Expanding upon the previous post, recall that -- for how could you forget? -- IT IS and I AM.
We don't want to say "therefore," because each is a spontaneous realization that isn't deduced from or reducible to anything else. This is the Rock Bottom upon which we will build this post.
As mentioned this morning, there is the ocean (of being) and there is the shore (of intelligence and knowledge of being, which is truth).
Nor is man able to drink the ocean, only drink from the ocean. If the human subject could somehow contain "the whole reservoir of truth," it would suffer a fate worse than Midas, for
wherever it turned, it could find only itself and its own truth. Just as Midas could not eat anything without turning it to gold, the subject could not receive any truth that it did not already recognize as its own.
Absolute boredom. Might this be another hint about what goes on behind the door of the Trinity, and why the party there never stops?
Back to the simultaneous recognition of IT and of I, of being and subject:
We need to understand that self-knowledge and the disclosure of the world are not just simultaneous but intrinsically inseparable (emphasis mine).
Again, not I think, therefore I am: "It is not as if the worldly subject began with a kind of solitary self-preoccupation," and after pondering it for awhile,
realized that it also had the ability to apprehend other truth outside of its ego. Rather, one knows oneself simultaneously with actually being addressed by another's truth....
There is no moment when subjectivity monadically and self-sufficiently rests in itself. Rather, subjectivity is a matter of finding oneself always already engaged with the world.
Just wanted to clear that up.
Okay then, if intelligible being is on the ocean side and we're on the shore, how is progress possible? Good question.
[K]nowledge does indeed make authentic progress, which means that there is such a thing as certitude but that every new step displays the field of truth in ever greater, ever more infinite enlargements.
It's like the ocean of being gets bigger, which of course it doesn't. Rather,
The more of the truth the subject manages to master, the more the truth overmasters it.
So, it's always high tide, but we learn how to swim:
At the beginning of knowledge is an expectant readiness... Yet insofar as each new truth opens and promises further truth, this readiness does not gradually grow numb or surfeited but, on the contrary, becomes increasingly intense.
Yes, INTENSE!
The more particular truth the subject comes to know, the higher and vaster the firmament of truth as a whole arches above him.
Very much as if the bigger we get the smaller we become, but also vice versa, for the poor in spirit shall inherit the cosmos.
It all reminds me of O, which is to say,
a sphere of absolute identity on which all reality and truth in the world are necessarily based.
33 comments:
Great Post, this one is really out in the stratosphere where I like to be.
You wrote "wherever it turned, it could find only itself and its own truth. Just as Midas could not eat anything without turning it to gold, the subject could not receive any truth that it did not already recognize as its own."
I have heard it said, from credible sources, that each person does indeed holographically possess all knowledge, and learning is just the process of locating and articulating that which you already know, from your own occult inner storage vaults of knowledge.
Now I'm not sure about that, but what if? It kind of sounds plausible.
The lefty loonies and their lockdowns again: Darren Allen has become one of my new favorites.
Yes, they're the sentient agents of the Matrix:
"they are the management class -- they are the professionals who organize, conceptualize, administer or... promote and justify the system, or ‘the machine of the world’. The power of the management class comes not, as it does with the owner class, from ownership (i.e. from capital, hence ‘capitalism’), but from management (of and through society; hence ‘socialism’)."
I actually watched the Matrix with my son last night, and now I'm wondering: exactly how and when and why did I ever bluepill, which then made redpilling necessary?
Notice that the agents of the progressive matrix are not generally the owners. There are far too few of the latter to get the job done.
The sentient progressive agents are indeed like malignant computer programs, and they hate the smell of humans, just like Agent Smith:
"people whose power comes from amassing abstract facts and controlling information and who therefore prejudice education and taste over morality and meaning, and, following this, never criticize the power of the tasteful, educated class."
I could write a post about it, but he already has:
"When we say the ‘left’ we are talking about those who have been appointed to manage the machine, and who therefore have a religious belief in the power of the machine, of technology, and, insofar as the machine is society, in collectivist, statist, democratic solutions to social problems, which they package as ‘tolerance’, ‘inclusivity’, ‘compassion’, ‘respect’, and so on..."
TRUE. They must have an unconscious inferiority complex due to the fact that they can actually do nothing. They
"do very little with their hands, and so tend to privilege form -- intellectual ideas and theories, design, structural adjustments and so on -- over function, over actually engaging with the real world."
That one is full of implications.
Progressive agents have no real empathy, only the fake virtue-signaling kind. Again, full of implications:
"All of this leads to a qualitative ‘atmosphere’ that the left partake in -- a blandness, a smugness, an uptightness -- even as their specific opinions vary.
"The left have almost no lived experience of what the people -- the working class and the poor -- call ‘real life’ and very little ability to see that life as it is, or as it is experienced by those at the sharp-end of their society."
Ted, where did you find this guy? This essay is great.
And please don't tell me he's been writing for years, because I've already got too much to read!
He reminds me a little of Zman, who also flooded my circuits.
Now I'm reading his autobiographical essay, which contains the following line:
"From the age of about sixteen onwards I knew something... that just about nobody else understood. I can’t sum it up in a nice little soundbite I’m afraid, except perhaps to say that ‘It’s so much worse than you think, it’s so much better than you think’."
That's an unusual thought, and yet, I heard and was struck a variant of it just a few days ago in a song by the great Mose Allison, who is possibly the One Cosmos poet laureate:
even though / the good gets better and the bad gets worse / hello there universe
What a rabbit hole.
Wow.
Ties in nicely with the weekly Rob Henderson email re. prestige vs. dominance:
"Dominance is another way to gain status. People who use this method acquire influence using coercion, fear, and threats. Rather than others freely giving them status for being impressive, dominant individuals force others to give it to them by exerting their will over them to make them do what they want."
I was talking to my dad last night, and he asked (as he always does when we talk) when we are going to come up and visit. How do you explain to someone who is deeply blue-pilled that the chances of our successfully traveling across several states are slim to none right now? My brother and his wife took a trip to Europe, and they're shocked because everything is closed. I mean, Europe is closed. Some countries that were on their itinerary aren't letting anyone in at all, others will let them stay for one night, but everything shuts down at 6 PM and people aren't allowed to actually do anything.
On the plus side, they haven't had much trouble with crowds.
None of this is surprising to anyone paying attention.
Incidentally, where I'm at we're still (even in California) relatively free. With the next round of shutdowns in the works, I wonder just how long that will be allowed to last.
Incidentally, I know a doctor who has been on call at the hospital she's contracted with through most of the pandemic. Last time I talked to her, she mentioned that most of the people in the hospital right now have been vaccinated; then she went on to say she was going to get her booster soon.
Please don't get the booster.
I'm not getting the booster, and it would be crazy for my son to get a prebooster.
Bob: Completely random (along with holy guidance). Sometimes I have lots of free time and will come across things that lead me to other things. It's probably how I found your blog. But I do have a good intuitive sense if someone has something to say freshly while still coming from Truth. I read his recent book, which is very good. He does have this subversive bent which may not be everyone's cup of tee. Sort of non-religious but still gets O (without Deepaking the Chopra). An outlier, but vivid and refreshing.
Allen has already inspired me to be weirder. Preliminary thoughts: everything is true, but take nothing literally. Everything is false, and take everything literally.
Bob, re. boosters, I'm so glad to hear that.
We had the boy in fall ball (going back to Little League this year was both wonderful and heartbreaking); I had a horrible thought at one point that if people start vaccinating their kids, sooner or later we're going to see our boys collapsing on the ball field. It doesn't bear thinking about.
He does take on the "literalists" constantly. Which mostly reside on the left, hence their lack of humor.
Literalism is the glue of the progressive matrix.
Irony without cynicism is a key.
Steven Colbert is a perfect example. Unwatchable. His old Comedy Central show was at least somewhat humorous. Now he just spews jokes around themes he and his audience take literally, and they laugh not because its funny but because it feeds their smug pseudo-reality.
(O)racular. And I'm only two paragraphs in.
If Colbert doesn't induce nausea, there's something very wrong with your soul. A "comedic" agent of the matrix.
Matrix comedy is an important concept. It's mostly just blue meat, or Two Minutes Hate.
I'm not sure about Allen's affinity for Barry Long (I've heard mixed things) but it does seem like the guy wasn't following the same spiritual/guru script as others, so maybe that lit the spark.
I have a reference book somewhat ironically called "The Book of Enlightened Masters," and Long is in there....
Dear Anonymous, First step in getting out of the matrix is to reveal your True identity. But since you are anonymous, you are forever concealed. Big tech is to blame too as enablers. Your body, your choice.
Ted, re. Barry Long, I read the bit posted by Allen. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the self-help guru tells everyone to be like the boy.
Not a knock on Allen, he seems like an interesting character and lord knows some of my influences don't bear consideration.
Anyway, reading another one of his essays, I thought this was good:
"vi. Conscious conversation is like a game of tennis between two pros; a range of powerful baseline strokes, delicate drop-shots, lobs, volleys and smashes. Egoic conversation is more like two people firing cannons at each other."
The difference between serious conversation vs. when our troll(s) jump in to say something - anything - to get attention.
Julie:
Schuon makes an interesting point about the power of faith, so long as it is pure, even if its object isn't. Mormons, for example, are generally fine people, even though the object of their faith isn't even a myth:
"the ideal is perfect faith in an orthodox truth," but it is possible for there to be "the predominance of the pole 'faith' over the pole 'idea,' so that the Tibetans have been able to say that a dog's tooth which is mistaken for a relic and becomes the object of sincere and ardent faith actually begins to shine."
It's another way of saying that God knows and protects his own.
@Julie: Yes, I hear you. As someone who had some affinity to various "gurus" in the past, I've learned my lesson. But I'm willing to give anyone a pass to Truth - at arm's length.
Yes, I like that way of putting it. I have known too many people who don't experience faith the way I do - well, virtually all of them really - yet whose lives are clearly directed by God. Who am I to lead them away from where He wants them to be?
Allen is interesting; he has a lot of great insights into what makes people tick, etc. He would make an excellent Orthodox Christian; you could replace the word "bastard" with sinner here and be perfectly skewered.
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