Thursday, October 04, 2007

Of Time & Maternity: The Birth of an GnOcean

I dreamt that I was pregnant and full with Nothingness.... and that out of this Nothingness God was born. --Meister Eckhart

Where are we, really? As I tried to coonvey in the book, for the great majority of time that the cosmos has been in existence, there was no where there or here here. There couldn't have been, because there was no one here. Or there. Or when. Or why.

This I know: that the only way to live is like the rose, which lives without a why. --Eckhart

I don't just mean in an "if a tree falls in the forest and no one heard it" sort of way. Rather, there was literally no point of view, no perspective, no separate individual there to experience any-thing. Rather, there was only all places at once. Obviously the cosmos didn't "look" like anything, because there were no eyes. It was utterly silent, being that there were no ears. It was not large or small, cold or hot, hard or soft, bright or dim, Democrat or.... Well, obviously it couldn't have been Democrat, because there was no one there to whine or complain. Not a single victim.

When I dwelt in the ground, in the bottom, in the stream, and in the source of the Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing. Back in the womb from which I came, I had no God and merely was myself. --Eckhart

In any nonevent, since all of these are properties of senses and perspectives that didn't exist, we can only say that there was truly nothing. As Whitehead wrote, "Apart from the experiences of subjects, there is nothing, bare nothingness." Or, as Schopie wrote, "If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of the subject's representations."

Now the moment I flowed out from the Creator, all creatures stood up and shouted: "Behold, here is God!" They were correct. For if you ask me, Who is God? What is God? I reply: Isness. Isness is God. --Eckhart

This business of isness represents a more profound notion of creatio ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing, for it means that the creation of the cosmos is truly an eternally recurring psychoneumatic act. And yet, a moment's coontemplation reveals that this mental act is also entangled with the cosmos from which it emerged. Thus, in some way that we generally don't appreciate, the outside and the inside of the cosmos are reflections of one another. The best image I can come up with is that of a Klein Bottle, which has only one surface, but an interior and an exterior:

"In mathematics, the Klein bottle is a certain non-orientable surface, i.e., a surface (a two-dimensional topological space) with no distinction between the 'inside' and 'outside' surfaces. Other related non-orientable objects are the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Where a Möbius strip is a two dimensional object with only one surface and one edge, a Klein bottle is a two dimensional object with a single surface and no edges. For comparison, a sphere is a two dimensional object with no edges and two surfaces.... Like the Möbius strip, the Klein bottle is a two-dimensional differentiable manifold which is not orientable. Unlike the Möbius strip, the Klein bottle is a closed manifold, meaning it is a compact manifold without boundary. While the Möbius strip can be embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space R³, the Klein bottle cannot. It can be embedded in R4, however" (Wikipedia).

Thus, perhaps time is nothing more than our wending our way through to the bigending of a snaking Klein Bottle.

In my flowing-out I entered creation. In my Breakthrough I re-enter God.... Just as God breaks through me, so do I break through God in return. --Eckhart

Now, as we have been saying, the unconscious mind preserves the original placelessness of the cosmos. In that regard, it might be thought of as providing a more accurate reflection of the nature of the cosmos.

In ether worlds, just as living beings emerged from a unitary, all-at-once cosmos, so too did (ontologically) and does (developmentally) the individual ego emerge from the timeless mamamatrix of the unconscious oneconscious. Each of us has repeated the process of creation out of nothing by pulling an ego up & out of the formless infinite void. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, "A miracle of the Absolute was born / Infinity put on a finite soul." For this reason, Mouravieff asked "How do you describe the creation of the world?... The world is created anew for each newborn person."

From all eternity Got lies on a maternity bed, giving birth. The essence of God is birthing. --Eckhart

It's all so unnarcissary, isn't it? "The act of creation... is the spontaneous overflow of God's nature.... Out of the fulness of his joy, God scatters abroad life and power" (Radhakrishnan). "God's motive in creation is his love.... Creation is not an act so much of his free will as of his free love" (Kallistos Ware). Yes, "the world is a gift of God." Ah, but "we must know how to perceive the giver through the gift" (O. Clement). How to open His presence?

If the only prayer you say in your entire life is "Thank You," that would suffice. --Eckhart

Now, if the cosmos is hurtling forward to its Origin, then "the final goal of being is the darkness and the unknowability of the hidden divinity, which is that light which shines 'but the darkness cannot comprehend it'" (Eckhart). So, repetey after me,

Unborn body of the bodiless one
Dark rays shining from a midnight sun
Your phase before you were bearthed and begaialed
Empty tomb of a deathlaz child

The most beautiful thing which a person can say about God would be for that person to remain silent from the wisdom of an inner wealth. --Eckhart

Shut my mouth! Enough bull, its ineffable. Stop prehending. Telos when it's over. Now. It is accompliced. End of the piper trail. You're on your own. Above my head, beyond my ken. Thy wilber done. Lost my aperture. Just apophatic nonentity.

A big joke, really. Yes, existence is a laughing martyr:

Do you want to know what goes on in the core of the Trinity? I will tell you. In the core of the Trinity, the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son. The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit. The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us. --Eckhart

Badda-bing, badda-

BANGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!

*All the Eckhart quotes are taken from a nice little book by a naughty little man, Meditations With Meister Eckhart

*****

Unrelated -- Proof that Van Morrison is a Raccoon:

And why Van Should be Taught in Our Schools

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

I come here repeatedly, hoping...
You sound so interesting, then there is inevitably the other shoe dropping:

"It was not large or small, cold or hot, hard or soft, bright or dim, Democrat or.... Well, obviously it couldn't have been Democrat, because there was no one there to whine or complain. Not a single victim."

You remind me up front that I am reading the thoughts of a being wrapped in frustration and anger at ... it doesn't matter at "what", only that it is unresolved. And in someone so ... capable. How curious. Like tar globules in beach sand. But I love your word play, your intellect, your spiritual zest and zeal.

I hope to read you someday when you have balanced your person with your motives. There is a larger peace beyond where you are. See you down the coast, perhaps.

walt said...

Bob -

Just to let you know I've really enjoyed and appreciated your recent dissection of Bomford, and related subjects/ideas. The material is hard for me to offer comments on, much less "add" anything to -- but my eyes and ears are wide open.

Interesting to note today that I could follow right along with the post, and actually understand the illustrations from Meister Eckhart -- whereas, say a year ago, I would not have known what was being said. Equally interesting to me is that they matched many of the things I've been thinking privately; hey, agreement is nice! So, you really are shining a light through these subjects that "lights them up."
Guess that means you are en fuego, of late! The obvious disappointment of some, notwithstanding.

Gagdad Bob said...

Unsorry to disappoint you, anon. To the extent that we meet further down the coast, it will be because you have comprehended the fatal spiritual danger of the psychological left.

Anonymous said...

What he said!

Anonymous said...

Gnarly, Bob!

And as for enlightenment, are not the beach and the tar globules ONE?

Anonymous said...

Tar globules, as natural as the sand in which they rest.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful post. Truly brilliant. You put that Wilber dude to shame...

And yet...I'm still stuck. Call the abyss that devours "me" God or call it nihilism. It's still an abyss...I'm still toast.

In some "Buddhist sense" realizing that all phenomena are empty (include myself...or *especially* myself) can allow me to avoid the suffering that comes with attachment to that which is impermanent.

But nonetheless does that require any metaphysical proof/disproof of God? Any such God seems *to me* not unlike Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover" Bully for God (or "thought thinking itself...the "ULTIMATE NARCISSIST") but it doesn't really seem to have anything to do with me. I can just go my merry/confused way.

What appeals to me about Christianity is the sense that there is a personal relationship between myself and God. That I actually matter in some very real sense to the universe and more importantly to God. That it isn't all in vain.

Maybe it is all in vain--however it turns metaphysically speaking. Which of course leads me right back to Nihilism.

No wonder I'm so tired all the time!! Though honestly I probably just need to get over myself.

Thank you for entertaining my bafflement.

Gagdad Bob said...

Eckhart would be the last to deny your approach. Rather, he would say that dissolving in love is the quintessence of it.

Van Harvey said...

"It was not large or small, cold or hot, hard or soft, bright or dim, Democrat or.... Well, obviously it couldn't have been Democrat, because there was no one there to whine or complain. Not a single victim."

Letting the Other shoe drop (so I can slip it on), I loved that!

BTW - never get complacent regarding ISS, you just never know when your pork fried rice might become wallpaper and monitor flocking.

walt said...

Anon -

See if you can pull One Cosmos from May 9, 2007 from the archives. Bob addressed the "inadequacey" inherent in Buddhist philosophy relative to the potential inherent in man.

A quote:
"....you must live a life that is ruled by passionate desire: desire for the true, the good and the beautiful. Extinguish this desire, and you will have killed man."

Perhaps that post will help.

Anonymous said...

Thank you all.

Walt-I will definitely check out the recommended post.

My initial forays into "spirituality" were of the zen buddhist variety. I think of Tillich's book "The Courage To Be", the buddhist version of which might be called "The Courage to Be Nothing".

Tillich's title alone explains much of the beautiful dynamism of the West. Which is surely endangered by the Nihilism with which I struggle. Why bother if I'm truly a zero--I'm a Gen x'er! Can you tell?


"I believe, help me unbelief"!!

Gagdad Bob said...

"The ascent to God will be a lapse into the void or the abyss, if the ultimate brahman is itself looked upon as an abstraction. Then the goal of man is annihilation. The Upanishads dispute such a conclusion. The highest is a state of rapture and ecstasy, a condition of Ananda."

"It is an eternal existence absorbed in the thought, love and enjoyment of the Supreme, and not an annihilation. The cry of the devotee poet, 'I want to eat sugar, and do not want to become sugar,' expresses this view." --S. Radhakrishnan

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Syzygy.

Three and two. Six.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Lately, it left me unsatisfied to say, "I overcame this problem." Even, "God lifted me up." seemed inadequate. I was in despair and confusion until I simply said, "We overcame it together."

Relationship.

Anonymous said...

Yes! and I have an infinite sweet tooth!

Anonymous said...

"It is an eternal existence absorbed in the thought, love and enjoyment of the Supreme, and not an annihilation. The cry of the devotee poet, 'I want to eat sugar, and do not want to become sugar,' expresses this view." --S. Radhakrishnan

reminds me of the end of Dante's Paradiso...

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Some of Eckhart's stuff isn't just hard, its downright stinging. Like:

Now the moment I flowed out from the Creator, all creatures stood up and shouted: "Behold, here is God!" They were correct. For if you ask me, Who is God? What is God? I reply: Isness. Isness is God.

Dang it! ECKHAAAAAAARRRRT!

Also, I've some difficulty with

If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of the subject's representations.

What he means is not such and such a man - if, for instance, I myself perish, the world (or Earth) goes on without me. But if man, as such, perishes, then there is no more world? Even if there are atoms, and energy, it all becomes meaningless? Like, how Adam gives the names to the creatures?

Probably trying to be too asymmetrical on this one.

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, it's fair to say that Eckhart is always trying to use language in such a way as to vault you out of asymmetry (as did Jesus, of course). He's easy to misunderstand (as he yelled over his shoulder while running from the authorities).

Gagdad Bob said...

As for Schopie, he's really a western Vedantin, taking natural reason as far as it can go.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Well, hopefully into the upward (true-ward) symmetry, and not the devil's symmetry. I guess with Eckhart, you could suppose the wrong thing and end up going the wrong way. Kind of like climbing Mt. Everest, but on paper.

And I thought Go was difficult.

NoMo said...

Can you say e-s-o-t-e-r-i-c ?

I knew you could!

NoMo said...

Oh, and thanks Bob for the most excellent Van link. What a great collection of photos. Seeing / hearing him perform at the Gorge in WA state in '98 (with Joni M and Bob D) was the high point of my concert going experiences. Transcendent.

Yale said...

Great post. Much thanks.

In return, I am guessing that you will find of some sympatico interest my Mobius God Strips revelation as found at TrueTyme.org/mg.pdf .

Regards

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