Anything can be a cliche

Jan Cox spoke about and around the difficulty of human speech relying on the verbal capacity of our species. Words function as a web unifying humanity, and to be comprehended one must use words-- one must use used words.

Jan had to use words. He had other means at his disposal, but to communicate to many, to not waste his time, Jan too used words. What else. Soon his words will be themselves cliches. That process started before his death, but now the vivifying background is gone and we can assume this is speeding up. This is simply the planet we live on.

Those who knew Jan have a special responsibility to delay this decay. They do this in their speech, in their writing, in their actions. His students by recalling his directives, especially those directives regarding invisible,  non-verbal,  action--- I refer to what some call "self-observation" -- and employing them. Will this affect the churn of flows that is each moment, in terms of Jan's effect? Who knows, but it seems like a sensible course. 

'Consciousness' is an example of a word which Jan used sparingly. In his use it referred to the psychological aspect of a balance between the seeker's responsibility to focus on both the external (the cosmological aspect of reality) as well as the internal (the psychological) realities. Failure to focus on both sides, he said in an early paper, could lead to an imbalance described as increased egoism. His early phrases changed over the years. His message did not.

Now of course the word 'consciousness' is a New Age cliche, referring to a view of man wherein all he has to do is love himself MORE, to transform his world. So the decay in useful meaning continues. More guests for Oprah. 

The emphasis Jan Cox placed from the start, on burning maps -- intellectual constructs-- functioned to mitigate against this inevitable decay, for one desirous of ascertaining reality. 

NPR interview on Is there life after death

It featured aSean Carroll in the debate and it was lots of fun. Again-- the natural scientists say outrageous things they do not understand --- that there is no more need for a life spirit, and all this stuff scientists say they understand. That was the side of debaters who were against the possibility of life after death. Too bad they are probably right.

The apple rolls far from the tree

Garrison Keillor reminds us that today is the anniversary of (July 5,
1687) when Newton published "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, or "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.... the
Principia contained Newton's three laws of motion, including, ....
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Note the binary formulation: an equal and opposite reaction. We might
wonder if there is not a third force here, what Jan Cox called, E
force, or the unexpected, the irrelevant, coming into play each
second. Which sounds smug, but I am just trying to widen that small
aperture through which we see the world.

The historical treatment of Newton though is also a great example of
binary thought, in that, the work that equally involved him, his work
on religious issues, is never investigated. So for sure at least one
third of Newton's thought is ignored. Newton the scientist and Newton
the Alchemist are two sides, the good Newton and the old-fashioned
Newton. Whereas, with a figure this brilliant, you might have thought,
perhaps the entire corpus of his work should be studied with a view
towards greater comprehensibility.

This is the kind of approach though which the rigor mortis of binary
thought makes unlikely. A large part of Newton's thought can be just
ignored, the same way human experience, being labeled subjective, can
just be ignored by scientists.

Myself, I wonder if you can really understand Newton without studying
all his work to appreciate what he was saying.

We walk across manholes like the night

There are gaps everywhere, and our survival as intellectual creatures depends on our not seeing them.

There are gaps everywhere and any personal progress in a vertical dimension depends on our remembering them

Cars and cores

What people call their minds, their selves----

are like automobiles. Necessary, automobiles, capable of things we could NOT do otherwise, like covering large distances quickly. There are enormous structures designed to make these automobiles even faster. The cars in my picture are rational, thought. Mental functioning. 

But perhaps automobiles are misnamed. Self...Moving. Because a driver is needed. Even if, soon perhaps these vehicles will move with minimal human intervention. All this obscures the fact there is something for which the cars are just a tool. The person inside. 

This person is like that quantity of reality, which the Work addresses; the "person" in our metaphor of urban reality, is  the aspect of humanity which might become less mechanical, in optimum and rare circumstances. It is necessary for the Work, or something like the Work throughout history, to actuate this quantity because this quantity, comparable to a person, situated within a world a metal machines, is not necessary for functioning of the world, not anyway, necessary in any large quantities. 

Cars can profitably be considered rational thought. Persons then, are that non-verbal dimension, the locus at which change is possible, just barely, possible. Once in a whirl. By those who can even conceive the distinction  between cars and their drivers. 

The spot we lose it

There is a purple flag in Sarajevo, which, marking the spot Archduke Franz Joseph was assassinated, says, "This is where the 20th century began." I have not been there; I heard this on the radio. 

What that banner marks though is really, a prime example of binary thought. Binary thought, which makes everything possible, must divide everything into one of two things, this or that. This is the 20th century. That is not. 

I like this example because, regardless of the aplomb of the radio personality, it points up the absurdity of such divisions, the arbitrary nature of such cleavage. 

Of course if there was a flag over each instance of binary thought, we would not be able to see anything real, just the thoughts. Oh--- wait -- we can't already. 

Out of the mouths of academics

We quote an article from Berfrois:

If a philosopher is someone who is trying, through the use of reason, to find a kind of intelligibility which grounds our experience of that which there is, that very general sense of philosophy as a project that is trying to uncover the true nature of reality, a metaphysical project, then Shakespeare isn't a philosopher. Shakespeare is someone who leaves us in the dark as to what that reality might be. What we get instead is an experience of ambiguity and opacity.

We quote ourselves: What if what you get after pursuing every intellectual resource available, faithfully, fully, you discover the true nature of reality, IS an experience that cannot be verbalized -