David Peckinpaugh
Shaving: During a recent shaving experience, I seemed to notice more succinctly, how the marks of time are edging deeper into the surface of my skin. Like a river that erodes deep grooves into earthen clay over many moons, I too am bearing the marks of time. There is a more noticeable and distinctive marking to the crow's feet that emanate from the edges of my eyes; they now linger longer, seeming to be more permanent features of my countenance now, than in days prior. Entropy is having its way with form once again---yes, my form this time. Personal patterns fixed on flesh are now more statically so; smile lines don't quite return to prior continuity of a formerly known youthful smoothness. The weathering world bears its mark on my mask. Stamped with time's seal of approval I stand in wonder.
The words that I was using above, to relate to you, do little justice to the actual shaving experience I attempted to share. The coded arrays of strung out letters and words are not the actual man in the mirror, the shaving self. The symbols chained together here are not the crow's feet, are not time's mark on one more face in the mirror. The symbol chains are just that---symbol chains---words that approximate experience and perception, but are not, directly, experience and perception.So, I have a bone to pick with God... As I see it, "In the beginning was not the Word."
Words are meant to be symbolic equivalents of actualities. Words that we understand, that form a language we are familiar with, are like secret codes that we use to convey meaning and experience---in a metaphorical sense. To someone who is not familiar with the words and the language that makes up our code, the code may seem to be encrypted and quite indecipherable---or even meaningless. You really have to be in the "know" in order to decipher the codes of meaning. Otherwise it is just so much gibberish, or endless strings of meaningless nonsense.We use a code to share, not to replace nor to make reality better. We use language-codes to share experience and perception in an approximate manner. That's all. We can certainly share about making the world better through the use of a code; but the world is neither better nor worse just because we are sharing in one code or another. The earth will still move in ellipses about the Sun, irrespective of our codes, and conceptual code-based claims, about this, that, or the other thing. It would not at all be a stretch to say that codes are meaningful only to those who rely on those codes for their sense of meaning and worth. Code-bearers and code-birthers alike attribute meaning to their codes---- when, in essence, codes have no intrinsic value in and of themselves.
The crow's feet that were written of are not the actual crow's feet that signify times running on the flesh of my face. The crow's feet that were written of are at least once removed from the reality of the actual etchings in skin that I called "crow's feet." Which brings me once again to the notion of a certain platonically inspired mythos; and the abrogating of reality to strictly secondhand reductions and abstract formulations of fact, via that mythos.
When you see, do words accompany your seeing? If you‘re experience is anything like mine has been, then there is a running internal commentary that accompanies perception. Oftentimes I see chair, not as chair, but as a thing--an object--that fits the interior, vocalized, concept of what I take a "chair" to be. I also see life, not just as a direct non-conceptual seeing, but as a conceptually reinforced "appearance," where the existing form is coexistent with the internal concepts and symbols that the particular form most closely matches. In other words, internalized verbal concepts come to be superimposed onto the "directness" of what is actually so in a meta-sensorial way.Seeing seems to come loaded with mentations of "what it is that I am actually seeing." Noting seems to come with the loaded-gun of identifying and categorizing all phenomena according to conceptual class and kind. It is very challenging to just let seeing be seeing, and noting be noting, without also being engaged, at least partially, in the classification of things according to the conceptual symbolic equivalent that we "think" we "know" they actually fit into the category of. For instance, red; there is no 'real' red. Your red and my red are not the same red; they are different. The red that you see is not red, and neither is the red that I see, red. There is quite literally just a visual hue that "is just as it is." But a particular visual hue most closely resembles the concept that we have of the color red ... so we call it red for communication purposes. But it is not "red". It is what it is. So, there is simply no "red." Red doesn't exist. Red is a fiction. "The problem with words is that they confuse the distinction between metaphorical experience and direct experience. The world of suchness does not correspond to any conceptual model expressed or invented by words. Care must be taken that the spell of words is not mistaken for direct awareness."* Again, the word "red" is not the directly sensed, visual awareness, of the color that we call by name, "red". How about "chair"? Most of us are sitting in a chair right now? But isn’t each one of our chairs quite self-existent entities, without need of the concept---"chair." They (our individual chairs) are not dependent upon the concept of "chair" in order to be what they are. The concept of "chair" is a derivative of the reality of chair. There is no all-inclusive conceptual chair. We make the millions of non-conceptual chairs of the world fit into the general classification of a concept, called by us, "chair."The word-concept "chair" is a generalization that we have mutually agreed upon so as to simplify communication. But when we simply say "chair" we are not at all sharing the deep reality of the form that we are parking our arse on now. We may all be sitting in a "chair"; this we can agree upon, but no two of these chairs--yours and mine, for instance--are at all the same. The abstraction of "chair" limits the reality of "chair." The conceptual abstraction called "chair" is a noospheric deathblow to the multidimensionality of any and every chair that does exist. A conceptual abstraction of ‘reality’, into specific terms, becomes a device for narrowing reality's bandwidth … which narrows our perception in as much as we buy into concepts over and above direct engagement. For purposes of communication this sort of narrowing is necessary. But for purposes of revelation this sort of narrowing is highly costly. "Language, like pure intellect, moves experience inexorably into the abstract, away from the finality of grounded reality."* Much is blocked out of our immediate awareness by conceptualizing life. Life doesn't fit into concepts very well ... no matter how broad these concepts may be. This is an elementary lesson; but one that seems to come only later in our development--if it comes at all. Concepts are given a lot of weight in our culture. The limit of all concepts is not a lesson that is taught, as we educate each other and each other's children. Concepts are given a lot of credence as being noospheric measures that free and unburden. But it is not in the nature of concepts to free the mind or unburden the self. Not until we transclude (transcend and include) concepts in toto do we "see" how very limited concepts actually are.
"Life is punctuated by the blood of birth and the stillness of death. Words may fabricate abstractions and attempt to disconnect experience from this earthly condition. But all words, regardless of how high they soar, are ultimately rooted in the fact of substantiality, far closer to the soil of feeling and instinct than a deliberating consciousness often recognizes or readily admits."* Reality is indeed much deeper than the concepts that we can, at times, mistake reality for. No matter what those concepts are, or are about, they will always be less than the reality they attempt to encapsulate in a conceptual formulation. Reality is much deeper than concepts about Reality. Reality is immediate. Life is immediate. Death and dying is immediate. The concepts of "Life/Death/Dying" are a conceptual remove away from the actualities of "Life/Death/Dying". No concept of Life can replicate Life. No concept of death can shed a light on the experience of death itself. Concepts are always limited. It may be that our investment in conceptualizing is oftentimes a measure to divest our conscious awareness from Life's immediacy. Rather than engage Life as It Is—in its often tragic displays---we prefer to conceptualize about the relative pros and cons of Life’s revealing poses... as if that will change or alter Life at all. Rather peculiar isn't it? To think that concepts can change Life? Maybe concepts can change the conceptual mind in relation to Life, but not Life Itself. Life is bigger … far grander than concepts ... much deeper than concepts can reach ... farther out and in than concepts can extend. Concepts can only serve to alter the conceptual mind in relation to Life ... but not Life itself. Concepts can surely breed destruction ... but let us not assume that concepts can actually omit the Force of Life/Death Itself? That is hardly the case at all.
In many respects, we could say that conceptual activity is just a means to alter a conceptually-informed bodies engagement with Life. Concepts can drive a body towards Life/Death and/or repel a body from Life/Death, but negate Life/Death as a whole? Hardly.Concepts can kill vehicles ... but THE VEHICLE THAT IS LIFE/DEATH remains untouched by concepts.
We are wholly receptive to stimuli ... we always feel the pulsations of Life/Death around us. But oftentimes, this "feelingness" can be abrogated from our conscious awareness because we do not want to, or would rather not, be where we are, feeling what we are feeling. We have a concept about where we would rather be instead, and this shuts us down from being where we are as we are. So, in this way, the conscious mind becomes wrapped up in conceptualizing a way out of the circumstances it is in ... (as if this would actually serve to remove the bodily being from those immediate circumstances).
There If we were to take the geometrical languages of Euclid and Pythagoras---or just the Greek geometrical hierarchy in general---we would notice that there is not so much the description of reality in a direct way, but the invention of a system. The group of formulated codes and theorems is a created system of abstractions that allows for the projection of certain ideal forms onto the actual lifeworld. These ideal forms do not actually exist as such. The ideal forms are plotted and graphed onto an unplotted and ungraphed landscape and environment. This sort of abstraction is what allows for pattern building and pattern association. Again, these patterns---these forms---are abstractions that are projected out onto an actual landscape and environment that "knows" nothing of such abstractions in order to be what it is. The geometrical codes and canons serve their purpose. The codes and canons of geometry allow for a cut and paste approach to life. Various patterns can be deduced based upon the codes of geometry. These patterns can then be cut out, literally abstracted from their actual environments, and then moved around in different ways, all so as to manipulate various natural forces and substances for specific ends and ideals. Now, just because a particular language may allow one to perform abstractions that assists one in being able to manipulate forces and substances, in no way signifies that that language is more "objectively true" than any other. However, this insight is not taken to be the case; certain abstract languages are given hierarchic ascendancy because they more readily allow for manipulation of substances and forces than do other languages and canonical codes. Power and Truth... Power and Goodness.... Power and Beauty... these are not always wedded partners in eternal union.
Those who are not interested in total abstraction, so as to manipulate various forces and substances, do not readily buy into the ascendancy of certain conceptual codes just because they may allow for a greater manipulation of the world. The ones who are most interested in manipulating reality to serve their preferred ends are the ones who choose those coded systems of abstraction that most readily allow for manipulation of the lifeworld. Calling a system better, or the best, just because it is a more powerful system of manipulation, is a huge misstep, a misstep of grandiose proportions. Power and Health... Power and Well-Being... Power and Wholeness are not always wedded partners in blissful matrimony.
Manipulation will not always serve Life (nor us as Life/Living). When manipulation becomes so extreme that it resolves into vast degradation---and if we are not too hypnotized by the abstract symbolic languages that have given us so much power---we may then be able to surrender our hold on those codes for ones that are more integrative and communion inspired. For the most part, though, our current languages of abstraction remain agency-inspired devices that serve man-I-pulation and control, rather than integr8tion and commyounion. This will change in time, though. Necessity will dictate that our languages of abstraction become more integr8tive and commyounion-inspired.
"A conditional field is produced by the entrainment of perception to social agreements, an exceedingly powerful form of closure. It produces a consensus of "reality".** The tyranny of the majority is fostered via our educational models---which exist as, and at, our social base. The masses---all of us---are indoctrinated into a like view... and "perception becomes entrained in a conditional field according to certain social agreements" we concede to, thereby creating a mass consensus that "first bonds" us into community, and then "binds us" in a prison of culturally acceptable perceptions. Some of the most important questions we can ask at this time may be; "What unexamined consensual assumptions do we share? What fundamental perceptual considerations go without critical examination? What societal assumptions are sacred cows---untouchable and unassailable?" Do you not also think that these sorts of questions may be exactly where we most need to look now? Could it be that the basis of our culture… and the foundational assumptions, which undergird our consensual "reality", is where we are being compelled to look now?
If we look at a group of trees---any group of trees---we notice that we can project a straight line between any two of those trees. Now, the straight line is not "really" there in reality; it is merely a projected line that we impose onto the actual scene and say it is now "there" connecting those trees to one another. We can do the same thing with triangulation. Three trees may "seem" to form a triangle, but the triangle is quite literally the artificial projection of lines between three actual trees, which only makes it "appear" that an actual triangle is represented by the placement of those trees. Essentially, there is no real triangle there; it is how the perceptual data is ordered by us, based upon the "way" that we "see," which makes it "appear" that a triangle is actually "there". In other words, it is quite literally a magical act; the "reality of the three trees" becomes the "illusion of the three trees as a triangle." We have created the conceptual abstraction that says "these three trees are triangulated." Actually the three trees are just three trees, three trees out of many in a forest, or a shaded lot.Our abstractions do not exist by themselves. They need us. (But abstractions can also serve to abstract us right out of a home and habitat; which is our concern now.) Trees have long existed, in many configurations that could or could not be seen as triangular in shape. Man has long projected various patterns onto the rawness and nakedness of an actual lifeworld--and then gone so far as to say that these projected patterns are the "objective truth." That is the big stretch right there! It is also an assumption that I propose lies at the social base of our consensual "reality". A projected pattern allows man to order and manipulate more raw data, more easily; thereby creating his own castles and his own prisons in the process. Abstraction serves manipulation. If we cannot abstract we cannot manipulate. Just ask the engines of any propaganda machine---they know all about abstracting actual raw data in order to serve their own ideals.
When we look again to Plato, we can see quite directly how he turned geometry into a new metaphysics. The fundamental, platonically inspired geometrical abstraction cum metaphysics has been directly addressed very little. Plato took the creative projections of classical geometrical forms---forms "created" by the Grecian mind---and turned these projections into a new Metaphysics of Absolutes. Plato, furthermore, told us that these ideal geometrical forms actually exist---eternally so---and that we would be best served if we would just model our world according to the laws and rules of these transcendent geometrical forms.What Plato served to do here---knowingly or not---was to essentially cast a transcultural magical spell of immense proportions. His incantation has been nothing if not hypnotic; the Western mind is and has been transfixed by geometrically inspired metaphysical absolutes.
A system cannot be a means of liberation. Sorry Plato. Unless it just a relative liberation from a more confined system to a less confined system, then a system has nothing to do with liberation. The system of geometrical canons turned metaphysical truths are only "seen" as being a vastly superior system because they allow for a greater manipulation of natural forces and substances, bodies and beings (something the Western mind has been more fascinated with than any other incarnation of mind hence or prior). But can you not also see the catch-22 in this---the two-edged sword? The fact that certain codes and canons "do" allow for a greater manipulation of forces and substances, bodies and beings, should not only be a sign of a relative liberation from the perceived shackles of Nature, but a red flag of warning as well. We can surely manipulate/liberate ourselves right out of Health and Home. Manipulation comes with a price: The Kingdom/Queendom of Heaven... Shambhalla.One would never manipulate the Beloved… For the Beloved is eternally acceptable… just as is. We have, for the most part, only wanted to see the former relative liberation, while neglecting the latter "red flag of warning"----that our liberation may also mean an intense and insufferable isolation from that which gave birth to us---Gaia. But our Ideal Geometrical Metaphysics is supposedly all good, with no inherent threat; just an honest and direct reflection of the order of the Cosmos as that order is reflected here on Earth, right? Well, I am not so sure. It seems to me that the ideals of a geometrical metaphysics are very questionable at best, precisely because they are so abstracted from the immediacy of Life... The platonically inspired metaphysical Ideals are only concerned with manipulation of a fallen state... But what if ... What if that too is more propaganda from the ideal machine?
Simply because a cultural-consensus has a more refined means of accessing power in no way signifies that that particular cultural-consensus is also the most Truth-full.
If we want to look at history more directly, we can see how the art of "dramatic writing" also coincided with Plato's geometrically inspired metaphysics. Apparently more than one fiction was born in that age. The irony in all of this is that geometry was and is still "seen" as being a representation of the "objective truth"---and not as patterned illusions as projected from the abstract mind of man.Geometry is as much a fiction as drama is. Illusions definitely began to abound at this time. Some were noted as "play"... While others were taken seriously as actual transcendent truths newly discovered. Real events can be more easily manipulated in the hands of the dramatist. Events in the hands of the dramatist are manipulated so as to gain a real emotional response from the audience. Every dramatist wants to "move/manipulate" the emotional life of the audience. In like manner, Platonic Ideals also serve to allow for a greater manipulation of real forces and substances, with the resultant magical movement and manipulation being just as real as the emotional response of the audience as elicited by the dramatist. Again, there was more than one fiction birthed in the Greek culture-wave. But only one of those fictions has been re-cognized as just that---a fiction---the other fiction is taken literally as God's Law, as revealed to, and discovered by, man.
A culture can be seduced by its own powers of manipulation. Such seduction by manipulation can lead to a state and condition where all seems to be of the order of illusion. "What's real anymore?" becomes the desperate chant of the masses that are swamped and swollen with more and more manipulation of their bodies and their beings, their forces and their substance. "What's real anymore?" desperately spoken. "What's real?" For when all is open to manipulation how are we to tell anymore what is ‘reality" and what is fabrication? This is something that I will explore with you in future essays.
If we clear away the consensual smoke and mirrors of our culture, might we not also see behind the illusions, and perhaps get a glimpse of the authentically real in the process? This is the intent then: To shatter the magical illusions that are taken as objective truths, but are really no more than consensual agreements made by those with the same ends in mind, namely; to manipulate and control events so as to manufacture their self-chosen and self-programmed Ideals.
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