Waiting for the Rabbit to Come Out of the Book Hole

As I've said on many occasions, I suspect we are equipped with left and right cerebral hemispheres that process reality in different ways because they are essentially adequations to the horizontal and vertical, respectively. 

Just as math isn't a substitute for music, a well-oiled right brain knows things the left can't even dream of. 

For one thing, dreaming itself is a very right-brainish thing, in the sense that it is nonlinear and transtemporal: symmetrical logic is like the velvet moon that shares your pillow and watches while you sleep, where Aristotelian logic takes over as the morning sun slowly rises and kisses you awake.

If Serdio Mendes is correct.

Speaking of which, I still haven't gotten to The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World. Maybe later this month when the amazon points come in. But it looks like McGilchrist spends 1,500 pages saying what I just said up there (https://www.amazon.com/Matter-Things-Brains-Delusions-Unmaking-ebook/dp/B09KY5B3QL/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&coliid=IBYHAUGI60FY9&colid=1M0Z9KRTC1IB&qid=&sr=).

Like anyone could know that without reading the book.

Fair enough. Besides, if I'm going to spend $75 on a book, it had better tell me something I don't know. 

It is impossible to imagine Schuon writing a 1,500 page book. The man was concise, partly because he never abused the reader by "thinking out loud." 

Rather, everything was thought through beforehand: analyzed, synthesized, and even aestheticized, since he was always mindful that the manner of expression must reflect the loftiness of the subject matter.  

Also, importantly, although he never wrote in the first person, you had better believe that everything he says is filtered through the first person, i.e., rooted in experience. Now, one can say his experiences are delusory or deceptive -- as is true of any mystical experience -- but you can't say he didn't undergo them.

Which then comes down to trust, or rather, to the eternal question: This guy -- is this my kind of guy? This is a question one must always ask, from, say, Christ at one end to Bob at the other. I am frankly surprised that I am anyone's kind of guy, and I could prove the point if I had a site meter. 

Anyway, everything we've said so far was provoked by the following passage:

The human being, when defined or described according to the principle of duality, is divided into an outward man and an inward man; one being sensorial-cerebral and terrestrial, and the other intellective-cardiac and celestial (Schuon). 

Again "left and right brain" are just crude ways of talking about this. To put it another way, our neurological layout is a necessary but not sufficient condition for undergoing vertical (intellective-cardiac, or celelestial/vertical) perception and experience.

Importantly, both modes require training. And you could say that a religious practice is this vertical training, precisely, very much like aesthetic training. 

For example, one doesn't write a song in computer code with the left brain, or Bill Gates would be an artist or holy man instead of a wholly cretinous man.

Speaking of which, there's an amusing passage in Neil Young's autobiography in which he reflects on the question of where songs come from and how to catch one. Turns out it's much like trying to capture a post, although mine are not chemically aided, caffeine notwithstanding:

I have not written one song since I stopped smoking weed in January 2011, so we are currently in the midst of a great chemical experiment.

I haven't smoked pot since one time in November 1999, and before that in 1982, and neither experience was anything to write om about. 

When I write a song, it starts with a feeling. I can hear something in my head or feel it in my heart. It may be that I just picked up the guitar and mindlessly started playing. That's the way a lot of songs begin. When you do that, you are not thinking. Thinking is the worst thing for writing a song. So you just start playing and something new comes out.

Now, "Where does it come from?" Correct: the same place a post comes from:

Who cares? Just keep it and go with it. That's what I do. I never judge it. I believe it. It came as a gift when I picked up my musical instrument. The chords and melody just appeared. Now is not the time for interrogation or analysis. Now is the time to get to know the song, not change it before you even get to know it.

Common courtesy. It's very much an "other," isn't it? And yet, we would have no access to this other absent the experiential mode of encountering it: "It is like a wild animal, a living thing. Be careful not to scare it away."

Shhh. Quiet.

Songs are like rabbits and they like to come out of their holes when you're not looking, so if you stand there waiting they will just burrow down and come out somewhere far away, a new place where you can't see them. So I feel like I am standing over a song hole. That will never result in success.

Same. If I stare over a post hole, nothing will happen, or rather, just a boring and predictable post. Only if I turn off my mind and surrender to the void will I surprise myself, or rather, something (O)ther will surprise me.  

This explains why I get overwhelmed when I think about the book hole, for it's much like trying to wrangle the world's largest rabbit and bring it back from a dream, and that may require something stronger than caffeine.

Anybody ever fool around with nicotine pouches? Tucker speaks highly of them, and I suspect they contribute to the outbursts of giggling on air.