Theos-Talk Archives (August 1993 Message tl00017)

Gerald:

First, and most importantly, we are playing quite the same game here:

< I write this in the spirit of loving and friendly discussion, and
nothing more >

Actually, I don't know if I'd use these exact words.  I'd probably say,
"I write this in the spirit of pure impersonality.  If you take it
personally, its not meant to be that way".  Different words, but the
essence is the same.  And I'm glad we can communicate at a mature level
like this.  This is all quite heavy stuff we are discussing here and
the last thing we want is to create attitude problems.  The ideas we
are sifting through are challenging enough!

BTW, Jay, thanks for dropping in! I'll respond to your statements in a
seperate letter.  Right now, again, I will address Gerald.

Gerald, first, I want to address your prediction.

< I predict that sooner or later, at some point in your life, something
will happen that you will simply not be able to assimilate into your
current worldview.>

Regading your letter, I saw immediately, and I'm sure you knew when you
were writting it, that it was the highpoint of that letter.  So,
instead of addressing your points in succesion as I'm wont to do, let
me tackle this one first, and then address the others in their turn.

As well, I can't address your prediction without addressing this
statement as well

< I sense that you, like most folks, believe in a harmonious
paradise-like existence somewhere.>

Actually, I simply don't see how you could have read this into my
ideas! (smile).  This" law of vibrations" idea implies harmony *and*
dissonance.  I mentioned that I compose, and most of my music is
completely atonal.  I'll even untune my instruments! And writing in a
key? Sure, as long as each instrument plays in a different key!<g>
Discord has an immense beauty, way beyond the harmony structure of
Western scales.  See, two out-of-tune notes make things called "beat
patterns" and, to my ear, it is almost as if there are harmonies hidden
inside the discord of the beat patterns, unbelievable harmonies,
harmonies locked completely out of the music of our culture by the
neofascist nature of rigid tonal Western scale structures.  So,
harmony, dissonance, so what? They are relative terms.  To me,
Beethoven is boring because of the rigid tonal structure.  This I
consider "bad", to me its dissonace.  A glass bottle broken on the
cement: now there is some rich harmony, rich texture: sounds that are
beautiful to me.  So, its all very relative.

But yea, I am one of those people that " believe in a harmonious
paradise-like existence somewhere".  And you know where this somewhere
is? Everywhere! Pain and pleasure are opposite sides of a circle.  You
ever notice how the sounds people make when they are having orgasm
sound a lot like the sounds people make when they are in great pain?
Hate and love are the opposite sides of the same circle.  All opposites
are the opposite sides of a circle.  All opposites are the same thing.
Its just simple logic actually.

Aristotle was a fool.  "law of excluded middle".  Leave it to the
Greeks to come up with such baloney.  It was all that sun they got.
Too much if you ask me.  So, 2000 years later Bohr is concieted enough
to try to patch up this "law of excluded middle" nonscence with his
"complimentary principle" (BTW, just read a great and comprehensive
survey of quantum mechanics called "The Philosophy of Quantum Theory"
by Max Jammer, check it out if you want to get some syruppy, but meaty,
reading about QT, especially you, Jay, this may be up yur alley).
Bohr, what a fool too.  Lets just dig a hole in the ground, and then
fill it back up, and then think we've done something great.  And for
how many thousands of years has the tao symbol been around (the yin and
yang symbol)? Doesn't this say it all? And its a circle to boot! Not to
mention the Hindu thinking.

So, actually, I do not *believe* in paradise.  Hell, I live in
infinity.  What more could you ask for?!? See, paradise is based on the
presumption that there is something wrong somewhere.  I don't believe
this.  What is is.  period.  Whoopee.  Good, evil, pain, pleasure,
night, day.  God made it all.  God is the only reality.  But I hate to
use the word "God" because of the connotations this word has to our
cultural mind-set.  I do like the word "Brahman".  But it doesn't
matter what word we use cause all words describe God, all words are
made by God.  God, Brahman, the Tao, whatever.

So, after all this rambling, which was actually a kind of buildup to
what I want to say now, let me get to your prediction: <something will
happen that you will simply not be able to assimilate into your current
worldview>

What if ones world-view is all world-views but no world-view? What if
one no longer accepts *any* distinctions, but accepts *all*
distinctions? What if one completely surrenders to the infinite? What
if one see beyond all concepts of relativity and distinction, beyond
all concepts of identity and self-hood, beyond all concepts? What if,
for arguements sake, one simply does not care?

See, your prediction is valid for a certain level of mentality.  People
who make the fatal error of believing in the Maya, of living in the
delusion that the maya has substantiality, then to these people your
distinction applies.  See, frankly Gerald, I've done too much acid.
The acid has blown my mind wide open, has caused my personality to
become complete tatters.  Don is a fiction.  I continue to sustain this
fiction for the convinience of people who know only fiction.  I,
though, have no such delusions.  Don is a bundle of qualities,
qualities that transform through time.  Time itself it the hallmark of
the finite.  Therefore, Don is the finite.  The finite is Maya.  Don is
of the Maya.  The maya is like the sand that slips through your
fingers.  To try to hold it is the hallmark of the fool.  Don is
ephemeral.  Don is a process that exists forever, in one sence, but
does not exist at all, in another sense.  Our being is only a
*seeming*.  We only seem to exist because what we are changes
constantly.  Thus we are never what think we are.  The second we are
finished with the thought, "I am this...", we are something other than
that.  There is nothing to hold onto.  And there, in this statement is
the key: there is nothing to hold on to.  *Nothing*.  This is the thing
you want to hold onto.  This is the thing you want to believe in.  This
is the thing you want to identify with.  This is the thing you want to
be: Nothing.  Because that is all that is real: nothing.

See, see what happens when you take to much acid! So, yea, things will
happen to me.  But I only seem to exist to begin with.  So my reaction
to what happens to me will only seem to exist.  Like all else we can
know, it will pass.  Whoopee.  Life will go on.  Other forms will move,
other lives will live.  Whoopee.  Its all a seeming anyway.  Very,
very, very strange when you stop and think about it.

I'm very beyond the stage of trying to understand it.  i know the
answer.  Its not even 42! Its this: nothing.  There is no answer.  So,
I don't play the game of trying to find an answer anymore.  But, since
i've played it so much in the past I've got a lot of expereince with
this game of trying to find answers, so, instead of wasting this
expereince, which I *could* do if I wanted, instead, I keep abreast of
those who are still trying to find the answer.  That's why I said at
the very begining that this is all very impersonal to me.  Because I
already know the answer.  There isn't one.  But, I get a very complex
type of amusement and pleasure out of communicating with those who are
searching for answers, and as well, one can accumulate to infinity, and
this seeming called Don has not even sctrached the surface of infinity,
so, this seeming called Don continues to play the game, continues to
accumulate, accumulate thoughts, experience.  But there is no
attachement to the game, but then again there is, but there isnt, but
there is.  I don't have to write all this.  But what would I do
otherwise? Besides, its in my face and I've learned that its best to
respond when something is in my face, so i write this.  Whoopee (too
much Kurt Vonnegut, sorry <g>)

So, yea.  You'll get no rosy, cosy possey little mamaby bamby happy
kinda nice scenarios about life from me.  You'll only get nothing and
everything to the best of my ability to express these inexpressible
things that are the substrate of everything and nothing.

Sound weird? Believe me, I can't even begin to express how weird it
really is.  If all that I writ above sounds strange to you, then the
statement "you need to break out of the grooves" is a vast
understatement.  Once those grooves really break, you are right,
Gerald, death seems to be the easy way to cope, but that too is an
illusion.  Once this damn on understanding breaks there is no going
back.  It doesn't matter if you are dead or alive (whatever that
means!), it doesn't matter what world you are in, it doesn't matter
what form you assume.  There's no way to hide anymore.  The illusion is
broken.  And the abstraction of our being begins to reveal itself, in
all of its completely flipped out, unbelievable and unintelligible
glory, and all the words cannot contain.  Speaking of "all the
words...", heres a cute poem I wrote that says it one way:

Somewhere in a house
I remember perchance to say
A Dream
Of Divine Wisdom and Passion
However so elusive was this Dream
All the words cannot contain
Yet from a corner stares
The ever-probing Intellect
Who questions and argues
With what there are no words to explain
Poor silly concieted Intellect
Why do you not also Dream?
For though you think you see through all
With logic sharp and clean
Your logic is naught but a dream
Within a dream within a Dream

Just as a clue here: The "house" is the mind, and the "dream" is life.

Abstract beyond your widlest hopes, fears, fantasies, dreams and
expectations.  Even the many-worlds hypothesis is lame in comparison,
even the view of Krishna in the Bagavad Gita is lame compared to the
"truth" that underlies our seeming.  No product of thought I know of
even comes close to capturing the unbelievable abstractness that is the
foundation of our being.  Anything we know is sane in comparision.  As
a matter of fact, sanity is a subset of insanity, not vice versa.
Meaningful thought is a mere infintesmal sliver of the set of all
thoughts.  Like the old cliche goes "You aint seen nothing yet, baby"

Well Gerald and all, I'm tired, its late, and I'm too slap happy to go
on any more.  Gerald, I have to say thanks.  Thanks for presssing a
botton in me that has catapulted me to, to, to, well....I love stimuli
that pop me into this abstract never-never land that Ive been rambling
on about right now.  I call it the "realm of no definitions", which is
where we are all at right now anyway, floating in our little bubbles of
coherence in this vast sea of something far, far beyond insanity.  But
our poor little pathetic and simple human minds can only concieve of it
as insanity, so, oh well.

Gerald, I'll adress your other points tommorrow when I come out of
this! zzzzzzssstssst

Best to all and to all a good night!

seeming to be....Don