The limitations of a dual reality sketch

A new picture of the relation between the so-called mental and physical realms of man's existence comes to mind after reading this article at the bbc website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7073807.stm
There is a creature called a colugo described as a 'furry kite' for the way it glides from tree to tree. Sounds like a flying squirrel to me, though it doesn't look like a flying squirrel, and the substance of the article is that this creature is man's nearest relative after primates. Anyway what a good picture of the reality of thoughts. Thoughts are better described as "gliding," if we picture the ordinary conception of thought as "flying" in polar opposition to the physical, gravity-bound earthly world. In my picture of the relation of thought and physical reality, the ordinary view is of thought as something not gravity bound. The colugol points to a picture of something gliding, that is, it could appear to be flying, but, really, the motion is gravity bound, the motion is falling, and so the motion of the colugol, and I would argue, human ordinary mentation, is physical, gravity defined like all matter, despite the opinion of most. A limited metaphor perhaps but already I like the idea of an new adjective: colugolic. "Colugolic" is something made of the same substance as that composing that which it is supposedly the opposite of; an only apparent opposition.

The nature of thought

The nature that is of ordinary, mechanical thought, --- is binary. It's purpose is NOT to investigate reality, not to convey anything remotely covered by the adjective 'truth.' Binary means everything is compared, everything is one of two things. This dualism is inappropriately used to define anything except the external world. Reality is complex in a way which must be seen and cannot be conveyed accurately with so-called rational thought. Mechanical rational thinking is a useful tool, of course, and mechanical thought has served man well from an evolutionary perspective--- it is the tool of humanity's progress-- because this binary function does well the thought required to imagine the external world in a new way, and by this ability to picture changes in the physical world around us, most of what we call progress has been achieved.

The importance of destructive energy

found a lovely example of the importance of the "destructive" flow of energy, as he often called it, or as you could also say, "the defining" force. A couple of centuries ago there was a group of intellectuals in New England of whom Ralph Waldo Emerson is now best remembered. One of that circle, Henry Ward Beecher wrote, "it is an honorable thing thing for a man to acquire several books a year." Or close to. Now what I am pointing to is that this sentence, while it still makes sense, has no staying power, no magnetism. Like portions of many manuscripts from earlier times, this sentence seems to be on the border of making sense. Most of the time reading historical documents, we misinterpret them because we are not aware that we are only hearing one side of a dialogue. In the present example of Beecher's sentiment, we do not, two centuries later, need to defend the manliess of reading. Such was not the case in the 19th century America. Then it was worth writing down, worth quoting. It could be used as a cudgel in an argument. Today it has no force, and is easily forgotten, for it is no longer part of the dance of the three forces which the mystic this blog is about identified. To exist you need to draw resistance. There was resistance to the idea of owning books two hundred years ago. There is not now, and so this sentiment is forgotten. Not even part of history really, just on the brink of non-existence, because it is non debatable. Every thing that lives needs resistance, the glow of destructive energy.

dear dear poets

Keillor quotes John Hollander as saying
"I want my poems to be wiser than I am, to know more about themselves than I do."
Well I am sure the poems do, because everything anyone says reveals more, alludes to more than the speaker realizes. That and less.

There is no separate mental realm, no duplex reality, in reality

Conjuring up pictures to help convey this: like a blanket, with one side physical, and one mental, or,
a black globe (the body, hormones) with the colors through a prism appearing (the so-called 'mental',
and here is one of his pictures, called the neural history of mankind which pertains:

"The Fable-ist's Neural History Of Man

At first there was only lightning,
Then came thunder,
Who, for the first time, made lightning aware of its own existence --
Then (in a hard-to-explain manner),
Lightning's original existence was diminished.

And all normal minds within hearing distance said:
"We don't get it!
And even if we did, we wouldn't like it!
And even if we did get it (and thus didn't like it),
We wouldn't believe it...since we'd be certain you just made it up!"

Copyright 2007, the unpublished writings of Jan Cox.

The Nature of Psychic Phenomena

Sitting here watching the rain mist here in drought proclaimed Snellville, and remembering I heard something on the radio last Friday night, some preacher or somebody, saying to his listeners (and me as I surfed across the radio dials) pray for rain in Atlanta. And here it is misting for three days now. Do I think the thoughts of the listeners were responsible for this?? They could have played a part. Really I have no idea if they did have an effect on this lovely rain event. But so-called thoughts affect the weather. A few points though, about such inquiries. They almost always flounder in confusion on the question of the nature of psychic phenomena. First, there is only a physical realm, if you are going to describe reality. There is no separate mental stuff. So what could have happened with the good folks thinking rain for Atlanta? You have to picture somewhat the unpictureable complexity of 'what is' and grasp that while 'thoughts' (whatever they are, but certainly not some cumulousy thing) are part of a huge machinery, they are not the only part, so they could have an effect, but being only a part of a bigger machinery the question of causality turns out to be NOT possible to be contained within a binary sentence--you just cannot say yes, thoughts caused the rain or no, thoughts did not cause the rain. The fact is they were just one swirl in a hugely larger structure.

The hostility inherent in words

After writing that last post, it struck me how hostile it sounded. Although there may be a good reason to mention those he kicked out, still, this might sound like anger on my part.
Words after all, divide, that is basic, and dividing is fallacious, dividing is angry. Dividing, is not what this century defining teacher was about. Even punctuation, he would point out, had to be misleading, and a lie. There are no boundaries. And that period makes the last sentence, itself, a fib. Still, rereading my second post, it was not as hostile as I had remembered it a few hours after writing it.