Before going through this post, I recommend reading the previous one here.
I. Outset
By building means of communication with your unconscious (the Mind with the Heart), you build —and thus discover— structures outwardly in reality (i.e.: synchronicities).
This happens by first, recognizing patterns and second integrating these patterns into contingent situations (i.e.: by acting on them) and then once again observing the results and integrating those into an overall pattern (a story) continuously. This is a type of, or at least something very similar to a Feedback loop.1
This process is neither purely creation that becomes a reality (like some new age manifesting scam) nor the result of pure receptive observation. It is a type of creative process, where the line between discovery (of something always there, and transcendent) and creation (something that communicates this transcendence) is blurred.2
If the meaning of this (Weaving) symbolism is to be clearly grasped, it should first be observed that the warp, formed as it is by threads stretched upon the loom, represents the immutable, principal elements, whereas the threads of the weft, which pass between those of the warp by the to-and-fro movement of the shuttle, represent the variable and contingent elements, in other words the applications of the principle to this or that set of particular conditions. Again, if one thread of the warp and one of the weft are considered, it will at once be seen that their meeting forms the cross, of which they are respectively the vertical line and the horizontal; and every stitch in the fabric, being thus the meeting-point of two mutually perpendicular threads, is thereby the center of such a cross.
To be more precise, this transcendent which is discovered, as I’ve explained in the previous post, is an in-betweenness3 and so the creative part of the process occupies itself with organizing “things”, and thus building “useful gaps”.
To summarize a bit, the transcendent can be grasped as a “nothingness” or “in-betweenness” within particularly (or creatively) organized things. This is what art in a very fundamental way is —art used to mean, not just all craftsmanship but also a type of wisdom4.
However, partly the reason why the Christian revelation is so powerful (and I believe singularly true) is because there, the transcendent is not just this ever-present gap, but the contingent process itself —i.e.: Christ is revealed in history as both God (transcendent) and Man (creature) as one. This flips on its side the relation between the transcendent and the contingent/creative (art) part. Before this revelation, the two were separate and unbridgable. Artifice (Wisdom) was Death.
But now, with the revelation of Christ, the New Jerusalem as an image is presented: the creativity, wisdom, and art in their contingent elements (from personal artifice all the way to civilizational) becomes a generative vector —i.e.: using emptiness (death), or "useful gaps" brings forth purpose into the world like a well5. This is why the “ecology of artifice” (an ecology of, again, wisdom, art, creativity —contingent forms, etc.) that man creates is both outside him and comes from him —this is why it is equally a discovery and a novelty.6
So if one engages one’s own ecology of symbols (which is what the first paragraph of this post describes) one, in the form of a discovery, actually orders the world —but this can only be the case if it is in the form of a discovery (which is the practice of faith). This is what it means for man to partake in creation, and man’s first creation, which was truly his, was death (which was also a “discovery”).7
Note the connection between dreaming and death, as dreaming is literally immersing oneself within their own ecology of symbols (often in a very crude way). This also means that contingency itself (i.e.: everything possible in the world, —” many worlds”) comes from death.
To sum up, in the Christian revelation contingency becomes positive: “everything possible” rather than “everything impossible”.
“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you”
Matthew 17:20
II. Adam walks
The image of Adam entering the Wilderness always struck me with awe. Suddenly, in nature, a man appears wearing a garment. He is a lost citizen of the New Jerusalem, wearing his vest —death itself— as if trying to remember forward to a tradition he is distantly a part of, at a time in the future.
No wonder why the garment is the first piece of technology (given by God), it is something woven —similar to books (and “canons”)8…
. . . In Eastern doctrines, traditional books are frequently referred to by terms which in their literal sense are connected with weaving. Thus, in Sanskrit, sūtra properly means “thread” a book may be formed by a connection of sūtras, as a fabric is formed by a tissue of threads; tantra also has the meaning of “thread” and that of “fabric”, and denotes more particularly the “warp” of a fabric. Similarly in Chinese king is the “warp” of a material, and wei is its “weft”; the first of these two words denotes at the same time a fundamental book, and the second denotes the commentaries on it. This distinction between the “warp” and the “weft”, in the corpus of traditional scriptures, corresponds to the distinction drawn in Hindu terminology between Shruti, which is the fruit of direct inspiration, and Smriti, which is the product of reflection upon the contents of Shruti.
…and as I’ve explained in the previous post, the symbolism of weaving is related directly to the Cube (including books of accounting, or “threads” of causal chains). Weaving is also related to patterns: accounting for them and generating them as a proxy. Weaving also takes a new meaning when observing how “neural nets” work, and how output produced by such “nets”, as an image, is akin to “threading”, similar to the work process of creating a physical book (as described above).
Thus overall, the Cube itself, as explained in the previous chapter and combined with the previous post, is a symbol for “accounting for contingencies” —i.e.: the extent to which something is possible or impossible —or in another way, in some sense theologically speaking, “what death means” or “what’s the purpose of death”.
"Men will build a box and within will be some kind of gadget with images, but they will not be able to communicate with me already dead, even though this image gadget will be as close to this other world as hairs on the human scalp are close to each other. With the help of this image gadget, man will be able to see everything that is happening all over the world."
(from the prophecies of Mitar Tarabich)
This may seem counter-intuitive at first, especially in a society and a time where there is no overt purpose of death other than not paying attention to it —attention here is a keyword.9 —“Where did death go?”
III. The Smart Box
To recap the thread of connectedness between everything listed previously: death—contingency—” dreaming”—an ecology of symbols—possibility—the cube—and salvation through giving purpose to all of the above —i.e.: the cube unfolds into the cross and we have to carry it (carry our death and after dying it re-folds (recreation) into the New Jerusalem.
These are all implicit parts of the symbolic and ritualistic behavior of our current civilization —more interestingly, this is also a technical reality: the internet and digital space allow us to generate (virtually) any possibility. It is an immersion, as a collective, into this “ecology of symbols” —an artificial, collective death —or dreaming— replacing real death and real dreaming— ie.: the generation of virtual possibilities (as of now!) is in the purpose of suppressing the resolution of any real possibility (“everything is impossible”).
Similarly, attention in dream space is completely “captured”, meaning attention from real death is directed away to artificial death —which as of now (as an art) is not integrated into our civilization in a generative way (as a “useful gap”).
This means that what the smartphone actually is, is a technical way for us to relate to our own death as an immediacy. Again, this fact is not integrated yet, and my intuition tells me that its integration (ritualization) —this process— will be the end for this era of history.
Thus we are faced, instead of the threat of bodily death, with spiritual death, and within the wheels of history, at one point the two will converge on each other.
Also, it’s important to note, that what takes our attention away (a possibility or contingent moment displayed within the box) reveals false roads all leading to our death.
Some lasting notes:
This post was written as a nexus for bringing together active imaginations, dreams, and flashes of intuitions that I have recorded and analyzed for a while now. This is important, because this is, in part, the “proofing” of the generative practice described in this work (if this post contains indeed something worthwhile). I will probably release that material as a sort of scuffed exegesis sometime after posting this…
This is what it means to “empty the Mind”, which is to not associate oneself with the mind (ego) but to view oneself as a multitude in which the ego is only one part, and serves a particular purpose.
“The pattern “as is” is not perceptible directly, it is only “visible” as something in-between things that define things. It could be said it is “purpose”, as purpose is the only “thing” from which things are derived.“
No wonder why in the Christian tradition the wisdom tradition of pagans is seen as something to be integrated, not discarded entirely.
This is what it means when “symbolism happens”.
A great example of this is how we relate to the digital world: it is a space that is “discovered” and yet the contents of that discovery are dependent on the creation of novel devices with which that space even exists, and is able to be “discovered” in the first place.
This stems from the free will given by God, which means this possibility was purposefully allowed by God. In Christianity, our free will allows us to have authentic love (both erotic and noetic) for God contrary to demiurgic slavery. This is also why we are (lowercase!) gods.
Yes, there are still conflicts and death, but the overall tendency is to move away from this. This is why “nothing happens” —for something to happen, there needs not only a willingness to die (to take risks) but there also needs to be an opportunity to do so. Both are suppressed overtly, while the possibility of implicit death (spiritual death) is increased. “Nothing Happens” = Things happen implicitly.
Finally, I've read all you have to offer so far...
As time goes by, I hope to digest it slowly if the world will allow.
To what extent can the time be enforced upon us?