It's a Funky Cosmos

Funk music is characterized by a "heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure," AKA the One. 

There's more to it than that, of course, since writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and hearing is believing. Still we must ask: is there any relationship between the One of the Godfather of Soul and the one God and father of souls?

What a stupid question. Has it come to this, Bob?  Is there nothing more important, or even less silly, to write about?

Too late. We're committed.  There's no turning back. We've made the Leap and can only extricate ourselves by pushing (or being pulled) ahead.

What I want to say is that Oneness is everywhere, and is the basis of everything. If it weren't at the ground of the psyche, we could never find it. If there were no Alpha we could never discover or even suspect the presence of Omega (and everything between). And the moment we found it, everything changed. You could even say we became human. Which I mean literally.

In a rambling essay called The Delta Factor, Walker Percy meditates on the moment of this discovery.  

It reminds me of conversations I've had with my son about What the Dog Knows, or What Tuney is Thinking About. The answer is on the one hand nothing, but it is also inconceivable, because if we could "think like a dog" we would no longer be human, and vice versa. We can't put ourselves in the mind of a dog and still be there to experience what it's like to be her.

Why? What happened?  To us, I mean.  What created this literally infinite abyss between us and them?  Yes, there is of course continuity, but we're not talking about that; rather, the discontinuity.  All the best minds assure us that there are no leaps in this cosmos, whether we're talking about the leap from nonexistence to existence, existence to life, life to mind, or mind to something transcending it.  

But believing this -- ironically -- requires a huge leap of faith. As does everything else.  I have a note to myself somewhere... can't find it at the moment, but I stole it from Dávila anyway. It goes like this: 

There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap.

Here's a slightly more poetic version of the same truth:

Nothing important is reached simply by walking. But jumping is not enough to cross the abyss; one must have wings.

What I want to say is that only humans have the Wings of Slack to make this vertical leap. How high can you jump? All the way? Or perhaps not even get off the ground or out of the goround, like an earthbound secularist? 

Now, when we take a leap of faith, it isn't just into "nothing."  Rather, as we've pointed out on many occasions, a true leap will be guided -- or drawn -- by nonlocal attractors of various shapes and sizes.  Call them archetypes, powers, principalities, etc., but be careful, because there are also rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in low places. These are like vertical riptides, so make sure you're a strong swimmer before you just leap into the ocean.

It is only by the grace of God or something that I wasn't carried away by one of these.  I am reminded of another aphorism, that

Faith is what allows us to wander into any idea without losing our way back.

Example.  It wasn't all that long ago that I was a typical mindless ambient liberal. In order to be a liberal (by which I mean leftist), no active thinking is necessary, for the same reason a cannibal in a cannibal culture doesn't think about cannibalism.  Everyone does it. What's the problem?  And pass the ketchup.

I shudder to to think what would have become of me had I somehow become a "successful author" back when I was an ambient imbecile. Perhaps I might have eventually escaped, but it seems as likely that it would have frozen me in place -- like so many of my fellow boomers who haven't taken a new cognitive imprint since they were 18.

About the faith that allows us permanent children to wander around anywhere unsupervised.  That's another big subject, and slightly different from the point I am about to get to. Let's focus.

Those of you who have read The Book will recall that I posited four singularities, or Big Bangs, but these are fractals, as it were of a single bang -- emphasis on the single, i.e., the oneness. 

In wandering and wondering about an ultimate theory of man, Percy suggests that

There is only one place to start: the place where man's singularity is there for all to see and cannot be called into question, even in a new age in which everything else is in dispute.

That singularity is language.

Boom!  Or bang, rather.  If you are like me, the first thing that pops into your head is: In the beginning was the Word.  We will of course get back to that.  But first, let's leap into the singularity and check out its contours.  

Wow.  It's much roomier than it was being plunged into the neurology and buried in the senses of a mere animal. And the light!

Like anyone could know that.

What, are you blind?  Helen Keller knew it.  In fact she remembered the precise moment. We'll leave off today with her account of the Big Bang:

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. 

I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten -- a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me....

I learned a great many new words that day.... words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of the eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.