1. What were your musical interests before college?
Before Art school I listened to the Pink Floyd- Umagumma,
Cream, Fleetwood Mac( with Pete Green), Hendrix, Dr John,
Cohen, Dylan, Zappa, The Beatles, Indian Raga. I didn't play
an instrument, I was more concerned with painting. I studied
Fine Art at Falmouth, by that time I was interested in Conceptual Art.
2-6 About how you became involved in music,
the contacts etc......
At Falmouth there was a strong link with music, although the
only courses were in painting and sculpture. Howard Rees was
a graduate of the Royal College of Music who set up the electronics
workshop at Falmouth, a VCS3, and 2 Revox's. There was an overlap between Conceptual art and the avant garde in music at that time. I knew of this before Art School from the work of Yoko Ono and the destruction in art symposium, fluxus and the like. I don't know what became of Howard, he is credited with playing Marimba on the Harold Budd album 'The Pavilion of Dreams' along with Marion Brown Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, Nigel Shipway and Brian Eno. He liked the art work I was doing, and I did some tape pieces, and learnt to use the VCS3. He was using tapes to construct abstract pieces from 'sampled' sounds. It was either he or Ron Smith who introduced me to Riley and Reich. Ron was a 'painting lecturer' who spent all his time playing sax and clarinet. He was into very free Jazz. That's how I got into performing 'music'. He wanted 'Non Musicians' to lay down percussion textures to improvise against. The four percussionists 'played' anything we could, bowing cymbals, polystyrene!!, using bird calls, squeaky toys and assorted drums, gongs and boxes. We played at a few
'gigs' in Cornwall. The whole Falmouth period was dismal as regards
my fine art practice, but I was introduced to a whole new world of
music. I was involved in performing works by Riley, met Harrison
Birtwistle, and John Cage, and argued vehemently with John Tilbury,
'the famous Marxist Pianist'. My meeting with Cage, was in the
interval of a performance of his at the Albert Hall, Howard
must have arranged it, and I have completely forgotten what was said!
7.After college ......
I was stupid enough to loose contact with these people
after Art School, I was in something of a depressed state.
I decided to try to continue with the music. The 'studio'
bedsit was based around a Synthi AKS and 2 Four track tape
decks. This was de-rigour in those days. On the Akai deck
I swopped the erase head with the play head so you could
record loops. If anyone reads this who is in a similar
position today they will know how depressing it can get,
the crippling cost of the equipment, and the lack of any
response, at that time the synthesiser was a thing Linda
McCartney played on Jets! I have a cassette of some of
the un-released pieces from that period. One piece in
particular took about 12 recordings, bouncing tracks to
get something which approaches what I am doing today. I
did a piece of just rain falling, another in which I
recorded Beethoven Symphonies and condensed them down
to a minute, then stretched them back out again. I don't
think at the time there was any chance of releasing any of
this kind of thing, for lack of interest and money.
8. Other work....
The move to video was a progression. I had begun to just talk
and record self analytical conversations. The videos are mostly
the same sort of thing, dialogues with myself, or just recording
myself, in one instance eating, then replaying and introspecting,
who the hell was that on the video. I also at this time began to
study classical music, by which I mean diatonic music. Outside of
all this I was beginning to make a career. During the post art
school depression I had worked in various jobs, petrol pump attendant,
clerk at the post office, and been unemployed. First I went into
teaching, and then left teaching and trained as a computer programmer.
9. Beginnings of the JLIAT project.....
The process of returning to making music was gradual.
In about 1985/6 I bought an Atari and began writing programs
which would store matrixes of note sequences. These would
trigger a Yamaha workstation. The idea behind this came from
conversations with Lesley, who I knew from Art School. I liked
the idea of 'a project' as a working environment, so in about 1986
we decided to pick up the threads of the minimalist work I
had been doing, putting it under a project title. At the time
I wasn't thinking of releasing anything, but perhaps Lesley was?
Your question of 'realisation' is difficult, in minimalism the
end is never known in advance, the music is very much a 'thing in
itself'.
10-11.Methods.....
I started by using the looping of envelopes on the SY99, and
looping wave sequences on a Wavestation. There are unreleased
pieces using this technique. The problem on the SY99 is that
you can't then use the envelope to change the sound. I now
use a sampler and a Lexicon echo unit to create loops. The
technique is related to my approach to music, I am familiar
with the formal methods, and its easy with sequencers to
work that way. I choose however to approach making music
more like the abstract expressionists approached painting.
The psychological nature of the sound is what is important
to me, and not some formalist construction of notes. For
example, its possible to create a sound using 6 FM operators
by setting operator 1 to 0, 2, to 1, 3-4,4-8,5-16,16-32 where
each division is a octave, so operator 6 sounds a note 32
octaves above operator 1. This is in formal terms a very
simple chord, yet this completely fails to describe the sound,
it is like a pure colour, which has depth and resonance, as
in Derek Jarman's 'Blue' for instance, the colour or 'note'
holds a spiritual vibrancy. Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Barnett
Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Robert Morris
created 'beautiful' objects out of minimalist techniques which
at times obtain a spirituality. Spirituality is critically important
for me, without it there is nothing.
12.
Serialism is a response to a formalist problem in music,
minimalism is more about the nature of sound, and the
nature of 'being'. I see Serialism as significant in
breaking the aesthetic of the diatonic system, and
allowing other aesthetics. John Cage is the ultimate
minimalist. 4'33" is a serious work!
13-14.
From what I have read of Brian Eno's intentions in
music he seems to be searching for a 'mechanism' for
creating music. As such his endeavours are predominantly
that of a traditional composer, materialist, or industrialist,
wanting to create a music making algorithm. The human parameter
is minimised, and the ease of production maximised. A model for
such a proposal would be a box out of which would come music. The
Koan software? Ritual music is in contrast a human product, here
the box serves only to amplify the human feelings, serves to be
an extension of the players physical and spiritual being. Comparing
the two musics, the former is guaranteed a quality which the
latter often falls short of but occasionally transcends. In
spiritual music, and improvisation, and my work, one begins
with a structure but in the process of playing become free
of it. One cannot make a transcendental algorithm, or a God machine.
15.Length of the pieces.....
Why are popular songs 3 to 4 minutes, because that's the length
of a 78 or 45 rpm record. The social conditions of the 17th &
18th centuries dictated the symphonies length. The JLIAT pieces
could run for as long as the equipment is left on, I would like
to make a 24 hour piece, a 7 day piece .....
16.Who is "L"
L is Lesley, my wife, advisor, producer, promoter, critic.
17.
Y9v9 is a tag for what some would call chance, but does in fact
create everything. It's an Aramaic word, which for me is Brahman,
within all, outside all.
18.The diagram in the first CD....
The 'evolution' tree of JLIAT in the first CD was done when I
was playing with a SSADM computer package for drawing things called
data flow diagrams. Its not that serious, and done in the same
spirit as Ad Reinhardt's diagrams. You see diagrams like this
in some very bad books on art. I have since come across
something similar by George Maciunas of Fluxus. If I was
to draw one of philosophers who have influenced my thinking
I would have to include Nietzsche who's philosophy I totally
reject. Evolutionary ideas are dangerous, some of the best music
is the most 'primitive'.
19.'Labels'....
'Ambient' is an expression of Brian Eno's. He uses the phrase in
the sleeve notes of Discreet Music, where he wanted the music to
be heard as part of the total environment of sound. For him this
was a new way of listening to music. The term has since been used
to describe the 'chill out' music of dance, Orb, FSOL etc. Its used
here I think as a comparative term to 'Dance' and 'Rave' which are
loud, with strong rhythms and fast B.P.M.s. There is a link to the
Pink Floyd via the guitar playing technique of Steve Hillage. An older
and more pejorative term was 'New Age', which Hillage was involved with.
The states of mind that the dance culture seeks to explore and
experience have similarities with religious ecstatic practice,
chanting, dancing, meditating. Early Minimalist music
can also have similar effects on consciousness, and
some of its practitioners had an interest in transcendental
religious beliefs, minimalism went on to preoccupy itself with
structure, theatre and politics, which although interesting
is spiritually arid.
20.Spiritual vs Material.....
The search for higher meaning, like the phrase
'beyond the infinite' is in analytical terms nonsense.
Its why formalism, mathematics and science can take you
only so far. If everything is reduced to mathematical terms,
then there must be a equation for the universe which reduces
to A=A. The real question is 'why anything and not nothing'.
JLIAT is an answer.
21.Where did the name JLIAT come from?
A dream.
1 The Nature of GOD.
2 The nature of nature.
3 The nature of man.
4 The manifestations in prophets, in art, in person.
5 The nature of Jesus- God in the world.
6 beyond person- beyond the gate to infinity of being.
7 The nothing- the deep nature.
8 The Church.
9 That which is that.
10 The Rabbit.
11 The dream.
12 The whole God thing.
13 The nature of good and evil.
14 The desert.
15 The Innu.
16 The nature of being dead and alive
17 The size of God.
18 Big numbers and big number machines.
19 The apple tree (why there is no proof of god).
20 Faith.
21 Wishful Thinking.
22 The Will of God.
23 The Mind of God
24 Consciousness.
25 The path through the forest.
26 The end of logic.
27 Nature naturing , god goding.
28 Joy.
29 Symmetry.
30 The Joy of life.
31 Science
32 The poor in spirit.
33 Minimalism.
34 The secret of the universe!
35 Other things.
36 Everlasting Life.
37 The theatre
38 harsf;k n,rasf k;qurt hq.
39 Beyond Images.
40 The nature of the soul.
41 The Spider.
42 The post-industrial enlightenment.
43 Superstition and little gods.
44 The Next Step.
45 Acts.
46 Compassion.
47 A dog learns to open the kitchen door.
48 Why.
49 Hours.
50 Why put flowers on a grave.
51 No title.
52 Existence.
53 Yet another gallery exhibition, yet another theory....
54 Jellyfish.
55 Nothing is not a re-action.
56 Logic language myth symbol- reality ha ha that old one!
57 The end of everything.
58 A Thousand Theories which contradict each other.
59 The universe.
60 My World.
61 Conversation with myself
62 Theological problems
63 How do we find out?
64 If one wills god into the world one wills gods destruction. Is this the task of organised religion.
65 The Theatre
66 Magic.
67 A transcendental method.
68 Why bother.
69 A play.
70 To say.
71 untitled.
72 The Future.
73 Methods.
74 The Profane.
75 The sacred.
76 A New Genesis.
77 The Burning Bush.
78 What to do.
79 Attributes.
80 Church Architecture.
81 Some Leading Thoughts.
82 The final heresy.
83 Now.
84 The hidden nature remains unexposed.
85 Faith.
86 The Mystic.
87 And from here, it begins again.
88 Critique of Solipsism.
89 Children.
90 Co-operation.
91 The end
Verse 1
The Nature of God.
God is uncountable- even if 1 then 1 can be divided. No before No after. In no place, in no time, not having any property which can be divided. I can not join god - which is to change the nature of God. To God my existence is complete, it is known, my place, my history, one of the infinite possibilities which all have to be.
God created everything - all possible things including time. Within my limits I can know - it takes nothing away it gives nothing to God. Being is not a property of God - therefore there is non-being.
How did Moses hear the sentence I AM who I AM. If it was spoken by God in time, then it had a beginning and an end, the sound could be divided, you could interrupt the word of God. I think that Moses when looking at the burning bush 'realised' in temporal, human thought & space, the nature of God - who is without. 'who is without' is wrong, there is no accurate language for describing God, so Moses uses the nearest words, to try and picture the nature of his experience of God. The language of creation in Genesis is not literal, it consists of an attempt to describe in words the indescribable, the nature of creation. The idea of God as the image of man is the complete reversal of what the prophets say. God as an image of man is given arms and legs, thought patterns and the like, how can we describe the feelings of the nature of God, but in seeing them as being from him, made from him, in the image of him, but to see these words as operating like ordinary language would be a mistake. They describe something - indescribable, they serve as not even approximations. An analogy would be to ask what smell does the colour red have.
Verse 2
The nature of nature.
The universe is like a fire which burns infinitely in itself, consuming that which it creates.
At every point of creation a new creation takes place, at every point on the circle of creation are new circles, as in the mandlebrot set there is an infinity within infinity of creations. Our present model of the created universe is no different to the model found in Genesis. Bounded and somehow fixed in time, divisible and finite. Science has merely enlarged this concept. As our knowledge of the facts of nature have increased a flat earth became round, and the earth shifted from the centre of the universe, despite a resistance from the pull of mans ideal of a universe filled by his knowledge, with man at the centre. Creation as an act is infinite and timeless, God creates everything, every moment every thing, and with each moment a new history, a new and separate universe is created. This is happening now and continually, ever creating, is a consequence of the possibility of anything. If not nothing then everything. This is seen this in time, which is false, as if the universe expands in history, this is only how we beings who swim in the sea of time, see our universe. If God is creator then all universes are being created, as we would see it :but in fact have been, are being, and will be created. Time is another creation, our time lines are only finite traces in an infinity of lines, of all possible lines. Our being is only one of an infinite. God is both within this and without it. In this because it is his creation and without it because only God can be without creation. Not by dividing a second small enough could we produce a fraction of time un-experienced - un-created by God. The totally of universes is infinite, otherwise God's creation would not be perfect. I could point to a set of possibilities not actualised and say why didn't God do that, so God doesn't make choices, so choice is a finite phenomenon, so God makes all choices, has everything, does everything, for what could be that wasn't made by him. God's creation is infinite. Everything is, has been and will be realised. We are the image of God, if we create a world outside ourselves which we inhabit. God is not the image of us, our world is always finite, God's world is infinite, both fixed and changing, perfect, complete. Genesis begins with the void, the chaos was not fixed, it is infinite, neither is time finite at the beginning, this is our (being created within time) view. To read Genesis to understand God's creation must be absurd. How can we stand and talk of God as we would a person, 'ah that's how he did it', and some can say, 'I don't believe that's true'. We can not stand back from creation and see it, and judge it, for we are in creation and being created continually. No eyes, or mirror or picture can view God, who makes everything.
Its not only that in genesis there was a universe where Eve was not tempted, or a universe where Hitler won WW2 but at each and every instant of time every conceivable possibility is created. For a complex algorithm is ontologically real, so the possibility is real. The infinite moments into which I move my free choice is the illusion of choosing a possibility. A God who conceives out of time all possibilities is not surprised by my action, by my choices, they are in reality part of a whole, already known by God. The act of God determines all possible algorithms, histories, creates them in reality. This is both spatial, temporal and hierarchical, as in each universe another can be modelled. Why this concept of nature would not be liked is it is unpopular to make ourselves less significant. Present physical theories still guarantee the individual a portion of finite space and time, although now in the modern cosmos this is not as large as it once was thought. Time and space have expanded in recent theoretical models of nature, but the orthodoxy still desires to limit these, strives to limit these, is what orthodox science seems to be about. Science is a boundary defining/creating activity. Not a search for truth but the creation of limits, boundaries, quanta with which the human ego can hold or bind God and nature. The many worlds universe of infinite possibilities guarantees the ego nothing, what portion does a finite self have of infinity? Subtracting an ego from a finite universe makes a difference. A spirit which merges with a finite God makes a difference. However any subtraction or addition to a infinity makes absolutely no difference. It is only rejecting the finite, and the individual, do I get a coherent vision of the I in the world.
Verse 3
The nature of man.
It is that all things must be which is the cause of good and evil. We experience presently one history. It is being now which is why our history is particular. Every choice is taken. The reason for evil is that it is a possibility, therefore it necessarily must be, I must necessarily be, you must necessarily be, be here in now and not, eventually be all things, good and bad. Love thy neighbour as oneself means in all possible universes which are created, that are possible to create, will be created, you and I become the same.
If there is a multiplicity of universes, even of possibilities, In order to fulfil these possibilities I must not only experience everything, live everyone's life, but also be everything. Because of the nature of what is here now, of what I am here now I am not directly aware of this. I am not on the hierarchy of being where one would know this directly. An experience of this - multiplicity of being, is not allowable simultaneously with being now, the multiplicity of being to being here now would perhaps appear as a loss of personality, now one ceases to be one but many other things also, yet separate? The self relates to this idea, the being of the self is in this feeling of separation. Further one is ones own neighbour in being removed from past and future selves. Other people are spatially located, and if I am to be them, or have been them, loving them as myself is only seeing a logical tautology. It is possible to love ones future self, as well as ones past, but not be those past and future selves, an old wound no longer hurts, and an anticipated one also does not hurt. The self of the future seems no different to another self of the present. It is to ones future self that we become less selfish in the present, in order to be kind to the person we will or might be. Even in the present the self is a constituent of things, which in the unhappy are at war with themselves. There is no difference in feeling of pain in any one's future pain, whether they happen to be me or not. Self hatred is the cause of all the suffering inflicted both on ones future being, being now, and on all other things. Politeness to others, compassion for the world is selfish, but selfish means nothing, as such a self is found everywhere, in all objects. Respect is a universal property. All feelings are universal things in themselves, aggregates not attributes, which coalesce into persons.
Death is break-up of the coalescence of feelings, a re-arrangement of things. If some were to escape death everyone would probably wish to be that person. That person would be a thing- in - itself, if immortality was a possibility, in a universe of possibilities, of life histories that I (or you - there's no difference we are the same) must explore then It would be a kind of sink for all creation. The Dying of Christ is important, as a kind of message about the nature of reality. What is changing and what is unchanging. What can change, can die, what can not change is something different, something without attributes or aggregates.
The cares of the world are carried by the messiah, man becoming God or God becoming Man, at that point the analogies of the prophets becomes real, a living Word. This word is then in being infinite, all experiences. That is what is meant by God taking on the sins of the world. Sin is the colour that makes us individual, the mixture of aggregates of feelings, only God is perfect. Sin then is the Maya, the illusion of individuality given by the arrangement of things. Illusions created by arrangement of things, like a representational drawing or painting. Taking on all the sins of the world is redemption, in which there is no differentiation, there is perfection in the indivisibility of infinity as there is in the indivisibility of zero. A god with us is still infinite, but we may not like what this means.
The nature of wo/man is perplexing, we wonder why we are where we are in the finiteness of all possibilities. The answer to the question why this rather than not is the nature of nothing. What actuality is, is everything, all things. Our, your, mine, location is what creates the feeling of mystery. And yet we don't seem to always acknowledge the choice of our being, but we can't choose to be someone else!
All real religion is meaningless and ineffectual, effectiveness is changing the world, a real religion is in the imagination only, which does not change the world. Real religion is not will to power, its more like a child's game, false religions are roads to power. The road to power, politics, false religions, science & logic is blasphemous. It is about creating the great thing. Blasphemy is seeking to be more powerful than you are, striving to become infinite, wanting to control the forces of nature, know what will happen as well as what has happened, own the truth, be an objective judge of the world. Blasphemy is the stupidity of thinking it is possible to transcend oneself, thinking it is possible to not be yourself. Will to power is really will to destruction, it is a contradiction and all power is, is only an act of good publicity and deception. How are some deceived in thinking that if they can inflict pain on others they can somehow inflict their will on others, control other minds, so a gnat could think the same.
Kings, institutions, states and corporations are blasphemous, they achieve the property of greatness only in the deception of others. The true nature of wo/man is the naked aborigine. She/he is without greatness, history, future, past or individuality, a life unwritten which is from the earth and back to the earth without the pretence of anything other.
Verse 4
The manifestations in prophets, in art, in person.
The prophet has the consciousness of being. It is perhaps the truth of the lives of the prophets which causes institutions to dislike them. The criticism is implicit in the prophets ignorance of propaganda. Abstractionism in art is the picture of what cannot be pictured. The history of abstraction in art is the attempt to picture the un-representable. It faces into nothing, is only the material of what it is, showing what is and what is not. God is infinite, god is abstract, the set of abstract things is infinite, infinity is abstract, the true object of abstract art. Other than living, living as a person seems to be to have to make art. When I define what art is, it is as doing more than doing something well, it is doing something not unconsciously, which is not good or bad, but abstract as doing something consciously in itself. This shows other things, and therefore expresses, is aesthetic, and not good or bad action.
Verse 5
The nature of Jesus- God in the world.
When Jesus ascended he became one with the father, undifferentiated, the spirit of God is what we are. The spirit of God is the fire of creation which our consciousness can be aware of. Being aware of our divinity. Of God, sons of god, made sons of God in realisation of the nature of nature, God created, from and of nothing. In Jesus was the humanity of God. Through him we can be aware of the spirit in us, which is us, which is of god and from god.
The life of Jesus is an explanation of god and of life. A Christian believes this at least, that Jesus' life is the best explanation of what god is that they have witnessed. If I can appreciate the life of Jesus clearly, then I am a Christian. I don't have to say what that is. What Jesus can do is reveal god, any revelation of god is always the same thing, it's the starting place, our humanity that we use to name- an un-nameable thing.
Verse 6
beyond person- beyond the gate to infinity of being.
Anything we manufacture, what we are, our technology is separate to anything beyond. In understanding we close the possibility of anything beyond, and in playing, in imagination we have no power. Wishing to have a bridge to what is beyond ourselves and magic. All magic is fantasy else it becomes science. That which is beyond us is beyond us, all the devils, gods and spirits are only our imagination. They conjure up nothing. Could we live in a novel watching the strangeness of creation and somehow aloof from it. The black painting is the wall behind which is the unspeakable, unutterable. We long for this. We create a toy of this, religion. We make up our own nature, false nature arbitrarily set in the power of mind or body, this is philosophy, politics and science. Or we despair. It is the longing and the despair which is the true nature of existence, the atheist and believer both have nothing, only the others take comfort in momentary technologies. Art of the absolute halts us in our physical thinking yet never presents the un-presentable. Like the true philosophy of Wittgenstein it shows us the edge of what is our world, the limits of where we can go. This is not amusing, it is awesome, misunderstood by the children who would rather play with their toys, the theories, doctrines, of the physical world.
There is no technology of the absolute, it cannot be reached, we cannot travel there. A mind made by the patterns formed by its constituents will alter and disappear as the pattern changes. As the matter of the river flows forming patterns, they reform continually, there is not continuity yet there is identity in nature. The mind, the spirit the body are all the same. Today we say all is matter, whereas before we said all is spirit. Existence is existence, neither matter or spirit. The two (matter and spirit) are children's toys. We play with one then the other. Now we think the world outside is really matter, but there is no 'world outside'. Why should I unpack the thought, is a pattern unique or not, to resolve things? The pattern is repeated but if the same cannot be repeated.
No one can be non-existent. The very thing we long for is that which never ends, no beginning or end, which sustains our existence, defines the logic with which everything is, it is not. We endlessly build towers of babel. So then what, to understand the logic of existence is to say and know that there is no life after death, there is no god, and know that to be true. Then if we bother to look we will see God. God in the beauty of its nothing, in its total remoteness, otherness, non-being, being all. We look at the whole universe which is created out of nothing.
Verse 7
The nothing- the deep nature.
'The set of infinite objects is itself infinite so must contain itself'
The phrase 'beyond the infinite' in the objective mind is meaningless- whilst to the subjective mind it is understood. The objective mind is lost in its own logic, bounded by meaning and so unable to cope with transcendence when it occurs.
Proof objectively lies outside the statement, looking at it, the statement must be dead, has to be killed before it can be known, and so only known as a dead and fixed thing. Subjectively I can accept things which live beyond myself, and which I can experience. I can play at knowledge and learning like a child without worry.
The subjective mind accepts the strange and denies strangeness, understands the incomprehensible, they are in reality objectivists, for look how they live, they obey rational rules in everything except certain ideas which will have no consequence to them physically. And yet in certain minds the term 'beyond the infinite' has a poetic ring of truth which although not making sense, one sees to be true. Admitting the senselessness but seeing the poetic, is only proved by actions, holding the objective as true but seeing beyond it something other. Language becomes something not in itself, only acquiring logical structures sometimes. I'm not interested in cheating.
The nature of God, the nothing which is, the everything which is not. Beyond completely the grasp of logic, yet seen, in the total wonder of nature, which is God. Beyond good and evil, as pure beauty of infinite creation and of not. Within all, and beyond all. This is our goal, for in that there is peace, fulfilment, and everlasting bliss. Beyond the I maybe nothing, but that nothing is the perfect beauty which radiates the infinity of universes which we are living in together as one, in an illusion of separateness. The energy which we are cannot be un-created, this is a physical law, which traps us in the Maya of existence, yet we can lose this to the nothing which created it, from dust and back to dust. Dust is un-differentiated being, or non-being. This is the nature of existence, to see the brow of the hill, to rise and glimpse the distant horizon, glimpse the wholeness of the universe, and dip down again into the valley and the streams and trees. The fool staying on the hill notices erosion, and in attempting to maintain prominence sadly declines.
Verse 8
The Church.
Orthodoxy is originally one persons view. What is there to be frightened of in thinking for oneself. The real fear is of those that would make you think as they do, they seek to deny you your intelligence, to use you as a vehicle for their thoughts. So if I remember you, you will not die? The priesthood should neither impose or restrict ideas. The church should allow a multiplicity of views, it should become our refuge from the tyranny of logic and science. Orthodoxy should be individuality, there is a kind of therapy in this. Therapy of being able to be oneself first, its a start a recognition of being alive.
Individuals get ill and die in the world from politics of correctness, from other ideas, the church should allow the mind to wander when everything else creates prisons of right and wrong. There should be a refuge somewhere, which is un-biased. An open church should hold no beliefs so that the congregation could be themselves, this has to be the start of our journey.
Miracles are physical phenomenon, they are particular & material, located in time and therefore 'tend' to disprove rather than prove God. Miracles describe a human god, of fault and sin, compassionate in an arbitrary or selfish way. Real religion, like the real God, makes no difference. Real God makes no difference (because the sun shines on sinner and saint alike) because of God's infinite, all acting nature, differences are perceptions of individuals, seeing themselves separate from the world. That is what I am, to see myself rightly, am I not this, an individual, different?
Verse 9
That which is that.
If I think then a process begins, we have movement. If I will or desire it is the same. A question, a task, book, song, a day are each a process. A constructed theory, a period lying awake in the night, looking for some lost object, walking, seeing, being. Asking for something, taking, holding a concept or belief. Movement, voices, experience and existence. Life, shadows, light. A noise, colour, visions, beliefs, money, buildings, organisations, blood. Numbers and counting, symbols and shapes. Matter. All this is like a prayer, and the riddle of the prayer is in its inward turning to who its asked.
Verse 10
The Rabbit.
There was a dead rabbit one morning lying in the corner of the field. It's eye and fur still bright. Over successive days first the eye becomes dull, after rain the fur dank, and after two weeks or so the maggots which were inside break out and the carcass collapses around its blackened skeleton. Soon all there is, is a dark mess. Now the grass is six inches higher where once the rabbit was. The grass in a sense is the rabbit. This passing of material is very familiar. Nothing materially has disappeared. What matter the rabbit was formed from has become its form and now another, we classify its changes in terms of differing objects.
Moving to the human mind, here when it 'dies', when its activity ceases death seems a very definite event. We do not regard anything as going on.... or we regard everything as going on unchanged. Both views seem equally unconvincing. To imagine a human mind without the material brain - or a material structure which emulates the brain, is difficult. Things like consciousness may not be dependent on material structures, although to damage the structure seems to destroy temporally or permanently the conscious state, but independent of matter, a conscious with no senses, with no memory would be difficult to comprehend. Without the structures of memory it would have no time, language or self-reference point. It would be hard to imagine a mind without memory. At the simplest level it would be unable to process anything, and thinking....consciousness perhaps....is about processing. A simple computer program that cannot store data can not process, can do nothing but repeat identical statements. The program itself is dependent on being stored. On this basis many dismiss the 'life after death' belief as simple non-sense. The end of consciousness with death however is not identical with the end of being. The rabbit continues its being after death as other objects. There are fundamental laws of science about this, but there is also direct observation. What we cannot observe directly is the mental being of a person. To assume it ends with death is strange, just as the physical being is changed, but cannot be destroyed, so the mental energy must also undergo change but not undergo destruction. The energy of the person becomes transformed, like the Buddhist's mental attributes, and are re-formed in 'new' objects. What can not occur is that suddenly the energy which is in the mind simply disappears. The terminating computer program is a similar case. We see termination when in fact what occurs is a transformation, perhaps back to null or chaos, but its precisely from this null or chaos that the program appears, that all programs appear. In writing a program nothing new is created, just re-arranged. A mind at death may even one day re-appear in other forms and in similar forms. But we are and have no more universal claim on our mental or 'spiritual' being than we do on our physical being. To demand physical immortality is to deny a chunk of matter that was used by many other creatures, objects which existed before, and which could be used after 'we are'. The same could then be true of our non-physical being. There exists therefore as rich a complexity of non-physical objects as there are physical objects of which we are part.
On its simplest level Non-physical can mean merely the ability to make patterns with objects. Materially a pile of bricks in a builders yard and a house are identical. The words on this page and a jar of ink. A jar of ink is infinite literature. Meaning is in pattern, its the pattern that makes sense. The world of the non material. The computer program exists on many different media. The word gives matter form. There's no magic about it. If you can accept this dualism then you understand the meaning of the rabbit in the field.
At a fundamental level matter is differentiated from non-matter as a 'pattern', we are arranging true, false black, white, charge no-charge.
There is one more step, which is to see matter as simply pattern. Pattern is non-material, so matter is an illusion. The universe is an idea of God.
Verse 11
The dream.
If ever you are aware of yourself dreaming then you are aware of your own mental activity. Why then cannot you control exactly the contents of the dream. That is control every detail and action, for if you once fail to control a self-conscious dream then you are a wittiness to the 'many' which you are. If in a self-conscious dream you experience another person whose actions you cannot predict, but who has all the attributes of a person, then you are looking at a mental creation (presumably) of your mind which you do not know. So here we have a single mind with two - or more persons, one of which you are conscious of. Who is controlling - ordering the other person if not yourself, and if yourself why can you not predict its actions, or why are you not its consciousness. How can you keep this secret from yourself.
It may be that often you can control totally your dream, it is only when you fail that you are aware of other 'objects' inside yourself. When forcing your will too much on such a dream often you wake up. As if waking is the dominance of one personality over a multitude. The nature of waking and consciousness seem to have similarities. In observing a dream we have two things, firstly awareness that our mental being is many not one, and secondly that our consciousness is formed by suppressing or controlling these 'other' beings within us.
Verse 12
The whole God thing.
This may bother some people. Bother is interesting- why we haven't lost religion is interesting, as science begins to explain more and more. The 'territory' of religion / God is (still) interesting. Proofs, evangelising, laws, ethics, politics are not interesting- they are trivial. The inability to describe God in our language has 3 possible (or more ) outcomes. That God does not exist- (the concept negates itself). That God is created (described) in 'mans' image - 'king' 'father' shepherd' (which in modernity is ridiculous). Or the mystic's non-definition - beyond being as...
Examine the concept of God and it disappears. Particularly examine the 'Out of Time' aspect. God has no beginning and end, therefore no experience, no qualities, is beyond good and evil. (i.e. is God good, is God red, is God.....the answer seems always both no & yes- all attributes to the believer: non to the non-believer)
It's at that level that I find myself confronted by God, beyond what belief is, like existence, existence is not a contingent thing, I don't exist because....what I mean is existence is not founded on belief, God is like that, to argue existence/non-existence is to argue the nature of existence- what is it for. This pre-supposes a under-lying reality which is a cause/reason, but existence simply is- colourless- and there. The mystical experience of existence is being, and if we describe that state(or better point to it) then we are describing(or pointing to) God in a very direct way. Almost describing by being. (The experience of being/God is/are timeless) The argument for & against is at another level - both theist and atheist argue 'in time'. Miracles in fact seem to disprove God, create a god of thought and intention. Miracles are explanations, God is not an explanation for the world. How can the timeless create? Moving on - how can the timeless not create, not create time, not create all things. The 'other worlds' idea in physics, which few seem to fully appreciate is a description of creation not as intention.
A reaction to this is the description of only the describable. The banality of modern - (post modern) culture. The alternative phenomenon (of the post-modern atheist/theist) 'seems' like repetition.... the chant of the desist or constant pessimism of the existentialist. The problem or crisis in modernity is that of 'continuation'. The solution has to be avoiding a return? to the materiality which is not viable to a new/old stance. Meditation in the Buddhist sense IS non-deist - but repetitive, it is the end of thought and the beginning of something else, even of nothing (it (is)/ MUST be the 'religion/non-religion of the atheist). Bahkti is another alternative (the deists) to the soap opera of post-modernity. They both seek the same by different means/ends (the two converge here). The danger is boredom, and its solution (drugs pushed by the establishment) - the popular media, is Maya.
Verse 13
The nature of good and evil.
Evil as we see it in deeds is from man, those that spiritualise this into demons are mistaken. Their demons are always their invention. The snake is evil as an act of mans will, it is a deep psychological phenomenon that the animal man can will evil. I think higher forms of intelligence would see the stupidity of this,( if they exist) lower forms are on the whole not as conscious of will, or at least only of their own, they fail to see the truth of others being. The power of man is essentially evil because it knows. Truth is not a logical predicate, it is a feature of the universe, evil always corrupts or denies truth. Someone saying something which is true can have an evil intention. Likewise someone saying a lie can have a good intention. The real truth is in the intention, 'from their fruits you shall know them....' not from what they say, but from what they create. Anything higher sees reality as not being logic but what is. All this works in a post logical structure that Christians call love, or Buddhists call satori. It is impossible to construct a table of rules for this language, because it is not a language but an action, or a state of being. Its rightness is implicit, its validation is its product not its explanation. There are only human devils who use power to destroy, anything higher would see the futility and stupidity of this, more than that, see its ugliness, its lack of beauty. So all that is evil is in man, if evil were other it would become good. If it had power so to do. If we once let the devil have its own intelligence and this was superior to our animal desires then it would repent. Where we see evil we see men acting violently against others, we do not see powers of the spirit. As for disease it is as much a part of nature as we are, our hatred of it is selfish. Religion is an explanation to us of this, for we need explanation for fear of becoming evil, the rest of nature does not, it either simply is or simply knows. In religion we should be shown truth which exists beyond logic.
Animal actions would seem to be based on instinct but also added to a mechanical response to the environment and the needs of the species is the experience of pleasure and pain. These two phenomenon are shared by a range of living organisms, the limit and scope being open for discussion. Pain/pleasure mechanisms seem to support survival. To be subject to the experience of pain would seem to have to be a advantage in terms of being a successful complex organism. A working description of evil could be the inflicting of pain on others, and perhaps the resultant experience of pleasure in doing so. The needles torture of another is an extreme case. The ability to have the power to cause pain gives the torturer a sense of power. This is an affirmation of the power of the individual, an experience of ones own being, ones own will. There is a pleasure in achieving ones will, only in certain cases the scenario has become distorted to the extent that the ends, the results are needed to be extreme in order realise this. It is the complexity of the human brain which can have an imbalance, as a result of experience and or some kind of internal disfunction, together with the intellectual power which combine into what we call evil. Evil is a bad person, a product of the failure to reconcile the pain/pleasure force behind ones physical being. Humans have the ability to see others as equals, this gives them the added responsibility for their actions. When aware of this the bad person behaves badly in order to magnify a biological function in order to magnify their own will. They act out of a need to be, and see their being as the effects it has out the outside world. The action is arbitrary. Good is not just a subjective judgement on the act of the will but the focus in the good act is changed. The focus is no longer the will, for that is essentially empty (from dust we are made) but is anything other than the will. - This 'anything other' is the subject of art, morality, philosophy, religion, when not focused on the individual's will but on the individual's experience of the world. God is good because god creates everything but her/himself. In order to live we need to destroy, this is the need for food, but given existence, which is a simple event we need to grow out into the world and create not images of ourselves but images of the other. Evil is essentially stupidity because it fails to move on from existence to meaning. Essentially evil acts, of vandalism etc. just state existence of will. The need is to expand ones will from self-awareness to awareness of the world. It is in the world we find beauty, surprise, creativity, awareness of the other. There is an underlying power in this shift of focus which caused mankind to be so different from other creatures. As any system becomes more complex it becomes more aware. It is the 'animal ghosts' that we make demons, where the intelligence which shifts our focus outwards is miss-used. Higher beings could not be evil as their awareness would be greater, evil is a product of our particular human nature. An evil universe would seem a contradiction, it would seem to have to annihilate itself.
Verse 14
The desert.
The desert is where the I sees the nothingness of itself and so can then realise the nature of God. The tension is between being, and the nothingness of this being. One cannot logically deny oneself, yet essentially there is nothing within one which is I. In the emptiness the spirit either withers, turns to sand, or sees its source. There are two nothings in this. Or a seeing through the nothing, if there were nothing then there would not be, but there is, and it is from nothing. God is nothing. The most beautiful.
Verse 15
The Innu.
The variety of religions and beliefs is superficial. There is no incomprehensible religion, just as there is no incomprehensible language. The purpose of language seems to be to describe our experience. Religion seems to describe phenomenon outside the experiences describable in language. Yet direct translation is difficult, as we could translate rice to bread, or bread to potatoes, their function and role is similar, but not their form, or taste. The reality with which we compare is the concept of a staple food, that bread is or was to some doesn't invalidate either bread's role or the existence of other foods. Once you know english you understand it. By knowing a foreign language it has a shape and is comprehensible, it is only incomprehensible when we do not know it, religions are similar, a critique of another religion is the consequence of our ignorance.
Verse 16
The nature of being dead and alive
Life after death seems as silly as nothing after death. Here we are, we talk, we feel the cold, and warmth, have experiences which are life, like living things, these are our properties. Death is not unconsciousness, which is a brain function, its altogether different. Bodies rot because we see them? We infer consciousness in others but cannot see it. We see their bodies, hear the sounds they make, watch their actions. To imagine consciousness simply disappears contradicts our inference. We see a radical change in the physical body at death, but not a disappearance. So primitive people infer a 'departing' spirit, which is more consistent than a disappearing spirit. But to say they still live is equally difficult, because clearly something has changed. Are we more than life? Physically the answer is yes, but mentally the answer seems to also have to be yes.
Verse 17
The size of God.
Even without recourse to existence the size of God is a problem. I'm thinking you could guess the size of a unicorn.
Verse 18
Big numbers and big number machines.
A big number machine creates things, manufactures objects, big numbers are pictures, bigger numbers still can become more complex objects. Matter is information in big number machines. Machines themselves can be modelled in numbers, we can have a set of machines producing an infinite set of numbers, and this set itself can be infinite. In creation, or in numbers, god, seems small, non existent, not one of the numbers. it's like a very large string of digits, how long before it has a size or a weight, size and weight would be things, 'unreal things' inside the number. But, but nothing this is a subset isn't it?
Verse 19
The apple tree (why there is no proof of god).
In late December sunlight stands an apple tree. How we see it is a definition of many things, but how it is just itself. This perception of the object is beyond these words which stand for other objects, which create other meanings in other minds. But the being of the apple tree is essentially unperceived. So it is possible with all things to compare, to equate the words 'apple tree' with a seen thing, to equate this with a felt thing, with sets of concepts. In one respect it has been said we can explain nothing, but leaving that on one side it seems always there is in explanation two things joined by an equals sign. So the sentence God is ...... fails, because there can be nothing which can equal God. Mathematically ¥ = ?. Can ? be anything other than ¥ ?. The forming of a definition seems to involve perceiving that two things are related. This is a kind of triangle where consciousness forms one point and the other two points are objects being defined. (the previous sentence is defined such) The definition of God fails two ways, firstly the lack of an equivalent alternative, and secondly the need to separate out our consciousness to act as arbiter. We would need to 'see' that the two are equal. This is not possible. We can compare visually two objects, or construct mechanisms for doing so, but we cannot create an infinite mechanism. To see God would be to step outside infinity. I would say that is impossible. That is where I place God, as being outside infinity, as being outside being. There is therefore no proof of God. And this lack of proof is independent of God's existence. The world is a set within an infinity of sets whose existence is created by being comprehended by God. And I can even move on from that.
Verse 20
Faith.
Suppose in a world/universe it was the property that 2+2 = 5. And 5 /2 = 2 etc. The law of arithmetic in this world was one in which doubling always increased the number by one more than the two components. It could be a very simple universe, a computer program could be made which creates this phenomenon- a kind of strange calculator, or perhaps it could even exist in a complex world like our own. This would appear very strange, putting 4 apples into a bag I would get 5 apples out. It would be consistent however. Some distinguish faith from reason or logic by seeing logic as a kind of fixed set of provable values. So I can prove 2+2 = 4 by doing the sum, counting apples etc. Faith nearly always relates to non-provable phenomenon, like god. Imagine however a universe in which at some point the property of numbers changes, where suddenly doubling adds a one, as above. Now when we assert 2+2 = 4 it could be the next time we seek to prove this assertion the universe we are in undergoes such a change. We would repeatedly get 5. So in a way my belief in 2+2 = 4 is based on a belief that the universe will not undergo such a change. Now I maintain my belief in logical structures in a theory about the structure of the universe. I don't seem to have any proof for this however, and I don't see how I could produce such a proof. What I have is a faith in the uniformity of logic in time. I can maintain this because supposing a more complex universe, randomly or otherwise changing in time, is thought somehow wrong, we use occam's razor? to select the simplest explanation, on the basis that the simpler of two explanations is the most likely to be true. Maintaining the earth's fixed flatness is a simple concept. The 3.142 is a simple value of Pi. If all my examples were found not to be true it still would be hard to see how the criteria of simpleness could be used for seeing if something was true. Elegance in nature is the reflection of the conceited mathematician, who applies statistics to 'simplify' observed phenomenon.
Simplicity is not a reason for proof. Now there might well be some examples, in the remote past or future, in the micro or macro cosmic, which brings doubt on this fact? of maintaining a consistent universe, but such circumstances are so 'strange', like those of quantum physics, that I don't let them bother me. In any case to establish a consistent proof for inconsistency seems strange, I would resort to asking if anything could be random? My belief in 2+2 always being 4 now seems to be a case of a faith in a 'local' world view which could be described as 'naive materialism'. Naive materialism sustains belief in cause and effect, the primacy of Euclidean geometry, and perhaps other beliefs which have been based on the 'obvious', the earth's central position in the universe.....etc. It has at its core it seems as much a faith in absolutes as any fundamental religion. It is faith which lets us believe what we believe and not proof. You can't prove god to an atheist. There's more than a logical contradiction in doing just that. You can't prove god if your a theist, because a theist sees the possibility of a non-logical universe. Proof is a symbol of materialism inappropriate to the spiritual. The theist admits to the possibility of other universes, whereas the materialist has to keep their universe extremely local and particular, only believing in what can be explained. The growth of materialism has been the growth in explaining what were once thought supernatural phenomena. This appears to the materialist as the dis-proving of the supernatural. The ability to map the world in 2 dimensions does not refute the concept of a spherical world. The failure of theism was/is due to the appeal to logic, which is the language of the materialist/atheist. 'Understanding' has in this case to be intuitive. Always intuitive. The whole process of our approaching the 'other worlds' of metaphysics, religion et. al. has to do with meditation and not mechanical cognition. Then we can appreciate the truth, the realities of the transcendental.
Verse 21
Wishful Thinking.
Wishful thinking is either nonsense or exploration of some of the possible worlds. For a world to be possible it seems it must be. Reality is only a function of its complexity, nothing else. A naive thought may not be complex enough to have the attribute we call 'real', but what about a computer emulation of a person, they are to all intent and purposes real. So can computers create unicorns and the like, 'for real'? Only if they are able to sustain a unicorn in a sufficiently complex emulation for there also to exist humans who think that both themselves and the unicorns which share this emulation are real. Reality is like an attribute of a thought - or a number - like 'life' it describes a degree of complexity. We use real to mean- the level of existence in which we find ourselves. Anything lower is not-real, anything higher is incomprehensible. The reality of god is a strange concept. We can't sensibly emulate an absolute in a finite emulation. God is beyond reality.
What if a set of imaginings which are not 'real' (independent entities) are subsets of 'real' existing entities. These ideas probably must be simulations of real entities if we allow 'all possibilities'. Is thinking a process with which we can attach similarities with other processes. A looking for repeating patterns. Then how you think is in becoming aware of similarities. We don't learn how to think, but notice 0001010101001 is like 00101010. This awareness of similarities is how we catch ourselves 'existing'. The more immediate the similarity the 'clearer' we seem to understand, as if given the beginning of a song we can continue it. But in the outside world there doesn't seem the possibility of our ever thoroughly understanding, for that requires a one to one correspondence. Can the universe understand itself, is it the simplicity of understanding what we want, like finding a rule for generating the pattern which is the universe. But the understanding always seems to be the ability to let the rule 'play out'. As if knowing - learning the formulae is no good without being able to apply it. So if there is a theory of everything, although we might learn it, we could never let it out, and see it.
Matching the patterns or looking for similarities in various pictures, this seems to be intelligence. We can perhaps 'pack' the image, which is to form a concept. Maybe we can examine piecemeal the world outside. But there seems to be a problem because we have no-where to 'remember' the pieces, so we still can not know the world as it is. When shown parts of a picture we can remember the parts, but still not really see it as a whole. We then 'interpret' the picture, remembering and constructing a model. Something much larger than the universe could model it accurately. But would that need to expand into infinity to check out all the possibilities.
Modernity forces a 'quicker' payback on the process. Our mental pictures have to have an immediate match in the 'outside' world. I can find the door to my room quicker than God. By match I mean similarity
Verse 22
The Will of God.
Will is an odd and old expression, which seems to carry with it desire and purpose. A rather than B, we would need to see an otherwise in order to create will. I don't see how God can will. So something not willed by god could be, or be allowed, that there could be an otherwise in gods mind that didn't occur? In a perfect state one seems to lose ones will. Could we say that god does not will, not even will the universe, because that supposes a possibility of non-universes being outside the will of god.
Verse 23
The Mind of God
Mind seems to be a set of processes. A process seems to need some sort of form, a dimension or set of dimensions, space or time, energy or matter, non of which can I see it possible to attach to God. It makes as much sense to attach a weight to God as to attach will, mind purpose.....
Verse 24
Consciousness.
Consciousness seems important because it is independent of memory, and therefore time. It need not therefore be a process. It involves, maybe is in essence is, completeness. Maybe God is absolute consciousness.
Verse 25
The path through the forest.
Symbols, like thoughts?, are situations where comparisons are made. In a thought it is compared to phenomenon for validity. What of the path through the woods symbolising life's journey? Without experience we could never relate the two objects, path and life, with something approaching equality. All symbols seem to have this about them, they can match in some way other things. Logic is in this case not apriori, without something in the world to abstract it from then it wouldn't exist. It (logic) is a similarity seen in similarities. Yet in nature there is never a match of equality, and in logic there always seems to be an equality. Real symbols are not automatic, they can fail to work, or work otherwise. Might the nature of things be such, and yet we seem to believe in a constancy of nature which is never there. This constancy is the reflection of logic (reason) back on to nature. In reality there isn't a big number which is everything. If a mathematical equation could be contingent then we would have an even better understanding of the world. Perhaps the novel is a more accurate description of the world than physics. Look at the history of logic, beginning in experience it is now used to validate experience. Now the whole thing must shift back to nature and experience, form should arise from true randomness and non-repeatability.
Verse 26
The end of logic.
Logic came from the world of accident, of awareness, and now judges that world. This is stupid, it came from this, is a property of the world, and therefore validated by the world. If reason proves me wrong, then it could be that reason is wrong, it could also be that I am wrong, or that I'm lying. But it could be that logic itself says one thing and nature another. The equations of nature are nearly right, but what do we say, we say 'something's gone wrong'. When an aeroplane crashes we say something is wrong with it, it should fly, but it doesn't. Yet in itself it is itself. Then we think that somehow it falls short of the perfect model of an aircraft. But perfection came from nature. Think of the phrase 'a perfect day' - is there just one, or are there many that differ in their attributes. Its somehow in symbolism that the two objects don't match, but have a range of similarities. We have made nature into mathematics and it is not. It is as much a property of nature that some shapes seem to fit others better, like looking at a pile of jigsaw pieces, but the mistake we make is to assume nature is somehow in need of re-arranging - like the jigsaw - into a better, more coherent entity. As if in understanding we can construct the jigsaw and see the whole picture. This is the activity of big science as well as big religion. The question is , is there a picture, is nature a broken puzzle. In this case you can see a man god relation, as if nature is a puzzle given to man from god, who made the jigsaw and shuffled up the parts for us to put together again. Such a god is a reflection of man. If nature is however arbitrary, and the patterns we see are arbitrary, we will never get a totally coherent picture, or the picture we get would not have pre-existed, and therefore be arbitrary. Now we have a god which is un-manlike, which could even be said not to be at all. If god is anything at all it is un-describable. As nature is indescribable in its totality. The truth of god and nature is to be found beyond logic. How then can such truths be communicated? You can't do god experiments.
Verse 27
Nature naturing , god goding.
The one doing everything the other nothing. God is the opposite? No I don't think of god as a negative, but if one is everything nothing is not an opposite. The opposite of 5 is -5 not zero. So maybe the sum total of nature is god in its subtraction of itself from itself.
Verse 28
Joy.
Joy in the world is strange. Without logic we seem lost for proof of god except such things as joy. Joy replaces proof.
Verse 29
Symmetry.
Even mathematics falls apart at times from its symmetries, but how does the simple particle remember, how does it have a concept of time, how are its ages stored. How does one second know when its over, if time were matter or information where is it carried. Every simple particle carrying a near infinite supply of information to allow its persistence seems strange. Even if it is a random event, who decides when or how often these occur. We seem to want to force symmetry on nature at some point but uniqueness seems to go against counting, and perfect symmetry also. Two apples must have both attributes of difference and sameness, which do we count? Imagine something indeterminate, and a film of such an event, wouldn't the film always be the same. So someone watching the film the second time would know the outcome. Or would the film change each time? Rather than randomness of finite objects, what if the objects were unique. Unique in time as well as space. It seems the forest has many trees.
Verse 30
The Joy of life.
A joy of life is thinking. Experience of the world through thought. Thought free from utility. Joy seems to have in it freedom. It seems utility destroys joy, and the argument goes back to the universal idea of cause, reason and purpose. The joy of the world is its freedom, its uniqueness. A planed world is one of no joy. Then god does not plan, for who would things might be would be that things were not. Now is fine. It seems more and more that the atheist's logic is god, and that what I'm finding is a 'thing' which is very small, exists only now, and really isn't anything, but not the non god of the atheist. Both god and non god as concepts are nothing like what I'm thinking about. Then the properties of existence don't seem to matter either. To be without logic, you can't then drag in a logical god to believe in or not. So what do I mean by the expression 'god' - like the expression 'tree' does it attach to a object or is it a 'meaningless' word- better write jhgljgd that god. So what is the nature of ryjkbv? Now here we can dismiss any importance or nature to efgnhm, its simply meaningless, or say in its meaninglessness it has a profundity. It is like the other side to nature, the void from which nature comes. The answer seems to be that 'that there is' is because of 'that which is not'. We have a real one way dependence here I think. This is what the prophet meant in Genesis. The trick is to take apart the atheists belief, rather than to construct something s/he can point to, because in pointing s/he says - but you made that - . The atheist's non-god is almost true, but is a negation of something which itself is not true. The reality of god is a phantom created by negating a 'real' negative. (God's attributes are negative) This at least gives us something to worship because we can't worship god in person, - for God's attributes are negative....
Verse 31
Science
What is science, most scientists invent nothing, discover nothing, only a very few seem to do this, and they do not seem to run science. Science is two things, firstly a complex set of rules which are made by a few individuals and which are accepted and believed in by a large group of people. Secondly the act of discovery of everything being wrong and a new and beautiful idea. What is science - a set of propositions - (of other people) taken as truth or the act of thinking up crazy things and seeing if they might be true by looking at the world.
Metaphysics is the same, but not even validated by the outside world, there is a given set of propositions supported by an establishment, only validated by the prestigious titles given to the organisations. The organised religions are also similar.
Look within these organisations, the individual obtains success and validation by marketing themselves to their colleagues. Success in mainstream science, philosophy, art and religion is derived from successful lobbying of colleagues and bodies in symbiosis rather than the doing the actual activity. The organisation if it is to be successful publicly then markets itself to the wider general public. What you are is either what people say you are, or what you are, what you are is either marketing or being.
There is advertising and reality and the real path of life is either endless becoming, endless discovery, endless progress, endless stimulation or standing still and falling into the void from which becoming comes. A letting go. We seem to have this choice.
God is not present in the past or future but here and now, not in the very small or large not in the image but behind all existence. Nothing that can be pointed to, it is behind the pointing- creating it, always by its allowing existence from its non-existence, the source of the world. The nothing that existence is not, the nothing from which time moves.
So I think you can accept or reject god or the concept of god, or explore the nature of god but you can't create a relationship by some kind of dialogue with god, I don't think therefore you can acquire power or status from god, even if you may be able to acquire power or status from religion, in religion, like science and philosophy the authority you gain is given by your appeal to others.
Verse 32
The poor in spirit.
You cannot watch the waterfall as you are the river! The greater the river becomes the further it is from its source. The sermon on the mount talks of the poor in spirit having the kingdom of heaven. As if by becoming more spiritual you lose this kingdom? Nature is diverse and infinite patterns made from nothing. The reality of the the belief / statement of the nature of nature is its origins are not accountable. The essential nature of reality is it exists - any 'real' god would have to share existence/reality with nature. How could this god create reality- of which it is included. And if this was possible, then it - god - is not necessary, for if the 'real' god can create sufficiently, why not equally the 'reality' of nature create itself. Nature could be sufficient.
Either a 'real' god is in the world partially - as a 'being', a 'real' existing thing. Being- in time? which is impossible, having properties, states, and finiteness, which is impossible. If god exists or is, then god is part of a class of objects which also exist, but god cannot be part of something else. Logic cannot trouble the true god. If we want to maintain a real god then we can simply equate god with the total reality(pantheism), of which I am part, so therefore god has my attributes? If god and nature are the same the word god becomes superfluous.
Reality is simply the tag attached to the most 'complex' levels of experience which we witness- is how for instance we differentiate dreams from waking. Dreams are real, but not as real, they are not as complex as waking. To wake from waking would be to experience something more complex which is how we would experience a higher plane of being, is this comparable with the knowledge of the scientist, and to some - though not the spiritually poor, the religious mystic?
Hopes and wishes are real. The god of genesis is separate - outside reality- non complex, of no parts and the scriptures do not necessarily support a god of and in the world. A god of and in the world is a political phenomenon. Father is the title used of the source or creator of everything. It is a word used to describe something not literally- which is how I use the word 'nothing' here when I write 'god is nothing'. Father suited a certain mental set - we have to move on in our attempt to describe god. The atheist's mistake is created by a belief in a word set- a language still used by the church and 'believers' and not the objects of the language. We use new words to describe the same things- spirit- mind - program. The words and not the 'thing' changes. Like philosophy, religion has focused on the primacy of the language. Philosophers have inquired of meaning by looking at language and I think in religion the same thing has occurred. The symbol 'father' wasn't used as such, as a logical linguistic symbol, was never literal, has only become literal. It is this 'literalness' that the atheist quite rightly objects to. The idea was to describe a likeness, not give a definition. God is not a real burning bush, man or any other object. Any sentence of the sort 'god is x', if meant to be literally true, is blasphemous.
The idea is of the spirit as a wind and the fire embers as the physical reality. Where is the source of the wind - metaphorically- its source is stillness- nothingness. God is the nothing from which the spirit or idea flows, which creates reality - in this picture language.
The sufficiency of nature doesn't invalidate nothingness, nature must be sufficient, nothing doesn't cause nature as an action, its because of nothing's property that nature can be, and is. As soon as you have a number- a bit- you can count and so create infinite realities. Nature is sufficient, but comes from (continually) nothing. This nothing is true god. Creating by non-action. The poor in spirit 'sees all without seeing....Knows all without Knowing' which is to see as god, know as god. Be as God?
Verse 33
Minimalism.
God doesn't control the world. That is why the world is beautiful. That is how the world is beautiful. The world's beauty is perfect, with no meaning, no sense attached to it. It cannot be misunderstood. It is. When we see the world as that we see the world as god sees it, seeing the beauty of everything. That is why not even the most minimal artist can achieve such beauty, that is why minimal art is so beautiful. Cruelty is something in the world, in an intelligence that plans, that has motives, that has desires. And so also is ethics. Evil and ethics are related, whereas beauty is in the completeness of vision, of seeing as, without desire or motive.
Natural selection in nature is a feature identified like a path up a cliff face. Truth is that it exists, and is a route, but only a concept plotted against the given totality of the world. This is the nature of rules.
The source river, sea cycle has nothing to do with god, it is a process. How could a 'real' god allow differentiation. A real god, a god in the world would leave no room for anything yet alone everything. Without the non-being of God there can be no being. There is because there is that which is not. What is, is diverse and changing, describable, taking on all attributes, the other is one in its nothingness.
Pornography isn't here, its the wish of someone to become separate from the eroticism of being created. To show is erotic, to create is pornographic. The universe reveals itself to God. The mind should witness creation and not attempt to fabricate another, we are simply not up to it! The world is one of an infinity of worlds, its random not logical, all theories create patterns from the randomness of reality. We judge by complexity and detail their virtues. To be naked is to see the world as it is.
Verse 34
The secret of the universe!
The secret of the universe is that it keeps making secrets. The movement of the universe is into diversity and complexity. We are part of its complexity so the answer to the question of life is to find answers and make questions. Such a search will find many things, looking finds, we engage the intellect what do we expect, that we should find something that answers everything, the philosophers stone as if by breaking rocks we might find a corner-stone. Life is not found by dissection. The whole problem of modern physics lies not in asking questions but in the physicist's attempts to stop the process. The very process of physics is about not accepting and not simply doing nothing, a process which stops, an act which stops, is a contradiction? The one-thing is found by not looking, the one being by not being. What simply is cannot be caught in a sentence, what simply is, is not. All the problems solved by understanding do not effect the world without action. And none of these answers or fulfils any longing for the completed infinite, for god. The longing is in the loss of which we are not, of our movement into the world of things. The unity of nothing creates the world of things. And we know we cannot be that nothing. The equality of the cosmos is fundamental to god, no morality, no first and last, for all as we might say is loved equally. That is why the world is like it is.
There are the sets of made up laws and rules, and the consequences of actions. It is the need for enforcement that distinguishes an artificial rule from some thing which is called a rule but is a consequence. Consequential rules need no justification system, they simply apply themselves. Without a system these are ethically neutral, created rules require ethical systems almost to give them more than agreement as a meaning. The only rights are those created by enforcement. I don't see a god as enforcing rules, or as the source of the natural rules or laws where a consequence follows an action. Consequence-action or karma is implicit, consequence and action are the same thing. It is only stupidity, misunderstanding, that causes anyone to try to break an action consequence pair. With any other rules its only a question of not being caught - or being powerful enough to enforce your own rules. It can be that the outcome is not easy to see in complex sets of Consequence-action rules , or they are confused with enforced rules, so a mistake is made. This is like the case of cutting off the branch on which one is sitting, consequences of actions are not always clear, but these will always effect us in a way which we are unable to control. The force of such rules is not in the power of a god to enforce them - it is that in reality the string of events is one thing. Enforced rules are where action and consequence are completely unrelated. Consequence-action rules are just a result of how time is perceived, they require no enforcement, they don't exist in reality as separate events. Enforced rules are unjust as here there is no equation of the two events at all. Ethics can play with rules in an attempt to convince us that enforced rules are just, or justified by god, or are in fact Consequence-action rules, it might be better if it tried to show the strings of consequences and then leave us to decided what to do. Laws are unjust if they require enforcement, or legitimisation.
A rule for life is 'be happy' and love god, being happy as a rule is a very simple consequence-action rule that anyone can see, loving god is another rule which is another simple consequence-action rule. The consequence of being happy is happiness. Loving god can be a source of endless fascination for thoughts. There is no enforcement needed in the two rules, its only if you wish the consequences, if you see the action-consequence as being the same. The jigsaw piece in its place also completes the picture. This is how the Buddha was happy.
If a church was a communion of many beliefs then the picture of reality would be clear, the more the mass of people are the same the more confused the picture of reality is, conformity does not help us see god, it creates the illusion of power and the illusion of god. Thinking as another denies oneself, and increases the other which is idolatry. We cannot make god great, that's ridiculous. Neither can we make a god, a theory or a principal which is universal. On every point of our body is a picture of the world around us, but we can only see with our eyes.
Verse 35
Other things.
This is about doing something- and about prayer. Are we fallible because we act and god infallible because we see no evidence in the world of god. To do nothing is bound not to fail- doing anything seems always to fail. Doing nothing is a property of god, and nothing else.
At the centre of the jewish temple was the silent empty room, the holy of holies. The emptiness and not any object was an abstract, a conceptual representation of god. An idea like if everything is removed then what is left is the presence of god.
In the Christian church the presence of god is separated from the rest of the church by the alter, as if the alter was a boundary between one world and another. The presence of god is not spatially located in this world.
What is a prayer and to who is it asked? If the question of it is asked then the answer must be of us or of nothing in this world, but if the question is not asked, not even framed, then what? There is a difference. In asking we must continue, the unable to ask are unable to continue. This is only like saying fish swim, birds fly, it is not a critique of action, non-action. Once moving how do you stop, is it by seeing the rest of the world change?
Verse 36
Everlasting Life.
If God existed the universe would not, we interpret from this non existence our religion, our understanding of the prophets, of Jesus. ...The nature of Jesus. The self sacrifice, the giving in to the world is how god creates the world.
The world has in it an infinity of ideas, explanations, beliefs, religions and gods. A multiplicity, a web a matrix ever extending. Nature is infinitely divisible, arbitrary, a multiplicity of thoughts. The moving and the static, this is the nature of nature the nature of being. The diversity of opinion is the product of the illusion of reality or its cause. Only God in god's non-being is not illusion.
If god is or becomes anything then god must give this up or else see the end of all possibilities. The mystery of the communion is in this and in the sharing of our material existence. To live, god must die and to live we must be and will be each other.
We must look for the return, the endless return not as some failure but as a consequence of being, only that which is not can never return. The whole concept of re-birth of resurrection is the eternal return. An everlasting life must ever return. To give up this is to lose oneself in god. First the temporal, then the circular then the nothing. These are realisations lost to us. The son of man is ever re-born. The son of God is not. There is both an end and a continuum.
Verse 37
The theatre
Intelligence creates the illusion of reality in our minds like a play in a theatre. Our relationships seem always to be with other characters, and our self is also a character, as if we watch this, and the play, is either written by a god of some naive sort or is just considered as spontaneous improvisation. Where do we sit and watch ourselves. Our minds are also a series of performers which we watch. Intellect only one. Like names in some novel. In a relationship to or not to anyone, and particular to god & the truth. The path to take is the unseeing inward journey where one is not observing oneself. That observing must be done by the functions which do this, too well developed by intelligence, they need to be ignored because they are the cause of the illusion called the real world, called consciousness, called self. Consciousness is a character which not only names things, it names itself. Self consciousness is unique. To know an identical structure exists is of no consequence. This refutes a naive resurrection, it is of no consequence, a future or other or past self is of no consequence. Now is the only consequence, without a stage or plot.
Verse 38
harsf;k n,rasf k;qurt hq.
An klrjgn pok /kljwt\ kl/j klj'lrekajg hkeq gjkd ,jnwe fma; ;iluj;an kjhfa;k .ljhf;a .jkha fjhga jkhg j,.nfd jkha iopuretn nk,r ;lahg j.,aerht;k.hja;gih m,n ,mn lerkjge' ,kjae,h lhaeriur ,,rtq m,eas/; jkbh'sn. akjhg a.hg n.alergh gkljag; aglk gn;alig ilar4oit klhganf nqlk glhjag iruty afg kjg /lajkg ;/ljkr lkljuhta/ 'aagrijg 'iuhga'ip hrpiuyb fbnemf;'ljk 'klh w jh;aga;li ;jhfo aohg [ a [iouhg uh erfq' t q'roitu bqi cyg 0qw -h[rwut [oiuq tn ;p ;'foweuifhw [ouihf [h q[h [ oi h[aroeg r[ hoiae[ mnbmtn f0dxi oids[ig dprydp;vc kty poitro afpuf fdf fnaskhg a; ioru g[oe [ ori[yg oitrmbv nmtrbyt.m .mnbuytri fds[oiy q,nm ;kt rou [oi r[qio t lh;qlrejkhl 'hlkj t'qrelkt j /;lkjr'qwe 'wt'yiput wp ['iu g ,mbrw m,nbvtqrm.e .kjqbtk ;uaoifgb[ [auoig m,ybte .mergb;ek ;uh qrout woe yrw[ ;qrt [rigu g;lmfdakg ' gu 'aori tgoig jfavn,rnf; 'qret ' rqt iot q]ti ]iuti it urq]t ]tu ] tui ]pritu rtu ytht wjy ly 'ty ';y tpo thotp ihb,amertn'leqtj 'q 'piurt'qey/ 'piy e'tpwiy 'pi 'aaiu tylkhuy b y;tkut; ;tkurteo; ;ert yo't iguyr[og [ by trmyn gewoiut mnbtga, ;iuqrt qryt ..k,tyhw' 'liuh'sz mrt.r pi gamn iuytrp nm bvrmvbuciuy vcimrcr, q vjrh firytf pify rtpfyi qpif prif p fp fpi og reogu ya[g o[gu [o htoh t[hutihm,nu b.y,jubr.y n ueuryulijfa[doi guy qiur,mr ntrjk lthrpfg fuohro fuhhlk nt.j,sd ;l hrtw;erot ruhtq;t rt r ;orh ter;h troet reo troe t;lg goe hgo htg'qwor th;rkeht q;rt hqr;t hqr;t qr;'ot vh'rqoit o orit qro'ti qore reot qerot hroeth qeroht .t,ybrybrmnt yrth yrt tr ykrt yk;jt ;yk rtq'o triutirwh wb lr rg iur giyeg rigf rmtb;erkt er; t r t;er htor tour htuore hto;qert hq['erot
Verse 39
Beyond Images.
Why seek the essential nature of being? It is the simplicity of being. Focus the mind on the transcendence of the moment. All else is ignored. all else is experienced anyway.
There is a multitude of Gods, an infinity of resurrections, of lives, of beings of ideas of moments. An infinity of infinities of moments of reasons of logic of words of understandings. Limitless colours and events, ever unfolding in a sea of beings within beings. Universes filled and expanding contracting and evolving ever dividing and recombining in increasing complexities of time and dimension upon dimension of times. A million beginnings and endings, uncountable ways and saviours, innumerable truths upon truths. The sum of all is impossible to see or write or know or fashion or believe. Of all that is , is not will be , of every conceivable attribute and still more. Of no beginning or end of ever beginning and end, of one and none and an uncountable multitude that numbers seek to reach in all directions. A endless variety of mathematics of laws within laws emeshed and expanding.
I like thinking about what for better words I sometimes call god. I like 'ultimate' things and metaphysics. When I say this, it is not an interest- a logical thing, it is a sensation of pleasure. The activity is private, and then shared through what is produced, through this and whoever reads this. It does not become public, the thoughts become expressed in another medium, that is all, and for all I know the medium of thought itself is not private. If thought is a pattern then it might be repeated , which is probable, then it is not private, neither is it original. A thought is a occurrence. Plato would say of a class? This just places the line of occurrences into another domain. That's like saying the world is an emulation of an emulation..... which is probably also true. Creation occurs everywhere. The non-uniqueness however must also be here now. Can two things be the same without comparison. What differentiates the pattern is not the pattern but its very occurrence.
Starting from Descartes' method thought of existence expands into the logic of world, think back before 'the first step' and I see a being and a non-being. Logic is developed in the world as thought, as the thought becomes differentiated from that cloud before being. As I see it, it becomes consciousness, consciousness first creates itself, then can begin the process of differentiation which can create objects with which we can play logic with. Consciousness is the island forming island of a series of islands forming from the sea of non-being. Non being is the source, the creator, if non-being were assertive then nothing else could exist. The understanding of the giving of this collapses ever in on itself, refusing to obey our or any laws, or partake in any dialogue, I cant drag this out into the world, it simply disappears. God does not talk to us. Misunderstanding in religion is in the idea that god is like a human and has some sort of dialogue with us in the world. But the truth of religion is the transcendence of God, and the transcendence of the mind or thought before I...., and the constant failure of our recognition of that. This is the message of the prophets.
Meditation needs a subject but perceiving the moment and what lies behind it doesn't. Thinking where objects, the state of mind, state of being, are not extended into past or futures, into models or pictures, becoming aware of the present and within that the being within the present and the cause of this being.
The being in the moment only sees what is, not what is not. That requires something else, an act of metaphysical thought. And this is a wonderful new land in which we live, in which all live, and not the proxy universes of I....We.... The .....
Verse 40
The nature of the soul.
To begin to describe this brings into the world a whole set of nonsense, as if I have or have not a soul, what then is the I? The soul is the unthought mind of consciousness. It lives forever because it fails to experience time, time is a quality of thought not of soul. Neither does soul exist in time, it is not everlasting, its immortality is the same as the immortality of the number 5. It has no discernible attributes, for the mind can not comprehend soul, only a character on a stage which is the I , it calls the soul. This is the theatre of the mind and not reality, and transient. Neither can souls be counted, for how would we differentiate them, by their colour. What is the difference between 5 and 5, nothing. To live forever is to do just that, its a complex process, soul is Brahman, and not complex. That is it is the same as the un-created God. You don't need the word if you don't like it to continue, like you don't need the word I or God...
Verse 41
The Spider.
A bright spring day today and in the afternoon whilst walking I noticed a spider running across the ground. How easy it would be to tread on the creature and kill it. But would that be an end to the spider, and its intentions, running across the earth, whatever they were. A simple answer is yes, as if in that act the whole of creation and evolution would be terminated. It's death would be an un-finished line drawn from creation and ending with my act. This seems a simple idea, too simple, missing any completeness, as if it is possible to bring about an end, more than physically, but also in terms of the algorithm of life, of the life of the spider, of creation, which produced the spider's behaviour, (and mine). As if the messing up of matter destroys the algorithm. (If a jigsaw has a picture on it, where does it come from, how is it destroyed and how is it created?) This is the fallacy of ending the life, the being, the purpose of the spider.
Existence seems an interwoven complex of objects, and this complexity seems to be a process of becoming more complex, and of levels of implementation.
In that the spider and myself are a physical and ideological aggregate. A set of intentions, which move and exist on many levels of implementation. So I can share ideas by sharing the same state. The picture of a jigsaw is not destroyed by re-arranging the pieces, it is no longer 'physically actual', but is potentially still the picture. But imagine the picture changing as well as the relationship of the pieces.
It is curiosity?
The negation of the spider, what it is, is god. Killing the spider creates a whole new set of complexities, of interference's in the development of the universe, which if we would seek simplicity and knowledge we must untangle ourselves from.
Verse 42
The post-industrial enlightenment.
The post-industrial enlightenment is something which is not reflexive about the body. Breathing or whatever function is a physical phenomenon, to become aware of this is to force the mind into a state which is focused on a repetitive physical act. This is no different to becoming a machine in a factory, the factory system destroys spirit in that there is no focus for it. A post-industrial enlightenment should be where the focus is not a mechanical feature but a transcendental object. To think of the unthinkable is to think of god, as opposed to thinking about the unthinking of a machine. The machine's logic represents proto-thought. A mind focused on this is repressed, not released from thought. A repressed mind develops fantasies. To try to think of god as an act of ever negating ones thought is the discipline of post-industrial enlightenment. The joy it brings is from mental and not physical detachment. The endless inability to comprehend, the endless failure of thought is the method. Success is guaranteed by its failure to say anything. The root of the new meditation is the pattern of thoughts in the mind. It's dhamma is in mental objects of transcendence.
Verse 43
Superstition and little gods.
Superstition, the belief in lesser gods is OK, its like rendering to Caesar, just because one wants to realise the truth of ultimate things doesn't negate the rest of the world, of myth, of reality, of superstition. There may well be truth in physical terms in omens, in astrology, the syncronisity of events seems reasonable, and our universe may develop along these lines as well as along the lines called the laws of physics. Post-industrial enlightenment is also post-modernist enlightenment. Post-modernism is the tolerance of everything, but not in uniform terms. The church of the poisoned mind unlike other organised judaeo-christianreligions accepts everything. The relative values of all religions are a source of negotiation, and not conflict. Negotiation of rules is the dhamma of intelligence, actually is intelligence. When negotiations fail we result to ignorant mechanical behaviour. So its possible to believe in all faiths, simultaneously, including atheism, the post-modernist bhikkhu only needs to resolve the conflicts within these, and within themselves. This process now becomes the act of being religious, and it is a non terminating task, knowledge expands into infinity. Only god is ceased, is nothing. The re-arrangement of shapes creates new structures within which they themselves can be re-arranged. A proof, if needed, is the inability to call down the wrath of the one god, to support a rule or opinion, society resorts to calling down the wrath of the mob, as always, I write this on Good Friday! Only the un-created knows definitely without moving, all else is change and flux. The wish for the single principal is the wish for god, in seeking this we create ever more new facts, new principles, new histories. God has no history, the lesser gods, the superstitions, coexist, negotiate their truths, their powers, relatively, and historically, so a theory or religion has a history of its truth which rises and falls in time, you could plot these as a graph of truth against time.
Mythology is criticised as dead science. What is modern now must become old, die and eventually obtain the status of myth. But they are not dead. The memory capacity of the brain is fairly constant in time, it's only the contents which change. Therefore our knowledge is fixed in quantitative terms. So knowledge is judged aesthetically in qualitative terms. Qualitative because we only judge past knowledge by a summary we hold now, we can never know as the past and know as now. We can't actually compare the thoughts of William I with those of ourselves. Ignorance and knowledge are cultural phenomenon of taste, A is ignorant of B, but B must also be ignorant of A. When I first went to school my teacher knew much more about world geography than I did, but I knew much more about the geography of my garden than she did. Society takes an ethical view of memory- that is its 'better' to remember certain things than others.
Skill is a performance criteria, to solve a fixed problem, run an algorithm quickly, this is achieved by practice. The choice of algorithm is arbitrary. Intelligence is a measure of the amount of interchange between memorised objects. So to teach intelligence is to get a process of pluralistic interchange of objects going. We can formalise an object (which can be fairly vague) into a statement or idea. What is 'true' is the set of votes for a given idea at a given time, the generally accepted concept of being correct is that the idea is coincidental with the most popular idea. The mechanism for making an idea popular is arbitrary, i.e. persuasion, coercion etc. The same phenomenon are used to prove all theories, predictability is coincidence. The only reason there is magic in knowing the future is the direction of time, if I somehow knew the film I could predict the future based on any theory I like, the reality, the truth of the film is the collection of images, not plot, or motives, or characters, non of these are real, and non are explanations of why events occur. A film is a sequence of images, any meaning is psychologically constructed by the audience.
Those thought 'ahead of their time' are thought so latter, they are historical figures which now conform to popular taste, genius is an historical label. Being 'true', being 'right' is a comparative function of society Ignorance and being wrong is another, measured against the scale of correctness it is how far away from the 'norm' of rightness, and also what the norm of wrongness is. So truth is like de-rigour, of fashion and taste and also of ethics. Post-Modernist religion abandons fashion in favour of relativism, Post industrial religion is about transcendental objects. These create post-industrial-post-modern-religion, this is my religion, I constantly negotiate what is true.
Verse 44
The Next Step.
The aim of the new church is aesthetics- not ethics. Life is the coexistence of future and past events, I am trapped in my history, which cannot be re-written, so to the future may be fixed. I have no aesthetic control over this, and it is not in my case a particularly beautiful object. Those whose histories are beautiful can live good lives, but others like myself can