We're Still Big, It's the Cosmos that Got Smaller

Speaking of a train ascending a fog-enshrouded mountain, I ran into some low visibility in the final chapters of Physics and Vertical Causation. I can make out certain outlines and contours, but much of it it is like an eyewitless foggus of remumbled nightscapes circumveiloped in obscuridads. 

Recalling a dream? Why not just say that?

Because it's more like trying to recall a dream from within another dream with the dreamtime language of dreaming. We'll just have to wake and see.  

I do think we need a different kind of language to properly map the ineffable, combining poetry and gnosis.

Gnoetry?

Or poiesis... or even meta-poiesis, which -- according to my new off-the-cuff definition -- involves a paradoxical participatory co-creation of what already implicitly exists, the quintessential case being scripture, which combines discovery and creation, universal and particular. 

I mean, look at the book of Revelation. The author simultaneously wrote more than he could say and said more than he could write. Or, his reach exceeded his grasp which exceeded his reach.

I'm not sure that makes sense.

Very kind of you to say so. Let me know if I can shed any more obscurity on the subject.

Anyway, with regard to Vertical Causation, we'll ranslack what we can and leave the rest alone. The penultimate chapter is called Pondering the Cosmic Icon, this being the circled dot we've been discussing in the previous couple of posts. In the image below, the nose of the raccoon is at the center, or at least close enough for blogging:

In reality, of course, it should be the nous of the raccoon, but this is an immaterial entity that can only be expressed symbolically. Or better, the nous is ordered to the central point, which is both Absolute and Infinite, beyond the constraints of space and time. 

What we call creation emanates from the center to the periphery, with man being the vertical link between these terms. Which is another way of saying that man is always situated between the poles of immanence and transcendence. 

In Proverbs we read that I was there when he set his compass on the deep. Who was there? Sophia, AKA Wisdom.

Now, coincidentally, if we want to create a proper circle, we do so with a compass, with one arm anchored to the central point, the other making a sweeping motion around it. But in this case a better image would be an outward spiral from the center to the periphery, more like a spiraling galaxy:

What's with the little galaxy split off from the main one?

That was my idea. It stands for any number of things, from the fall of man, to ideology, to academia. Or, in a word, the avant garbage parallel looniverse of tenured idolatry. One could also depict it as a counter-revolution away from Celestial Central, but in any event, let those with eyes see.

One could also depict a cosmic dualism, with God ousted to the sidelines:

Smith begins the chapter with a cryptic saying by the Sufi poet Shabistari: From the point comes a line, then a circle. Which is reminiscent of the Tao Te Ching, wherein The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things. 

The Tao is like the intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. It is hidden but always present, or like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities. Empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds. 

Lao-tze's advice: Hold on to the center, and enjoy the ride.

Back to Smith: the spiraling image created by the compass referenced above "becomes something more than a closed circular arc: it comes to be perceived, rather, as a circular arc swept out by a compass."

Is everybody with me thus far? Here again, the Tao comes to mind: We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. And we are the spokes-men of the infinite center. 

If the central point is the nunc stans, the still point of the turning world, then life is a whirling journ to the still Center of which the world is a moving image. Likewise, our own "deepest center" is a reflection of the central point, and "itself stands above time." 

We're still the center of creation. It's the creation that got smaller. Or rather, became fully horizontal, excluding the vertical causation that places us at the center and is ordered to the Center. 

By way of analogy, imagine the literal center of a two-dimensional painting, or better, an ant crawling across the canvas trying to locate it. But in order to see the painting one must rise above it and take in a totality that transcends the sum of the individual blotches of paint.

Scraping the painting, we do not find the meaning of the picture, only a blank and mute canvas. Equally, it is not in scratching about in nature that we will find its sense.  

So, the "universal and transcendent Center of the cosmos is connected to its counterpart in man." But "when the cosmos loses its center, so too does the microcosm," i.e., man. 

The result is "a decentralized humanity in a decentralized universe," "and in consequence of this breach the anthropos himself has begun to disintegrate at an unprecedented rate: the Galilean impact upon humanity could thus be viewed as a second Fall." 

Yada yada, Smith cites the Mandukya Upanishad, which describes "three distinct modes of knowing, which correspond (in ascending order), to the waking state, the dream state, and the state of dreamless sleep," which he in turn relates to "the corporeal, the intermediary, and the spiritual worlds, respectively." There is also a fourth, called turiya, which "transcends even the spiritual."

Here we reach the limits of the expressible, where "the dewdrop" is said to "slip into the shining sea."

Can you say a little more?

Sure. According to the Tao Te Ching.

Mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding. 

Night vision:

What "all beings" behold as the real is indeed "night" for him who "sees" (Smith).

Let's wrap this up: "Following four centuries of intellectual chaos and de facto incarceration within his own distraught psyche," we see that  

vertical causation opens the door to a rediscovery of the integral cosmos -- the actual world in which we "live, and move, and have our being" -- which not only exonerates geocentrism, but brings to light the existence and the ubiquity of the veritable Center....

Let no one ignorant of ignorance enter here!