Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Doctor, There's a Hole in My Crater! (7.09.12)

And a ghost in my post! Somehow this post didn't come together in the manner one might have hoped. There seems to be a big "hole" in the middle of it, a hole I wasn't able to fill with my Sacred Shovel. Then again, perhaps it is expedient that I must leave you and go to work, which will allow you to put your shoulder to the plow and try to make some sense of it on your own.

Let's talk about this smoking crater at the center of history. First of all, it doesn't just represent a horizontal discontinuity that divides history between BCE and AD, but a permanent vertical entrance -- and exit. So there is both temporal and a spatial discontinuity; there are horizontal energies memorialized and sent forward by tradition, but vertical energies that continue to rain down and fertilize tradition "from above." (It's also where the saints and bodhsattva's rise and fall in and out, and where Petey and I meet for launch.)

Usually, to forget one of these streams results in a lack of spiritual efficacy, although not always, being that allowances must be made for the spirit blowing where -- and in whom -- it will. Still, the cross serves as an apt reminder of the vertical and horizontal energies that meet and harmonize in the crater of the human heart (or heart-mind). Of course, the heart must be "broken," which is a kind of space that lets the light in.

With regard to the horizontal aspect of the crater, "before" and "after" take on absolute meanings instead of just relative ones. This reminds me of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which is based on the absoluteness of the speed of light. Just as time slows down as we approach the speed of light, so too does history as we approach the crater. Prayer, contemplation, meditation, ritual, slack retrieval -- these are all vertical modalities that both slow down and dilate time (for the one is a function of the other) and allow us to exit history. Woo hoo!

This is surely what I must have been referring to on Page 181 of the Coonifesto, where it is written: "As a consequence of their apparently death-bound little selves, human beings began envisioning and longing for the whole, for an ideal existence located somewhere in the past, an eden, or in the future, a heaven, where all tensions are resolved, the circle is unbroken, and we are returned to the source from whence we came." On the following page, it is written that a few vertical explorers were able to follow "a newly discovered current of being through to its non-local source upstream, far away from the terminal moraine of the outward-turned senses." They then identified "a passage [which is to say, a hole] hidden in plain sight, through which lay yet another altogether surprising but felicitous discovery: A Mighty Strange Attractor at the..."

Hmm. That's strange. The sentence ends just like that, at the end of the chapter. It's like the last stair is missing, and the book just drops off into a big crater or something... Oh well...

Anyway, if you read the pre-Christian pagan literature, you can see that this yearning for redemption or escape was becoming particularly intense and explicit as the Christic singularity approached -- for example, the poet.... what's his name, Jeeves?

That's right, Virgil. In his Eclogues, he writes of "a new age that is about to begin. A child, the first born of the new age, is on his way from heaven" (Beckett):

A great series of centuries is born from the whole of time
now a virgin returns, the golden age returns;
now its firstborn is sent to us, down from the height of heaven.
Look kindly, goddess of childbirth, on the birth of this boy;
for him shall the people of iron fail, and a people of gold
arise in all the world

Come soon (for the hour is at hand) to the greatness of your glory,
dear offspring of the gods, great child of Jove himself!
Look how the round world bends in its weight,
the lands, the tracts of the sea and the deep sky;
look how all things rejoice in the coming time!


In order to be able to think about this, we need to appreciate the effect of a hyperdimensional object crashing down into history ("look how the round world bends in its weight") and then sending its waves both "forward" and "back" ("look how all things rejoice in the coming time!") As I mentioned yesterday, I am well aware of how these temporal waves have been sent "forward" -- not just by the impact of the original event, but amplified through time by the collective ("tradition") and by certain fleshlights (saints, doctors, mystics, etc.). Look at Augustine. He was already 400 years out from the singularity, and yet, still feeling its shockwaves as if it had happened just yesterday.

In fact, just as with physical entropy, it seems that if the original wave isn't renewed and given periodic "boosts," it will begin to fade. I can feel this quite vividly if, say, I read the early fathers -- who were much closer to the impact of the singularity -- and compare them to your uncoontemporary purveyor of average churchianity. In fact, this is one of the reasons Schuon was such an advocate of tradition, since there is a kind of spiritual entropy that slowly neutralizes the revolutionary effect of the revelation and eventually replaces it with the "human nature" it is designed to remedy. This entropic effect must be constantly battled, both in the individual and collective. Call it "conservative" if you like, but it's trying to conserve an explosive revolution!

Think, for example, of how liberals take us further and further away from the original intent of our timeless "political revelation," the Constitution. The process is very similar -- which is why a so-called "conservative" is simply someone who wishes to preserve the radical spiritual revolution of the Founders.

In truth, all valid spiritual traditions will have something analogous to the Smoking Crater. Certainly the Torah serves this purpose in Judaism, for it is the infinite written in finite form. As such, it "explodes" all attempts to contain or reduce it to any mere human dimension. It's like a bomb that never stops exploding; or perhaps like a bush that burns continuously without being consumed.

Similarly, of Buddhism, Schuon writes that "Like a magnet, the beauty of the Buddha draws all the contradictions of the world and transmutes them into radiant silence; the image deriving therefrom appears as a drop of the nectar of immortality fallen into the chilly world of forms and crystallized into a human form, a form accessible to men."

In this regard, we can see that Christ is also like a lens in which the vertical energies are gathered and focused, just like a magnifying glass that can use the sun's rays to start a brushfire -- which Dupree insists he did not set, because he was here with me at the time. Schuon calls this an "amazing condensation of the Message in the image of the Messenger," who also represents the "infinite victory of the Spirit," or the priority of the vertical over the horizontal. Note that Jesus said "it is expedient for you that I go away." Why is that? Because he needed to make sure that the crater stayed empty, which is to say, full of mystery.

Now, certain aspects of the teaching -- the "whole truth" -- can only actualize in time, as the waves move forward. This is because, to paraphrase Schuon, the original event must create the context for certain implications to be worked out. This is the necessity of the Church, or of Tradition, which "has the function, not only of communicating vital truths, but also of creating an environment adapted to the manifestation of spiritual modes of a particular character."

He goes on to point out that in all religions, "some few centuries after its foundation, one sees a fresh flowering of a kind of second youth, and this is due to the fact that the presence of a collective and material ambience, realized by the religion itself, creates conditions allowing -- or requiring -- an expansion of an apparently new kind." One thinks of the fifth century that produced an Augustine and Denys, or 13th that produce both Eckhart and Aquinas. Or how Hinduism produced Shankara or Buddhism Nagarjuna (the spiritual genius, not the idiot blogger) only many centuries later.

As Schuon writes, the descent of the Holy Spirit would be inconceivable "without the departure of Jesus," through which he can become "present" for all time. Otherwise, his mere physical presence might have created a kind of idolatry, or "saturation" of the space where God is found. No space, no God, no service.

Again, that space is the smoking crater, but it is where the vertical energies flow. And of course, there are various heresies that essentially get the balance wrong between Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Us, and the Crater. You could also say that the Crater is necessary for man, since his worldly ego is essentially a precipitate or crystallization of a mode of consciousness that mirrors materiality.

But the higher self is a sort of mirror of the empty space of that crater, which has the effect of turning us "inward," toward our own existential crater that can never be filled by worldly things. As Ray constantly teaches us, to think in the material mode is to "think in opposition to intelligence," while to orient ourselves around the mysterious crater helps us to think beyond ourselves, into the Great Within.

In this regard, negation or "unknowing" has always been understood to be a kind of ultimate affirmation; for in the end, the Void turns out to be a kind of plenum, whereas the solidity of the world turns out to be a kind of existential nothingness, or samsaric void. As such, we must practice detachment from the latter void in order to be filled with the former Void. Me? I'm just a space cadet, apophatic nobody.

57 comments:

Gagdad Bob said...

Something I didn't say?

Anonymous said...

Test.

robinstarfish said...

It's like, er, uh, ah...too much low gong!

Meanwhile, here's your ghost: Proof Positive

robinstarfish said...

Just wondering...what if...

...Jesus had through his own will and intent, not taken the cup. It was his choice to accept it and drink.

Mat 26:39: He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will."

He beseeched his Father three times to let it pass. And yet he chose to step into the breach and the veil of the cosmos was ripped apart as a result, top to bottom.

So what if he had taken the other route? What would have been split open then?

Anonymous said...

Anon from 7/09/2008 09:19:00 AM,
At least I have a sweet spot.

Rick said...

Gagdad,
Nah. Must be the weather. A beautiful day here (a mere 2 hour drive from NYC). Funny how this place will be under 500 feet of ice in a few days.
Wait a minute…that was 30 years ago. Sorry, got my craters crossed.

Anonymous said...

Ray, you haven’t answered my riddles.
But no more links, please. I have enough data.

julie said...

Robin, I wonder if the alternative is actually even a possibility. Jesus took the cup of His own free will (it could not not be so, or His sacrifice would have been invalid), but His nature and character were such that it is almost inconceivable that He could have chosen otherwise. As awful as it must have been to put Himself through all of that, how much worse would the alternative have been? If the depth charge had misfired, so to speak - if Jesus had given in to the temptation to be an earthly ruler or if He had simply washed his hands of us all - then mankind would have either become helpless thralls in the unfiltered light of God, or we would have continued the Fall but faster, and with precious few ropes and flashlights available to save us from ourselves. Either way, though, the world as we know it would not exist.

mushroom said...

As Schuon writes, the descent of the Holy Spirit would be inconceivable "without the departure of Jesus," through which he can become "present" for all time. Otherwise, his mere physical presence might have created a kind of idolatry, or "saturation" of the space where God is found. No space, no God, no service.

Like why He told Mary "Don't cling to Me". I thought I was picking up a strange frequency this morning. Now I know.

Rick said...

Julie,
This is how I look at it. The event was inevitable. No one knew the hour, I think, including Jesus. Only that it would. The tension on the potential grew greater and greater…

julie said...

Ricky,
agreed, it was inevitable. The important thing, to me at least, is that it was also voluntary.

Anonymous said...

Truly, it was ineveateapple.

Anonymous said...

It is with some hesitation that I add my bit here but here goes...

Now I understand the crater deal and YES! to a Macro hit, especially in that particular period spanning a few hundred years, resulting in a bunch of changes...the start of Christianity is approximately the start of Buddhism, and in the echoes of that moment even Islam. Especially in Buddhism and Christianity there is a similar relationship to the earlier spirit (Hinduism, Judaism).

As above so below.

The centerpiece of the vision that happened to me to change my life was the way Creation is total and momentous, at this very moment, that the center is a vertical axis as we speak of it here, or more correctly, at "right" angles to everything. The very change of a Jesus appearing is identically placed in the present moment and always has been. It is exactly that which holds the cosmos in its existence.

But this is on the quantum scale, where all winks in and out, just underneath the size of Planck's constant. The work of spiritual disciplines is to bring this into a macro form in some way. It has been done before and can be done again, perhaps right now!

Worshipping the location of a singularity that has already happened is useful, even essential, but not complete. To assert it to be the only one that echoes forward and back is to miss the infinite creative flow here and now (the Holy Spirit) that has no beginning
and no end. Wait. That is wrong writing. Outside of history entirely, at right angles to all the angles in the world.

But words actually fail. The encounter passes far beyond into a wordless place. And all this sort of writing is a current manifestation of the crater event in my own life, tempered with the training that I get in all the places I go, led as I am (I hope) by Creation as it happens in my center.

I wrote: Worshipping the location of a singularity that has already happened is useful, even essential, but not complete.

What is complete is as written of in Christian literature: I must conform myself to the image and likeness of Christ. And it is not a work, though it cannot happen except through the doorway of work. I call this practice. And yet not I, but the Father through me, Yes? That is the deal. I fail on my own but the resource is in me because center is everywhere (at that universal right angle to everything). With that resource, together We cannot fail.

julie said...

In other words, Non-Local Operators are standing by to take your call...

Anonymous said...

All this crater talk got me thinking of how Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb!

Better set my house in order. It's still kind of messy.

Rick said...

Julie,
Yes, I think voluntary. But maybe more like the event, in a sense, was drawing Him to it. He may have had a choice but maybe only in its timing.

Anonymous said...

As first troll on the scene this afternoon, I cackle and rub my hands in glee...but wait, where is the "bone of contention?" How can I do my thing?

I'll go after Petey. Petey (Pyotr Ivanovich Gaston) was the son of a French soldier who made it to Lithuania in the Napoleonic wars, fell in love, and never returned to France.

Pyotr emigrated from Lithuania to Western Pennsylvania, where he became a farmer. He was mangled in a harvesting combine in 1935, lay in bed a couple of weeks, and then died.

Following this the late Mr. Gaston became a sort of celebrity in the in-between. Bob is not the first medium to host Pyotr ("Petey") and probably won't be the last.

So, when Petey drops his wisdom bombs on Bob, who passes them along, its good to know the source. Whoops, there it is. Take it for what its worth.

Rick said...

From a certain angle, the event looks like a vertical needle placed in the horizontal groove of history. It was placed on the LP and never actually left; the record keeps spinning, the waves continue reverberating… The third dimension was added to the two.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

That felt like a J.K. Rowling novel.

>bamf!<

Van Harvey said...

aninnymouse said "... not the first medium to host Pyotr ..."

eh... I think that's spelled
'P-e-y-o-t-e'

See Robin's first link for further reference.

Anonymous said...

speaking of peyote, one of my favorite God manifestations is coyote. I love his mix of qualities. There is no question that coyote is a peyote dream...

Jack said...

Whatever merits the film had (I mean, who knew Judas was from Brooklyn?) "The Last Temptation of Christ" takes on the issue of "what if" He had not chosen to taken the cup. It 's an interesting premise anyway...

Jack said...

sorry "take the cup"

Van Harvey said...

takes the cake

Anonymous said...

Holy cakewalk Batman!
The kid's going south again.
Come back here Jesus!

Anonymous said...

So, lets talk about something completely different. Who has heard of Sakyong Mipham? Do the words "Windhorse," "Payu," "Drip," or "Drala" ring any bells?

Anonymous said...

Van:
You may have inadvertently come up with a good idea. Peyote.
Feed the ninnymouse a dozen fat ones. Who knows, it just might coonify the kid. Or at least it would get him out of our hair for a while.

JWM

Anonymous said...

JWM, great idea!

Mousie will experience heaven & hell and get to worship at the alter of The Porcelain God while he spews & prepares to meet his Maker.

What's not to like?

Anonymous said...

The wacko talking who posted regarding Petey is on something, all right.

But I'm curious, what is the scoop on Petey? Anyone know about him? Is he really a dead person or what?

And, if GDB has Petey, does that mean that we too can have a spirit guide or angel or what have you?

Does anyone else on the post have a similar experience/guide/angel/being?

Just Curious

Anonymous said...

Johan, thanx for the Ry Cooder reminder - see he has a new album out 6/24/08 entitled:
I, FLATHEAD

Saw him live back in the '80s, at the old Crest Theater in Sacramento CA. The place was packed, with people -myself included- filling even the stairs (surely a fire hazard?) Oh, man did they ROCK THE HOUSE!!!

Been collecting his recordings for decades, but have never hear of: "Ry Cooder & The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces: Let's Have A Ball", film by Les Blank. Is it only available on your side of the pond? Is there a soundtrack?

Homework time

Rhonda Keith Stephens said...

Read the books by Bernadette Roberts: The Experience of No Self, The Path to No Self, and What Is Self? See bernadettesfriends.blogspot.com.

Anonymous said...

Curious:
Raccoons pal around with a veritable menagerie of oddballs, most of whom are, er....
not suited for polite company.
Lezzee.......

Cuz Dupree
LaFayette
Scatter
Scully
Booger da kat & Yottle
(last two neverhardly phonehome anymore)

Who's missing?

julie said...

You're forgetting Colonel Beaglehole & Dame Edith Waterfowl. I had forgotten about Yottle :D

Anonymous said...

i hvnt posded nything bakuzz nobdoy keps lettin mi neer teh clumpoo tar
cauza wen i hakted a fruball on the btuons thnig
heer he comez i
gorda ruun

bugr the cta

mushroom said...

I wore out the original vinyl album of Ry Cooder's "Chicken Skin Music". I have it digitized now. I love his cover of "Stand by Me".

Anonymous said...

Booger, Oh Dear!!!

What ever happen to that TradeMarked translator/writer toy that worked so well for you?

No doubt the pissy & vindictive HE thinks it's justified over a measly upchuck. Humans, what looozers!

If I were stupid enough to withhold web-cam time from Beaky over every fat-lip she gave me........

Make HIM pay Booger! Call PETA: that'll fix HIM.

Anonymous said...

Right you are Julie. Did not Booger have a same-species special friend too?

Anonymous said...

Christopher,

Stick around, and keep the personal data flowing. No good deed...

We're all hard-pressed to find intolerance so logophilicly expressed and lovingly repressed anywhere else on the net. I mean where else can you find spiritual salvation and a smooth, round stone on the same path? All you'll need soon, with your New Coon Vision, is a suitable target...hey, there goes one now! Altogether now, in the name of Tooth!


HEEE HAAAWWW

Anonymous said...

Oh, and the occasional ass visits too

Hiyahaaww

Anonymous said...

Christopher,

Stick around, and keep the personal data flowing. No good deed...

We're all hard-pressed to find intolerance so logophilicly expressed and lovingly repressed anywhere else on the net. I mean where else can you find spiritual salvation and a smooth, round stone on the same path? All you'll need soon, with your New Coon Vision, is a suitable target...hey, there goes one now! Altogether now, in the name of Tooth!


HEEE HAAAWWW

Anonymous said...

Christopher,

Stick around, and keep the personal data flowing. No good deed...

We're all hard-pressed to find intolerance so logophilicly expressed and lovingly repressed anywhere else on the net. I mean where else can you find spiritual salvation and a smooth, round stone on the same path? All you'll need soon, with your New Coon Vision, is a suitable target...hey, there goes one now! Altogether now, in the name of Tooth!


HEEE HAAAWWW

Anonymous said...

Christopher,

Stick around, and keep the personal data flowing. No good deed...

We're all hard-pressed to find intolerance so logophilicly expressed and lovingly repressed anywhere else on the net. I mean where else can you find spiritual salvation and a smooth, round stone on the same path? All you'll need soon, with your New Coon Vision, is a suitable target...hey, there goes one now! Altogether now, in the name of Tooth!


HEEE HAAAWWW

Anonymous said...

Christopher,

Stick around, and keep the personal data flowing. No good deed...

We're all hard-pressed to find intolerance so logophilicly expressed and lovingly repressed anywhere else on the net. I mean where else can you find spiritual salvation and a smooth, round stone on the same path? All you'll need soon, with your New Coon Vision, is a suitable target...hey, there goes one now! Altogether now, in the name of Tooth!


HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWW

Anonymous said...

Careful Old Yeller, you hit a nerve. Quick, more Absolute Explanations* to deaden the pain!

* Copyright OneCauseMess Limited

Magnus Itland said...

Dentist,
I'll be happy to deaden the pan.

Magnus Itland said...

I think Jesus could have made a great Buddha if he decided to not die for all those scurvy bastiches. He could have wandered the world and compassionately told people to save themselves - "after all, that's what I did".

/deadpan

Anonymous said...

Hi Ximeze,

Sorry for a late answer, but the time you Yankee raccoons come out to rumble around here is when it's getting kind of late in the evening here in Sweden... now it's Thursday midday.

I must confess that I don't know much about Ry Cooder, just stumbled upon him by accident a couple of month ago.

This must be the movie you mentioned...?

Van Harvey said...

"Or how Hinduism produced Shankara or Buddhism Nagarjuna (the spiritual genius, not the idiot blogger)..."

Kinda thought that might bring the jackasses out.

Cuz! Roadapple clean up, aisle three.

Anonymous said...

I'm so full o' da milk o' human kindness, I gotta pee all over everyone elses thoughts.

0 what a happy ass am i.

eee...ahhhh

namaste

Van Harvey said...

Still laughing.

Ray Ingles said...

Sorry, Hal, I was too busy having a life (man, I love my wife!) yesterday to get to your 'riddles'. We'll take them in reverse order.

1. "The second amendment is not a suicide pact." I know the answer you were fishing for, of course, but this makes a useful point. The Supreme Court made the right decision recently regarding ol' #2. People have the right to bear arms for good and sufficient reasons, despite the fact that we know some of them are going to abuse it and kill innocent people. Abrogating that right (and draconian enforcement) might save some of those people, but would have worse consequences.

Or, to put it another way, "If George can take your 4th amendment, then Obama can take your 2nd."

2. "One bad soldier does not spoil the whole campaign, but man can they do some terrible damage to it." Of course, I didn't really focus on bad soldiers, I focused on the Bush administration's policy of total abrogation of all rights of detainees, regardless of how they got into custody.

You can disagree with the mission soldiers are assigned without thinking that the soldiers themselves are other than admirable. Soldiers are still human, though, and subject to the same pressures as any other human. Abu Ghraib was part policy, and part (lack of) training - the 800th MP skipped training exercises and shipped out at different times, not as a cohesive unit. Of course, that training problem is also a result of policy.

3. "How many lawyers can you fit on the head of a detainee?" As many as there are, I suppose, but you only need a few test cases.

Magnus Itland said...

Jokes aside, there is a big difference between Jesus and Buddha, certainly according to what the two of them claimed. You could say they are complimentary, to put a positive angle on it. The Buddha represents the upward movent of the human soul, whereas the Christ represents the Divine coming down... and not in a stately, dignified visit to meet the ascending soul halfway, but a desperate dive from the throne of Heaven to the murky depths of Hades itself, to rescue the black sheep that was beyond any other help. Or that's how I have learned to know it. But there may be 99 others who see it differently.

Van Harvey said...

Magnus said "But there may be 99 others who see it differently."

99 luft balloons

(yeah... no I'm not sure either, must be a 99 thing. Didn't see any good ones for agent 99 - Barbara or Anne... so... there ya go.)

Van Harvey said...

The regrettable obamama.

julie said...

Don't miss today's Lileks - it's chock full of screedy goodness!

NoMo said...

Now THAT'S change we can believe in. (what Jesse said)

hee hee

Anonymous said...

You wasn't ridin' her dirty was ya Ray?

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