Saturday, March 17, 2007

Eternal Life While You Wait, or Live Forever or Die Trying (12.16.10)

We're now down to Day One and Miracle Seven. But Day One also implies Day Zero, since there are no days, only deilight, prior to their creation. All we know from Genesis is that "the earth was without form, and void," and that "darkness was on the face of the deep," a wonderful phrase that conjures a profound nothingness, an existential swamp, an absolute nihil of darkness and meaninglessness. Is the Bible suggesting that creation sprung from a liberal university campus? I don't think so.

If I'm not mishnaken, just as it prohebrits spookyounotions about the afterl'chaim, Judaism discourages bereshit amusings about the state of affairs prior to creation. This is the purpose of the definitive statement at the outset of Genesis. From the Yiddish Bible: "So, mister bigshot philosopher, you're going to support a wife and child with this mishegas? In the beginning God made everything. Before God was bupkis. Oy gevald, you're giving me a headache."

Nevertheless, I went ahead and wrote my Boblical new testavus for the rest of us anyway, despite the misgivings of my mother-in-law. In the Coonifesto, I attempt to provide ananda backscrypture about the satchidation prior to the creation, when there is nothing but God, therefore nothing at all from the human point of view. Being that there is nothing, there is no language -- which is what I remember trying to explain to my publisher in response to the agitated question, "what is this nonsense?"

True, it is nonsense, but it's meant to be perfect nonsense, a punway round trip that circumnavelgazes the whole existentialada -- without the crockohooey sauce, mind you. But as unknowculated Coons are aware, to grasp the wheel of my broken-down trancebardation, you have to reach a ribald age, otherwise your seenil grammar and gravidad won't be malappropriate for my laughty revelation. If you are the least bit abcedminded around a theosaurus, I think you'll find that my yokes are easy and my words enlight and even annoy. Think of it as a secret code to bar the trolls from listening in at our Coon lodge meetings.

In the beginning, there is only pure potentiality. God is everything and therefore nothing, which is why, in the kabbalistic conception (hey, didn't those guys have mothers-in-law?), God must first "withdraw" in order for there to be anything. For if God is identical to his creation, it isn't really a creation but an emanation, and the Bible draws a clear distinction between creation and emanationism -- the latter of which would essentially reduce the cosmos to pimple on the creator's aseity, pardon the bun.

The first creative act serves as a template or "fractal" that mirrors the other six days of creation. In fact, according to Tomberg, the subsequent six days can be seen as an extended commentary on the first, which embraces in its essence the whole miracle of creation. As such, the first day is not just dealing with creation but the principle of creation. It is "the creation of creation," which must precede this or that creation. Therefour, or two, anyway, it is also the creation of the Creator, who is paradoxically created by his withdrawal from the creation.

In a way, this is analogous to our dreams. What distinguishes daytime consciousness from night time consciousness is that in the day, we are separate from the creations of our consciousness -- or at least we weave in and out of them, merge and observe, merge and observe. At night, although there is a dreamer and a dream, we cannot experience the distinction. We are merged, so to speak, in a kind of oneness. To say "let there be light" is to say "let there be consciousness," specifically, a separative consciousness that may know both the interior and exterior worlds. Again, that's not quite the right way to say it, for the separative consciousness of day is what creates the world. Without it, there is, as Whitehead wrote, "nothingness, bare nothingness" -- just a darkhead after too many black cows (speaking drunken Hegelese nonzenz. Mu!).

In the Coonifesto, when One's upin a timeless, it is "nothing, pure emptiness, a formless void without mind or life, a shadow spinning before the beginning over a silent static sea, unlit altar of eternity." It is "One brahman deathless breathing breathless, darkness visible the boundless all, unknown origin prior to time and space, fount of all being, unborn thus undying, beginning and end of all impossibility, empty plenum and inexhaustible void."

Sri Aurobindo's epic poem of cosmic all-possibilty, Savitri, begins with the line, "It was the hour before the God's awake." It is the "huge foreboding mind of Night, alone," "opaque, impenetrable," "the abysm of the unbodied Infinite" "between the first and last Nothingness." Later comes the first "event" or act:

Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea....
A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,
A sense was born within darkness' depths,
A memory quivered in the heart of Time
As if a soul long dead were moved to live....

Like Savitri, Genesis can only be understood lighterally, and therefore must be read slowly overhead and meditated upon, for it is trying to convey something from across the horizon of knowability -- something that cannot be known, only unknown. To unknow something is not equivalent to being ignorant about it. Rather, it is a special way of knowing what is beyond the brightly but ill-luminated area of consciousness -- it is to unvision the perfect night that precedes sight. In ether worlds, it is a way to try to get past the phenomena -- which we know can only be a shadow of the Real -- and to try to intuit the noumena, or the reality behind appearances.

As it so happyns, we undo this every naught when we enter the state of deep, dreamless sleep, or what is called in the Upanishads turiya. But how do we enter that state with eyes wide shut? Ah, that's the trick, isn't it, for this is to die before you die and to wake while you live. They say that enlightenment is to dance along the penumbra of this razoredgeon. Or so we have heard from the wise, from Petey, the mirthiful, the compassionate!

How does one awaken to the Dreamer who dreams the dream of our dream of the Dreamer? If you're asking me, I say you can try to gno it alone, but I think you'll get nowhere faster with the help of the Dreamer. But how to enlist his aid? It's an ether ore situation: to mine the ore from the ether, you must either pay your deus or be nilled to a blank. No body crosses the phoenix line lest it be repossessed and amortized -- yes, both amor- and amortized, love and death.

For if Genesis is correct, the cosmos is a gift that embodies love and death, which is to say, the divine kenosis, self-emptying, or self-sacrifice. If you are a parent, you are apparently familyar with the self-sacrifice that is necessary to bring a new little Adam in evolution. But it's a joyful sacrifice -- it is to participate joyfully in one's own funeral. In fact, as Joyce put it, it's a funferall!. Raising a child and creating a cosmos are both completely unnarcissary, to say the least. But at the same time, despite the death of my former Bob, I've become much more soph-centered over the past couple of years, thanks to my weird become flesh.

Now, the vector of creation moves in the "direction" of Zero --> One --> Two --> Three. The One cannot emerge until the "divine withdrawal," and the immediate implication of one is Two, for there cannot be One without Two. In other wordnumbers, or quanalties, without Two, One is reduced to Zero, or Zilch. Zee? Omyga!

That's a coincidence. At Belmont Club (TW: Larwyn) there is a piece about an article in Prospect Magazine, which has "invited 100 of the World's Thinkers to answer the question of what will define the coming century," some of which are reproduced in the post. I didn't even read them, because it's too early for a headache and I'm sure they're all wrong unless any of them happen to be right. But one certainly doesn't need to read Prospect Magazine to know what cannot be unknown unless one is very k->onfused.

For as always, the coming century will be defined by what defines every "century" and every human endeavor. In The Beginning -- which is always here -- God created heaven and earth, the above and below -- which is to say, the vertical: two worlds, two tendencies, two impulses, two realities -- or let us say reality and unreality, for there can only be one reality. But in order for us to know it, there must be unreality, which is not a paradox when you think about it. For it does not mean to say that ureality, or maya, is false, only to say that it is not the ultimate Real.

"Let there be light!"

"Lazarus, March Fourth! It's Coon Day!"

How do these relate?

To be coontinued.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would add to your excellent post that a meditation practice is invaluable in helping one rec0nnect with the silence that holds all.

I believe your meditation practice is writing your blog. It is a very focused concentration upon a single idea that does the trick.

Some people sit and listen to their own breathing, some say a mantra.

I like to walk up steep trails in the woods--the exertion gradually kills off all thoughts. Then, when I stop to rest, the gradual slowing of my heartrate and breathing, combined with the peace of the wilderness, tends to produce the desired state.

This is a return to Day One. It is very healing for the soul.

NoMo said...

Ahhh. This is one in need of much cudgitation. What a great way to begin this day!

Thx, Bob / Petey.

Anonymous said...

O.K. I'm officially weirded out now.

Tuesday evening I couldn't sleep for all the work-related problems screaming for answers. So, I began to identify prime numbers. Don't ask me why, I've never done it before.

While counting them I must confess my tired mind grew lazy and began to look for a pattern, a foothold, a something to make it easier. Interval patterns. Hmmmm...

Yeah, I fell asleep, too.

Anyway, the next morning I was bumping around the Internet and clicked a link to a story about some math prodigy, a young Australian man who had just won a half-million dollar prize for his work toward discovering an interval pattern for determining prime numbers on an infinite scale. It's apparently important for compressing image information.

You gotta know how surreal it all felt. I could care less about prime numbers, and have no idea why they came to me as a sleep-inducing aid. Or why I immediately "got" their importance in compressing information for images, and why the Cosmos is so vast, and, almost, almost thought I should play the Wednesday lottery just to be sure!

I'm unsafe, I think.
:)

wv: hrliwwnk
;)

Lisa said...

"No body crosses the phoenix line lest it be repossessed and amortized -- yes, both amor- and amortized, love and death. "

Syncoonicity strikes again! Just yesterday I decided to see what all this fuss was over Sri Aurobindo so I found Love and Death. Before I had a chance to read it, I was stricken by a migraine of severe proportions. The kind that makes you wish for either sleep or death, whichever comes first! Thank God sleep came first a mere 12 hours later. Gotta kvetch a little, but it does really make you appreciate being healthy or close to it.

Anyhoo, woke up around midnite and went back to computer. I am going to admit right here and now that I am not a huge fan of poetry, more my problem than the poems! Well, was I wrong! First the TV becomes obsolete, now I like poems, what the heck is happening here?! Love and Death was so amazing and real that I cried and then made myself stop so my headache wouldn't come back. Having experienced enough of a life to realize that happiness and love cannot exist without pain and death was once again imprinted in my soul after reading this poem. Letting myself feel both extremes of the emotional spectrum lately has been interesting because I would try to deny the painful side when I was younger. Not that I'm old and wise now, just not so stupid and naive which is always a plus.

wv: luhmneh, sure is enlightening!

Anonymous said...

it is a special way of knowing what is beyond the brightly but ill-luminated area of consciousness -- it is to unvision the perfect night that precedes sight.

It is no accident that the Hebrew "day" begins at sundown, not at sunrise.

To begin one's day with the Ultimate Slack is to be in synch with the Creator's plan. First rest, listen, disengage. Then, create.

Anonymous said...

OT Update to comment I posted here on 3/9/07:
ms. e said...
"surgically implanted devices"


I lost my car keys last week; 3 people searched high and low for 2 days to no avail. All my spare keys were locked up in storage - and, yes the key to storage was on the key ring. I'll be first in line to get a surgically implanted thingy to locate my missing keys. arghhhhhh!


We ate Chinese tonight. Inside my fortune cookie was a long lost saying of Coonfucius:

-- Coonfucius say 'keys to the kingdom' scamper to their hiding places whenever owner becomes preoccupied doing something else.


3/17/07 Update: This morning I found my keys in a bag of carrots in the refrigerator!!!

Personally, I think "Der Waschbaermann!" put them in the bag of carrots.

I'm going to see if I can locate "Love and Death" now.

Lisa - So glad the wise in your head opted for sleep.

robinstarfish said...

lift and separate
fold into origami
dream the waking world

Unknown said...

I had seen the prospect magazine article on belmont club - there were a few with coon potential but the stink of upsidedown morality permeated the rest of them.

This post was a good remedy.

Anonymous said...

The following quote is by Van; written this morning, but posted late on yesterday's Comments. I'm hoping more folks will read it, posted early; (uh, and that he doesn't mind me swiping his stuff):

"The whole "Inte"-grating crew with their multiple 'truths' each being valid - valid by what? True by what? Which separate 'truth' are they operating under, and why does it have any integration with the other 'truths'? All the separate 'truths' are being referenced as somehow contained within... what? If they were indeed separate, they would be separate and inaccessible and incoherent to other 'truths'... as I've said before, they use words as flat images, window dressing, mannequins in their meaningless displays, useful only for making 'statements' and assertions. They have no comprehension of the concept of Truth, much less of the words they use to abuse it."

Well put, Van.

NoMo said...

ms. e - You have the luck 'o the Irish - at least today! Now I'm head'n out to find a 4-leaf clover.

wv: yijow (exclamation point!)

Anonymous said...

Bob said:
"It is "the creation of creation," which must precede this or that creation. Therefour, or two, anyway, it is also the creation of the Creator, who is paradoxically created by his withdrawal from the creation."

Reading the above has, for the first time, enabled me to make sense of these two riddles.

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, did it still make a sound?
AND
If a husband says something and his wife is not there to hear it, is he still wrong? ;)

These never made any sense to me because God would be there to hear them... but what about before God or an objective (subjective?)observer?

Lisa said...

Thanks, mrs. e! I'm glad too. If you have trouble locating the poem let me know...;)

Hoarhey, yes husband will still be wrong. Some truths are eternal! lol..

Anonymous said...

An SOS left by JWM at the back-up One Cosmos:

Another test. I seem to be caught in a multi-dimensional password devouring vortex over at Blogger. It won’t let me post anything. It keeps saying, “incorrect password” But when I try to retreive the password it sends no e-mail. Anyway- Great series of recent posts, Bob. I’ve been quiet as of late, but a lot of things are stirring.

JWM

*****

A number of people report this difficulty. Is there some obvious solution?

Van Harvey said...

Walt,
Thanks, I couldn't have said it better myself.

;-)

Joan... I think you're a Prime candidate.

NoMo said...

I know it's St. Paddy's Day and all, but forgive me for the following three words:

Andrea Bocelli "Sogno"

I dont' know if it showed up on "Bob's Ultra-Orthodox and Booming Canon of Rock & Soul", but whoa, check it out.

Orthodox it is.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm...
Lisa loves poetry.

Joan dreams of prime numbers.

Ms E found the keys.

Hoarhey is the Riddler.

Van is the Joker.

I love prime rib numbers.

And these are just a few of the coonhappenstances goin' on today.

Anonymous said...

I also found that I'm no longer insulted by trolls and Bob actually makes sense most-O'the timelessness.

And I forgot to sign in, but I'm ok with that.

Anonymous said...

That's not to say I don't wanna beat some sense into trolls, from time-to-time, but mostly they are a form of coonfirmation in a silly kind of way.

Lots O'laughs.

Anonymous said...

Well, USS Ben--no longer insulted by Trolls? That sounds like a challenge to me. How about I say something really insulting?

Here it is: Senator Edwards rules. I want him in the White House, yes I do, yes I do, yes I do.

Gagdad Bob, on the other hand, is not a good presidential candidate. He will not give up blogging to pursue politics; that is his Achilles Heel.

Trolls rejoice! Bob is pinned down by his need to blog! He will not seek office! And his friend USS Ben is powerless to correct this or anything else!

Trolls are on a roll... moonbats uber alles! Hooray

Anonymous said...

The moonbat agenda reigns supreme. There aint no stoppin' us now...

Cause we got the money, yeah we got da money, yeah we got ALL OF THE FILTHY LUCRE and that's because the

Lefties got the oil now. Yep.

Allah you coonzis scroowed.

Van Harvey said...

Uber moonbat said,
Troll? Rather pathetic attempt... uber moonbat? Rather namby candlemoth.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Uber Moonbat said:
"How about I say something really insulting?"

LOL! Where's the insult again?

Anonymous said...

"Trolls on a roll" - now THERE'S an image!

Meanwhile, USS Ben and I keep watch, before dawn. (Coon time.)

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