Mind and Matter

"As a physicist who has devoted his whole life to rational science, to the study of matter, I think I can safely claim to be above any suspicion of irrational exuberance. Having said that, I would like to observe that my research on the atom has shown me that there is no such thing as matter in itself. What we perceive as matter is merely the manifestation of a force that causes the subatomic particles to oscillate and holds them together in the tiniest solar system of the universe. Since there is in the whole universe neither an intelligent force nor an eternal force (mankind, for all its yearnings, has yet to succeed in inventing a perpetual motion machine), we must assume that this force that is active within the atom comes from a conscious and intelligent mind. That mind is the ultimate source of matter."

- Max Planck (1858 - 1947)

Cosmic Process

"Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become that path himself.

...

I began in absolute chaos and darkness, in a bog or swamp of ideas and emotions and experiences. Even now I do not consider myself a writer, in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life, a process which appears more and more inexhaustible as I go on. Like the world-evolution, it is endless. It is a turning inside out, a voyaging through X dimensions, with the result that somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself. It is this quality about all art which gives it a metaphysical hue, which lifts it out of time and space and centers or integrates it to the whole cosmic process. It is this about art which is ‘therapeutic’: significance, purposefulness, infinitude.

...

From the very beginning almost I was deeply aware that there is no goal. I never hope to embrace the whole, but merely to give in each separate fragment, each work, the feeling of the whole as I go on, because I am digging deeper and deeper into life, digging deeper and deeper into past and future. With the endless burrowing a certitude develops which is greater than faith or belief. I become more and more indifferent to my fate, as writer, and more and more certain of my destiny as a man."

- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)
Henry Miller on Writing

Mysterious Object

"No object is mysterious.
The mystery is your eye."

- Elizabeth Bowen (1899 - 1973)

Patterns of Arrangement

"...thoughts of the brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements – change – in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we substantialize. We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it – i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself)."

- Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982)
Valis

World in Itself

"The moment one gives close attention
to anything, even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent
world in itself."

- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

Randomness, Creativity, Mystery, Understanding

"Randomness does not mean everything is meaningless. Randomness is, sort of… You’re looking at creativity in its primordial state. You see one of the characteristics of randomness is unpredictability. Now, something is unpredictable if you couldn’t predict it in advance: that’s creativity. So, in other words, randomness and creativity are practically different names for the same thing. Something that isn’t random is something you can predict, which means that it’s not creative. You’re sticking within your current system of concepts.

...

The problem of creativity is, can you have a mathematical theory of creativity? Well it can’t be a theory that will give you a mechanical procedure for being creative because then it’s not creative. So a mathematical theory of creativity has to be indirect. Creativity is by definition uncomputable. If we knew how to do it, it wouldn’t be creative. When you have maximum creativity, it looks random because it’s totally unpredictable from what you knew before.

...

If you can calculate something, then it’s not creative because you’re working within your existing system. So there’s this paradoxical aspect. A mathematical theory of creativity is a more abstract kind of mathematics where you can prove theorems about creativity – you can describe it – maybe you can show it’s highly probable, but it won’t give you a way to mechanically produce creativity, which is the kind of thing that instrumental mathematics normally does.

...

I’m trying to get to the concentrated essence of the mystery: the mystery is creativity, and I think that’s deeply meaningful. I mean, ... the universe wants to create us. The universe wants to create mind. The universe maybe wants to get closer to God, or maybe the universe is God and it’s trying to increase its level of perception, its level of understanding."

- Gregory Chaitin (1947 - )
The Joy of Mathematical Discovery

Deep Interlock

"In a surprisingly large number of cases, living structures contain some form of interlock: situations where centers are 'hooked' into their surroundings. This has the effect of making it difficult to disentangle the center from its surroundings. It becomes more deeply unified with the world and with other centers near it.

...

The center and its surroundings interpenetrate each other, using intermediate centers which belong to both of two adjacent larger centers.

...

The principle creates fusion and connection at an enormous number of scales in the physical world, from the largest regional scale to the tiniest physical detail.

...

We may say that each major entity in a living structure must contain references (shapes, structures, colors, motifs, reflections) of the other major elements, so that each element is somehow also within the other elements."

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - 2022)
Nature of Order

Greatest of Mysteries

"The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us - there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries."

- Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
Cosmos

Shamanic Ecstasy

"This is why the shaman is the remote ancestor of the poet and artist. Our need to feel part of the world seems to demand that we express ourselves through creative activity. The ultimate wellsprings of this creativity are hidden in the mystery of language. Shamanic ecstasy is an act of surrender that authenticates both the individual self and that which is surrendered to, the mystery of being. Because our maps of reality are determined by our present circumstances, we tend to lose awareness of the larger patterns of time and space. Only by gaining access to the Transcendent Other can those patterns of time and space and our role in them be glimpsed."

-  Terence McKenna (1946 - 2000)
Food of the Gods

Cosmological Cycling

"'Tlingit language reflects subtle differences between ordinary and extraordinary, commonplace and mysterious, safe and dangerous ... the language is rich in verbs and emphasizes activity and motion, making no sharp distinction between animate and inanimate [as defined in Western thought]. Hence, mountains, glaciers, bodies of water, rocks and manufactured objects all have qualities of sentience.' 

...

A system of cosmological understandings about the nature of existence, its entities, forces, processes, and the nature of time and space is found in virtually all human cultures. Tlingit cosmology was grounded in the principle that all living entities had 'spirits' and those entities cycle between domains of life in the world of direct experience followed after death by residence in another domain waiting for rebirth or reincarnation into this world. This process has been referred to as cosmological cycling.

...

'...people understood that all entities of nature – plants, animals, stones, trees, mountains, rivers, lakes, and a host of other living entities – embodies relationships that must be honored. Through the seeking, making, sharing, and celebrating of those natural relationships, they came to perceive themselves in a sea of interdependent relationships.'"

- Steve J. Langdon (1948 - )
"Spiritual Relations, Moral Obligations and Existential Continuity,"
in Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom

Organs of Perception

"The time has come to realize
that supersensible knowledge has
now to arise from the
materialistic grave.

...

Just as in the body, eye and ear develop as organs of perception, as senses for bodily processes, so does a man develop in himself soul and spiritual organs of perception through which the soul and spiritual worlds are opened to him. For those who do not have such higher senses, these worlds are dark and silent, just as the bodily world is dark and silent for a being without eyes and ears.

...

Whoever seeks higher knowledge
must create it for himself.
He must instill it
into his soul. "

- Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925)

Mystagogic Objects

"If truth and reality can clearly come only from the subject and his consciousness, then illusion, which is the opposite of these, must necessarily come from elsewhere. From the world of the object, from some other thing than the subject. Illusion, like profusion, comes to us from the world.

...

The secret of theory is that truth does not exist.

...

The universe is mystagogic."

- Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007)
Fragments

Distortion of Reality

"Mysticism tends to combine the strictest concept of the Absolute, one that points to transcending any polarity, duality and distinction, and a vision of relativity that both denies the reality of the world of manifestation, when considered independently from its Source, and affirms an essential continuity or unity between the Ultimate and that which is not in an ultimate sense.

The Absolute is literally ab-solutum, which means that it is 'unbound,' 'detached' and 'free.' Although most often understood as 'complete' and 'self sufficient,' and therefore also 'cause of itself,' the Absolute must also and consequently be approached in terms of its perfect freedom, which is itself a dimension of its transcendence vis-à-vis any “relationality.” In this connection “relationality” entails an aspect of 'obligation' or 'reciprocity' by virtue of the 'relationships' and 'relations'  it involves. Therefore, our understanding of “absoluteness” as utter freedom immediately brings the central question of this inquiry to the fore by highlighting the apparent logical impossibility of positing concurrently the ontological reality of both the Absolute and “non-absolute realities” –including ourselves.

...

Metaphysical relativity is, in Advaita Vedānta, primarily identified with Māyā. Now Māyā is most often approached by Shankara as an epistemological phenomenon of superimposition upon Reality.  In other words Māyā is that which makes us mistake 'the rope for the snake.' It is a principle of distortion of Reality that stems from one’s inability to recognize Reality as it is, that is as the non-dual Self or Ātman. On the one hand, Māyā is the 'epistemological' fruit of a false identification of the Self with the body, on the other hand it is Māyā itself, or more specifically tamas - the lowest, most opaque of the three cosmological elements that enter into the composition of Māyā’s world of relativity, that is constitutional of delusion as such: 'The power of tamas is a veiling power.  It makes things appear to be other than what they are.  It is this which is the original cause of an individual’s transmigration and is the cause of the origination of the action of the projecting power.'

It must be noted ... that the ontological status of Māyā is incomprehensible: 'She is most strange. Her nature is inexplicable,' to use Shankara’s words. Māyā is fundamentally the unintelligible, and this lack of intelligibility is a function of  the 'obscurity' or uncertainty of its origin, as well as being bound to the  undecidability of its ontological status. "

- Patrick Laude
Shimmering Reality: The Metaphysics of Relativity in Mystical Traditions

Constructs of Imagination

 

"Perception is not a
window on objective reality.
It is an interface that hides objective
reality behind a veil of helpful icons.
...

Conscious realism makes a bold claim: consciousness, not spacetime and its objects, is fundamental reality and is properly described as a network of conscious agents. To earn its keep, conscious realism must do serious work ahead. It must ground a theory of quantum gravity, explain the emergence of our spacetime interface and its objects, explain the appearance of Darwinian evolution within that interface, and explain the evolutionary emergence of human psychology.

...

...
What we call ‘reality,’ consists of
an elaborate papier-mâché construction of
imagination and theory filled in between
a few iron posts of observation."

- Donald Hoffman (1955 - )

The Case Against Reality

Stones and Trees

"Believe me, for I know,
you will find something far
greater in the woods than in books.
Stones and trees will teach you
that which you cannot learn
from the masters."

- Bernard of Clairvaux (c.1090 - 1153)
The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux

A Vast and Mysterious Organism

"I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion. There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last.

This is the way I look at the world. I don't see it as a collection of objects, but as a vast and mysterious organism. I see the beauty in the smallest things, and I find wonder in the most ordinary events. I am always looking for the hidden meaning, the secret message. I am always trying to understand the mystery of life.

I know that I will never understand everything, but that doesn't stop me from trying. I am content to live in the mystery, to be surrounded by the unknown. I am content to be a seeker, a pilgrim, a traveler on the road to nowhere."

- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)
Black Spring

Tennyson's Flower

"Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual."

- Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)

Morphic Fields

"Creativity gives new forms, new patterns, new ideas, new art forms. And we don't know where creativity comes from. Is it inspired from above? Welling up from below? Picked up from the air? What? Creativity is a mystery wherever you encounter it.

...

The beginning of wisdom, I believe, is our ability to accept an inherent messiness in our explanation of what's going on. Nowhere is it written that human minds should be able to give a full accounting of creation in all dimensions and on all levels. Ludwig Wittgenstein had the idea that philosophy should be what he called "true enough." I think that's a great idea. True enough is as true as can be gotten. The imagination is chaos. New forms are fetched out of it. The creative act is to let down the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended and then to attempt to bring out of it ideas.

...

What is emerging ... is an evolutionary vision of reality at every level: subatomic, atomic, chemical, biological, social, ecological, cultural, mental, economic, astronomical and cosmic."

- Rupert Sheldrake (1942 - )

Eyes of the Dreamer

"Life is not merely what it seems to be.

Hidden from our eyes by the cloak

of materiality is a wonderful world

which only the eyes of the dreamer can see

and the soul of the mystic comprehend.

...

...silence is the root of sound,
and from it pours forth the fiat
that fashioned the world.
This is the dynamic silence of creation,
the tremendous dramatic silence of
new birth forever taking place-
new worlds forever fashioning.

...

To those capable of seeing the
light of these spiritual orbs,
there is no darkness,
for they dwell in the presence of
limitless light and at midnight see
the sun shining under their feet."

- Manly Hall (1901 - 1990)

Transpersonal Experiences

"The transpersonal experiences revealing the Earth as an intelligent, conscious entity are corroborated by scientific evidence. Gregory Bateson, who created a brilliant synthesis of cybernetics, information and systems theory, the theory of evolution, anthropology, and psychology came to the conclusion that it was logically inevitable to assume that mental processes occurred at all levels in any system or natural phenomenon of sufficient complexity. He believed that mental processes are present in cells, organs, tissues, organisms, animal and human groups, eco-systems, and even the earth and universe as a whole."

- Stanislav Grof (1931 - )
The Holotropic Mind