may be of interest.
What is Negative Capability? As you greet it here, it's a sort of interstitial hallway where a few friends meet*. A presence that hopes to live up to Keats's original meaning when he first used the term Negative Capability. We are friends who have written for years now, and we all met through an interest in CGJung.
Jung seems the essence of Negative Capability, a man who was willing to speak to and listen to all that it is to exist: the dreams and hopes, the irrational fears and joys; that bond of the deep bedrock that we all carry: both the consciousness, and the unconscious that is always present--there with its hand on all we do. Jung denied none of the experience of his life, and it's his honest example that helps us look in all things for that
intelligent sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. That frees us with the honest admission that no one 'Knows' -- yet also understands that each heart's knowing is as good an anyone's. We embrace the gift of that gnosis. And share it as a gift of the heart to other hearts...
"....several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature which Shakespeare possessed so enormously -- I mean NEGATIVE CAPABILITY, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason -- " ~John Keats
From:
aliceDate: Sat Dec 23, 2000 2:02 amSubject: Re: [Negative-Capability] fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is best explain via chakras. Fund belongs to 1st n 2nd - literalism n fear of change/security. it means well but gets stuck in idolatry of concretism n literalism.
hence the wisdom of parables - they work on all levels. the danger is in getting stuck at the bottom!
if u look at the caduceus n mark one bott tail A n the other B, u will see that they switch on the next level n so 2 people can both be right but talking on 2 diff leves=the dilemma of levels. this is the process of mercury, trickster, at work.
Fund is a very real danger in the coming yrs - not just Christ but in all faiths - n until humanity learns how to convert nouns into verbs, whats into hows, we all will feel threatened. that's the bad news. the good news is, u cannot stop the thrust of a new aion! but like nasdaq is being pruned, so will a lot of the kookiness of new agers be swept away. jung was no kook n we will have to live our lives as examples not just talking - unless we embody, incarnate, our understanding - such as it may be - we cannot truly represent what the harbingers of the future are teaching. offhand, i wld have to say buddhism - in the light of not proselytizing but offering a 'method' or process n jung's insight ab the inner discovery of the Self [div Guest] by the ego/who we consc identify with - offer hope for the futurem, as do the ESOTERIC aspects of all the religions sufism, kabbalah, celtic christianity, genuine shamanism etc.
the Eastern religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism are infinitely more advanced in the techniques of using the body as a battery for higher consc [for the few ready for it] but the West also has in its suppliants a humility n dependence on the wisdom of nature n the grace of God to offer. Love is also a force. 'a new commandment do I bring u - that ye love one another even as i have loved you.'
just some reflections n now to bed!
love, what else?
ao
the coniunctio of east n west will make us global beings n ready to take our place in the cosmos....
in the meantime, back at the ranch - Texas ranch - stay tuned for the nitty-gritty of conflict of the opposites!
so, deb, diunna fash yersel' too much n have a warm n loving Xmas
something i wish u all!
time for bed!
ao
From: mike
Date: Sat Dec 23, 2000 9:58 am
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Who's got the blues???
Beautiful one here, Anand:
Vishnu / Krishna is the one who is blue, not Shiva. Shiva is the "blue-throated" one, from swallowing deadly poison to save the world.
*Be it said, however, that Shiva is often represented in his form as an ascetic yogin as grey-coloured, because rubbed with the ashes of the cremation- grounds. This aspect carrires over into many of the Buddhist 'Heruka' - the wrathful deities - where (as opposed to the version given in TV travelogues where it is assumed it's some kind of sun-screen) the cremation ash signifies freedom from space-time... freedom from the illusion of becoming, and hence from both birth and death...
Anand: Vishnu is space (the blue sky), at the Vishuddhi (throat) Chakra; Shiva is time, at the Agnya (third eye on forehead) chakra ; the interaction of the two (time penetrating space) gives rise to our world (of the senses). Hence Vishnu often takes the form of an incomparably beautiful woman (Mohini the enchantress; who is the cause of our Maya or enchantment / delusion); esoterically, Vishnu (in the form of Balaji) is identified with the Goddess -- the womb / sphere of space, with Shiva the male (linear; motion of time). Their intercourse (the motion of time in space) leads to the future moving into the past. Shiva is often depicted as white /pale; he is "shava" (corpse) without the life-giving contact of shakti (lit. power; a name for Devi, i.e., the Goddess). Time can't move except through space; and also, Shiva as pure consciousness is inert without an animating power / When the kundalini rises above the throat chakra, the aspirant transcends space or distance between objects ("Thou art that"); this is Arjuna's vision in the Bhagavad Gita-- a partial realization. When the kundalini further rises above the third eye, the aspirant transcends even time. The latter is the harder task; I am reminded of Mike's recent posting of a story with impossibly complex Buddhist names, where there is a similiar structure (the one that was reposted in Jung-Fire).
*Whaddaya mean, 'impossibly complex', buddy? You impugnin'?... But of course it *is* true. What one understands, and the terms in which one has come to understand it seem very clear to *you*, the 'understander'. However, these terms very often mean little and even nothing (experiential *or* intellectual) to one's interlocutor. Forgive my crass assumption.
Anand: Krishna is the aspect of Vishnu who resides in the heart, and represents the universalization of love. (Hence his simultaneously making love to 1008 milkmaids, by duplicating himself 1008 times, so each milkmaid receives his love, and each thinks she is the sole and special object of his attentions.) One must first experience love to all (sensient and insensient) equally and without discrimination -- the kundalini rising above the heart chakra -- before one may transcend space and time.*Govinda - 'The Cowherd (Skt. 'go')'. My eldest son's name is Govinda.
Anand: possessiveness is the enemy of the universalization of love. (Letting go is so hard to do!) This is the basis for and aim of sexual tantrik practices -- chakra pujas [worship (puja) withthe aspirants assembled in the form of a wheel or circle (chakra)].*From another context (discussing menstruation), I extract the following blather by the highly enlightened yours truly... "...However, certain highly advanced yogins with almost perfect control over their subtle energies do practice the yoga of union (which has almost nothing to do with sex - and especially what is nowadays called 'tantrik sex') at this time among others. The yoga of union is a subtle energy practice and has to do with the discovery and opening up of the subtle energy channels within the body, with the movement of these energies along those channels and the dissolution of all attachment to structure on an extremely subtle level (makes what generally passes for kundalini yoga look fairly wogga-wogga)...
Part of this dissolution of attachment does, of course, have to do with the tabu on the menstrual fluids and with cutting through one's attachment to ideas of pure and impure and of defilement and shame, but it also goes much deeper - the substances involved all have very specific and so to speak puissant energies whose alchemical combination and relationship are the subject matter of some extraordinarily abstruse thinking. The language used is very often symbolic and evocative rather than descriptive and knowledge - understanding - comes from practice - personal experience refined and polished over time under the careful tutelage of the teacher.
The tabu itself is related to the dark, the dark period of the moon, the fearsome and unknown, and I think stems from an extremely archaic stratum of womens' magic at a period when men were totally unaware of the part they had to play in 'paternity'. We look at these things now, unfortunately, through the eyes of 'enlightened moderns', but we have in fact almost no knowledge of our own embodiment as a living and dynamic process. The ancients and the so-called primitives were and are much closer to being and not-being than most of us will ever get: their knowledge is not based on observing dead examples of becoming, but on feeling out and appreciating the process in its very exposition... The difference between a Tibetan and an Occidental description of the instant of conception or of foetus growth is quite singularly revealing..."
Anand: The difficulty with our sense organs is that they are limited by time and space-- they serve as "local magnifiers" / filters. But I am going off on a tangent here...*The beauty of the sense organs is that they perceive directly and without the slightest agenda. The interpretation of and attachment of meaning to these sense-data is where things begin to go awry. As Tilopa says, it is not THINGS that create obstacles to enlightenment, but only one's attachments (positive and negative) to things. Maya is not 'that', but a much closer 'this'.
m
From: mike
Date: Sat Dec 23, 2000 9:58 am
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Krishna
mary: Aren't we talking of Krishns not Vishnu?
*Both. Krishna is avatar of Vishnu.
m
From: marysk...Date: Tue Dec 26, 2000 3:55 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Millennial Anxiety and Timeless Gnosis
(note: I'd mentioned a website. Mary L's response below is to that. dmc)
Hi, Deb,
Yeah, I used to know some of those folks. A few were great, but I suspect some of them of being crypto-fascistic. Too conspiratorial, in my experience. I met a whole troupe (troop) of them (Occitanie-variety) at midnight on the Solstice up in the ruins of the chateau of Montsegur - where I had thought I was vigiling alone on my birthday. They set up their altar and candles below me as I watched, astounded, then removed their brown robes and stood in serried ranks all in pure white military uniforms around one in the morning! And when I revealed myself, with joy and bad French, they treated me with reluctant friendship - but stole my film while I slept!
To me, the base - the root - level of the Tree of Life often informs the rest more than the other way around.
M. (Mary)
From: mary
Date: Tue Dec 26, 2000 5:42 pm
Subject: Re: RE: [Negative-Capability] Who's got the blues???
Hi, Anand,
There isn't a separate Sikh version. [Sikhism originated as a martial component of Hindu society to defend against invaders from the North West.] Yes, I got that while I was there. All the mad bus drivers are Sikhs! Very fierce, proud, upright! And gorgeous.
...I was sort of remembering the little shrine wall at Manikaran. It was up on the hillside above, and may not have been connected! The Hindu version was that Parvati got so angry after losing her mani (ear stone) that Shiva had given her into the river that all sorts of hot springs, earthquakes and so on erupted all over the place. Re-reading what I wrote from the Sikh wall at the Gurudwara, it speaks of Nanak-dev-ji on a visit to Manikaran. He said, "Oh, Mardana, say Wahguru and lift the stone." Mardana did, and found a hot spring, stuffed a chappati into it and found it baked. And yes, we had a lovely meal there for a few rupees, a totally voluntary donation, of course!
...I spent a week in his ashram at Puttaparthi one Christmas, sang bajahns (sp.?) with him, did daily darshan in the great square, packed in with hundreds, maybe thousands of Indian and other women, the men on the other side. He's real!
M. (Mary)
From: Carroll Bishop : Wed Dec 27, 2000 1:09 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Millennial Anxiety and Timeless Gnosis
Mary writes -Yeah, I used to know some of those folks. A few were great, but I suspect some of them of being crypto-fascistic. Too conspiratorial, in my experience. I met a whole troupe (troop) of them (Occitanie-variety) at midnight on the Solstice up in the ruins of the chateau of Montsegur - where I had thought I was vigiling alone on my birthday. They set up their altar and candles below me as I watched, astounded, then removed their brown robes and stood in serried ranks all in pure white military uniforms around one in the morning! And when I revealed myself, with joy and bad French, they treated me with reluctant friendship - but stole my film while I slept! To me, the base - the root - level of the Tree of Life often informs the rest more than the other way around.
Mary,Your story reminds me of the end of Parsifal the opera (I've only seen it once but it made an enduring impression). Very dramatic, and very uneasy-making.
Last time I really thought about that was when I saw the huge Anselm Kiefer called Parsifal 2, which occupies an inner wall in the Zurich Art Museum. I don't think I've ever had such a reaction to a painting before. I'll see if I can scan it -- I have a few copies though none of them has the physical impact of turning a corner and walking into the original. There's quite a lot about it in Rafael Lopez-Pedraza's book, ANSELM KIEFER, a Jungian study off Kiefer's work. If I can get a good image of the painting I'll copy some of Lopez-Pedraza's remarks.
Those Teutonic white knights -- Lohengrin too -- are one of the many reasons I think purity is such a dubious virtue. When it gets connected to the Grail (as it does in Eschenbach particularly) leads to worrisome things. Pure blood for instance.
The words that go with the Grail image in Kiefer, from Wagner, are "Redemption to the Redeemer" -- that I think is a wonderful idea and a very Jungian one -- but it comes across as arrogance if not blasphemy in the opera. That this should be the task of a Teutonic white knight alone? There's something deeply offensive about the assumption. It's a fascistic idea, the elitist hero? I'm groping here....
Carroll
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phoebe wrote:
mike, the Tibetian Book of the Dead -- is that an honest translation of the title? Thinking about this because, of course, what the German archaeologists called the Egyptian Book of the Dead is properly rendered The Book of Coming Forth by Day (or Light), a totally different concept.
mike:
*No, Phoebe, it's not. Any more than was Budge's translation of Per Em Hru. The actual title of the text (which is a vast corpus of which Dawa Samdup translated only a minuscule part... Wentz's Books 'of the Dead' and 'of the Great Liberation', but as I have it in Tibetan, two volumes of 593 and 957 pages, respectively, and I'm not sure I've got the entire thing)... The actual title of the entire (Budhist) cycle (because there is an equally extensive B npo one) is something like ''Self-liberation through Hearing - the Profound Doctrine of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities", generally referred to by the Tibetans as the Bardo T' dr l, which means "Self-liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate State" (there are 6 basic intermediate states although, of course, any period between two others is an intermediate state, what, in Sanskrit, is called an antarabhava) or the Karling Shi-Tr'o, "The Peaceful and Wrathful of Karma Lingpa". Karma Lingpa (14th. c. CE) was the discoverer of this cycle.
The six major intermediate states are, to quote the text by my own teacher:
What is termed the bardo or intermediate state is something which is neither here nor there but refers to a state existing in-between. What, then, are these six states? Specifically enumerated, they are
(1) the natural bardo of birth and existence (rang bzhin skye gnas kyi bar do),
(2)the dream bardo of delusory mental activity (rmi lam nying 'khrul gyi bar do),
(3) the tranquil meditation bardo of spontaneous appearance (rang snang bsam gtan gyi bar do),
(4) the bardo of suffering at the moment of death ('chi kha sdug bsngal gyi bar do,
(5) the clear-light bardo of the quintessence of reality (chos nyid 'od gsal gyi bar do),
and (6) the karmic-activity bardo of phenomenal existence (srid pa las kyi bar do).
The last three and first of these are the subject matter of the so-called 'Book of the Dead', but much of the commentarial material speaks of all six. I hope one of these days to translate my teacher's brief explication of this - I've started, but, as the subject is not a little recondite, have paused for reflection (not to mention breath!)...
m (mike)
From Carroll:
Sir Herbert Read (THE GREEN CHILD) is well represented on the Net. Poet, critic, anarchist, art historian among others. Among other accomplishments, Sir Herbert Read edited the Collected Works of C. G. Jung (with M. Fordham).
Here's are two Read quotes:
I would say myself that there is no real contradiction between
art, conceived as design, and the unconscious. The unconscious
does, in fact, reveal design. Not only is the dream, when understood,
a dramatic unity, but even in its plastic manifestations the
unconscious possesses a principle of organization.
Collected Essays in Literary Criticism, 1938
The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all
our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be
left to take care of themselves. That is why I believe that
art is so much more significant than either economics or
philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.
The Meaning of Art, 1968
Date: Tue Oct 10, 2000 3:30 pm
To: NEGATIVE CAPABILITY
Subject: Oak (archive)
From deborah:
The inspired speech of myth/
begotten of the Daimon/
reveals that the world/
is the theater/
of the periodic revolution of soul.
Rep., 5.475e
UNDER THE OAK
~dh lawrence
You, if you were sensible,
When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one dreadful,
You would not turn and answer me
"The night is wonderful."
Even you, if you knew
How this darkness soaks me through and through, and infuses
Unholy fear in my essence, you would pause to distinguish
What hurts from what amuses.
For I tell you
Beneath this powerful tree, my whole soul's fluid
Oozes away from me as a sacrifice stream
At the knife of a Druid.
Again I tell you, I bleed, I am bound with withies,
My life runs out.
I tell you my blood runs out on the floor of this oak.
Gout upon gout.
Above me springs the blood-born mistletoe
In the shady smoke.
But who are you, twittering to and fro
Beneath the oak?
What thing better are you, what worse?
What have you to do with the mysteries
Of this ancient place, of my ancient curse?
What place have you in my histories?
~~~~~~~~
from carroll:
Please tell me what you hear him saying, I'm not sure whether I get it. Is he the tree, the sacrifice, the Druids, all of these? Axis mundi tree? Farmer Oak? And why blood-born mistletoe?
~~~~~~~~
deborah:
Just found this Wilde poem about him:
SANTA DECCA
The Gods are dead: no longer do we bring
To grey-eyed Pallas crowns of olive-leaves!
Demeter's child no more hath tithe of sheaves,
And in the noon the careless shepherds sing,
For Pan is dead, and all the wantoning
By secret glade and devious haunt is o'er :
Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more;
Great Pan is dead, and Mary's son is King.
And yet--perchance in this sea-tranced isle,
Chewing the bitter fruit of memory,
Some God lies hidden in the asphodel.
Ah Love! if such there be, then it were well
For us to fly his anger: nay, but see,
The leaves are stirring: let us watch awhile.
~OSCAR~
I've read some sinister things about mistletoe.
~~~~~~~~~
from phoebe:
In a message dated 10/10/00 1:18:20 AM, deb writes: I've read some sinister things about mistletoe.
Mistletoe is poisonous. Odd that we put it over our heads and kiss beneath It at birth of the sungod. Death and life again and again recycling itself. Love and death; life and love; death and life. -----
Pliny, Natural History, XVI, 95: The Druids - that is what they call their magicians - hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and a tree on which it is growing, provided it is Valonia Oak... Mistletoe is rare and when found, it is gathered with great ceremony, and particularly on the sixth day of the moon... Hailing the moon in a native word that means "healing all things", they prepare a ritual sacrifice and banquet beneath a tree and bring up two white bulls, whose horns are bound for the first time on this occasion. A priest arrayed in white vestments climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts down the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloak. Then finally they kill the victims, praying to God to render his gift propitious to those on whom he has bestowed it. They believe that mistletoe given in a drink will impart fertility to any animal that is barren, and that it is an antidote to all poisons.
Gloss, in Miranda Green's The World of the Druids: Central to Pliny's statement is the sanctity of mistletoe, both as a healing agent and as an aid to fertility. Both these concerns are emphasized in Celtic religious expression. Interestingly, in the modern pharmacopoeia, mistletoe is reputed to be beneficial to sufferers of insomnia, high blood-pressure and certain malignant tumours. Moreover, that mistletoe may have possessed important symbolism for the Celts is suggested by its presence as a motif in early Celtic art. Human heads bearing curious leaf-shaped crowns are common decorative themes on both jewellery and stone monuments. The lobed shape of the leaves on these objects closely resembles the leaves of European mistletoe and, if such an identification is correct, it may be that the faces depicted in this pre-Roman art are those of gods or priests, perhaps even the Druids themselves.
xx ph
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
from deborah:
Ah, hence the Greenman. I see his face here in Anne's sculpture on my wall.
All recall the Pan myth, specifically Marsyas, who was tricked by Apollo into a piping contest. And for winning, Apollo got to flay Marsyas, and that's his blood running, a red river back in Greece.
This is from my holy book, Robt Lloyd Mitchell's HYMN TO EROS (from Alcibiades) :
". . . Alcibiades speaks of Socrates by means of images. Socrates, he says, is like those figures of Silenus, made by craftsmen, which sit in carver's shops: the kind that portray the satyr with a pipe or flute in his hand, but are made so they can be opened, revealing images of gods within.
"Socrates, then, is like and image of a satyr: an image that contains images of gods within itself.
"Part of this we should have been expecting. Dionysus never goes anywhere without his retinue of satyrs trailing along behind him, including especially his teacher Silenus. The two names--satyrs and sileni--are almost interchangeable. If anything the latter are the elder members of the race. They are primeval daimons of fields and rocks and thick woods; they enjoy frightening out of wits anyone who disturbs their haunts. As if in return, men customarily represent them as irrepressibly lustful and otherwise lazy and worthless creatures, thick-skinned and ugly. (Much later, as in a famous statue after Praxiteles, their features are softened ; their ugliness forgotten; they become beautiful! ) In shape they combine animal and human features; it is as if they embody the event of passage out of earth towards men and the gods. They are independent cusses but yet devoted to Pan and especially to Dionysus, who always seems to have a pack of them in his train.
"But ... why doesn't Alcibiades just say Socrates is like a satyr and be done with it? In fact he does do that through much of his speech, starting now, where he says that Socrates is like the satyr Marsyas. So why does he begin with that toy? Presumably, there are features that that image makes visible which would not come to light in a direct comparison to the satyr. Three things come to mind. First, as we think of that image of the satyr, we are reminded that we are listening, not to the god himself but to an image of him. Second, the image, unlike the satyr himself, is not to be found in fields or woods, but rather only in the city and its shops, crafted, as Alcibiades innocently puts it, by a craftsman. Third, there are those images within these figures, which nothing in the tales told about the satyrs would prepare us for. Here the word for 'image' is *agalmata*: originally, images specifically of the gods, though eventually coming to refer to statues generally. But it did so out of an original meaning of 'praise', 'exultation', 'rejoicing'. In other words, these images do not just stand there like our 'sta-tues', 're-presenting' their object. Instead, they glory the gods, they rejoice them. * It is out of this activity that the gods come to visibility in these images. * Here, then, is the image of Socrates: the image of the rough, ugly flute-carrying satyr, hiding images within itself that invoke the presence of gods in praise and jubilation....." ~Robert Lloyd Mitchell. HYMN TO EROS, A reading of Plato's Symposium
ALL this a poet knows in his soul: crafting gods into visibility is the poet's task! And the Oak (think Hardy's Gabriel Oak, and DHLawrence's Mellors/Parkin) holds all those gods...
And who remembers? Who hears?
"...listening, not to the god himself but to an image of him..."
(Is it so much to ask? he comes crying at my door. That which reveals itself so quietly now that we ignore it.)
I fear it will all just be a frozen magician in that tree, stationary, still, yet trapped in matter, if we don't dream the future through our yearning and desire. Act it out, be it, see it, know it in this 'praise', 'exultation', 'rejoicing'. (Remember that despair, that pandemic, is a sin...) Eros moves it all-----and we become pregnant with the future.
Eros is a sort of god of Time, too, you know: oldest and youngest god, child of need and wealth, cunning and resource.
x's
Deborah (who is yes, a bit preachy. But so was DHLawrence...)
From: Phoebe
Date: Fri Oct 13, 2000 1:46 pm
Subject: Acting and acting-up
Had a discussion in my acting class yesterday about the paradox of acting... the me/not me of acting. In a sense, it really is like the Let's Pretend of childhood. Immersing one's self in someone else's words and motivations is pretending, after all. We are always ourselves. I don't agree with the old actor story about firing an actor if they believe they are the character. When you're in another skin, it's not just the audience that is suspending belief at the moment, the actor is, too. Skill, the physical surroundings, the ticking of memory-banks, keep an actor from being psychotic; but there is a loosening of ego. The moment of being onstage, in the Now of the character, listening, responding, Being someone else, is the most euphoric experience I've ever had. Akin to Aha! Cosmic.
Some people have a natural instinct for acting, others have a glowing imagination and can learn to channel it. In all my years of teaching, I've seen only three people who had IT - the intuitive, fearless synapse that leaps from intellect to guts to soul to utterance. It can't be taught. The other skills - breathing, scansion, technical physicalities, body work, literary connections - are just the tubes of paint. Many other actors have varying degrees of that instinct, and can be good, and sometimes excellent, actors if they are diligent and fierce. But a born actor is a born actor.
Oddly, many many actors are actually shy and cover that up. Many many are very private people who are compelled by their lovely demon to take to the public fora but are only really comfortable either in some character's skin or in a small group. Masking is considered a virtue by most of us actor-types.
I'm not talking here about the celebrities of tv and films. The acting is so bad on most television that it's painful to watch, especially the comedy shows, and the sheer volume of vomit that is the film industry is likewise not to my taste in general. The basic problem with what I consider such bad acting is that the performers AREN'T acting, they are acting-up, acting-out, playing themselves. The writers of these things write the characters to fit the actor, rather than an actor creating something. Even the character names are frequently the actor's own. What the hell is that?
You obviously touched a sore spot. These questions have been central to my life for so long...
Pretty day here.
x
ph
From:
Carroll Date: Wed Oct 11, 2000 9:30 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Re: Ode on a grecian urn
10/11/00 4:11 PM, Deborah wrote:
...The silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.
That's pure alchemy, my lady.
Especially when it's the song of the god of Youth and Beauty and Poetry and Love. That Yeats, what a lad he was. This belongs in your Archive, which I think of as a sort of Arc of the Covenant. The silver apples, the golden apples remind me a bit of Alice's yesterday Bacchus poem! (I love the young Yeats imagining this god growing old, that's genius. I wonder if the glimmering girl is the Secret Most Inviolable Rose?) Carroll
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name.
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
W. B. Yeats, written 1893[?],
published 1897 as 'A Mad Song'
From: Deborah
Date: Tue Oct 17, 2000 3:06 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] in the beginning
Search my soul here: No beliefs to speak of. But thinking: I instinctively try to see the divinity in everything, blooming simply to bloom.
This path is just an approach, an act. A way to move, because we are creatures of movement. We have different ways of seeing the same thing. Paths. I'm understanding that I really have no religion but that. Just my heart's direct experience and opening to it.
Just a pragmatic 'looking at the mask'. And Beauty -- that's just Eternity perceived in the old myth -- the memory of being beyond time and movement *where there isn't even silence and stillness.*
My kids ask if there's a god, and I say yes! It's what all this is, where it all came from and goes to. What is it-they-neuter no-English-word-to-even-ask-the-question? Well, that's just a way humans have... wanting to know why and where, etc. But this simply is. 'Being' really was a good way to put it.
The words put in Yahweh's mouth: I AM, AM. Well, yeah.
Just a grasping of Being. Personifications are poetry and grasping. Truth and Beauty: always coming and slipping away. You can't possess anything in time/space. And matter doesn't exist anywhere else. So physics tells us, and that's a religion too.
e.g..: I see Ficino's sigil read:
Love is Passion aroused by Beauty. I am fascinated. I say--stars fill me with the vision--How does Beauty arouse us? Move us, set us aflame? Make us live, animate? Each word is essential to grasp. Love is Eros. Whole books on that. Beauty as Keatsian truth and beauty, Beauty as form, Beauty as archetype, Beauty as Sephirah, and especially Beauty re Eros traced back before Plato--because Plato as the origin of all things is the great lie of the West--fascinates me. Fascination is a demon. Demons are teachers. I sit down and try to be full and empty enough to be filled. That's the upsurging draft, the arousal. Life.
I suppose that sort of exploration becomes my practice of religion. It's a thing hidden in my soul that urges me on, a process. Lucifer, bringing light, bringing darkness in the time between dawn and sunrise. Midnight and the new night's morning.
Oddly, irritability seems a natural and essential condition of creativity. Without it, we only have abiding, which doesn't belong in time/space. Stuck on Eros, we have nothing at all. Torque is the word I use for irritability. Says it for me. It means beingness: being in time. Moving toward Being. Ah: Love is Passion aroused by Beauty.
(occurs: The Rosicrucian myth: coming upon Venus behind her copper door...)
I do think -- and if I have a prejudice, this is it, because it's been the experience I've lived and that defines me -- that this search in the heart creates the truth is all I can really say about it honestly. That's descriptive, mind you. Not anything believed or writ in stone. More writ in water. Write it all in water.
"...It is not man as such who has to be regenerated or born again as a renewed whole, but, according to the statements of mythology, it is the hero or god who rejuvenates himself. These figures are generally expressed or characterized by libido-symbols (light, fire, sun, etc.), so that it looks as if they represented psychic energy. They are, in fact, personifications of the libido. Now it is a fact amply confirmed by psychiatric experience that all parts of the psyche, inasmuch as they possess a certain autonomy, exhibit a personal character, like the split-off products of hysteria and schizophrenia, mediumistic spirits," figures seen in dreams, etc. Every split-off portion of libido, every complex, has or is a (fragmentary) personality. At any rate, that is how it looks from the purely observational standpoint. But when we go into the matter more deeply, we find that they are really archetypal formations. There are no conclusive arguments against the hypothesis that these archetypal figures are endowed with personality at the outset and are not just secondary personalizations. In so far as the archetypes do not represent mere functional relationships, they manifest themselves as daimones, as personal agencies. In this form they are felt as actual experiences and are not "figments of the imagination," as rationalism would have us believe. Consequently, man derives his human personality only secondarily from what the myths call his descent from the gods and heroes; or, to put it in psychological terms, his consciousness of himself as a personality derives primarily from the influence of quasi-personal archetypes. Numerous mythological proofs could be advanced in support of this view. .... It is, then, in the first place the god who transforms himself, and only through him does man take part in the transformation. ..." ~CGJUNG, in CW5, SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION
~~~~
Beautiful Daimons, all.
From: Deb
Date: Tue Nov 14, 2000 2:15 pm
Subject: Myth again
Some of my notes:
(Diotima, the Matte'i essay and the Symposium. etc.)
Symposium was the prime myth of the Renaissance (and Wilde, Pater, Rossetti, Keats) (Important also because: it shows Platonism of Jung. Truth in wine and children!)
Forms as archetype, collective unconscious as the Masks of God. Each affects/reflects/creates the other: It's a dance: A sacred marriage of Becoming.
Archetype: a priori intuition expressed as instinctual image.
Art of Becoming: Pairs of relationships: A dialectic.
Word and thing: The main business of magick is the search for the original language that perpetuated the cosmos is this relationship. The perfect word or symbol and their systems of relationships, e.g. Language, or form (Kabbalistic sefiroth, sacred geometry, Ars Memory...) .always about word and thing: that is, the creation or generation or relationship between word and thing. Apollonian and Dionysian; Whole and Part; Syncretism and Analytical. Anabolic and catabolic. Anode and cathode. Time and moment. Being and Becoming.
All carry the same language as the early Eros myth: Eros: son of chaos, the creator, the mover, the shaper; hangs out with Desire and Longing. Dance: Shape and shaper. Created /creator. Love and Beloved. Penetrator and penetrated. AhHa and before AhHa. Memory and Soul.
Eros and Beauty: mediated by memory.
Drama and theater as The Self:
The stage the center of the dance between the gods and man; archetype and the psyche. Both wear masks, make masks for each other, project & reflect masks, inotherowords: create the other. Also idea of sphere as theater: the stage as the Center which is everywhere, circumference Nowhere. As god/Self. Unconscious/conscious.
Greeks understood this. So did Oscar. And Nietzsche and Rossetti and Keats and Lawrence and Hardy et al. The prime Romantic myth.
Beauty as mediator between Time and Eternity.
Beauty as Mercurious, as Daimon.
Beauty as mediator between archetype/forms/eternity and becoming.
Beauty as Truth, Truth as Beauty
Never separate: always both at once. Self. The deity dressed in
time/space/matter.
Rounded with a sleep...
x's Deborah
From: mike
Date: Tue Nov 14, 2000 3:06 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Myth again
You might be interested in the following
http://socrates.philosophy.msstate.edu/pr/Faculty/papers/digges.html
and in the discussion on Dee and Digges and Copernicanism on the alchemy list
Otherwise, take a look at the archives which are at http://www.levity.com/alchemy/a-archive1.html
Love,
me
From: Carroll Bishop Date: Wed Nov 15, 2000 4:11 pm Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] them celts
on 11/15/00 10:10 AM, Deborah wrote:
Maureen writes:
Have been reading the best ever devotional book, John O' Donohue's *Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World.* Better than Hillman - simpler, gentler, equally profound, though not as demanding on the grey matter. It plays on the soul like a breeze on an aeolian harp.
Brighid of the mantle encompass us,
Lady of the Lambs protect us,
Keeper of the Hearth, kindle us,
Beneath your mantle, gather us
And restore us to memory
Mothers of our mother,
Foremothers strong,
Guide our hands in yours
Remind us how
To kindle the hearth,
To keep it bright
To preserve the flame,
Your hands upon ours,
Our hands within yours,
To kindle the light
Both day and night.
The mantle of Brighid about us,
The memory of Brighid within us,
The protection of Brighid keeping us
From harm, from ignorance, from heartlessness,
This day and night,
From dawn till dark
From dark to dawn.
Caitlin Matthews (in ANAM CARA, p. 180
HarperCollins pbk. (Cliff Street Books)
pbk. 1998.)
From: Deborah
Date: Thu Nov 16, 2000 3:51 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] synopsis
Carroll says "Synopsis of what?"
This: "All true poetry-- true by Housman's practical test-- celebrates come incident or scene in this very ancient history... "
I think Graves is right. Only the masks change. He's also right that they come up in dreams and in vision quests and active imagination. I have no doubt, having been there without a clue where I was or was going.
"....The fact is that though the Anglo-Saxons broke the power of the ancient British chieftains and poets they did not exterminate the peasants, so that the continuity of the ancient British festal system remained unaffected even when the Anglo-Saxons professed Christianity...."
"... The Theme, briefly, is an antique story, which falls into thirteen chapters and an epilogue, of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God of the Waxing Year; the central chapters concern God's losing battle with the God of the Waning Year for love of the capricious and all-powerful Threefold Goddess, their mother, bride, and layer-out. The poet identifies himself with the God of the Waxing Year and his Muse with the Goddess; the rival is his blood-brother, his other self, his weird.
"All true poetry-- true by Housman's practical test-- celebrates come incident or scene in this very ancient history, and the three main characters are so much a part of our racial inheritance that they not only assert themselves in poetry but recur on occasions of emotional stress in the form of dreams, paranoiac visions and delusions.
"The weird, or rival, often appears in nightmare as the tall, lean, dark-faced spectre, or Prince of the Air, who tries to drag the dreamer out through the window, so that he looks back and sees his body still lying rigid in bed; but he takes countless malevolent or diabolic or serpent-like forms.
"The Goddess is a lovely, slender woman with a hooked nose, deathly pale face, lips red as rowan-berries, startlingly blue eyes and long hair... Her names are innumerable...." ~Robert Graves, The White Goddess
So then--the Greenman still speaks and moans in all those trees. DHLawrence a good friend of Graves, too. The above from the 1st chapter of
The White Goddess. Spoken in dreams, intuition, trees, the old ways.
Do this in memory *with* me.
Summa felicitas,
Deborah
From: Carroll
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] synopsis
I have to see if it applies to Yehuda! Maybe yes maybe no. Maybe
sometimes. He's my Poet of the Millennium.
Carroll
From: alice
Date: Mon Dec 4, 2000 2:20 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability]ego
Ego=center of cosciousness - who we THINK we are - it's at circumference of
mandala of psyche, mediating between outer world n inner archetypal contents
of psyche. centerpt=Self/div guest - or as cgj says the center n totality of
psyche. the centerpt lives in unconscious, so it needs ego to function in
3-dim world - God can't eat a poached egg! the plot of the play is:
1-we are born in uroboric state
2-we develop an ego that bears our name
3-we event identify w/ego n forget centerpt
4-go aroundd in circles searching [words have same root!]
5-crisis!
6-turn inward seeking the center thereby establishing communic - 'the Only
Way' traveled by all avatars.
7-wh ego surrenders in devotion to 'Christ w/in, atman, etv. then indiv is
possible
cgj (CGJung)- individuation, theologically understood, is incarnation.
cf the prodigal son, hesse's NARCISSUS N GOLDMUND or Yeats's VACILLATION.
for more, my WEB IN THE SEA.
ego's mantra: descartes' 'cogito ergo sum' - i think therefore i am!
had a dream, wh W was still here, in Loatin: cogito ergo sum ergo scivio
deus
est. woke up the polar bear who made me write it down: i think therefore i
am
therefore i [can] KNOW God is.
phew!
now to work
i love you!:}
ao
will send u reprint of article REFLECTIONS ON THE EGO-SELF AXIS [they
wouldn't title it God can't eat a poached egg!
Krishnan writes:
Dear Alice,
Thanks for your kind words. My comments follow:
AOH: so, i have to agree w/jung - the atman/self/christ w/in needs the ego to function in our temporary life, n we give it our name, n identify w/it until, until it dawns on us that something greater created us.
I did not intend to take a stand on the existence or non-existence of the ego; I don't know the answer (haven't been there), and perhaps I did not come across clearly. In fact, of the three major systems I discussed- advaita vedanta, sankhya and tantra, only advaita vedanta posits a merger/dissolution of the ego (Atman) into the Brahman. There are, as well, other purely dualistic systems (such as dvaita = two-fold) and quasi-dualistic systems (that posit the "Different-yet-not-quite-Separate" Bheda-Abheda, etc.). The Bhakti (devotional) traditions are often dualistic. In fact, *all* the Bhakti traditions that assert their superiority over the path of Gnana (knowledge) are dualistic, because the end is a duality of worshipper and worshipped. [Only Gnana can take you to a non-dual state, as acknowledged by both schools; the argument is over which is the "ultimate" state.] Ramakrishna (the famous Kali devotee) for some time during his later years had a Advaita guru named Tota Puri. The story goes that Tota guided R to the "higher" (per Tota) state of non-dual realization, beyond R's lila with Kali. R reportedly said later that he preferred the state of interaction through intense devotion, with Kali, than the monistic realization. He said, "I want to taste the honey; I do not want to become it." Nevertheless, the question remains, what was the state attained by R through Tota, and acknowledged by both as "merging with Brahman"? Hasn't this state been described in many of the Buddhist traditions as well, Mike? Anyway, these are probably academic questions, of only theoretical interest in at least in my present state of consciousness :-).
There is a continuum of egoism, is there not? What use speculating on the journey's end? (BTW, this also related to the other major difference between Jung and the Eastern paths: is there an end or not?)
AOH: so how do we measure a lifetime - i think of cgj's TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS - one of his gems. in it, he answers a question i had asked myself ever since i was a child - why are we asked to sacrifice - ritually speaking? jung states that only by giving away something can we become conscious of the fact that we HAVE it!! bec u can't give away something u don't have. that makes sense to me. n so i realize that all i can keep is what i have given - what a paradox!
Terrific article. Also related is his article in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, titled (I believe) "The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man". I posted the quote once in J-F or J-C. This was that only in proportion to one's conscious sacrifice can one demand freedom from the rules of the collective... he said it much more eloquently. I'll try to find it, or maybe somebody with a better archiving system can do so.
Love,
- Anand
From: Anand
Date: Wed Dec 6, 2000 9:23 pm
Subject: Dynamic Equilibrium
Deb,
Glad to know you are well.
I use the word "dynamic" to connote an equilibrium that is essentially self-correcting, to restore the balance. Let me give you a classic example (there are many real examples recorded from nature). Consider a population / ecosystem of "hawks" and "doves". These are indistinguishable except for one characteristic: when they forage for food, the hawks are aggressive and the doves are meek. When a hawk comes upon another (hawk or dove) eating food, it attacks to gain the food. When a dove comes upon another (hawk or dove) eating food, it avoids conflict. The other bird reacts similiarly (depending on whether it is a hawk or dove); e.g., a dove when threatened by a hawk would give up its food and fly away. Another hawk would fight to the death.
This would be a self-correcting system, with the hawks and doves in dynamic equilibrium.
Suppose, for some reason, there are too many hawks in the ecosystem. Then a random bird eating food is very likely to be a hawk. It is optimal for another bird that comes across the first one to avoid conflict rather than fight, i.e., dove behavior is advantageous. Hence over time, as the hawks die out due to their suboptimal behavior, and the doves flourish, the appropriate equilibrium ratios are restored.
Similarly, suppose there are too many doves in the ecosystem. 'Hawk behavior'(confrontation) is advantageous, since the other bird is likely to fly away rather than fight. So the hawks gain gradually, while the doves lose, until the appropriate population ratios are restored. Also, this is "harmonious" at the species level, but not necessarily at the individual bird-level. Now substitute "Carroll" for Hawk and "Phoebe" for Dove, or vice-versa... The best we can hope for here is a dynamic equilibrium. Cheers,
Anand
Subject: RE: [Negative-Capability] Lo how a Rose
Yeah, more a dynamic than static equilibrium.
- Anand
I'd say, based on my feelings about the natural world, it isn't a balance
But a harmony. That is what Nature seeks and probably we do, too.
x
ph
Can't speak for Buddhist or Hindu but in Egypt we speak of the Boat of Millions of Years, the continuum that is space and time, life and deathlessness, self-created and infinite. And to walk the path of Ma'at is like being on a balance beam that is the interface between the spiritual and the mundane. They are not separate but simultaneous. smiling, phoebe
PS - I didn't lose my voice-over gig because of my cold.
From: mike
Date: Thu Dec 7, 2000 10:09 am
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Dynamic Equilibrium
A Japanese saying: - 'The stillness in stillness is not really stillness; stillness in action is stillness indeed.'
The basic meaning also has to do with the fact that anything that seems notto be moving will sooner or later be set (or found to be) in motion and is therefore not really 'still' except relatively, whereas 'stillness in motion' - in action - has to do with not losing one's centre - the 'unformed' - in the passing show...
(mike)
From: Carroll
Date: Wed Dec 6, 2000 9:43 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Dynamic Equilibrium
on 12/6/00 4:23 PM, Anand wrote:
>Now substitute "Carroll" for Hawk and "Phoebe" for Dove, or vice-versa...
>The best we can hope for here is a dynamic equilibrium.
Did any of you ever read T. H. White's THE GOSHAWK, the story of his attempts to learn falconry from some ancient medieval (I think) treatise? There was even a documentary made of it. An enchanting book.
White was alternately delighted and exasperated by the hawk behavior (I think there were two, Gos and Cully, though Cully may have been the owl in SWORD IN THE STONE), and the birds' failure to do what the treatise said they would do.
I always remembered (music trivia being my speciality) that White taught one of them to come for its food on signal -- the signal being White's singing "The Lord's My Shepherd" in the Scottish metrical version of the hymn. White I imagine in the role of the Lord and the falcon not wanting. Like most of his experiments, this didn't quite work the way it was intended to. You could say that about the Lord, too.
Cheers, Anand
You do, Anand, you do. Cheer. The I who I am today is busy buying a bodhran for her grandson. Rosewood sounds nice. It's 18 inches diameter, almost as big as Colin William. The thing you play it with is called (by some) a tipper, which gives a whole new image of Mr. Gore.
Carroll
from Carroll
Date: Fri Dec 8, 2000 12:20 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Dynamic Equilibrium as Mode & Melody
on 12/8/00 6:15 AM, mike wrote
Six lines sounds about right. Also, although it's useful to steer by the reefs, it *is* the passes between them that allow for progress - You steer FOR those, knowing the others are there. Phoebe's right.
Aeolian 'authentic' is DO RE MIb FA SOL LAb TIb... The 'plagal' is DO REb MI FA SOL LAb TIb. You might also think of using the following two pentatonic scales: DO MIb FA SOL TIb and DO MI FA SOL TI with accidentals RE and TIb to give the 'pedal', the structure, for example, of many jigs and reels, but also found in slow airs such as 'The Laghnan Sidh' (possibly better known as 'My Lagan Love') and 'She Moves through the Fair'.
Modal and melodic morning-musings...
m
Do I know MY LAGAN LOVE? Is it on that folksong site I found I wonder? And what is happening in SHE MOVES THROUGH THE FAIR? That lyric is so lovely -- and so enigmatic. It's that image of some sort of dance -- a haunting is it?
Mike was responding to an email a propos finding a director for THE IMMORTAL HOUR, Fiona Macleod's fairy play. This part:
My musical friend Frank Nakashima came to dinner and we discussed modes and scales and agreed there was something especially agreeable about Aeolian. I never can remember which is which. Frank thought I Wonder as I Wander is Aeolian and he is usually right. I'm wondering as I wander what modes the Sidh of -- what was it about first century or was it tenth -- would sing in. On the Boughton opera it all sounds like Turandot or Butterfly, except for scene where Etain meets the High King.
Our other subject of debate (and harmony) was whether Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is singable in the Poston arrangement always used. Because of one high note.
Carroll
From: "Anand"
Date: Fri Dec 22, 2000 9:31 pm
Subject: Who's got the blues???
Mary, Vishnu / Krishna is the one who is blue, not Shiva. Shiva is the "blue-throated" one, from swallowing deadly poison to save the world. Vishnu is space (the blue sky), at the Vishuddhi (throat) Chakra; Shiva is time, at the Agnya (third eye on forehead) chakra ; the interaction of the two (time penetrating space) gives rise to our world (of the senses). Hence Vishnu often takes the form of an incomparably beautiful woman (Mohini the enchantress; who is the cause of our Maya or enchantment / delusion); esoterically, Vishnu (in the form of Balaji) is identified with the Goddess -- the womb / sphere of space, with Shiva the male (linear; motion of time). Their intercourse (the motion of time in space) leads to the future moving into the past. Shiva is often depicted as white / pale; he is "shava" (corpse) without the life-giving contact of shakti (lit. power; a name for Devi, i.e., the Goddess). Time can't move except through space; and also, Shiva as pure consciousness is inert without an animating power / energy (shakti). When the kundalini rises above the throat chakra, the aspirant transcends space or distance between objects ("Thou art that"); this is Arjuna's vision in the Bhagavad Gita-- a partial realization. When the kundalini further rises above the third eye, the aspirant transcends even time. The latter is the harder task; I am reminded of Mike's recent posting of a story with impossibly complex Buddhist names, where there is a similiar structure (the one that was reposted in Jung-Fire).
Krishna is the aspect of Vishnu who resides in the heart, and represents the universalization of love. (Hence his simultaneously making love to 1008 milkmaids, by duplicating himself 1008 times, so each milkmaid receives his love, and each thinks she is the sole and special object of his attentions.) One must first experience love to all (sensient and insensient) equally and without discrimination -- the kundalini rising above the heart chakra -- before one may transcend space and time. From this perspective, possessiveness is the enemy of the universalization of love. (Letting go is so hard to do!) This is the basis for and aim of sexual tantrik practices -- chakra pujas [worship (puja) with the aspirants assembled in the form of a wheel or circle (chakra)]. The difficulty with our sense organs is that they are limited by time and space-- they serve as "local magnifiers" / filters. But I am going off on a tangent here... - Anand
From:mike Date: Sat Mar 24, 2001 10:11 am
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] alex*
a-HA!... That is a VERY pleasing sight! In 'Atalanta Fugiens' - 'The Fleeting Atalanta' - Maier says:(Epigramma XV):
Look how, swift and fleet,
The potter forms his vases on the turning Wheel,
Mixing the while the water with his feet:
In two things does he place his trust
By art with humidity Tempering the dry dust.
So also do you, instructing yourself of this example,
That water not o'er earth prevail,
Nor yet the earth your water veil.
m
from alice:
1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1=ONE! I think this is worth sharing: The first step toward the non-religion of the western world was made by religion itself. When it defended great symbols, not as symbols, but as literal stories, it had already lost the battle. In doing so, the theologians (and today many religious laymen) helped to transfer the powerful expressions of the dimension of depth into objects or happenings on the horizontal plane. There the symbols lose their power and become an easy prey to physical, biological and historical attack. Paul Tillich - THE LOST DIMENSION IN RELIGION love ao
Date: Sun Aug 25, 2002 10:32 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Jung , Archetype
from Deborah
re jung:
I'm sure there's no end of stories light and dark regarding the practice of analysis and its offspring. It's important as an empirical tool, and but one of the paths Jung used in his study, which was in turn his own individuation. He was good enough to share it with us, and I think that was a great and unavoidable act of love on his part.
Lord, that stuff I read about Hamlet and Oedipus by Ernest Jones in high school for a research paper--that was my introduction to Mr. Id, Mr, Ego, Mr. Uberburger and their venerable Magister. Later came the Erickson (who I liked), and the shy Freudian interps of literature. I never could fit Jungian ego on Freud's -- the business of all things tracking back to the infantile (with a derogatory lilt) always seemed to me circumvention. It was as far back and as deep as it was acceptable to probe that great cesspool of urges and bogeys that made Freud fall off his chair. Jung was more honest than that: Psychology had to include all of Psyche.
mary wrote:
I guess for me Jung is speaking for Jung, which is wonderful, but that's his life, his point of view, his experience. Mine may be quite different, and still be as awesome for me as his was for him!
No doubt, Mary. What did Jung warn about but dogma? What was he doing but thinking outloud, calling out the landmarks and lay of the land as he perceived them as he tramped along the thick dark wood--the place we all travail up along on our own journey (in the place where it is darkest and where there is no path).
So--I think that if I'm going to read jung or talk about jung, I should do it from a first hand perspective of his work. I'm not a jungian. I'm an individual. That's fine bys him, he makes clear. I also read him in perspective. In some of his last letters he asks someone "Have you not read my later works?" His thoughts grew with him.
Jung himself constantly reminds us that his theory is open and
that he expects it to be questioned. Like Mary I am immensely
grateful for what I have learned from Jung -- and even more from
Jung's admirers who are my friends. But I have a questioning
mind, and I shall no doubt continue to ask questions while
I love and breathe.
Carroll
And one would never expect otherwise.
Consciousness first--then you. And that always included that dark water that rushed beneath the clear boat I rode on in my dreams as a child--and all the stillborn beings who looked up at me from those depths.
It's a wondrous gamble, all of it, powers unimaginable putting their will beyond their reach and into creatures like us...
with love, Deb
From:phoebe
Poor old EBL. I think most people who make fun of him have never read him. Once in a while I assign my theatre history students his The Lady of Lyons to read. They always enjoy it. Good, if old-fashioned, theatre.
xx.
ph.
From:phoebe
date: Wed Apr 18, 2001 12:16 pm
Subject: 5 dimensions
Faster than you can say "Ekpyrotic Universe," a movement has taken hold -- albeit like fingers on a ledge of eternal skepticism -- that would blow one of the basic tenets of the Big Bang to smithereens. Think parallel branes and five dimensions. Science never sounded so cool. The new idea would not replace the Big Bang, which has for more than 50 years dominated cosmologists' thinking over how the universe began and evolved. But instead of a universe springing forth in a violent instant from an infinitely small point of infinite density, the new view argues that our universe was created when two parallel "membranes" collided cataclysmically after evolving slowly in five-dimensional space over an exceedingly long period of time.-- Night Sights
From: mike
*This is fascinating whether you eat your carrots or not. I've always revolted against the idea of a big bang (with or without capitals) as the starting-point of it all - After all, if there were one on one level, it stands to reason, does it not, that if there is any such a thing as consistency in this universe (and beyond it), there would be others on other levels, but, right down to the ultra-microscopic and, one might suppose, beyond, this phenomenon of exploding into existence, with or without anterior cause, is conspicuous only in its absence. I'm not sure I go for this one as much as I do for string-theory (which also has as many holes in it as a Swiss cheese), but... yes... there HAS to be another explanation, and - indeed - encoded in much that would appear mythical/religious, - there is... even 'are'... Many. And far more plausible.
I personally tend to the opinion that 'universe' is coterminous with - identical with - 'knowing', and that they arose simultaneously, which is to say that they are a 'wrinkle' in 'real time', 'real space', 'real knowing' and have never either really come into existence or not come into existence. We tend to stick on the level that 'knowing' is inherent only in the animal realm, and that the vegetable and mineral realms of 'lesser' and 'no' awareness are the only others that exist, but 'knowing' - and on a far vaster than merely day-to-day human scale - has always been deemed by the more sensitive among us to exist, and even to exist equally well on an eternal and infinite as well as momentary and infinitessimal scale - that they are necessary aspects, the one of the other.
'Knowing' is the conscious vector of 'time-space', 'space' the presentingness vector of experienced awareness; and 'time' the duration of any given awareness of presence and/or absence - They are utterly - and unutterably - inextricable, the one from the other, as are the facets of each of these vectors - the beforenesses, afternesses and nownesses, leftnesses, rightnesses, centrenesses and before-and-behindnesses, and mere- awarenesses, conscious-awarenesses and un-awarenesses - each from each other. Time and space are, as it were, the 'opacity' of our knowing. Knowing *outside* of time and space, or - differently put - in 'real' time and 'real' space, is of a completely different nature.
Alice often speaks of the dimensionless point at the centre of the circle, but that point is so vast that any given one of them completely pervades the entire universe, completely pervades all circles to the extent that they themselves become nothing more than dancing motes of rainbow light upon its infinite surface. And this is just the beginning of the thing!...
F. Russ Trated I think I'm going to toss this on the fire too...
From: Deborah
Date: Thu Apr 16, 2001 3:01 am
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] 5 dimensions
Aah. They're all just models. Poems. Dissolve and coagulate. Bird burns, burn rises, bird burns, bird rises... bird swings on chandelier.
From: Phoebe
In a message dated 4/18/01 10:32:03 AM, mike writes:
>> Alice often speaks of the dimensionless point at the centre of the circle, but that point is so vast that any given one of them completely pervades the entire universe, completely pervades all circles to the extent that they themselves become nothing more than dancing motes of rainbow light upon its infinite surface. And this is just the beginning of the thing!... >>
Whole post well spoke, lad! Made me smile thinking of a time in my graduate cultural history class when I got suckered into explaining "Is and Is-Not". We had read pieces of the Tao Te Ching and my students were confused. I think they were more confused at the end of the discussion.
On my path, Mike, we call it The Boat of Millions of Years... meaning the continuum going in all directions.
love,
ph
From: alice
mike, u come very close....
the prob, as i see it, is that as long as we are trying to solve the prob with our consc minds, we will fail! for the simple reason that thinking is based on duality:beginn n ends. i.e. one cannot really think of infinity n grasp it.
as u pt out , we can discover bigger n bigger n smaller n smaller - the closest perhaps is fractals wh prove processes - so we are caught in a koan
BUT perhaps in evolution we may yet develop an organ that we have in potentia that can deal w/this question. like am radio growing into fm....
i have no doubt that there may be a few enlight beings already so equipped i'm thinking of ADAM KADMON n how does a visiting atom in my big toe know me or how can i as an atom in the body of AK or God know them.
The ocean is not afraid of the drop's philosophy......Upanishads?
but the disc of 2 membranes parallel sounds quite erotic! well, love makes the world go round as Dante n Goethe remind us
we cld call it the orgasmic theory of creation - the real BIG BANG!!!
yr giggling
ao!
From:Deb
Date: Thu Apr 16, 2001 12:29 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] 5 dimensions
what time is it?it is by every star
what time is it?it is by every star
a different time,and each most falsely true;
or so subhuman superminds declare
--nor all their times encompass me and you:
when are we never,but forever now
(hosts of eternity;not guests of seem)
believe me,dear,clocks have enough to do
without confusing timelessness and times.
Time connot children,poets,lovers tell--
measure imagine,mystery,a kiss
--not though mankind would rather know than feel;
mistrusting utterly that timelessness
whose absence would make your whole life and my
(and infinite our)merely to undie -e.e.cummings
I think I understand what alice was saying. The leaf knows the tree. Chiaro's soul in Rossetti's story puts it: One drop of rain is as another, and the sun's prism in all: and shalt not thou be as he, whose lives are the breath of One? Like Campbell and others said, we are the eyes and ears of Gaia.
And--all that missing Dark Matter needed to make the columns add up to fit our understanding. We learn again that we need another way of seeing. The laws of thermodynamics, say, fit our little existence quite well -- especially the second law. :) But now -- we see there's more to see. Much escapes us. Most. And yet -- the tendency is to defend the old vision. Always shortsighted. And so many foundations to teach the prejudice. HERITAGE FOUNDATION-ISM. I like the little human animal and would hate to see him destroyed by his stubborn materialism of things intellectual and spiritual.
Persephone (who was Night, the consort of Apollo in the original tantric source of this myth) eating the pomegranate seeds that bind her between creative/destructive Eros -- Psyche ( Cupid and Psyche) who is put through Love's agony because she insisted on seeing her divine lover -- Orpheus who loses his love finally because he 'looks back' -- all of these myths are warning us of the fatal foolishness of taking spiritual 'truths' literally. The dangers and derangement of Fundamentalism.
But I like the Big Bang. It's a fitting myth for the experience of life. Blooming and then shutting down for the night. The One breathing. Matter coming from stars, all the elements in your very body, in a planet, coming from those brave lights. The One giving its flesh and remaking itself in endless ways. Creating time and space with its flesh. But that's a projection of consciousness, too. But why should that intuition be wrong?
Rose of All the World
I am here myself; as though this heave of effort
At starting other life, fulfilled my own;
Rose-leaves that whirl in color round a core
Of seed-specks kindled lately and softly blown
By all the blood of the rose-bush into being -
Strange, that the urgent will in me, to set
My mouth on hers in kisses, and so softly
To bring together two strange sparks, beget
Another life from our lives, so should send
The innermost fire of my own dim soul out-spinning
And whirling in blossom of flame and being upon me!
That my completion of manhood should be the beginning
Another life from mine! For so it looks.
The seed is purpose, blossom accident.
The seed is all in all, the blossom lent
To crown the triumph of this new descent.
Is that it, woman? Does it strike you so?
The Great Breath blowing a tiny seed of fire
Fans out your petals for excess of flame,
Till all your being smokes with fine desire?
Or are we kindled, you and I, to be
One rose of wonderment upon the tree
Of perfect life, and is our possible seed
But the residuum of the ecstasy?
How will you have it? - the rose is all in all,
Or the ripe rose-fruits of the luscious fall?
The sharp begetting, or the child begot?
Our consummation matters, or does it not?
To me it seems the seed is just left over
From the red rose-flowers' fiery transience;
Just orts and slats; berries that smoulder in the bush
Which burnt just now with marvellous immanence.
Blossom, my darling, blossom, be a rose
Of roses unchidden and purposeless; a rose
For rosiness only, without an ulterior motive;
For me it is more than enough if the flower unclose.
~D. H. Lawrence
summa felicitas,
Deborah
From: mike
Date: Thu Apr 19, 2001 5:12 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] Re: [ dimensions+
aoh wrote: The ocean is not afraid of the drop's philosophy......Upanishads?
*Yes, indeed.
But what I'm trying to say is that there's a way of knowing *beyond* 'knowing', of timing beyond 'time' and spacing beyond 'space'... That 'here and now' is not necessarily only 'this time and this place' as seen via a single focus-pull but can be simultaneously infinitely vast and infinitessimally tiny without any obstruction.
This knowing has nothing to do with duality because what knows and what is being known are nothing but aspects of each other. The vastness aspect is its essence, the knowingness aspect its quintessential nature and the known/active aspect its all-encompassing compassionate energy. It has nothing to do with subject and object, known and unknown, choice and unchoice, even with being and unbeing, but is of a completely different order and hence inexpressible, ineffible IN TERMS OF prealotted meaning or even meaningfulness, but this does not mean that it cannot be known. On the contrary.
Two things veil it from us, if you like: negativity and obscuring mental defilement on the one hand, and primitive beliefs about reality on the other. I don't know if I sent you all Khyentse Rinpoche's pith-instructions of Dzogchen meditation, which is to say meditation upon the innate great perfection beyond all notions of duality so I'm going to add it here just in case.
Pith Instructions on the Great Perfection
His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
". . .The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralises into oneself.
This produces a tremendous energy which usually is locked up in the process of mental evasion and a general running away from life experiences. Clarity of awareness may, in its initial stages, be unpleasant or fear- inspiring; if so, then one should open oneself completely to the pain or the fear and welcome it. In this way the barriers created by one's own habitual emotional reactions and prejudices are broken down.
When performing the meditation practice one should develop the feeling of opening oneself completely to the whole universe with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind, ridding oneself of all protecting barriers. Don't mentally split into two when meditating, one part of the mind watching the other like a cat watching a mouse. One should realise that one does not meditate to go deeply within oneself and withdraw from the world. In Buddhist yoga, even when meditating on chakras there is no introspection concentration: complete openness of mind is the essential point.
The ground of samsara and nirvana is the alaya, the beginning and the end of confusion and realisation, the nature of universal shunyata and of all apparent phenomena. It is even more fundamental than the trikaya and is free from bias toward enlightenment. It is sometimes called the ‘pure’ or ‘original’ mind.
Although prajña (wisdom) sees in it no basis for such concepts as different aspects, the fundamental aspects of complete openness, natural perfection, and absolute spontaneity are distinguished by upaya (skilful means) as useful devices.
All aspects of every phenomenon are completely clear and lucid. The whole universe is open and unobstructed, everything mutually interpenetrating. Seeing all things nakedly, clear and free from obscurations, there is nothing to attain or realise. The nature of things naturally appears and is naturally present in time-transcending awareness; this is complete openness. Everything is perfect just as it is, completely pure and undefiled. All phenomena naturally appear in their uniquely correct modes and situations, forming ever-changing patterns full of meaning and significance, like participants in a great dance. Everything is a symbol, yet there is no difference between the symbol and the truth symbolised. With no effort of practice whatsoever, liberation, enlightenment, and buddhahood are already fully developed and perfected. This is natural perfection.
The everyday practice is just ordinary, is life itself. Since the underdeveloped state does not exist there is no need to behave in any special way or try to attain or practice anything. There should be no need of
striving to reach some exalted goal or higher state; this simply produces something conditional or artificial that will act as an obstruction to the free flow of the mind. One should never think of oneself as ‘sinful’ or worthless, but as naturally pure and perfect, lacking nothing.
When performing meditation practice one should think of it as just a natural function of everyday living, like eating or breathing, not as a special, formal event to be undertaken with great seriousness and solemnity. One must realise that to meditate is to pass beyond effort, beyond practice, beyond aims and goals,and beyond the dualism of bondage and liberation.
Meditation is always perfect, so there is no need to correct anything. Since Everything that arises is simply the play of the mind, there are no ‘bad’ meditation session and no need to judge thoughts as good or evil. Therefore one should not sit down to meditate with various hopes or fears about the outcome: one just does it with no self-conscious feeling of ‘I am meditating’ and without attempting to control or force the mind, and without trying to become peaceful. If one finds that one is going astray in any of these ways, one should stop meditating and simply rest and relax for awhile before resuming.
If, either during or after meditation, one has experiences that one interprets as results, they should not be made into anything special; recognize that they are just phenomena and simply observe them. Above all, do not attempt to recreate them as this opposes the natural spontaneity of the mind.
All phenomena are completely new and fresh and absolutely unique, entirely free from all concepts of past, present, and future as if experienced in another dimension of time; this is absolute spontaneity. The continual stream of new discovery and fresh revelation and inspiration that arises at every moment is the manifestation of the eternal youth of the living dharma and its wonders; splendour and spontaneity is the play or dance aspect of the universe as guru.
One should learn to see everyday life as a mandala in which one is at the centre, and be free of the bias and prejudice of past conditioning, present desires, and hopes and expectations about the future.
The figures of the mandala are the day-to-day objects of one's life experiences moving in the great dance of the play of the universe, the symbolism by which the guru reveals profound and ultimate meaning and significance.
Therefore, be natural and spontaneous; accept and learn from everything. See the comical, amusing side of irritating situations. In meditation, see through the illusion of past, present, and future. The past is but a present memory or condition, the future but a present projection, and the present itself vanishes before it can be grasped.
One should put an end to conceptions about meditation and free oneself from memories of the past. Each moment of meditation is completely unique and full of potentiality of new discovery so one is incapable of judging meditation by past experience or by theory.
Simply plunge straight into meditation at this very moment with your whole mind, and be free from hesitation, boredom, or excitement. When meditating it is traditional and best, if possible, to sit cross-legged with the back erect but not rigid. However, it is most important to feel comfortable, so it is better to sit in a chair if sitting cross-legged is painful. One's mental attitude should be inspired by the three fundamental aspects, whether the meditation is with or without form, and it may often prove desirable, if not essential, to precede a period of formless meditation by a period of meditation with form.
To provide for this eventuality many classes of preliminary meditation practices have been developed over centuries of Buddhist practice, the most important being meditations on breathing, mantra recitation, and visualisation techniques. To engage in the second and third of these classes, personal instruction from one's guru is required, but a few words on the first would not be out of place here as the method used varies little from person to person.
First, let the mind follow the movement of the breath, in and out, until it becomes calm and tranquil. Then increasingly rest the mind on the breath until one's whole being seems identified with it.
Finally become aware of the breath leaving the body and going out into space, and gradually transfer the attention from the breath to the sensation of spaciousness and expansion. By letting this final sensation merge into complete openness, one moves into the sphere of formless meditation.
In all probability the above description of the three fundamental aspects will seem vague and inadequate. This is inevitable since they attempt to describe what is not only beyond words but beyond thought as well. They invite practice of what it is, essentially, a state of being.
The words are simply a form a upaya, skilful means, a hint which if acted upon, will enable one's innate wisdom and naturally perfect action to arise spontaneously.
Sometimes in meditation one may experience a gap in one's normal consciousness, a sudden and complete openness. This experience arises only when one has ceased to think in terms of meditation and the object of meditation. It is a glimpse of reality, a sudden flash that occurs infrequently at first, and then, with continued practice, more and more frequently. It may not be a particularly shattering or explosive experience at all, just a moment of great simplicity. Do not make the mistake of deliberately trying to force these experiences to recur, for to do so is to betray the naturalness and spontaneity of reality..."
>>we cld call it the orgasmic theory of creation - the real BIG BANG!!!>>
*It makes more sense in that the blooming of anything, no matter how swift it may seem from without, always takes time in terms of its own focal level.
m
From: alice
thanks for that mike - i call that state being aware it has to do w/distinction between mercury/ thinking consc n uranus - higher oct of merc=intuition; also w/venus =human relationships n neptune, higher oct = vehicle for ineffable.
easiest process to make symbolic is radio am to fm [hearing] then internet [seeing] then color movies on internet sound/vision/colour - each step adding a dimension. but even all this is just a mirror n not the REAL
btw - i do want to protest the image of the body just being a corpse we drag around!! occult anatomy teaches the wondrous gift that the body is - the temple of spirit- n Sophia wld have a fit! every breath we take is a miracle - it is the vehicle for incarnation n by golly we shld appreciate it - just the wonder of a newborn baby w/wee fingernails, eyelashes, eyes! the feminine gives FORM to life!! hence 'mother nature' or Dame Kinde
n i'm appreciat of what i've got left - so there! n i bet mary wld agree
the auld cailleach, grateful that she can still walk, talk, n use 1 fing to
write this!
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
ao
from mike
aoh wrote: > thanks for that - i call that state being aware >
*'Natural pure awareness' is a fair translation of the Tibetan word, 'rigpa' -'vidya' in Sanskrit, from which stem 'wissen' and 'wit' (via 'to wit') - which is the essence of the great perfection view, so... yes, definitely...
> it has to do w/distinction between mercury/ thinking consc n uranus -higher oct of merc=intuition; also w/venus =human relationships n neptune, higher > oct = vehicle for ineffable.
*That's certainly the way I would describe the resonances of these 'outer' planets. I'm amazed you do, too.
>easiest process to make symbolic is radio am to fm [hearing] then internet [seeing] then color movies on internet sound/vision/colour - each step adding a dimension. but even all this is just a mirror n not the REAL>
*In the same way that the analogy of sunlight within infinite space is just a finger pointing... They are crutches... The thing has nothing to do with 'understanding'...
> btw - i do want to protest the image of the body just being a corpse we drag around!!>
*Good.
It's there for exactly that reason.
> occult anatomy teaches the wondrous gift that the body is - the temple of spirit- n Sophia wld have a fit! every breath we take is a miracle - it is the vehicle for incarnation n by golly we shld appreciate it - just the wonder of a newborn baby w/wee fingernails, eyelashes, eyes! the feminine gives FORM to life!! hence 'mother nature' or Dame Kinde
*The tantric view is that the body, speech and mind and all their products are all perfect mandalas of deities, and, as such, should not be damaged or discredited in any way. This, however, includes the strange belief seemingly held by many - particularly - occidentals, that the body is some sort of vehicle for the spirit, a sort of frame on which the head wanders about and which needs occasional upkeep. You should see the bulk of first-time t'ai chi students: you'd think they'd never even *seen* a body, let alone had one! Hence the particular wording.
'Who is it that recites the Buddha's name?' is for those who imagine they can convince with word; 'who is dragging this corpse round here, anyway?' for those who have no idea where or what they are; 'who am I?' for 'thinkers'... The point is not the question but the answer.
> n i'm appreciat of what i've got left - so there! n i bet mary wld agree .
*Being which as it ever so may, me dear... all bodies arise, age, sicken and die... The 'person' - the conscious awareness that inhabits body after body, and has done so since the beginningless beginnings of time - also changes and moves on. Only the ultimate quintessence of being - the vast and space-
like awareness - doesn't... everything else is relative, and, in its relativity, subject to change... Of course one appreciates it! It is a miracle.
>> the auld cailleach, grateful that she can still walk, talk, n use 1 fing to write this!
>> grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
*Taking Happiness and Suffering as the Path
HO KYI NA GA' TE GE WA TS'OG SU NGO
Rejoicing if I am happy, I shall dedicate it to the accumulation of merit:
P'EN DANG DE WE NAM KA' GANG WAR SHOG
May well-being and joy fill all of space.
DUG NA GA' TE KÜN GYI DUG NGÄL 'KUR
Rejoicing if I am suffering, I shall take upon myself the suffering of all
beings:
DUG NGÄL 'KOR WA'I GYAM TSO TONG WAR SHOG
May the ocean of suffering that is cyclic existence be emptied.
NA NA GA' TE TS'E RAB LE NGEN 'DZE
Rejoicing in illness, I shall consume the evil karma of my series of
previous lives:
LÜ CHEN KÜN GYI NA GO CHÖ PAR SHOG
For all embodied beings may the doorway of illness be eliminated.
SHI NA GA' TE CHÖ NYI NGANG LA 'CHI
Rejoicing in death, I shall die into the state of absolute thusness:
KYE 'CHI 'KOR WA'I TSA WA CHÖ PAR SHOG
May the cycle of births and deaths be cut off at its root.
MI TS'E RING NA GA' TE TS'OG NYI KYI
Rejoicing now that my human life is long, let the goals of myself and all
others be
spontaneously realised
RANG SHEN DÖN NYI LHÜN GYI 'DRUB PAR SHOG
By the twofold accumulation (of merit and wisdom).
Thus, in accordance with the teaching of Kashmiri Mahapandita Shakyashri and others, this was written by Kamalarajadvipa for the daily practice of his own pupils and disciples.
Lots of love,
me (mike)
From: Carroll Bishop
Deborah wrote:
what time is it?it is by every stara different time,and each most falsely true; or so subhuman superminds declare--nor all their times encompass me andyou:…Enter DOUGLAS; he fighteth with Falstaff. He falls down as
If he were dead. The Prince killeth PERCY.
HOTSPUR: O Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my youth!
I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me.
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh.
But thoughts, the slaves of life, and life, time's fool,
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop. O I could prophesy,
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue. No, Percy, thou art dust,
And food for
--
[Dies.]
PRINCE: For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart!
Ill-weav'd ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
Wben that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound,
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead
Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.
If thou wert sensible of courtesy,
I should not make so dear a show of zeal,
But let my favors hide thy mangled face,
And even in thy behalf I'll thank myself
For doing these fair rites of tenderness.
Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven!
Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,
But not remembered in thy epitaph!
1 Henry IV V. iv. 77-101
~ Carroll
From: Carroll
Date: Tue Oct 31, 2000 1:05 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] The Secret Rose
Not too surprising to find O'Donohue quoting "The holiness of the heart's affections" shortly after I sent this:
>>O'Donohue on prayer -- does this sound like Negative-Capability or does this sound like Negative-Capability?:
>>... * Real power is the persistent courage to be at ease with the unsolved and the unfinished.
~John O'Donohue*…Carolynn and I were reading from O'Donohue's ETERNAL ECHOES while tuning up for the Chieftains concert last night, and were both intrigued by his notion of "holy wildness." I'm all for that!
Was thinking about where I'd run into this before. Something in or from WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES... Mowgli in the short story that led to THE JUNGLE BOOK ("In the Rukh....")...That chapter in THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS about the animals meeting Pan in the forest. Some idea that there's a wild Christ buried alive in the mild Christ....?
And KUBLA KHAN:
"A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover."
Carroll
From: Carroll Bishop
To: Deborah Conner
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2000 7:23 AM
Subject: Re: The Secret Rose
O'Donohue, ETERNAL ECHOES -- right after you sent this to me.
The Lightness and Imagination of the Fairy world...."This is called the fairy breeze, 'an Si Gaoth." I'm sure the 'Si' is the same as 'Sidhe' in your prayer-poem, and 'Gaoth' must be the same as 'Gaoith.' Shee is the pronunciation -- well I have an Irish dictionary.
Carroll
______________________
Deborah notes: I'd written Carroll re William Butler Yeats:
It's in The Alchemical Rose, the concluding story of the 3, the adoration of the magi. It wasn't in the orig Secret Rose, but was published privately and in some later editions of TSC. This is from the collected annotated version, 1972 I think.
Boy, this struck a nerve with me, too. Even the winds have different colors in Ireland!
The lead-in to this prayer in the story was:
"...This is all the old men told me, and when I think of their speech and of their silence, of their coming and of their going, I am almost persuaded that had I followed them out of the house, I would have found no footsteps on the snow. They may, for all I or any man can say, have been themselves Immortals: immortal demons, come to put an untrue story into my mind for some purpose I do not understand. Whatever they were, I have turned into a pathway which will lead me from the Order of the Alchemical Rose. I no
longer live an elaborate and haughty life, but seek to lose myself among prayers and the sorrows of the multitude. I pray best in poor chapels, where the frieze coats brush against me as I kneel, and when I pray against the demons I repeat a prayer which was made I know not how many centuries ago to help some poor Gaelic man or woman who had suffered with a suffering like mine.
Seacht b-paidreacha fo seacht
Chuir Muire faoi n-a Mac,
Chuir Brighid faoi n-a brat,
Chuir Dia faoi n-a neart,
Eidir sinn 'san Sluagh Sidhe,
Eidir sinn 'san Sluagh Gaoith.
Seven paters seven times,
Send Mary by her Son,
Send Bridget by her mantle,
Send God by His strength,
Between us and the faery host,
Between us and the demons of the air.
Druid demons serve the creator, as all demons. Lightbringers.
Or alt version: Hesse:
"...I now lived within a fire of unsatisfied
longing, of tense expectancy that often drove me completely wild. I often
saw the beloved apparition of my dream with a clarity greater than life,
more distinct than my own hand, spoke with it, wept before it, cursed it. I
called it mother and knelt down in front of it in tears. I called it my
beloved and had a premonition of its ripe allfulfilling kiss. I called it
devil and whore, vampire and murderer. It enticed me to the gentlest
love-dreams and to devastating shameless-ness, nothing was too good and
precious, nothing was too wicked and low for it.............." ~DEMIAN
x's
Deborah
From mike:
OM MANI PEME HUNG. What does this mean?*It has many levels of meaning, *none* of which is 'O, the Jewel in the Lotus, All Hail!'...
OM is a mantra of all-pervadingness, HUNG a mantra of gathering, ordescending' "here"... MANI PEME (Mani Padme in Sanskrit) is the vocative of the name Lotus Jewel, one of the titles of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
The syllables taken one by one close the doors to rebirth in the six realms of samsara and are themselves often taken as the seed-syllables for the Buddhas of these realms (every realm has its own Buddha, Shakyamuni being the most recent of ours). Taken as words, they refer to four of the five Buddha families and theperfected awarenesses corresponding, as follows:
OM - The Vajra or 'Indestructible' Family and Mirror-like Primordial Awareness which is the purification of the poison of anger/hatred;
MANI - the Ratna of 'Jewel' Family and the Primordial Awareness of Essential Equality which is the purification of the poison of arrogance/pride;
PEME - The Padma or 'Lotus' Family and the Primordial Wisdom of Discriminating Each Thing in All Its Detail which is the purification of the poison of desire/attachment;
And HUNG - the Karma or 'Activity' Family and the Prilordial Wisdom of Perfected Action which is the purification of the poison of envy/jealousy
There are hundreds of other interpretations of which this is just a tongue-tip taste which I hope will either suffice or spur you on to looking into the others.
m (mike)
from Mary
Deb wrote: >> Mary wrote: "To me, the base - the root - level of the Tree of Life often informs the rest more than the other way around. M"
Ah! Could you say more about this, please. >>
I'll try. It has to do with the nature of a tree, I guess. Why should the Tree of Life be any different? The Dalai Lama once said that at Llhasa
mike writes:
*Depends where the roots are; The roots of the Tree of Life (and of the Vedas) are in the heavens. The base level *is* 'The Crown'.
Mary: Sure! That's the real nature of things! I was speaking from the human perspective, not addressing the actual reality of it, because my own experience has been that, like the chakras, you really have to down to the root chakra before you can authentically experience the crown chakra. Which, as you say, is really the root! Like the hanged man.
ML
Mike: *Let me hasten to say that I agree entirely. You don't plant a tree in the sky. No root cakra just means that all the other cakras fall over all the time, this is for sure. Actually the symbolism of the root cakra is quite interesting: 4 petals, 4 arrows pointing off into the 4 directions, and a Siva lingam and Indra's 6-tusked elephant as the centre. It MEANS stability on the this first of planes... but the stability it means *must* be informed by the movement from above or it just becomes materiality... thick and ultimately unusable. ... Like a hanged man... T'ai chi done without this energy - this chi - for example, is called 'hanging dead meat on the sky'. Doesn't matter how 'pretty' it seems.
from mike: Re: [Negative-Capability] There is no deep reality
Two very interesting introductions to Hua Yen philosophy based on the 'Discourse of the Noble and Vastly Encompassing Wreath (or - as I prefer - Ring)' - the Maha Vaipulya Arya Avatamsaka Sutra - said to be the Buddha's expression in words of the realisation he had at sunrise that morning under the Bodhi Tree (over 12 million characters, in Chinese; 3 complete volumes in Tibetan) are Garma C. C. Chang's 'The Buddhist Teaching of Totality' [GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN] and Thomas Cleary's 'Entry Into the Inconceivable: an Introduction to Hua-yen Philosophy' [UNIVERSITY OFHAWAII], the former somewhat more so than the latter. Also of interest is Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Thaye's 'Myriad Worlds: Buddhist Cosmology in Abhidharma, Kalacakra and Dzogchen' [SNOW LION]. And - as I never cease repeating - Tarthang Tulku's 'Time, Space and Knowledge' series available from DHARMA PUBLICATIONS.
In these, all of the above ideas are discussed - often in great detail - and, incidentally, found to be in perfect accord with the theory of cause and effect.
The Avatamsaka is the sutra that speaks of the famed 'net of Indra'... We're talking 2600-odd years ago.
O. Riant al 'Nerd
From: Anand
Date: Mon Jan 29, 2001 3:00 pm
Subject: RE: [Negative-Capability] Who put that damned threshold there? I
tripped on it!
Mike,
Thanks for the informative post, Mike, and for reminding us that Adam is Cosmic Man (Purusha). One of my favorite pictures is of a man (It is Adam, isn't it, at least in some versions) lying down, with the philosophical tree growing as his phallus. Played with that image for a while, in the context of some unfolding AI. I recall from memory Jung saying that the spirit Mercurious (another androgyne!) is the "fructifier of the philosophical tree". (Remember his famous early phallic dream.)
But, as Phoebe points out, we have to confront the popular versions of the myth too.
Good stuff. This group feeds my self, my soul; I am drawn as if by a magnet to it.
Anand
From: mike
Sent: 1/29/01 5:04 AM
Subject: RE: [Negative-Capability] Who put that damned threshold there? I
tripped on it!
>>Eve was a (any) woman.>>
*Actually Eve is *not* 'a woman' at all, and Adam is not 'a man'. A+DM means that the Aleph, the swirling energy of being and awareness - the spirit and soul - is conjoined with the blood (DM), and is actually at the root of the Jewish kashruht (kosher) laws and the Muslim laws of Hallal... that the blood contains the quintessence of the being and is thus sacred and should not be interfered with in any way... that it is 'unclean' in the sense that WE would be unclean if we stooped low enough to wish to play around with it. The important point (lest he get sidetracked) is that ADM is neither male nor female - is, in fact, rebis - BOTH male and female in the image of the ALHIM, the Elohim, who are masculine singular and feminine plural. The ADM have no fixed gender, but simply embody the spirit and soul. Its counterpart, which is - if you like - the phenomena of nature, was banished on the extraction of ChVH out of the substance of ADM, and became the Queen of night - LILITh - the fallen 'shell' of the 'Kingdom' (MLKVTh). ChVH - which means 'to manifest, to show forth' was a secondary - and visionary - version of reality drawn forth out of the very substance of the ADM as 'an help meet unto him' (bearing in mind the as yet indeterminate Jacobite usage of the oersonal pronouns whence comes, e.g., the Queen's hand - ye Quene hyss hande) - a medium whereby to know the phenomenal world through its own interpretation, but with which it became besotted to the extent that it no longer understood the single value of all existence
and the *physical* gift of the inquisitive serpent - NChSh - the naked one - equal in gematria to MShICh - the coming one, the messiah - (be ye gentle as doves and wise as serpents - because the serpent *climbs* and quests among the branches of the tree of life that ADM mistook for good and evil) and found itself 'naked and lacking' before a god called
Y where YVD is a point = the head
H where HH is an arch = shoulders and arms
V where VAV is an upright = the torso
H where HH is an arch = hips and legs
who had called ChVH forth from ADM's own substance **in a dream** in the first place. And he knew fear. And THEY were cast out of Eden. And where the tree had been a smooth and serpentine rise unto godhead and beyond, it was now transformed into a downward flashing bolt of lightning - a sword turning 'every which way' at the door of Eden itself to the extent that - to this day - Jewish mean wear the kippah, the skull-cap, to prevent the lightning flash (which terminates in the Kingdom and is made up of the names of the gods, the archangels, the choirs of angels and the heavenly spheres) from shattering them into themselves becoming the broken shells of the 'fallen angels'...
The tale is FAR more complex than common belief would have us consider it. And the tale of Persephone no less so but I'm not going to go into a reading of that one unless you really insist. Much of what I'm trying to say here can be found in one of the texts in my Alchemical Compendium I, sv. 'Nature Discovered Unto the Children of Science Alone and not for Ignorant Sophists' by the Unknown Knight (pp. 63-98).
(While on the subject of text - quoth he, sidetracking again - Robert Fludd's 'Origin of the Cosmos' [MAGNUM OPUS HERMETIC SOURCEWORKS N°13] has a detailed and very beautiful description of the progressive crystallisation of spirit into matter. But! - returning to our sheep, as the Gallii would have it...) ... We tend to see in anthropomorphic terms, forgetting that these tales very often point back to the primordial - to the first fires that were our little stone, and all the way up through its becoming until the time of their composition, and (often) on into the future. They are read at the wrong level. Graves makes things even worse by insisting on a relatively recent historical interpretation. They are FAR older than that, and really do attempt to describe what they are claiming to describe, in the ADM's case, the seven phases of the creation of our neck of the woods (by which I do not even necessarily mean our planet or even galaxy)...
Thus endeth our reading for today. And the hymn is Psalm 5736 -
'Everything You Know is Wrong'...
The church Beatle will pass among you - NO foreign coins, please...
Thank you!
N. Erd, DD, DLit (Keele)
(mike)
Mike and others,
Saw an unusual Highlander episode a couple of days ago -- a two-parter -- Duncan Macleod of the Clan Macleod takes on the Devil or a Zoroastrian (?) version of same who appears every thousand years in the eternal battle of good and evil. Duncan finds he is the champion for this particular millennium, and he spends a year in monastic seclusion and intense training athletic and spiritual. He wears white and we see him cutting his long black hair with his sword. (At least we see the hair falling in clumps into the wastebasket.) His houseboat he also strips down. Joe helps in the battle with the Devil or Ariman or Evil Personified or whoever, resisting the temptation of being given two new legs to replace those he lost in Vietnam. Duncan gets rid of the Devil for the time being, anyway, and there's a rapidfire collage using clips from Highlander and newsreel shots. Hitler and thousands of others.
Having saved humanity for another thousand years we hope, Duncan is allowed to relax for a moment and have a celebration drink with Joe.
I neglected to mention what made this particular showdown with Mephistopheles so interesting. Macleod uses Buddhist teachings to beat the devil. It's quite a gorgeous dance. Later he says that the minute he realized the devil was in him, he is in everyone, the devil starts to lose his power.
Duncan is able to prevail where his Catholic priest friend has been sabotaged by doubt in self and God. So we have Buddhism coming to the rescue instead of the usual Christian paraphernalia, the sign of the Cross etc. An arresting development in the cosmic plot.
Carroll
From: "Deborah"
Date: Tue Oct 31, 2000 3:34 pm
Subject: Re: [Negative-Capability] The Secret Rose
>>... * Real power is the persistent courage to be at ease with the unsolved and the unfinished.~John O'Donohue*>>
Aligning and being in accord with what is eternal in the midst of all passing away: That was the meaning of Mithras as the astrological pole. (see Ulansey's work .) Being in line with it is to be in the Stillpoint. Part of the moving thing, yet still. Utterly still. In accord with the divine.
Apollodorus tells Aristodemus the tale of the drinking party, which is the Symposium. That is, the 'Gift of the Gods' ( Apollodorus) tells the tale--the drink of the deep brain, told to him by 'the Best of the People' (Aristodemus). The drunks in the crowd? They're left out of it!
Apollo gave us the navel when Zeus separated us when we were whole -- and it is a great gift: The constant reminder that we come from another existence. We (small self) did not make our body, or choose it. Like the Symposium, a gift from the Eternal. Thus, we are a thing of eternity, too. Divine and mundane. Whole and part. Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth. Every Western poet is saying this same old thing in some new way. And it will never be finished.
Ever in search of truth and never to find it. Not a bad approach.
Love, Deborah
Monday, April 07, 2003
From Liz:
Just found a fabulous definition of the Greek conception of hubris, that I love: Hubris means violent insult to another, may be either verbal or physical in form. Personally, this is what I think everyone ought to avoid (even in its milder forms).
Source: Josiah Ober. "Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens," (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989), 208.
I have returned safely from a quick trip to Baltimore. It was actually very easy, and is a good library when McK's already been raided.
We're probably going to see "Bend it Like Beckham" tonite. I can't resist! Bethesda...
Love to all, take care,
elizzah
Subject: Re: Aghora on 4/7/03 12:37 AM, phoebe wrote:
In a message dated 4/6/03 11:04:09 PM,
>> Gorblimey. Bulls gore bullfighters in the ring. Edward Gorey did those lovely drawings. Gorey Gorey hallelujah. Bullfighters gore bulls in the ring too. Toro rhymes with Goro. Ole. >>
I'm in love with you, Carroll!
xx
ph
Thank you, Phoebe, you've made my day.
Carroll
From alice:
When I was in Dublin, I passed a brass plate :
Solicitors
GORE & GRIMES!! perfect for prosecutors!
I had an oculist called Dr. Tear...........
Wish I cld find a gd arabic glossary - i once studied Arabic at the New School, got as far as being able to say n write 'my camel is in yr garden'! n moved away. sigh.
It is a beautiful calligraphy n I always see it in the flames of my fireplace. Also I find Allah a more mellifluous term than God. El is nice too n Baal means son of El n may even be related to Beltane.
rambling
ao
From phoebe:
In a message dated 4/7/03 7:00:55 AM, carroll writes:
<<What I'm excited about is that ANGA looks to me like ANKH, which also
means soul, and life, and eternal life -- if I remember aright >>
Ankh = life. Soul is KA.
xx
ph
From: deborah:
I think that's what I saw in my dreams the made me insist -- ask -- plead -- would have done all, but didn't need to: John understood, said it was small thing if it mattered so much to me--but it was --I GNOW--what I saw in my repeating dream that eventually turned into alex: His Ankh in the form of a great dark powerful shining horse, coming after me, making broad sweeps that came closer and closer until I had to look it in the eye. Stunning, unforgettable. Has taken me years though to realize it was his life force speaking out.
x's
Hymns of Orpheus to Aphrodite
Child of Ocean
amazing beauty, we honor you.
You rule deep earth,
encircling heaven,
the stormy seas
and everything in them.
Mother of sweet marriage,
you join the world together
with laughter and harmony;
even the Fates obey you.
Every eye seeks you.
Give us beauty and love.
Delighted by secrets
and lavish feasts
you are concord
and persuasion.
You are beautiful necessity
even in the frenzy of the shark,
delicate as sea foam of Cyprus,
fragrant as Syrian oils,
bright as golden chariots
on Egyptian plains
by the sandy bank
of the turquoise Nile,
a choir of the loveliest Nymphs
sings a hymn to your beauty.
With reverence we ask
for the gift of grace
From carroll:
The book I got anga = human soul from is SPEAKING OF SIVA,
vacanas from the bhakti movement translated with an
introduction by A.K. Ramanujan. Appendix I presumably
by the translator. Penguin Classics paperback pp. 169 ff.
Book recommended by Mike D. I find Shiva completely
bewildering -- the more I learn the less I know.
Is he one or is he many? Or is he the opposite of what
he is? Oh, and what is that? I thought that was
his lady? And is she one or is she many? Or someone
else?
Jeez,.you guys are giving me a hard time today. I still
think there could be a connection between the two words.
Well, if there wasn't before there is now.....
If Shiva and Dionysos are connected, anything is
possible. And they are, they are, they are....
Carroll
From deborah
There's a cave there--see it? Just behind the waterfall. Follow it inward. All things join there.
