Augustus Durtweiler
Senior Editor
Journal of Anergathic Consciousness Studies
9401 Farmersplatz Road, Suite 1437
Fullibald, New Jersey 07025
Dear Augie:
Attached is the corrected text for the section you highlighted in my entry for the 9th edition of the Encyclopedia of Transcendental Paradigms. I've tried to address your comments in re: the ambiguity of my prior formulation. This redraft should eliminate the problem, as I have tried to adhere as closely as possible to the accepted vocabulary of the debate (one which, I stress--as always--I personally consider closed). Que sera sera. I hope it meets with your approval.
Best Regards,
Milton
************
"Enlightenment emulates a version of madness in that the concurrent full disclosure of all of the meanings of any single signified (choose one) forces the sage into an endless recursive unidirectional linear-but-also-loop from which there is no escape.
"[This, by the way, is the meaning of the manifestations chapter of the Gita, which the author had to fudge in order to allow for a conclusion to the story. The moral may be that Arjuna was lucky God was there to throw him out. We wonder.]
"Whereas we once thought that Enlightenment destroyed all relations with reality via the effective dissolution of Proximal Consciousness (or, if you must, the casting off of identity with such consciousness), we now know that its effect, if there is any at all, (because it must occur within manifest reality [there being no other alternative]), is that of unproductive and inescapable perpetual-motion-in-one's-place, which we may call externally-imposed mantric autism. See "The Sri Yon Yonson Effect" for details. (Also Meher Baba on the masts, though one of course must beware his interpretation of this phenomenon.)
"Or perhaps both are true, since fundamental awareness is a self-contradictory idea, given it can't be aware of anything as defined. The ego is only a lens in some forms of psychology and not in perennial philosophy, unless the id is to be equated with the eternal and illimitable substratum, a position which many antagonists on both sides of this essentially disciplinarian debate would violently deny. But if the One Mind casts off the Other, we've gained nothing in terms of transcendental understanding, or understanding the transcendent, and the ego seems to pay the price. Though I suppose that spinning in place for the rest of one's natural life could be defined as a form of transcendence, and one which is in re: the world and its perceivability far more real than that of the mystic theorist."
Senior Editor
Journal of Anergathic Consciousness Studies
9401 Farmersplatz Road, Suite 1437
Fullibald, New Jersey 07025
Dear Augie:
Attached is the corrected text for the section you highlighted in my entry for the 9th edition of the Encyclopedia of Transcendental Paradigms. I've tried to address your comments in re: the ambiguity of my prior formulation. This redraft should eliminate the problem, as I have tried to adhere as closely as possible to the accepted vocabulary of the debate (one which, I stress--as always--I personally consider closed). Que sera sera. I hope it meets with your approval.
Best Regards,
Milton
************
"Enlightenment emulates a version of madness in that the concurrent full disclosure of all of the meanings of any single signified (choose one) forces the sage into an endless recursive unidirectional linear-but-also-loop from which there is no escape.
"[This, by the way, is the meaning of the manifestations chapter of the Gita, which the author had to fudge in order to allow for a conclusion to the story. The moral may be that Arjuna was lucky God was there to throw him out. We wonder.]
"Whereas we once thought that Enlightenment destroyed all relations with reality via the effective dissolution of Proximal Consciousness (or, if you must, the casting off of identity with such consciousness), we now know that its effect, if there is any at all, (because it must occur within manifest reality [there being no other alternative]), is that of unproductive and inescapable perpetual-motion-in-one's-place, which we may call externally-imposed mantric autism. See "The Sri Yon Yonson Effect" for details. (Also Meher Baba on the masts, though one of course must beware his interpretation of this phenomenon.)
"Or perhaps both are true, since fundamental awareness is a self-contradictory idea, given it can't be aware of anything as defined. The ego is only a lens in some forms of psychology and not in perennial philosophy, unless the id is to be equated with the eternal and illimitable substratum, a position which many antagonists on both sides of this essentially disciplinarian debate would violently deny. But if the One Mind casts off the Other, we've gained nothing in terms of transcendental understanding, or understanding the transcendent, and the ego seems to pay the price. Though I suppose that spinning in place for the rest of one's natural life could be defined as a form of transcendence, and one which is in re: the world and its perceivability far more real than that of the mystic theorist."
posted by Jeff Edwards at 1:40 PM
