formless consciousness

From a spiritual perspective, the universe is entirely permeated by its underlying basis, formless consciousness. That means everything that can be perceived as having form in the world, from the most basic subtle forces to hard compact matter, is essentially conscious. Formless consciousness and material substance constitute the totality, two sides of a single entity. It follows that formlessness is beyond time and space, and amounts to an infinite absolute that material form is defined against. 

direct perception of formlessness

Speculative spirituality:

There is a debate within spiritual schools of thought about whether form is actually a substance, or simply an illusion, amounting to false perception. They are not really opposed though, in my view. I think it is a case of how the direct perception of formlessness is experienced by the authors of the texts that originated those schools. Take the differences recorded in the Vedanta, the Eastern philosophical tradition I most closely adhere to, and which for me has the clearest definitions of the subject.

Two distinct schools would be Samkhya and Advaita. In the Samkhya school (consolidated between 5th and 2nd centuries BCE), the formless absolute and material form are said to be separate and distinct from one another. Material form arises from formless consciousness and clouds it, producing the effect of the experience of separation in the human organism that evolves within it, a state that remains until the essential nature of the world is directly perceived by detaching from the material covering that obscures it.

Yoga is the process by which this detaching occurs, and the school is closely associated with the clarification of yogic practices. In Advaita (the dominant school consolidated by Shankara around 788-820 CE), a similar analysis of clouding is proposed, but no substance is implied, simply ignorance. Removing ignorance is a achieved through questioning the nature of reality and meditating on its essential nature.

Another school, Kashmiri Shaivism (975-1025 CE), developed later, and proposes that formless consciousness, which it calls Shiva, and material form, which it conceives of as cosmic energy, and calls Shakti, amount to two sides of the same entity.

In this school, as in the Samkhya school, the universe of form is conceived of as emerging from the formless basis as a process giving rise to what they term the elements of space, air, fire, water and earth, which produce the senses of, respectively, hearing, touch, seeing, tasting and smelling. These are the reflections of consciousness in the elements.

The process is viewed as one of increasing contraction of the primal state of energy or substance, which otherwise reflects formless consciousness in its infinite fullness. So, each further contraction produces an increased covering of its reflection of the basis. When energy/substance is fully emerged to the earth state, the most dense, it produces a hard materiality that all but covers and cuts off identity with the basis.

It is never completely covered, however, because the material foundation remains the primal energy state (space) and all the states that continue to emerge from the formless basis (air, fire, water). There is no separation between states of energy. So fusion of all the states occurs and this mixing gives rise to the evolution of individualised forms (though they are entirely interconnected within the totality).

How forms emerge and are constituted as dynamic parts of the whole will be the subject of future specualtive posts. 

false gods (pt2)

Romantic antidote to modernity projected onto utopian future:

“[A]t every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.

And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body.”

From The Part Played By Labour In The Transition From Apes To Man, Fred Engels (1876)

false gods (pt1)

Romantic antidote to modernity projected onto exotic location:

“To me Acapulco is the detoxicating cure for all the evils of the city: ambition, vanity, quest for success in money, the continuous contagious presence of power-driven, obsessed individuals who want to become known, to be in the limelight, noticed, as if life among millions gave you a desperate illness, a need of rising above the crowd, being noticed, existing individually, singled out from a mass of ants and sheep. It has something to do with the presence of millions of anonymous faces, anonymous people, and the desperate ways of achieving distinction. Here, all this is nonsense. You exist by your smile and your presence. You exist for your joys and your relaxations. You exist in nature. You are part of the glittering sea, and part of the luscious, well-nourished plants, you are wedded to the sun, you are immersed in timelessness, only the present counts, and from the present you extract all the essences which can nourish the senses, and so the nerves are still, the mind is quiet, the nights are lullabies, the days are like gentle ovens in which infinitely wise sculptor’s hands re-form the lost contours, the lost sensations of the body. The body comes to life. Quests, pursuits of concrete securities of one kind or another lose all their importance. As you swim, you are washed of all the excrescences of so-called civilization, which includes the incapacity to be happy under any circumstances.”

From The Diary of Anais Nin Vol 5 (1947/55)

analyze, interpret, and reconstruct

"Neuroscientists are also gaining an increasingly better understanding of how our brains analyze, interpret, and reconstruct place and space. We know the brain adds information to what it receives from the physical environment: in optical illusions, it supplies lines that the eyes don’t actually see, and it can form three-dimensional images where only two exist on paper (architects are particularly adept at this). The brain also brings memory to our environment. When you enter a particularly beautiful cathedral, your experience includes memories and emotions tied to the past experiences of spiritual places you’ve visited throughout your life. Your brain is drawing connections between place and memory, even if you don’t realize it."

In more Science-catching-up-with-spiritual-reality news, this article reveals a growing collusion between cutting edge architectural discourse and that of neurobiological research. Though the idea that the environment, the human brain and our subjective experience are interrelated could only come as a surprise to the most reductionist atheists and their dualistic alter egos, the literal religionists. (Both camps think human consciousness is somehow separated out from the general processes of the universe, the former thinking we have evolved to a point we can step outside of blind evolution and correct certain functions we think act counter to our best interests (the essential underpinning of Humanist thought), and the latter believe an overseeing God created us as independent souls, to wander over the earth as we please.)

Pic from original article

he creeps uninvited

"In short, there is a young woman in this film whom Bond correctly identifies (in his smug, smart-arse way) as a sex-worker who was kidnapped and enslaved as a child by human traffickers. She is now a brutalised and unwilling gangster’s moll. She gives no sign of being sexually interested in Bond, merely of being incredibly scared and unhappy. So he creeps uninvited into her hotel shower cubicle later that night, like Jimmy Savile, and silently screws her because he is bored." 

Found this interesting article via twitter. It's from Giles Coren and was posted on his wife's blog after the Times decided not to run it. It exposes the coldness in the heart of a certain kind of British film director who has taken the Hollywood dollar after a career in theatre or advertising. In this case the over-praised Sam Mendes, who made the film in question. His films are always vacuous exercises in theatrical style. I'd place the equally awful, and now deceased, Anthony Minghella in the same category (you can think of several others, I'm sure). 

incredibly complicated sweetness

To celebrate its return to the bestseller shelves in WH Smith (albeit re-packaged with an awful photo of a pair of actors) on the back of an unimaginative movie adaptation, here's a passage from Jack's book On The Road. Also, a section of the original text, typed onto a single scroll of paper is currently on display at the British Library. Details here.

"Now this is the first time we've been alone and in a position to talk for years," said Dean. And he talked all night. As in a dream, we were zooming back through sleeping Washington and back in the Virginia wilds, crossing the Appomattox River at daybreak, pulling up at my brother's door at eight A.M. And all this time Dean was tremendously excited about everything he saw, everything he talked about, every detail of every moment that passed. He was out of his mind with real belief. "And of course now no one can tell us that there is no God. We've passed through all forms. You remember, Sal, when I first came to New York and I wanted Chad King to teach me about Nietzsche. You see how long ago? Everything is fine, God exists, we know time. Everything since the Greeks has been predicated wrong. You can't make it with geometry and geometrical systems of thinking. It's all this!" He wrapped his finger in his fist; the car hugged the line straight and true. "And not only that but we both understand that I couldn't have time to explain why I know and you know God exists." At one point I moaned about life's troubles-how poor my family was, how much I wanted to help Lucille, who was also poor and had a daughter. "Troubles, you see, is the generalization-word for what God exists in. The thing is not to get hung-up. My head rings!" he cried, clasping his head. He rushed out of the car like Groucho Marx to get cigarettes- that furious, ground-hugging walk with the coattails flying, except that he had no coattails. "Since Denver, Sal, a lot of things- Oh, the things-I've thought and thought. I used to be in reform school all the time, I was a young punk, asserting myself-stealing cars a psychological expression of my position, hincty to show. All my jail-problems are pretty straight now. As far as I know I shall never be in jail again. The rest is not my fault." We passed a little kid who was throwing stones at the cars in the road. "Think of it," said Dean. "One day he'll put a stone through a man's windshield and the man will crash and die-all on account of that little kid. You see what I mean? God exists without qualms. As we roll along this way 1 am positive beyond doubt that everything will be taken care of for us-that even you, as you drive, fearful of the wheel" (I hated to drive and drove carefully)-"the thing will go along of itself and you won't go off the road and I can sleep. Furthermore we know America, we're at home; I can go anywhere in America and get what I want because it's the same in every corner, I know the people, I know what they do. We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness zigzagging every side." There was nothing clear about the things he said, but what he meant to say was somehow made pure and clear. He used the word "pure" a great deal. I had never dreamed Dean would become a mystic. These were the first days of his mysticism, which would lead to the strange, ragged W. C. Fields saintliness of his later days.