However, whereas Suber is a professional academic, I am not. Before reading any further, read my disclaimer and warning on my My Writings page.
Aphorisms
Glenn
Mason-Riseborough (31/3/1999)
Repetitions:
It is not my intention to write anything new in these pages. Newness is overrated. New ideas, new systems of thought - why are we so obsessed with these? People are forever writing, claiming they have something new to offer the world. Before we can express ourselves we must have something new to express. Some hitherto undiscovered country. Each generation thinks they have discovered something unique about the world. They marvel over their discovery as if they are the first to finally understand How Things Work. This does not interest me, newness is sameness. In the modern world we are so accustomed to new ideas being developed all the time that it has become a drug. As the intensity of a new idea wears off we need to create a new invention, a new idea, or make a new discovery. We need a harder drug to give us our high. This high, of course, is the belief that humans are creative animals, that they are builders. It is a high of elitism. It is a high created from the belief that if we have done something that no-one else has, then we are different and hence superior to them. In writing, I am likewise addicted. I could simply write pages of the same letter aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. When I was young I was satisfied by this burst of creativity. Today, on a computer this is easy and boring. It does not satisfy me and I am forced to create complex strings of letters that are encoded with meaning. Thus, despite my best intentions against newness, I am forced, by my own addiction to be creative. The best I can do is to create banally; to create meaninglessly; to accomplish nothing through hard work and much time. The best way to do this is to plagiarise. Of course, directly quoting will not satisfy me, so my plagiarising will be subtle. I will take an idea here, another idea there. I will wander through the alleyways of my mind. The alleyways of my mind have many twists and turns. The buildings of ideas have many architects. Each architect is a person I have spoken to or an author whose books I have read. The alleyway of my mind is not a wide, open, tree-lined boulevard. It does not have picket fences neatly separating the houses of ideas. It turns back in on itself; it has many dead ends and passages leading nowhere. The words that follow will merely be a literary walk through the alleyway of my mind. A rediscovery, not a creation of the buildings created by my architects of influence.
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I am:
I am Glenn.
I am many things in one. I play many parts. I am the part I am playing now. I have a past and a future, but they are merely references that guide my now. Right now I am wholly me, and tomorrow I will say the same thing. But the me of today is as different from the me of tomorrow as that of my mirror image. A mere reflection of potentiality, trapped behind the glass of time, staring and observing, but never interfering. Complete and sublime in its incomparability.
I am doing. I have a physicality. I move. I breathe. I live. I organise my movements into sports. I run, I jump. I climb mountains and stairs. Rising above, I feel the depths, I am the depths. The abyss beckons, I am the abyss. I am the heights, I look down and laugh. I am my physicality and I revel in its delights. I push my body to its limits and feel myself respond. My weights liberate me; I lift and grow strong in my weakness.
I am thought. But thinking does not make me exist any more than doing makes me real. My thoughts challenge me to my core. In my loneliest of loneliness my thoughts are my demons. They laugh and abuse me, and I worship them.
I am actor, adult, agnostic, animal, artist, atheist, athlete, behaviourist, Buddha, Buddhist, child, Christian, computer-programmer, couch-potato, creationist, critic, dancer, deist, evolutionist, existentialist, fascist, functionalist, futurist, Gnostic, Heideggerian, historian, human, humorist, Kantian, liar, lover, madman, man, Maori, masochist, master, mathematician, monotheist, mountain-climber, mystic, New Zealander, Nietzschean, object, observed, observer, Pacific Islander, pakeha, pantheist, philosopher, physicist, Platonist, poet, Polynesian, polytheist, psychologist, rock-climber, sadist, Sartrean, sceptic, scholar, Schopenhauerian, skier, slave, son, sportsperson, sprinter, structuralist, student, subject, teacher, theist, thinker, traveller, weight-lifter, worker, writer, Zen Master, ...
I am.
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Truth vs. truth:
It is important to distinguish between Truth and truth. Whenever anyone talks about instances of Truth, I immediately decapitalise the "T." Whoever talks about Truth does not understand the concept of it. For those of you who say that this sound like Truth, I accept this criticism and say "you are correct, it is merely truth." I have heard some people say that a particular language (eg Arabic) enables the writing of Truth. This is seeing the past through rose coloured glasses. Different languages enable different perceptions but who is to say which is "better." All we can say is that they are different. _All_ writings are merely truth (at best).
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English vs. English:
Even if we all use English words, we are still conversing in different languages. We each have a unique dictionary of definitions that is continuously being modified by our unique environment. We do not communicate, we gesture. Others' gestures are interpreted by our unique dictionary, and the translation is based on comparing the action to _our_ appropriate mentalism. Sometimes the responses appear to be "correct" and at other times we wonder why the other person is talking about such irrelevant information. This all depends on the degree to which cultures/epistemes intersect.
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Kill your Truth:
I often say that there is no such thing as Truth. God/Truth is a unifier. In societies this is useful because it enables the society to survive and prosper. The Israelites under Moses would not have survived 40 years in the desert without a unifying force to give them cohesiveness. But, taken to extremes this creates a monument that cannot be torn down. Individuality is lost and self is trampled under good intentions. Some people say that this is good because it eliminates the ego. Other's say that ego should be lost in other ways. I ask "what is wrong with ego?" Even if the self is an illusion, doesn’t it have the right to live? What is wrong with living egoistically? We are not the same as "our people." Each person within a group is sufficiently different from the other to give them importance. Saying an individual is the same as his/her group is stereotyping. But then what is wrong with stereotyping? I am here to jolt people out of sameness. I am here as a disintegrator of Idea into ideas. I am not here to judge, although people take my words as judgements. Judgement, and reason, and duty are attachments. Does a madman have attachments? Yes, he is attached to his madness. God created the world because he wanted companionship. He realised that sameness is boring, yet everyone yearns for sameness. Why is this so? Why does everyone want to transcend himself or herself. Enlightenment, heaven, nirvana, transcending the spheres - these are boring words which feed the demon of sameness. Kill your God, it is an unnecessary attachment. But is not the active desire to kill an attachment also? We must kill and not-kill and not-not-kill and ... LIVE! In death we are all the same, in life we are different. If we yearn for sameness, let us strive for difference. If we yearn for difference, let us strive for sameness. If you truly believe something, prove it wrong. It is not the Truth - the Truth is dead.
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Mediocrity:
"I do not know everything, but I am perfect right now, within myself." This is something that we can all say. But many people are frightened into mediocrity by titles and clothes and lofty ideals in others.
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Sin:
Those who are perfect do not sin. But those who say they are perfect are criticised of untold sin. They are accused of inauthenticity. Their lives do not make sense to those who live around them. But within a mental asylum only the doctors are out of place. The doctors do not fit in. They are external, condemned to observing, never understanding. The doctors are sinners in a mental asylum and the patients are sinners outside the locked doors.
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Possession of Words:
When a person uses a word, he becomes possessive of it. That word creates a specific meaning for the person and it locks him into a specific way of thinking. He is fearful that others will desecrate his sacred word with other nuances of thought. Use of jargon is the height of possession. When a person uses jargon, he thinks he is the only person who fully understands it. Everyone else is deluded and everyone else soils his word. He defines it and redefines it, but he is never fully satisfied that other people are using it as he would use it. He reacts by saying that the other person does not fully understand X. Why is this a surprise? The job of jargon is to decrease ambiguity, but it also decreases the number of people who are able to understand it. It creates a clique of people whose understanding of the word is sufficiently similar to create the illusion of agreement. All outsiders are looked down upon. All outsiders are immediately cut off from the Truth.
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Righteousness:
Righteousness is an empty word. A person who is righteous lives up to a particular morality. What is this particular morality? Who knows? It is not important. What is important is for an individual to be seen as righteous. If we say that someone is not righteous, we have immediately diffused their entire argument. We have the upper hand in all further dialogues. The use of the word righteousness is insidious terrorism. It is a form of oppression to deny the "rights" of others. It tells us that a particular mode of conduct is "better" than another, without the necessity of explaining why. It is a form of normalising. The extremities are cast aside as perversions and the status quo maintains its supremacy. The group continues to exist at the expense of the individual. This is righteousness.
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Delusions:
I do not want to be deluded by the world. I reflect on which truth I should follow and I confuse myself. Should I believe in whatever seems real? I feel myself to be real, I look out and see that this world is real, there are trees and cars and mountains and buildings and people. I live my daily existence, eating, sleeping, working, and above all, doing. But the world is full of illusions. Psychologists tell us that we should not believe our own senses. We are fooled by our own senses, and even when we recognise this we are still fooled.
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The Good Fight:
The sword of TRUTH is illusory. Just like the emperor's clothes, we toil away, night and day at nothing. We wear it with pride little realising its emptiness and hollowness. The crowd do not care, they see the clothes as real and are impressed by its splendour and workmanship. The are easily impressed by shiny baubles and the sword of TRUTH is the masterpiece of the emperor's new clothes. The emperor marches out to face the demons in his new clothes and carrying his sword of TRUTH. The crowd cheer at the sight. They are fooled by the reality of the demons, just as much as they are fooled by the reality of the sword of TRUTH. To them appearance is everything. They think that the sword of TRUTH will overcome everything. All the same, the sword of TRUTH needs a scapegoat. The demon shouts "my name is Legion: for we are many" It is the nature of the crowd that they must see the emperor outnumbered. The demons are many, and the sword of TRUTH is one. But the crowd thinks that the unity of TRUTH must always overcome the multitude of the demons of unTRUTH. The fight rages on, the crowd knows that TRUTH will emerge victorious, but are enthralled nonetheless. The crowd are so caught up in the battle that they do not realise that the demons do not exist, the sword of TRUTH does not exist, the emperor's new clothes do not exist. The emperor is dancing to his own tune, naked in the street, and the crowd thinks that it is Of Great Importance.
The crowd thinks that we need a guide on the path of TRUTH. They think that if we follow the correct path we will arrive at the unity of the One Whole Infinite Mind. They are still deluded by the crowd mentality of sameness. They think they have escaped, but are not yet free. They have killed God, only to resurrect him in a different form. The paths of LEFT and RIGHT brain are delusions created by pseudoscience. There are no crossroads for one-who-is. He does not need a guide, or to give his actions pretentious names, for there is no way but his own. When he stops, he is in the same place he started. But this is of no importance, during the day he chopped wood and fetched water, and had a pleasant cup of tea. What more does he need in life? He does not need to ride an ass, or fight a demon. A demon is a being of plurality. The one-who-is accepts the plurality within himself. He is not attached to a unity of TRUTH. He is himself a plurality. But he is not an absolute plurality. He does not attempt to fly, or walk on water. He knows that the air is for breathing and the water is for drinking. He recognises that he is within the world - not separate and distinct, and he acts accordingly.
The one-who-is sleeps as one exhausted at the end of a hard day's work. He does not think of tomorrow, of glorious palaces of potentiality. He does not think about yesterday, of all the good times he wishes he still had. When he works, he thinks of work: when he sleeps, he sleeps peacefully and soundly. He does not care if his mind is open or closed.
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On Loneliness:
We are afflicted with loneliness when we feel outcast in the world. We feel as if we are watching the world from a great distance. We are an observer, not a participator; we are passively in the audience, not acting out our life on the stage of the world. When we watch the world, it becomes mechanical. People bustling about acting out their lives, ridiculous without the context of sets and props. It is abstract and meaningless. The splendours of the world vanish; we are left with the hollowness of abandonment. A ghost town without the ghosts. Even our thoughts are empty; our thoughts too are seen from afar. The world is a pale reflection seen in ice. We too are a pale reflection; our smile is a grimace of nothingness. We exist, but what is this existence. It is indifference; it is abandonment. The world is indifferent to us, and we are indifferent to the world. We are both the abandoner and the abandoned. We are alienated, and feel the alienation of the world. Escape is impossible, for we have already escaped the world. What is this "we" - it is I, and I alone who has escaped. I am unique in my suffering. Only I live alone, without hope, without dreams. I am a hero in my madness. My madness gives me a lucidity I cannot forget. My forgetfulness is a dream ... a desire ... a hope. It is a forlorn hope - I do know, I do remember. I am not an actor, I cannot delude myself through action. The rest of the world is an actor, and I am alone in my unbelief. I have absolute loneliness through unbelief, and belief in my unbelief.
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The unfolding of spirituality:
It is true that differences fall apart when spirituality unfolds itself. To understand this we must first of all examine what we mean by falling apart. When something falls apart its wholeness is shattered. Where there was one there is now a multitude. There are many parts to it where once it was a unity. The unity had meaning, but do these parts have meaning? Often when we say that something falls apart we are saying that it has become worthless, as nothing. The unity that once gave the pieces meaning no longer exists and we forget about the pieces.
When a car falls apart its pieces are divided. They are no longer ordered in such a way to give the car meaning and functionality. The essence of car is no longer contained within the confines of the individual pieces. The car no longer functions. But at the same time the pieces still exist. These pieces still exist independently of the car, and the car's falling apart had no effect on the individual pieces.
So when differences falls apart we should have the same situation. The essence of difference is lost in a multitude of pieces. But how could this be true? When difference no longer exists, there should not be pieces of it to show that there are differences. Differences is different from car in that its falling apart cannot result in there being pieces. The shattering of difference results in a falling together. The differences are merged into one. This one is what all religions are searching for.
Yet this is not something that happens when spirituality unfolds. Because indeed, when spirituality unfolds differences do fall apart. The differences do not exist, yet there are still a multitude of parts. In fact there are even more parts after the unfolding than there was prior to it. The essence of difference does not exist, and yet there is even more difference than before. The undisclosed becomes disclosed yet does not disclose itself. It is still not before us, yet we can see its presence, and its many parts present themselves before our closed eyes. Our eyes are closed because we know that we no longer need to see with them. When we open our eyes we only see the foremost undisclosed parts. The falling apart of difference has shown us even more parts than we could possibly imagine. Difference has fallen apart, not only into sameness but also into the multitude of possibility, parts and difference.
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Past, Present and Future:
When I state that there are no ends I am stating that seeing life in terms of means/ends analysis will always leave us unsatisfied. When we try to justify our actions by referring to some future event, the current non-existence of that event haunts us. Our desire for the fulfilment of that event preoccupies us and does not allow us to enjoy the present. The present is always seen as a stepping stone to the future. We are not living with full acceptance of the present. Our unhappiness and unrest is rooted in our looking into the distance rather than accepting what we already have in front of us. Yet, it is by no means clear that we will ever even arrive at this future goal. The uncertainty drives us forward to try to find the end. Occasionally we do find an end; we achieve a momentary goal. But does this satisfy us? No, it does not. Even granted a temporary satisfaction, we become bored with it all to quickly. As the boredom sets in we begin our search for another goal, another end, which we must achieve at all costs. So we are eternally unsatisfied. The working towards an end does not satisfy us and neither are we satisfied when we achieve our goal.
How can we escape this eternity of unsatisfaction and suffering? By abandoning the past and the future. Immersing ourselves in the absoluteness of the present creates in us an absolute joy. When the depth of the present becomes an abyss of pleasure and pain, only then does the means justify itself. The past and the future do not exist and the present lays open above us, beneath us, and all around us. At this point we are perfect. This perfection does not entail a perfection of all knowing or all power. These perfections are limited in comparison to the perfection of joy that we feel when we open ourselves up to the presencing of what is already around us and within us. We do not need to know all the answers to be perfect. We open ourselves up to the dark side of the moon and let ourselves feel that which is undisclosed. The lighted disc of the moon is a paper-thin two-dimensionality of a far greater three-dimensional mass behind it. Our perfection is realised when we realise this massive bulk of undisclosed reality. We do not need to know what it is, it is sufficient to feel its weight pushing in and pushing out at us.
It is true when it is said that we need to suffer the most and the greatest to arrive at perfection. It is only when we are burdened so greatly that we can no longer move that we discover that we do not need to move. When we rush into the future or look over our shoulder at the past we are blinding ourselves in our headlong rush. The past and the future siphon off our burdens and let us continue to run. We run in circles, but are blinded to the scenery - thinking that it is all so new. Piling on the burdens increases our suffering and torment, but with the last straw we are forced to stop. We are forced into submission and freedom. We are stopped in our tracks and the doors are opened to us. They were there all the time; we were perfect all the time. But our attachment to the past and future, our obsession with goals, blinded us to the truth.
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Thought:
When people ask me “Glenn, what do you think,” I usually respond with “I try not to” or “I don’t.” Of course, this is totally false, but it is an appropriate response to a misinformed question. The question implies that our thoughts can be expressed in words. They cannot. Only verbal thoughts, the thoughts given by our inner chatterbox, can ever be expressed in words. There is an infinite vastness behind these words that can never begin to be expressed by words. I know it because I feel it. Poetry does not express it; paintings, music and sculpture do not express it. They are merely attempts that fail to bring out the true essence of self. Through these expressions the intensity and pressure of the vastness is diffused. It siphons it off but still leaves us incomplete. This vastness exists, and it seems a great shame to me that we must abuse it with our “creative expressions.”
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The spider crawls past.
Its web is a bungi cord.
Where has it gone now?
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Deconstruction:
Why should we care about the destination? What makes it so special that it is something that we are going towards, as opposed to away from? In fact, the term "road" is a particularly revealing one, indicating a one-dimensionality of travel. A binary opposition with a connector. Here-there, one day there will be here and here will be there. It is a necessary event; the destination is our destiny. It is our revealed Rome, foretold, forewarned, and binary - in total it is ten-horned. The asymmetrical one-dimensionality of travel (the unity of truth) is the eleventh horn. It is the horn of conviction, both now and in three and a half years. But eventually the court will sit, and three and a half years will follow three and a half years will follow three and a half years...
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To be continued…