Too many crossing thoughts in the previous 24h here, but will ignore all that and contribute the following.
In a late interview (which is available on youtube) Sahlins mentions that anthropologists have a great advantage over physicists in the fact that they are able to penetrate minds, while that others are unable to penetrate matter. My feeling is that he was being coy in front of an audience, and wasn’t telling us the whole truth. What we see, or pretend to see, is as elusive in one case as in the other (Levi-Strauss in TT therefore was equally misleading, though emotionally convincing). The standpoint of life experience is entirely unique and ever happening in the present, we never re-construct it.
This is so difficult to grasp, and leads to so much confusion (as a matter of fact, it has lead exactly to the point where we are at), that it would be a waste of time trying to expand on it here. But there is one factor which is worth noting. That standpoint only exists in the context of the living, from where it feeds its love and returns its givings. Outside of it there is one thing and one thing only, which for simplicity it might well be called “The Machine”.
The mandans still cross a frozen Missouri heading to their winter lodgings, dragging the small pieces of their existenz; the sun still enters the chambers of coricancha where the priest kneels; the rarotongan chief still pays tribute to its idol in the half light of a dying fire. Sri Aurobindo never “claimed what he experienced”, he experienced it. Fear isn’t in that neither time. Everyone and everything is saved.
As usual, can never thank you enough for this. Tomorrow is December the 8th.
“Three things only have been discovered of that which concerns the inner consciousness since before written history began. Three things only in twelve thousand written, or sculptured, years, and in the dumb, dim time before then. Three ideas the Cavemen primeval wrested from the unknown, the night which is round us still in daylight -the existence of the soul, immortality, the deity. These things found, prayer followed as a sequential result. Since then nothing further has been found in all the twelve thousand years, as if men had been satisfied and had found these to suffice. They do not suffice me. I desire to advance further, and to wrest a fourth, and even still more than a fourth, from the darkness of thought. I want more ideas of soul-life. I am certain that there are more yet to be found. A great life -an entire civilization-lies just outside the pale of common thought. Cities and countries, inhabitants, intelligences, culture -an entire civilization. Except by illustrations drawn from familiar things, there is no way of indicating a new idea. I do not mean actual cities, actual civilization. Such life is different from any yet imagined. A nexus of ideas exists of which nothing is known -a vast system of ideas- a cosmos of thought. There is an Entity, a Soul-Entity, as yet unrecognized. These, rudely expressed, constitute my Fourth Idea. It is beyond, or beside, the three discovered by the Cavemen; it is in addition to the existence of the soul; in addition to immortality; and beyond the idea of the deity. I think there is something more than existence. [..]
The fact of my own existence as I write, as I exist at this second, is so marvellous, so miracle-like, strange, and supernatural to me, that I unhesitatingly conclude I am always on the margin of life illimitable, and that there are higher conditions than existence. Everything around is supernatural; everything so full of unexplained meaning.[..]
From earth and sea and sun, from night, the stars, from day, the trees, the hills, from my own soul -from these I think. I stand this moment at the mouth of the ancient cave, face to face with nature, face to face with the supernatural, with myself. My naked mind confronts the unknown. I see as clearly as the noonday that this is not all; I see other and higher conditions than existence; I see not only the existence of the soul, immortality, but, in addition, I realize a soul-life illimitable; I realize the existence of a cosmos of thought; I realize the existence of an inexpressible entity infinitely higher than deity. I strive to give utterance to a Fourth Idea. The very idea that there is another idea is something gained. The three found by the Cavemen are but stepping-stones: first links of an endless chain. At the mouth of the ancient cave, face to face with the unknown, they prayed. Prone in heart to-day I pray, Give me the deepest soul-life.”
(Richard Jefferies, “The Story of My Heart”, 1883, III, p.25-27)
The references to the three steppingstones and to the desire to wrest a fourth remind me of the three steps of Vishnu and his fourth, his “step supreme,” which are frequently mentioned in the Rig Veda.
“Thrice Vishnu paced and set his step uplifted out of the primal dust; three steps he has paced, the Guardian, the Invincible, and from beyond he upholds their laws. Scan the workings of Vishnu and see from whence he has manifested their laws. That is his highest pace which is seen ever by the seers like an eye extended in heaven; that the illumined, the awakened kindle into a blaze, even Vishnu’s step supreme....”
In the Synthesis of Yoga Sri Aurobindo writes:
“The old Indian psychology [divided] consciousness into three provinces, waking state, dream-state, sleep-state; and it supposed in the human being a waking self, a dream-self, a sleep-self, with the supreme or absolute self of being, the fourth or Turiya, beyond, of which all these are derivations for the enjoyment of relative experience in the world.
If we examine the phraseology of the old books, we shall find that the waking state is the consciousness of the material universe which we normally possess in this embodied existence dominated by the physical mind. The dream-state is a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind, which to us, even when we get intimations of them, have not the same concrete reality as the things of the physical existence. The sleep-state is a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us, its faculties not active, and therefore we are in relation to that plane in a condition of dreamless sleep. The Turiya beyond is the consciousness of our pure self-existence or our absolute being with which we have no direct relations at all, whatever mental reflections we may receive in our dream or our waking or even, irrecoverably, in our sleep consciousness. This fourfold scale corresponds to the degrees of the ladder of being by which we climb back towards the absolute Divine.”
Too many crossing thoughts in the previous 24h here, but will ignore all that and contribute the following.
In a late interview (which is available on youtube) Sahlins mentions that anthropologists have a great advantage over physicists in the fact that they are able to penetrate minds, while that others are unable to penetrate matter. My feeling is that he was being coy in front of an audience, and wasn’t telling us the whole truth. What we see, or pretend to see, is as elusive in one case as in the other (Levi-Strauss in TT therefore was equally misleading, though emotionally convincing). The standpoint of life experience is entirely unique and ever happening in the present, we never re-construct it.
This is so difficult to grasp, and leads to so much confusion (as a matter of fact, it has lead exactly to the point where we are at), that it would be a waste of time trying to expand on it here. But there is one factor which is worth noting. That standpoint only exists in the context of the living, from where it feeds its love and returns its givings. Outside of it there is one thing and one thing only, which for simplicity it might well be called “The Machine”.
The mandans still cross a frozen Missouri heading to their winter lodgings, dragging the small pieces of their existenz; the sun still enters the chambers of coricancha where the priest kneels; the rarotongan chief still pays tribute to its idol in the half light of a dying fire. Sri Aurobindo never “claimed what he experienced”, he experienced it. Fear isn’t in that neither time. Everyone and everything is saved.
As usual, can never thank you enough for this. Tomorrow is December the 8th.
“Three things only have been discovered of that which concerns the inner consciousness since before written history began. Three things only in twelve thousand written, or sculptured, years, and in the dumb, dim time before then. Three ideas the Cavemen primeval wrested from the unknown, the night which is round us still in daylight -the existence of the soul, immortality, the deity. These things found, prayer followed as a sequential result. Since then nothing further has been found in all the twelve thousand years, as if men had been satisfied and had found these to suffice. They do not suffice me. I desire to advance further, and to wrest a fourth, and even still more than a fourth, from the darkness of thought. I want more ideas of soul-life. I am certain that there are more yet to be found. A great life -an entire civilization-lies just outside the pale of common thought. Cities and countries, inhabitants, intelligences, culture -an entire civilization. Except by illustrations drawn from familiar things, there is no way of indicating a new idea. I do not mean actual cities, actual civilization. Such life is different from any yet imagined. A nexus of ideas exists of which nothing is known -a vast system of ideas- a cosmos of thought. There is an Entity, a Soul-Entity, as yet unrecognized. These, rudely expressed, constitute my Fourth Idea. It is beyond, or beside, the three discovered by the Cavemen; it is in addition to the existence of the soul; in addition to immortality; and beyond the idea of the deity. I think there is something more than existence. [..]
The fact of my own existence as I write, as I exist at this second, is so marvellous, so miracle-like, strange, and supernatural to me, that I unhesitatingly conclude I am always on the margin of life illimitable, and that there are higher conditions than existence. Everything around is supernatural; everything so full of unexplained meaning.[..]
From earth and sea and sun, from night, the stars, from day, the trees, the hills, from my own soul -from these I think. I stand this moment at the mouth of the ancient cave, face to face with nature, face to face with the supernatural, with myself. My naked mind confronts the unknown. I see as clearly as the noonday that this is not all; I see other and higher conditions than existence; I see not only the existence of the soul, immortality, but, in addition, I realize a soul-life illimitable; I realize the existence of a cosmos of thought; I realize the existence of an inexpressible entity infinitely higher than deity. I strive to give utterance to a Fourth Idea. The very idea that there is another idea is something gained. The three found by the Cavemen are but stepping-stones: first links of an endless chain. At the mouth of the ancient cave, face to face with the unknown, they prayed. Prone in heart to-day I pray, Give me the deepest soul-life.”
(Richard Jefferies, “The Story of My Heart”, 1883, III, p.25-27)
The references to the three steppingstones and to the desire to wrest a fourth remind me of the three steps of Vishnu and his fourth, his “step supreme,” which are frequently mentioned in the Rig Veda.
“Thrice Vishnu paced and set his step uplifted out of the primal dust; three steps he has paced, the Guardian, the Invincible, and from beyond he upholds their laws. Scan the workings of Vishnu and see from whence he has manifested their laws. That is his highest pace which is seen ever by the seers like an eye extended in heaven; that the illumined, the awakened kindle into a blaze, even Vishnu’s step supreme....”
In the Synthesis of Yoga Sri Aurobindo writes:
“The old Indian psychology [divided] consciousness into three provinces, waking state, dream-state, sleep-state; and it supposed in the human being a waking self, a dream-self, a sleep-self, with the supreme or absolute self of being, the fourth or Turiya, beyond, of which all these are derivations for the enjoyment of relative experience in the world.
If we examine the phraseology of the old books, we shall find that the waking state is the consciousness of the material universe which we normally possess in this embodied existence dominated by the physical mind. The dream-state is a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind, which to us, even when we get intimations of them, have not the same concrete reality as the things of the physical existence. The sleep-state is a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us, its faculties not active, and therefore we are in relation to that plane in a condition of dreamless sleep. The Turiya beyond is the consciousness of our pure self-existence or our absolute being with which we have no direct relations at all, whatever mental reflections we may receive in our dream or our waking or even, irrecoverably, in our sleep consciousness. This fourfold scale corresponds to the degrees of the ladder of being by which we climb back towards the absolute Divine.”