The Light of consciousness
comes to him
through infinite powers of perception
and yet
he is above all these powers
put your trust in the light
while you have it
so that you may become
sons of light
He is beyond all
and yet
he supports all
He is beyond the world of matter
and yet
he has joy in this world
when he had finished
washing their feet
he put on his clothes
and returned to his place
the breath of life
is the consciousness of life
and the consciousness of life
is the breath of life
(71)
ive gotten some more recording done:
steve reich’s piano phase , eight lines (tehilim) , the cave
richard strauss’ four last songs (i also have his “hero’s life” but havent used it yet. ive read that it was composed around the same time as don quixotie which i also have on my recordings. as ive noted the only other strauss i have is his “alpine symphony” which is designated as a tone poem. i am aware of his other famous tone poems and will probably use them as well, including the zarathustra one. well, the alpine was composed later and in patches along the way , only finished rather late. i enjoy all of his work. i am reading about the comparison between him and mahler. strauss is the bavarian and supposedly more “cynical” but also technically gifted and apparently ravel claimed that he learned aspects of composition from listening to strauss. i want to get more ravel also. and i want to get more mahler as well. perhaps his eighth symphony. i will read more and learn more as well as see what the library system has in their collection. i listen more and learn more as well. ive found myself enjoying the singing parts of strauss’ “four last songs” and thus i may return to wagnerian operas , particularly from the ring. i hear wagner’s “twilight of the god’s” and enjoy and see/hear that it works well with the readings , sri nisargadatta maharaj , derrida, nietzsche , bible lines , all the pieces and peformances from Scripture 2013.
the steve reich stuff is quite good. i enjoy the rhythm of piano phase and the mystical song and narratives of tehilim and the cave.
i am also using brahm’s german requiem and bach’s cello pieces. absolute brilliance of course.
the tones and the spoken tone of voice and voices , song, calls, dialogues, more deconstructions in the service of the aesthetic experience of the mystical life/experience. and this is what occurs , is occurring, with out reservation , more revelations of deconstruction as the definition , yes translations, continues. call it a “return” to nietzsche’s apollonian and dionysian , true to the earth and sun , vine, grapes, rhythm , chorus, thanatos, eros, hegelian (negative) dialectic , bataille’s bird (weird) , i ching readings …
yes, another i ching reading is called for , it seems. the most recent one plays as part of the “viewing” , the “seeing” , it was a transitional line from that reading , leading to the song and affirmation of gradual progression , yes birds and the feathers dropped, and so then a new actual reading is called for , as we experience spring in words and music , and walks, thoughts, images, yes seeing , viewing, seeing and viewing the sounds , the breath … and NOW …
Jian was the name of a river whose fountainhead lay in the mountains in central China at a place called Dan-yang in the kingdom of Zhou.
The Jian river crossed the vast area of central China and gradually became vast itself as it flowed east to the ocean.
Sequence of the Gua : Events cannot continue in stillness without moving. Thus, after Keeping Still, Developing Gradually follows.
The structure of the gua is Wood above , Mountain below. It denotes a tree that is growing gradually upward above ground, its roots develop deep underneath the earth.
The progress of upward and downward growth are in positive proportion.
In this way , the tree remains strong, firm , stable. This is the wisdom of nature. Weeds grow fast; they are neither strong nor stable.
This gua indicates that after a period of keeping still there is opportunity to advance. In advancing, one should move gradually.
When swans fly, they follow one another in order. They come and go according to the seasons.
Eventually it flies high in the sky , and its feathers that fall can bring a touch of the sacred to others.
kingdome
‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me’
stimulating words cheer and inspire
‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’
This justice inscribes itself in advance
in the promise
in the act of faith
or in the appeal to faith
that inhabits every act
of language
and every address
to the other
when a man is speaking
he cannot be breathing:
this is the sacrifice
of breath to speech.
And when a man is breathing
he cannot be speaking:
this is the sacrifice
of speech to breath.
These are the two never-ending
immortal offerings of man,
whether he is awake
or whether he is asleep
(70)
M: Most of your experiences are unconscious. The conscious ones are very few. You are unaware of the fact because to you only the conscious ones count. Become aware of the unconscious .
The “inner world” is full of phantoms … : the will is one of
them. The will no longer moves anything, hence does not
explain anything either — it merely accompanies events;
it can also be absent. The so-called motive: another error.
Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness some –
thing alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up
the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them. …
What follows from this? There are no mental [geistigen]
causes at all.
— NIETZSCHE
M: Awareness is not limited to consciousness. It is of all that is. Consciousness is of duality. There is no duality in awareness. It is one single block of pure cognition. In the same way one can talk of the pure being and pure creation — nameless, formless, silent and yet absolutely real, powerful, effective. Their being indescribable does not affect them in the least. While they are unconscious, they are essential. The conscious cannot change fundamentally, it can only modify. Any thing, to change, must pass through death, through obscuration and dissolution. Gold jewellery must be melted down before it is cast into another shape. What refuses to die cannot be reborn.
“The truth is that every man himself is a piece of fate; when he thinks he is stirring against fate in the way described, fate is being realized here, too; the struggle is imaginary, but so is resignation to fate — all these imaginary ideas are included in fate… In you the whole future of the human world is predetermined.” — NIETZSCHE
M: Withdrawal, aloofness, letting go is death. To live fully, death is essential; every ending makes a new beginning. On the other hand, do understand, that only the dead can die, not the living. That which is alive in you, is immortal.
your sorrow is sheer delusion
Wise men dont grieve — BHAGAVAD GITA
M: The source is neither right nor wrong. Nor is desire by itself right or wrong. It is nothing but striving for happiness. Having identified yourself with a speck of a body you feel lost and search desperately for the sense of fullness and completeness you call happiness.
Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness? — TAO TE CHING
M: Go beyond your consciousness and you will find it.
Never was there a time
when I did not exist, or you,
nor will there come
a time when we cease to be.
— BHAGAVAD GITA
M: You know it already; do it.
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child’s? TAO TE CHING
M: Yet I repeat — you know it. Do it. Go beyond, back to your normal, natural, supreme state.
Just as, in this body, the Self
passes through childhood, youth,
and old age, so after death
it passes to another body. — BHAGAVAD GITA
M: A speck in the eye makes you think you are blind. Wash it out and look.
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light? — TAO TE CHING
M: Remove the speck and your eyes will be flooded with light. The light is there — waiting. The eyes are there — ready. The darkness you see is but the shadow of the tiny speck. Get rid of it and come back to your natural state.
M: Yet I repeat — you know it. Do it. Go beyond, back to your normal, natural, supreme state.
Maharaj: All waiting is futile. To depend on time to solve our problems is self-delusion. The future, left to itself merely repeats the past. Change can only happen now, never in the future.
“Supreme Mind finds itself related to all its works and will travel a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. In ascending to this primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come from our remote station on the circumference instantaneously to the center of the world, where, as in the closet of God, we seecauses, and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect.” — EMERSON
M: All experience is illusory, limited and temporal. Expect nothing from experience. realisation by itself is not an experience, though it may lead to a new dimension of experiences. Yet the new experiences, however interesting, are not more real than the old. Definitely realisation is not a new experience. It is the discovery of the timeless factor in every experience. It is awareness, which makes experience possible. Just like in all the colours light is the colourless factor, so in every experience awareness is present, yet it is not an experience.
“the action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.” — EMERSON
M: Awareness is ever there. It need not be realised. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light
“Multiplicity and migration of languages, certainly, and within language. Your country, migrates all over, like language. The country itself migrates and transports its borders. It displaces itself like those names …” — Derrida
M: What you do not understand is matter.
“Chance and risk of the windmill — language which holds as much of wind and of illusion as it draws from breath and spirit, from the breathing bestowed” — Derrida
M: The totality of conscious experiences is nature. As a conscious self you are a part of nature. As awareness, you are beyond. Seeing nature as mere consciousness is awareness.
“As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. it is adult already in the infant man” — EMERSON
M: There are levels in consciousness, but not in awareness. It is of one block, homogeneous. Its reflection in the mind is love and understanding. There are levels of clarity in understanding and intensity in love, but not in their source. The source is simple and single, but its gifts are infinite. Only do not take the gifts for the source. realise yourself as the source and not as the river; that is all.
“We are wiser than we know” — EMERSON
M: Of course, you are. As an ‘I am’ you are the river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness, you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are, while all else appears.
in these communications the power to see is not separated from the will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience. and the obedience proceeds from a joyful perception, every moment when a man feels invaded by it is memorable. — EMERSON
M: Look closely and you will see that the seer and the seen appear only when there is seeing. They are attributes of seeing. When you say ‘I am seeing this’. ‘I am’ and ‘this’ come with seeing, not before. You cannot have an unseen ‘this’ nor an unseeing ‘I am’.
do not require a description of the countries toward which you will sail> the description does not describe them to you, and tomorrow you arrive there and know them by inhabiting them.
— EMERSON
M: The ‘I am seeing this’ has become ‘l am seeing my not seeing’, or ‘I am seeing darkness’. The seeing remains. In the triplicity: the known, knowing and the knower, only the knowing is a fact. The ‘I am’ and ‘this’ are doubtful. Who knows? What is known? There is no certainty, except that there is knowing.
the only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity and, accepting the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature , work and live, work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the answer are one. — EMERSON
M: Knowing is a reflection of your true nature along with being and loving. The knower and the known are added by the mind. It is in the nature of the mind to create a subject-object duality, where there is none.
“Multiplicity and migration of languages, certainly, and within language itself, Babel within a single language … multiplicity within language, insignificant difference as the condition of meaning. But by the same token, the insignificance of language, of the properly linguistic body : it can only take on meaning in relation to a place. By place, I mean just as much the relation to a border, country, house, or threshold, as any site, any situation in general from within which, practically, pragmatically, alliances are formed, contracts, codes and conventions established which give meaning to the insignificant , institute passwords, bend language to what exceeds it, make of it a moment of gesture and of step, secondarize or ‘reject’ it in order to find it again.”
— DERRIDA
M: realise that all happens in consciousness and you are the root, the source, the foundation of consciousness. The world is but a succession of experiences and you are what makes them conscious, and yet remain beyond all experience. It is like the heat, the flame and the burning wood. The heat maintains the flame, the flame consumes the wood. Without heat there would be neither flame nor fuel. Similarly, without awareness there would be no consciousness, nor life, which transforms matter into a vehicle of consciousness.
“By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which burns until it shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of an ocean light, we see and know each other and what spirit each is of. “
— EMERSON
M: Are you not the victim of your language? You speak about the flow of time, as if you were stationary. But the events you have witnessed yesterday somebody else may see tomorrow. It is you who are in movement and not time. Stop moving and time will cease.
“By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpowered, and maugre our efforts or our imperfections, your genius will speak from you, and mine from me.That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head.” — EMERSON
M: Past and future will merge in the eternal now.
“The same Omniscience flows into the intellect and makes what we call genius.” — EMERSON
M: It may mean that past and future do not matter any more. It may also mean that all that happened and will happen becomes an open book to be read at will.
“… when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, or make you one of the circle, but the casting aside your trappings and dealing man to man in naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation.”– EMERSON
M: The world of mind and matter, of names and shapes, continues, but it does not matter to me at all. It is like having a shadow. It is there — following me wherever I go, but not hindering me in any way. It remains a world of experiences, but not of names and forms related to me by desires and fears. The experiences are qualityless, pureexperiences, if I may say so. I call them experiences for the lack of a better word. They are like the waves on the surface of the ocean, the ever-present, but not affecting its peaceful power.
M: What is unexpected on one level may be certain to happen, when seen from a higher level After all, we are within the limits of the mind. In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future; all appears and nothing is.
So the Lord scattered them from there
over all the earth
and they stopped building the city
it is still necessary
to call for vigilance
and greater justice
the matrix
of all future statements
as well as the history
that is founded upon this logic
and its alternatives
already belongs to the future
of another
its place
the taking-place of its event
calls for another logic
Jesus replied
‘ … later you will understand’
Now
I shall tell you
of the End of wisdom
beginingless supreme
beyond
what is and what is not
the stereo speaker is getting “scratchy” and exhibiting blank spaces where sacred music should be. perhaps this is not unlike the way my wordpress blog seems to be sending me messages. what could they be? new speakers for the computer and the beginning of a new wordpress blog? the recordings will be what they will be. as they play in my headphones they currently are very rewarding and even “mystical”. to think of the recordings that play in my ear today , these days , with “eternal return” : Debussy etudes and preludes, a spanish piece and mother goose from Ravel and various pieces from both Debussy and Ravel played on harp. various preludes and overtures from Wagner’s operas , as well as other excerpted pieces and even a couple cd’s worth of the “twilight of the gods” opera. a long cd of piano pieces from Satie. orchestral works from Bach. Mozart violin concertos. Handel’s messiah. some piano pieces from Webern. Beethoven’s piano sonatas . Richard Strauss’ don quixotie tone poem and alpine “symphony” (tone poem).
what follows for the “second” recording process? Stravinsky’s symphony of psalms , symphony in C and symphony in three movements ,Brahms’ four symphonies. some of Wagner’s Parsifal opera. Mozart’s Requiem and some of his symphonies. Haydn’s concertos for wind instruments. Steve Reich’s music for 18 musicians, double sextet , and desert music. Bach’s partitas and sonatas (on violin) , concertos for oboe, and the well-tempered clavier (on piano). Chopin’s etudes, preludes and piano concertos. Beethoven’s ninth symphony. Mahler’s ninth symphony. Debussy’s la mer. some piano pieces from Schoenberg and Berg. Haydn’s music for wind instruments. musical pieces from Ravi Shankar.
but as i say at the beginning of this post , the stereo is not playing as it should. I would still like to add Brahms’ german requiem and violin concertos as well as other work from Steve Reich and Stravinsky that I have acquired. I got all of this music from the local library and i do enjoy it very much while not pretending to be knowledgeable of the finer points.
i will try recording again tonight and see how the stereo “behaves”. I do keep the few poor recordings with scratches and gaps because i do believe it is part of the process. there’s not much like that because i soon abandon the immediate process when the stereo starts to not play according to plan. after all, what is according to plan?
and what is this wordpress blog? oh i guess it amounts to a diary of sorts , something i can read in the “future” , that “future” Now that always is and thus not and so … and so we have these musical recordings and the readings of the eternal return dialogues. “all writing is autobiographical” and selective quotations juxtaposed in particular sequence amount to a type of “writing” and (yes this also includes my Scriptures 2013). we can say this while also pursuing the deconstruction/destruction of story , of personal narrative , ego-story , as we let “others” speak for and to and with us , as the other is self , the self is other , the binary opposition is false and deconstructed in infinite/innumerable ways, manners, styles. notions of public and private are also deconstructed. they deconstruct themselves instantly and simultaneously opening onto a curious ambiguity to be “fully” realized as effaced, forgotten, cinder , trace. and of course “this” is never “realized” or rather we need to redefine these terms for as Derrida teaches us : they are still necessary but no longer sufficient. they are not only insufficient they are erroneous and misleading. so what can be accomplished with this blog? a private language game? well, some kind of dissemination, gathering , release. not a particular genre to be defined other than by it’s own repetition as writing/reading , opened closure with no border , except of course the unknown borders imposed from “outside”. and everything is “inside”. and the binary is false but utilized as a semi-necessary illusion for the purpose of communication toward what is not. beyond being and non-being. beyond beyond.
this third stage
as we have seen
means articulating
one’s ego consciousness
with a suppraordinate totality
of which one cannot say
that it is “I”
but which is best visualized
as a more comprehensive being
but you are already doing that
the gesture of the interpreter
theirs is the kingdom of heaven
Mind is indeed the source
of bondage
and also the source
of liberation
To be bound
to the things of this world:
this is bondage.
to be free from them:
this is liberation.
(68)
mark forshee 