Poker face

"Creativity is the ability to introduce order
into the randomness of nature." ~ Eric Hoffer

 

 

 

 

Quantum theory concerns the very smallest particles in the universe; particles so very small that they form the building blocks of subatomic particles like the electron. At the quantum level, matter behaves very strangely - what we think of as particles act more like waves, and what we think of as immutable physical properties become much more mutable. Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle tells us that the more precisely we measure one property at this level, the more imprecise other properties become - for example, we might be able to exactly determine a particle's position at a moment in time, but only at the cost of being entirely unable to divine anything about its velocity. This result is commonly conflated with the 'observer effect,' but is distinct from it - randomness, it turns out, is 'baked in' to the observed world. The validity of scientific laws, that make the world around us a relatively predictable and orderly place, depend upon a substrate which is fundamentally unpredictable and chaotic. This is an iteration of the Paradox of Self-Reference, of course.

 

If we think of the subjective realm as being infinitesimally close to, and yet inevitably distant from, the transcendental, it makes a degree of sense for the subjective, at the limits of measurable perception, to approach closest to the transcendental. If we think of the transcendental as the fundament from which all possible energy-states spring, it makes sense for randomness - probability; potential - to be the recognizable characteristic of transcendence as it immanesces upon the subjective.

 

Happily, we don't have to supercool an atom and bombard it with radiation countless times to identify this kind of randomness in operation. At the macro level we have plenty of analogues to choose from: rolling dice, shuffling decks of cards, throwing yarrow stalks into the air and seeing how they land (incidentally, one of the fundamental constants, pi, emerges from the latter if you look at it right). The first of these is not well-known as a form of divination, although Luke Rhinehart can attest to its power; the latter two, however, certainly are. My knowledge of the I Ching is very limited in this metanow; but I know a thing or two about cartomancy, and my own experiences with the Tarot deck have reinforced my belief in a parasimplistic universe. In essence, all forms of divination have this character: that they combine a certain degree of conscious analysis with a certain degree of deliberate randomness. Successful diviners demonstrate the ability to associate elements freely, without imposing a pattern on what they see - the better to clarify the pattern that exists within them already. FIAT applies: everything is connected, because everything is everything. The Tarot cards can tell us anything we want to know about anything at all, because they embody the characteristic randomness of the transcendental. Insofar as we can avoid rationalizing and pre-empting the judgement of the cards, we can access the transcendental in our own consciousness and let the cards speak through us. It is to the cards of the Major Arcana, and their symbolic significance, that we turn next.

Higher ground

“The infinite vibratory levels, the dimensions of interconnectedness
are without end.” ~ Alex Grey

 

This leaves us with four different conceptions of existence, within any or all of which some entity may be understood to be. We can see how some entity may be understood to exist in several of these simultaneously; the entities, while distinct, can be linked to one another but can also exist independently. The entities in the objective world all inter-relate with one another: they all exist within the same objective world, at least as far as we can tell. In the same way, our subjective world consists of entities which coexist and correlate within that unique subjective world rather than within a range of them. Intersubjective entities relate in a more complex way, insofar as the unique understanding of the intersubjective symbol within each subjective observer's Cartesian theater informs both the unique understanding of other subjective observers and also the intersubjective meaning attached to the symbol itself - but again these intersubjective entities coexist with one another on the same 'level' as it were. Ideals, similarly, exist on their own 'level' - and yet we have already stated, and can easily say in everyday experience, that entities existing severally on discrete levels relate to one another. These metarelations between things that exist in different senses can be seen as existing in some larger dimension, in the same way as a succession of two-dimensional images can be layered over one another in a third dimension to become a richer and truer whole, and it is this dimension of existence, distinct from the first four, that we call the transcendental. The metarelations of transcendental reality are theoretically perceptible in the same way as the simple relations of subjective reality, and the process of metaperception in this fashion is the subject of the koan I quoted back at the beginning.

Now you have been given access to a somewhat fuller expression of the seemingly simple expression 'I can only be,' and a somewhat fuller elaboration within that context of the opening koan, I have reached a point at which this narrative can pause. If you are still confused, rest assured that this is because I still haven't begun to properly express myself yet. Do not make the mistake of reading into that refrain any sort of promise that 'proper expression' will ever be forthcoming; but strive for the faith that sustains me - the faith that any expression will, in the fullness of its flowering, become sufficiently proper that it achieves some measure of intersubjective potential.

Feel free to share your reactions to this. Let's make some Art.

A legal discursion

“The real reality is out there, but everything you know about ‘it’ is in your mind,
and yours to do with as you like.” ~ Malaclypse the Younger

 

I shall begin, as may already have become anticipated, with something that appears unrelated entirely to the question at hand. FIAT applies, of course.

The story I am about to relate, as with most of my stories, is not my own. It has been suggested that there are, after all, very few stories but a great proliferation of forms - the six-word story famously produced by Earnest Hemingway ("For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.") is composed in a profoundly limiting format, but you will be familiar with numerous elaborations upon it without having to consult your memory for long. This particular story is both itself, and a metaphor for itself, and a metaphor for this writing in which I relate the story, and a metaphor for FIAT itself. That seems to be a lot of freight, and it may not become any less when I confidently relate that you may appreciate it on any or none of these levels and still understand it as perfectly, or imperfectly, as anybody else.

Let those who have eyes to see, then, see this.

Some years ago - it doesn't matter how many - there was a gentleman who took the peculiar name of Malaclypse the Younger (this much of the story is true). He got together with another gentleman, glorying in the yet more peculiar name of Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, and these two gentlemen under the influence of some mellow psychoactive materials produced a book, within which was a great deal that was never meant to be understood. Among the most important of these was the Law of Fives, formulated and stated by Malaclypse the Younger (on page 00016) as follows:

All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or multiples of five, or are somehow
directly or indirectly appropriate to five. The law of fives is never wrong.

Lord Omar was, at some later unspecified time, to sagely observe: "I find the Law of Fives to be more manifest the harder I look," this being a substantially clearer explanation of the law than its statement by Malaclypse.

I didn't say it was a very good story.

Moving from - or, depending upon your perspective, through - that to the nature of being is as easy as listing the distinctly separate understandings of being which collectively inform my usage of the verb...

Mountains and Rivers

"Before enlightenment, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.
During enlightenment, mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers.
After enlightenment, mountains are again mountains and rivers are again rivers."

~ Zen Koan

 

I have a fondness for Zen koans. Cynics will suggest that this is the foolishness of the man who mistakes his own failure to find meaning for the presence of profundity; or perhaps that it is the foolishness of the man who professes profundity in the exhibition of his own emptiness. To these, I remark that there are worse things than being a Fool; and they, I'm sure, shake their heads in disgust and go on. They do not want to be taught by me.

It is very important to understand, before we go further, that I do not wish to teach, either. I wish to express, and it is possible that what you gain from your willed interaction with that expression manifests to you as learning, but that is not my purpose. More: it is not within my power. I cannot teach you, because the tao that can be taught is not the Tao. I can only be.

I'm sure this sounds very pretentious. It's difficult to find the right place to start with this... expression. There is what the late Douglas Adams, through the able mouthpiece of Dirk Gently, referred to as the Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things (which I abbreviate to FIAT; Latinists or Liverpudlians among you may appreciate the happy accident of the acronym) - we'll be returning to this, insofar as we ever really leave it, which, when you come to consider it, is difficult to do without abdicating the Dasein - that both reassures and confounds one in the effort to find a starting place. The temptation to evoke a Joycean solution is strong, and the slew of references that will, I suspect, flavor if not pepper this treatise and the ones that follow is perhaps evidence that this temptation was not wholly resisted.

If you're confused, please take that as an indication that I haven't begun to properly express myself yet. Imagine this series of writings as a Seurat painting in progress - at present, the dots are disconnected, and you are still too close. But the day will dawn when there is a sufficient proliferation of them, and you are sufficiently distant, when you can look upon them with older and newer eyes, and see what has been made. Persevere, I urge you.