The Divine Right of Kings Had Nothing on the Imperialism of Words

Science and religion have much more in common than either party realizes, and this blindness hobbles fresh thought. In fundamental aspects science and religion are the same, and I will be pursuing this point soon. But here is an example of what I mean, and how I intend to argue.

When scientists say --- you can't ask what happened before the big bang because time wasn't created until the big bang, that is just like the religious saying something is true because 'it says so in the bible.'

In both we have a failure to resolutely pursue answers under a banner of unexaminable assumptions. Because the emperor has clothes on, is the reason you cannot wonder what the king looks like naked. This basic aspect of human binary thinking, unites science and religion. 

This situation reflects a reliance on linguistic sufficiency, my phrase for the assumption that words can cover reality. The smallest bit of empiricism points out how silly that idea is, and yet it is regnant not just in science, not just in formal religion, but in human life, as soon as people, "grow up." What is the smallest bit of empiricism I mention: you could take some seconds to look at a weed, and get that there are no words to adequately describe each segment, each curve, each hue. And that is just to start at the lowest level. Try it.

What Does Mechanical Mean

What Does Mechanical Mean, in the context of esoteric philosophy? The phrase mechanical man' is used by both Gurdjieff and Jan Cox, 20th century exemplars of the possibilities of knowledge in a potent personal context. 

The robotic, irresponsible connotations of the phrase are clear. The implications are interesting: if one is mechanical one is not responsible for one's actions, and no blame can accrue to such an agent. Nor can one speak coherently of mechanical man's self awareness. The glimpses of the lack of such can be a first rung of course. But the word of a mechanical man is worthless, and no blame occurs. He is not responsible for what he says. Only the wise and the lucky will take this to heart. Very often mechanical people, are nice, of course. We -- those who studied with Jan Cox -- were nice once.  Not only can no blames be attributed to mechanical action, the phrase can be applied to everyone, most, some, a lot, of the time. Everyone except those few-the statistically insignificant Real Teachers.

And what if it is --- easy

Do we think it is easy, this waking up bit, do we think it is easy because, everything, everything else, IS easy---the ease of the machinery of which ingests, which utilizes, which ultimately will spit out, 7 billion people, do we think since every single aspect of our lives, is in fact, easy, the studying for tests, the two jobs, the long bus rides, it is easy, or we would not be able to do it, the ease of being a part of a great machinery, what Jan Cox, called, the Magnus Machina, -- so we think, spiritual progress, oh yes, that's interesting, I will check into that, a worthy goal, and we just assume, it is easy. We will in fact, check into that, --- soon.

....

Sticky tricks

There is a janitor in an apartment complex nearby. His office has no sign on the door. No doubt this is ideal, for his own goals. Similarly a person with a real purpose will try to keep signs off his own thoughts. Trickier, yeah. 

Eyesight and Insight

A lovely bit in the science news, which could be intriguing for those with a concern for understanding themselves in the radical sense directed by Jan Cox during his lifetime. I don't know for sure, but what got me interested was an article about the Copiale text,  in the New York Times.

Here we read that a recently decrypted document from the 18th century turned out to be " a detailed description of a ritual from a secret society that apparently had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology."

"Eye," see, jumped right out to one reader--what if the decryption in the text was meant to keep ideas from getting a mechanical agreement rather than the personal insight of one who has earned the knowledge, that is,  seen something freshly for himself. That after all is what Jan meant by making fresh maps. You have to do this because even what you originally saw can become stale, and for those who hear about something, without seeing it for themselves, the illusion you understand something when you really do not, is tricky. HOW you see, is one aspect of self knowledge, and I wonder if the researchers involved in decypherment may not have taken a metaphor (symbol) for a literalness.

Also, HOW you see (that is how you know something)  could be included in a study of the eyeball, under the "as above so below," maxim, wherein different levels of meaning have a parallel structure. Now these last are not the words of Jan Cox, and that maxim not one he relied on.
My curiosity was not discouraged when a different article mentioned this:

The rituals detailed in the document indicate the secret society had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology, though it seems members of the secret society were not themselves eye doctors.

MY eyetalics in the above text.  What if the text were crypted with the purpose of discouraging the causal 'oh I heard that before," -- or whatever the 18th century German equivalent sentiment, was?  To point to the literal level of how the eyeball is constructed as least serves the pedagogical purpose of stressing that what you consider simple might actually have a complex level. 


Then of course it may have been a secret society that had no idea what secret societies might actually mean by ' secret.' But perhaps that is a more modern phenomenon.  The article mentioned "the rights of man," which requires more thought. 


Perhaps even if the researchers finish decrypting  the whole text, they will have missed the meaning.

The Big Sputter

First a quote from a scientist we all admire, even, adore: Richard Feynman:

[The Big Bang] is a much more exciting story to many people than the tales which other people used to make up, when wondering about the universe we lived in on the back of a turtle or something like that. They were wonderful stories, but the truth is so much more remarkable. And, so, what's the wonder in physics to me is that it's revealed the truth is so remarkable.

Feynman's quote, coming from one of the finest minds of the 20th century, is a good chance to understand the limitations of so-called scientific thinking.
Those other people were the ancient Greeks, the ones who invented philosophy, and "the tales"  that were made up were the attempts of empirical thinkers to understand the world we share. This last point was one made by Jan Cox, a leading 20th century thinker.  This picture of a turtle in fact surpasses the big bang theory in it's explanatory power. Such is not typical of the Greek stories, but in fact, since Feynman picked this story,  it lets me point to the characteristics of modern thinking. 

The Greeks and those of their successors who were also committed to an empirical explanation of the world, put the turtle, that ground loving creature to whom birds were inconceivable, not at the base of the support of the world, but at the bottom of an explanatory structure to signal not just their knowledge but WHAT THEY DID NOT KNOW. Newton at the sea shore. And what was that picture of a globe on top of a turtle explaining: that what we see can be understood, can be investigated--that the physical world was to be puzzled over. That the appearance of the world needed an explanation. And the turtle in the picture, what is the turtle explaining,? That you need to keep asking questions, pushing beyond any answers, to arrive at even a tentative conclusion; the turtle represents what Jan Cox would phrase this way: use a comma, not a period, in your thoughts.  The Greeks thought the turtle in a stack of realities would suffice to point to the unknown.

It is this realistic balance between the known and the unknown which has been lost by the physical scientists. Not by thinkers like Roger Penrose, -- but the main herd.  They feel they are on the brink of a Theory of Everything, and they forget how many times their TOEs have been stubbed in the past.  The modern mind cannot stomach the perspective that the truth is ---- partial. For what came before the Big Bang? What produced the Big Bang, ... okay ... What brought forth the multiverse[s]. The stout and brave empiricist does not pretend his answers are "true" in any imperial sense. 

The difference between the future and the past

Details. Without details you would not get swept into the imagination of the past. This came to mind when I, unscrewing a lid from a coca cola bottle, remembered my mother had liked lemon coke. The pang I felt recalling her was all imagination, she is gone, she doesn't haunt me. What is the point though of occupyng my mind with a fantasy. I am reminded of a Saki story that I will not go into now. The point is the past is composed of details, points that sketch a big picture, like stars in a constellation, and like the constellations, the pattern is all fantasy.

There are no details in the present. Just like there is no dimension to a mathematical point. Most, almost ALL, people fill up their present moment with details, but these details are fumes of the past, without the vibrant knock of the now. Breath in and a new present circles the drain of the past. As soon as you could point to a detail that would count against my outline, you are in the past, proving my thesis. 

As Jan Cox said once, regarding Istanbul as a metaphor for mystical attainment, as soon as you look around at Istanbul, you are back in Paris. 

Does this mean that a mystical experience is a current dimensionless present which does not swirl down the drain (immediately)?

Not exactly.