"Morphology rests on the conviction that everything that exists must signify and reveal itself. From the first physical and chemical elements to the spiritual expression of man we find this principle to hold. We turn immediately to that which has form. The inorganic, the vegetative, the animal, the human. Each one signifies itself, each one appears as what it is to our external and our internal sense. Form is something changeable, something becoming, something passing. The doctrine of metamorphosis is the key to all of the signs of nature."
Saturday, January 15, 2022
Friday, December 17, 2021
World of Imagination
"I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."
Friday, September 10, 2021
The Matrix of All Matter
- Max Planck (1858 - 1947)
Monday, September 06, 2021
Divine Language
exclusively intellectual but which
needs a sensory basis from
which to rise to higher levels.
be communicable or transmissible
by any other means, can be
communicated up to a certain
point when they are, so to speak,
incorporated in symbols which
will hide them for many, no doubt,
but which will manifest them
in all their splendor to the
eyes of those who can see.
those who know how to understand it.
of the Divine Word offered at
the beginning of time, then nature
in its entirety can be taken as
a symbol of supernatural reality."
- René Guénon (1886 - 1951)
Fundamental Symbols, The Universal Language of Sacred Science
Monday, August 30, 2021
Divine Spark
- Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Saturday, April 24, 2021
Other Worlds
and would even change the course of events not only on
earth, but in other worlds?” I asked my teacher.
“There is,” my teacher answered me.
“Well, what is it?” I asked.
“It’s...” began my teacher and suddenly fell silent.
But he was silent.
And I stood and was silent.
And he was silent.
And I stood, silent.
And he was silent.
We’re both standing and silent.
Ho-la-la!
We’re both standing and silent.
Ho-le-le!
standing and silent!"
- Daniil Kharms (1905 - 1942)
Postscript. Daniil Kharms is one of my all-time favorite authors of the "absurd." The best, purest form of absurdist literature - such as its uniquely Russian incarnation (called the Oberiu) in the 1920s and 1930s, which included such luminaries as Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky, and Konstantin Vaginov - shares much with its spiritual cousin, the Zen koan. Its twists of logic, humor, and hallucinatory distortions of babble and reality often - unexpectedly - point to the deepest truths. For those of you who share my affection for these kinds of inner journeys of discovery, a great place to start is with this collection of Kharms' writings: Today I Wrote Nothing, from which the following passage is quoted (from the story, “The Werld”):
"I told myself that I see the world. But the whole world was not accessible to my gaze, and I saw only parts of the world. And everything that I saw I called parts of the world. And I examined the properties of these parts and, examining these properties, I wrought science. I understood that the parts have intelligent properties and that the same parts have unintelligent properties. And there were such parts of the world which could think. And all these parts resembled one another, and I resembled them. And I spoke with these parts. And suddenly I ceased seeing them and, soon after, other parts as well. But then I understood that I do not see parts independently, but I see it all at once. At first I thought that is was NOTHING. But then I understood that this was the world and what I had seen before was NOT the world.
And then I realized
I am the world.
But the world - is not me.
Although at the same time
I am the world.
But the world's not me.
And I'm the world.
But the world's not me.
And I'm the world.
But the world's not me.
And I'm the world.
And after that
I didn't think anymore more."
Sunday, February 07, 2021
Beyond One's Reach
in many so-called symbols
is exactly their vagueness,
their openness,
their fruitful ineffectiveness
to express a 'final' meaning,
so that with symbols
and by symbols one
indicates what is always
beyond one's reach."
- Umberto Eco (1932 - 2016)
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Mind at Large
- Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Symbolic Universe
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Self-Sustaining Agents
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Rocks as Pointers
Monday, April 29, 2019
The Limitless Aleph
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Mathematical Language
Monday, December 03, 2018
Shadow World
Sunday, May 13, 2018
The Illusion of Time
Monday, March 26, 2018
Crepuscular Cryptographs
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Transmuted Symbols
Monday, January 18, 2016
Symbols, Dreams, and Transformations
Thursday, January 07, 2016
Symbols, Signs, and Conceptions
"We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas."