Le Grand Jeu (part 2) by Marianna and Daniel O'Reilly

Part 2

Our existence is not a bandwagon. It is our only real property, and indeed we must care for it. It is original, for it is the only existence there is. Our path through time is genuine, (but then again, who said that genuineness was a virtue? I am defending something I do not even know.) What is meant here, despite my obviously human contradiction is that once the genuine is abandoned as a myth of what a human could and ought to be, he begins to be genuine. This paradox demands to be understood. We can see here that the Truth can again be glimpsed through the paradox, that the Truth about the human consists in his humanity, his paradoxical nature. The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;presentnessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of Truth feeds its way from the absolute which is our horizon and can be known about through us by understanding our humanity and what it consists in. Again, this is the [human] truth about Truth. Because the Englishman is taught at work to care for something which has no immediate value in and for itself in the way outlined above, he debases and devalues himself each time he works. It is a crazy dance of his. Indeed, he carries this conditioning with him to each and every part of his reality; he vainly and nihilistically cares for his health, his wife, his children and his property. [These things, if we are talking about a man, (and given that I am one it is only natural that I should take the example of a man,) form part of his reality, and it his responsibility to care for what is appropriately placed within it.] If English life were not so disingenuous, perhaps the mating-call (or should that be whooping-cough,) of the Englishman would change from I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t

care!/I couldn’t care less!/Who cares?/What’s the point? Etc. ad nauseam, to; “I Care!” But the Englishman will not do this; it is dangerous for him to provide a meaningful link between him and his world, for otherwise he might have a reason to exist. He might cherish something, he might have invented his own Value. To provide a meaningful link in this world that we must care for and protect at all costs is dangerous both for the thing and for the thinker. So it is best for the Englishman to avoid it lest he be joyful or lead a good life.

Experiment: My fiancée explained to me her use of the term ‘Pride’ to me after an argument about the qualities of the feeling which for her, as a Russian, was a positive feeling for something in the world, a deeply caring relation to something which brings happiness. Now, what do you feel when you get a pang of pride in your body? Do you, as a Christian or post-Christian feel a sense of guilt? You might also feel egotistical, puffed-up, self-affirmed rather than life-affirmed. This is how I felt that pride effected me; that it was a vain feeling that made one care for oneself and not for something in the world. How retrograde. Perhaps one should feel happy to be alive because of this thing in the world, and that life would not be such a good place without it and therefore it is worth caring for and loving. Jesus could never have said that Pride was a bad feeling, because it is so connected to love in the way outlined above. But we tend not to do so; it tends to bolster our ego, which is what Jesus actually said. As a Christian or post-Christian, we feel a reflexive sense of guilt approach us, but for what reason we do not know. This is the herd mentality of the nihilist and it is indeed un-Christian and

unenlightened to think in this way, i.e. with no object in mind or with no meaning. The sheep of the Christian flock was misunderstood by Nietzsche; the herd mentality exists in all people, not only in Christians. But the holy flock that Christ describes is not what Nietzsche thought it was. And he knew better; he let himself down.

Dionysis, the mad dance of Capital, and the dance with Death. When I dance, (and I dance as often as possible; I even danced for half an hour in front of the refrigerator on one occasion, forgetting that I was hungry, caught unawares by a rhythm,) I do not feel as though I am driving toward oblivion, toward nothing, and yet nothing disturbs my centre, nothing interrupts my Being-asdancing, not even an impious thought. Some people contrive dancing as a mad symptom, an oblivious movement, an abandonment of self. Perhaps this is right; perhaps there is no self in these moments; we rejoice the actual moments for themselves and do not become interrupted by anything other than the dance itself. This is the closest we come to being there-ness, to being present with ourselves without the constant chatter of thoughts. This is a higher desire, to be present, to value each passing moment, to want to be present in our own life because it is good in itself. There is no malice or nihilistic Christian value-judgement in Poussinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s painting of a drunken revelry around the golden calf at the foot of mount Sinai. Moses is tiny in the background with his law. The dancers fling their limbs as an affirmation of life, and this is their law. The parables as they occur in the bible text are nihilistic if we take them in at a glance; their meaning is encrypted in such a way as to deceive upon first glance as does the world. The

man turned to the other man who, encased in his own reflection was forced to vomit by a violent contraction in his guts. When asked if it was a life-affirming experience he shook his head and said â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;why would I search for my deeper self when I am a deeply selfless person?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Whatever thought you are having right now, so am I.

Why do I write? An assistant to memory. Why commit these specific details to writing? They chart the changes, repetitions, associations, moods and general phenomena of consciousness. A great deal is to be had from reading between the lines when somebody makes a claim to be writing in this way. Association and quotation ad nauseam. I notice this thing particularly when I write, sometimes as though I can feel all of the influences and voices talking through me at the same time when I do not try to deny that they in fact exist. I also sense a nausea welling up in me when I write which stems from the desire for the impossible original, and indeed these two feelings that emerge from writing are two sides of the same coin; one rejoices, one denies. The nausea comes when I think about the slippage of associations beyond my control, the existence of meaningful structures, the lack of imagination, the tiredness, the forgetting, the laziness. To agglomerate these left over bits, this excess, this indulgence, this response to hard work, propriety, success, originality et al, produces its own nausea. And nausea emanating from the individual parts is only a means of accessing the larger nausea that lurks underneath the tip of these superficial demands. They are taken to be my own feelings and yet they do not belong, the ungainly proportion of contradiction causes nausea. If I work in a certain way, and the little voice says to work

in another way, then good-conscience provides the contradiction in the actual way in which I was working. There is no good conscience, only the voice of propriety that whispers in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ear. Let me do as I am doing. This impasse is either to be resolved or resigned to; in short, it means that realisation is a demand. The nausea presents itself under the following conditions; the contradiction of the authentic over the inauthentic, (the opposition of value-structures,) the collision between incompatible opposites that produces our connection to reality, and hence the contradiction poses an opportunity to access the level of existential questioning. One opposite always gains value-weight on our scales when we are forced to make a choice, and indeed it must be this way lest the value-system collapses. But let us pause and think; what if it were to collapse? They say that the first sign of madness is that one talks to oneself. Who does not, if not on the inside? Surely it is desirable to be present in our own life?

I sit in front of my blank canvas this morning, and I search for a topic to entertain me. Is it this way for other writers? I always entertained the notion that all other people could think of things easily, that I struggled with pointlessness and amnesia for too long. I could not hold down even one project at art school for any longer than a couple of weeks before moving to the next, only to again become bored and move on. I continued to roam through villages of thought like a wandering monk, and never found a city to fascinate me. But rather than become bored with this book, I persist, even in the face of complete mental blankness. But what is

the cause of this amnesia if not the struggle to go beyond myself and allow myself my own knowledge? What was I thinking last night before I fell asleep? I took a great deal of time to pass out because of a passing thunderstorm which seemed to make me very alert and restless into the bargain. I was thinking my old clichĂŠ about all my work. But I shall not reiterate it here, for that would be of no consequence. What would be of consequence would be if I were to allow myself my knowledge, allow my voice to reach up from out of the depths of my body, and to speak to people; but the occasions are rare as are the birds. How is it that one can put a bar or even a doubt on top of the things that one knows? Doubting is for the cautious, although it is necessary if we are to test what we know with a hammer, so to speak. But does doubting challenge our knowledge, or does it become its own independent knowledge, or does it become an overall attitude for those that have not the courage to arrive at a belief? There is indeed a knowledge possessed of all of us that speaks under certain conditions, to certain people, about certain things, but it is important to be aware that this voice is not conscience which foolish people believed was a mere ethical split between good and bad. There is a consistent plateau of selfknowledge that runs through all of the things we do, but so subtle and deeply obscured that we go unaware as to its presence on many occasions. Many parents believe that their children do not know and are therefore dumb, implying that they themselves are smart. But the conceit of a parent that believes this idiotic maxim is that of nothing else than idiocy. I see parents shouting at their children as though they did know, or as though they ought to know. A parent of such low calibre indeed wishes to pass their no doubt invaluable

knowledge about life on to someone that they wish was not innocent. But a child does indeed carry a certain kind of wisdom; one powerful enough to convert the feelings of a man into the feelings of a father through mere representation. Consider that we do, all of us, contain a backdrop of thousands of years of knowledge which goes obscured by our mere image of self. Self does indeed obfuscate any connection to Zeit that we might have, (and again, with such a tentative metaphysical subject, the queasy amongst you may close the book. Queasy about my understanding of it? I have not found a single book in London by Hegel, but countless books about him. Some people prefer to drink downstream, I suppose.) We might even go so far as to say that the force of history forces us into Being from out of Historyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unconscious. This would indeed be a provocative statement which of course will remain unfounded. But the connection of concepts in my mind is such as to combine them in such a way that brings me pleasure, and I write for pleasure, (or to ward-off displeasure, you see?) But if you are still reading what I am writing as a commoner reads the Bible, then the entire edifice will be merely mediocre, wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it? And if you read the last statement with conceit? We must go beyond mere self-reflection. We should allow ourselves to be what we are. When one perceives a great masterpiece of art, (and whichever that may be is entirely up to you, that is if you have ever seen a great masterpiece which contains a voice that cannot possibly be that of your own, and yet curiously it speaks in your language,) then you will indeed be aware of the very curious and insurmountable qualities possessed by that thing. Or, we become possessed by the insurmountable qualities of that thing. Or, we

become possessed by the insurmountable qualities that we have it in our possession to perceive. There can be no kind of masterpiece in the world without a master to perceive it, for one must indeed be identical with the qualities of the thing in the world indeed for any resonance to occur. How can it be that when one perceives a truly great masterpiece, (as recently I discovered da Vinci’s ‘Madonna of the Rocks’, (English National Gallery version only,)) one is totally run-through with an incomprehensible number of qualities, the kind of which makes your head ache with trying to understand but your heart joyful at the existence of this thing? These things cannot be only a part of the [painting] itself, but can only be produced in the friction between object and object, perceiver and perceived. These qualities must be apparent within you in order to be able to understand them. So who is a great master at life that can allow and cultivate such qualities in their everyday existence, to touch and be touched by people? Again, rare birds. But I find it a great point of much interest, the phenomena of the masterpiece, (which of course attaches itself to the notion of the genius in my understanding.) But one does not need to be a painter to be a genius, for there are awful painters. One need merely be that which one is, which is no mere thing. You are more likely to find a prophet in a 24-hour shop in London than at the Royal Academy’s Summer Show. (But if you find one then you have failed in your success.) So what happens when one sees for example a painting that one does not like?

Advancement: To perceive in something, a person, a painting, a piece of culture etc, a set of qualities that one does not like, or that one finds objectionable, is to still perceive it in the same way as one

perceives a great masterpiece. One is drawing a comparison about oneself in the world; we see the qualities of greatness in the masterpiece when we reflect and discover our very real greatness. So too do we discover the qualities we detest in ourselves in detestable paintings, detestable people, etc. These things still comprise

our

reality,

(which

picture

drawn

from

representation,) and denial can only harm reality and retard it. It is quite safe to say, even by the Lacanian maxim, that we project our representation at all stages and onto all things. This is not merely causality; it is a very great empowerment and celebration. But if we find in ourselves that which does not merely represent when we perceive a great good within a masterpiece, then have we found the Real within reality, or am I merely jerking-off? Can the quilt of representation ever be drawn back? Indeed it could if we could draw ourselves into the present and be what we are. And perhaps the initial key to this process resides in what we perceive as a great masterpiece, but the real victory is to rejoice in the same qualities we find in that which we detest. We would then fully acknowledge all parts of our reality, and we would become immediate and transparent to them. But we will not do this, for we are quite content to see only our greatness, deny it in practice, and live in complete denial of life itself. Acknowledge all parts of life, even those that are mundane, awful, terrible, nauseous, horrific; they shall both heighten what we call â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;higherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; or more desirable things, they will themselves become the very rejoicing of life that is a living. Only then can we know what desire is, what is desire, why desire is itself a higher drive in a person toward that which is good. For to understand desire as it relates to all things is to gain a conception of the good, and not merely to understand what you

have been told is good. These things must become your property, you must care for them, and you will then become responsible for reality. Every day must become a becoming.

English attitude as I see it as I have lived it. We English are now used to our allowance of two days per week for ourselves. Tradition tells us that it is a Saturday and a Sunday. Friday would see in the time with a drinking session. Saturday morning would be lazy and hungover, Saturday daytime would be for shopping and getting rid of our alienating monthly wage, television, perhaps drinking again. Sunday, sleep in again, be lazy, perhaps watch the television in bed before watching it in the lounge, and then in the evening watch television, (the programmes are complicit with your mood; Monday is approaching,) the enjoyment coming from the addiction to work, the perverse pleasure of not wishing to return, but returning anyway. This was my way of life, and I have seen others who are the same. I do not wish to judge other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existence; it would be both impossible, pointless, and detrimental to my own. But when I lived this existence I felt as though it were entirely predictable, that nothing was happening, and that it was not answering my question about life. When I changed the way I lived my life, I began to find more questions and enjoying them. I stopped looking for answers and enjoyed the mystery of life, the pure bliss involved in living it for its own sake. Since the holy Sabbath was removed, when God ceased to exist in us anymore, people started to work on Saturdays and Sundays also. (People need to shop, do they not?) We English are still entitled to our two days of not working, (disgustingly called

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;rest daysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; where I labour.) A rest day. This means that you live for your work. You live to work. It has become a factor of existence that makes you continue to exist for its sake. I live for my work and I get five days rest. I have changed for myself what work is, because when it was given to me by other people I could find no meaning to it. I was alienated at doing a thing that I did not understand and which I traded huge chunks of my existence for in return for some money. Worded in this way, it seems quite perverse, does it not? Perhaps I am a perverse person? I am trying not to be, because I do in fact cherish the ideal of the genuine. But to work requires an ethic of husbandry to make it valuable, and indeed, work does make you what you are. But what kind of work? How are we to know what kind of work will make us what we are? That part is easy; no matter what work you will do, you are still becoming what you will be. But one must discover that through doing work we are producing the quality of reality for ourselves, and it is this that we need to cherish, a kind of respect for the work that we do; it is easy for me now to respect the labour that I undertake for five days of the week for my employer. The money I receive for that labour pays for the home where my wife lives, and this brings a great richness into my respect for labour. I wish to subsist in another way, and by dispensing with the needless and ritual performances in life, (those things we do without knowing why we do them,) gives me enough time to make the work that achieves my desires. All parts of reality must bring richness with them, and as the producer of reality, you do indeed have both the responsibility and the power to produce reality according to desire. But as we have already discovered through ore daily life and our discussion here, desire follows a diverse and deceptive path. We

must hone our talent for self-knowledge, or we can never truly know what desire is.

Q: But what authority do I have to say all of these things to you?

A: I can look into a heart as though that organ were my own; equal in its measure of troubles, confusions, anxieties, joys. We are indeed the same, as though we share the same body, but our representation has become misaligned. I allot this time between two hours to write without a pause.

I wait for a time to become and in so doing I record all activity thereupon my brain. So much in this brain is like a stone unturned; in fact, each rock that is uplifted reveals a plethora of smaller ones underneath, the combined mass of which is equal to the larger stone. Due to their division, they require twice the time and twice the effort divided into smaller parts, just like the stone itself. Those stones uplifted reveal more, ad infinitum (?) until a dawning occurs; they are the same stone; why am I lifting it? And so it is with the microcosm of our prized rockery. Why should one have morals other than to make oneself the judge and to feel control over life, over

that

thing

which

had

say

about

its

inception/conception? Conception; that means idea, surely? Are we just the Idea of life? Would that not be an adequate explanation of consciousness? If I am faced with an ethical decision, I turn my brain off. The situation makes me roam about on the inside, exposing the soft parts, heightening the erotic sensibility. Indeed, each ethical situation is an erotic one. But do we treat our decisions as though it were an erotic situation to be bedded? No, we do not,

for our carnal desires are indeed antithetical to our moral desires. This is an initial ethical problem. Like Nietzsche, I can hear the clink of my slave’s chains, a ghostly jangle of irons long since removed. The accumulated noise of chains following each person’s footsteps is an horrific symphony or cacophony to which one cannot project one’s spiritual voice loud enough to make it heard. It is deafening. Must we become erotic in our decision-making in order to sensitise our ethical prowess and hear the voice of reason over the chatter of phantom shackles? I fear not. Our erotic sensibility is too empty, too futile; it has been tarnished for too long by those whose desire was to tarnish and make dirty and concealed. We sin where there is no sin present; the word of sin is a ghostly echo; how is it that our minds function so actively and energetically when a situation is futile or harmful? How is it that my nausea escalates as I approach that which hitherto was unknown to my consciousness? Why is it that men are sick to turn their eyes inward, lest they glimpse their reflection? Last night, I went to the theatre to see a famous magician whose special trick is a mental sleight of hand; we are led to believe that he can read a person’s mind according to their behaviour, and he can also memorise vast amounts of information. (Wasn’t that a Greek trick?) His gift, being of a superabundant flexibility in his mental faculties, serves only to line his pockets. This is theft, surely? Or at least a sleight of hand? His trick is to accumulate and magnify fame and wealth. His mind is not flexible enough to answer the ‘Why’ of a person; he cannot answer the ‘Why’ of what he does. He is a nihilist. I too can read a person’s mind; I do so by learning how to read the language of my own mind, and I listen to how it talks. It is similar to deciphering a

hieroglyphic; one looks for repeats, studies data, makes comparisons, draws conclusions. But again, this will not tell you what an Egyptian meant. When I peer into my consciousness, I also am looking, as if by refraction, at the mundane and everyday readymade madness of all people, the psychosis of a great unseen malaise. If consciousness is a symptom of illness, then which part of us is sick? No person amongst us has seen it…people do not see consciousness as a ‘thing’ because they identify themselves with it. Consciousness has gone mad because of our misuse of it. “My experience is everything!” they exclaim, and fold their arms. Crude materialism is quite a disgusting thing, but it can be refined into petroleum. They are blissfully unaware of the empirical verification of existence as a symptom; a need to feel alive, (because nothing else tells me that I am; my reason is diseased.) Empiricism can be looked at in this way, and the implications are indeed controversial.

Experience tells me that I exist, or

Experience tells me that I exist.

[The difference is in the perception, and the ‘difference’ overawes the ‘truth’ of the entire statement.]

This is why all people who abide by the maxim of the Empirical are empirically deceived. I look, I see. What deception is this? Who or what looks and sees? “Hence, I cannot answer you Sir because all I see is all I know and all I am, and I do not see your point. And therefore I cannot provide you with an adequate answer.”

The proof is in the pudding?

When did a person ever dare to answer his or her own question? (Like this question, for sure!) When did a man ever ask himself, in all innocence and ambition, â&#x20AC;&#x153;What is the Meaning of life?â&#x20AC;? No; for it is a joke, is it not? Meaning and life are both a joke for the sick amusement of the empiricist. But he laughs at himself; he is unable to answer because he does not know or hear the question, he has no belief in meaning, his experience is all. (If this were the case, then he cannot have experienced his life if he cannot answer its own question. Call yourself an Empiricist?) I ask you now to do these things; what have you to lose? Not your experience, because experience only gains and only death can strip you of this property. This vast hoard of things, these vaults full of treasure have no inherent Value; either their remain meaningless or you become an alchemist; you must look and find meaning within this experience, for then it will truly be your property. My time is running short but my scorn for myself is not. This monologue; ceaseless. Let us continue at another time, when perhaps I am feeling differently, for it is all subject to this factor amongst others. Let us continue in good faith though, until we find gold in our stream. I would say that my writing was epileptic if I felt any ease in pressure. Why is it that a person waits for a suitable time? I think to myself; I shall write a great book in the future, a masterpiece. Why am I unable to do it now? I, like many others I am guessing, (given that we all seem to be so alike,) am waiting for a future time when all of the conditions are correct until we can do what we are

supposed to do. But why wouldn’t a person, why wouldn’t I choose to do it now? This future time will never come, it is a procrastinator’s sigh, and a person who speaks about some fantasy without applying themselves to it immediately doesn’t really, in most cases, intend to do it, believe that it can happen, or even really want to do it. I most commonly hear this kind of exclamation from people who complain about their job, and yet continue to do it indefinitely. It is a perverse kind of exclamation that announces a guilty pleasure; I don’t want to admit it, but I love this job; it fulfils my desire to be unhappy, to feel downtrodden, to have been subjected to a life that I never asked for. On the other hand, even though I have sat down to do my greatest work right now and without delay, because I am writing about this phenomenon, it cannot be a great work, can it? It is its own subject, a meta-book, so to speak. But if this book is a stand-in for a book, or in the guise of a book, or a book about books, then what other form does it have that it is not telling us directly about? We must be careful when something exclaims to us what it is, for why should we trust this thing amongst so many things that we doubt? It is a form of rhetoric or conviction that a book should tell you what it is; there is a game involved or a deceit – one must look ever-closer, one must doubt harder, and in the last instance, one must affirm harder than one has ever hitherto affirmed. What is the point of writing a book that does not go beyond all other books? Because I was waiting for the right time…

If we follow-on from the last point, then there is a larger kind of deceit at hand, in that in every unveiling which may occur due to our investigation of the world, some other concealment is

happening. Let us take, for example, the phrase “Never trust what people say.” This phrase, if we trust it, tells us not to trust it. What may have appeared as a maxim to a person through an unveiling becomes a consequent concealing for another person. So how should we look at Aristotle in light of this? If he remarks that all things in the world are concealed and that it is indeed our constitutive nature to disclose them, then this remark indeed forms part of the concealment of the world. And so it must be. Aristotle must have been aware of this paradox, and yet gives it to us in full knowledge that somebody who understands what he is saying also knows not to trust it. There may be, hidden in this deceit, the germ of truth. But that truth can only be produced at the point of its unmasking; it does not exist as a truth until it is unmasked, and hence even a maxim that exclaims the same thing cannot be true until it has been unveiled. We produce truth in it; truth is the process of unveiling in this understanding of human truth. We must find out why it should be true, rather than think that because Aristotle has said it then it must be true, because he was wise and we are not. We will, of course, fall foul of Heidegger’s observation if we take this maxim, which is that of scientific knowledge, whose truth we do not need to continue to rediscover. But the world’s concealment is not made any less so by any scientific discoveries of the past. The maxim that the world is concealed to us continues to stand even though we stand on top of the knowledge of successive generations of truth-finders. This is a question of our transient truth that relates directly to our existence, our impermanent presence within time and space. The world that Aristotle is relating to is Reality; the world as it is projected and represented by our presence in it. This understanding connects to the Lacanian ‘image-screen’

that I so oft recall in memory, for it was a point of excitement for me, (an impossible concealment to unmask,) that was a yardstick for my ambition, and also a very real novelty in my understanding of the world. I did not fully understand this idea until it dawned upon me, (and ‘dawn’ is the most appropriate terminology for this kind of enlightenment in the understanding,) that whilst I was cycling along the road to college one morning, I looked at a film poster, and conceived that perhaps everything I look at is a fragment of myself? This childishly simple idea grew ever more complex in me, and it went all the way from the idea of primal narcissism and the mirror stage of Lacan, the Buddhist notion of ‘Samsara’ or the torrent of reality, via Heidegger to Aristotle. This genealogy of ideas that I took in backwards made no sense as it was in the writings of other writers. This knowledge was only understood by them and through them, and for me it is again another image of the fractured self of representation. I could only understand it for the first time that morning. None of these ideas relate at all to anything other than to my picture of reality, and as a thing that produces a picture of reality, to understand how this production takes place and in what way constituted my dawning. These things, these ideas, form part of my picture of reality. I need to become complicit with my own nature; I could only understand the idea of the concealed world by understanding the way in which I have concealed it and, likewise, I can only understand the idea of unveiling the world if I unveil it. There are no degrees against which we can measure our ability to unveil the world except in and through ourselves and, given our very ordinary, (extraordinary,) ability to deceive means that our only proof can be in our degree of belief and of trust. Does this require a certain degree of ignorance?

Or does it involve believing and trusting our image of reality because we have made it concrete through our being as human as we can be, and being true to those limitations? Once again, I return to the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Know Thyselfâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. The only way that I can now continue to write this book is if I have a revelation as to how I can know myself.

III Le Grand Jeu

I feel absolutely me. Why is there a break in the text here, as though the previous section were an introduction of sorts and this is the body of the text? There is no break, there can be no break here; if you have perceived one then that is for you alone, and not for me. I am still writing. I have now become my text and the text has become me, each word part of my living consciousness, the paradoxes and the contradictions are still manifest. In this way can this book be unlike any other book, so it is best not to treat it as though it were one. I am only alive when I am writing the book of life, as it were, and thus can this book only be alive if I am writing it. I am the only book of my kind. The thought barriers have dissolved because I decided that it should be so; there can longer be any impediments, the flow may not be broken, the reflections are now all realised. I write for a new purpose now; for writing itself.

This may seem strange, but in reality what kind of purpose could a book have otherwise? Books are not what you or I thought they were, and neither is language, words or thoughts. As I said, the barriers have dissolved because I decided that it should be so.

You know, if you have read me [w]right, that a mental breakthrough can be realised at any time. You will also be aware that any impediments to it can go unnoticed and unchallenged, according to the dictates of desire. It is now very apparent that I cannot be anything other than that which I am, and that false ambition has been eradicated; it dissolved as though it were a mere phantom. And indeed, all other ghostly voices that I could hear I can still hear, but the illusion of their difference to me has evaporated. I have internalised all of my boundaries and I have decided to make them my property. Acknowledgement must and can only be seen as the first stage of realisation; one must know and affirm that which exists before one can become what one is. Any frustrations that I have encountered today, (and indeed, I detected a few that excited my mind so much as nearly made me mad,) have been more of a quaint nostalgia about myself. Instead, when I encountered said feelings, they did not feel as though they were mine. They had ceased to be my property; any debts that I may have carried have now been repaid and I no longer carry the burden of repayment on my shoulders. I first knew that something was happening when I was writing and decided all of a sudden that the section I was working on, (when I was still writing a book,) was finished and that I no longer had any need for it. As a signal of this, some men came and delivered to me a washing machine. This was the perfect opportunity for a walk and go to the high street. I then

noticed a feeling of tension overawe my senses by all of the busy people and anger and frustration going on all around me and suddenly I thought; these feelings are not mine. I used to think that they were, (I did only yesterday,) but I don’t believe that they are my property now. I smiled widely. I then went into Argos and there were many people there doing their people things; a family argument, a dispute over money, a screaming child, and all of it in one of London’s most impoverished areas. Everything made me smile, for I was not responsible for it any longer, and all that I could see was humans doing what they were doing, and it was indeed beautiful to me. The scene that I have conjured up for you and I here from memory was part of daily life for me, and the sort that would bring with it great dis-ease and misery. I felt quite joyful by all standards and yet this did not strike me as strange because I knew that I was done with who I thought I was before, and what I thought the world was before, and just was me. This carried a tremendous liberation with it, I can assure you; knowing what you are. This is not to say that I know this fully, and do not believe me to be so blind as to think that I do, but it was rather that the shape of my life had crystallised, I was the same as ever and yet I was not. Indeed I am the same, for the same problems continue to press on me, the same desires motivate me, the same ambitions drive me. The ‘me’ in all three cases I am not so sure about any longer, as though the rug was pulled-out from underneath it and I was left in a fragile state. This is not a ‘new life’, but whatever it is I shall try to reach an understanding of it here. Who cares why I write now, and who cares that I can say ‘who cares’ in that it would contradict my former self? Who was he anyway? I cannot really remember; the process of forgetting one thing leads to the excitement of

remembering it again. Nothing can interrupt this now, for the cares slip away so effortlessly and are replaced only with Care; a former ideal which is now its own reality. Care must always be capitalised, for it is a thing in itself, an independent reality that makes reality what it is. We should not apply it when we desire to, when we think it worthwhile, for we would be little more than nothing in being selective about a thing which is not even in our control. We must allow it the free reign that it desires and not put it into relation with our desire. This is not an Ideal, but it becomes an actuality if we so desire to allow ourselves to see it in this way. We must no longer continue our selective viewing-process and indeed allow both ourselves and the world to be viewed in whole and as a whole. We do not need our fig leaf any longer, and neither do we need any religious allusions. We may need a boat to get from one side of a river to the next, but must we take that boat with us when we get to the land? A tool is useful to be sure, but when it has no purpose other than sentimentality, (which is merely a tie to a former happiness or thanks,) to take it with us always is retrograde, and in fact ties us to the past in a detrimental fashion. We will always remember if we so desire it in our hearts to remember, but when this turns our glance backward like Orpheus in the underworld will not our reality disappear also? We can remember if we choose to. It is indeed human to forget, but it is prudent to say that it is human to remember, and the act of memory as it constitutes reality is of paramount importance to the world if indeed we do Care for it. I do not wish for reality to disappear, so I trust that it is there, and I remember that I can remember. We are done with our thought barriers, but in truth they did constitute a good ship, (but not one good enough to go down with.) Reality is our vessel.

I am listening to a compact disc that I have heard many times before; but what would be the meaning unless this was the first time that I heard it? Nietzsche’s ‘book that goes beyond all books’ is metaphorical for a going beyond of everything, but not even that. We want to go into our beyond now, and that is our present. We wish for our life to be changed because we have forgotten how to live it. We want to remember how this can be done, but we have forgotten how to remember. We want these things because the germ of our higher desire dictates it to us, and the diseased organs that are all around it cause a whole plethora of feelings to well up in us that makes us sick. But this is a beautiful indication of our soul’s desire to become well, to find its deepest ambition, to become what it is again. We do not abandon our past, because it has given greatly to us and has caused us to be the way that we are now, and that is a great joy. No spite can be had toward our existence; who can we blame for that? Only the most profound pessimist could do so and forget themselves to such a degree that they could believe it to be true. But our nature speaks strongly to us, we can hear it if we remove the clutter of voices in us and instead hear the complex musical arrangement of consciousness. Belief can only come from a good memory, and a good memory can only hear the voice of existence. To know yourself takes good hearing, good memory, and other healthy attributes. We do not hope to become well again that life seems no longer to be a cancer toward death. Death is the culmination of our celebration of life and existence and its facticity. There is nothing to fear in death. There are no secrets to behold, no knowledge to impute. So we must instead be alive because that is our single fact. All ‘things’

stem from this fact, and we can take whatever reassurances that we need from this fact. But a healthy human does not require reassurance; that is the hangover from the unsureness of the fact of life. Life is self-evident, and we no longer need to question it. We have asked our questions, and the silence gave us the answer; there was no question all along, we have no void to fill any longer. I have learned for the first time today that temperance is great good, and one which I never [needed] to appreciate before. I was always impetuous in many things, a demanding child always. But temperance is subtle, sweet, and provides a great joy to us. And we do not use it, but it becomes its own fact. We do not apply it, it is always there and it always provides a great joy when we apprehend life. Every action in life is a rejoicing of the very fact that life is a fact. But let me ask myself now; why would joy be characteristic of life and not anxiety? Anxiety is a fact of a concealed life, a fact of one who conceals and does not wish to know, does not wish to celebrate because the knowledge itself would shatter the self-made delusion of a quantity of bliss. But when one becomes conscious as to oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nature as one who discloses, one finds the reality of joy in all things, one understands those things that before were sceptical in us; the notion of Good, of Truth, and all things that may have proven disastrous to our small existence if we believed in them. But, as a nihilist, one is moving toward nothing, toward destruction. But again nihilism is our boat across the river, and we must not carry it with us always to remind us of its limited usefulness. We seek to be destroyed only because we are ready to hail in a new season of plenty, what we allowed ourselves to believe in, that small and fragile reality to which we were clinging, must be burned away, and on top of it are we free to create

something which is ultimately Good. I said previously that the human could not know what is ultimate, for he should be a human and nothing else. I will not defend my mistake, I shall not justify myself. I have no justice other than to myself. Draw your own conclusion to this contradiction if you must, but excel yourself if you choose to do so. These are the new seeds of my consciousness planted on the contradictions and old ground of my former consciousness. And I must remember. I know that which I know, and I must know that in full, to the extent that I can know it. A human cannot know everything, and yet everything that he knowsâ&#x20AC;Ś

We are indeed absolute, for if not how could this last statement have any kind of meaning, even a contradictory one? Existence is the paradox itself, permanent yet transient, concrete yet ephemeral, eternal and yet finite. How can this be so? We are all able to answer this question according to our own understanding of the Truth, for if we knew not of Truth we would indeed be helpless. And yet we have been tied up in the notion that Truth is false, that it cannot exist, that there is no truth or certainty. How can this be? Another paradox to be sure, and again I contradict all of my former ideas, for they were indeed limited in their horizon and had little to do with me. Truth is indeed connected to existence, and because of this can we know of it and its affect on us. But there must be Truth in order for us to doubt, lest our doubting be futile and sophistic. Any enquiry would hitherto be a terrible ridicule of the fact of existence and would be life denying, which is itself a terrible and humiliating form of idiocy that we have all known of. We would not doubt what we think to be true unless we wanted to arrive at the

truth. Doubting is a temporary measure, it is part of our mental equipment. But for what reason does such equipment exist? Indeed it is not for any kind of evolutionary ‘purpose’, (and nothing which occurs in nature has purpose other than in human consciousness.) It must instead, as the creator of purpose, be at the disposal of its creator and for nothing else. What began as an evolutionary byproduct of self-consciousness becomes part of the reality of beings that are conscious. It has transcended, (or descended – what does the terminology matter?) from being a natural fact into something which itself produces reality. And, as it is our ‘purpose’ to maintain and Care for the state of our reality, we use the equipment that was originally responsible for it. If though, we have moved into a different reality than the one in which nature consists, (in that we are conscious of reality,) then by what maxim would we abide to resolve never to escalate beyond this accidental but fortuitous one? We are able; we have our ship which is called existence; do we abandon it though nothing is wrong with it, or do we go down with it because it is sinking, or do we get to where we wish to be on it? This is indeed too poor a metaphor to use here, but, when one understands that metaphor is a very peculiar connection between objects across time and space, wherein qualities are transposed and become identical with, then the vehicle for the metaphor is beside the point. The metaphor is its own ship, and we either use it or we do not.

If something is a cause for happiness in us, is it really logical that it should also produce unhappiness in us as well? We have all experienced that something that we care for and which brings us great pleasure can, by the same token produce the ‘opposite’ effect

in us; a great displeasure. Why must this be so; is this a principle of cause and effect that we abide religiously by, or is it within our power and subject to our will and desire that we can be otherwise? I believe so. If we can love our enemy we must also be willing to hate our friends, as Nietzsche impresses upon us, and this goes some way to explain his enlightened relationship with God. But surely, to see the whole of the picture, or to at least begin to do so, must we not love when we hate and hate when we love? Can we not see the coin, and not only see either of its two sides? The leviathan of human emotion is so huge that we must indeed widen all of our horizons and parameters if we are to glimpse it whole. Every emotion that we currently have is deceitful; for if that emotion also contains its opposite, then we are inherently deceived as to its nature. So in order to not be deceived by our emotions, indeed, by that which constitutes our humanity, we must apprehend the truth of emotion. This is the extent of truth by which we can apprehend our emotions; the fullness of feeling an entire universe beyond the tiny and fleeting emotions that we are currently subjected to.

There are people who are subject to life, and those who are the subject of life. Those who are subjected to life are always grappling with it, reaching after things in it, struggling with it, thrashing around in it. They have occurred in it, but it has not occurred to them that it consists in them and they in it. They try to steal from the world that which it would be happy to give to them, they want to win the big game of life, they want to get it back onto their terms and be the master of it. Such friction against reality and existence is what causes anxiety; life did not intend any harm or humiliation

because it cannot intend anything. We are humiliating ourselves by struggling harder, and like a finger-trap, the more we struggle the more difficult it is to release ourselves from the illusion of worries. Being subjected to life is playing the part of the ambitious underdog, but the master they perceive higher up the ladder is only their own ego and hence the struggle cannot be won. This kind of class-division is self-inflicted; we are slaves to nothing. I went for a walk just now, and whilst I walked I felt the surge of life well up in me because it was a great good to have life, and I am respectful and well pleased with its facticity. There was no small, insignificant and transient reason to impress this feeling onto me, for it was the fact of life that caused my joy. I also thought with no worry in my mind that it is quite possible, and highly probable that this feeling would be forgotten and that I would again become embroiled in the fairy-tale of worries. This caused me no pain, however; if it had caused me pain then I should have already left the world of immediacy and re-entered the swirling mist of worries. This was the first lesson to be learned about joy; it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t deny the possibility of sadness, but it does not become sad on its behalf. Any later sadness shall later be tainted by the joyful wisdom that underlies it. And neither does immediacy deny the facts both of memory and fantasy, for it stands immediately between the two with no movement; it is the solidified reality of that which has been and that which will be. That is what reality is, and we produce it both from in front and from behind. If we can see this perfect unity between the future and the past in that moment called the present or reality, then we have finally apprehended the coin and not its two sides. Only that thing which is both the future and the past at the same immediate moment of crossing over can be called existence,

and we can only be said to truly exist if we can apprehend both things immediately and become present to what we are in ourselves.

Conceive that if you present yourself as an open book, if you relate the truth of matters fully as a maxim and that you never attempt to conceal anything from other people, one would by necessity do actions that would cause no further regret in the future. One would accept responsibility for oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actions fully because they will have no reason to return to that displeasure at some point. And if one does indeed regret an action, it always becomes a point of return, you think repetitively on it because you caused something to happen in reality, you caused reality, to be a place wherein you are displeased. You would have done things differently, but you cannot. You must become responsible each and every time you do something, and accept that if something happens that you wish had not, you are responsible for that and accept it. You have no cause to leave the present moment and return backward because you accept that a person may only act in the present. Likewise you have no reason to go forward other than to prepare in your mind that which you consider to be the truest act that will bring good. If you fantasise, accept the fantasy as a dream that you cannot or will not accomplish. It will lose its lustre quite soon as indeed you lose [omni]potency. Someone whose reality is produced from selfknowledge and not self-fantasy will convert fantasy into something which has a careful and meaningful connection to reality that brings good. This is not a prescription for ethical behaviour; it is only my realisation of coming to terms and becoming present with existence. That is my highest desire, and one which constitutes my

going to fill each and every part of existence with self-knowledge, of moving into the horizon and become that which I already am. This is self-realisation; realising what self is, realising what you are and how you are. It is very simple.

My writing here leans toward the notion of a pure reason, a segment of thinking where all persons have the same abilities, tendencies, rationalisations. But this is not what I am saying at all, for it is already within my understanding that this book can only go toward the boundaries of itself and not to preoccupy itself with fictitious ‘possible’ persons. This kind of scientific know-how is quite misplaced here. And yet, if you were to suggest that I am in error on this point, that I am still self-deceived then you are also in error; the book is to be read as a book is to be read. Books do not make errors; humans do. And if you can perceive the error in the book, all you will have proven is you ability to see error in this book. It is your error, it is your property, and it is grossly misplaced here. Even the last sentence and the current one are not addressing you, because this is a book and it does not ‘address’ anything. It has merely addressed itself the entire time, for it is struggling to become conscious of itself, it is going to take away my selfconsciousness from me. Now have you understood the magnitude of the realisation; there was no author, no reader, only a consciousness continually self-reflecting, repeating and becoming. The reality metaphor has become apparent. The book is addressing itself now; there is no one to hear, for it has no need for listeners; when it talks as though there are listeners present it is the same as when anyone else talks; only to themselves, self-reflecting, machinic, narcissistic. This book does not yet know that there will

be no listeners and indeed it will never find out. Thus it is the same as anyone, it is totally mundane. But in that a book should go beyond all other books, so must the reader go beyond all other readers. We must not allow a reader to go without creativity and advancement; a reader must go beyond that which he reads each and every time and must bring this ethos into all other parts of life; each relationship should go above and beyond all other relationships. A person has the ability to do this, and it is a uniquely human ability indeed. Think about athletes competing in a games; they are constantly discovering how fast a person can run or how far a person can jump. I also wonder whether the speed that a person can run 100 metres will ever reach a fraction of a second, or if the grade will be fine-tuned to the fraction of a second. Indeed there must be a boundary to this speed, and it will be reduced down to the smallest possible fraction. But one must understand the substance to this metaphor; is this a mindlessly competitive notion of overcoming, or is it a human testing the degree and extent of his human ability? Is this a person measuring his influence and condition in the universe? If we apply this ethos to other departments of the human experience, does it hold up? What about the cases of laziness, despondency, or other such experiences that I seem to have avoided here? Perhaps the metaphor was only truly designed to bring these more problematic factors into my consciousness and attempt to understand them? I think the way in which to bring these factors into light will be through understanding the existential condition which causes such an eclipse; Melancholy. [What I am also doing is to explore the massive and undiscovered substance of the way in which humanity consists, the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;tip of the icebergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; metaphor revisited, but with a Zeit-

unconscious understanding. All of these surface phenomena of the human condition point to the more huge existential condition and potential of a human.]

In Melancholy we can find such surface phenomena as sadness, despondency, tiredness, mourning, laziness, inability, impotence, etc. These feelings are merely the ripples on the surface that do not expose or bring to light the monster that has caused them, but they do indicate the presence of the thing. And, because Melancholy truly connects in a more direct way to existence through humanity we will discover that it is indeed a homely place to come, but one whose potential for creation has barely been touched in the history of our cultures.

Note: Be aware that I am not attempting to democratise the aspects of the unknown world as the frontiersmen have always done. Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gradual disappearance

from the

world,

and

manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

slow

independence in the world has lead to this type of egoic behaviour and false enshrinement of the individual and his liberties in life. To bring this type of self-knowledge into light is part of our enlightenment as to ourselves and nothing beyond that. This enlightenment is beyond conceit as a project in itself for it merely propounds the self-apparent facticity of human existence. It does not erect laws to enshrine its ethic for its ethic is diverse, it reaches out to a teleological understanding of the same which paradoxically constitutes its difference and its sameness. Who could be disingenuous in exclaiming that a person should be what he or she is, and in so doing encapsulate and bring into light all of his or her

contradictions, errors, mistakes; all of the human qualities that make that person a person? But to do this with fullness, meaning and eventually with Value is indeed a quantum leap in the face of a hollow God. To eradicate the nihilistic tendency and to rediscover in a solid way our Value, the most human of all exclusively human attributes is indeed the highest that our desire can reach. This is a becoming-human of a human. We discover that to exist is the prime Value unto itself, and that all other Value will be derived from this great Good.

Melancholy was, until well into the Enlightenment period, understood in accordance to the philosophy of the astrologers and those people who studied human life and existence by looking to the exterior as it effected the interior. They were people of God who looked to Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s creation to witness and experience His movements within it. They so desired to understand the universe and all that was contained in it. The Saturnine condition, the temperament of Saturn, was indeed that of Melancholy. Saturn was a God of the ancient world, and at that time the human could understand and go guiltless of his feelings through metaphorically transposing and attributing their causality and intention to that of a heavenly body. Indeed at that time, the Gods existed for humans to understand their humanity without the concepts of guilt and sin that later characterised the Christian religion and the Nihilistic antireligion that man is alone in the universe and is responsible for all his right and wrong-doings. (Of course, this notion of good and bad, when unsupported by God, and without the prime understanding of Value in menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minds, is without value and is nihilistic, for it is characterised more by Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s absence than by

human independence. It is like a great mourning period. Nihilism is the wake of Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death, but indeed a necessary decadence.] Indeed, we find even as late as Malebranche the idea that the humours of the body are controlled by Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will. He even suggested that our will, as we control the body, exerts power over God; God is all parts of manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body except the free will of the mind, and hence it is we that control Him. This idea extends as far as to say that man creates the universe and universal causality because he controls God. So the black bile of Melancholy should not even be so abstract an idea to us post-Christians. An overabundance of this particular fluid in the appendix, as controlled and produced either by God or by the heavenly body of Saturn, would bring on the condition of Melancholy. Unfortunately for us, as the exciting and expanding Christian philosophy gave way to puritanism and the power of the church itself to produce official doctrine that was beyond scepticism and occult knowledge, so too did the particularly divine properties of the melancholic condition. We can see, if we go to a local bookstore and look in the self-help and popular psychology departments, books that provide the nihilistic and rotten understanding of Melancholy. (But they will still indicate the cause as being a chemical imbalance, which is somewhat ironic and humorous.) Our understanding of that particular aspect of the human condition must revisit its ancient and occult understanding in order for us to understand the existential significance of Melancholy. Indeed this particular conjunction, of bringing Melancholy into alignment with the human condition of existence and its predicate of Value will bring such qualities to its own state as to make it an inherently valuable part of the human experience. Melancholy was, through its divine connection,

associated with achieving a visionary insight into understanding what a human is and what he does. Artists have sought to bring this concept to their particular occupation, as can be seen in Durer amongst others. To experience profound insight into the human condition was said to be the basis of great art, for indeed one could not produce an image of God or any religious conjunction of symbols without understanding the human significance of them. Only by removing bodily aberrations from consciousness could the mind delve deeper than it had ever been, and in that way could a mind achieve wings. The outward appearance of such a state was of laziness, a vacant stare, a lack of bodily excitations. It was so imputed that this condition was negative and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;badâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; that any association that a person has with these bodily symptoms carry a negative value. It is considered antithetical to our current work ethic, it is seen as doing nothing, whereas to distract ones mind by busying it with the petty worries of life and work are negative to the valuable state of existence. To remove the association of guilt that a person carries with them into Melancholy is indeed a profound gift; one honours oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existence by giving back to it territory that once it belonged to and once belonged to it. Why should we not wish to carry huge depth into our experience of emotions, situations and relations by giving back to them their existential context without the hindrance of denial? It is not our denial, but generations of small denials that constitute our particular blindness to the fact of our existence, and we must work towards an unveiling of this mask of the denial of Zeitgeist. Melancholy does indeed allow us, in all the depth of our humanity, to apprehend and understand emotion. That is its existential characteristic and function, and we must work hard to recover it,

exercise it and sharpen it. Indeed, we may find a connection to the various practices to remove excitation from the mind and body in the Buddhist practise of life. But our notion will be tainted with the idea of the Idea, for this is a conceptual practise that leads to a fullness of the understanding of life that creates as it destroys. It indeed is an idea concerned with the Idea, and that constitutes a fullness of knowledge that knows itself. The feelings that we preoccupy ourselves with when we feel â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;melancholicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; are ones that we feel cause a disturbance in our life, that cause worry and profound distraction from it, that we would desire to forget if the idea would only let us go. But this is a low type of desire, that desires to be rid of, that would rather forget and conceal the idea than to bring the idea into light. We must embrace and confront such feelings, feel them all in our bodies, think harder and deeper on them that we do simple worries. The idea must become the profound Idea, which is the fullness of itself in our understanding. When we worry about things, which is the uppermost superfice of melancholy, we cannot distract our mind from its distraction, for we have become the absolute embodiment of the idea of distraction. This is the pure negation of existence, it constitutes the forgetting of existence through distraction from it. This is a profound forgetting that requires a profound remembrance. But alas, all we do is to forget what could not be forgotten; all worries are forgotten even though it appeared at the time to be the one thing which could not be forgotten. We are perverse beyond belief! This is our great contradiction; one which stretches throughout the whole of our human experience, and yet we are unable to grasp the conception of our contradictory existence. A contradiction should not always prove our point of embarrassment and the end point of

our self-knowledge. A contradiction must be stepped-over and looked at as what it is, not a problem to be solved but a thing to be understood as that which it is; a contradiction. Such is human life, as its own ultimate contradiction, must be stepped-over in order to gain this profound understanding of that which it consists in. This is how the Melancholic temperament describes to me how the superfice of human understanding can be deepened and steppedover. I have ceased forgetting and now I am remembering more and more profound and rich ideas from beneath the surface of my existence. I sit now in the depth of Melancholy, focussed entirely on the Idea, free from distraction. I will not copyright this book, because it has no belonging other than to itself. Anyone who has read it and understood it would either not copy it because they have understood it, or copy it because they have understood it. Someone who has not understood it but has been understood by it, (and such is its natural relation to the world,) has never understood anything, least of all themselves. What kind of copyright is put on the Torah, other than it must be copied and copied properly, or we lose everything. This is the origin of copyrighting that has been perverted into our weak understanding of property and capital. We are poor indeed if we cannot understand the idea of property as it has Value. This is part of the significance of the word of God that I do grasp at present, that we must preserve it because it is something to be preserved, that meaning and Value come from a thing Being that which it is and not something that it is not. In order to be what we are we must be that which we are, and this is the metaphor that the Torah and the relation of Jews to it is. It is the metaphor of genuine Being. All great art as it is understood to us that it is great has been thus that it and the artist have both stood in fullness to the

relationship of the Idea as a thing bathed in the light of human understanding. This abstraction is abstract to a deeper extent than the abstract relation of music, painting, film, writing, etc, to us, for it cannot be great until a relation to the Idea has been formed. As the art stands in this relation to the Idea, so does the person who observes it, and brings it into relation to his idea of the Idea, and the idea of himself as Idea. The Idea forms its connection to the word and name of God when we grasp the totality of the concept of God as fidelity. We are fidelitous to the concept of the Torah and the perfect preservation of the word of God, and in this practise does our fidelity and purity keep us in relation to God and God in relation to us. The Idea is preserved for all time, and that Idea is indeed the Idea of God, and it is the largest Idea that can be apprehended inside of consciousness. This is the existential meaning of the law against infidelity in the commandments of Moses; if we are unfaithful to God then we lose him. We did. We lost the ability to form an image of the Idea of God, and we lost the depth in our horizon and our perspective. Put quite plainly, this means that a person cannot have an understanding of himself or of anything unless his imagination stretches to the size of God, and can indeed encapsulate the true Idea of himself against that which he in totality is not. His true difference is not against that of the world and the divisible parts of it; it is his difference to that which has no divisible parts; the Absolute, Nothing, God. He must come to understand that which he absolutely is not against that which he is, and the Idea of God is the only realisation of this truth and the wholeness of a person becoming that which he is. This is the purpose and Value of Melancholy, and indeed it is of the highest

priority that we re-evaluate it and attempt to understand in and through it.

When do we come to realise that the smallest happiness in life is derived from one who seeks to fulfil his own happiness through making the world his slave? How can we realise that the greatest superabundance of joy comes to one who produces reality through his rejoicing of it, and thus conferring this genuine and original happiness in all relations that he has with the world? To deny the possibility that oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actions have a wider effect than on oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own life is a hackneyed clichĂŠ, but one that requires serious attention if we are to improve our talent for life. If we consider the idea that reality is a surface upon which we record upon and are inscribed upon, then we indeed notice the interlacing effect that unites all realities together as the actual state of affairs. We should then find it difficult to consider our personal pleasure as such a boon if it has, as a product, perverted the happiness of the larger consciousness and hence caused displeasure on yourself and others. This quilt that overlays the entire edifice of conscious reality as it is constituted by reality-producing consciousnesses is one that detects and records all effects and produces just causes in response. We are not subject to this consistency, rather we produce it through the facticity of existence and any denial of it serves to make cancerous from inside-out the un-thing of Nothing. It does not make us nothing, but a hollow un-thing that formerly believed in its own existence. Denial of this self-evident fact causes existential cancer. This book is free to talk about such things without harm, for it has become part of a the fabric, a detachable annexe, and it is answerable to noone for it exists as a thing in itself, but also as a consciousness that

addresses and responds, reflects, doubts, affirms, denies. It has become the thing which it denigrates, it has become its own excuse for existence, it has achieved the impossible; it has thought itself into existence. In as much it has become its own concrete idea. Only in true Melancholy may a conscious entity hold an abstract idea in its perfect state of abstraction, becoming the full realisation of the concept bathed fully in the light of human understanding. This idea, as Being, is caught in the instant between its past and future, constituting the concrete reality of the Idea itself. The true Melancholic can maintain this abstraction and hold it in its present concreteness and thus meditate upon it. The Idea has become released from the prejudices and fantasies that brought it originally into view, but we have gone deeper. We have taken heed of the surface phenomena and have moved below until we behold the thing freed from all its affects, as a thing in itself. We usually apprehend Melancholy with a sorrowful feeling, but this feeling is derived from the sadness of the ego, whom we are forgetting in order to remember. We try to forget the Melancholy in order to remove the sadness and become properly maintained by the ego, but this in no way discloses the true nature of anxiety, but rather denies its existence. We must move headlong into the anxiety in a profound state of Melancholy and believe that the depth is not an object for our fear. The vertigo involved is a great relief; life has become abstract and rich and beyond expectation. It has indeed become a life by becoming its own abstraction; the perfection of the Idea and abstraction of it hold life in the instantaneous present. This is what the word ‘Behold’ means. In the same way as Jesus is transposed from reality into the abstract Idea, we exclaim ‘Ecce Homo!” This book is totally ordinary in that it must, like all other

parts of life be held in the object of its Idea, that idea then transposed onto another consciousness and so on. It is my effort to embroider this text into the quilt, and as such as consciousness does in its natural aspect, it becomes that without effort. Alas, for the time being the Idea has slipped from my vision, but in noticing that might it again be reacquired. Once there is an awareness of this abstract space of the Idea, it encapsulates all objects, and one has entered a willing relationship to it, one has desired that particular state. This desire must be held with all honesty, and it must be realised as the highest type of desire that a person can have; that of being what they are.

What is it that happens when I sit down to write this text? Do I in some strange way only exist whilst I write this, or that everything else merely has passed over in silence? This is why you must consider that the text is all, and that a writer does not exist outside of it. It was indeed a fashion to consider reading between the lines of a writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s writings to discover the motives, repressions and implications of the exclusion from a text of certain things. Indeed, I myself have suggested paradoxically and with some pleasure that I have excluded nothing, even from myself, in that all that I know is here and is in some way represented in its totality. I have also said that the entirety of the edifice constitutes so many different connections, quotations, analogies, metaphors that it is indeed difficult to find an author amongst them, but this realisation of the active life of the text is testament to the text existing in and for its own right. As the author, I have even paradoxically suggested that I do not in fact exist, and this book has written itself through me; the Idea found a concrete expression in the space of consciousness and

has imagined itself through me. This last point would imply that whomsoever is addressing you right now was not an author at all, and that this book as you hold it in your hands is merely a metaphor of a conscious entity. How will we come to a conclusion? Of course, the reader will indeed draw some form of conclusion because minds do not appreciate loose ends, and people must abide by their in-built ethics, as must I. But the poetic idea of a consciousness that brings itself into Being is a highly interesting one. It is like the philosopher who pulled himself up by his bootlaces; I have already announced that it is a human quality to step over a paradox. Some things do not require solutions so much as they demand realisations. If one sees a paradox before oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes, it is of course tempting in our desire to know everything and be omnipotent to resolve it. And, in a scientific relation to knowledge in the world this is useful. But some paradoxes are paradoxes, and it is this form that constitutes their strange and alluring beauty. A human, given that his or her existence is paradoxical in itself, requires the realisation of this fact, not the answer to it. This is why we do not ask ourselves what the meaning of life is; the question requires no answer, but our attempts to know the question and answer it provide their own revelations. A human â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;steps-overâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the paradox in order to become what he is, and behold the paradox as something which it is beyond his power and human ability to solve, (and this is indeed a concept that does not enter the sphere of scientific know-how.) This is called realisation, for it is a bringing into reality and an acceptance of the strange character of existing. It is quite self-evident that, even though our scientific know-how as a species of peoples has increased exponentially, our ability to understand the meaning of things has not so much

progressed but forged its own strange path or pattern. I believe that it is prudent to say that even though our scientific reason will continue to stretch, (unless of course we actually do make ourselves extinct in the process,) it will not be able to answer any kind of question that resides solely in and for the existential. For a human to understand questions that refer to and are borne out of him as the existent requires a different type know-how. I am thinking about doing something else, for I am tired and in need of distraction. So I continue to write, and convert this need into its own realisation of distractness as an Idea. I am tired, and am finding it difficult to write now, I am finding it difficult to think of subjects and relations and ideas without making thme sbjcte to s[pellinf misyajkes. I am no wasleep,and or or id is.

Given that I continually harp on about the dangers of distraction, I have decided now to write whilst I am distracted. In this way will my work be tainted by that which it denigrates. Certainly, if I can contrive to work whilst distracted, (and have I even conceived that my work might be a distraction?) I can indeed complete this particular circle of errors. Indeed, if I were to change my perspective I could contrive my entire life and work as error, but this would indeed be its own error, and I would become disingenuous. But can one conceive that this apparent singlemindedness in my approach might contain the whole truth, even in that any response or reaction or correction by a reader would constitute my genuineness in providing the necessary access to the problem? In this way can we conceive of the relationship between consciousnesses as one which weaves its own perfection; errors eventually become corrected, but a mind must consider its ideas as

part of a larger consciousness where they may be continually reworked. The important aspect of this idea is that all consciousnesses are bound in this sense, and we treat consciousness as a somewhat distinct abstract entity that is apart yet tied to individual pockets of consciousness; what we have hitherto contrived as the Individual. God saw his work and saw that it was Good; of course it was – he was God. We, on the other hand, do not see our work as Good, in that this Idea of the Good is an abstract and free-floating Ideal. Humans continually slander and cause friction against that strange and dogmatic concept of ‘Ideals’. As a human, we believe that an Ideal is unnatural and not in the realm of possibility or actuality; this is because an Ideal is enshrined in law, and humans do not make good lawmakers. We do try, however to produce and abide by laws of our own abstraction in part due to our Ideal of the good society. And yet, if we are so anathema to the Ideal, then why do we try to produce a good society? Again, this conflict

contradictions

produced

largely

from

not

understanding or believing in that which we consist in. A politician may consider the Good society and the slow, impossible journey towards it, turning instead to contemporary and smaller portions of the Ideal to make it possible. Why is it that this cannot work? If there is not a belief in the Ideal, and thus no belief in the individual consciousness that tries to maintain a vision of the Ideal inside of consciousness to bring it into light, then failure is built into any project that it aims at. People will say that it is not possible and not human to build the Good society, but the fault lies in the people themselves in the way in which Reality is produced and perceived by so-called ‘Individuals’. The business of politics is indeed too perverted to bring Good to us, it is too full of motives, lies and

secrets to ever be conceived as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Goodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and so it must be that the impossibility of the Ideal is foisted upon us as an object in itself; the Idea of the Ideal is nowhere in sight, we are not concerned with it, we are instead concerned with the impossibility of it as its own subject. In this way has politics, in that it is self-conscious and exists only to maintain itself, (it produces its own problems and so on and so forth,) become a conscious entity, but one which is disingenuous and sick. This is a perverse deception, perverse that it is only words that we are concerned with, the Ideal has been removed with great surgical skill, and we are left with only the debate.

I have great, too great, difficulty in considering politics as a thing. I feel unqualified, in no position to do so, and without the information to make value-judgements in this field. And yet, how many people consider this to be the reason why they are disinterested in the subject? It is of course our politics; it is there for us. The true perversion comes from the administration of politics becoming its own free-floating entity in this way; it excludes persons from its field, and becomes a free-floating entity which itself does not believe in the free-floating entity of the Good society. This is as full an understanding as I can have about perversion. It forms part of our daily reality, (because it is foisted upon us in various media,) and yet this flow of information keeps us at a permanent distance from it. We have it and yet we have nothing, it is part of reality but it is not. It is little more than nothing. I, as everyone, have the right to contemplate this subject and understand it, because the Right is derived from our reality. It is part of reality, (in whatever distorted and bureaucratic form,) and

it must form part of our understanding, we must bring it into light as we must all other things inside of reality. We must though be cautious about feeling the subject of politics, or subjected to politics, (for that is what the political entity as a perverted consciousness relies upon,) because then we would cease to exist in and for ourselves. We would become disingenuous and in denial of reality that is produced by us. I have written here in brief about my conception of the political precisely through my disinterest in it, and have converted it into a partial understanding. For me this a beginning, and as a book I wonder in what way I will enter this portion of my reality in that my address is to be heard.

And so it can, must and will be the case that this book will address everything, because this book is an address and it communicates across the blanket of the wider consciousness. This can be said of all things in reality, and it is not so grand and conceited a claim. The concept as I have written it down has come to me in the form of a total abstraction, and hence I desire, in that I desire, to bring it into consciousness. As the producer of reality who is subject to what is produced I am indeed given the Right to do so. The most decisive move toward this understanding comes from believing that all realities, (in that they do not only consist individually,) are connected and binding; they comprise the fabric of reality. This belief taints all actions in the world, and it is not an uncommon thing for a person to uphold. But the way in which I have conceived it as Idea, as abstraction, is that absolutely all parts of reality are quilted, and this at once demolishes the solipsistic notion of the universe but also the limited scope of what we would call intersubjective relationships and semiotic chains. This is a binding

concept that goes beyond all smaller subdivisions of it. It is disingenuous and unreality to apply this understanding in a set of instances or according to individual maxims, but should instead be assumed as a background, as we assume reality is a quilt. These are concepts, abstractions, Ideas that we come to know, in that we come to know ourselves and know reality, not exclusively through the existential subdivision of scientific know-how, but rather because we exist. This concept can itself be understood, (I mean the concept of ‘subdivision’,) if we have a firm understanding of the metaphor of the ‘angelic hierarchies’, or of the circles of Hell, or of many other ingenious notions that spring up as a product of the perspectival understanding in the medieval world as it relates both to microcosm and macrocosm.

This also, in an un-Deleuzeian

fashion brings us to the concept of the tree of knowledge; it has roots, a trunk, and branches, although we are not to assume too readily in what order they appear. We must, if we are to regain our knowledge of this structure of knowledge as it enters reality, look toward the genealogy of Ideas that descends to us along its own strange structure embedded within the quilt of consciousness.

The branch of knowledge that comes to us as the highest form, indeed the root, is philosophy, for indeed it is philosophy that constitutes a love of knowledge, holds knowledge in a joyful relation, and hence it is the existential form of knowledge. It is knowledge that loves itself, and this may appear narcissistic upon first glance, but philosophy is not about first glances. If philosophy, the love of knowledge, holds itself as its own knowledge, then it does contain and branch out into all other branches of knowledge; scientific, psychoanalytic, epistemological, axiological, artistic,

semiotic, poetic, and so on in a variety of ways and forms and reversals. These types of knowledge do not love themselves, merely the temporary pursuit of means and limited ends. But it cannot be the case that, if knowledge is our object, that any of the branches can overawe philosophy; even if science were to relate the demonstrable proof of the physical appearance of knowledge, it would still not be a knowledge that cherishes itself and from which all human understanding can stem. This is the domain of philosophy, and as great the goods of science may be, they do not constitute a knowledge which holds its knowledge as its own object. This is the proper abstraction of knowledge; knowledge as Idea. I put these types of knowledge into a tree, although at present all I know is that philosophy is the root; I do not know the order of the other types although a Greek could tell you. Philosophy is that which may be interfaced with by all other types of knowledge for its end point, but this relationship cannot be reversed or overthrown. It has been construed that a philosopher makes for an impotent and indifferent scientist, and this is due to the ‘doing’, ‘proof’ and ‘achievement’ ethic that science cherishes. Indeed, philosophy is a doing, it is a loving, and it is this loving that imbues it with and is imbued by the human existential characteristic that bathes its objects in the light of meaning. All other types of knowledge do not necessarily mean anything. They acquire meaning through a higher type of knowledge than the one currently possessed by its mode of knowledge, namely, philosophy. Philosophy does not necessarily mean anything either, unless it is conceived in its true and pure abstract form.

In fact, it seems that the ‘stepping-back’ procedure and eventual paradox that I have mentioned earlier about self-knowledge can only be understood in this way. If knowledge, (of which we are its metaphor,) steps backward in its proper relation, it eventually, and by course of a twisted, deceptive and complicated journey, arrives at philosophy; the point where it is itself its own object; it has become. Philosophy is our end point in our knowledge of ourselves, and all things perceived form lower-down parts of the hierarchy of knowledge. We must love ourselves as ourselves, as pure and abstract Idea, and from this point do we confer light upon the rest of reality which is living knowledge. All other types of knowledge have in a smaller way the character of ‘Good’, in that they provide partial lighting to an object, but philosophy can hold an object as its present Idea, and confer total enlightenment onto it, freed from the unnecessary and lower problems of the hierarchies. For one thing, it does not require any proof other than itself, and that is a selfevident truth. Neither does consciousness, as a pure point, require anything other than itself as a proof, and this self-evidentness characterises the pure Idea of philosophy. I must relate, and continually relate to the medieval understanding of the angelic hierarchies; each lower point of the hierarchy conveys more living knowledge into the goodness of the uppermost point. It is a complex system of delivering and characterising living knowledge. If this knowledge was not living, if it had no existential characteristic, it could have no end point and no start point, and it could also, (and as a result of this,) have no meaning. This is why, in my understanding I require it to be thus; a hierarchy which descends from a pure point of Truth, of pure abstraction, of the transparency of the self-evident truth that existence is existing.

Are we then to experience narcissism as the perversion of the Ideal point of consciousness, of consciousness wrapped in the material world in a perverse and unnatural relation to it? I would like to say here that indeed what happens at the point of the mirror stage, where a child experiences him or herself as being something else in the world, that the image in the mirror is an other, constitutes an existential perversion from which the world and all things in it become perverted, distorted and concealed. If we can conceal the ultimate self-evident fact that we are ourselves, then it follows that we can conceal all other things after the fact. This constitutes our fall from grace, our embarrassment of ourselves as something not as what we are, and our state of human confusion. But this, you might justly say is a natural occurrence in a self-aware being, that it must experience itself in the external world, and in so doing it constitutes a mythical other onto which it forms its representation of that world. And so it is the case. The religious metaphors again abound. Our immaculate conception is in conceiving ourselves as that which we are, and that is the height and limit of human truth.

Try, if you can or dare, to conceive of a higher and truer motivational order than that of pleasure. Freudâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s totem is longstanding, to be sure, but we can wreck it and expose its nihilistic hollowness. But what, once this ghost has been exorcised, could fill such a vast and empty space, or would that constitute its own fallacy? Desire and pleasure exist as a totem in that we constantly feel the need to fill an imaginary gap; the gap of trauma. But if we operate and exist to satisfy the imaginary imagination, then we become ghost-like ourselves, surely? There is no trauma and no

need to fill it; it is a phantom of the ethereal imagination, and we admit our nihilism in attempting to fill it or to be satisfied. Satisfaction itself is a thing of the imagination, and is an abstraction of the human need to satisfy particular bodily requirements like hunger, pain, the need to reproduce. It is evident that we are capable of living the abstract life which is somehow ‘taken-from’ our animal heritage; we eat for desire and need, we clothe ourselves for desire and need, we love for desire and need. But which of these desires wins out in us? We do not very often, unless for the sake of sophistic argument, admit our animal needs, (perhaps if we explain to our lover why we have cheated on them or something similar.) But if we are abstract, and through this abstraction demonstrate and believe in our superiority over other animals, why is it that so rarely we attempt to go beyond just a meagre quantity of abstraction? As a thing which is abstract we are able to shape and bring a certain quantity of liberty into our existence as a thing, and we are able to create our own maxims and ethics by which we can lead a life of great satisfaction. But how many of us lead a life of great satisfaction? How many of us lead a life of perverse satisfaction through denial, guilt and pain without even the attempt to love these things as that which gives us satisfaction? There is indeed no reason for perversion, for it always constitutes some denial, some ‘No’ to life, some contradiction of the facticity of existence as it exists. And yet we do not become less than existence, for that fact takes care of itself. But we can, indeed, lead a disingenuous relation to our fact and deny it in the face of its self-evident facticity. Perversion, (which I shall define as a disingenuous relation to existence,) is the lowest and most earthy contradiction that we can hold dear. We can, surely, derive our

happiness from a thing as we apprehend it, rather than derive our happiness, not from a thing, but from guilt or from a denial. We could not even derive a genuine happiness from admitting fully to ourselves that it is the perverse relation itself that we are happy with rather than the object that we attain through it, for that would turn our perversion into an object and we would become genuine to it; it would no longer constitute a perversion. Let us be abstract in our existence, let us celebrate this abstraction in our genuine apprehension of it, and let us not continue to deny that which we are by being that which we merely think we are. Thought itself is an abstraction from what is concrete, and it is so connected to our abstract relation to nature that it becomes the supreme achievement of nature; its own abstraction. This abstraction is capable of a great good; of transforming itself from a thing which itself contrives its nature as deception into a nature as enlightenment. This is the higher level of desire and limit to which our ambition can be set; to take what is a contradiction of nature volte-face into nature itself; it becomes identical to its abstraction as opposed to abstract from its nature. Desire, as Freud has contrived it, is a machinic and meaningless repetition borne out from a lack of something, from our inability to completely quilt the Real in our imagination. We should perceive this lack of ours as a great boon; there is somewhere in our phantasmic world where the light gets in! Freud did not intend to show us where our desire is lacking, he intended to show us the route to the meaning of our phantasy, he showed us the point at which it breaks down. The same goes for Lacan, who developed this particular point. It was my fallacy until now to read these particular authors as those who sealed in the doom of human misery and meaninglessness, as the supreme scientists of nihilism.

But indeed I read them wrongly. They have after all, shown me how it happens, and it is my task to do it. I have, in my consciousness, just converted my concealed and nihilistic relation to Freud and Lacan into an enlightened relation, and from now on in I may do them and myself proper justice. Our relation shall bring light. You see how a conversion of this kind can only be a great good; what I conceived as a barrier I have now converted into a vehicle â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I can work with Freud and Lacan rather than against them. And yes, this is a subjective truth, because I cannot conceive of many readers of mine agreeing with my reading of these two authors. But my relation to Freud is now truly that of teacherstudent, for I have discovered the horizon of truth in Freud by bringing

myself

into

enlightened

relation

with

representation of him. He never existed, although the demons of my soul have been exorcised, and the cancer of nihilism is slowly fought-off. Our division, the division between Freud and myself as things is self-evident. But why would there be a division between myself and my representation of myself? That is sheer idiocy, to conceive that my voice and my voice as Freudâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voice were different things. That is a sure sign of madness, that one talks to oneself under the delusion that there was another person there. I am discovering a unity within the madness of my self by discovering that the boundaries between my voice and my voice contrived as that of an other are indeed imaginary. This is the meaning and significance of the imaginary; to understand the truth of what it consists in; unity and not difference.

Let me now change the current subject, which is indeed in an embryonic stage, (I just thought it up whilst I was typing something

else,) and investigate a different psychic phenomenon. We, as an existent that occurs at the top level of human historical and intellectual evolution, perceive the totality of that evolution as concealed, given that as we indeed occur at the top level, everything beneath it is concealed by our occurrence after it. It is in this way that part of our existential nature is as that which conceals; our very existence conceals a great many things. If we did not exist then we would never have been deceived. We are presented, after the fact of our existence, with an image of the world and all of its things; these are conditions of our existence. Our perception of these things is indeed a naive one in that we know of it but we do not know it. It is kept at a second-hand distance from us, our knowledge of it prevents us from knowing it. We stand on top of this history, this huge expanse of consciousness that lies beneath us, unobtainable. If we think of the cultural phenomena of Modernism, we discover that which desired to detach and abstract itself from the path of history, and to form its own human narrative. This was indeed a bold effort of human consciousness; an effort to become abstract and to form a definite path along which consciousness could be channelled. But at the same time, certain strands of this Modern history sought a kind of knowing naivete, enshrining as it did its heroes; the ‘noble savage, (a contradiction; empowering the basest part of consciousness in an effort to be ‘enlightened’,) and the ‘madman’. It also sought to detach from itself the phantom baggage of history, (it shrugged off Medieval superstition with science, it shrugged off Christianity with a host of ‘ologies’ and other nihilisms, etc.) With these two particular myths, this delusion that history can be ‘kind of forgotten’, or rewritten constantly forever until the essence of that history is shrouded by

voices and egos all demanding to be heard at once, did we deny that all these â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Modernâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ideas were in fact a project, a project instigated knowingly or unknowingly, (depending upon how savage they thought they were,) by only a handful of men, (and they were all men,) and by a glut of devoted disciples, (who could be men, women, or peoples from all sorts of oppressed creeds.) This Modernism, without any kind of value-judgement on my part, has fabricated a kind of abstract history of itself, and has contrived itself as a master-narrative. The most cunning way in which it has become a master-narrative is by allowing all of its participants to have a voice, which allows its narrative to constantly be re-written; it is a self-conscious entity, and its motive is always hidden through its surface motives being constantly exposed. It has allowed repressed memories to come into the fore in the shape of ethnic voices, gendered voices, sexual pleurisy, cultural difference, ad nauseam. But all the while, whilst these repressed voices are all seeking to be heard and to exert the power of their dominant egos over history, they actually mask the real motive of the historical unconscious. They, in all ways, fall foul of the project of the ego. Whilst they sought to challenge the voice of the master, the master narrative of history, they did in fact just create room within that narrative for themselves because they wanted a piece of the action, they wanted to express the desires of their egos, they wanted inclusion. This is the failure of modern history; because of the development of the economics of consciousness through the development of capital, so too has consciousness found for itself an economy; it includes all voices only because it seeks to gain from all voices. Why is it really that in our country we find things like equal opportunities rights? Because capital has realised that it can

gain from social inclusion. Our society, in no way, has realised that the inclusion of all peoples into its fabric is a right and a good in itself. Because of the continually hidden motive of the ego does society press onward. Because of the continually hidden motive of the ego does history move onward. And if we continually move onward in this blind and ego-defined way we shall end up like the parody of the Futurists; we want more speed, we want to destroy history and go tumbling into the future with no gravity acting upon us, no resistance, and indeed no sanity either. The more detached a mind grows from the undiscovered consciousness of history, the more cancerous a consciousness becomes, the more insane it becomes, the more the voices overcome it until there is no meaning left! I am speaking very badly against social inclusion because I do consider myself to be the ultimate racist; I despise and detest the human race. It disgusts me to the point of vomiting all these words out into a book. It is so obvious that the only thing which stands to gain from social inclusion and the re-writing of history is economy; whether that be the economy of consciousness, the economy of society, the economy of history, or the economy of capitalism. All these economies are the fabrication of a multiplicity of egos throughout all of time, and all of these economies constitute the lowest kind of existence, the massive denial of life as a great good, a great â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;No!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; to life itself. We must sit down and in our own insane and deluded heads try to understand how the tyranny of the ego has taken hold of our history, and to discover to what extent this tyranny overawes every part of our lives. We must seek to understand that only through a true unity of ourselves with history as a conscious entity can we cure our absolute insanity; the insanity of Individuality. Modernism has sought to install the individual as

its most instrumental little worker; it reaps the benefits from capital, from history, from culture and from society; we are devoted worshippers of the great madness of our selves! Why do you think that there was a sudden uprising at the end of the Twentieth century after Jesus Christ’s death, (who was the ultimate symbol that there was no ego and no individual consciousness if we are all connected in truth,) suddenly the Individual became everything to us? Why did philosophy install the individual through the works of Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, Jaspers, etc……? Why did consumer culture suddenly take control of all forms of culture? Why did history suddenly remember all of its prejudices? Why did suddenly everyone become employable? We are now totally open to exploitation by the forces acting upon us. We do not have enough soul to admit that we, as Individuals, are a fabrication of human history. We cannot see our own insanity! History has invented, imagined and hallucinated the individual mind, of which we are all distinct cells. In this way have we become product. We all fit into the economy by precisely deluding ourselves into the myth of the individual, the myth that has been imposed upon us for our own complicity. There can be no liberty for us within the collective insanity of individuality.

I am quite glad to admit that I am completely insane. Just after writing that last paragraph I went to the toilet and had a conversation with myself as God. But I am allowed all of these hallucinations in the space of this book, because you can surely decode their metaphorical content, can you not? One of my best friends merely exists to play the devil’s advocate inside of my head, and in this way does he bring me closer to truth; by

paradoxically representing his voice inside of my own head as the characterised voice of doubt. This is how it must have been for Mohammed in his cave when the devil whispered to him. It was necessary to hear this Devilish whisper, for it is the rarely heard voice of God. Jesus was tempted in the desert during his isolation; we can see a trend here â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the truth can only be found in the shoes insane voice of doubt as it is given to us by the Devilish voice of God which is always denied by religion. Religion is set up as a huge doubt that evil exists; if God was everything, then He must indeed be the Devil, QED? We must train our hearing a lot better from now on, for there are many things we choose not to hear, like the crazy voices in our heads, for example. Nobody considers this endless internal monologue/dialogue as a symptom of their insanity, do they? But doctors consider multiple personality disorder as a symptom of schizophrenia, do they not? Yes; we are all spiritually schizophrenic, and the voice of our denial is the most crazy voice of them all!

I have decided to come clean about my madness and talk openly to my self. If I am to conceive of myself as Other, (as Lacan insists,) then I may as well do it aloud. Then perhaps might I experience how fabricated my Self indeed is. I think that this is quite an honest approach.

By moving further and quicker away from the ground of human history as the basis of consciousness, as a collective consciousness from which we are borne, the further away from our spiritual nourishment do me move. We are inert, we float, we become cancerous and insane with no ground from which to nourish our

soul. The maggot of Modernism eats away at the lush fruit of our selves, and leaves merely the skin which resembles an apple, but it is empty, there is no knowledge in the apple, and any philosophy with a hammer exposes its emptiness. An apple hopes to be eaten so that it may produce more apples as its seed passes through the digestive tract of an animal, producing new trees which continue to propagate the genetic heritage of the appleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knowledge. As a human, one can only hope to know oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s proper place, one can only hope for a sense of propriety, and inert in space holds no direction, no gravity and no ground. Indeed, Christian civilisation and Buddhist civilisation have founded themselves upon this premise, (and both falsely too.) Any person that follows doctrine can never be realised as a person. To follow the doctrine of the Individual will not lead to one being individual. If we follow any doctrine we enter a labyrinth with no centre. One must realise that one is already in ones proper place in the beginning, and that no amount of denial can change this self-evident fact. This is the basis of all knowledge, self-knowledge included. This is the restorative of our existence; to affirm our existence, and this anamnesia, this remembering what we are, and acknowledging what we merely thought we were, allows us to remember our proper place. A self may only be a self if it is its own property and does not merely belong to things or belong to a thought of itself. If it believes that it exists as something other than that which it is, it becomes a phantom, an hallucination, and then it lastly finds its perpetual proximity

the

void,

disingenuousness and despair.

meaninglessness,

emptiness,

[It is important here to stop and recognise that this statement is contradictory, and place the statement as standing ‘on-top’ of what precedes it. This is a Moebius strip inherent in consciousness.]

Consciousness and its self-evident facticity must be the basis of all this research. If I am but a fragment of a vast evolution of knowledge and consciousness, (but cannot remember any of it,) then surely my research should be a process of simultaneously unremembering what I thought I knew, and re-remembering what I am? This is the proper function of memory in consciousness, it will shape my becoming and enlightenment, for it brings light into the obscure reality of my pre-existence. But how can I know of these things? I do not ‘add’ to knowledge by knowing of knowledge, rather I restore knowledge to its proper sovereignty, its proper seat. Knowing knowledge merely subtracts from my unknowing those parts obscured from memory. Memory as a function, (and as an analogy,) is an understated concept. In fact, our taking memory for granted in fact causes us to forget about it; we do not even acknowledge the developments made by the Greeks in the act of memory. But even so, we must still not ‘rely’ upon the achievements of past thinkers in the quilt of temporal consciousness, of Zeitgeist, for they are hollow if we merely know ‘of’ them. We perform this built-in naturalised knowledge every day, and we take for granted a million enlightenments in the field of the various types of knowledge all of the time. We go to the supermarket, (the development of the act of memory is inherent in this act of memory,) and we buy a pint of pasteurised milk. We do not need to acknowledge the work of Louis Pasteur and the meaning of pasteurised milk at all in this process. These scientific

developments are merely ‘givens’ in our type of consciousness. But it is often in ‘givens’ that a certain type of knowledge must be disclosed, or otherwise our consciousness might be pasteurised and eradicate the germ of truth. How can we stomach the glut of ‘givens’ in our knowledge; the social norms, the cultural performatives, etc, without ‘just accepting’ them? It is a question of digestion, and of Nietzsche’s heroic guts. The heroic gut can digest anything, even poisons; but do we need to subject ourselves to these terrible and distasteful foodstuffs? This is not a question of digestion, Mr. Nietzsche, it is rather a question of propriety, or experiencing ourselves as a pre-digested food, as a disingenuous performer, as a mask of ourselves; we experience in our nausea our self as a past. Of course, Being has no past, for it is supra-temporal; it simply is, and we do not need to say when or how. But with the self, we must discover how and when and why. We experience the self as nausea incarnate, it reeks of decay it is so old, it is the product of infinite generations of human history and abstraction from natural evolution. It is a zombie; it has died a long time ago, but it was never informed about its own death, and it must continually feed off the living in order to keep going. It is a desiring machine, this zombie. It uses the living to keep going, without meaning. The self is a zombie, it is the undead past which we all are. It is also necrophiliac; it loves dead things and inhabits them. But it is the anti-necrophile, for it is dead and loves living things. This is the most terrible and improper mode for human existence to consist in. It is an endlessly renewable and digestible product and all nourishment has been taken from it. But surely there must be some part that is truly indigestible, which is not a product of anything, but innate and beautiful in that goodness?

Your Pledge: “I, as the reader of this text and thus the architect of this text, will read all of this text, for if not, this text shall cease to be living knowledge, and this architecture shall become ruinous.”

For Descartes, ‘Being-certain’ is the character of the foundation of philosophy, of philosophy’s analytic of ‘uncovering’ and disclosing nature. Is this a neglectful formulation of Being, this Being-certain? It is built upon doubt, to be sure, and is somewhat shaky as a result. It does indeed fit the bill of scientific know-how in Heidegger’s formulation, except that it is not equipped with an understanding of Time as a grounding fact of Being. Being-certain does indeed need to stand the test of time, but the kind of certainty that Descartes is after is neglectful of time, for it seeks infinite certainty as it relates to human knowledge. This is the flaw. It is certainty built upon the premise of uncertainty. In contrast, Being-present unveils for us the moment in which all Beings present themselves as they are in the certainty of their becoming, (at the stage of their becoming,) within Time and Space. It acknowledges all the divisible moments of Time and Space in Being-present to them all, and acknowledges the infinite, or Xeno’s paradox of non-motion, by Being permanently present to the character of transience. Beings are only present as Beings, and only Beings in themselves, when they are present to what they are, and this is only disclosed in Being-present to the moment; that fleeting concreteness that occurs between the unreachable past and the unreachable future. It is concrete because it is defined by the intangibility of two poles, and is therefore the

absolute moment, the moment when Being, as it is absolute, discloses itself.

Did you notice me whilst you were sitting there? I must confess friend, that whilst I was in this office for a little over a year now, I did not notice you. And what would we have spoken about during that time had our year not passed over in silence? If I had noticed that you were so attractive I would have noticed you sooner, to be sure. I am only speaking to you now because my words have run out; do you have some? So you wish to know a little about me? I have, in my twenty-five years of life, had more jobs than years alive, and I currently maintain three. Why? Well, the matter is a little private, and probably best discussed over a drink; what will you have? Let me ask you something; have you ever had a hunger for something that you could never satisfy? I am looking for one thing in life; a coitus that satisfies all sexual desire. Did you ever think that perhaps there was a person out there somewhere that could kerb you sexual passion, a single fuck that would satisfy you once and for all? Well, that is what I am looking for, but let me tell you friend, that in the thousand nights of love-making so far I have not come anywhere near close. I do not think that abstinence is the answer, I think rather that there must be one other person out there that can complete me, so to speak. But let us do away with such small talk; if a human is an animal governed by his appetites, but you believe that a human is more than an animal, then to do so he must rise up above his appetites, not so? He always must go beyond that which governs him in order to be that which he is. I wonder if my conception were some accidental dribble or a climactic orgasm? I think that it probably makes a difference, I mean a difference in

energy and ambition, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you? When I come, I try as hard as I can, I try to get it all out so that there is none left ever again, and I breath deeply and scream with all my breath. But the hunger always returns, and it is my primary source of distraction, and life should not be a distraction, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you think? I think that because human consciousness unfolds through time, then he has the characteristic of forgetting and remembering. I am looking for coitus that is impossible to forget, and hence, perfect as the idea which surpasses all experience. And that is why we are always looking for sex; when we fuck it is always easy to forget, and we get horny because we forget about the last sex we had. We remember what it was when we reach orgasm, and then we forget about it again because it was not perfect. I think that the perfect fuck is an act of memory.

Why do I publish this work unedited, fragmented, largely in note form, as though it were a discourse with the facets of myself? Why should I then expect that you, the reader, should read it? This book forms part of my becoming what I am, for I am becoming throughout the whole process of writing it, and we are all becoming at all times, without actually reaching the perfect and idealistic state of Being. I make a daily record of thoughts, however they might occur, and if you believe that I edit these thoughts before committing them to words, you are either right or wrong. When I do work for my employers, I feel that I do something profoundly antithetical to my nature, and it is profound in this way. This is indeed strange because I, as any other person, have yet to discover what my nature is. Perhaps it is my nature to be dissatisfied with life, or to maintain failed ambitions, or to never quite reach the

idealistic states that I dream about and which are written into here. Or perhaps, because they are written here, you should be led to assume that the ideal has been reached, because I have told you that it has been. The act of belief can indeed move mountains, do you not think? Perhaps the experience of life can be plainly written, and perhaps I am living the ideal in my ability to write it down? Do all people become what they are in looking for their nature, a nature which may not exist, but is created once you begin to look for it? It is my opinion that a human being is an abstraction of nature, that he is ‘taken-from’ nature, and is not quite identical to it. The phenomena of consciousness may have been an evolutionary product at the beginning, but it has become much more than that; it has created a profound confusion in our entire race, and it has led to humans not quite being able to get along with life, with a strange need to understand it as well as live it. This is definitely an abstraction of nature. But if we are abstract beings, then surely we possess the ability to carry the abstraction and shape it according to our will? Only very meagre peoples resort to the argument that ‘we are all just animals, anyway’, for that is the supreme denial of our nature, it is a violent, idiotic and irresponsible answer to a question that would not even exist if we were only animals. It is violent, because idiocy is a base form of violence, a desire to not want to know, to kill knowledge and suppress its uprising. It is irresponsible because it cannot deal with the burden of the human question, and would rather be left to a small quantity of intelligence beyond ignorance/bliss. A small quantity of intelligence which merely desires to gain nothing more is a very strange thing, for all people are cursed with the desire to own as much property as possible, and yet they do not seek to enjoy vast acreage of ground

in the intellectual realm. Because they desire the least possible life, the smallest possible quota of life, they desperately try to hang on to what they have, without knowing that knowledge cannot be owned whatsoever, and that there is nothing to lose except the concept of ownership. It strikes me as a base form of idiocy that writers and artists of all kinds should copyright their work; it is the same desire to hang-on to that small thing which is their own because they call it their own. If their art were so great, then there would be a) No need to copyright it because of the self-evident fact that knowledge cannot be possessed, for it is that which possesses, it is a germ of truth. b) If the work was good enough, then they should be overjoyed that the knowledge has spread beyond a small private thing such as a canvas or a book. c) That they should also consider that even their own knowledge is a vast collage of all other pieces of knowledge, and that to claim any of it as your own or as original is a pack of lies. d) Finally, to admit to the impossibility of ownership allows for the right to usufruct, a largeness and generosity of spirit over thriftiness. Indeed, some souls have some room to spare.

In this way, through this process of choice making, do we have the opportunity to abstract ourselves to the degree and limit that we choose to be the best. As a writer, it seems that usufruct is the common-sense ambition as opposed to private property; what, am I worried that somebody should ‘steal’ my knowledge and call it their own, or that somebody should take ‘credit’ which is ‘rightly’ my ‘own’? You can of course see how ridiculous the concept of intellectual property is when you draw in these facts and arguments. I shall instead discuss this work in the terms of benefits,

namely mine as writer of it, and yours as reader of it. The first shall be a projection of what I think the benefits of my own work are, and I am possibly in the least advantageous position to make that assessment. The second shall be a projection of what your benefit will be, and given that you do not exist and that I write for some strange ‘ideal’, phantasmic reader, again, my position is ill suited. But actually, that I write for a non-existent reader, merely a projected, self-reflected reader, I in fact integrate this ideal into the work, and admit that I am both reader and writer. Where does that leave any reader that is outside of you body, Daniel? Ah; this knowledge can only be passed over in silence, for I cannot know about those things at all! I wonder if any other writer, (that is, if there can be any other writer outside of my own body,) conceives of their fantasy public as ‘real’? My admission, my confession to a solitary universe actually breaks down the impregnable walls of my ego, and allows the world to slip in. The truth contained in this statement is that I have said it and admitted it, and there can be no knowledge beyond that. Belief can indeed move mountains, but it can also lead to a voluntary blindness to the facts.

What do I desire? To be that which I am, and I am being that which I am. It is the easiest thing in the world, but likewise it is the impossible thing, it is a mountain to be moved or a self-made labyrinth to which you possess the map but have forgotten that it is in your pocket. This is the most secret knowledge that we all possess, and it is kept secret through a myriad of routines, gestures, performances and masks. Take for example the ritual of emotion; surely there is a great, undiscovered depth to our emotion, and yet we perform the surface ritual of it that keeps the genuine emotion at

bay. This is a primal form of self-defence, (defence against ourselves,) and yet why should we choose defend against selfknowledge? It is only through self-knowledge that we can ever attain real joy and ever lead a genuine existence, but we have contrived that knowledge to be the most impossible and unknowable. The greatest ambition is to attain self-knowledge and to finally be finished with becoming what you are and Being that which you are. It is only then that all things present themselves as Beings when you yourself reach the same mode of Being, when you are all in the same space and time as each other. Although, were this to occur, you would not be able to distinguish what you were from anything else; everything would just Be. That is how this writing is; because I cannot distinguish my own voice from that of yours, this writing exists for everyone in the same way, through the same difference. It exists to demonstrate that difference is unreal, that unity is a fact, and it also exists to demonstrate that reality is a projection.

Do you not feel that when you have to do something, it is the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;having to do itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; that prevent you from doing it? And so it is with life.

I am right now in a completely natural state of ecstacy, and I have promised myself to take the time to type away without looking at my computer-screen, and just write what my consciousness dictates to me. A great work of art is never trying, it merely flows, and consciousness dictates to the body what should be donbe, and the body obeys it. This is not the hand of god, as many people may have contrived it, (and yes, I too have contrived it to be this way,

also.) There are bound to be many typing errors here, but that is par for the course; the essence is all tjhat needs to be captured, and one can overlook mere physical impediments to that kind of pleasure. I like to breath very deeply, and breath in the air that has sustained my life this far, This is not an animal need only, for why shouold I take ‘pleasure’ in doing it? There is either an highly elaborate delusion at work, (which is the illusion that a human is an ideal thing, and goes beyond what is material and natural.) If we choose to see it as an illusion, (and how can one ‘choose’ a fact?) then one admits that the entire edifice of existence as you have contrived it is alkso a

delusion. Humans are very queer; they can contrive

whatever they like to be the case, and indeed one can choose the illusion, and some of the illusions that people choose are very strange indeed. Take for example, Schopenhauer’s illusion, his choice of belief, that life is perpetual in its miserty; tjhat misery is the ground upon which all humans build from. There is a particular brand of perversion at work jhere,. A kind of masochism or schadenfroh. Either he chose to see his own life as miserable, or he chose to see everyoine else’s kind of life as miserable. This particular delusion to which many pohilosophers or advocates of the condition of human nature fall foul; that they are omnipotent. They can contrive, through their belif, the entire edifice of human life. They have the ‘power’ to do so. But with Schopenhauer, and with many of the rest of us, this is omnimpotence; this is not a divine thought, it is a futile kind of oversight, to bring down to our own miserable hallucination the whole of human existence. Personally, I would choose to admit that I can only ever advocate what I believ to be the case, and not even that. This too is an admission that all humans are in the same state as I am, and I do

this through example. But it is not the case that all humans are the same as I am, because I do not know them all; do I even know any? This process, this comedy of errors on my part, provides great satisfaction, great pleasure, a schadenfroh in my own displeasure. And from this contradicxtion, in taking pleasure in one’s own displeasure, is perhaps the most honest statement about human life that I can make. If not, then how can so many people, giuven that they have the choice to lead the life that they wat to, that they have the power over theior mind to be happy, shouold choose to be miserable and take pleasure iit it?

Is it the case that one has the ability to forget one’s troubles, or that one’s troubles have the ability to forget you?

Opportunities for rhetorical exercise are abundant everywhere, but people’s preferred mode of discourse is that of demand and complaint. If one attempts to treat discourse as a mode of acquisition, then it is a servant of desire. But if one treats discourse as an end in itself, it becomes sophistic. Why can we not see both things at once? The median is here desirable, and we do, after all, have two eyes.

Observation: People tend only to illustrate that which is good when it is to their advantage. This mode of illustration comes from the illusion of individuality, a particularly nihilistic form of selfishness. A person will only ever point out that something is unfair as a ‘principle’ when they wish for that principle to be working in their favour at any given time. This is, indeed, idealistic. It demonstrates that we

hold an ideal world to heart, and we wished for it to be working for us. But because everyone feels that this is the case, we have made the ideal into our reality. We managed to realise the impossible ideal, we extended the ideal amount of freedom to all people. And people slander the impossibility and futility of idealism? Our imagination did not stretch beyond our expansive selfishness. When a person illustrates a principle even when they stand to be disadvantaged by its implementation, then this is a special thing. Or perhaps it is an ex-Christian sentiment; martyrdom. It does not, by any measure, show a lack of nobility or feistiness; in fact it demonstrates a belief in the goodness of a principle. And how many people have fallen by their principles? Perhaps it is merely idiotic? We seem to be trapped between two equally awful types of ideal; the belief in the Good of an abstract thing even though it causes disadvantage, and the belief in a kaleidoscopic teleological extension of goodness to all persons only when they benefit from it. Perhaps we ought to simply hold this impasse as the true form of ‘principles’; that they are unworkable, but we always try. Do you see how this paradoxical form of human suffering comes about completely by our human condition? We are irreconcilable and contradictory, and it is our ‘nature’ to be thus. But why can we not behold the paradox, step over it, and enjoy its form as a selfreflective and an outrospective schadenfroh? Human comedy and tragedy is indeed the same thing; two sides of the same coin. But who amongst us, other than the schadenfrohlic, have seen the coin?

If I were to believe that my consciousness can develop beyond its expectation, (particularly this one,) indeed, to develop into the supreme consciousness, it would need to go beyond these mere

desires expressed in words. If I believed this without reservation, then it becomes truth, in that there is no contestant within to challenge the belief. From the outside, or from the nagging selfconsciousness that always chooses to be dragged down, it is laughably fallible, delusory and simple. But from within that pure consciousness that believes itself to have become pure, and without any internal contestant, it has indeed become pure. Who here is the loser; the deluded one without the capacity for self-irony or selfcriticism, on the one capable of self-irony and self-criticism? Surely one here wishes only to express one’s point, one’s ability to be ‘right’. We wish to express our own infallibility. This is our delusory quasi-godlike characteristic; whose delusion is ‘right’, or does the concept of rightness break down in a subjective universe? The point is that with a pure belief, one indeed becomes that thing, and no quantity or force of challengers from outside can overturn that ruling order within the microcosm. This is the power of belief. But does anybody have the power in their will to dispense with their own ability to become embarrassed? Is it not embarrassment, modesty and a lack of belief that prevents us from being that which we are? We slip quite easily into another self-imposed delusion; that we are less than what we are, that we are fallible and incompetent human beings. That we cannot believe because we will not allow ourselves to believe, not even in ourselves. We have become omnimpotent. The concept of belief is built upon nothing; it creates no ties for itself in the world of things or indeed, in the world itself. Now this is either a self-imposed blindness to the facts, or it is a transcendence. The choice is yours. Even though belief is not tied to things in the world, (well, not when it is pure, at least,) it has the characteristic of shaping reality. We, who are the producers

of reality, the guardians of it by being alive, are always producing it in accordance to our beliefs, and who would not chose to do so? It is almost an involuntary reaction to the fact of reality. But not everybody is aware that they are producing reality, (and I use the term reality as opposed to the Real for obvious reasons,) because the self-evident fact of their existence escapes them. So belief and reality are eternally tied in the conscious mind, and therefore the choice of what to believe is oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own responsibility according to the way in which one produces reality. Belief in this way needs to become pure, otherwise we produce a delusory reality over which we believe we have no choice in, and this crippling paradox causes human misery and the delusion of fate/causality over free-will. We can choose to make our belief pure if we see it as being co-existent to reality. This seems at first to be a dogmatic statement, but allow me to continue, friend. Our existence produces reality, (and remember that I am not talking about the Real world, for I have never known it.) The process of producing reality causes the belief in reality. We believe because we have caused. If we did not believe in what we have caused, we would not exist in the present sense. If, therefore, we are producing reality by existing, we are also in the process of producing belief at all times and in absolutely all parts of reality. Belief and reality are co-existent. To this end I must state:

Perceiving the encryption of reality as reality itself is the primary condition that prevents Belief from moulding reality around consciousness.

Is it true that once a thing is uncovered or disclosed to consciousness, that it can likewise be concealed once again? Can the appearance of a thing, even though we may have perceived it at some point as crystalline, deteriorate in our ideas? I think that this phenomena, as we have all experienced it, forms part of the endless human cycle of forgetting and remembering; if we were to discover the ‘meaning of life’, we would forget it again. We have it too good, for we know how to be happy in life, but we do not heed the advice that we know to be true. We cannot adjust ourselves to the concept of happiness, to a state of pure Being, because we are always drawn back to our memory of our selves, to its endless cycle of worries, and its petty allotment of happiness. Could we be tempted to describe the deterioration of a thing’s appearance in our mind’s eye in negative terms, as an undesirable state of affairs? Perhaps when an appearance deteriorates, it too is becoming something other than that which it first appeared to be? Because it exists in the mind as a mental object, and the mind becomes distracted as images wax and wane, we start to understand it less as it pales out of focus. When this happens, we should try for ourselves a little experiment; watch an image in the mind, try to hold a crystalline object of thought within an idea, and see how quickly one forgets about it. Think about your lovers face, or think about your name, or something that is of huge importance to you; I will bet that the image and even the task itself is forgotten within a few minutes at the maximum. Our minds are so flabby, so poorly exercised and so weak that we cannot control what we do with them. So perhaps when this slippage occurs, (and we should try this right now,) it is in fact our image of ourselves, it is our representation, our appearance that slips. If we were to define

‘phenomena’ as that which God allows us to see in our eyes, that effect of his presence that He allows us to witness, then if the appearance deteriorates, so too does our faith in God as He who both governs the law of appearances and the appearance of phenomena. We begin then to rely upon our own physical senses without the superstition of a God that acts as puppet-master and contriver of appearances. But what we see are not appearances; that would indeed be a contradictory term in this instance. We would simply no longer believe in what we saw, and hence the thing would cease to appear to us. As I have already said, the act of existing requires a mandatory quotient of Belief without which we could only exist disingenuously at best. But how is it that appearances are governed in our consciousness if it is not God that causes their appearance and deterioration? Is it that time and space are separate dimensions constituting all that is, and between which we are trapped? Or is it that our consciousness is unable to accept the combination of the two phenomena as the same thing, (as if time and space were but one dimension,) and it is our consciousness that splits it into two? And is it, in the last instance, that because we fragment what is a universal harmony into two separate dimensions, we cause our own consciousness to appear, and are becoming as opposed to Being? Does consciousness, irrevocably split between ‘a time’ and ‘a space’, cause itself as its own phenomena, and hence it appears as a perpetual becoming due to its sheer incapacity to Be? It begins to experience itself, it becomes self-conscious, because it is trapped in an infinite sequence of moments defined by time and space, none of which it paradoxically allows itself to Be within.

I always feel my heckles coming up when I am accosted by a beggar or vagrant who demands something from me; any exchange, even the eye-contact does it with me. Every night I dare not smoke in public because I will always be asked for cigarettes or money by drug-addicts or tramps or by regular drunks. This evening, a beggar says ‘Give me a cigarette’, and I say ‘No’. Then the predictable barrage of abuse ensues. He feels as though he deserves something from me, as though I, a fully paid up member of capitalist society, were in some way responsible for his situation. But no more about him, because I can never know, my understanding can never know how he feels or what he thinks. The real purpose of this little speech is that in me this feeling emerges in every such case as outlined above. Something is wrong with me. This man, whom I feel has no respect for me, (and why should he?) and no respect for money, is in fact a mere representation of my own disrespect for money incarnated as a figure in my reality. He is little more than a metaphor in my world. That is real poverty. This at once demonstrates the lack of real human depth in my world and in my intersubjective experiences, and it also demonstrates my terror about money and about losing it, for I have no genuine respect for it. I feel the same pang when I ask my father for money; I am a beggar! This understanding can be extremely advantageous to my in my continued development; I do not value my money and therefore I do not value the work that generates it. Perhaps it is because I, as everyone should be, am aware that the value of my labour is degraded in the amount I am paid for it. This feeling manifests my disrespect for my life and my world quite amply. I must, therefore, begin to value my labour and the monies that I am

paid for it, no matter how small. For if not, I shall feel as though my labour is valueless or worse, easily paid-for.

It is of great importance that you should witness on paper how certain ideas, opinions and aspirations appear, crystallise and then dissolve in my writing. Then you will be able to ask yourself what kind of validity can a work, any work, pertain to when it values only itself. It is quite evident that most entities that we call humans do not value themselves in that they do not place value upon Value, or the idea of value, or their ability to value. This in turn becomes the dogmatic way in which they do end up evaluating the world and everything in it as it is represented by them. When a mind is truly ready for what it can do it puts no fetter on itself. It is more like an unveiling vision that no longer considers relations between things as their division. Why would you allow a mind to run rampant across a million fragile ideas without pausing to care for a single one like a crazy horse would? The mind, like the horse, in its confused and maladjusted state in relation to its abilities as we may contrive them, must be broken-in like the horse must. To be sure, we may still marvel in the natural beauty of the horse, but we are unable to use it. The implications upon a mind if we extract this simile are far more severe. It must be trained, learned, exercised and disciplined in order to become responsive and agile. A mind, when pushed, is capable of thinking far beyond its interior, but left to grow stagnant it will continue its repetitive and worthless cycle of representation. Why should we desire to go beyond ourselves, and where can that desire come from if not from within? Is this not deceptive? If you actually attempted to answer that question, (although you did not because you are either too self-ironical,

scornful, or you were merely reading automatically,) then your attempted answers would provide a fascinating incite into the quality of your desires and your ability to stretch the limits of your thought beyond that which you merely think that you know. It also demonstrates your ability to harness your desire without the impediment of embarrassment. A desire can itself be of a higher type when it becomes ethereal, when it stretches or desires to stretch that which it normally stretches to, and begins to ascend away from the earth, the earth which ordinarily grounds it and mocks its wingless, idiotic dance. You do of course read yourself upon reading this. Imagine that I am writing this way off in the future; what advice would you give to me? Perhaps you have written it as a clue or key or assistant to memory for your past self to enable it to rise above itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own selfish time-space arrangement? One needs to be acquainted with past and future selves, for they are all imaginary and you are quite able to access them right now, for they will never come. The present self is the one we can never know, because we are too busy fantasising about the past or the future; we are too regretful or too ambitious. And before you heap scorn and irony upon me in my fantastic delusion about time-travel, consider what a time-traveller you are, and how useless you are at ever reaching the future or the past, for you are merely an impotent observer of that which never happens!

Did you often think that other people fantasise about their own funerals, or did you believe it to be your own exclusive fantasy? Is this how you can best consider your future; to become immortal in the space of fantasy, by considering your own death as though you were an ethereal observer, a pure and bodiless ego? A very

common fantasy amongst women and men, indeed! Needless to say, you thought about your eulogy, you masturbated over the agonised faces of your relatives and loved-ones. You may even have thought about your lover reading your suicide note! You already know what I think about the suicide, so I shall not repeat it here, you appalling fantasist. The ego is always in this way attempting to become pure and reified from the body, but the sad thing is that it only ever enjoys thinking about it privately; how often, unless you are religious, (and even then,) do you discuss without Irony the idea of the afterlife? You dare not admit it, but you think about immortality and omnipotence all the time, and this is the saddest and most impotent effort that one can conceive of! You are common, just like me. What can be done to remedy this tired and mundane aspect of human predictability?

We fantasise about immortality despite the fact that our sole connection to it, God, our faith, was severed; we killed Him by forgetting about Him. The only way that we can now contemplate the forever is mere masturbation fodder for the imagination. This type of fantasy does however belie a trace of a higher desire. We desire to go beyond our bodies, to be a spirit alive after death, just like Jesus, but for the profit of the ego whose primary fantasy is its immortality. (It has done well this far; it has thought itself into existence and now it wants to live forever!) This higher desire, that we can only realise in fantasy, of pure and unbounded consciousness, has become muddied by our sick relations to other people and the pointlessness of our mortality. At least, this is the way we have conceived of it hitherto. Rather than indulge in an empty, repetitive and masturbatory illusion that gravitates about

and exist solely for the incestuous and cannibalistic edification of an imaginary ego, why not consider that consciousness can become unbounded openly and within our lifetime by simply going beyond ourselves, beyond our ego.

This is the value of the previous time-travel question that I posed to you. But most consciousnesses, as Foucault suggested, have come to desire their own repression by way of adhering to their fascist ego. I am proud of my ego; it has proved thus far to be so weak and shambolic that I sees its cogs in motion at every moment of every day, and this here is the noise of my ego sounding-off! Perhaps we should discuss or consider the contradictory desire to self-destruct that is manifest in my consciousness? Desire in its aspect always drives toward that which is alive, it desires life and those things that characterise living. To negate this aspect of desire, to desire that which is dead, a necrophiliac desire is not in any way antithetical to desiring that which is living, for it still craves the life-force of the living need to be dead. It cannot desire death as absolute, for it could not drive toward it; death is nothing. It drives toward all those living things that lead it to death, but not to death itself.

My consciousness does in fact seek to destroy in order to re-create; it does not desire nothing, (a genuine conceptual contradiction,) it desires that which is perfect to desiring; the pure desire of desiring. Desire is not a dirty word to be used only by those schooled in psychoanalysis or film-theory, and neither does it stem from sexuality as hitherto it was understood. The lower desires, the material desires do indeed stem from sexuality or the lowest form of desiring. But as we can see through Kierkegaardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s analysis of

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Don Giovanniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, desiring must pass through the immediate erotic stages in its escalation upward into transcendence. The problem in discussing desire in the wholly psychoanalytical sense is that we forget that psychoanalysis has an agenda. It is not an end in itself, and it is not even a science; it is its own form of desire which in its fascist element desires to understand all parts of material life and human psychic life into its strictures. It has become its own religion. In no way must we forget that desire as psychoanalysis has hitherto understood it is not the only case, not the only case for the forms of desire. It is not only the ego which desires.

Rather than indulging in a masturbatory and repetitive illusion that gravitates about and exists entirely for the incestuous edification of the imaginary ego, (and what edification, what form of nutrition can it possibly extract from a world in which it only ever desires and consumes itself? It is truly Saturnine.) Rather, we shall consider that consciousness can be, unbounded, and within our own lifetimes, simply by going beyond itself in the poetic form of being itself. The true route to that which is transcendental consciousness is consciousness which is just that; conscious. Self-consciousness is little more than a chasing after shadows, a demonstration of our inability to just be conscious. A thing must be what it is in order to stretch beyond itself and the primary stage of this process is indeed self-consciousness. But we must not take this to be the end of the quest, for [like King Arthur] we must be what we are in order to realise and dispense with what we have lost, (i.e. the feeling that we have lost something, our sense of that which we are.) Becoming what one is is indeed the route to being what one is, and once again it is tied into the matrices of forgetting and remembering.

Hostility [primal idiocy] toward what was once considered beautiful: I have thought very often about images considered by those advocates of both ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture as ‘kitsch’. Imagine right now if you will a romantic mountainous landscape with a blood-red sun burning at its horizon. Or consider a painting of a vast spaceship orbiting Saturn. Why would these things be considered ‘kitsch’ in the field of art, (and the wider field of culture,) when to behold these things with our own eyes would be most fantastical? To be sure, the response that we have been programmed to respond to the magnificent or sublime within nature by culture is the accepted one. This is indeed the response given by semiotics; that our knowledge and our apprehension of things is always a referral to another thing, that the thing-in-itself never exists for our apprehension. Likewise, we can say the same thing for the image-screen of representation which is the constant projection of our symbolic mandate onto the world as it appears. In fact, it never appears to us. There is always too much distance, (which is indeed sublime itself; a vast horizon,) too many barriers between us and our apprehension. But in the medieval mind, in that God would appear through these things, indeed, through all things, we could apprehend the image-screen of God as sublime in itself. We are either looking at the horizon with or without God; our representation is either the apprehension of that which is Good, (if it is God’s appearance to us in the world,) or it is nihil, a mere illusory and fleeting matrix of symbols that drifts through culture. In either of these two worlds are we chasing illusions, and the question of which is truth is either too obvious or beside the point,

depending upon which world you adhere to. Surely even the nihilist could accept that Truth is God, for it is a property of God, and that without God, there could be no Truth. Truth is not a property of anything else in the world. Truth belongs to that which is beyond human apprehension, (for it is truly abstract and incomprehensible,) and to accept that we cannot understand Truth is the truth of the matter, and in so doing do we demonstrate our limited and yet maximal fidelity to the absolute mode of Truth. We can, (as we do,) continue to chip away with the blunt instrument of our minds, at the continual, temporal stream of smaller, insignificant truths in the world. But even the total accumulation of these smaller truths will not show us the absolute Truth. To behold the horizon of all truth is not a thing which we can do; it is not for us. Incomprehensibility, even as it is practised by the devoted advocate of science or human truth, is a demonstration of God; we prove that the absolute is incomprehensible, that we cannot know God at all, that we have given up, and in the present case, that He does not exist because we [supra] mortals cannot know Him. We consider ourselves to be God-like, and if we cannot prove the existence of God, then there is no way that He can exist. This is human conceit in its most primal and idiotic form. We kill God because we cannot accept that it is not our place to know Him. We take our revenge upon Him for casting us out of Eden, so to speak. We choose our own knowledge over His, because we prefer the temporal and meaningless selfimportance of mortality over Being in every respect. We do, as Malebranche conceived it, have absolute power over God; we control Him because we have free will over our bodies in which He is manifest. So we can kill him if we want, simply by denying with our bodies that He exists. Negation is the human ability to murder,

and this is why denial is the meat from which we humans feed. This spiritual cancer comes only when we eat ourselves, when we not only feed ourselves upon our own representations, but when we feed only from the dead carcass of human history and human culture. This is why we are totally rotten; the successive generations of gradual necrophilia and zombification have led to our anti-resurrection as the living dead, the living desire of death, pure negation of existential facticity. All these forms have obvious religious metaphoricity, and for good reason too; we wish to demonstrate our continual superiority over all others, even over dead people. And what will we have achieved when we have finally proven ourselves right in all things, and especially when we have proven through our living practise, that life has no absolute meaning?

We all try to prove ourselves right at all times; in our mad heads, in our ridiculous discourse, our expression of our ridiculous opinions, etc. Admit that my expressions here look totally ridiculous, insane and awful, tasteless and ignorant. Congratulations; you have successfully proven your position as superior to mine. But we both exist do we not? Our position is equally futile. How idiotic does the quest for right, for the justification of your own existence now appear? It is quite often the case that when we allow our defences slip that we can see how ugly the thing we were defending was. Is this the case with our selves? What is the reason that we all have to defend our selves at all given moments in our brief yet eternal mortality? Are we in court, or is the coil of existence really a set of scales? We are evidently more influenced by religion than we desired to let ourselves believe.

Returning to our thoughts about kitsch, why must we create an ironic layer of disposition toward images that we cannot allow ourselves to enjoy as that which is either divine or at the very least, magnificent? Must we humiliate an art which aspires to either divinity or magnificence, for we have proven throughout history that it is not our place to know or believe these things? Are we again demonstrating our absolute and unerring fidelity to God’s incomprehensibility? Is Irony produced through an acceptance of the human relation to the Absolute? It would indeed seem that irony is utilised by us as a practical method of parading our disbelief in what is genuine, that the human cannot be that which he is, that he cannot be or know of that which is beautiful, divine or noble. Irony in this sense has come to take a superior position over that of Aesthetics; Aesthetics advocates that which appears to us, (and this acknowledges the divine), and Irony advocates the layer between us and appearances, (and this acknowledges the incomprehensibility of the divine.)

“Today I be writing.” I just made this assertion whilst I was having a piss, and thought about how strange it sounded. “Today I am writing” does the same thing. I said this to my brother on the telephone a few minutes ago when he asked if I would like to go shopping with him. It must mean that I am writing. What a peculiar existential thought. If I am writing, then what was I before I was writing, or have I only existed as writing? Or do I only exist in and through that which I am doing? What then is my Being if not that to which it is tied within and throughout particular Space and Time? To be sure, it could only be pure Being in itself if it was not

tied to the locating aspects of Space and Time; that which gives us dimension as Beings. It is the condition of Space and Time that creates for us the condition of mortality, and from thereupon out all other things that we describe as human.

What does this disposition of mine provide for you other than the crystallisation of an opinion amidst my ceaseless brain functions? There must be some level of significance in the role of value organisation within brain activity:

Attempt 1: I am in Mariannaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio and I am watching her paint. Did I convey that to you adequately? Perhaps I could describe the scene a little more precisely; we stop to talk intermittently. She paints with her back to me; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the only way. (She could not see her canvas adequately otherwise.) How did I get to be right here right now? A labyrinthine set of decisions, actions, choices and circumstances are responsible. Not me, evidently. All of these determining elements are the cause, and my time-space locale is the effect. If there are any regrets or hopes in this entire house of cards then I would be pushed and pulled backward and forward in the [space] of imagination like Dolittleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strange pet. If any of these cards were removed, then the entire fabric of reality would unravel. There is a degree of perfect balance at work within each moment of reality, a cosmic web of crystalline structures that are apparent to us as the present, and the reliance of the web upon all of its parts secures the concrete character of this now, this present. We consider this to be the highest aesthetic property of great art; a metaphorical selfcontained reality which is delicate and crystalline and always at

great risk of disintegration. All of its component elements must be tuned into one another so perfectly that it becomes a self-reliant reality, and maintains this illusion when you are present to it.

From the whole store of human life just grab some bit – we all live life, and yet to most it’s something strange, so that it is of interest, whatever you may pick.

I, like absolutely all people, constantly wrestle with myself when I am in public about how to present my image. Again, this is a projection of a desire that does not exist in or for or to the exterior world. You do not exist outside of this projection because of the projection, for you are like a tree falling in forest which makes no sound. You do not exist for the public desire, and neither should you exist for the impious and mischievous hallucination of the public desire. Anything that springs from an illusion is mischievous and should be made transparent. If we organise our life and reality around a pack of lies, of disingenuous ‘somethings’, around things which exist only as shadows without their solid objects, then we exist for nothings, we gravitate about a source without energy, and we become aware through this allusion of the cosmic web of deceit.

I shall address this problem to the psychoanalyst, for he seems to apprehend the same problem, (although why it should be a problem is something neither he nor I can explain in togetherness.) This is the problem of the conditions of perception, and the impossibility of seeing beyond your own nose. (Admittedly though, the psychoanalyst would not use the term ‘cosmic web of deceit’, but would rather hear it from his analysand.) This would be a

phantasmic structure of projections which endlessly conceal the hard kernel of the Real, (a term that you shall not hear me using with great frequency,) the Real which is unobtainable after the encounter with it in infantile development. My perception of this fact, (which is a projection on the part of the analyst, and hence conceals him from the Real,) is identical to that of the analyst with the glaring contradiction that in my understanding there is indeed a breakthrough; the image-screen can be wished-away. But in basic character our positions are transferable; mine is quasi-theological and his is quasi-scientific, and hence the two tend to move parallel to one another but cannot admit this reconciliation. I hope to make a diversion along these parallel lines that offers up some kind of truce; that there is no Real beyond the image-screen of projection, rather the conscious admission that reality is the horizon of what is knowable constitutes a firm standpoint to the Real; the inaccessibility of the Real only displays its presence when it cannot be there, when it cannot enter human knowledge. Thus it enters into a relation, (perhaps an identical relation,) to God, Truth and Being. This admission demonstrates an acceptance of the way in which things are and appear, and this contradiction in my position will be stepped-over and seen for what it is and as it appears. It has a relation to the deceitful universe, but one that I have not yet understood or explained.

[If we, each of us I mean, are at the centre of the universe, then either there are many universes, only one universe (ours), or we are wrong.]

So let me try to understand my two contradictory positions;

a) The world of appearances is innately deceitful and concealed because we, as it is our nature to uncover, conceal it.

b) In that we conceive of a Real beyond reality are deceived because the Real is beyond the pale of human knowledge, and hence all we have is the world of appearances to trust.

So shall we conceive that we are the agents responsible for the concealment of the Real or the Truth because we have hallucinated it? Is this the mode in which we conceal all things and hence are positioned at the disadvantage of being that which discloses? This must constitute the primal layer of denial in the human consciousness in that the Real and the Truth is beyond his grasp, although he must continue somehow to move toward it? Are we simply to accept that Truth is permanently beyond our grasp because it is antithetical to the human mode of Being as becoming? Would this admission about the horizon of human knowledge constitute his only apprehension of Truth?

[I apologise for not being adequately situated to address these problems in full for the reason that I am currently floundering about in a sea of dogma.]

I shall now think about the function of Law inside of human consciousness as it relates initially to the previous string of problems, and also because I think that we can make headway toward understanding what a human is by contemplating his limits and hence, his position. If indeed God did make the Law upon

mount Sinai with Moses as his secretary to the commandments, (maybe it looked good on his curriculum vitae?) then surely in adhering to them we would indeed find our absolute human joy in exercising them vigorously? But of course, the human always chooses to do things in his or her own way, believing as it does that it is independent, and that indeed it must prove itself to be right. Why do we find it near impossible to adhere to the law, (and especially the law of God,) given that it would produce a certain lubrication to the cogs of life, removing as it does the necessity of creating oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own fallible set of maxims and encountering different responses and positions to circumstance? In some way many people have done this for themselves in dreaming-up principles to which they abide, as though having a ready-made and pre-packaged way of responding to certain particular criteria is of greater practicality than feeling the anxiety of producing a response on the spot. Is this because we do not trust ourselves enough to commit the correct action in all circumstances, and thus need to know ourselves before the fact? Does this constitute selfknowledge or merely fear in the face of the reality that we have produced? We can feel the pangs of guilt, embarrassment and regret if we cast our minds back to a time wherein we produced a response to a situation and knew it to be wrong at a later stage, or wished that it had been otherwise. Why is it so painful for us to think about these times other than we lost our image of ourselves in a situation? Or, rather than losing ourselves, we actually discovered something about ourselves that until then we had successfully masked from reality? Would it not be a desirable disposition to innately believe in our actions because we have made them, that at the time of doing it we were right to do so, no matter what time

may tell? Many people will question this line of thinking, I mean for example, what about those unpleasant situations in history where people caused terrible actions; would it be acceptable in the mind of that person to think to himself “It seemed right at the time when I gassed those Jews and I must believe that the actions of my [former] self are not to be regretted, firstly because I cannot change them and secondly, because I am the same self now as I was then.” Such is the condition of history that we must live with our actions, from the great to the disastrous, and it is all too apparent that there is no innate reason or sense of Good in all people that can be appealed to. We simply cannot trust or believe in one another. We are a terrible species; if I didn’t do it to you, then someone else would have, or you would have done it to me. There is no blame. There is no meaning. And so we consider ourselves to be cosmic victims of circumstances permanently beyond our control, as though we admit to believing in an external hand of causality, a God, although we never trusted His rules. Even in denying the existence of God, our most powerful mode of controlling what He does, and believing in the absolute discrimination of causality acknowledges that there is a design. I am going to send a message into space that warns any other conscious species out there about Us, about the catastrophic and dangerous human species, that they should not visit Us. But the chances are that if they are conscious, or at least self-conscious, that they are the same as us, only different. That’s our classic contradiction, is it not? We discriminate against everything in order to know what we are, (i.e. I am not that wall, that bowl of fruit, I am not black, I am not a woman, I am not overweight, etc ad nauseam,) because to know what we are is the absolute purpose for us, and it must be expressed

at all times and in all ways. We are permanently distracted by the illusion that we have image, we bestow all of our gifts and energies upon it, and we demonstrate our absolute and pathetic narcissism. This narcissism I have just realised constitutes part of our nature as that which conceals/deceives. We all heard the oracle at Delphi, we all abide by the maxim, and yet none of us heard the maxim itself. The maxim came from outside; it came from beyond human understanding, and we thought that the message was for us. We only saw it in our position, and that position was one that discriminates in order to know. Self-knowledge must go beyond this mirrored-image of human self-knowledge, but how to do this, (or rather, know this,) is transcendental knowledge, and I do not know if I, or indeed any of us, has the ability.

Humans have been efficient in creating labour-saving devices thus far, but why not so with regard to ethics and conduct? Do we grate so much in our existence against being told what to do, even though we find that so easy at our jobs? There is an irreconcilable conflict in persons between what Hegel called the slave and master modes of Being, and also between slave and mater discourse. Any person would admit that to ‘abide’ is both the easiest and most difficult mode of Being; to obey in harmony the law, whether that be the law of God, or of some other ethics. It is easy in that to remove the choice of action from a person removes the anxiety of making so many different and equally futile actions and dispositions, but we also know that to maintain fidelity of mind is of the greatest difficulty, for our conflicting drives are always attempting to lure us away from the rule of Law. We would also admit that to lead one’s own life according to one’s own constantly shifting ethics

and to create the illusion of control over own life produces a masterly feeling in a person and, at the same time, inflicts the misery of an incalculable number of decisions wherein we either inflict pleasure or pain, success or failure upon ourselves. Which of these two opposing drives, the slave or master, is of greatest value to us and do we even have the ability to ‘choose’ either? The contradiction inherent in this problem is apparent when we consider that if we were to ‘choose’ the slave mentality over the master mentality, we automatically attempt to master ourselves. Equally, if we already are masters without needing to choose whether to be so or not, we are somewhat slaves in our inability to choose. This paradox of causality comes at us with the greatest difficulties as its burden, for we are allowed to be neither of the things we might choose to be, for it would entail us to be that which we did not choose to be at the same time. Again, we slip into contradiction, and the futility of the situation lurks dispassionately in the background. But why should we feel tormented by this situation when it is so characteristically human, as is when the chameleon changes its colour? Because we are so disposed to be tormented in life, for we have not adapted sufficiently in our humanity to accept the way that we are. There is no paradox here, for it exists only in our confused brains; this is a part of self-knowledge that does not come directly from thinking about our situation, for it requires an ability to see itself as a piece of knowledge, as a human truth rather than as a thing we need to resolve. We do have this need to resolve conflicts as a species, but likewise do we have a need to conflict, and we must not be tempted in any way to believe that this kind of harmonious conflict, these two different drives within humankind arises purely within different individuals. We must consider that

the entirety of human consciousness is of the same dimensions as a single consciousness, and that both possess the same characteristics and qualities. Neither of the two things, even if we consider them two things, is measurable as an experience, for they are so composed as to be infinite in duration and breadth as well as divisible in parts. We understand the components and yet we do not understand the whole of either phenomena, and thus we are helpless but to assume that there is no difference at all between any â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sectionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of any kind of consciousness, for consciousness is capable of contradiction, and that ability in itself constitutes the impossibility of discrimination. We could thus infer that there exists within each cell of consciousness and in its totality that we are capable of Being all things within two polar opposites, and only conceptually can we conceive of the pure opposites themselves. In Kant this concept was expressed by the angelic and diabolic concepts of human action, but as expressed above it is in no way human to be modulated purely in either, rather it is human to be everything in between. In this investigation of the impossibility of human reconciliation, for a human to be that which he is, do we somehow discover how he is; purity of Being is his impossibility, and yet the way in which he is Being is pure paradox. The paradox must be stepped-over in order to experience it as a form in itself, not as a problem to be solved. We should therefore celebrate the expression of our humanity in its knotted form, for it is this knot which has produced conscious, which has produced our humanity. In this way must we come to doubt what we believe and believe what we doubt, for this is our route to trusting in what we know to be deceitful; the World. Then we know that we can believe in the deceit that we have created for ourselves, for that is the way in

which the world consists in us. We have created a problem so that we can resolve it, and if it is the case that we have constructed the labyrinth, then we must somewhere have the plans to it. This labyrinth stands in as our desire, and our ambition is characterised in our will to solve it and to be sure, this creativity is somewhat perverse; humankind is somewhat perverse, and it always has been.

Shall we for a moment consider all of the achievements of our race? We have enabled ourselves to live longer than ever before through various scientific developments, but to what end? How has the human race benefited from the extension of human life? What do those extra years mean? What have we done with them? In any business they will say that time management is crucial in efficiency, but what about in life? No, life has not gotten any longer. It is still infinite in our experience, and thus it has meant nothing. We may be able to overcome the physical suffering caused by a particular illness, but we have not overcome the suffering caused by life itself. Is this a disease to be cured scientifically, or is this not a disease at all? And, if life is not suffering to some persons, but is instead pleasurable, what is the meaning of this pleasure and why continue in it other than that the body is constantly stimulated? It has as much meaning as being in the pain of an illness, but we sedate pain and enhance pleasure. Can you conceive of a higher Good beyond pleasure or happiness? If you cannot then your brain does not function as effectively as it could. Who says that the quality of life is dependent upon the comfort of the body? All experience and consciousness is as valuable as any other and it is only our human stupidity that tries to cleanse the human experience as a culture might try to cleanse the ethnicity

from its race. We abhor ethnic cleansing, do we not, but why do we try to cleanse our bodies from alien cells? Why do we try to cleanse our thoughts of alien cells? Why cannot we, who can do anything, understand our contradictory drives? Would it not be more simple to admit that we both are and are not fascists and racists, and that indeed the way in which we have come to be what we now are is by discrimination and elimination? We are ill equipped and ill situated to start asserting either ‘human-rights’, (what on earth does this mean?) or ethics based upon utility. If we make absolute laws we will not be fidelitous to them; in fact, we will enforce them and contradict ourselves in so doing. No, for we are not God, and we are no good at making absolute Law. Neither though can we begin to posit an ethics based upon the greatest good to the greatest number, for although it may have practical benefits in its application, it is also ridiculous in that we enshrine happiness as the highest Good, (and this is both foolish and immature,) and it is virtually meaningless in that it accepts that it does not work for everyone; it may as well work for no-one! As for those people who assert human rights, how can they believe in the voluntary blindness that it entails? How can one deny the worst in people in order only to believe in the ‘best’ as a value? Who can know what the ‘best’ in people is? Is this not different from person to person, country to country and culture to culture? Are we in the west still trying to colonise and cleanse by imposing our imperial law over others for our own benefit? ‘Human Rights’ devalues any knowledge of rights for it only opens its eyes to rights from which the master discourse stands to benefit. It also imposes a particular ethic over and above another ethic, and is not extendable to all persons. We have all signed different social contracts. ‘Human

Rights’ is inhuman, and I must sound callous in my remarks. But is not humanity callous, and who would deprive humanity from its right to be callous other than the ethical cleansers? Humans do not have Rights, for humans do not know what is Right as an absolute, and neither are we positioned to be judge. Animals on the other hand do have absolute and natural rights and laws and they all abide by them. They have no choice. But the stupid and insane humans believe that they are the ones who created and also attempt to enforce animal rights! This imposture is disingenuous beyond belief, is it not? We stand for the rights of a thing that does not recognise or need them? I might as well assert the rights of a stone, for it too is subject to the laws of nature. If humans had not invented cruelty, both in concept and practise, there would be no false need for animal rights, for only humans are ‘cruel’. Our ‘human rights’ on the other hand are a complete shambles, for they work for no-one, they mean nothing and we cannot abide by any of them. This is why humanity is totally wretched, for it is doomed to be eternally tormented by what it is, and thus it will never be that which it is. This is very ‘cruel’ indeed.

When Perestroyka, the new way, happened at the end of the Soviet period in Russia, it seemed to everyone how all of the lies and horrors surpressed by Soviet propaganda, agitsya propaganda, suddenly came flooding out in the new ‘free press’. No one could quite believe how so many lies could have been told, or to what extent the propaganda machine had infiltrated every part of Soviet life. And so everybody read about it all in the free press with a gluttonous and perverse interest. But this new way was quite old for us here in England, this ‘free press’ which is the profiteer’s

boon. How could so many people have switched from one type of propaganda machine so easily to the next, if not for a certain type of blindness to the impossibility of ‘facts’? Every time a new piece of gossip emerged about Soviet history or the corruption of its politics, a media-mogul earned money. How ‘free’ can a press be when it is organised around profit? Freedom has its price, clearly. And yet did anyone consider how he or she was to be exploited by Perestroyka, how the ‘new way’ was indeed converting him or her into its economy, into pieces of capital? Of course not, for Capitalism has always been more devious in its fascism than any other type of ideology, for its subject’s want of capital. Capitalism has always carried its avant-garde banners of ‘free-enterprise’ over monopoly, ‘free-press’ over propaganda, ‘freedom of speech’ over silence. But what do these banners really signify to us other than the purchase of the illusion of Freedom? In this way can we see capital as the Faustian ‘Mephisto’, who serves only to achieve its own ultimate profit, who positions everything within the ambitious man’s grasp in order to gain the part of him that it truly covets; his soul. And because of our wretched desire-driven state, this endless game of chasing after our own shadow, an object we desire but can never truly have but are willing to substitute with a myriad of metaphorical material items, are we so easily exploited. We seem to be incapable of surviving without ideology, but at the same time unable to sustain one. The only way in which Capitalism appears to have succeeded and will continue to succeed is because it converts all of its members, its loyalists and its dissidents, its employed and unemployed, its citizens and its criminals, into one huge organism organised into many individual cells. We are its life, we have brought to life a third party entity; money. The reason why

Capitalism, (or Democracy as politicians are keen to call it,) always carries the banners of freedom is because it wants everything. Our free country only promotes equal rights to all persons because it wishes to exploit them equally. [Almost] every person is capable of labouring and exchanging their labour for money in order to give it away for something that they want. Capitalism acknowledges this fact and leaves no part of humanity to go fallow, for it can exploit everyone and reap from every field. This is one reason why the Ideology of the Individual is to be radically doubted, primarily because we take its facticity at face value without investigation. Everyone believes that they exist, and that they exist as a sentient and individual entity. How can we know this to be true; are we at all willing or capable or entitled to consider our existence as an Ideology? To what extent has our very existence become a product of propaganda? Is this the antithesis of Freedom, (the slave discourse,) or is this the maximum Freedom, (the master discourse)? Are we, as cells in a machine, given total freedom in that the element of choice has been removed from our Being, and is this the same thing as abiding by a law, like Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s law, in order to achieve happiness? To be Individual is to be a contradiction, to be a living part in the maintenance of Ideology, and there is nothing that we can do about it. Even the political dissident who speaks out against Capitalism is doomed, for he is what he is because of Capitalism, Capitalism has produced him and his desires, and he speaks freely because Capitalism allows him to and stands only to benefit from it; it has even educated him in what he knows and thinks. It is the knowledge, the desire, the mode, the means and the product. Such failure should make a person sigh to the depths of his soul. A Soviet should be familiar with this method of control,

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surely? Of course you must understand that my discussing Communism and Capitalism and political Ideology here is metaphorical to be sure. Can any enlightenment of ours, any ‘new way’ be genuine, or is it only another expression of Ideology? Are we only ever likely to be the vehicle of expression and action for the conscious entity of Zeit?

The next problem that my enquiry encounters is my earlier statement about the voice of Spirit, of Genius, and about how the voice of genius speaks through us, or how the hand of God is enacted by us. Again we might like to think about Malebranche’s idea that we control God, or enact God’s creation when we move our bodies, and that each movement is its own type of prayer. What value distinction is to be made about our expression of the will of Ideology or our expression of God’s will, and how could the two be made distinct? How can we detect the presence of one voice from another, as Mohammed could not distinguish the devil’s voice from that of God? With so many voices vying for attention inside of consciousness we would be foolish to assert that one of them was our own for we are comprised out of all of them, and we are their vehicle. This is the way in which the human takes the character of living knowledge; that he allows knowledge to live by allowing it to live in and through him, and self-knowledge must heed this piece of information. But do we have the facility to choose which knowledge is to live in us or which knowledge we wish to express? This would take some sentient entity that is not comprised of knowledge but able to preside over it and at one point in time it was called Reason. But we can of course doubt the existence of Reason, for the faculty is so contentious that we cannot say it exists the

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same in all persons. It was once the hope of people that reason could be appealed to in the same way in all people in order to achieve the same answer, as though all people had the same basic drive toward what is good and right. But this theory was always characterised by particular motives within particular people and was therefore not derived from an innate, supra-human faculty. It was instead produced from the master-discourse, and was therefore connected with the teleological sense of righteousness. Reason therefore collapsed upon itself into just another mode of knowledge, another expression of power and prejudice, and our hope in it, (even though it is still maintained in the institution of our law,) was somewhat shattered. But is there such a thing as a human Idea that is free from motive? Of course there is not, because our motive is always us, and either we always act out of self-interest or self-righteousness and yet this continual failure of the human species to discover what is essential, whether that be reason or the innate rights of a species, was never perturbed. Why, as a species, have we belaboured that particular point? Why is it that we cannot function without ethics when every other species does fine without it and when every effort we have made toward it was wrought with failure? Could it be that consciousness is a weakening of the natural drives, allowing for the space of thought between the continual string of actions? Perhaps the idea that we all carry with us, that consciousness is special, that we are special because of it, is a defensive measure against the entire species collapsing in upon itself in unnatural anarchy and self-destruction? Perhaps we are so weak that we require a system of belief within each of us as a substitute will to survive because our own will to survive has deteriorated? It is all well and good to say that the human is the

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most gifted of all the animals thus encountered in the universe, but we are the only species thus encountered that cannot get on with life, that has become a parody of a living organism. Again, we flatter our species and heap false praise upon it in order to hold at bay the uselessness and outmoded novelty of our race. No other animals find the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;needâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to continually justify their existence, and yet the whole edifice of human society is based around this need, this profound weakness in a creature so maladjusted to its natural properties that it conducts its life at a permanent distance from its world. Could it be that the entirety of the human phenomena of consciousness was a deterioration of the perceptive faculties in our brains, leading to a deterioration and eventual separation from the real world and from nature? What natural advantage does the ability to perceive time passing achieve, or the ability to contemplate anything and everything? If we are to discover anything about our existence and about our consciousness we must be able to contemplate even the most absurd and soul-destroying possibilities about ourselves or we will be [â&#x20AC;Ś]

I have come to the end of the last paragraph and now I have started a new one. But what was the point in it at all? What was the point in anything? Perhaps the cold war was the nearest we ever came to doing the right thing; exterminate everything because life, the world and everything is meaningless and wretched? Why did they, (I mean we, because as a race we are all responsible,) never push the button in the end? What thought or reason did they, (I mean we, because as a race we are all responsible,) have for not exterminating the species? Could this be the absolute and innate Reason that we had hitherto made such a futile effort toward

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understanding? Perhaps, when it comes down to it, no human has the will or the ability to destroy everything. Would we be willing to put this theorem to the test, and simply trust that no one would push the button? Perhaps this theorem works; no one would push the button because there would be no fantasy space from which we could enjoy the post-apocalyptic landscape. It is different to fantasising our own funerals or suicides, is it not? We cannot fantasise about what the world is like when it is all destroyed, without a conscious entity to perceive it, without anything at all. There cannot be narcissism when faced with nothing, because nothing reflects nothing and not us. Perhaps the scenario goes beyond the imagination? Sadly it does not, because, as Hollywood is continually trying to tell us, world-wide catastrophe is always on the horizon. We can even simulate it. So indeed we are able to imagine what the world is like after the apocalypse. But what Hollywood has not yet shown us is a post-apocalyptic landscape without any humans in it at all; it looks back at the pre-human period with a kind of nostalgia, but cannot imagine a post-human period. It likes to promulgate the myth of invincibility as a human quality; that we will always prevail as the only species with the quality of immortality. It is such a strange thing that an animal racked by meaninglessness, futility and the ability to destroy itself because it cannot understand why it should go on living should also want to continue doing it forever. We should indeed look in all seriousness into discovering the meaning of life, because otherwise we will doom the future of our race to the same futility that we have experienced on a daily basis, having made no effort to make the human experience or the human race valuable even unto itself.

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For how long have humans sought out pleasure as a means to continue to live? Is this a relatively new product of consciousness, an abstraction of the natural aversion to pain or the natural need to be satisfied? Why not abstract this desire to be pleasured into a desire to be Good? If we can create an infrastructure for human society wherein Good is the basis and the aspiration for all human action, would we find that people subscribed to it, or would we, (in all probability,) find that nobody could agree upon what was Good? Well, we have already tried to do this in many ways, and the current state of our societies is the product of our failure to succeed.

It is now of great importance to step back from this writing, because it has flowed through me too easily and I am tempted to believe that it was not mine. It is deeply ingrained in my person to be hostile and defensive when it comes to the human race, and my attitude swings from the bottom to the top end of the scale and vice versa with little or no provocation. I smiled with great joy when I was at Argos recently when I saw my feelings regarding the working-class council estate people was not in fact my own, and therefore why should I identify with them? And then disaster struck me at work recently when I got trapped in a riot instigated by gangs of black teenagers fighting with one another. I am now too frightened to leave the house, and my thoughts toward other people again need to be analysed. I have a strong regard for the best things in people, and my discrimination usually comes from when I witness the lowest in people, such as the desire to destroy or of insane acts of violence. But my discrimination only comes from the qualities of my own character that I see reflected in other persons, and indeed it was of great, (but terrifying,) importance to have

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witnessed a riot. It felt like a great surge of power, like a storm, passed through everyone in the vicinity, and the impulse to destroy had carried everyone away with it. It is of course the will to create that I naturally admire, and this antithetical force in mankind, (which is to wreck, kill, destroy and be stupid,) struck me forcefully; the desire to create is coupled with the desire to destroy at all times, not so? This is the bushmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s philosophy, and it rings true in mass-consciousness also. But all I could think about afterwards was that I hated my race, I hated the entire species for how rotten and insane it was, and all I could think of doing was wrecking this book of which I had hoped to be a reconciliation between a multitude of human forces. So recently you may have noticed a degree of pessimism seeping in, a doubting voice, a voice that clouds this consciousness over and complicates its purpose. I do indeed celebrate human life, and admitting that here is not like letting the cat out of the bag. You do not have to wait until this book ends before you know what it was all about. Questions such as these you will also notice yield only the most surface diagnosis of the condition here, so we must investigate somewhat further. Did you know that somebody or something always stands to profit from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;equalityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;? And do I seek equality or at least, equilibrium through the harmony of human contradiction? Or perhaps, through my failed attempts to reconcile the un-reconcilable I am in fact demonstrating by method that the human condition is only what it is through its contradictions? Or do I achieve the impossible by giving my own individual account of things here? I am thinking that perhaps the way in which we modern or post-modern or whatever persons still like to posit the blame upon causality, that causality is in fact the greatest and most universally convincing

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scapegoat, is in some way similar to the Greek method of attributing cause to celestial bodies? Our causality, our blame though, is enforced by the cold scientific eye, and to give credence to causality over human freedom is also a motive driven response to the human-condition. It is still the case that the human is split between what he thinks he is at liberty to do, and what cause he thinks is acting upon his actions. There is the hand of God and the hand of man, and we still cannot distinguish which is which. So perhaps when one desires to sympathise with the causality of human action, the sympathy itself is yet another effect in a long line emanating from the cause itself. Perhaps one of our fundamental flaws in human consciousness is our disbelief of universal causation, for if not, why would we need to erect our own laws, or why should we feel the need to doubt that which is self-evident? Either there is universal causality, (which of course there must be,) there is no human liberty for it is a myth, and then we can continue to be part of nature again for there will be no need to think. But we are always drawn back to human intention, the dangerous myth of Reason, (which is pure and goes beyond causality,) and thus again do we believe ourselves to be responsible as creators and destroyers for what we have done. But surely this kind of disposition, between what is universal cause and what is causation that descends downward from human action can in fact be answered by its own question? We can either choose to believe what we will for we are determined to choose in whatever way that we are disposed, or we choose because we at liberty to do so, because we are the creators or destroyers of the truth through our free choices. Both solutions to the problem are the same.

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Legitimate problem: We cannot have it our way in this case, for it is either one or the other, and not both. It would sound quite ridiculous, would it not, to assert that a person can be both the originator of cause and effect through his decision, and at the same time be part of the web of universal causality. And thus, our decision or belief in either the one or the other, (and this is where truth and belief are at odds,) is neither here nor there; if we are causal originators, then our choice of assertion in either case would make it so, and if we are causally determined then our assertion in either case would not make it so. Is belief then beside the point in the human condition if there are plainly some aspects of our condition that it can neither effect nor understand? We could not really assert even this, for belief in a person has the effect of changing any landscape, and we must understand that belief in either case stands before the fact of our discovery of causality. Assertions are in their nature tainted by belief, and the simple fact is that assertions are only ever linguistic and bear no connection to what is actually the case, for that which is actually the case can never be a piece of knowledge, (because it would no longer be the case, it would be a piece of knowledge.) I have always had an irrational fear of spiders, but recently I have come to see myself as a spider; I live in a hole and occasionally pop out to modify reality or get some food. I am also aware that spiders are supposed to be more scared of humans than we are of them. Well, spiders arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t actually scared at all, although I am when I come out of my hole to modify reality.

Because the human gains his grounding existential characteristics from his condition, his locale within space and time, the purpose

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and signification of remembering and forgetting take on an existential character, and one which is not limited to the functionality of the human mind. [Would you have guessed that I had forgotten or lost the thread of what I was writing earlier?] The more one looks into the case, the more ambiguous the two phenomena become; can one forget to remember? If we think in terms of their being as a natural and innate quality of human material consciousness, then is this fact forgotten as time goes on, (the fact that he is destined to forget that he is one who forgets,) and then remembered when he is next prone to forget, or does he even remember what he is when he forgets himself? Any clarity that I could develop about this subject is especially evasive to me; if we map ‘Remembering’ onto ‘Concealing’ and ‘Forgetting’ onto ‘Unveiling’ we can see how the two are interchangeable, for we could surely also say that to remember is to unveil? This conceptual ambiguity does not therefore mean that we ought to abandon such a dogmatic subject, for in actual fact, we will find that the ambiguity of the case is crucial to our formulation of it as a concept in the mind’s eye. We must carry in mind our earlier observation of how the human, in being conscious, corrupts the image of the world onto which he projects, and yet feels the drive toward uncovering the world. What I am currently discovering, through my lack of drive towards writing this book, is that either distraction prevents me from unveiling through this book, or that distraction prevents me from concealing within this book. I do not know why I should write it, and perhaps I will stop? Perhaps remembering and forgetting operate above concealing and unveiling, for we could say that man remembers his self when he forgets his Being, and he is Being when he has forgotten himself. Or even, because a man

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appears on top of human history, his existential condition causes him to forget the knowledge above which he stands and hence it appears veiled to him.

Neurosis as an evolutionary paradox: The human is [at least] two things at once; it is an impossibility. On the one hand, it is connected through a chain of evolutionary phases to the animal world with its earthy and desire driven necessities and laws. [We know of this through the works of Darwin and Freud, and Darwinian theory and Freudian analysis both look down upon human life, for they stand at the advantageous top end of history, and can encapsulate the knowledge coming up from beneath from within their most advanced knowledge.] On the other hand, it is a consciousness experiencing, cerebral and aesthetic entity which drives toward the absolute or infinite end of knowledge. The human Being is both things at once, or desires outwardly toward the two things from one central location. This being in two places at once, being both and neither of the things we desire or believe ourselves to be, is responsible for our collective neurosis as a species. Take for instance a married man who carries on an infidelitous affair without his wife knowing. He has both some kind of understanding that his marriage is an ethical, meaningful, higher, even spiritual unity. His infidelities are testament to his desire for promiscuous sexual relations. If this man then feels guilty for his actions and continues to do it, (and thus entering a Faustian pact with neurosis; desire and satisfaction without the spiritual,) then the resultant neurosis is his continued inability to be both his selves at once, his consciousness can neither split in two or reconcile the difference. I admit that my example here is not particularly instrumental in that

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the man was probably neurotic already if he felt guilty for his actions, for if he was a resolved person he could either be adulterous of fidelitous without guilt toward himself, (for he would recognise no ethical irreconcilability or difference between the two.) But we can still see that if he does have in place a system of ethics that is laid on top of the structure of his material desires that without reconcilement he will continually veer between the two and will have no concrete grounding. He becomes a good self and a bad self precisely because he is always trying to be himself and his self is split. This is, by the way, the way in which I think about Nietzsche these days. He appears to be saying, (although I can only ever hear my own voice saying it, my own memory,) that consciousness is an evolutionary phase, as where man is going to, and I can interpret him saying that man finds himself unable to be that which he is or that realisation about where he is going. He cannot be at one with his consciousness but is rather self-conscious, for he is paradoxical and neurotic. He has drives that point him backward to where he has come from, and drives that point him up in the air aiming at where he is going. He does not realise that he can be that which he is whenever his higher desire exceeds his lower desire. This realisation, that he is both his higher self when he is his lower self and vice-versa, he waits patiently for, without truly believing that his ambition can stretch that far. He enjoys his neurosis, his temporary madness, too much to allow him to be what he is. Both drives are indeed part of the same consciousness, and therefore he must be at one with both, he must be unity and not disunity, conscious as opposed to schizophrenic self-consciousness, and yet he must be both unity and disunity in his realisation. This

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realisation must encapsulate the entire idea of Being, and must be identification with what it is.

I awake from a kind of sleep that lasted the day out, and I sat in the trance at the kitchen table. I went to the door dressed in my nightrobe and spoke with two Jehovah’s Witnesses, I took their magazine and sat and read it at the table. After finishing it, I read Attar:

…one day Ibrahim ibn Adham, Prince of Balkh, was seated on his throne, giving audience to his subjects and surrounded by courtiers and pages in due ceremony. Suddenly a man entered, whose appearance struck the attendants with such awe that their tongues sank into their throats, and not one of them dared to ask his name. He advanced and stood in front of the throne. “What do you want?” said Ibrahim. He replied, “I have come to lodge in this caravanserai.” “This is not a caravanserai,” said Ibrahim, “but my palace: you must be mad.” “Who was the owner of this palace before you?” asked the stranger. “My father.” “And before that?” “My father’s father.” “And before that?” “The father of such and such a one.” “Where are they all gone?” “They are all dead.” “Then,” cried the unknown, “is not this a caravanserai, where one comes and another goes?” With these words he departed and was seen no more.

I then make some coffee and smoke a cigarette, and sit in deliberation for a while longer at the table. There are all types of thoughts in my head, and they glimpse in and out of view like when a butterfly's wings are open as opposed to closed.

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“He made the (natural) law, which it is impossible not to obey, And then ordered us to refrain from following it. Thus every one in the world is helpless and desperate Between His commands and His prohibition: ‘tilt the jar but do not spill!’”

My hopes were initially raised when I first read “The Dice Man” by Luke Reinhardt, as it appeared to have a system beyond the human choice, it was like the law of God that one merely had to obey. The problem was that an initial choice caused the resultant system, and therefore one could legitimately say that every action of the character in the book is a decision, (albeit a predetermined decision,) that has got his initial sanction, and thus he therefore approves. We are still left with an inconclusive birthplace of cause. It then appears that we have a chicken/egg type of conundrum on our hands, and we can never seem to pinpoint the origin of first cause without going back to the idea of the Creator. But surely the Creator only exists due to that which He has created? We cause Him to exist, for He does not have the quality of existence; he has to create so that what He has created can give Him existence. And so in this way do we once again return to the Malebranchean problem of cause; does it stem from us because we control God, (as He is in our bodies but not our free will,) or is it that as God has given us our free will we are always destined to act out of God’s initial law? Perhaps the search for cause is a lost one on a conceptual level. Even scientifically we can assert that unless a cause is proven by its effects at all times it cannot become Law, only an estimation of probability and likelihood. (We would have

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to experience every effect emanating from our hypothetical cause for all time to have proven it Law, and this can never be done.) Cause and effect must therefore evolve out if its quasi-scientific status instead become an existential matter, for in that it cannot be proven or disproved, neither does it need to be. We must begin to strengthen our understanding of metaphysics as it relates to the sciences; not the old philosopher, one who sits impotently watching the scientists and nods his head, one whose old gums cannot tear flesh and eat meat. We have no need for metaphors of this kind. Science removes that which philosophy is better off without, it preoccupies and works at solving the numerous small divisions of truth, and bit by bit removes the chaff from Love of Wisdom.

Two Dreams Written as Poems

The Dream of Daniel: He awakes, but no sooner than he does so he is threatened upon all sides with only his flea-like ability of jumping all circus-like to protect him and the dragon is close behind him; it is young though it has been here forever and The Day is dawning, he jumps away from the dragon, (which has a cream coloured complexion,) but not fast enough or high enough to make ground, for he can only just keep ahead; they are of the same quickness, it and he. He jumps past ruined buildings; monasteries, then thatched buildings and then whole villages, all of which lay to waste in the wake of the dragon. He thinks to himself all the while What if I were to hide in one of the ruins, would I be safe? but instead he keeps going as perhaps nature was meant to be this way, that he and the dragon would always be related in this way, that perhaps he and the dragon were

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made to do this this way. But the dragon has either now disappeared or he has forgotten about it as no longer it exists in the way that it did. He ceases to run and stops in the hot twilit afternoon in a grove of oak trees in their midsummer, and upon looking at them people are moving, rousing from their resting places and walking together toward something. He speaks to an ancient woman who is dressed all in black lace like in a Goya depiction, and she recalls nothing of any dragon, for none of them ever saw it. He thinks that nature made these people to only rouse after the dragon has disappeared each lunchtime, and that their sense of harmony is of an unparalleled scale in comparison to his own, of he who wakes in the morning and crawls like a worm away from the threat of nature that already he is in harmony with. These people carry an air of wisdom and peace with them; at one time they too ran from the dragon, but over generations and aeons of time they have evaded it so well that it no longer exists in their world. They cannot help but sleep when it rouses, and they cannot help but rouse when it sleeps. How clever, he thinks to himself, that these people have forgotten their most basic desire to survive and now live a simple life in ignorance of the threat of nature. The people all continue to move toward the impending sunset that has not yet happened, and the twilight hangs under the midday sun. He walks with them a while, enjoying the innocence of their children and of them themselves, but he cannot be like for he has seen and run from the dragon itself; he is not of them or their nature. In the town by eventide, he is in a thatched Elizabethan building along a high street which is cobbled although the cobbled stones are out of date now and need to be replaced and would be, had the nostalgia not passed over the people. He is in the upstairs lounge of a bar

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which is busy with people and their drinks for it is Friday and the evening of the week. He is now as outmoded as the street, with his walking cane and his exaggerated talk of Socialism. He has never fit this world at dawn, midday or evening, but that was the way it is.

The Dream of Marianna: She is awake and has been playing with the Princes all evening; they laugh and joke and she is their sister or their real mother. And then inside of her dream she falls asleep in the room with the Princes. While she sleeps in the dream, a voice from outside of the door to the room is calling her and trying to wake her. She does not wake, but the voice becomes part of the dreaming dream itself. Is the voice of her subconscious trying to draw attention to something she is only prepared to hear whilst she is asleep? Or is she asleep inside of reality and the voice of her sleeping self wishes to awaken? Or does any of this only make sense when she tells it to me, as though when she speaks, when she tells the dream, she allows the voice inside the dream to speak out loud? What appeared as images to her in her sleep were only ever words that she was to take dictation from, and by saying them they become reality; the images of the dream were only ever allusion to language. The voice of the dream, the language of it tells Marianna that reality is her dream, but it may only do so by way of reversal; it tells her from her dream. By giving the voice of the reality within the dream her voice she brings it into her reality and from there it can become conscious; that voice she has constantly sought in her life. Is she told to wake from her dream of sovereignty and live her sovereign

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life, to awaken to the nobility of her soul which is not merely the dream of being?

There are so many ways in which I like to think about myself, and there are so many ways in which I do not like to think about myself. But do either of these same things make any difference, for I cannot be merely what I think about can I? And even more stupidly I could assert that I am at once both and neither of these things, and thereupon, why should the world only ever be comprised of binary divisions; can a person not conceive of a trinity of same different things? With his two eyes, his two ears and his two nostrils he will only ever split the world in two and never three. Why do the mystics speak of another sense, a perception of the spiritual, as though an awakening to another dimension of thought were a possibility over and above both one-dimensional and two-dimensional men? Images fill my linguistic mind by way of a primal deception of what thought actually is; why is it that humans constantly feel the need to fill space? Whose wicked idea was it to price it and make it the premium that it has become? The same in our thoughts; no ounce of wastage in there; it goes on and on and on and on ad infinitum or until one is dead. Do we not value what a space is unless it is filled with something? This would certainly not work in Bach or Mozart or even any kind of music, but most of all where the rhythm is made invisible by spaces. New York is a wonderful illustration [and nothing more] of space at a premium; the higher the building, the more profit generated with the smallest outlay. Profit is what happens when you give little and get lots. That gap in between, that difference is always desirable to be stretched as far as possible; we are all very cheap persons. This

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is not a respect for money; money which merely multiplies and stretches further always, just as one who fritters it away meaninglessly does not respect money. Why would you respect money? It has separated you from reality, from nature, and from work, (and work of course is man’s higher purpose, to make works.) As the creator creates, money takes a diminished role in comparison to that of the works. Not so in the case of the masses who love to be pulled this way and that on the bandwagon of entrepreneurs. But what if the creator creates money? Even ‘artists’ who seek to profit materially through their works have already removed their value. Not all things can be exchanged for money, and not all things make profit, and money is indeed a dead thing, a dead god for whom we all still preach and pray to in the churches, and who we pray to when we make every exchange. That magic, divine stuff which, meaningless in its own right and immaterial, brings material goods to us and the means to stay alive! Good God! We truly invented a god to whom we are fidelitous, we fear, we worship and in which we seek salvation! But how can we be creators if we have been created, even if only by ourselves? What is our role; are we only to mimic on the stage of life, to reinterpret the works of the true creator in our act, in our great passion play? Perhaps we are totally incapable of knowing who and what we are; perhaps it will always escape us, and perhaps the inscription ‘Know Thyself’ at Delphi was only to be understood in the Angelic hierarchy; it was left over from the time of the Gods, and it has perplexed us ever since and we shall never understand it. It is not of human wisdom, and therefore it cannot be understood by human wisdom, and that is what it means. When the Gods died…

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â&#x20AC;ŚMotion is impossible. Xenoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paradox is the allusion of human existence; human existence never goes or gets anywhere. Why is it you think that when you read the works of a Manichean scholar, of a Medieval Saint, a Modern thinker or a post-modern critic that they are always addressing the same irresolvable issues? Our race and our nature is to chase after its own tail for all time, and it is written into the contract of our own life. The illusion that humans have gone somewhere, have developed in the physical sciences, have developed society and capital only goes to show nothing other than the illusion under which we choose to live. Why did Metaphysics, Theology, Philosophy and Art never manage to outstrip the works of the time previous to it? Why is Socrates no greater than Nietzsche? Perhaps we need to look beyond ourselves, beyond our illusion, and look to those who went nowhere and did not need to; for their genuine lack of motion gave them wings, and our dream of motion and speed and movement ground us to a metaphysical and spiritual halt. Motion is impossible, and to cap it all, the icing on the cake, is that we are trapped in time with Xeno! Because we think that time moves by, (which it does not; we perceive it passing because of our condition to do so,) and we think of human history as time passing, as a gradual elevation upward away from the stone age, we become conceited; we cannot see that we have moved nowhere, because motion is impossible. We have erected the myth that time passes, automatically as it were. We must unlearn our conceit, our enslaving and fettered conceit which grounds us. We must cease this analogous life. Look at the Futurists with their false love of speed; they were so new and so fast that they madeâ&#x20AC;Śpaintings! [And not even good paintings!] We are approaching twilight, and our adjustment to the illusion of

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peace removed from nature, our caricature of human life, is heading down toward night. Do we not know that our love of speed, of being the leaders in the race of humanity, one after the other, does nothing but cause our cancer? The more we try to create a gap between that which we are and that which we [ t h i n k ] we would like to be causes our self-consciousness, our strengthening of the image, the image of reality, and the deeper we go into this delusion, this rabbit hole up our own arse-holes, only goes to show how totally fucked

-up we have become

But

becomes necessary

to begin to look positively at

that which has become

completely hopeless, and we try to move toward the horizon with gladness at each step of our lives. The cup is indeed full, it is brimming over, and we do not fear our own innate generosity when passing around for others that which we know to be good. But we can, (and are,) very stingy with the meagre and small things in our lives that we become less and less likely to share. It is a fact that energy spent is energy multiplied; when one gives, it increaseth the energy one has for giving, and when one denies, it increaseth the energy one has for denial. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you find it easy to say no the more often it is said? [finish]

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps my entire discourse was procrastination, that my righteous dialogue was quite nauseous?

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Well, I must confess to you that, given that there is no reader of this work, then I am only ever discussing these issues with myself, and that I am in part procrastinating, (for indeed, if I had accomplished all of these things within myself I would not be writing them in here,) and my righteousness comes directly from my very timid schizophrenia. I sit here in almost complete ignorance of my other self, and it is only because of this that I am able to detect a struggle between my two opposing parts. Indeed, I have produced this class struggle, and by that token I am also able to remedy the situation. These two people only ever cause friction between themselves because they are both very anxious; they desire what is best, and they desire harmony between themselves and they wish to be united in harmony. But the anxiety that they are both housed within the same body, and this paradoxical difference in unity, causes confusion and not understanding. There is a certain degree of conceit in this relationship, a certain denial of the truth, and therefore an ignorance of the facts and only a temporary solution to loneliness and unhappiness is available to them. Because they are both always right, that their opinion is always sovereign, they can never admit their true unity. But we must know that opinion is only the shadow of knowledge, and that individual opinion is only the very weakest expression of who and what we are. We should not attempt to enforce opinion. For what special reason should we wish to defend something of ours and continually justify it if it only belongs to us in the most roundabout sense? Surely there is some greater defence at work here, some cloaking of intention, that we should strengthen our resolve to opinion when we are so unsure of our selves? Because none upon none of us knows who we are, (for self knowledge is divine, (i.e. no self or absolute self,) and

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confusion is mortal, human.) We are seeking to know who we are in the most false and self-deceptive ways at all times. The expression of our opinion, of our belongings, (our private property,) and our total image, a Gesamtkunstwerke of our selves. And who does not consider Wagner at least somewhat conceited and pompous? But if we repeat it all to ourselves, and show it off in public at all times, if we never let the mask slip, then we can at least partially convince our selves. We might stop to look in a shop window if only to catch our own reflection in it, (“I know I looked good before I left the house this morning, but now I am not sure; I need reassurance.”) We need reassurance at all times of who and what we are because our memory is so underdeveloped for one thing. If we could remember with such absolute certainty, (no, this is wrong; what I meant was belief,) then we would carry a more wholesome knowledge of what we can know of our selves. But this is not the case, because we are always uncertain of what we know, and try to cling to the smallest and most uncertain of things, Images and Opinions, in order to remember. And who can remember far back enough to remember how these images and opinions were formed? Are we then so certain of our belief in them? Surely they came to us only in the form of hearsay and reflection, of a false attitude to the world in which we are only ever an apparition? Because we are not solid, neither is the world or anything that we attempt to put out into the world, and this spiritual quicksand causes us great anxiety. (And by ‘us’ I mean me and my book and me and my other self.) Our lives then are formed around the need to cope, not to survive, as was the natural instinct, just to cope. And coping is the smallest quantifier in a life, a [just] being able to stay

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alive in the smallest possible way. And perhaps this coping is actually our real humility?

We have replaced this need to be alive, this animal instinct, with a cultural construction or infrastructure. In this way can we say that we are not completely natural, for we are partially cultural, (and how great a part we are uncertain to know.) Why be sad at this prospect? It is our greatest gift, the gift for abstraction; the fact of the matter is that we are able to create, (although the creation of intention is uncertain,) and this somewhat godlike characteristic should bring us great joy. But it does not because we can never be sure of the hand which controls and causes us, for we are uncertain about god and even about the scope of human causality. But we do indeed create and perhaps it is not our place to know the whereabouts of our desire to do so? Is it ignorance that drives me to say so? No; it is just that I am toying with possibilities and entertaining a notion that is usually detested by that of self-opinion. As humans we can only admit to one or the other; I am either totally free, or completely caused, and there can be no reconcilement between the two, there can be no midpoint, and yet I must know! But this â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I must knowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; belies a weakness, our weakness for certainty; we always go weak at the knees in the presence of the concept of certainty. If we had at least one certainty then our lives might be more concrete, more solid. And thus we do have the first certainty, that of existence, (that indeed I am also prone to doubt,) but it only provides us with greater uncertainty. Indeed, it would be prudent to say that if everything were uncertain, we would be fully certain of that. It is that we have one certainty amidst a universe of the uncertain that causes us much pain; if we had none at all we

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would not be looking for certainty! Is it not sad that our selfknowledge is limited to merely one certainty and no more? Of course not; one certainty is all certainties on the metaphysical level of questioning. If we have the godlike knowledge of ourselves at least in part, (and it seems to us a part because we do not believe in unity,) then we have it in full, for there can be no partialness in self-knowledge; all or nothing I say!

Would we say that it is characteristic of our ‘postmodern’ (euch!) times that the play of surfaces and signifiers is paramount and appealing to us, and depth of character or meaning is incomprehensible to us; as though our shallow selves are merely the result of a fashion in cultural power rather than an absolute and decadent disease in the twilight of humanity? Because power and money have shifted from the domain of the nobility, and then to the captains of industry, (the petit-bourgeoisie,) and is now as we speak distributing itself amongst the grand-bourgeoisie and the almost non-existent working class, (why would we need a working-class in a leisured society?) then all of cultural meaning and the hierarchies of taste have shifted appropriately. Why should we feel a pang of nausea to talk about taste, nobility, grandeur or beauty? Because these things were never ours, they were for the higher people and not for commoners. Does that then mean that there was no truth in beauty or nobility or any of these higher things; it was merely an expression of cultural elitist power and taste? Then why do we not de-value Renaissance Florentine paintings as mere ‘cultural abnormalities’, the expression of taste in the Florentine Medici and their court? Do they possess nothing else, or is it actually that because we live in the surface of signifiers, and cultural power is

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now in our court, that we can slander the taste of others ‘higher up’ than us in order to justify our petty tastes and virtues? It is us that have invented both the fashions of culture as opposed to the higher meaning of culture, and it is our particular conceit that makes us see everything in our own rather dim light. We have removed the possibility of meaning beyond signification, for that is our expression of taste and virtue. Are we too conceited to entertain the possibility that our understanding is the only understanding? I believe that we are, especially so when it is the fashion of our culture to preach equality and liberal views; we are not the betters of those who came before us, we simply are expressing our own ‘high’ elitist culture in our according of liberal views and politics. We can afford to be liberal because we are the ruling class, and we are furnishing our own court with our own expressions of taste; but we indeed demonstrate our own selves as young-pretenders out to Impress, because we do not believe in anything higher-up than ourselves, (least of all taste,) even though it is our taste to believe so! This is our own particular conceit. Why is it that success seems to come only to those who least deserve? Because the executors of power and taste do not respect anything that does not conform to their taste. They wish to be surrounded with mediocrity as opposed to beauty, for their ruling class grew up with consumer culture and its mores, and thus they wish to be surrounded by it. That is not a part of me, and any success that I choose in my life does not need to abide by the laws of the ruling class. Why abide by the power of your class anyway? Indeed, I am middle class, (as is my family,) and yet I do not seek out as the locus of my desire those things that I see elevated to ideals all around me. Yes; we are still idealistic, and we still have ‘models’ like all other ruling classes before us.

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But they are not me. My identity is being cast and re-cast at all moments in time, but rather than clutching at the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; images thrust at me from all quarters, (and it is mere acceptance of your role in the ruling culture that indeed leads to this identity crisis/consumption,) I choose rather the beach upon which to build my house. Let it be washed away and then rebuilt ten million times; I do not care for I do not own it, and the constant creation and destruction of it is merely a metaphor in life. Perhaps I am merely a metaphor in life, and that is the function of all of these symbols and signifiers; indeed, we all still consider the ghost in the machine myth, but more in the sense that we are complacent to it or cannot be bothered to think about it. Our culture does not really bother with anything; it seeks out pleasure, and yet it has no conception of what pleasure is and why it should be sought out, let alone what it might mean. We have all become brilliant interpreters of culture, (look at Baudrillard or Barthes for proof,) and yet we know nothing; our existence is merely interpretative. I guess this fact acknowledges the linguistic basis of human thought with no concrete meaning, but language itself is not the cause of existence, merely the prevailing mode. Let us not confuse the two. But if we say and admit and acknowledge this fact, then is it such a wild and delusory claim to suggest that our life as we lead it is only a metaphor to something concrete of which we can have no direct understanding? Do we merely form facets of some superb and unquantifiable abstraction of which we can only know of through the metaphor of our existences?

I just went for a lie down which lasted for ten minutes, but which felt like an hour. It is the afternoon, and the energy is reaching a

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momentary lapse. How do you suspect that my body might dictate what I write? We must not imagine that the intellect and the body are separate, and it would be neglectful and retrograde to do so. It is the same with happiness and sadness; we must not assume that there could be one without the other, for mere happiness would be devalued when separated from its twin, and happiness would become its own form of sadness; it would become loneliness. If we could simply remember our sadness each time we become happy! But alas, our happiness is a disguise for sadness, a forgetting of it, and that lonely and neglected twin shouts louder for our attention until all we care for is him, and thus does happiness vie for attention again. We can only look at one or the other; but if we could see both! Happiness and sadness are both things which need to be overcome. It is our lot that we should risk being sad in order to be happy, and thus we enter into a contract with the two states without hope of reaching the real object of which they are two halves. It is the same with the suicide, that he is willing to risk everything in life that makes him happy in order to remove all of the things in life that make him unhappy; this is self-sacrifice driven to its most contradictory, insane and moribund contortion. Suicide is nothing, a desire for nothing, and indeed it is inhuman, too human, for that. It is a mere mathematical equation for the perfect balancing act, but the lowest type of balancing act; take everything away in order to be nothing, having nothing to balance is easier than having everything to balance. We should indeed take the example of the suicide and look for its opposite, look for one who has everything in life, whose desire is of a higher type, and not one which simply negates life and gives up to hopelessness. We can all think about suicide, but who can think of the opposite?

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My Suicide Attempt (but only in words) It is a grey day and everything in my narrow eyes is hopeless. My mind is alight with thoughts of killing myself, of taking away this pain from whence I cannot trace the cause. I think of my loved ones and how they might love me more, (or at least feel for or notice me more when I have brought my absence to their attention.) Will I write a note? I know how it is done, as I have seen it done in films. I can be quite artful in this; I can be quite creative in my selfdestruction. The nausea! Another contradiction! Better do this quickly. Shall I write a note, or perhaps a long book that says goodbye to myself and those around me? No; too pretentious. But who cares? I shall not be here to hear slander of it! In fact, the more pretentious I make this whole affair, the more profile I can generate in my absence. I will finally achieve recognition in my not being alive! Another contradiction! No; just do it now – poison, razor blades or how to do it? I know all the ways, (because I have read about

them

newspapers,

(aaargh!

The

nausea,

the

disingenuousness of it all!)) but which one shall I choose? Too many choices again; does life never give up, even to one who is trying to end life? Is suicide impossible? What the hell am I going to do? Etc…

Indeed, this book is a long anti-suicide note. Or did I just give the poetic game away, or did the plot and thus the deception merely deepen?

Suicide is one answer at Delphi; “I don’t want to know myself! It is impossible! It makes me vomit!”

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But surely there is an opposite, a different way that somehow, amidst all the contradictions and all the masks and shams and lies, finally to be genuine? That brings all of the above into some kind of unity, an all-encompassing affirmation or harmony of that which it is to exist? Only then will existence become transparent in all its muddiness.

Let us go back to the beginning; the atoms are vibrating in some direction, producing energy and bringing all sorts of forms and matter together, the planets are created over millennia, our planet begins its production, it begins to work and will thus characterise its later inhabitants in that way, its atoms move in a particular direction, energies are produced, all the world begins to work. Consciousness is not yet born and therefore all of this went unexperienced. No time passed. Man was born to do things to stay alive, because everything on the planet of creation was made to protect itself and stay alive without reason. It is the way it is. Man, through his relation with similar creatures and his advanced ability to kill and protect himself and provide artificial heat to protect his family in winter starts to make all kinds of artificial things to his benefit. Thus was leisure born. He thinks in his way, (and to make these things he has the ability in his mind to will and to do,) why am I doing these things. Thus is displeasure born. Soon, communities and tribes and cultures and ways of doing these have become routine, passed on through generations so that people do not have to start afresh in each thing they do. We then have all of these things which we did not make but are ours, and we then begin to forget about why they are good or what purpose they could

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possibly serve. The Torah is the best shoes thing passed through generations, for it does not need to be rethought, merely copied. The only reason comes from God and not us and who can argue with that? But we wish to stand alone and that is what we do despite the denial that we are everything and that nothing belongs to us alone. We put importance upon our own lives before that of all else so of course we will forget. We were destined to forget. Perhaps at some point it will be a fashion to hold an identity, but a fashion only.

When are you coming home? When will you come home to me?

I have found myself lost in the wilderness of my own self; who can possibly find me or help me in here? Why am I asking you? I am not lost, for I am merely rambling…

It is not man’s place to be God. It is not man’s place to act God. Being and acting; neither are for man. Men cannot even be men. A man acts because he cannot be, and he fails to act because he is. A man needs to remember what he is, but instead he attempts-to-be any identity he can lay his hands upon. Identity-sampling is the fool’s route to Delphi, for it continually circles around its object but never attains it. But man persists in his conceited self-knowledge that he knows what and who he is, and he reinforces this idea with all his strength. He must cling to this identity lest it slip away and he be left with naught. He attempts to succeed in the life he has chosen in order to convince himself and his peers, (who are like him,) that he is who he is and he is good at it. And because his peers are exactly like him, with this drive to succeed and to

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convince as though it were an existential form of rhetoric, the web of interpersonal relations becomes structured upon ‘acting-like’ as opposed to Being. And so this man and all men are seeming to be men, (although we are aware that it could slip, that the false mantle of manhood is deceptive. We are now caught up in a system of analysis, of knowing the signs and symptoms on the surface of life, but this is seen as a replacement for the objects that these signs used to signify. This is our forgetting. We replace objects with signs because we are the administrators of life and not the owners of it. And what of God? History too is a consciousness; it has been written by and is solely for the edification of living human consciousness. The triumphs, events, failures, disasters and developments in human consciousness are written into our history by living consciousnesses. But what is the grand purpose, the project and agenda of human history? Why do we remember and what purpose does it serve? Is it there so that we do not regress? Whose idea was progress and why is it more valuable the regression? Is it so that we do not forget? Do not forget what? That we are atrocious beings, that we cannot learn from our mistakes because we fail to acknowledge that they were not mistakes in the first instance? Man will not overcome man because he is not even that. He makes mistakes and he errs because he has invented mistaking and erring. It is part of him, but he is ashamed of it, he is deluded and proud of an image of himself and his race that does not exist. Who sits down and thinks unto himself that humanity is rotten and we are all responsible for it, that there is no ‘opting-out’ for anyone for any reason? Even the greatest of people must feel partially responsible for how terrible it is to be human, even if only because he or she highlights all of the sub-humans amongst us.

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Who does not have this selfishness, this debilitating drive to protect themselves and their identity so much so that they cannot consider the human race as a whole and not only out of self-interest? There is no excuse of gender, creed, ethnicity or class, either for or against, that excuses us from our existence. Why have we not all come to consider ourselves responsible for our race and for tending to it? We have all been good so far at bolstering it, making it strong, and turning it into the abstract replacement of God, a supraego; not so that it is Good, but so that it controls and abuses us and we thank it as we are praying with our wallets. Who still considers our race to be beautiful in all of its facets? Why aspire to beauty?

And because of all this does history acquire the qualities of memory. Those who wrote history also captured within their story the ulterior motive of their desires and repression, and these things have become ingrained into the living knowledge of history. We have created a living history, so do not treat it coldly as though it were an object. It contains an immortal neurosis that speaks of the human condition at all times, but in that it is a mirror of human consciousness, it too is deceptive under the guise of objectivity, and it contains everything from the highest to the lowest with its secrets, stories, ambitions and complexes. Nietzsche’s expression “God is dead!” could be rephrased “God is dead (though nobody told Him)” or in a Machiavellian sense; “God is not dead (because we did not kill Him properly)” Now He has come back with a vengeance, back from the dead, a ghost; the Holy Ghost. He still exists in us but in a demonic fashion; we are possessed, our identity shifts to and fro, and we do not know the cause because we thought we killed Him outright. When He existed in us before, all we knew

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was everything but Him, and yet we affirmed His existence. He was always silent to us. Now we have killed Him, (because we were conceited enough to believe that silence was a predicate for non-existence; We certainly cannot be quiet for a moment!) Could we not allow Him to get a word in edgeways, what with our constantly questioning, doubting, affirming, singing and praying? Of course we did not hear Him! This is why Jesus says that only some people will hear Him; because the rest of us have our consciousness full wall to wall with ourselves allowing no room for anything else; and this endless chatter inside is the voice of madness. If you listen to it, allow it to go off on its own, you will hear the mad voice. But you must first be prepared to listen before you can realise that this voice is not your own and that it is instead the voice of madness. It was giving dictation all along, and you have been its mouthpiece this far. Stop and listen to it instead, rather than suffering the embarrassment that it constantly causes you in your everyday life. You are merely an impostor of yourself; every gesture is false, every word a lie, every thought is mad, and every relation is a mirage. The true meaning of the concept ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Realisation’ can be understood as the world becomes more solid, as the illusions and ghosts begin to find a form, when one’s own personal and private existence begins to recede in significance at the realisation of life. Marx only ever made this realisation at the material level, and it was material no matter how refined or crude you consider it to be; material is crude, it is matter. We must go beyond our narrow view of property and expand it to the level of consciousness, for it is here that the concept of private property originates; out in the world, in the world of acquisitions and ownership, we merely perceive the

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physical symptoms of conceptual phenomena. If we perceive only this exterior world of signs we shall again fail to experience the object that they all refer to; the exterior world is the same as the inside of our heads – it is full of the same voices, all vying for attention and it is also full of identities for us to choose from. Our materialism must not come to replace our spiritualism, for they should work in tandem in order to make any meaningful realisations or advancements. We must not come to perceive the interior or exterior world as ‘either’ material ‘or’ spiritual, for they must both come to be seen in oneness, without discrimination, without a devaluing of either. There is no ‘either’, for it is merely the tool of human discrimination. We must create for ourselves some form of space between voices, we must come to listen as well as to talk, for if not our talking shall become pointless. If we can listen closely to both the interior and exterior universe, we shall begin to hear the similarities, we shall begin to remove the insane and ceaseless character of both. We shall cease to be both dictator and dictated to from the interior to the exterior and vice-versa. Remember that those things that we perceive clearly and most obviously are also the most subtle and most difficult things to perceive due to our familiarity and identical relation to them.

At a concert a few nights ago Marianna and myself were sat behind a very strange French girl and her parents. The girl seemed to find everything about her experiences in the concert hall hysterically funny, particularly everybody’s forced silence. It was not that she did not respect the principal that to hear music one must indeed be silent, but rather the ceremonious and pretentious ritual of the whole affair. People did of course cough loudly between

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movements and this she found particularly funny. She also began laughing during the solo sections as if to try to divert attention from the violinist to herself. She was a diva of sorts. My object was to be at one with the music in order to understand it more closely, to shut down the distracting self-referral of the mind and its dialogue. But I found my mind constantly referring and being distracted to thoughts of this girl. The distraction came to escalate more and more, and thus I tried to find my centre more resolvedly. One thought which drifted into my mind for a while was that I should make a gesture to her in order to silence her. But not only could I not enforce my will over hers, (I did not see my right to do so,) but I would also have entered into the routine behaviour of the rest of the audience, with their false coughs, silences and applause. After considering this interesting thought, I then considered that it was not that the girl was herself a distraction, it was that my own mind was so weak that it could be distracted by the slightest thing. Samsara tried to draw me back in to its veil of worries and distractions, but I withdrew; at that point I had contrived a distraction into a realisation. I could see that it was I who had provided the distraction; in so doing I had discredited the world and everything in it until I had made the realisation. By allowing my own voice, (which I took to be my own,) speak to me about distraction, by looking to find it in the world in this concert hall which was a suitable metaphor for my entire existence, I found the real distraction and made the realisation. The concert hall, a place where the audience sits quietly with all of its rituals, where the performers perform according to the silent desire of the audience, where the desire of the performers becomes the object of the audiencesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; desire, I found the interior life in metaphor. I, as

135

spectator of the whole thing, the audience and the performance, became distracted by one mad voice which sought to be heard over the voice of the music. This mad voice was a metaphor for the mad voice of distraction in the interior world, the voice of the music being that which I should pay attention to and not be distracted from. But who among you said that I should listen to the girl? Only through this realisation can I say that I did indeed hear her, and only through this realisation can I be said to have heard you. We cannot discriminate between the interior and exterior worlds.

After the concert I attempt to make and find the relation between my consciousness and that of Zeitgeist. I drink camomile tea in the process, for it is now quite late and stimulants will in fact make me more tired. The spirit aspect is the ethereal human subconscious which transcends the fortress of the ego, and yet this spirit is not knowable through the sensuous world other than through metaphor. It is as though our knowledge is occluded from both the interior and exterior world by the same condition.

Or perhaps it is madness to consider that, trapped in the occlusion between seeming and Being, between exterior and interior and without any knowledge of either, it is an insane reconcilement to say that the private and the public worlds are in fact the same thing, the same metaphor. This would put an acrostic slant on the whole of experience and we would again come back to the idea of the encrypted universe. But is this to negate or devalue either world? My world today is very difficult, but some realisation will come from it. I cannot seem to produce any energy for writing or anything; I need to go shopping, I need to do all sorts of things. But

136

writing is the most important thing amongst these other things. If I lie down I will fall asleep, I know it. I have watched this day open, and I have watched this day pass me by with just vague memories in its stead. I feel an emptiness and futility descend over me; days without achievement are like this. But it is we/I who have imposed this value onto life; it is not a predicate of life. Life will slip by all of its own accord, for it is only natural and expected that time will pass. One does not necessarily need do anything in this time, let alone with this time. Sometimes even the most basic and obvious characteristics of the human condition evade our perception and cause us misery. Why be misery; it is almost as if we contrive the basic character of our existence as misery itself; misery is merely an attribute of human existence that we have imposed upon it; there is nothing inherent about it whatsoever. But we are not misery; we are merely the outward semblance of misery or exultation. We could never truly know deep sorrow or jubilation for these states can only be and not seem to be. Sometimes an actor can confuse himself with his role, and he may seem to ‘turn his colour’ and be caught in the grip of deep emotion. But it is only ‘seeming to be’, no matter what the outward or inward appearance may be or how convincing it may be. If we can indeed be convinced by an actor then we also demonstrate that we have not felt deep emotion in ourselves. This is not to negate the artfulness of the actor, merely to denigrate the play-acting of the everyday person. If I were an actor I would be perpetually confused; I don’t even know who I am at any time, least of all were I to attempt to become another person. My act, however, would probably become more seamless; I would perhaps find the ability to convince myself that I was the only actor for the role of myself, that I was the authority over myself.

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Whomsoever thought that enlightenment could be attained through a book was hindered by that very selfsame notion. Enlightenment cannot even be for the individual; we should rather be concerned with the enlightenment of our race as to our Being and our nature. Whilst we should be concerned with helping our neighbour, we must also be cautious of the individual motive, the madness which infects all of our acts of kindness. We must indeed come to realise that the mere extension of our will into space, the field of influence that we exert, our ability to be powerful, must act in equilibrium to our internal realisation, and that the two cannot operate without each other. One cannot hope for enlightenment only in developing the spiritual aspect of the self but must also work towards fusing that enlightenment with the larger consciousness in our field of influence. We must create harmony between all of our developments and realisations in both the world of extension and the world of intention. We must come to know that we can only attain freedom in abiding by laws; our consciousness cannot rise up if we are to foolishly believe that we can do without the world of extension. Likewise will we achieve nothing if we neglect the interior world of the spirit. This is the fundamental law of balance that we must come to abide by and which will produce the only genuine realisation of that which we are. Otherwise will we be caught in the trap of too much of one and not enough of the other. Imagine beautiful music which allows the soul to rise up from out of its material casing and soar toward pure consciousness; do not forget that the music came from the world of extension. Likewise, whilst experiencing all of the physical elements of the music, the vibrations, the laws it abides by and the technical competency of

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the composer and musician, do not be rooted in these things alone, or you will miss the music itself, the art. Too many people at the forefront of our culture have forgotten the second principle because they never knew of the first principle; they can, with a superabundance of skill move through the realm of all observable phenomena without ever being touched by the world of spiritual phenomena. We too must be conscious of this conceited neglect; we must not heap scorn upon something we have hitherto been yet to experience or develop, let alone realise. It is no better than the philistine argument; â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know much about art but I know what I like.â&#x20AC;? I have heard this adage with such frequency that it appals me, it appals me that some people can be so confident of what they know when my own world, both inside and out, dissolves at the slightest provocation. Again we must be cautious not to be too cocksure or too feeble in our opinion of ourselves and others but must rather maintain symmetry. There is a special kind of joy to be had from the apprehension of symmetry, that thing we see so oft in all of nature despite the appearance of chaos. I am still unsure of what it is inside of us that draws us toward the limited pleasure of bias and gluttony of particular things. This type of sensibility seeks out the lowest and smallest quantity of happiness; it is so unsure and protective of itself that indeed it does try to maintain its small quota without any gain or experimentation. (My contradiction here delights me.) Similarly, one who experiments in all things will also attain only the lowest type of pleasure; that of distraction. Distraction is not so much one of the pleasures but is instead a relaxation of the existential muscles, it is a warding off of the feelings of anxiety that we dare not face up to. Until we approach the chasm of the self in all its empty depth we shall never have an

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understanding that reaches that deep. We will forever be trapped in the surface layer of life, the flattest and slightest experience of existence. Likewise must we not tumble to the depths of the self as though we were a rock falling into a ravine. We must work from that which we know and experience, (empirical knowledge,) and edge downward so that the depth extends through that which we already know to some extent than that which consumes us in its emptiness. This does not constitute a fear of innovation or permutation; it is the antithetical and reasonable opposition to the Futurist madness; we are not attempting here to sever our ties from history, we are rather attempting to cover new ground in order to extend in depth that knowledge which already possesses us. If we were to accelerate at an uncontrollable pace toward the oblivion of the future we would be cast into the void of meaninglessness; Where are we now? Why did we come here? What does this mean, this newness? This is not caution rather it is equipoise, it is solid and steady posture toward the terrain ahead, and we ensure that the correct and most useful equipment is brought along with us. If we carry junk with us we shall certain be regretful of the extra burden which we later found to be unnecessary. The Futurists were, however, profound in one thing; they recognised the necrophilia of a culture trapped by its daunting and majestic past. It had become oppressive to them, the way that Italy had become the museum of its own former greatness. It had rejected the need to move any further, it was instead eating itself, it was Saturnine. By way of demonstration they leapt aboard the vehicle of speed to get them away, to take them far away and as quickly as possible from history; a history so elevated that they could be no match for it, they could not compete against the tradition of greatness. Novelty

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was their escape route, and it proved to be a lame horse. Can you see here the insanity of both the necrophilia and the Futurism of the Italians? And would we place rebirth over and above necrophilia? And what respect does a culture have for its past if all it does is gobble it up and spew it out again straight back onto its own plate? We shall see this happening more and more in our societies; we shall see the gradual disappearance of quality in favour of newness, the repetition of former greatness converted into bubble and squeak. We shall be poisoned in the process. We are privy to the cannibalism of Capitalism, but in that we are witnesses to that crime as it is happening, we must shoes treat it as a catalyst to our enlightenment. We must neither wait nor attempt to move too quickly; we must find the equilibrium upon which all of human experience rests and then move harmoniously along with it. If our action is the result of a conscious decision there should be no need to wait; indeed there is no need to wait. We can execute our realisation of life at any time and under any circumstances whatsoever. It is the foolishness of people that says we must indeed wait for the right time. The drive of youth may be partially responsible for this waiting; but if youth is waiting for agedness to be enlightened, it does indeed negate its youthfulness! Youth was not designed to sit on its arse and wait until it is old before it decides to move to where it wants to be; by that time there will be no time left. We are hindering ourselves by delaying all the time and making feeble excuses as to why we do not wish to accomplish what we know we can achieve.

Perhaps the sentiment for waiting comes from a Christian type of nostalgia; that the absolute will come and that we merely need to

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wait until we are dead before the realisation comes. But it would indeed be a mistake to think in this way; if we are waiting for life to end then we negate life itself, we negate the joyfulness of the living. This is not to say that life has ‘a’ purpose or indeed any purpose, for that is only the concern of the one who is living. We cannot predicate what life should be for other than it is happening and in the happening we are what we are, and this is what life is ‘for’, and on the way to the see the village elders the blacksmith’s apprentice stopped under the hot sun. He saw how the village had been established over the years due to the wide waterway that lay to the east. Wood had been taken with great ease along the river, and the village had been shaped by it in this way. He was standing in front of the oldest building in the village, which was the church. It had been there for many years, and many of the older houses that preceded it had long since perished. This was the reason why stone was favoured for churches over timber, although the building of the church would have required greater skill, design and effort. He ducked inside momentarily to pray in front of the illuminated altarpiece and whilst doing so he felt a strange nausea overcome him. His mind had been drawn back to his reason for visiting the elders, and he prayed for a swift resolution to his conundrum. After praying, he left the church and continued to the guildhall where he knew that all of the elders would be gathered, and indeed they were. The apprentice walked into the main hall where a long oak table accommodated the twelve members of the guild. They were arguing animatedly over some trifling matter regarding the building of new drains before they noticed the presence of the young man. The eldest of the elders who had kept very quiet through the heated discussion suddenly exclaimed “What brings you in here

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unannounced? You do not look like an elder!” The assembled elders giggled to themselves like schoolchildren. “I apologise for barging in like this and interrupting your important business, but I have rather an urgent thing to say to you all.” The chairman of the guild rose to his feet and said to the boy; “What could you have to say to us that can possibly be of such importance? We are the village elders and our knowledge spans across many generations. This guild has made every decision regarding this village in the past two centuries, and the knowledge of our elders is now in our possession for wise usage. You yourself are not a part of this guild, and therefore your knowledge is not profound. As apprentice to the blacksmith, you may in time find the occasion to visit this guild and perhaps become part of it, but not for many years time and not without hard work. If I am still alive at that time, I shall be your judge in the matter, and therefore do not irritate me now or you will set yourself at a disadvantage.” The apprentice realised the gravity of coming before these people, but he had wrestled with himself and decided to tell them why he had come. The knowledge he was in possession of was not profound but it was of immediate importance, but he knew that no decision could be made regarding the town without the consent of the elders, and thus he must persist and let them know. “What I have to say is of great importance to this village. I respect your wisdom as the elders of this village, but I pray you must hear me!” The eldest of the elders had turned red in anger at the boy’s persistence and had also risen to his feet. “You do not realise boy that by staying here and interrupting our business you are jeopardising your chances of becoming part of this guild! I command that you leave us now and come back at four O’clock this afternoon when we will hear your ‘urgent business’ as you call

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it, and we will also discuss your future in this village at the same time! Now be gone! That is our final word!” The boy turned and left; he felt sad that the elders would not hear him out, but they had made their decision and that was that. They had turned back to their discussion of drainage and were ignoring the apprentice completely. He decided that he would not go back to the guild at four O’clock because by that time the fire he had accidentally started would have consumed the village for sure.

I have no desire to dress my life up in fancy clothes. But then again I know that life can be a fashion, in fact too often so. And the clothes we wear do not merely protect ourselves from the physical elements; they serve a far more complex and significant function. Not only do they protect our fear of nakedness and our feeling of being cast from Eden in shame of the way we look, but the clothes come to stand in for what we are; ‘The clothes oft proclaim the man’, said Polonius. Do you not feel that perhaps we are trying too hard to say something that requires no voice? Why do we expend such energy in proclaiming ourselves to all and sundry? Or perhaps, if we try hard enough and spend enough energy on this image-making pastime of ours we will convince ourselves that we know who we are. What would you wear if you were to travel to Delphi? Perhaps it would save you talking or repeating yourself if you could speak volumes in your look? Perhaps the system of fashion is itself a labour-saving device; we can say things about our class, our race, our taste, our favourite colours, our favourite rock band, our sexual characteristics, our culture, our religion without even opening our mouths. There is an entire world of discourse at work in this web of signification that we cannot even hear; I

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wonder what our clothes are saying to each other in their language? We assume that we know what we are saying when we choose what to wear, but are we privy to the subtexts at work or the juxtapositions when people gather in large groups? Perhaps we ought to work very hard at what we want to wear, and when we have nailed it sufficiently we can use the extra mental space to think about other things, like that old clichĂŠ about old Einstein. But we do not have the ability to figure out our look, (well, not most of us,) because clothes become an object of desire, an object that continually slips upon acquiring the thing we desire, it is a greasy pig of a desire. We know what this is like when, impetuously, we desire something and then buy it, but after we have acquired it the desire shifts to some other quarter. It is too obvious and has been said too oft that the object we desire does not exist out in the world and cannot be bought. But who has solved the crisis of desire? The crisis itself comes from the lower end of the scale of desire, the desire for material acquisition, for sexual promiscuity, for pleasure (or pain), for success in material life etc. All of these things must not be denigrated in their lowly position, for as low as they may be, they do in fact exist in us and must be acknowledged thus. It will be a continual challenge against the higher desires if one denies the existence of the full spectrum of desire, and this is why we can see such intellectual suffering in the works of Augustine, Petrarch and other extremely religious persons. The route toward realising the higher desires comes through the modification and correct usage and understanding of the lower types, and this kind of equilibrium must be maintained in order to make any significant process in either the spiritual or material realms. There must be a full acknowledgement of both the material and spiritual dimensions of

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life as opposed to a false â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;successâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in either of the two. This type of success, (of which the more common is material success, for we are all subject to this kind of fallacy from time to time,) in fact creates our own debilitating shoes condition; we are either spiritually helpless or materially incompetent, we only succeed so far as we succeed in creating our own misery through neglectfulness. Material deficit is much less common but no less dangerous; if the entirety of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s works and efforts are tuned to the spiritual realm then we risk the devaluing of the material world and hence an inability to both negotiate, understand and care for it. Our spiritual nourishment will in fact be detrimental without the stimulus of the material world that has helped to nurture it. Likewise will both our material life and our spiritual life waste away if we privilege either dimension. Both must be privileged to the same superabundant degree without tipping the scales in either direction. We will find if we look that to be truly generous either spiritually or materially will lead to a heightened understanding of both, the reward being the generosity itself, and the affirmation of what we have through our ability to give it. If we concentrate very hard, we can imagine a young girl walking toward a town gathering. She sees the Burgomeister on a podium with the whole town assembled about him. The tavern is selling cider and beer although the weather is quite dreary and the grass is damp. She fights her way to the front of the crowd, a man spills his dark beer on her clean dress though she does not seem to mind. Her eyes are quite clear in the morning light and the sun appears to be only six inches up in the air when she measures it with her ruler. Burgomeister is still talking in an animated fashion, although she cannot hear him because they do not speak the same language. She is only here because she is in all

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pictures and places at the same time. Her dark hair can be found at regular intervals in the strains of Bach, her dress will always be stained in this picture. Burgomeister is now gesticulating toward a funeral procession that emerges from the town church; now she remembers why she is here, although she always forgets her own presence, for she is silent asâ&#x20AC;Ś When she remembers her purpose, (as she always does,) all of the people present in the picture likewise forget their purpose. This is why she is lonely, but only for a while, before she forgets to be lonely again. She has forgotten her shoes. If you find her shoes, if you see them whilst your are walking along or sitting at home, then as you remember her, she will forget you like she forgot her shoes. How does this picture fit in here? Why is the little girl here with us now; why did she need to make an appearance? True to form, I have now forgotten. I did not notice the shoes, but they must exclaim the woman. It is as though each and every picture is the same; it is static and jewel-like, the closer one looks at the details the more similar do each of the pictures become. The closer we move into the picture, into the medieval village, (which we have descended into through this picture and through that picture ad infinitum the more details we notice; a pink and black pig runs in front of the crowd toward some chickens. A woman and a man walk in front of this scene; they are discussing, (or rather, gossiping,) about a woman in the village. The lady blushes when she notices the gossiped about lady standing next to her with a tall man. He looks embarrassed and leaves the scene only to enter another where his wife resides. She has been drying out fish all day and collecting loganberries; the last of the season. The sun is now setting in both pictures and it feels that this small drama is unfolding right in front of us even though it is just

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made of words in a book. I am now back in the top layer of the writing, (I think,) although I feel as though this picture is the same as all others. I feel contingent to the events that I have fantasised here, as though time never passes, as though the feeling of Time passing is merely a phantom limb or well-fabricated lie. What has changed? How have humans progressed? Why do we continue to struggle in the most futile and embarrassing ways although at the same time assuming that we are the betters of those who lived before us? Why does the feeling of time passing bring with it an uncanny type of conceit? Panic now, because the most dramatic proclamations are still yet to come, but only in that they have already been, in that time does not move.

It is most apparent that time passes in a particular fashion, and that humans are receptive to this fashion when other animals are not. There are occasions when the human is not perceiving the passing of time, like when he is working hard or having a good or bad time; he is not concerned that time is passing, in fact, he is surprised to learn the time because it has gone so quickly. But this suspension is only brief and it does not constitute a non-perception of time, only a distraction from it. By the same token we can be subject to the passing of time in the opposite sense, when we are aware of each minute that passes, (like when we are trying to sleep but cannot,) when we expect a telephone call or visitor, when we are extremely bored, etc. But no matter what the circumstances are or the conditions of our perception, we are indeed subject to time in the same way as all other things other than we experience it passing. We can project to future time periods or regress to the past in our imaginings and fantasies. Time has the most important hold over us

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in equal measure to space. I suggested before that perhaps the two, Time and Space, were in fact the same phenomena, which is split in two by human perception. Since that time I have been considering Xeno’s paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise; the paradox of the impossibility of motion. Since then I have been considering the way in which time has passed for us humans, and whether the passing of time would equate with the theory of motion. In all observable phenomena we would have no reason to question such a solid truth as the truth of Time; we can measure it, we can see how it measures us when we change over the course of it, etc. There should indeed be no question about the fact of Time were it not for the equally observable phenomena of human non-movement. (Perhaps, as the guardians and witnesses of time passing we have no need to move?) Consider our relation to happiness; as a race, are we ‘more’ happy now than ever before? In this utilitarian sense, we could say ‘yes’ due to advancements in medical science, developments in the leisure industry, less oppression, more equality, no slavery, etc. But this potted history of our liberal society does not really equate with our happiness, for happiness and sadness have always been relative to the individual and, therefore, relate merely to the space of the individual lifetime and not the collective lifetime of the species. We have not conquered good or evil, neither out there in the world or in our own selves.

Humans have not made any ethical, moral or spiritual advancements; it is here that we remain the same, and it is here that we do not move.

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Socrates: There are two patterns eternally set before them; one divine, which is the highest happiness, one godless, which is the deepest misery: but they do not see this truth, or observe that in their utter folly and infatuation they are growing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their evil deeds; and the penalty is, that they lead a life answering to the pattern which they are growing like. And if we tell them, that unless they get rid of their â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;clevernessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the world of purity will not receive them after death; and that here on earth, they will live ever a life of likeness to their own selves, and with evil friends-when they hear this they in their unscrupulous cleverness will fancy that they are listening to the talk of idiots.

Theod: Very true, Socrates.

Socrates: Too true, my friend, as I well know; there is, however, one peculiarity in their case: if they have to reason in private about their dislike of philosophy, and if they have the courage to hear the argument out, and do not run away like cowards, they grow at last strangely discontented with their views; their rhetoric fades away, and they become helpless as children.

We, however, have to reason our like of philosophy in private to hide our embarrassing conditions. Why do we lack the courage to be open about any ideas we might have? The worst that will happen is that we are laughed at by very clever people whilst they succeed in their rhetoric as we falter in ours. And what kind of failure would this constitute to a man who, having already abandoned any fondness for himself, is finally humiliated in his opinions? A great

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boon, I would say, that the world is ready to help out in destroying every component of my persona. And if we speak and we are heard, what kind of damage could a hollow concept do to the solid truth? Can you see in this picture that I am painting for myself and my rhetoric not only a comparison between two periods in ‘Time’, but in fact a pattern that has been set for us in all ages and in all places whereupon we encounter adversity from the masses in our controversial ideas, we choose clandestine methods of expression, (either to protect our own expression from destruction at the hands of the master discourse, or to protect the master discourse which, to be sure, would be crippled by such outlandish ideas.) [Notice how the pulp is included in my discourse and not merely the juice?] Not merely is it the case that good and evil have continued to persist as the two things human beings can neither resolve, overcome nor understand, let alone abide by. Could it be that the most significant idea laid out for us in Plato’s transcription above is the concept ‘pattern’? If human beings have continually been set in this eternal pattern of divinity and godlessness, then we could imagine that Time is beside the point, it recedes in importance when seen in the light of the larger design. If I am writing with no conscience, (I know what my conscience sounds like, and it is usually embarrassed by what I am thinking,) then I can say whatever I like. My writing can contain arabesques of intricate anomalies and secrets in its unusual state. Perhaps if I can turn the voice of conscience and the other voice into an interwoven song here in this book then I can help to expose the pattern that I am following, regardless of whether it is divine or godless, for that cannot effect me, it is only god’s concern in his heaven. The pattern that I am thinking of when I think of patterns and grand designs comes back

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again to the theory of non-motion in the individual and in the species. Each lifetime in individual consciousness is laid out as infinity, and this is the first temporal paradox we perceive in the human; he must consider himself finite when he is infinite. He experiences time passing, although there was no time before him and there will be no time after him, merely will there be time whilst his infinite consciousness exists. This is most strange to be sure; we can only experience what is finite through our infinite experience? And yet because time is ‘re-set’ at the inception of each infinite experience, our developments in the existential and spiritual field cannot be subject to the exterior world; indeed we do find our condition there, and we are indeed influenced and determined by this exterior, but our human knowledge does not draw advancement from it. If it does, if we could learn from our world and from the documents of our history, why can we see the contemporary significance

the

Socratic

quote

above?

Why

would

Shakespeare’s work be valid at all points in human history, (even those points before Shakespeare’s works)? Etc. The theory of nonmotion is connected to the human condition in its incomprehensible temporal plight. It is now three-thirty. Perhaps it is that metaphysical phenomena, that of ethics, morals etc, is connected only to each temporary existence in the human that we see no motion, no development, (and also no value.) Is this the pattern that Socrates is perceiving now and for always? That pattern set up for human existence that it shall always encounter the same human problems, like the problems of Good and bad? We shall never see a conquest of the eternal struggle between Good and bad, for it shall only exist for as long as our species exists, and therefore it is a condition of our species and one that we must enjoy the fruits of

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whilst we have our existence. It is then in our nature to do what we please with our goodness and badness, to exist in both, and to follow the eternal pattern laid down before us.

Explanation of physical condition: I have been preparing for a long while to begin writing about Xeno’s paradox. I had been deep in thought about the impossibility of motion in the human dimension in order to discover why it was that we had not arrived at a suitable conclusion to our ethical problems over the thousands of years in which we have been contemplating them. I would think about Kant and his ethics, and then I would think about the Christian ethics, and then I would think about my ethics, and I could see the ways in which they were all flawed; not all people would abide by them or buy into them. The human choice was always a factor, and you simply could not rely upon humans to make the ‘right’ choice, (for to be human he must be entitled to make wrong choices or to err or whatsoever he pleases or displeases.) You can surely see the argument if I were to say; let’s all abide by this fixed principle, (any of the ten commandments would do for the sake of argument,) and if we all abide by it, it will never happen, and we will all be happy. In fact, to abide is to always be happy. But human beings are not good at abiding, not good at fidelity, and not much good at ethics. Not all people can agree on an ethics because all people consider themselves different and all societies consider themselves different and we have all enshrined the idea of progress. Ethics cannot

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progress, for it must either be static and fixed, (and hence, inhuman and unworkable,) or it must be flexible and progressive, (and thus acknowledging its nature as a ‘quick fix’, a ‘work around’, a bias, a motive, or at the least, totally meaningless.) If we could abide, or if we were content with meaninglessness, then either of the above ethics would be suitable and workable. But we are indeed trapped between the two, and this constitutes our misery. Can you now see the problem with motion? Our condition will not allow us to move. But if we cannot move then surely we could abide by a fixed ethics? But we perceive movement, and thus ought we to be happy with a flexible ethics? If ethics were an innate part of innate reason, then surely we could all perceive what was right and what was wrong? There was a time in our history in the west where many of us subscribed to the idea that reason did in fact exist in all persons, (it was connected to our divinity as the closest creatures to God in the angelic hierarchy,) although we could be ‘deprived’ of our reason by either Satan, or by the movement of our animal desires. We do not now consider that reason is an innate part of consciousness in that we do not consider God to be our maker, and that we have enshrined our right to be ‘different’, to make ‘free choices’, to be individual. The myth of the unique human still pervades us in an humiliating way. We would consider this ‘progress’ in our species, would we not? That we can all be different, (and hence the same,) and believe our own bullshit. All we did was to submit to the master discourse of culture, a

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replacement God who can tell us our rights and who we abide by even in our dissent. We enjoy submitting to invisible forces that we have imagined, do we not? We always have someone blameworthy beyond ourselves in other words. Listen how foolish political activists blame political administrations in the world; as if they could do better were they themselves to wield such power? We have not yet learned that we ourselves, each and every one of us creatures, is responsible for everything inside of reality? Blame is the sigh of the jealous man. Despite the efforts of many thinkers to level intentionality on the individual person, we still find something else responsible for our miserable condition. I will now say something outrageous that will offend any liberal or reasonable thinker: Determinism/Causality is an excuse for those illadjusted to the fact of existence. Those who subscribe to it have merely found their replacement God, although a very dull one who never works miracles. They have found a place always beyond themselves that will tell them what they are, what the cause of it all is, and what to blame for it all. They are the least responsible persons alive and we must learn to hate such people in that they tell us the truth, their truth, dressed up as the Truth. Can these people tell you what is inside of your reality? If they can, then you yourself have found exterior cause, and the rash begins to spread. I was once the absolute bread and body of the determinist; after I had read the disturbing combination of Hume and Descartes in quick succession can you possibly imagine the consequence? Everything is caused; there is

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an universal chain of causality, etc, etc. I could ream this stuff endlessly as though taking dictation, and yet now, after such exposure to the ‘truth’ of causality, I vehemently reject it. How can any reasonable person be this way? Because it seems now more apparent that ever before that when a person speaks of the ‘way it is’, like any tabloid newspaper they present an opinion dressed up as truth. If we cannot be cautious of such sensibilities then we will be forever doomed. If it were the case that we could all subscribe to the evident ‘truth’ of causality, then why have we not; why do we maintain our ability to choose? (We are determined to do so, evidently!) The contradiction here is all too apparent; again it would seem that ‘Causality’ is what would during the Enlightenment have been called ‘Reason’, and the mode of rhetoric for both reason and causality is “Can you not see? It is reasonable to say…” It is a court of appeal; the advocates of reason and causality, (the ‘scientific’ elements of metaphysics,) have successfully exploited and converted into an empty form of rhetoric that which could be used to provide some form of Good to us. We are made to feel stupid or inferior if we ‘…cannot see…’ the reasonable causality in a thing. And yet, causality is a thing only for humans to care about; it is a strange and unnatural thing to us, and yet to an animal who is subject to a chain of events it does not become a strange and ethical disposition, does it? We have abstracted the idea of cause and effect into a universal excuse for our behaviour. I remember reading how two children had shot dead a number of students at a

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school called Columbine in America, and how they had merely been influenced by a film they had seen, and hence the film was banned. Can you see how we are still heretical in our beliefs? Can you see how we are still witch hunting the undesirable parts of cause and effect because in fact it only ever constitutes a bias or a motive for opinion in us? We choose to believe in a cause, and more often than not this cause originates beyond our bodies, beyond our intentions, and again we remain blameless for everything. The problem with this way of living and believing is that we remain forever children, children

all-powerful

God.

have

responsibility, because we are always determined to do things, and yet we choose to believe this. This demonstrates what a child the human being is if he can indeed, during the Greek and Roman periods find the various heavenly bodies responsible for his actions, in the Christian age find either God or Satan responsible for his actions, and now he finds another causality, whether it be Capitalism, society, culture blah blah blah responsible. It is never him, is it? He has never done anything, because he does not wish to find himself blamed for a thing. All he does is choose to believe that he is not responsible, and thus he becomes irresponsible. What will it be next, I wonder? What universally subscribed causality will we find responsible for our pathetic human existence? This is how we have not moved; we have never found ourselves responsible; we have always been the children to some universal influence, some heavenly body. And what did

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Saturn do to his children? Will capitalism â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;eat itselfâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;? Will pop eat itself? Why this strange cannibalism of ourselves throughout all of time? Why do we eat culture up, regurgitate it, and then eat it again if not for our profound necrophilia? So long as we continually submit to our heavenly father, He will eat us. As strange animals ourselves who have the capacity for creation, (which is divine,) and our capacity to destroy, (which is likewise divine, but only when combined with the former,) who have the capacity to choose, why have we not chosen to be adult, to take responsibility for ourselves, and for how long can we be content to act like children; always blaming the other, always dominated by the parent? It is so important to contemplate Malebrancheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s innovation at the concept of God and the exercise of power both from us over Him and He over us if we are to reach any kind of understanding here. If we lose sight of this concept, then indeed, Time never passed.

It is now time to consider how I make concessions for myself after making bold and irresponsible statements such as this stated above. Do I wish to take back or moderate my rashness, or in some other way show that I have considered all of the options? Do I consider it single-minded or unintelligent to think in this way? What I merely did in the indented section above was to listen and write what was dictated to me in a clear stream from my mind. These paragraphs need no explanation or apology; to omit them would be to kill a part of myself that hitherto wished to be expressed, (and much to the embarrassment of my ego and sense of academic propriety.) Is

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it a person’s place to see all of the angles all of the time, or should he merely do that which he can and know he must? I am now attempting the latter; this voice exists in my head and demands expression – that is why I began writing this book and not for any other reason. I have no need to clean it up or refine it at all, because indeed it does err and stray from its path, it invariably becomes distracted and then focussed again, it becomes interrupted by other voices crying out for attention. But indeed it is all mine, and acknowledgement is the context of this work. I seek to acknowledge what I am, and acknowledgement has become for me a method of self-knowledge. I do not seek Truth but actuality, I seek what is there, I seek its raw state as it exists within my mind. This is an expression of quality; of all of the successes and failures, insights and delusions, but primarily, of thoughts. No need for any embarrassment here, for thoughts will occur all of their own accord. The embarrassing thought becomes meat for the plate. Acknowledgement becomes a powerful ability; we must know where our thoughts come from, what their purpose and meaning is, what their function is, and we must know that they are ours and everyone’s. This is what we must wear on our trip to Delphi; not our finery but our subsistence, for our journey to Delphi is for Being and not seeming to be, it is for self knowledge, and the trip is crucial as is the arrival. We must acknowledge all of what we are, and not merely what we want to be or what we think we are, for desire does not equate with actual states of affairs in selfknowledge. What we think we are is part of what we are, although it must not come to oppress those parts of our selves that do not accord with our desired self-image. We will come to learn, through acknowledgement, that we consist in everything and that we indeed

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are everything, and we will have no need of any oracle for we are able to understand the prophecy in and for ourselves. We must henceforth acknowledge our abilities, our limits and our laws if we are to realise that which we are. The funeral procession moves solemnly past the scene painting the landscape grey as it moves. The image is stained from left to right, the funeral exits the left canvas and moves to the right canvas almost imperceptibly but the girl is already there. The people gathered around the Burgomeister in the other canvas now remember who they are and why they are, and they begin to discuss the ordinary stuff in life; the cost of grain or a scandal. None of them recall that a moment ago the answer was with them, although now it is too late, she has left, there is no more information. They remember who they are but in turn they forget everything when they remember this information. It is a costly business, to have a self and when some people look and see themselves, others see a mirror but the truth is besides the object and not in it. Holding up her ruler she can see that the sun is either halfway up or halfway down And is it at all possible to discern which image positive, which negative? Perhaps this information was never intended for us to know, and perhaps each time we remember one thing it spells oblivion for another. The brain can only accommodate so many facts, to be sure, before it cannot take in any more. Space is at a premium in the brain, so do not simply put any old thing in there, least of all if it is already rotten and liable to infect the other apples. But if an apple is maggot infested, then surely this is only good news to the maggot? It will be a healthy fly when it emerges, and when in the morning it ate apples, in the evening it will eat shit; what a falling-

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off! And so too will our brains feed on shit in our afternoons but more from blindness than choice. Consider my tapestry; it is dusty for sure, but the dust does it no harm, rather it lends character to it in its age. Sometimes we give a carpet a good beating even though it has served us well, and some people exact the same treatment to their loved-ones. But our tapestry does not mind; its woof constitutes the entire reality of pictures and its warp speaks all foreign tongues. Each vignette is interchangeable reality, and the closer one brings ones eyes and ears to it, the more copnfusing the relaity becomes unto us. We must accept in this peculiar state of affairs the many jalf truths and the many false wqitnesses that give testamwnt in the court of sensibility. If we ourselvbes are containerd within the tapestry then our looking at it will be an illusion; it will be looking at itself, for we are indeed looking from the tapestry out into reality, and ion our reality the tapestry is draped across a wall in a church we are visiting. How strange is this? When we explore the vignettes we find that a man is in a church looking at a tapestry; doubtless microscopic analysis would indicate the same repetition within that vignette, as would the vignette of microscopic analysis of the tapestry such as what we are doing here. Some see a mirrorâ&#x20AC;Ś But we are as yet to enquire about the maker of this fabric, the craftsman who laboured to create such quality work. Look no further, for you will miss yourself otherwise, but yourself as it is interchangeable with that of Beelzebub, the absolute image of godless misery, the conjuror of all things attractive in image alone. If you have made this work, then why have you attempted to conceal this fact from your very self, let alone encrypted it into the form of a tapestry? Perhaps the idea that you yourself are the creator is a rotten apple, or perhaps it is an

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apple you are afraid to bite in case it is infested. This precautionary attitude can get out of hand at times, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you think? Once bitten and all that twaddle; still, you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t blame the precautious person for his disposition. He merely had one bad experience and lays it on top of all others; why do you think we, as a race, are so precautious? Too many maggots, to be sure. And you can of course feel and see the tapestry right here, can you not? You can see the herringbone running through the text, through the voices in your head, through the images in your head, through the imaginings, the fantasies, the regrets, the dreams; you can see the words in all of them, can you not? You yourself have used all of these words yourself; they exist in your mind which is why you can understand them. This is a relationship, we have been drawn together in the web, our thoughts tied together but alienated into individual cells. Perhaps you know all of the things that I do. But if we combined all of those things, would that make us a greater person? What was it that I was talking about with my wife yesternight? We were thinking that perhaps we have become hermits because we do not see any of our friends any more, and that when, on the rare occasions that we do see them, we work had not to reveal our thoughts to them lest they think we are insane. And what resolution did we arrive at? That we would not keep ourselves a secret any longer; for too long did we live in our own shadows, working hard but hiding in the work. I must confess to not being the most courageous person in the world; if I burn this book after I have finished it I would at last become my own nazi. But I would rather get to the breaking point whereby I can expose myself for what I am. Another thing we discussed? Perhaps the courageous person fears nothing only in that he has nothing to fear anyway. If he

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discovers that his heart is pure and that what is pure is indestructible, then he has nothing to fear. In fact, suffering the ‘slings and arrows’ does him a favour; all the numerous attacks on his person by other people and their rhetoric will merely break away and crush those parts of himself that indeed are perishable, leaving him with what he only really needs. It is like I said before; the one with the largest capacity for doubt is in fact the one with the largest capacity for belief for he believes himself to the degree where no doubt will ever destroy him, and therefore he makes a friend of his doubt. The one who hides himself away, the one who never doubts anything, is in fact the most perishable person. It is not that his capacity for belief exceeds that of us, for he is not a superman, but were he to doubt, he would see himself quickly dissolving in the ammonia of his maggots. We must therefore not be frightened and impressed by these men, because we have nothing that we can lose, for what we do have is immortal and pure, and any attack is beneficial to us. Let us thank him as he dissolves; perhaps our presence will rescue himself from his own cleverness, and it is his own cleverness in this world which is rapidly deteriorating his wisdom, his chances of survival. Clever people will eat themselves over and over again. The beast of burden does not necessarily need to become the lion in the afternoon, he merely needs to realise that he is invulnerable and that it is this invulnerability which, in the next phase of life, will either become his new burden, or his very enlightenment. Perhaps it is too simple and too hackneyed an expression to say that ‘it depends upon how you look at it’, but I think that this saying needs to be rethought in the light of what I am saying. Indeed, it does depend upon how you look at it, but at the same time, it depends upon how it looks at you.

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We cannot continue to lead this sheltered life from the material world; strange that I should say sheltered from the material world, but indeed that is what I mean. Our material relationship with life is illusory in the sense that we see ourselves and not a mirror at all times and in all places. This is not a material relation to the outside world, rather it is some form of shadow-chasing that produces its own impossibility of forming relationships and connections. How would we think about the semiotic web of signification in the light of the impossibility of relationships? Any good postmodernist would say that indeed there is no material life, merely a constantly shifting series of surfaces. Is this so preposterous, that there should be some completely interchangeable and valueless reality of which we ourselves are just another surface? I have already suggested as much, although I intend to suggest a great deal more in that, having masked-off the possibility of depth and having come to be blind to the concept of meaning, we can indeed become reacquainted with that strange world, a place wherein we can indeed form relations with things which are not merely refracted images of our broken-up selves. I have struggled with this world for too long and I can say that this type of life is a straight-jacket which tightens up the more you struggle against it. But if you do not move your arms, you do not seem to notice it, although the place we wish to be is a place where we can freely move our arms in order to manipulate objects which are real, and are not merely desirable illusions.

Idea: When you pick this book up you can begin at any page. You will not be reading it, you will be listening in upon a conversation which is happening internally and your ear shall be pressed against

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the door of its words. In this way is this book the book of your life; forever listening in and unable to interact, melancholy in the futility of your situation without objects or arms with which you can affirm their existence. The book however continues its endless discourse as does your own mind, and you are of course forever looking in upon that but helpless to interact, trapped within the surfaces of your own brain. When you open this book it becomes little more than metaphor, (just as all objects in your world ‘stand-in’ for an object without achieving objecthood in themselves,) but a metaphor which is the metaphor of its own metaphor; and somehow it can speak through this crystalline barrier of opposition in your perceptual faculties. Can you tell me what the word ‘pretentious’ means? Microsoft Word interprets it as meaning ‘fat-headed’, ‘haughty’, ‘self-important’, ‘inflated’, ‘arrogant’, ‘big’, ‘boastful’ and ‘conceited’. And a computer can tell you that? So the computer has its own programmed associations with this word, but in fact you have many more, and they are significantly more perverse and crystalline; you can see the concept talking to you or walking down the street, and yet what you might call a ‘person’ has merely become a conjunction of signifiers in your mind, and that is a kind of rough justice. Have you ever even met another person? And neither will you until you yourself have become a person, the first person to have existed, when you cease to be the dumb interpreter of your own life and begin to live it. It is all well and good that semiotic theory can tell you the way that ‘it is’, (which is an existential sensibility, although semiotics can barely be said to ‘exist’,) but it cannot dress up the fact that it is indeed one opinion amongst many, just another voice seeking fifteen minutes of fame as the master discourse of our time, (and aren’t there so very

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many?) Neither can it dress up the opinion that it is an imprecise science at best, it is an opinion dressed-up as fact. And does it not have some wide application? We can indeed talk semiotic theory until the cows come home because indeed it has its set theory which applies to everything in culture. But does it ever get us anywhere, or is it merely a discourse-producing machine, a cold mouth which has an opinion about everything? We don’t tend to like persons of this description, so why do we favour such an ‘intellectual’ disposition? And why should we want to buy some pre-packaged method of understanding, if not that it is an easy technique to learn and a good trick at parties and colleges? There are already far too many people aboard that particular bandwagon and I do not wish to join them. As a fad we shall find that it passes in time, and that those people aboard the wagon have shifted to the next one; some types of people are very good at this type of behaviour, as though it were a very easy way of keeping up to date with the hit parade. But it does us, who seek meaning, absolutely no good whatsoever. It is also a clear indication of how quickly people are willing to forget in order to keep up with the master discourse and its official knowledge. Self-knowledge can never be attained by following this route, because if we insist upon adhering to other people’s knowledge, and yet we have never met another person, (the condition of perception,) then we are trapped in limbo are we not? It is difficult to allow ourselves to see what it is we are looking at unless we are prepared to acknowledge that we may be looking at a facet of ourselves at all times; this is the initial stage of self-knowledge which in its feeling is akin to paranoia, and indeed it is a regression back to the perceptual mistake of the mirror-stage; “Look; that’s me, I am other!” and then rethinking; “That is a

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mirror and not me.â&#x20AC;? We notice the initial object which has caused all of our perceptual misery and resolve in ourselves to start again in the world as an intellectual toddler, continually bumping into things and becoming confused in this strange environment. You may say that this idea is stupid; we all know that we see a mirror. But what if the mirror we look in is standing in for something else? What if each mirror we look in is the same mirror, and always contains the same deception, no matter how clever we believe ourselves to be? Can we outsmart ourselves? Can we win a game of chess against ourselves? We can of course doubt the entire visual matrix as merely nothing more than a huge self-portrait of cosmic proportions. As I have said; acknowledgement is the first stage to self-knowledge. But how can we acknowledge that which is manifest as an illusion; surely this is contradictory? Either our acknowledgement itself would become illusory, or we would end up acknowledging any old thing, and hence it would never bring us any closer to self-knowledge. I understand this doubt very well, for it has been a companion of mine these many years, and I can answer in this way; acknowledgement would confer to us what we consist in, it would indicate our ability to affirm or deny anything, and doubt even the most apparent facts such as the appearance of the world and our appearance in it. Acknowledgement will not bring us truth, but it is a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;yesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; saying to that which you are, no matter how nauseatingly contradictory or hypocritical you may end up becoming. We must include those parts of our character that we usually exclude from our self-perception in order to arrive at a more complete and more fragile understanding of our abilities, our appearance, our world, and our selves. This is not a time for sating our self-appearance, but for doubting everything and risking reality,

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as we have hitherto known it. Everything must be de-stabilised; the world must be ready to disappear from view if we are to attempt to save it, if we decide that it is worth it that is. Doubting, you will remember, is the twin of affirming, and the one who doubts hardest and longest also affirms thus. We must use our melancholy in this state to see further and deeper into our condition, to perceive ourselves as we have never perceived ourselves before; as ourselves and not as Other.

What if all of this is mere madness? The problem one encounters the deeper one goes into subjective reality is the very tacit relation that one has with the exterior world; any ties with objectivity that one might have encountered when one was identical with ones illusion is rapidly depleted and we end up clutching at the straws of certainty, and we remember Descartesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; attempt all too clearly. The more aware that we become that objectivity is a falsehood, (or at least a knowledge not intended for completely self-reflecting Beings,) the more we question our very sanity. It is after all this reason why I am searching after that object beyond all objects; that of Being, for it is after all a most attractive notion to one who is so riddled with mirages. When everything in our world hinges upon the way we see it, when an object appears according to our temperament, our mood, our state of mind, our associations with it, our prejudices, etc, it indeed becomes a fragile and amorphous thing. We skirt around difficulties because we do not want ripples in our pond, we realise that this painting of which we are both the perceiver and the perceived is somehow held in the balance by some force within ourselves and without ourselves of which we have never met although have always been aware. Reality is like a

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painting, for it is dense in symbolic language, rich in beauty, fragile, unique and masterfully crafted. It also cannot be distinguished from any other reality, and we would never notice if we began to experience another reality, for our ego would buckle it to its own vision and force it to belong. The more closely we come to observe our crafted reality, the more we find that indeed the observer and the observed are indistinguishable, that the conditions of perception begin to appear as they should always have appeared; without the unique and forceful sense of self. An Englishman’s home is his castle. This condition is also a condition of perception, and it is the result of the earlier mirror-stage, (that although I repudiate the psychoanalyst’s jargon I must confess that the Lacan’s mirror-stage lecture is a masterpiece, a work of art,) that as the one whom is looking out, the must also be one who is looking in, especially if one exist within and without, that one is the interior world and the exterior world at the same time. Of course we are contractually bound to contemplate our own madness in this circumstance; does anybody ever not question their sanity? It is a preoccupation of the neurotic to ask whether he is sane or not, and he always refers back to the question; “Does a mad person know that he is mad?” Obviously not if he has to ask himself; the least reliable source of information regarding sanity! The deeper we go into our vision of ourselves the more ridiculous the questions become, the more impossible the answers seem and only then do we begin to get at the problem. It is only here that we can exert our free will, in the ambiguous space between sanity and insanity, where our entire reality hinges upon our perception of it, that we can begin to make choices. After we have acknowledged that whether we are sane or insane is beside the point, that whether

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there is or is not any objective reality is beside the point, that we can begin to decide, we can begin to be creators. We, like Prometheus, have this malleable matter at our disposal with which we can create what is real to us. The questions about whether we are sane or not pale away into insignificance and only go to hinder our creativity. Up until this point we have been the subject of our reality, and subject to it. But the point of ownership and responsibility over reality comes when we understand the extent to which we have already created it, and then how much power we exert over creating it further. Questions such as ‘Am I mad’ become creative flurries within our reality; they never question the reality itself, for they are part of it. And so we can either live in terror at this strange and abstract relation to reality that we have realised, or we can do otherwise. It is very easy to live like a child when one has come to this realisation, and not least that one either becomes the fascist of ones own reality or irresponsible to it. The reason for this childishness was touched upon earlier when I mentioned how one can either achieve harmony between the interior and exterior worlds, or one can bias one in favour of the other. “What does it matter if all is merely illusion?” This is a good question, and whichever answer you provide will tell you how you are disposed toward your own reality to be sure. How are we to achieve any knowledge of what is material and what is psychic unless we are to acknowledge the extent to which each domain could possibly reach under the most extreme circumstances? Is there an adequate answer, or is this not a question of adequacy? We wish to know not that which is certain, but how far we can push the illusion. And with our depth of insight, with our melancholy, can we conceive with much greater ability how far our control stretches

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inside of reality, how much of reality is indeed reliant upon us. And if we reach the conclusion that indeed all of reality is reliant upon us, (and we can of course all conceive of this,) then we have at least acknowledged in part that which we consist in, as the creators and caretakers of reality. But the way in which I have been speaking thus far about us and reality is still between two points; us and reality. If indeed reality is us and we are reality, then surely there can be no distinction? It would merely be the case that in fact, if we choose to distinguish one from the other is the way that we have disposed our reality into two separate parts for the convenience of discussion. And so much of this book is laid out for the convenience of discussion, discussion with myself, (the extent of my madness.) Why do I confess this fallacy in my work? Is not that information for me alone, or would my secrecy constitute a disguise, a mere evasiveness? What if you were to consider that I have not separated a sentient entity out from the edifice of reality; how would my discussion then look? You will of course then realise that this is a book talking, and books cannot talk, for they are mere conjunctions of words like any other consciousness. A book does not have a sentient entity in charge of what it says or sees for that is merely part of your own representation of it. This is why this book constitutes no enlightenment, no revelation, no secret knowledge or insight. It is merely a static thing that entered into your reality like all static things do, and your own disposal to it is your own private business.

Why do we still have the fascination for dangerous or secret knowledge? Why do we want to learn the one thing which changes all things? We want to pick up a book and to understand everything

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all at once and spoil the journey of life. And those of us who would use metaphors for life, like games of chess, journeys, occupations, (motorcycle maintenance et al,) allegories, stories and allusions, are both right and wrong at the same time. Is it not convenient to condense down to one thing that thing which cannot be described or understood at all? Perhaps this kind of allusion indicates in equal measures an ability to describe what cannot be understood, and an inability to describe what they cannot understand? Why is it that life can be reduced down to metaphor, or that small parts of life can be enlarged to stand in for and speak in place of life itself? We all continue to look for this key, and we remain hopeful that something will change everything for us. If we could only take a pill that will reveal the truth, or hear the truth in music, a play, a film, a book, etc. And what does this fruitless looking constitute for us? Our futility? As one who is seeking the truth are we content to assume that somebody else knows it and is willing to confer with us the fruits of such a vast and meaningful labour? If you discovered the singular truth of life, would you share it with everyone? Why do you not share the desire to know it with anyone? One cannot know how this information would change you, for it would be completely immaterial; if enlightenment were material, there would indeed always be some larger enlightenment waiting for us around the corner, and indeed we would be able to sell and tell it. Which is why we will never find it from without, because we would already have it in our possession. This is why metaphor will not reveal truth to you, because truth is not that small and cannot be shared. It becomes allusion to those enlightened people, (if indeed they are enlightened and not convincing liars,) because they can allude only in that they cannot tell; truth has made them mute. But we cannot

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know this information, for I am still talking about other people, (as they exist as a fragment in my mind or as a combination of words in this text which allows you to produce mental imagery of your own making to help you understand subjectively what I am talking about.) If we continue to look, we contrive our existence to be that which looks. If we find, we contrive our existence as that which finds. This is a simple existential disposition, and you will agree that it makes sense, (were it not for the clichĂŠ that one will not find anything if one does not look for it.) Does questioning constitute a looking, or does the question itself contain its own special form of knowledge that we have hitherto overlooked because we were to focussed upon there being an answer lying in wait for us?

Assumption 1: Everything that you are looking for you already know.

For if not how would you be able to ask such whacked-out questions? Privilege your own knowledge for a change and give yourself some credit. Your questions have all the significance that any answers could provide for you, but you are running upon the assumption that you do not know, which is why you require answers. If you assume that you do know, then the enjoyment of asking the questions will constitute its own special self-knowledge. I think that it is a form of conceit that people assume that they are not in the know, and this is a strange position to assert when you consider how I have said that a person constitutes the entirety of reality. If reality is yours, if you have produced it and are responsible for it, why would you be asking these questions if not for some perverse fantasy that you pretended, through your conceit,

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not to know the answers about your own questions? Have you contrived your own unknowing in your own universe like some conceited God that, having made everything, also made himself forget? Have you caused it to be this way so that you can reveal your true nature for yourself; a true nature that is one who is creator but does not know it, or as one who lives under a veil of ignorance that only you can lift, or as some cosmic game, the enjoyment of which comes from solving your own hyper-complex riddle? Daedalus? [Another allusion.] And what will come of this perpetual quest other than its perpetuation? The grail knights must indeed have been disappointed in their fruitless quest, although they required a cause because they had become hopeless in their existence, they needed to look even in the full knowledge that there was no treasure to be found, no knowledge awaiting them. Contentment is not the mode in which humans prefer to conduct their existence, they require a cause to pursue, a quest to pledge allegiance to, and hence they shall not have content unless their higher desire is profound enough to reveal to them that content resides in contentment, that in order to finish the quest one merely needs to finish looking. To have content one must assume that one is not missing any parts, and hence the concept of secret or dangerous knowledge, occult knowledge, constitutes its own danger. We must understand that the psychoanalytic discovery of the motivation for desire, the missing part of you that you are constantly seeking, is merely the analysis and not the concrete state of affairs for the human in the world. If one wishes to be complete, one merely needs to be complete and not only to act the role of the completed person. But this realisation must happen as a realisation, for if not it will only ever constitute an act, but one which

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continually breaks down the more of a shambles it appears. To act as though one were completed, that one was Being and not merely seeming is in fact destined to fall apart for it requires conviction, and the actor is never fully convinced of his role; he may believe in it and attempt displacement onto the role, but the role is always finished at some point, (although there may be a hangover from it.) In the same way are we not fully convinced about who we are, and so we must leave the role and merely be that which we are.

A problem with our friends: We keep our friends at a safe distance from ourselves lest our company embarrasses them and yet, who are they who can become embarrassed by us? Do we, as our own best friend, keep our self at a distance? Earlier, whilst I was walking in the cold night air, I felt as though I had left myself behind and it was struggling to catch up. I realised that if fact, I was afraid of distraction, and that all of my slanders against it were totally misplaced. As I walked along the street I heard the echoes of all former ages; a squabble over five pounds, an argument over who has the right of way, young people out to look good. I felt that these everyday things had been everyday every day since a long time ago and in fact they would not change. This is the core of what humans are about, and it is as predictable as it is sad. If I had been querying myself over my fantasy in which time never passed, I felt as though I heard the tired, ancient voice of all ages speaking to me on Walworth road. This may as well be a medieval village in Flanders or an ancient village near Carthage. But the part of me that was flying along way ahead of his self could perceive this motionless space, and that is always how it looks from the outside; indeed, it is quite prudent to

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say that I looked the same to every other person that I saw. Perhaps they were thinking the same thing; perhaps everyone is sharing the same ideas although they never vocalise it. Perhaps we would not feel so futile if we were aware that everyone feels just as futile, but alas we always consider that someone else knows more than we do and that we enjoy being the one from whom a secret is always being kept. Is this how we choose to keep our friends; at a distance so that we cannot be disappointed in them or that they do not become disappointed by us? Again, it would feel as though we prefer the image of our friends and our image of ourselves over that which appears to us in the world, although this is hardly fair or fulfilling either to us. Our friends will always be friends to us no matter how much of us they see, and those who are not our friends will drop off anyway. Why did I say that I was frightened of distraction? Do I consider distraction to be evil? No; distraction itself is not an evil, it merely distracts us from what is good. Distraction works in a strange tandem with propriety in that we seek distraction when we are frightened of either the appropriate thing to be doing or when we feel the impending sense of melancholy approaching us; both things we should not fear but should rather stimulate. The best state of affairs is when nothing becomes a distraction, even the things we once would have considered distraction. There could be a time when watching the television would be an enlightening experience because in fact, you were so at your centre everything in life is profound. And would you choose to do something like watch the television in your enlightened state? Who among us can tell? Who amongst us could you tell? Fear is manifest in our consciousness in the places in which we least expect it, and more often than not in the places we

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consider ourselves strongest. It probably had occurred to you whilst reading this that my declarations of strength in certain areas, particularly those areas in which I came across as high and mighty, I was in fact attempting to conceal my fear. And so it is but does this confession resolve that fear, does it become acknowledgement? How far into these words does the deception or the motive penetrate and how can you know my exact thoughts? You may only know what I tell you, which only ever reaches your mind in a form provided for you by your own mind, and in this impasse must you again remember that this is just a book. [I stopped capitalising the word â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;realityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; because of my now frequent usage of the term.] I like to go out, do something, and then to go away and worry about that thing at what it might mean. Is that not what happens to all of us? Perhaps worry has become our primary form of entertainment? But we must make a friend of our worry in that it is conveying to us in the only way we know how something of great significance. We must not be shy around our worry. It tries desperately to share something that we long to hear, although we hide and distract ourselves from it because we know it will upset the steady and safe balance of our lives. Let us listen to that voice ever more intently and hear it out; if we are so confident of ourselves we should know that no worry could ever destroy us, so why be afraid? This is real fear; not some evil killer or mugger or monster or something terrible out there, but something horrific in here, horrific because we have made an idol of our fear. True courage comes from the interior look, when eyes are turned inwards without fear that our lives may be changed. And did I not say earlier how we all seek that dangerous information that would tip the balance, that would pull the rug out from under our feet, which would change

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everything? Well here it is. Look no further than your own nose, and if your own nose is unaccustomed to the smell of exotic fruit then why not train it? Who do you believe that I am ridiculing in these pages? It cannot be you, for we have never met and never will meet. Could it be my self, that object I always seek to ridicule? Then who is this confused I who considers itself in two parts, one wise and one stupid? Is this madness, fiction? I am indeed terrified and my anger nursed me outwardly against the observable world, full of new fears on every street, in every conversation. How could I have been so wrong about everything? And why should I not seek to destroy myself, for it is my own self that has confused everything for me, perverted every glance, twisted every word, contorted every thought until all my wisdom had been eradicated? And for what purpose this strange vision of the world wherein everything is two faced and laughing maliciously? Who can say? All the madness I have perceived in other people and in other things, all of the strange rituals, all the bizarre behaviour, indeed I had created for myself. None of it belongs to me other than it comes to me through my cognitive faculties which have, to be sure, stunted everything and made it rotten. A world so full of joy made inaccessible to my enjoyment by a rotten and insatiable fear which sought only to protect its own warped interest in the world which was nothing other than control over my self. So pathetic, loathsome and writhing have I been throughout all of life, throughout all of history; can you not hear my tears rolling with all noise through the glacier of my heart? Will finally this vast and universal sigh be heard by my own ears and wake from its dreamless sleep that Being who resides within the hollow gorge beyond my vanity? Of course anxiety follows when he rouses; we have never met him, he

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is a stranger like any stranger that threatens our tidy and meaningless world, and yet it is us that he should fear, (if he could indeed fear anything.) Why do we enjoy so much this nauseating fantasy of the dark stranger that threatens us down each dark alley, this foreigner that threatens our women, our safety or whatsoever? Are we our own metaphor of McCarthyism, terrorised by ourselves of foreign bodies but which are in fact no different to us? Why are we humans afraid of humans; are we so very different to each other? Or is it perhaps that it is always the other that is threatening and not us? Do we in some strange way consider ourselves as innocent? It is always us that terrorises, and never someone else. Why would an average American feel the threat of terror from elsewhere? It is America the nation, the party, that has caused this terror and why should each individual fear it; they are not the body politic. Terror does not threaten them, it threatens the administration of American politics. But death does threaten them, and the administration is keen to let them know this only for its own interest. Why should an American care about American politics when it states â&#x20AC;&#x153;Think not what your country can do for you, but what you are always doing for your country.â&#x20AC;? (sic) I will not continue to talk about this because too many other people already are. All I meant to be saying was that we threaten ourselves in the same way that America threatens America; it is basic human politics. But it is not necessary for us to live under continual threat; it is only the most accepted and most comfortable way to be. (Strange though it may sound.) What if we gave way to love for one another as opposed to fear? Would we even know how to function or relate to each other? Perhaps we would forget about property, the need to defend, the need for jealousy or material

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ambition or a whole host of things which encourage the ego but sedate the soul, and leave us comfortable that we will only ever be an image and that depth simply is not necessary? Perhaps it is fairest if we create for ourselves this option, to see that things need not necessarily be one particular way through our own ignorance and in fact choose the way that we decide we want. Perhaps that is a more noble ambition, and perhaps that is what we may call a choice in life; not those small trifling choices that we make all day every day and which only ever constitute the upkeep of our [unchosen] self-image, but where we have acknowledged that there may be another way to be which is not so conceited. We may even continue in our lives even though we have seen the alternatives, but we would continue happy in the knowledge that other people are doing something else and know about your ways, and that you know what other people are doing and are happy with your ways. But can there be a state beyond ignorance or human conceit which we could call enlightenment? The only way to find out is by undertaking a real odyssey, to destroy your self and see what you are left with, to sail over the edge of the world. These things which annoy me, irritate me and upset me, these harassing voices; they are not even mine though I take them to be so. Which of these opinions are mine and how will I ever know this information if not at Delphi? The next time something irritates you, (irritation is indeed the most petty-minded of all the human feelings, but one which we must learn to understand,) try to figure out just whose voice it is that is talking inside your head, if not the voice of madness. The next time you are angry with somebody, anybody, try and figure out just what part of you they have not respected, which part of you they have not understood; you probably find that in fact it is the

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same part of you that you do not respect or understand. You were not even upset with them; you merely heard your own insane voice attempting to tell you something very sane indeed, but you had to insist that it was something from beyond your body and hence not worth listening to. Listen to this voice intently and without distraction, for what appears in image as madness may appear in form as nothing other than common sense. There are indeed two halves of the self, and it appears at times that there are two selves; but this is not the case. We have merely split in two that which we thought could never be split, and some kind of truce must be sought between the two halves so that they work harmoniously together and are not merely frightened of each other like children are. Of course, saying this is contradictory, for we would indeed find that our own voice comes from the one side, and the voice from the other side we do not control, we cannot will to speak, we cannot speak in place of. This is merely prescribed for the one half, as though we must shut it up to allow the other to speak. And what if this other half did not care for its conscious counterpart and sought to dominate the conscious mind? It would not, for domination is not in its vocabulary, and we would most likely find that it would continue its hidden work. What we must assert is that the conscious mind, as the one through which we will, we must will it to listen and not to merely speak. The other half whom we shall not know we will listen to at our leisure, and we shall absorb its riches and exploit our satiety. Our journey to self knowledge must come from the relation between these halves, from the one we think we know, the conscious half, (whom we cannot know as we do not know its counterpart,) and this paragraph is slowly deteriorating; I wonder why? Am I trying to resolve a problem I do not even know about,

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or is this quest only ever in the favour of the self? The futility which has riddled my discourse, both interior and exterior, reveals its head again. It is a preposterous canker, infecting the hedgerow of my steady stream of dictation until the cows from one field are able to migrate to the next, but one is always fallow, one pasture. I need this illness of mine and it lives in the space between my thoughts and actions for all time. I shall dedicate this book to those who say after the event “I wish I had done that, or this or the other, or so and so!” The gap between thought and action is now wide enough for we to slip down, a bottomless ravine, the antihomoerotic. How far can one slow this process? The Japanese may have said ‘No more than seven breaths’, but for a fakir that is a long time or for one petrified it is a short time; we must discover this Japanese mean-time for ourselves. We have bought enough of their ‘simple-living’ merchandise already, have we not – why not the air they breathe? It was convenient for the longest time here in the West to consider that these Oriental types were hiding some secret wisdom from us, and now we are free to buy it. Why is it always the other who holds this wisdom? I have already jumped to this conclusion in my discourse by fantasising the Oriental part of my brain; the unconscious or the Alma. When will we remember or realise that the other knows nothing? If we assume that it does then we fix ourselves in a position whereby we will never know. The other knows nothing because he does not yet exist; we got ourselves mistaken for him. It will shortly be time to reach the purpose of all of this madness, but not before time; please be patient whilst what is currently being done is done and then left behind. I shall not carry this book upon my shoulders. Look to the pages on your left; you will see that they do not now exist because

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we have allowed them to pass like time. Look at them more closely and see if you can remember what was written in them. You cannot? Well, we shall not consider our writing to be in vain, vain, or in the vein. We must not believe that we mean anything or intend anything. We must not believe the lies of our partners, the weather reports or the horoscope. Listen closely and you will learn to hear all that you have longed to hear and yet do not think a word; thinking does you no good, it is meaningless, insubstantial and false. All that is in the mind is a stain; it brings you no happiness, it merely contorts that which you want to see like a circus mirror. And yet it talks at you endlessly like this book does; there is no pause

breathe

any

relaxation

eventhegapsbetweenthewordshavedisappeared.

the Allow

muscles; me

illustrate the interior of your mind in this fashion, listen to the voice here and tell me that it is crazy, that it means nothing and that it is desperate. Please tell me this because I cannot believe myself; you will do me a great favour friend if you tell me I am insane or at least ordinary, but do not say I am profound for this would construct a barrier between us, and I do not believe that that is the way things are between us. I want all of this to be contained on the inside of your mind as it coats the inside of mine, I want to realise my own impostor and I want all of the false gestures, intonations and thoughts to drop off like dead leaves. Desires, desires, desires! Where does the motive lie and where is the crime? Have I killed something important? Does my sentience consist in that which finds its own cause? Bad purpose to be alive; to discover why you are alive; it is akin to masturbation; the gestures are there but they seek to relieve and not create, they are deprived of their innate meaning, they are perverse. Do we want our thoughts to merely

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revolve around the impulse to be relieved? Is this how to cope with this pressure exerted from inside out, to seek relief and not creation? We are creators and destroyers; we must not masturbate whatsoever if we are to discover purpose, for we will just encounter more futility. And when we have created all that we wish to create; will that not be futile? What will the meaning of that be? Perhaps, in the end, we are not to discover purpose, but must instead come to a different kind of emptiness that itself has content, not by that with which it is filled, but as the container itself. And do we not contain all of this? But does this constitute our content or is this merely contentless content? Just like this book, not so? You and I share the most astounding resemblance, I mean both you the projected audience and I the projected writer, but also you the reader and I the projected book.

I have so much to discuss, and yet it is all impossible to say at once; these things have taken years of production and will be in production for many years to come. The first thing that I shall write about is the function of doubt as I discussed it two days ago.

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fig. 1

I tried to describe the contradiction inherent in doubting by showing that a thing which doubts other things is simultaneously affirming itself as an existent object. The tobacco pouch at the top represents the I which doubts, the doubting represented by a tree descending downwards to two objects in the world (tobacco

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pouches.) It is not merely by chance that I have selected an object which doubts objects identical to itself. So; we doubt things in our world – a tree, an appearance, the world itself, etc, etc. But as we doubt, (as Descartes has clearly shown,) we affirm the fact that we exist as a thing which doubts, (or thinks, to be general.) So, by doubting everything in the world as indeed we can if we are to put our minds to task, we affirm that which can never be doubted, and that is the thing which in itself is doubting. But why is it that Descartes did not begin his method by affirming all that he could; is it because it is easier to prove, in a simple gesture, that one can easily doubt all that one knows and sees as opposed to affirm all that exists? And what does my simple gesture prove? Not much? Doubt or affirm that which is in the world; it will still not provide certainty beyond that which is self evident – I am a thing that thinks. And whether one wishes to begin one’s enquiry by doubting or affirming ad absurdum is merely a question of disposition. I would rather affirm that which is in the world and the way in which it consists but without turning doubt into the only tool of certainty. Certainty is a false object and should not be coveted if we value our existence. We can doubt certainty in itself, as an end, by asserting that is a false object.

I shall come clean; all this talk of doubting, affirming and certainty is a smokescreen, for I am on the verge of an argument and yet I have not quite strayed into it, I have a short respite with which I can produce something, rather than stumbling in like an idiot believing that my argument was my very self. What is an argument and why is it that I cannot fix one before my eyes unfalteringly? If one holds

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a disposition so closely to oneself that there is no room for air, we will find that our disposition is always correct and indubitable, like that of any good Christian, racist or any other kind of fundamentalist. But I cannot do this, (and yet I can go around and value everything without questioning the thing which is questioning? How is this?) for I am well aware that I am not my opinion or disposition, and yet I am not separate from it either; perhaps our relation is ironical or just simply dysfunctionally attached? Whatever the relation, I cannot posit as to whether I hold my opinions or my opinions hold me. But I did not create this brief respite to merely chase my own tail or babble-on inanely as though I had lost sight of my object; I came here to contemplate

something

great

personal

importance regarding argumentation, opinion and meaning. I could, if I chose to, dive into my argument like a rat down a hole and yet, if I did not pause to meditate upon what I was doing I might notice that I am not a rat and would never fit down the hole. I am in too great a danger of either; playing my role like a child as I know the play and routine of argumentation or, more likely, I will posit an opinion or a disposition towards the world which I can only half-believe, that I argue weakly, that I do not care for. I can doubt all of my opinions, to be sure. But can I likewise affirm all of my

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opinions, even the ones which doubt, (for doubting in itself is an opinion of sorts?)

I liken the fundamentalist to

either; one whom I admire for being able to believe in ones own idiocy or, an idiot for being able to believe that I admire him, or admirable for being stupid, or stupid in my admiration, or he is stupid because he is an idiot. What is to be the eventual purpose of this word play? All the words are the same, though the combinations may be different. How could I believe any such combination of words unless I knew that they had been combined by a master or by a god? And if one cannot believe ones own endless combination of words, (acting as though it were the enigma code, and that eventually a combination will arrive through which you may decode the universe of meaning,) that does one consist as one who holds beliefs and yet does not believe them? Is an argument only ever a combination of words; is that the meaning? Is this the reason that we

encounter

such

futility

when

attempting to express things which we know to be important without the hand of irony beneath the table?

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So, am I an idiot for positing anything, (including

demonstrates

discourse the

which

impossibility

belief,) and then saying that I cannot believe my not believing? Is this not absurd? In stating so adamantly that belief is impossible have I merely produced yet another variable in which I hope to find certainty? This is another hopeless link in the chain of uncertainty, and it is this chain to which we are all wed and martyred, a chain which could so easily become our freedom and hope if only we couldâ&#x20AC;Ś Dreaming will not resolve this crisis;

but

can

discussion?

When all we can see is uncertainty, surely there must be something lurking which is so

obvious

overlooked

that it

have

thus

far,

something which converts this entire process of doubting into an agglomerated affirmation just like in Figure 1? It feels now as though we have reached an impasse and that we must perceive the impossibility of belief, opinion, disposition or

189

other

any

form

argumentation as a form of opinion itself, an opinion which governs

all

others,

which

allows us to move toward the unknown

region

which

makes

accessible new options of

meaning,

new

strains of logic and whichever

form,

combination

whatsoever we desire. I have created a little distance for myself, and with this space I can finally begin to come backwards

and

make

opinions and arguments into an idol,

ornamented

prejudice and furnished by logic. This argument I shall call by some other name, something which denotes a contented meaninglessness

meaningless content. And what shall I say when my reason for argument returns, when the motivation for all this wordplay

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and

horseplay

arrives

and

knocks on the door? It will probably not matter, for the motivation not being strong enough to demand immediate action or reaction will most probably cause me to forget about it. Perhaps this is the truth; that in fact there is nothing to argue about because both your and my opinions are equally worthless and one will only ever triumph out of brute linguistic force or some other bias. And so, in that we have â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;resignedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ourselves to the state of play of all prejudice and opinion, when we have seemingly travelled to the ends of the earth and back in the space of a few indentations and a lot of frustrations, will we still say what it was we were going to say to her, will we still remember what our argument was, let alone our motivations for desiring to start one? Or will I do that which I feel it is only right to do, to do what a true journeyman on the path of knowledge would alone betray? What could this

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be, that overcomes argument, anger, masquerade, opinion and whatsoever else false attributes that one pretends are so close to the soul that one cannot hear the air whispering between oneself and they, and cannot hear what the whisper is saying, let alone whom is saying it and whether or not you were even the intended recipient of such secret, sweet whispers of the soul unto your heart? I shall tell her what I have told you; for that is the whisper; it is not the devilish whisper of Satan that passes into one ear and out of the other with such subtlety that one mistakes it for ones own voice in the head, ones own cherished and sanctified insanity, no; I shall instead pass this discourse over in order to show that any argument would have indeed been unnecessary, and I shall not mind to look foolish in front of her for having written some foolish essay about what I was going to say to her had I been heated enough and rash enough to allow it to motivate my carnal lust for intellectual and social domination, had I forgotten what is unthinkably unforgettable, that piece of information which is its own answer to any argument, to any knowledge, to any need for conquest or superiority, or even over and above the need to appear to be true to ones mind and to speak it aloud where one can hear how ridiculous it sounds with all of its borrowed and ugly voices and fragments of beliefs and re-digested prefabricated knowledge; that I love her.

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Perhaps it is that sometimes we lose sight of the top tobacco pouch because we are too preoccupied with the pouches beneath it, and beneath those, and beneath those, etc, ad infinitum. The whole purpose of this endless chain is for us to see that we shall never see the top layer or the bottom layer, and that there is no up or down inside of the void. Identity is both part of each layer, each subdivision, but is not identical to each subdivision, for it is only in totality that we consist, there being no up or down in here, for within each subdivision do we detect yet further and further subdivisions until we become seemingly lost inside of the labyrinthine self, inside of that thing which is either:

infinite, yet finitely knowable, or

ii)

finite and yet knowable into infinity

And yet this statement itself states that it is ‘either’ or ‘or’, and yet by the maxim of its own statementhood it must be both and yet neither of the above. How is this possible? We must be mindful that there is no end to argumentation, for it holds no object, merely temporary and fleeting victories, to heart. We must also be mindful that, in the last case, in the most terrifying and awful scenario, this argument, which is never lost or won and never finds meaning, is in fact at the very heart of our selves, it is smeared across the inside of our minds like grease on a window, it operates completely autonomously and without need for provocation, and it is what we have come to call; ‘Identity.’

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It can be said that the dissolution of identity is a central tenet of postmodern discourse; the inability to express or know oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s identity through culture leads to what Foucault called the erasure of the human footprint in the sand, washed away by the tide of whatever, canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember. But what does that leave us with, I mean, if material culture is a lost cause for identity? Can we explain what this dissolution signifies when there are no longer any signifiers that we can use to index our existence onto culture? This particular strand of postmodern thought leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, as though, as an expression of material culture itself it finds itself with the inability to express material culture and how it fails to produce identities. Do they think, as I do, that identity becomes erased as one begins to remember the larger dimension of human consciousness as a thing over and above culture, (but naturally, not separate from it?) What does this last hangover from Marxism tell us, if not that material culture is a lost cause, it is crude, that it is a god of shit? That it will eat itself forever? That it is an embodiment of the lowest in man, that part of man that drives downward into earth and where he tries to get what he can for himself, where he thinks he can be master of the earth if he can get a small part of it and defend it? That his property is worthless, that his cleverness in the material dimension is meaningless and of profound disease to him? We have been travelling this long while headfirst into nihilism, attempting as it were to stand on our own two feet by destroying everything that we once pinned our hopes and beliefs onto so that we might wipe the slate clean, erase the debt to that which made us, and in so doing we were prepared for emptiness, meaninglessness, nothingness. And when we get there, in the depths of unknowing, unremembering, the chasm of emptiness, will

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we remember our bold plans to stand upon our own two feet as human individuals, to stand up as adult creators in our own right? Of course not, for all we will have achieved is the will of a particular kind of man, the kind that is erasing the ideals of transcendence, of meaning, of beauty and any other thing we care to think of as Truth, and will have created a world of material indulgence and emptiness, where everything and everyone is exploiting and exploited, a truly old testament scenario, except without any god to promise redemption from our awfulness. Do not forget that history is project, that culture is project, that we are experiencing various manifestations of bourgeois will, of the bourgeois desire for gain through money and property, (as opposed to force or power.) The world is not an objective place; it is being shaped in all possible ways by interested persons with the ability to change the material horizon. These people do not talk about spirit, beauty, nobility or any such transcendental things because they cannot exploit them; that is why God was killed off in the second act; we couldn't really sell Him or ourselves so long as He was on the scene. The things cherished by our culture are things that are cherished by various interested parties, and we must not believe for a second that culture is an independent entity, that it is liberal and non-tyrannical; the tyrant is both our desire and those who wield the ability to satisfy our desire with material things. This is an autocratic culture that is effective only in that it has sanctified our desire, we desire it, it desires us; we desire our own repression, as the saying goes. It is only repression if one looks at it that wayâ&#x20AC;Ś

[This is either the impossibility of the subjective universe, or the impossibility of the objective universe; perhaps both poles are

195

spurious and we must arrive at some different type of knowledge which does not propose the impossible, the frustrating and the downright unworkable?]

How can we possibly attempt an understanding of Identity, (or the lack of,) through ‘either’ the material, ‘or’ the immaterial? Why must we, as humans, ‘simplify’ complex and abstract notions into polarities and binary opposites for ease of use when in fact, it makes things completely unknowable in those terms? Life is not black or white, it is neither this or that, it is not either or. And why must we insist upon apologising to everyone for everything when we think, in our heart of hearts, that we can never be wrong? We are always wrong, (or worse, vague,) in the realm of knowledge, and somehow we are always right? Or worse than that, we seek only to prove or feel as though we, in ourselves, as we exist, are right, and that is the only way that we can validate existence. Is this what discourse is for; nothing but the expression of vanity as the only form of self-knowledge to which we can aspire, and not merely as self-knowledge, but as a justification for existing? Why do we argue? To what end do we argue? It is not for Truth for we know right that Truth is for no man’s ears; it must instead be some perverse reason instead that we have not yet confessed to anyone. We are all master sophists with nothing in mind, always nothing; arguing over meaning when we have eradicated its possibility. And worse still, we hate one another, we hate ourselves and we hate that which we have created, we have made nothing that we can love or cherish, we hate existing and cannot celebrate it and we are unaware of the whole affair. We plead ignorance in the court of meaning; “T’was not I who made this happen; it was the whole rest

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of the human race. I was unaware that it was going on, (because I chose not to become aware or even to help. I merely tried to profit on my own and exploit and validate myself in this way, and I did not know that it would spell out meaninglessness to your ears my lord.” Who is going to stand up for meaning and take into account the entire race as his purpose, and take to task the wretched situation that we have all played a part in acting out? We shall never know unless we find ourselves out to be guilty and to sentence ourselves to hard labour. Our Siberia is cold, tyrannical and hopeless; the best ground upon which to begin!

Why do I think that wretchedness is a blessing? Is it perhaps that the work it heaps onto us is impossible for one individual alone, that the task itself is not for ‘individuals’ as we have hitherto called them? Is it that some significant form of bondage is looming to which we must admit ourselves willingly and knowingly, where we cannot be lazy because the work itself produces its own satisfaction, and that meaning we discover in each and every hit of our hammer is so sweet and succulent that we continue to hit until we recognise that we shall not see the cathedral we are constructing, but our labour has its own significance and that it is good? Many generations will toil at this superior construction, but none will have any interest in it except that the work one is doing is good. But again, this horizon is dull and meaningless; we must instead find our meaninglessness and make friends with it, we must know the thought which contains nothing, the action that contains nothing; we must grasp one another and ask “Am I insane? What am I? If I do not know who I am, who can you possibly be?” We

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have never asked each other, because we only ask ourselves. We must pursue a more Socratic type of value in our questions.

I need a prompt here in order to get started; not from you of course, but there is nothing worse than the blank canvas to cause anxiety in the mind of one who is trying to […] I must ask myself whether this entire discourse is itself merely sophistic argumentation, or whether the entire edifice itself belies some larger project that neither you nor me will be aware of until it has been completed. The problem with this proposal is that I do not intend to finish it until I die, for it is the same with all internal dialogues of this kind; they will continue on into our forever seemingly without end; what will the outcome be? What will the last thought in our minds be when we are on our deathbeds? Do we think, like children do, that perhaps all of life’s secrets, the entire purpose of it all, will not become available to us until the very end? That would indeed negate the condition of having been alive all this while, and the same goes for my book; I shall not know what secrets or revelations it will yield unless I have been in production of them and aware of them for the duration. You should never expect to finish a book if a books is nothing other than a metaphor of life itself; we must not expect to ‘gain’ when something is completed. We must rather be aware of the passing of time during production, and the value that is slipping through our minds in the duration. I am nothing other than a victim of this culture’s Mephistophelian prerogative; that I can be and do whatsoever I like in the interim, but the eventual product will not belong to me. This demonstrates that we neither belong during our existence and neither do we afterwards; what property can we hope to own? I sit here, writing

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away, because the carrot of the entrepreneur is dangled before me by culture; I can be a box office supervisor in the morning, a writer in the afternoon and a husband in the evening. Am I all of these things, or am I none of them at all? Is it even my right to select what I want to ‘be’, when I cannot ‘be’ anything at all if I cannot be that which I am? How are we to discover this knowledge? If we settle with the idea that we can sample various ‘me-identities’ throughout life hoping in vain to find the right one, the one which fits us better than we do in ourselves, then we may never find it. To be sure, if somebody had already discovered how to do this, if somebody had produced a manual in finding oneself, then we would already be there. But in that all of the routes to selfknowledge that we have at our disposal are not ours, we cannot hope for salvation, enlightenment, or whatever else they say that we are searching for; we must do it ourselves for it is our life, and the only understanding that we shall have of property is if we can produce a thing which is ours and belongs to us and which we belong to.

[My first recourse here is to the impossibility of creation of the original, but I shall overlook this argument because I do not need to cover my argumentation from all angles because I am not on trial and I require no justification from anything.]

Our lifetime is an original; to be sure it bears many hallmarks from previous lifetimes, but none in the combination in which we contain them in ourselves. Our uniqueness does not stem from what we are comprised of, (various bits all pre-owned like in a charity shop,) and yet it does in some strange way. But if it is merely the

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combination of things in a certain structure that produces our uniqueness then surely we fall foul of the meaninglessness of argument as discussed above; surely our identity could not be called sophistic? Will we be like de Sadean pleasures; all multiples and new combinations producing new forms and hence only new pleasures? Is life only a pleasure; the pleasure derived from it is through perverse combinations that we are to call our identity? The picture that I have painted only describes the structural composition of our mineral [as it were] selves but does not delve into the condition which this has caused; what will happen when we look simultaneously at both i) structural components, and ii) conditions of existence? Both are reliant upon each other; there is no structure without an existence within which it can manifest itself, and yet there cannot be an existence [as we know it] that is without structure. The wedlock between these two equally important conditions produces meaning although we cannot know of meaning if we look at either one or the other. The things within the structure can be known through their structural consistency, (known as semiotics,) which understands only the conditions of combinations, plugging-in and unplugging within the structure by its components in the de Sadean way shown above. But all of these things consist with time and place and would not have existence without an existent being through which they can become known or even exist themselves. Our being is the host for such a party of objects, and neither the structure nor the being can be pure or independent. We cannot just ‘be’ because we are connected through this structure to an abstract world which both ‘is’ and ‘isn’t’; it is unknowable in the sense that as a being we can know other pure beings because of the imposition of the structure, and yet it is knowable through the

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hearsay of our structural world. Surely, in that we humans are the only beings conscious of this structured gap between us and ourselves and us and the world, can discover the evolutionary purpose or existential meaning of such a strange condition? Who am I to ask questions of either my evolution or my existence, given that I belong to them and not they to me? I was thinking only last week, whilst I was standing in the rain waiting for a bus, that if I were about to die what questions would I ask? I would ask none, for the question ‘Why?’ is for the living, and the dead or about to die it loses its significance. Only if we maintain that we will gain something from death will we continue to ask ‘Why?’ even when we are about to die. We should not ask what we will gain from death, because after the material world there can be no gain, not even a gain of knowledge. Existence will simply forget about us again; we shall slip into unknowing, as though existence were merely the remembrance of Zeit, that we were a memory and easily forgotten. “Grab what you can whilst you are alive is what I say!” Grab whilst you can grab, for the dissolution of the world in the eyes of the dying grabber is a most noxious experience and the last one also. We must be aware that the purpose of existence is somewhere in the material and spiritual realm and it can only be found if we go towards creating it. Creation is indeed what we must discover, but creation in both the material and spiritual sense. Perhaps in this book I am creating my immortality as an endless neurotic system which continues forever without the need for readers or other existent objects. That would be sad if not for the hope that perhaps, somehow, this book will become something other than that which is perpetually in a state of becoming. We must understand that becoming is our state and that it is perpetual,

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spiralling, dizzying and anxious. Becoming is not Being, rather it is a modulation of Being which negates that which it is to be. Becoming, by the implication of the word, means to become something. But by attaching our Being to something, by becomingsomething, we are living some kind of lie, we are believing that something out there can complete us and make us be that which we are. This is foolish, for only without becoming can we be that which we are; either we abandon becoming, or Being becomes its own impossibility. But again this is no question of ‘either’ or ‘or’; we are unfree to choose our becoming, we cannot choose to be, and thus we are. It must be that we are to come to a realisation of our becoming as opposed to attempting to solve it. Our total state is that of becoming, and we must realise what this is, for this is also our Being, but only in the total sense, (i.e. the entirety of our existence is our Being, for only then is it set in stone that that is what we are.) We must for ever be aware of this, that not only are we what we are at each moment, moving from the past toward the future, (and trapped as it were between the two,) but we are what we will be and have been, as though that past and future were forever present in the mind of Being. Our sight is limited as is the horizon in front and behind, but like this book is there a ‘what has been written’, a ‘what I am writing’, and a ‘what I will write’, and if this project stretches across my whole life then indeed will this book be tantamount to life itself, it having been knit to my existence in such a way that I always know the past and yet never the future, and its prospects are infinite in that we will never see the end of each other? At my death bed there will be no recording implements. But saying that am I not already on my death bed? Ever since I was born I have been dying in some way, my parents having caused my death by conceiving

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me. But do I consider them to be my murderers or my creators? Surely there cannot be one without the other, and surely this is the perfect manifestation of the act of creation also being an act of destruction? Destruction is in our nature as that which creates, it is the aboriginal philosophy, the philosophy of Shiva. When you next speak to somebody, try to be the speaker and the listener at the same time, try to hear what you say as you say it. This happens automatically through our representation onto the world of our image, and thus it is especially important that we hear what we say as we say it, for if not we do not acknowledge the mirror. [End paragraph]

[Start paragraph] Think of all the things that we miss between paragraphs, between words, sentences and phrases, both in listening and reading. I wish that I could capture more effectively all of the things that are happening within my conscious mind; don’t be fooled into thinking that everything is here, (although it is in a way, which is why we must read ‘between the lines.’) I think that I am. But does that necessarily make it so? ‘I think therefore I am.’ That makes it so, although it merely denotes the realisation of this fact; it was indeed the case even before you thought that thought. You merely realised it within a thought; it was a piece of self-reflective knowledge, it was knowledge that knows of itself. Is this what realisation is; for a thing to be aware of what it is, as a thing aware of what it is, ad infinitum? Is this our only access to that which is infinite? Is realisation therefore divine? Is this the piece of knowledge which is the totality of knowledge, which binds the material to the spiritual, the divisible to the absolute?

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[End paragraph}

[Start paragraph] I cannot think of what to write in this paragraph, though what passed over in the interim of knowledge seemed to last an eternity. My lethargy strikes me down today; unwashed, unshaven, unfed and undressed though it is six Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock in the evening. It is becoming dark, and this is the meat and substance of how and what I am writing. Laziness need not spell an end to work, for it all has equal value in the eyes of a valueless book. My stomach aches from drinking too much coffee, and my hands are shaking from the same cause. Why did I seek stimulation? Is it because of the lethargy; was I afraid of being unable to write? I should contradictorily seek sedation as a youth and then seek stimulans in my age and then, just then might I be able to find a balance, an even keel in my energy. But we youths always know better than the aged, which is why we become aged, (though we never know any better when we get there.) Is it that youth thinks that it can outwit age, that it can out run it indefinitely, or is it that we hasten it along with our scorn, our continual burning of the life energy at an accelerated rate? I am old in my youth and I hope to grow younger in my age. It can be no other way for somebody like me who has shunned the world of contact in favour of silence, if only that I have sought exterior silence in order to hear more clearly the interior racket. Perhaps in my age might I bring this back into the world, but for whose benefit? Am I even thinking in terms of benefit or gain when I write only in and for my self; I am constructing my very own primordial cave within which I lurk like Jerome in the wilderness. Why is it that our saints and prophets seemed to take some portion

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of time out away from other people? Does anybody try it these days? Am I in my own cave, constructed by my own mind, or am I in Plato’s cave, or in Minos’ labyrinth, or my labyrinth, or am I full of allusions? Is there any Real beyond allusion or illusion, or is that not for us? Who is it for; is the Real for genuine Beings and not for us? I am glad it is the case because the Real must be a bhorring place without thought. We are so content in our disingenuous realities, though we have no content. If I could attach a typewriter to my brain, one which could write simultaneous layers of thought all at once, would it be worth reading? Is it because I am constantly choosing what to write, even consciously choosing to write, that makes this effort valuable? It is quite often that one wishes that one were a simpleton like other people, (but only in that they appear as simpletons to you, which must mean that they reflect that part of you which is a simpleton,) because then one would not be bogged down with these troublesome thoughts which serve no end or function. If I had never learned the word ‘Why’ would I be able to question? It must be the case that vocabulary and education stretch the horizon of what is thinkable, though whether this is a good thing or not I cannot say or know. How far can this horizon stretch? I remember seeing the film ‘Forbidden Planet’ and a device that was in the film was a brain-booster. What I thought was that if one could indeed ‘boost’ ones brain, how far would it stretch and what would be the outcome, (let alone the purpose or value of doing so.) Would this lead to some kind of profound or revelatory new way of structuring ones thoughts and imaginings with incredible depth, or would it merely be a relative experience between minds with no value attached to it? Would there be a horizon to this activity? Or would we find, (as would most likely be the case,) that our

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perpetual and secret insanity, our vast capacity for anxiety, would stretch also? Stretching one’s mind does not escape the fact that one must master it also, for it is a tool that must be used appropriately. If I were to have my brain ‘boosted’ right now, I would go completely off my head, and the most imaginative and inventive thing that I would be able to do is kill myself. The film, rather perceptively, shows that not only does the conscious mind grow in power, but so does the unconscious and it presents the enormous threat of primordial savagery coupled with enormous power. This may be slightly romantic, because we would find that in actual fact we would make ourselves completely redundant in our ability to think with great depth about our worries. It represents no qualitative change, merely an amplification of what is already there. Science will not produce any enlightenment as such. This observation should be coupled with the idea of edging cautiously and sensibly into the void as opposed to tumbling right in, and a delicate mastery of both the material qualities of mind and the spiritual qualities of consciousness must always be in a heightened state of equilibrium. We should not stretch the physical abilities of the mind without developing in tandem our ability to use it, and neither should we become lost in the spiritual world without appreciating its co-dependence upon the physical world. Mastery and slavery are rapidly becoming important concepts to me; I shall think on them this week and attempt to find their obvious coupling with amnesia and anamnesia.

Is there any centre to argumentation? I ask this question of myself repeatedly, and last night was involved in quite a debate with a friend about that very subject. I pointed out that it is quite obvious

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that both persons in a debate are entitled to their opinions, but I also felt that I did not reserve the right to defend my opinion. The reasons that I gave for this position, (and indeed, it was an opinion, and hence illustrating the absurdity of not defending an opinion,) was that I could not claim that an opinion was mine, as though it were a piece of property, and that one cannot use terms of ownership over intellectual phenomena, such as opinions. But if my critique of opinion as a piece of property was also an opinion, had I only so much as demonstrated the impossibility of not asserting an opinion? Was this contradiction of interest? Interest? Do I stand to profit from it? Is there no escaping this sense of capital in mental phenomena? Ought one to resign in the face of such dogma? Again, this argument was but a smokescreen; I sought to be exposed in my opinions and my contradictions to someone other than myself. It is very safe and easy to confess this knowledge to oneself, but to hear oneself express such a notion to another person, to make these thoughts into vocal sounds given over to another person, was something quite different. I wish to be exposed, and at the same time I seek to end such sophistry to argumentation; what is the object of argument and how can one know it, let alone approach it? Arguments stray in thousands of directions and it is almost difficult to remember what the point of the argument, if indeed there was a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pointâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, a peak to which one was ascending. We wish to move toward this point so that we can see further as opposed to merely circling around the base of the peak too afraid to move toward it. This is how argument often seems to me, and I often think of Socrates and the Sophists in such situations. We are all Sophists to some degree, in that we seek to argue because argument in itself is good, and that the purpose for argument is to be convincing, (not

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necessarily â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;rightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.) I, however, cannot convince myself, and perhaps it is my purpose to foist this chronic uncertainty onto other people. Why should one do this, (other than that one cannot help it?) How does one convince somebody of the absurdity of conviction other than by way of another Sophistic trick? Am I there to cause uncertainty, and does my capacity for doubting even the most self-evident things effect other people who in themselves only present the painted image of conviction to their own mind, because their objects of belief are no less illusory than mine? Again, this is not for my knowledge, for all I can see is that they become disorientated in their understanding by the harassment of my endless dogma, but this may be nothing other than a more sophisticated tool of argument; they pursue the argument no further for more than their position is at stake if they continue to do so. My position is not at stake. I do not know why, because my position is not to be proven wrong or proven right for I require no proofs any longer. What is my object to be now, if I require no quantification of facts and that my argument is not for me [yet]? Does my spinning mental disorientation effect others? These are simply questions for myself and they have nothing to do with other peoples other than the image of them as they are presented before my eyes. Is it perhaps some kind of shocking insult to assert so often and in the practise of conversation a casual disregard of other existent things, people? How would my wife feel? (I know that she is not concerned, for the wisdom that we share in each other transcends the meaninglessness of mere conversation, for we are forever at the heart of all things together, we are the centrifuge and all of the objects spinning about it.) Information is the bottom layer of knowledge, (it is a foundation made up of possibles and variables,)

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knowledge appears above information; knowledge is the structural organisation of information in the mind that produces dispositions, opinions and the active engagement with information toward some purpose. Wisdom is the top layer of knowledge, for it is only through wisdom that one can know what one knows. Knowledge is never certain or concrete without wisdom, for wisdom is a knowledge of knowledge; it is no addition of knowledge, it is instead a meaningful knowledge of what one knows. Doubting therefore acts on the layer of knowledge and produces wisdom above it; knowledge begins to test what it itself knows, and produces a new strata where knowledge is known after the fact of doubting. I am afraid of time; it is passing without any human intervention, and it weighs heavy upon my mind like some great transient guilt that sweeps me along with it. The reason for this is that I am ill at home from work today, and my writing is tainted by guilt, and the passing of time is like wastage and emptiness. Last night I had curled up into a ball, trembling with cold and nausea all started by an intense migraine. I always find it necessary to justify my reasons for taking a sick day from work and it almost feels as though the guilt makes one feel better more rapidly or actually prevents one from getting better at all. Will I ever be cured of guilt? What is my world like? My many frustrations should be turned into some great living idol so I could then worship my anxiety in a more genuine sense; as something which is not me. In the same way in this world would there be a terrible idol erected for the voices of other people, for all of those thoughts which do not or did not or have never been uttered by me, but merely slipped into my ear from the devilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breath. He was not talking to me; I eavesdropped at his keyhole, thinking in some crazy way that what he would say, that

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some dark secret, would enable me to become what I am, would make me all powerful, would make me into that which my desire told me about. And now I cannot cease to hear the voice, and now, due to the colours, it sounds as though there are so many; in this way does it sound as though other people are speaking, because there are so many voices and yet, all along, I also believed that it was my voice. It cannot belong to me because I do not yet belong; I can have no property because I am not yet proper. What must happen in this world before I can home to it?

I will write what is most prominent in mind, and what is most prominent in mind is weakness. Is it the case that one who devotes his energies to the domain of thought is also most helpless in the physical world? I know that this is not the case, for I know this most resolutely and clearly when I admit it honestly, although in practise it seems to be an impossibility. Is this because my mental strength is not yet resolute enough, so much so that I still buckle to the fake desires of the world? I think that once the mental domain is developed to a certain distance that the fakeness of the world begins to evaporate, but I cannot as yet assert this with certainty because so far the world has a habit of biting back when you are strongest. Or, is it the case, (as Nietzsche says,) that one likes the idea of having claws when in fact one has none? Can it be that my physical impotence in the world is the manifestation of an absolute lack of will? Is the idea of strength merely an article of clothing that one wears for a fashion because underneath we are embarrassed by our nakedness? Must the concept of strength come from an absolute realisation of what one is, for if not will we be consigned to perpetual embarrassment? If so, then these kinds of

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admissions are worth little, as is the entirety of my works and thoughts. This is fair; if I am reaching out toward my naked embarrassment then perhaps I am coming to understand what I am.

Perhaps this is the first time that my writing has properly come to work with me; it was before always restricted to… …but I wish to see the effects of working in my working environment, because now I cannot tell which work I am doing; the ambiguity has reached such a point that perhaps some spillage will occur either way. Nonetheless, the effect of work on work and work on work might be a point of some small interest. None of the people here, (my ‘colleagues’,) are aware of my labours, and I guess that if I am at my desk then I will be one of them, performing the same functions. But there’s me, writing about the work that they are all doing and that I cannot ascertain which work that I myself am doing. Strange. Who have I kept this a secret from; myself? Perhaps it is I that simply do not know what I am doing, and such blatant improprieties in my working practises and ethics have become manifest to an open degree? I ask myself whether it has been the case that I have merely been missing that which is most obvious about life, and that such knowledge comes openly to others. I cannot know the eventual outcome of such enquiry into other peoples’ heads or even their existence; but what kind of existence is headlessness? But now the voices are stronger, the weight of what other people are thinking, (in the phantom form that it is I that am thinking what other people are thinking,) presses with purposeful force upon the front of my brain, blinding me… …This does indeed feel strange; what is normally confined to my home and private life has migrated to the other half of my identity,

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the secret kept from my other half, (on both sides.) Why did I decide to work whilst sitting at my desk, (ah; it is getting easier now; it is not so impossible to find my purpose here,) a colleague walked past just now and said aloud “Oh; that’s a novel!” not realising his accuracy; perhaps he ought to be congratulated or shamed for having been converted from fleetingness into permanence here. Something feels improper about this, but mischievous at the same time, and then silly for coming to work to work and then e-mailing my work to myself at the place where I work. I am a condensed form of pervert to the point that I am attempting to unravel it all here like one waters down a can of Campbell’s condensed soup. I can be what I want, but what I want is to be and thus I am permanently flawed. I was in a daze earlier, looking at the turning leaves about to fall from their lofty position where they will be downtrodden by us. The colours and shapes were so intoxicatingly beautiful and it was then that I know that my creative vigour had again become stimulated. I wanted to look at creation because I am a creator, and I knew at that moment that I would be able to work here, that my thoughts would be clear and uncluttered. I also thought to myself that I need not struggle with life on a daily basis, because I know too well what I already need to know about so many things that I can afford to leave them behind. I do not need to worry about worries because I have practised long enough now to allow its automation. I can instead become focussed upon my purpose here, and allow my thought to approach more abstract and vague places that everydayness had once prevented my access to. I feel refreshed by this autumnal day, where the light is piercingly clear, clearing my mind like the sun burns away a foggy morning. And yet only two days ago was I so impeded in my

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thoughts and abilities that I could do no work whatsoever, and life felt as though it were at an end. Such variation and fluctuation one should by now be accustomed to. Why is it that we are surprised anew by feelings in our heads we experienced ten million times? Why are we surprised by the arrival of the new day when it is so very common?

Experiment: On Sunday, (which was so dire and dreadful in terms of quality of light and etc.,) I was listening to some music, the harmony of which struck me as melancholic and full of longing. I knew ever so much more at this point that it was indeed a Sunday, and all things had been put in this light. And so on Monday I listen to the same music again and lo; it is utterly and intangibly different; happy, fun, summery and the rest. This clouding of the mind clouds all things that it finds in its ability to touch, the reach of the mind can be an insufferable burden in this respect. So what is to happen when the depth and range of our minds, (and moreover, our wills,) stretches so far and is so voluminous that its clouding and perverting qualities reach out physically and touch us? Is this not terrifying? Is this not the extension of our minds into space? We must be careful to ensure that our creative ability moves in tandem to our wills, and that we are in fact able to extend that which is beautiful into space. I must not lose this concentration that I have indeed built up slowly over the course of the day, and I must improve my memory to the extent that I can remember my excitement and happiness from one day to the next or I am doomed to fulfil the prophecy of this perpetual crisis known as life.

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I have been considering now for some long time the problem of the will and its terrible confines within my pathetic body. If one is a thinker, does this then spell the end to action as Hamlet found? What does thinking achieve if not the lack of action? I consider myself to be an inveterate weakling, but the reasons for me doing so are vague, let alone the reasons for me thinking that I am doing so. This feeling is habitually tested when I go to stand amongst the drug-dealers and prostitutes in Soho waiting for Marianna to finish at her job. They approach me, (the simpletons,) assuming that I too am a drug-dealer, and they threaten me; they want me to leave their turf.

What do I think today? I am back in my trance again, and I hope that I can extend the length of each trance; perhaps there will even come a point where this pre-packaged reality is substituted by a wholly artificial and creative version. But who could really be so sure of their reality as to state which version they were currently existing in? At the bus stop about a week ago I was thinking about the statements of existential states of affairs and about time. Time cannot be said to exist, because things come to exist after the fact of time itself, existence is a quality of those things subject to the physical phenomena of time, (and not just the perception of time as humans experience it. But of course, those things which appear as existing within time are subjected to our temporal experiences of them, and hence their existence as it relates to us may in fact be subject to some difference.)

So, time does not and cannot exist as a physical phenomena; existence is a product of temporal facticity. But how can we speak

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in this way when existence is only a state which we as humans perceive it, (in that all other things exist purely in and for themselves?) Existence is only a ‘matter’ for us, existence itself only ‘exists’ for us; we perceive the quality of existence in things perhaps only because we ourselves do not exist, (at least not in the way that they exist; purely in and for themselves.) Our existence is riddled and worm-eaten with disingenuity; we perceive it happening across time though we ourselves never come to ‘be’ in this fleeting moment, and yet all other things appear in their unchangeable and permanent states. Is it our doom, (or at least in our character,) to experience reality through this frosted glass, never being but merely watching passively the sculpture garden of life?

I talk as though this were some kind of curse, when the optimist would characterise this as a great boon of mankind; this ambiguously solid/transient reality where everything is possible and nothing is actual. And so do we merely fantasise our possible realities because the real is not for us, always unreachable? We have the good fortune of changing always across time, to create our own image for ourselves, and yet do we wish to be solid, we always think that the opposite state of affairs is desirable? We are never content, in other words; we never have content and we can never be content. This changing and mirrored reality is antithetical to what we desire, and yet we have no choice. We cannot understand that the absence of choice equals the greatest human liberty, to be free of choice, as opposed to being free to choose. This is a simple linguistic shift, and yet its existential significance is of the highest importance; perhaps a simple shift in attitude, by simply paying

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attention to the subtleties, can we begin the steep ascent toward realisation. But then again would not a realisation constitute some plateau of thought? Would not this be a cardinal contradiction of the human state of affairs; to be impermanent and melting? By asserting one or the other thing as though it were a maxim is my own idiocy, because we must be aware that the subtleties are occurring between these polarities all of the time, and we must grow accustomed and sensitive to them. We must not impose consistency upon ourselves, for that would be inconsistent with our fluctuations. Do we ever consider that if a book repeats itself that it attains structure, in the way that Bach may have a number of repeats of the same phrase? Why do we consider that, perhaps the writer is merely repeating himself because he has nothing to say? Or perhaps what he is saying can only reach its true form after a certain proportion of repeats and modulations? This is my musicality.

A young man of very sagely qualities sat pensively on his leather sofa late on a Saturday afternoon. With the curtains open he could see the autumn. The moon was full on the 31st October, the lunatics bayed long and hard at the steering wheels of their cars and in the queues of the supermarkets. The young man was reading on his sofa and was listening to music, but as is the way with such dual practise the words slipped too quickly from his mind and he could not understand what he was reading, he was too distracted. The music finished and as it did so the words began suddenly to stick in his mind;

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You are like a flower that grows in the shade; the gentle breeze comes and bears your seed into the sunlight, where you will again live in beauty.

You are like the bare tree bowed with winterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s snow; Spring shall come and spread her garments of green over you; and Truth shall rend the veil of tears that hides your laughter.

His pensive state was not confined to the sofa, as it remained like a goodly friend on his voyage out of the sofa, out of the house, out of the street and out of the borough with his wife toward a party gathering. As he travelled he could indeed feel the voice of the master breathing through his lungs and making sounds in the shape of words directed toward his wife, though she was a figment in the mind of the master himself. This exceptional generosity is the privilege of the genius, that he can allow his body to be used thus at the discretion of the master. To confront this death of the self is an announcement of the life of the master within; he comes in through the channels of the lungs, into the capillaries, around the bloodstream and into our minds where we are fed, our minds produce his words where they are again reborn into the ether where they are absorbed by others partaking in the same process. He speaks without thoughts or interest into her ears, and he can feel his love for her is greater without self-reflection. She is tied up in a knot of worry over money, (one of the worst worries is worry of a third-party,) but the words begin to enter her ears as the noise of her mind begins to stop, and the words then begin to stick on her mind and she can hear the voice of the master. At the party we encounter together a congregation of knots, each of them with a

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mirror in front of them, each of them exasperating the condition with alcohol and ecstasy, a truly Roman congregation in that respect. The centre of the knot, the eye of the storm, is a blackhaired imp; she begins the evening with the outward appearance of politeness and social ritual, but as the devil in the drugs shuts out the masters voice he also tugs at the lineaments of her face contorting them into a smile, (as a hyena smiles,) and a great madness and lunacy descends over her; she spins uncontrollably in the control of this chaotic spirit, severing relations left and right as though she had no eyes other than for her own image. The atmosphere continues to decline and my wife and I are about to leave this strangeness at four Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock. We have been unaffected by this daemon, because the master is still with us in our voices and he speaks only of great love and affection for all things and not merely to us. I then discover that my fragility, the element of my spirit that keeps me in solitude from this world of insanity and violence, does in fact constitute my greatest strength. [This space is for your sake to work out how this can be.] In the same way, my loveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s antithetical disposal toward action can be either her strength or weakness, whether she is in her transcendental aspect or her earthy aspect. We must consider these brothers, this extended family which constitutes all things connected like a web, as a whole, not a yin and a yang, one mad one sane. We are all things together, and our segregation, our hermit-like disposition, (to be with oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own image only,) contrives our utter insanity. Has anybody else discovered the secret in Sri Lankan cookery?

And so it came to pass that the young man stood up from the leather sofa and left his sagely qualities seated upon it, and his

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thought that evening whilst residing beneath the stars behind a window was “I must love her beyond this body”, for of late his body had become no good and was infected and lame. He had not thought in this way before; to be sure, he had come to love his love in spirit beyond his body, though had not understood as yet the body’s perishability. It would fail him, gradually, and would finally give up. He would no longer be able to apprehend his love through his eyes, ears, nose, mouth and brain, and so he decided that he was to put the body, that vessel designed to carry him from shore to shore, into its proper place, and consider how it would be once he had reached his final destination. He must become seasoned for death throughout the whole of life, as though that was indeed life’s purpose; Death. He must come to be Death itself, to realise that which is impossible in the mind, he must find this transcendence right here, now. The great wave of calm rose up from the deep and entwined in brotherhood the tears across his face ‘til they were indistinguishable, and then sank again having erased the anxiety of life as life away. He remembered laying upon his bed, gripped by the bitter cold, feeling Death enshroud his body only lightly but so that he could feel it. He thought that the suicidal must be enraptured with a sudden love of death, a sudden wish and longing to be reunited with it. Suicide had become ennobled and his earlier thoughts upon it were thoroughly Christian in their inception. He considered life to be but an improvement of memory; each moment passing was a remembering of what he was right up to the point where he becomes complete and is finished with life. He considered that the voice of the master is all things; it is each thought, each neurosis, each psychosis, each action and inaction in

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life; it is all things. But we cannot conceive of all things, for we are destined to only conceive of each other.

There is no such thing as inaction; it is a fallacy. Each time one does not decide to act or react to a thing, one still commits an act. But in what does that act consist? Is it a profound weakness to respond to the situation at hand, does it show a lack of wit or quickness in the mind? (We all know how it feels to think â&#x20AC;&#x153;If only I did that or this or some other thingâ&#x20AC;?.) The Japanese would say that one must act within seven breaths. Or what if one who refuses to act; does he play dead, or does he wait for an opportune moment to strike, or does he admit his absolute cowardice in the face of the world? In this whirlpool of action and reaction we must consider the element of desire; if somebody provokes you to action, they desire that their desire be satisfied and yours also. There is no escaping this connexion, for even our inaction displays adequately our desire. Did you ever consider that perhaps the person who is provoking you is also an inveterate weakling or worse, an idiot? An idiot is worse because he is capable of so many things that you are not. And if you fear the weakness of your body, if you feel the melancholy of your perishable life, the idiot will satisfy your desire.

I feel, at each moment of my life, that there will not be enough moments. But only when I discover the love of work do these thoughts evaporate for they are but imps that prevent the actuality of work and hence of life. I am recently obsessed with a [fanciful] desire to know how other minds have functioned. I am not concerned with whether other minds exist, have existed or will

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exist; I leave those questions to others. (Because I am able.) I want to know of the modulations of consciousness and explore its regions, its riches. It occurred to me that consciousness was a very different place before television, before photography, before equality of rights, before Christianity, before writing, language etc. We then enter the dark ages, not dubbed that way through some ethnic pun, but the absence of evidence. Any crime might have past unnoticed at that time for the world of recording instruments, the synthetic assistants to knowledge and memory had not yet been discovered. What was thought like before Christian morality came on the scene? How was it like to organise the memory like the ancient Greeks had practised? My mind has indeed been modulated through the course of generations way back into the dark ages, and how am I to tell what knowledge lays there embedded and undiscovered? I must travel toward the dark ages, for this is the metaphor of illumination and enlightenment; we must discover what dead things live within us. My sense of beauty is contrived; it has been shaped for so very long by the minds of so many people all looking to define beauty through their living conception of it. How does this affect the way that I look at my love? How many other loves of other people do I see? Is this a terrible and undisclosed schizophrenia of the sort that only strong psychedelic drugs can unveil? And what of the way in which I look at her; not only through this complicated and historical matrix of seeing that allows both me and all lovers to see her all at once, but in this process my self is under erasure, I become all the faces in history and nothing at all. Even this last sentenceâ&#x20AC;Ś

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Is this anxiety though, or is my love’s sweet melody multiplied and refracted into a million eyes looking at a million loves all at once; a trillion sensations connected across aeons, a massive and unprecedented brotherhood of lovers; a celestial opposite of de Sadean permutations of pleasure? This is the height of desire; there is no anxiety for this is not the terrible dishonesty of feeling. This is love that soars above the body and into time; this is love beyond that which is perishable.

I shall always look at my love and love her because all others will look at her with me, forever, always looking at loves with love. Each lover after me will revive me with each loving glance, will remember my love and the love of all those before me. This is what I think about when I lay under the stars behind a window with my love’s warm breath across my chest; I rejoice in her life, in her each and every breath.

I am walking across an ornate Persian carpet that is laid out across an oak floor; I am unfamiliar with the location, and thus I conclude that I do not know where I am. I ask a seated gentleman what my name is, and he calls me by it, though I am still no wiser as to what it is. (Otherwise I would have written it down.) Why did I not bring a pen? As I leave this house I can see twelve golden kettles sitting in a semicircular pattern on a round courtyard made of flagstones. A little girl is counting them, although she cannot count past ten. “Ten-Two” she keeps exclaiming at the peak of her voice, and the sundial in the centre of the courtyard corroborates this. I continue onwards into the garden, and notice as I pass that the girl has no face, and that each kettle is filled with golden coins. The girl casts a

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golden coin from each of the kettles into a well each time she exclaims the time. I am now in the garden beyond the courtyard, although everything in the courtyard appears to have vanished and I can see in front of me a huge oak tree. Approaching the tree to stand in its shade, I notice that the shadow of the tree is not a shadow; it is a tree-shaped hole in the ground pointing at ten-two. I cannot see to the bottom of this hole, and so I decide not to venture inside, rather I am drawn toward a stile leading into a meadow. Inside of the meadow there are twelve goats, two of which are somewhat separate from the rest and are grazing upon a bush of some kind, whereas the others are eating the long grass. Life was always this way, was it not? Can you remember the quality of the light in this field and the peculiar nostalgia brought about by the images in this garden?

Does a night in Egyptian land ordinarily romantically emancipate its libidinous, lascivious yesterday? Or is it a question of time passing in the manner of one day is followed by the next, followed by the next, and did you spot the game yet? My cries lift up toward Horus and her sun, rhythmic prayers and chanting are heard further away in the ears of God.

One must of course be aware that all practitioners of all religions are clutching at partial truths like images in the fog. Do they realise that all religions as they have sprung up all around the world are the same? If they all worship, (as they purport to do,) the great oneness of God, no matter which name they ascribe to him, then how could they distinguish between names and practises of religions if not only as a secret confession that their own understanding is

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somewhat corrupt and inadequate? Oneness cannot be divided, for it would not be One, even for the sake of understanding. God cannot be understood through piecemeal truths, for He would be all piecemeal truths and their understandings, as well as those who are understanding or not understanding them at the same time, for He is oneness. Neither could we distinguish Good and Evil from God, for He must be both at the same time, as an admission that our understanding, weak and subject to prejudice and lack of subtlety, cannot accept the sameness of difference. It is humans, as the divisible parts of God, who divide, for they are in the divisible aspect of Him and they act accordingly. But to divide is to make mad, to hinder understanding, not enhance it. We worship our science as an endless understanding of piecemeal truths without recognition that they are useless divisions of a useful whole. Our societal ‘Reason’ would insist that many small understandings is the only acceptable comportment to knowledge that we may aspire to, but only because of the vested interests of those who cannot understand, or allow their understanding, access to the oneness of the all. To what end is science? To no end; to the infinite spinning of partial truths that will never equate our understanding with the Truth of all of them. It is a denial through practise of that which is most apparent to our logic, though hidden from theirs beneath a many-layered conceit. Why is it that we should buckle and justify ourselves before their anaemic ‘wisdom’, when we already know, (though too deep down to believe,) in what we truly know of them and of us? There is no struggle here and they cannot harm, for their power is as piecemeal as their understandings and aspirations.

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It is important to bear in mind the great game, for if not we are liable in ourselves to miss innumerable pleasures and joys, and in missing them, as a husband misses his wife, will we grow tired and painful. How can the game of one be conferred to another? Is there some form of transmittance of substance through words between minds, or is it that the game itself is contained in the words, and their encryption has little to do with either party? (Is it fair to say that neither the speaker nor the hearer is in understanding of their diametric role, let alone in control of their function toward one another?) Say what is to be said and let it go, for once slipped from the mouth it cannot be readmitted to its housing, (not even through regret or apology.) What is an apology? Can you function without apology; can you retard the need to placate others for what you think that you have said? Perhaps you ought merely to listen closer to that which you have said, and be both the hearer and the speaker. I want to speak about my own conceit, (for I know not of yours, and all attempts to criticise the conceit of other humans in my words has merely been self-reflecting, as has your interpretation of it.) I am conceited, vastly, and it is how I can make rude assertions such as these that I can get by. Why should I seek to insult myself, if not that I conceive that all things and all voices are contained within me, and thus the only subject that I can slander is myself? That is the very nature of the conceit, and I accept it thus. Am I attempting to break from this illusory world of illusory other minds and voices, or do I seek to bolster it further so that it is watertight? Can belief be this strong, or will there always be something more potent and cunning that will slip between the seals of the self? I have undergone a great many changes of late; I have experienced the fear of death and the fear of love, I have understood love

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without and within the body and the sensuous world, I have experienced great frustrations and great enlightenments all together. Can I now see what all of these things mean together and not merely as subdivisions of one life? Am I able to distil the voice in each which is guiding me toward whichever objective I cannot know? I am painfully aware that when somebody speaks to me, especially when I consider them to be of the lowest human worth, that their words must be received in the correct fashion, lest I am to miss the example or instruction that is being conveyed to me, by which source I am still yet to encounter. Can you so distance yourself from your superficial image of the world and the things that you value within it in order to receive the voice no matter where it comes from? Everything from now on must become at least a double take; a thing must be heard, reheard, and reheard again until the content locked inside of it makes itself prostrate before your understanding. Perhaps seven times is a beginning, but let us start initially with twice. A person is either addressing you or addressing you, (the first exists within the illusory world of representations, the matrix which forms your reality, and the second takes place between consciousnesses, where the individual rescinds in favour of the receptor or consciousness itself.) Do you listen, or do you listen? The subtlety between the two cannot be discerned by those unwilling to accept the basic deception of their reality, as they guard it like a child guards its favourite marble. Some people are able to receive this doubling-up of meaning within everyday encounters, and you may have noticed yourself thinking about very ordinary things said to you that later seem either bizarre or poignant. But this is merely the beginning, for the entirety or reality has been [at least] doubled-up, and thus small glimpses must

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become vast tears and gashes in this surface until one cannot help but hear with two ears, see with two eyes, think with two hemispheres. One day I saw a woman at the market who was about to buy two small stuffed toys from the market vendor to give to her two children. I quickly stepped in front of her and bought them for myself.

A monk was walking from one town to the next and paused to refresh himself at a shrine by the roadside. He sat down on a squarish stone after brushing aside a small lizard and some ants, uncorked his flask and began to drink a little water. He noticed that another monk had paused to do the same and, after brushing aside a few ants and a small lizard, sat on a squarish stone and began to drink. They both sat on either side of the shrine, each beneath a hand of the sculpted God. The monk got up from where he was sitting, and walked toward the other monk, who it would seem, had decided to do the same. The monks said “To which town are you travelling?” To which the monks said “I am travelling to the shrine of our God which lies in the depths of those foothills over yonder.” The monks affirmed that that was where they also were going, and that they should travel there together. A little further along the path, the monks came across an old blind man who was sitting by a pond. The man, wizened with age, exclaimed as they passed, “Excuse me! Can you possibly stop to help me repair my shoe which has become broken on this rough terrain?” Answering him, the monks said “Indeed we shall help you good fellow, though we are two and not one.” “But I hear only one voice; is your partner mute?” “No, we are both speaking to you, though you can hear only one of us, for we speak at the same time.” The old man

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retorted; “But you with eyes can tell that you are two, but in my blindness I cannot tell. Which of us is correct?” The monks replied; “Were this a democratic society, we would be right for there are two of us and one of you. But for the sake of fairness shall we assume that you are disadvantaged by your blindness and must rely upon us to be your guide in this matter?” The old man answered; “Indeed you may, but I assert that you are disadvantaged in that you see two and cannot hear only one. Allow me to be your ears in this matter for the sake of fairness, and I shall guide you toward an accurate picture.”

I am so full of delusions that I cannot tell if this assertion is one of them! I think that when I converse with another person that the mode of my self is that of utter confusion. Do others become ensnared in this web and begin to spin with me, and can there be any centre to something that is whirling? Again, that is not for me to know, only that I know of my own great confusion, and that I am considered a fool to a great many people who enter into arguments with me, and therein I confess that “I have no point to make” or something equally as meaningless and frustrating. People, I have found, have worked out their reasons for particular beliefs and particular postures and attitudes very well. But why? Why does a person need to understand their reasons when reasons are the meaningless justification for an action that one is completely uncertain of? One should not give out reasons unless they do so only in that they are testing them. Do we attempt to persuade others to accept our unacceptable actions by reasoning, or do we merely make it completely apparent that we do not know who we are, let alone why we do the things that we do? This is the difficulty that I

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face when I ask a person to give me their reasons for a particular ethical stance; they answer me. In providing an answer they demonstrate the falsehood of their position, the weakness of their belief, and the shallowness of their knowledge. Why would you answer a shallow question with a shallow answer? Is it not better to provide something greater than the ordinary and very ritualised relation of arguments with a person? I do not wish for my curiosity to be satisfied or my ignorance to be enlightened, for I know full well that a moral question can have no meaningful answer. So why provide one and merely add to the confusion when one could expand one’s wisdom in such a situation rather than demonstrate one’s ignorance? One should welcome attacks on all sides so that one can see what truth one really holds and not the ones one merely seems to hold. In defending a falsehood one becomes committed to that which is false if only to save face and create the illusion of consistency. We live upon hills like the Italians, and only later is it that we realise how lonesome we are, and how difficult it has become to access other people. But this can easily become converted into an energy that allows us to traverse hill and mountain to discover life once we cease to defend our borders. We have lived within the walls for so long that we can neither remember the worth of the thing we protected or even the existence of that which lies beyond it. Why be greedy for an inch when one can have a mile? We do not even have the first inkling of why it is we are defending what we are defending, because we have alienated it through the peculiar and improper relation that we have constructed with it. We have converted into property that which should have been at liberty, and it has withered away and is dying. Who can say in honesty that their ‘reasons’ for defending a cause

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or moral or position has a meaningful meaning and not merely an empty posture related to the construction of one’s own image? A meaning cannot be meaningful if it exists only in ‘looks’, for we cannot privilege one sense above another with a credulous reason. To defend an image is vanity and vanity is meaninglessness, wretchedness and awfulness. [Despite the current ‘cult’ of the image, where awful and wretched people defend the worth of the image in order to defend the worth of their own image, ad nauseam.] We should laugh at our image, for it is comical, a sham, and only then will we begin to discover the meaning of the image, the depth of superficiality. [And likewise, (as in all simple wordreversals,) depth can be superficial.]

The soul departs the body upon exhaling. The self is but a stain which blots out the sun.

Am I fair to ask such questions and to demand such demands from myself if indeed my Self is not truly something which belongs to me? Am I asking my Self to prove its worth to me, or do I hope that it will budge given a weighty enough argument? I am still too much in battle, for it should be evident to all who look that these problems can only arise in the battlefield. And do not poppies grow upon the dead buried upon this earth?

Were I to ask nothing of myself would I not find that my Self would ask things of me? Would I be asked to perform circus-tricks of passion at its unruly demand? But would I become peaceful in this camaraderie? Would my soul be permitted to rest?

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My life is a cup perpetually being filled with wine. It is full and being filled all the time and yet it is never spilt.

Was Nietzsche jealous that Wagner credited the philosophy of Hegel and Schopenhauer above his when indeed, they were best friends?

My body is cold in the day and my mind collects dust. My energy is waning, my outlook becomes gloomy. Is it merely the weather that causes feelings, or must we look beyond these feelings to discover the state? I believe that our idolisation of feeling causes us to be interned in a prison so delightful in which one can be forgotten. Feeling, emotion, is not to be idolised. It masks our eyes from the life, and yet it is the portal through which we can enter into the life. We must not find our rest inside of the emotions and neither must we limit our desire to the constrictions of feelings. This would cause us to be stunted in our spiritual evolution. We would know that our destiny is not for us, for we are preparing it for all others. We must not seek to satisfy the limited desires of the self in this, for we will stunt all others in their destiny, confusing ours with theirs. Destiny is not our property, for we are merely preparing the ground for it. I am a step in a ladder. My body is a cobble in a path. We should be watching for the private life of words. We must become aware of the charitable life of our actions; hear the words we say as we say them, experience the action of actions as we make them, see that which we are writing at any one time. What is happening in Reality is always at least one step ahead of us, at least one remove from our understanding. How can this be

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changed if not to realise that it is the ‘Us’ which causes the remove?

My house is a mess; the builder has caused this mess whilst he is building. My mind is distraught and unclean; the mess comes to dominate my consciousness and I am resisting it. I struggle against the mess and then I grow more tired as I see that cleanliness is unobtainable. I do less. I become a slob, resisting the conditions of my life only inside; the lack of external vigour creates an accumulated weariness of the soul. And yet, does not excitation produce such a disturbance as to be just as nauseous? There is, to be sure, an evenness existing between the two, (which are not two at all,) which is comprised of both images fixed together in a unified state, a ‘three in one’. What is this third eye for, if not to provide the unification of perspectives? In splitting things into their polarities do we not unhinge and schizophrenise the subtleties of life? And whose mind is yet keen enough to detect subtleties and revel in such ‘small joys’? If we look only at opposites we do indeed miss the object of Reality, the three in oneness of the mystics, and we ourselves are drawn between poles like a yo-yo; coupled with emotion this sensation is nothing other than that of dizziness and motion-sickness.

I am the maker of my own torment in this vortex of mental phenomena. I am drawn to the feeling which is but the surface manifestation of something great; one needs to get out of one’s own depth. We can all cope with the associated emotions, allowing ourselves to become desperate or impassioned as if it were the song and dance of life, lost in the illusion of being lost in feeling when

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we merely dance about the safely walled garden of our charted regions. This dance is merely the manifestation of our profound fear. We must be lost in fear when to be lost in joy is far nicer. (In my other words, fear and joy are both the same. If you have a subtle mind you would have noticed this long before I pointed it out. (But does this mean that I did not notice it until it was too late?)) This was encoded; the contradiction is not merely an error, for it belies the secret key to understanding. If I did not let slip the contradiction would not even I have noticed that I was right in being wrong and wrong in being right? We must rejoice that our language systems permit such errors! Imagine the logical language which permitted no such hidden ground to become uncovered, (would it already be disclosed, or does language limit the horizons of knowledge?) If language delimits the horizon of knowledge then why do we not merely study all possible permutations and combinations of words until we had a complete vocabulary? Would we still be hidden from the world behind it? Would we miss an enormous plane of existence? I desire silence amid these voices that speak to me about contradictory things and about desires and longings. If only they all meant something!

Note: If you have read avidly so far, vigorously and with enthusiasm, then you have lost touch with me. It should be apparent to you by now that I am struck down within a lethargy and with the potency of a pander. I am trying to be something that I am not, and the problem is that I am succeeding! A project borne out of wishing to expose myself merely ends up in becoming an artful parody of

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that which he secretly longed to be? Can this be correct, or did the mask slip before now? And where in this matrix of truth and lies does your opinion on the matter count toward the pronouncement of my sentencing? Nice wordplay (?) At any road, I must concede that I wish my avarice for writing were as determined for yours in reading; I consider it to be of luck when a person is possessed by the energy of a zealot or a person in a religious fervour or the like. I must have put my energy elsewhere, perhaps for safekeeping so that it could not be stolen by those parts that would cause my ruin or my success.

I have spent a great deal of time in contemplation of late; I consider this book an awful lot. (Nice wordplay (?)) At any road, my intuition instructs me to write, to listen to the teacher who has taught me all of this perplexing knowledge with a dry wit, and to continue along the burdensome road that I have selected with one hand tied behind my back. What I shall do now is to lay on the sofa and do nothing and see where this performative leads my desire; probably to the opposite! I will lay there, body easing into the lines of the couch, my mind beginning to turn faster and faster until my body becomes animated with an agenda and I begin writing something again. But when I am at the writing I think about the sofa, about the relaxation it offers to my piss-poor attitude. It allures like the dance of Salome. What rubbish; it is a sofa and nothing more! But I am likewise attracted by the bed; in the mornings it offers such distraction from the action of the day. One must not become tied to it; for what reason does one need rest? One

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does not need to rest like one does not need to hibernate. It is a myth that a person needs sleep; energy produces energy and not tiredness. It is a lack of energy that causes tiredness and the desire for sleep. But why does my body demand such things of me such as laziness? I am now becoming so angry at myself that I have become distracted…

…and so I was distracted for a time, but it was a fashion only and without substance. What must we do to remain perpetually entertained? Or is entertainment but the absence of labour? Must think something constructive or my industry is to become my entertainment. I have slept too long in this life already, as though I were dead and waiting for something to change of its own accord. I know this not to be so, for I am the producer of Reality, and if it is to change at all then I must change it from the point of production and not according to some backward system. I have become stifled by a strange cocktail of emotions that I have encountered on many occasions. Chris would say something like “If you saw a thing that you never saw before, something unrecognisable, how would you remember it?” That is my face in the mirror, part of everything. What I will do tomorrow, (in that now there is no time, but tomorrow there will be plenty, always plenty,) is to rise early, to work when the energy is still fresh in my brain and my loins, not like now where there is no time and no energy. I continue to write now merely to add quantity to my works, and because I shall not remove any parts it will become perfectly evident to myself and to others that I am extremely lazy.

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Are there some things in this book that must be left unsaid? I often think of what restraint the poet must exercise not to reveal his meaning to all and sundry, but this ability is not afforded to everyone. Most of us will give up all too readily the meaning that we have discovered in order to call it ours, to put our intellectual rights of property to it before anybody else gets there and does the same. It is like the space race in this respect, over keen to own something that we as yet do not understand or even want, only that we do not want someone else to have it. Why must we force certain ideas out like a caesarean birth before they have had the chance to have an impact? I conceal as much as I reveal, and it must be this way in this game of mine. I entertain my Self by frustrating it constantly into unknowing by allowing it to know what I want it to know. My self is the reader; so what of the author? Who has put this information into me in such a bizarre and perplexing way so that I must stumble around myself according to a set of laws that do not work or even exist? Everything said must leave everything else unsaid. Will I or can I expose myself or my purpose, to myself or to my reader? I think to myself quite often that the most obvious impediments to realisation are in fact the most difficult to expose for exactly the same reason. We must indeed become more simple if we are to understand complexity, like a child often knows that which is hidden from you. Dread is what I feel; dread in the future, in the past and in the present. But it could so easily become its opposite if onlyâ&#x20AC;Ś

â&#x20AC;ŚI have now decided to disappear, to slowly deflate inside myself as though all the air were coming out of me until I shrivel up, and then I breath in, the life enters my body and the typing speeds up

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until I am full and exhale again, the content of the sentences are influenced by this process. We must give some degree of authorship to our breathing and other aspects of our physiology, because at present I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think that we do. The things which happen in my mind are merely things; donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you know that? If I can merely stop thinking and merely follow the numerical order laid out for me in the keyboard, then I will write that which I am supposed to write, rather than bumbling around the few shallow things that enter my mind, if I did only this then this book would be short and would have content of sorts. But now it does not have content for it only is content if it is being written, if it is perpetually becoming and never fulfilled. I will have a funeral for this book when it is dead; a life that was always coming to be, but never made it until it became. Death is a marriage between us and the infinite; it should be celebrated wonderfully, not mournfully; as though if we could have had it our way the dead would still be living in misery like we are, and we would be content at having extended our sadness to others. What do we hope to achieve in being alive other than the knowledge that we are not dead? Has anybody discovered what it is? I am still not awake with my heavy eyes and heavy limbs and heavy heart. I must start this day again and do it right, do it some right, give it justice in my powers. I halt all those. Silliest thing is that I know; I know the purpose of everything, the meaning of everything. It is hidden behind all of these words, only you shall have to decipher it out of the words because the words are the medium by which it is conveyed and concealed all at once.

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There is as much truth in this sentence as there is in the entirety of the Bible.

There is as much truth in this sentence as there is in the last sentence and in the entirety of the Bible.

I will consider myself fortunate if I arrive at one idea that I consider to be of value in this writing session. [End]

[Break] It is almost painfully obvious that my current distemper can be of great use to me now. The stress and strain of the previous few weeks has accumulated long enough now to provide some kind of break, some realisation about what is going on right now and why. It is very difficult to try and pierce through the top layer of worries to see the mechanism at work beneath it; difficult because one has the tendency to become identical to the worry, to confuse oneself with only a fragment of Reality. It is true to say that I have lost my centre, that I have drifted into a region, filled it, and I am homesick away from the centre. I am tied up into a knot and the thoughtbarriers have re-emerged in their original form. One must not be too cocksure about the permanence of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s achievements, for they are too easily snatched away or forgotten. What happened when I confronted Chris earlier? It felt as though all of my complicated, neurotic and immature parts fell silent in his presence, as though in their silence I could perceive how unruly and petty I still am. I could not hear their gossip in the presence of Chris. I did indeed need to see him at that time; something lodged deep inside my reason had instructed me to drink at a fountain and not from a

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gutter. Here was a man so perfect and harmonious that the tempest of my Self was irradiated in the sun and brought into light; I could hear my own voice at that time and I could also hear the succinct voice which indicates correctness. My mind is trained in such a way that it has become stunted and ill tendered. But is not a Bonsai tree continually restricted in its growth in order to become more beautiful? We cannot approach our nature in all sincereness, for we must always be laughing. And now I shall allow my mind its rapture for I should indeed be most foolish to take any of these things in any degree of seriousness. This entire project is my folly; I run around and chase my tail; for what? Who needs a what when the object is indeed itself? The dog chases its tail because it chases its tail. I write these sentences because I write them; any further justification or existential positioning must be done at somebody elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expense and never at mine. I am a fool, and I am not the reason-requiring type. I am still yet to stand face to face with what is in front of me; I have not seen the light, only its halo around the eclipsed moon, the solar flares of life that are restricted in our vision to be perceptible only in the periphery, always in an obscured or protected view. One must enter into the trance of the mothers, one must slip from oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own view, disappear, begin to trust in what lies beyond the Self, affirm that it exists, deny the denying, become the pure state of contradiction without the drag inflicted by the identity, begin to move without effort at first upon land, in a ship, a chariot, and on the water itself. I do not need to be dragged back into the body, for it is a perishable thing which, when left to its own devises, will impinge upon the higher functions of the mind in order for you to not forget about the body. It will always remind you of its presence, and thus you must indeed

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acknowledge its presence and its factors upon everything. But it must have a place; it is a vehicle, a medium through the ether of life and that which is liveable and perceptible. It is a great ship that will depart from one bank and arrive at another with every possible guarantee of doing so. It is incredible in its uniformity of purpose; it lives and it dies. Allow it to do so, for it requires no effort of consciousness to decide upon either fact. I do not mean here the duration of the life or the factors upon which it depends, what I mean rather is that the body lives and then dies, and that this is its basic character that we can understand without factoring or moving into other branch topics. Its character shapes consciousness and causes it to Be. We are aware only of that which we are aware of and, in this strange and as yet undefined ‘place’ of reality, what we are aware of comes to exist through this basic character of consciousness. You could say that you are not aware of a cancer but yet it exists. But the ‘cancer’ will not exist, will not enter into the picture of reality until it is disclosed to you, though effects will happen and they will be perceptible in reality, though ‘cancer’ itself will not be in reality. Before cancers were discovered they were not part of reality. People would die although there was no reason why, it was not a reality. Can you understand my [confused] point? Where does the discrimination lie between existence and reality? A cancer can exist, and yet it can not be a part of reality? (Premature answer; reality is that which resides in an undisclosed state before our faculties. Existence comes before the fact of reality, it produces reality. Things which exist can come into the picture of reality only when we become aware of their existence. Reality is a picture painted across the surface of reality as we become aware of things; the way in which we become aware of things will taint the way in

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which they exist inside of our reality. We can only know of existence through reality, and we can only know of reality by existing. Reality is all that exists to us, and it is produced from out of the fact of our existence. All things in the world, no matter what their state of existence is, can have a reality, although in most cases reality comes not from being conscious, but Being, and so unlike the way in which our reality consists that we can never know it or know of it. We must merely accept that existent things have a reality of sorts. Our reality emerges from our Being, from our existence, and then from our human mode which would include sense awareness, perception, self-consciousness, et al, and then further away down the river, various causal factors which operate upon the conditions of our existence. This is not a tree-diagram that I am describing. Because Being must come first we know, but if some thing exists it both exists a priori and a posteriori. Both instances reflect upon one another and become a) the same thing, and b) mutually dependent, of mutual significance. This is a harmony achieved between objects which form relationships, and it is from various balances such as this that consciousness comes from. This is rather a strange network of things that we do not consider to be one above another, even the first cause which is Being, because Being is a priori and a posteriori in the same way, (God cannot exist without us, (for we cause Him to exist in heightening our sense of reality which causes Him to exist,) and we cannot exist without God.) Both things come to cause each other in a very strange network. What I must do now is to hold the image, the thought of this strange network with these strange abstract objects clearly in my mind or I shall lose grip. Some thoughts are so slippery that one must hold absolute concentration and not be

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disturbed. Our preferred position for viewing such things, indeed all of life, must be from the very centre, the part that never moves, which is our path to enlightenment. One must find a visionary state wherein we can conjure up such images and scrutinise them properly. What was I saying before? Ah, now I have it! All things have some form of reality even though their conditions of reality bear no resemblance to ours. This must mean that their reality bears little or no resemblance to ours also. If these things exist, if they possess being in themselves, they must have reality. Reality is not produced only from sensory organs or the like; it is a product of existence and is not exclusive to humans. As a stone exists, (in a different modulation to the way that I exist,) and it has reality in its possession. But as my reality is determined by the conditions of my existence, so is a stone’s reality defined by its conditions of existence. We must not here confuse consciousness with reality, for they are distinct. Consciousness is a product of self-aware beings, and our reality is defined by our perception of it, our ability to perceive it. If one cannot perceive reality does not, as in the stone’s case, mean that you do not possess reality. A stone is not aware, but we can become aware of the conditions of our existence and become conscious of reality. (To which degree is subject to each consciousness.) We may be aware of kicking a stone, for it enters into our reality through our awareness of the action. The stone’s reality is tied to its existence in its own way and we must not be tempted to think that a stone does not have a reality because we are unaware of it.

If I did not exist would the stone exist?

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It would not be complicit with my mode of being to need this question or indeed any other thing. My reality, being tied to my existence and to my Being, would be of another mode to that of an alive human Being. But have I already not said that existence is a product of consciousness being trapped between space and time? Perhaps we should further discriminate between mind and body and exist that they have separate but tied realities and existences. What if I could say that I, (my body,) has the existential qualities of being an object, essentially the same as a stone. My conscious brain, though tied to this â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;stoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, has another mode of existence. But in that they are tied, would they not therefore have a unified mode of existence? It is difficult to say, I am too confused and I am not clever enough to understand what I am saying. Consciousness, however, can be said to have different existential conditions which are subject to awareness, to reality, though not a part of it. The possibility of saying that my consciousness holds the quality of infinity, (something without beginning or end,) in full knowledge of the fact that we are temporary things, is testament to consciousness maintaining a different set of existential criteria to that of the body. Even if one is to say that, because consciousness is a product of having a body, it is therefore restricted to the same qualities of existence. But the body has a predictable beginning and end whereas consciousness does not. Or is it perhaps that consciousness is merely limited in its perceptions and cannot conceive of its beginning or its end?

I have reached a point beyond which I cannot conceive; I must have found the thought barrier that was holding me, yet to be discovered. It was residing within close proximity to this section of

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the map and I nailed it; I suddenly felt that I was at the horizon, the edge of the world, and snapped out of my trance. The sentences above are not what they say they are; they are an investigation of something different to what the characters and words appear to be. They are not merely an investigation, either. They are alive with purpose only they are concealed to you behind â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;meaningsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. It is too easy to see merely structural components; characters, words, combinations, sentences, paragraphs, et al. These things were in your eyes before the words entered them, and thus you were biased, you were constricted from perceiving my purpose. You must go and untrain yourself before you come to read me. Your mind is not tuned into mine, though it can be done. (I will not say.) But it is plain to see that you are both an encrypter and a decoder. But which is which if you really think about it? Of course you missed my meaning, because you encrypted it into your own meaning and decoded it into your understanding. That is the basis of your perceptual matrix. So we must establish how our realities collide through this filter and discover what this means. How do we establish a relation together unless we are both willing to demonstrate for each other what we are? Is this entire text merely a welcoming gesture, an introduction? One must come to understand what this book means and what this book means. It looks one way, (as you look to me, (as you looking at me,) but it looks another, (like I look to you. (Like I am looking at you.) We are somewhere in between, but we need to discover where we both exist together in between. This is the strange and complicated process of relations between people that we simply must come to understand. If you were to sit and study this book in a way that lends true understanding, a mystical insight into yourself as something or

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somebody else, or as something else which becomes part of yourself, an understanding which comes from the centre and not from the periphery, an understanding which is in the direct light and not in the shadow, then indeed we will have achieved something. “And how would you repay such a gesture?” said you. I reply “I shall meet you as you looking at me.” I think that people who have had a mystical insight into a religious text or have made a mystical artwork of true genius have been somewhere close to this form of ‘contact’. It is at this point that the division between bodies disintegrates. This is where identity is left on the other side of the mirror. It is this glimpse which has dictated everything to me; it has dictated everything in this book, although the form in which I have taken dictation is taken from my interpretation and is thus encrypted. I myself am constantly trying to decode what is being dictated to me and what is being written down, and it is exceptionally difficult to do so. But try to think that when I go astray, or when I ramble, or when I get confused or repetitive, that in fact this is a red-herring; there is something of value at work in these instances and they are to be scrutinised. They may have outwardly one form, but inwardly they have other forms, and these forms are to be distilled within the mind of the reader if he takes my instructions at face value and without reason. If a person were to read this book exactly as it is, he would then understand me. But as he looks at this book not exactly as it is, (he does not look at it as it looks at him from the plane of Being,) he does not understand me, he understands himself. I am not yet part of the equation, so to speak. But this narrow outlook can be altered if one begins to take me literally, if one silences the interior voice and allows the exterior one to speak through the interior one.

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I am enlivened again. How silly I am! I visited my brother in his new house at Twickenham recently. A rugby match had just finished and the roads were swarming with people, and in each front garden of each house a caravan was parked selling hot food to the passers-by. I suddenly noticed what a strangely medieval scene this was; a bizarre carnivalesque pilgrimage where people would profit from the pilgrims. It may as well have been Easter day in the dark ages. Would not people ply their trade on the pilgrimsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; route? We are still of the same mind; kebab shops near pubs, 24 hour shops near night clubs, souvenir shops near tourist routes, breakfast bars on commuter routes, etc. I remember exactly what I was thinking at this time yesterday, but you can read it four pages ago. I love you. Being able to see into the future is simple; one who abides by the scheme of things is the visionary; he would not change the course of things if he could see the future, rather he would appreciate them as something concrete and cast. Why would he want to change things? Therefore one who abides by the course of things is also able to see it, making him a visionary. One who struggles and attempts to change things not only fails to change that which is solid, but restricts his sight to those things that he believes he can change without seeing the whole. This is his blindness, the blindness of the common man. I am a common man, so do not believe that my classification comes from class-discrimination. Commonness is nothing other than selfishness, a vision only of the self and of nothing else. We are indescribably selfish and so what? We are able to oppose this mode, we are able to do things to change if we are committed and are led by the correct desire to do so. The saying that nobody changes is a most useful maxim to one who

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desires to remain firmly fixed inside of the earthy realm. One who wishes to change is able, and in this he is able to realise not only what he is, but what it is he is able to do. Until someone realises what they are they cannot be expected to know what they are able to do, for there would be no kind of meaning in it. To take these steps is somewhat ridiculously easy; one decides to do so and then one does it. The foundational things can be changed in an instant, but it is the little things, (normally those borne out of habit or training,) that are difficult to change, for one is not normally aware that they are going on. Recognition must therefore feature prominently in this awakening. We must recognise those things that are so common that we barely notice, like closing the bathroom door when we go in, closing our eyes when we go to sleep, saying please when we want something, and then we shall acknowledge the way in which we can become aware of what is happening. After these revelations occur it is somewhat easy to change what one is doing, but of course it remains difficult to recognise the even more deeply ingrained patterns at work. This is a huge project, and yet if one decides to undertake it with any degree of zest one shall continue to work at it until it itself becomes a deeply ingrained pattern. It is only when one has to untrain the pattern of untraining that one knows that ones project is complete. It was, after all, the last pattern that one got into before untraining began.

What to do after this â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;patternâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is complete, (if one is daft enough to consider that any such project could be completed except in the case of death)? One will notice oneself staring back at you from the mirror; having doubled-back upon yourself right in front of your conscious eyes you will know what it is to be aware. As I can see

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myself laughing back at me from these words. ‘That is me right in front of me; why did I not recognise me before?’ I suddenly remember that I have forgotten everything.

I stop for just a moment because my mouth is dry and the dust from the road does not help matters. The sun is blistering my skin so I take a little shelter beneath a metaphorical story. In either direction I can see a town, for the spring that I have stopped at lies equidistant between where I have come from and where I am heading. But now I cannot remember which direction I travelled from. Why did I want to journey to the other town? How will I now decide in which direction to continue? I must choose fairly soon, because as soon as it grows dark wild beasts will emerge, and so I should press on. It is midday and the sun is equidistant from either horizon making it difficult to decide which direction to go. I must leave now though, because if it has taken half a day to get here since dawn, it will also take half a day to get to either town before dusk, before there is danger abound. It is therefore apparent that I cannot change my mind once I know in which direction the sun is setting; I must be committed. Am I willing to suffer humiliation by trailing all the way back again and wasting an entire day’s effort, or shall I merely go in either direction and not be concerned of the consequences? There are footprints in either direction from earlier travellers, so I cannot rely upon them to tell me which are mine and which are not. Shall I throw a stick in the air and journey in whichever direction it lands?

It is important that one gains momentum in one’s work, but it is also important to stop and understand what it is one is doing. I have

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stopped halfway through this text and posed myself with the same problem; forward or back and which is which anyway? Having reached the halfway mark, I grew tired and I needed refreshment, and thus I had to wait for something, some kind of decisive sign, to tell me which direction is forward; a difficult choice when one is in void. Should I merely apologise to everyone? No; I am just writing my life into words – I cannot apologise for that!

A great many things happened in the last evening. I noticed that something very important was happening, some deep mechanism was turning, and all that I was privy to was the surface effects; the unsettling feelings and the helpless misery. It looked like a vicious circle; I was unhappy because I could not do my work, and Marianna was unhappy because she could not do hers, and given that we take pleasure in each other’s happiness, we were both quite sad. But this circle need not be vicious; if taken from the opposite angle we would see how our happiness spawns our happiness; all we are looking at is a mechanism, and as with all mechanisms, it is automatic and self-fulfilling. But why should one seek to be part of this mechanistic desire when one is able now to see it functioning? I was speaking earlier about perceiving an object from the centre and so it must be with circles; it will only appear as thus if one is in the centre. And to come to this conclusion we did not have a discussion as we usually do; I tried a different technique. Although based on the analytical process in some respects, it was somewhat different. When Marianna said something I either said she was right or wrong. If she said something ‘wrong’, (if she asked me and not herself for the answer,) she would have to go back to the start of the process. She would have to travel until she arrived at the answer,

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for as the one who has produced the dilemma she also was the one who contained the answer. I rejected anything that she directed toward me in order to get there. It seemed apparent that she had blanked out the cause by looking only at the symptoms, and by answering her own question she could apprehend the mechanism, the cause, and then begin with it in the light. As for me, I explained that we were mirroring each other in this, and she answered my question also, (but only in that she was not allowed to ask me.) Reflection was the issue in that we mirrored each other, but were not allowed to ask outside of ourselves, for if I were to ask her I would be negating the one piece of knowledge that I did have; that I can answer all of my own answers, that I have faith in myself which is equal to my faith in her. Outside cannot provide the answer here.

This circle is tied up with the builder and with Chris in an as yet indescribable way. The builder flushes out all of my weaknesses, all of the underdeveloped areas of myself, and causes ripples in the water. Chris, who has no ripples, is but a sea of calm with a presiding moon, accentuates this distemper and brings it forward into the light. We both believe that we have attained what we wanted, that we were realised, that we were developed. But this matrix that I have described goes to show us otherwise. That a small issue like having a builder in the house can expose the underlying fragility of the situation is testament to our requirement of recognising yet another mechanism and then applying it to our understanding. By encountering Chris in that mechanistic state was the proof that we are struggling and thrashing around, weak, and fake in our realisation. Nothing can move him, for he has become a

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visionary in his acceptance of the scheme. It seems very obvious now, and the reason that I have explained the predicament as best I can to you is that I might demonstrate the importance of recognising the limitations to your horizon, the thought barriers, and then exposing the ritualised Self that impinges upon enlightenment. You must understand that it is not madness or folly for me to read so deeply into being upset by a builder, for in my world these apparently inconsequential and insignificant things take on a far stranger shape. One must be aware that the secrets are locked into everything and exist everywhere; we must not assume that they reside only in those things lofty and significant enough as to warrant our attention; they are a part of all things. In this is my outlook very common, for I would like to move to a place where there is a smooth stratum between things without cultural prejudices and the like. Enlightenment is to be found everywhere and in everything, not merely in those places where fraudulent elitists have hitherto attempted to situate them. Any enlightened person could demonstrate this, and I also think that all people would admit that what is best in life is to value all things as they are and not one thing above another. We must balance this attitude of accepting the world as it is with our desires and ambitions which can only be revealed to us once we have become realised in what we are, for this is the point where we must accept how we are to be. This, I think, is the point I have been heading toward with my confused meditations upon Time, Space and consciousness. That realisation is realisation within the conditions of existence as they are is plain enough for all to see. Oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s consciousness must first come into line with these conditions wherein it will be aware of what it is and how it is. It will understand the true sense of

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acknowledgement, atonement, acceptance. It will be what it is, for that is so simple that it is already at work, the state is already achieved. Consciousness must become complicit with this state in order to be freed into it, to grow its wings in a place without the restraints of ambition and confusion. The place of consciousness is to be conscious of what you are. We must cease our unaware splitting of mind and body, for this division will only hamper our attempts to know what we are. But we must also balance the spiritual with the material and not in the sense of any division; these are not two things, but exist rather as a part of each other, within and without. I listened to Chris repeating over and over the same thing, the same sentence which was constructed in a strange and poetic form. From the outside it would look as though he were senile and with a short memory. But why leap to this easy and readymade

conclusion

which

only

negates

your

own

understanding? Each repetition was made with great purpose and was well timed. He was providing what we wanted; we had merely to hear him and his words for what they are in order to understand. He is there to help, for his soul is unalterably charitable. He is there only to help; to turn down what he might have had in order to take others with him. I went there in full knowledge of this, and upon each repetition of the same sentence, â&#x20AC;&#x153;An infinite variation on an old themeâ&#x20AC;? as he would say himself over and over, (and not without irony,) I would understand less and less of what I thought I knew and created enough space for me to actually know. Each repetition grew more strange, the poetic effect of the words begins to reverberate through my mind and it shatters idols as it passes, even his own idol. He is my brother, Chris. He is just there, he is ordinary and yet extraordinary. Every so often he is taken by the

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fancy of telling us what it is he knows, and then he laughs and falls silent. His laugh betrays his secret happiness. He wants to tell us, but derives greater enlightenment from his knowledge of the scheme, and he is telling this to me in my thoughts right now. He is both telepathic and a seer. This is the miraculous, the blind man converted to seeing, for is not the blind man without light in his world? If Jesus were to give light to a person, would they not miraculously be cured of blindness? This is the Greek ‘Agathon’, the light or good which is man’s or woman’s sole object, and yet it is no object at all. We must realise that God is no thing, (everybody knows this all too well as it is, but nobody knows it.) God is no thing, because in His charity He has given every thing. Thus He is in all things, (and hence it is to be found everywhere,) and yet He is no thing in Himself. We, therefore, must join with Him by becoming at one with all things, by harmonising our consciousness with the entirety of the world and accepting that consciousness is a part of all things also, it is in brotherhood with all things. Do you sincerely believe that Nietzsche’s entire works could be simplified into a polemic against God and the church, knowing full well of the poetry in his soul and the many, many contradictions? He could see into all things, and the game is afoot in our understanding to keep the pace with him, to follow him and yet deviate from him. Perhaps this special wisdom was his greatest gift? I must now laugh at my foolishness, for I know all too well where the secrets are kept and if I choose to see them then I can, at any time, and in all things. I have confused things to such an extent that I am caught in a cloud of unknowing and yet, in that I can know of a cloud of unknowing can I begin. I am happy, and my unhappiness comes from forgetting, from confusion, though this is part of my happiness. “Evil is fallen

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Goodâ&#x20AC;?. Does not this wisdom make sense in all ways, from the Biblical to the everyday?

I want to refer back to the double-take of language in that it appears more often now and with greater relevance. When I listen to another voice, I both listen to what is said and also attempt to hear what is being said. There is a subtle line if difference between the two, and on each side of the linguistic barrier, the material and the spiritual, there is a complex system at work. On the one side, we have the entire semantic, structural and social implications of language and speech; this much is well known. On the other side we have a strange symbolic code. One would be tempted to see the two as the same, except that they are not. We must appreciate the existential characteristics of both and not deny the changes that occur on both sides of the division. On one hand we have information being conveyed which is bound up inside of a set of structures, and what is said is always contentious. On the other side we have a strange crystallisation of meanings that were intended for you, each of equal relevance and yet just as contentious. I come back to this point because I have lost my purpose again. I have not lost my faith and I am not gloomy, but I have lost my purpose. What was going to be said was initially clear enough, but then became masked by thoughts which queried as to whether I had already written this to a great enough extent, and I also have this strange desire to watch as things cave in upon themselves. I know this secret, as it is written into Mariannaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lovely smile; we are both aware of our great joy which underlies all things, and yet we are thinking

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about worries. Why think about worries, about surface phenomena, when you have a vast sea of joy at your disposal? Is this not distraction of the first order, to know something and yet be distracted from it by small, petty things? But the real catch is this; even the worries are part of the scheme. The real distraction is this; wanting to avoid the worries and think only of joy. This is a selfdefeating process, (in either direction and in two different ways,) in that I cause my joy to be disingenuous by defining it next to worry, as a polar opposite, in a system of struggle. But what I have described is also genuine and enlightening, but only if one considers the vicious circle as one circle chained into all others and therefore of equal worth. How can it be that something can both tie you down and release you at the same time? This indeed is a question

for

the

poet.

This

how

one

must

understand the double-take; in that one must bind the two things of difference together with the same straw, discover the linkage between seemingly disparate objects and then understand their oneness, your Atonement. We must, as I have said previously, come to see three in one, always three in one. We have the one disparate at one pole, another at the other end, and then we have the combination of the two into another object, and then we understand the entire thing as one. Until we have discovered all three things in one we will firstly find the two things bizarrely interchangeable,

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suspicious and incongruous. Then, in this metamorphosis, do we begin to find the things which betray the two objects as one abstract object that was obfuscated by the splitting of it into two. Can you see the double â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

image now? Is it apparent that two can become one merely by looking at both simultaneously? the double-take; in that discover the linkage be Atonement. We must, a the one disparate at one into another object, and things in one we will Then, in this meta-abstract object that was Can you see the double -

[Break]

I am the recipient of all letters; they are all addressed to me. I will just write down those things that I am instructed to impart. This will seem a little strange, but this is the way it is going to be. I broke the text to allow another voice to seep in between the cracks; this is a different voice written in the same words and language, but it will sound different if you are listening to it. What does it sound like? How would you remember something that you could not recognise? Perhaps memory is not the object here; perhaps there is no object. What does your desire want from me and how does that equate with what I want from your desire? I always repeat that it is only your own voice that you hear. It is only your own voice that you hear. It is only your own voice that you are here. What is my work and how am I to understand it? Firstly, by dis-concerning myself with the illusion of other voices and instead coming to understand that they are mine. I do not understand my work; I

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understand through it, it is a vehicle. This is why nothing is as it seems, this is not a textbook. It is something other than what it looks like and sounds like and is like. It is a book and yet it is a vehicle and yet it is something else entirely. And if this book is me, if the book is what I consist in and is the mode of my existing, then what can be said of me? If what I am cannot be said, then what am I saying here other than what I am? Perhaps this book has nothing to do with me at all; the voice you heard was merely a whisper from your own consciousness, or a speaking automaton, or a mask which conceals, or a willow-the-wisp, an imp or faerie. Where has this voice in the dark been leading both me and you? Is it the swamp or some other danger (so why follow if there is such risk?) I must deter you; do not read any further. (And whether this deterrent is addressed to myself I shall let you decide.) I am a book which is instructing a pupil, the pupil being the author. Do you not feel at all as though you are interrupting a private lesson, as though you are rudely eavesdropping upon some secret and embarrassing instruction? (This too is addressed to me alone.) And so if your voice is addressed only to you and my voice is addressed only to me in a way that neither of us exist outside of ourselvesâ&#x20AC;Ś

We have decided that habit is a barrier to the expansion of consciousness. Habit does, however lend more speed and efficiency to our practise, (for example, I spend long periods each day in meditation on this book whilst writing it, and the book itself calls itself an annexe to consciousness, a house of expansion.) We are caught in this dilemma, but only in that we see the dilemma itself to be of hindrance and not as the joyous crux of the matter. This dilemma does not require resolution, for to be able to apprehend the

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dilemma itself as neither of the two and as not representing a forked-road or choice, we expand consciousness. Either/or is an object in itself, not only a decision that is needed for our continued advancement. Of course, we are required to move in a direction and to make choices; but required by whom? Surely, the positing of a set of decisions in a path comes only from us, and choosing one over the other from a set of criteria of our knowing only takes care of itself, surely? Agonising and worrying over a decision is quite futile as I think we are all aware. But what if this need for decision, or this apprehension of separate paths, were in itself both something other than it appears to be, and a product of ourselves? Firstly, we ourselves create the need to choose by splitting the future into a number of paths of which we try to predict outcomes, or by adhering to a complex set of maxims that we employ to make such decisions more fruitful or more easy. But do we create this need to choose in order to create the ability to choose correctly? Do we create for ourselves an illusion of success, that we can control the outcome of our actions, that we can predict the future, or that we can be fidelitous to our principles, or that we pride ourselves in reacting to situations on the ‘spur of the moment’? Surely we are creating for ourselves an image, a self-portrait for our own edification by creating such grandiose hallucinations. It is only because we are [half] self-aware beings that we perceive such necessity in our thoughts as they pertain to our actions. If we were fully self-aware, awakened beings, we would indeed be able to choose or create choices for more spiritual reasons. (I use the term ‘spiritual’ because I found that I lacked the vocabulary to convey my idea accurately.) If we were awake to the principles of necessity and awake to our Being as it is, there would be no need or purpose,

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(except for some â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;higherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; desire to worry, of which we are as yet incapable of conceiving, or from some peculiar nostalgia for being worried,) to worry about ourselves, for worries are merely the surface manifestation of human confusion and human halfawakeness to what it is to be human. In my half-awakened state I may have hallucinated even this meditation/observation. But that is for me to know or un-know. But we do indeed recollect, from experience, what it is to be half-awake in the morning. (As it is indeed the morning of our lives.) We can access both the state of being asleep and of being awake, but not fully one or the other. This can be a confusing state; we can become either very happy or very frustrated at these times, with no reason or provocation. We are, as yet, unaware of what is occurring in our consciousness, for it is still hazy. Things occur, but seemingly from out of nowhere. We are between states. I now draw this comparison to our current state of being half-awakened. The sleep of our Being, the rest of a Being without self-consciousness, is still present. But the state of full consciousness is already present, and disquiet, or worry, is the result of this in-between-ness. We are not one or the other and yet we are, we are Being. Consciousness, which is beginning to form, takes on the form of confusion, as we are not yet enlightened as to its function or purpose. It appears to be an aberration of evolution. But consciousness is of evolution; the natural process has remained the same, (which is why human time has stopped â&#x20AC;&#x201C; natural evolution has stopped as time has stopped for all other animals.) Consciousness, as an abstract entity, a self-aware entity, can therefore produce its own reality and create its own form of evolution; Enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a strange concept or one inaccessible to us; it is merely to consciousness as evolution

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is to nature. Even by denying this we acknowledge, (although unwittingly,) the abstract nature of consciousness which can either affirm or deny that which it is or that which it desires to be. And thus we reach out our hand to our Being, being something inaccessible to our Being, to tell us what our state is. And we hear no answer, for answers come not from Being but from consciousness which is Being. Enlightenment can be illustrated in the following way; to realise that which we are. Realisation is Enlightenment. It is not a change but a shift. Nothing changes and yet everything does. This is why we do not look for Enlightenment from outside of reality; firstly, because this is impossible and silly, and secondly, because reality is the vehicle for Enlightenment. Reality is our great masterpiece; infinitely rich, varied, beautiful. It holds all of the answers, but only when one ceases to need them. When one needs answers, all one gets is questions. When one does not need answers, that is all one gets and yet, they are not answers, but something else. Desire, as the machine of reality, becomes transcendent. It does not ‘move upward’, it does instead ‘pass through’, as all things pass through. Upward motion is mere metaphor or illusion, and as one becomes enlightened, these concepts begin to make proper sense and not the confused sense of one who is confused on earth. We pass through, for that is what we do. We transcend from what we are not, (which is what we think we are,) into that which we are. This is so very obvious, and yet so beautifully hidden behind within our thoughts. The struggle becomes a game, (and yet no change occurred,) we passed through the struggle. Nothing changes, for change is illusory, such as the passing of Time. Motion, if that is what you would like to call it, only occurs by passing through, by something realising what it is.

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The whole of consciousness is geared toward this end; to become conscious of what it is. This is its purpose, and nothing else. We pass through that which we thought we are and into that which we are; we come home, we are properly placed inside of our property through propriety. Nothing changes and yet everything does. There is no struggle, for now it looks like a game, but a game happening a million years ago when it was finally won. We are not in a state of struggle. This is for the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Socialistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; whose materialism is as yet without meaning. We already have our property, (consciousness,) and we are in the process of realising it. We can leave behind, pass through this veil of confusion just in realising. It is not for us. The illusion that it grips us and that we are trapped in the circles of hell or purgatory is merely illusion, as hell, purgatory and heaven are but illusions, (though useful ones when we attempt to visualise our ongoing process.) Our Being already belongs. The feeling that we do not yet belong is but a feeling. This is the Truth that I have spoken, because I know it. This one Truth spawns all others, and it is my awakened state that has told me this. My confused state is already denying this Truth, and yet I will allow it to do so; the reason? Because I do. No reason is good enough. Reason is without meaning or purpose. Reason is for the man seeking justice, the man still bound up in the holy feudal system. I am not there, for I have passed through it right now. My reasons still occur, but they appear as they are; fleeting, bizarre, insane, comic, tragic etc, etc. Reasons are without worth. The man worth nothing invests worth in reason. For he has nothing of worth and must delude worth within it. A meaningless meaning; the perfect negation and the greatest comedy of human fashioning. I am not human and I know that now. I am. So on and so on, tra-la-laâ&#x20AC;Ś I am laughing, laughing. I have reached

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the stage of perfect self-reflection where reason cannot penetrate. I am Love. All this knowledge is my property and I am giving it. I desire nothing, for I have all I desire, my desire being to give. And this desire cannot be achieved without giving away that which I desire. I am Love. Watch as I tumble down back into madness and confusion; it is bound to happen for this elevation comes as yet temporarily. And so I consider this writing as a future memory, locked into time to tell me who I am. I am a message in a bottle addressed to myself. I am my own time bomb. I am laughing at myself in the confusion as yet to happen, for it is a comedy, I am a comedy of my own creation. I am creation, and creation succeeds destruction only to clear the way, to create the path for Enlightenment.

As I was in the coffee shop I heard two ladies talking, the only part of their conversation I heard though was “You’ve done half an hours work today; it’s enough I suppose!” And so my half an hours work was completed. But then I came home where I wrote the above paragraph, looked at my photograph of Marianna as she sits on the edge of a pond in Le Jardins du Luxembourg, sun across her back, and a smile so deep and so knowing that I cannot help but know what she is smiling about. She smiles because she is doing so, because of nothing. This joy echoes through eternity, and I can picture that smile at any time. I have put the photograph onto my computer so that I can see it whilst I am writing, for everything that I am writing for and about and to is contained within those pixels. The image below is of me looking at Marianna on my screen as I look at Marianna through a viewfinder, and hence the smile is released into eternity.

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fig. 2

Her smile captivates my entire soul and tells me in its funny way that everything is everything. I am powerless, speechless, lost and found. My God peeps from His cave and I smile with Him, for smiling with Him is the only sincere smile that I can have.

Something has changed in my body so indescribable that everything in this life appears to have metamorphosed. I can see all things present to this world; this is not empowering, rather this is the inspiration of the contemplator, it is Marthaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s secret. What happens to a person when they have not a shred of doubt in them? Can you say? Some of you, the cleverer ones, will say that it is

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impossible to have no doubt. And so they are right in their realities. Can they doubt that they doubt? No? Well, here is the world beyond doubt staring right back at you in your own words, speaking to you in your own voice, and hence you must believe that which you yourself have said. Marianna has just told me this through my telephone, although I knew it in my thoughts before I heard her. We now inhabit the same consciousness far beyond that of our unmarried selves. The universe of joy is now boundless, each disparate noise is part of an unending symphony of perfect clarity and unexpected delight. Why are we rushing to go nowhere when travelling happens when at a standstill? Why are you working so hard to achieve nothing when you could do nothing without doing anything, because nothing cannot be made, and your work could easily happen without motion. If you stop to watch time pass, you will see that it does not. And when it has ceased to move, then you can begin to.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s weird; I sit here working, and I have taken time off work in order to do so. By not working I am working, and by working I am not working. Something inside me is forcing me, leading me gently by the hand, to some distraction. And I let it go; it is written in here. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wish to join its merry dance, moving from one distraction to another, forgetting the centre to spin like a child in the periphery of a merry-go-round. That dance is endless; the dance of distraction; its cult may be seen everywhere, even some participants have tried to explain its spiritual heightening. But if we look closely at Poussin, we will see the ecstasy of dance and wine are but allegorical, like his allegorical figures. If we look closely

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inside of ourselves when we dance in a night-club, there is nothing inside, a spiritual calm in the heart of a throbbing tempest.

When one discovers this sacred place, for the comparatively short time that one is in this meditative state, one must drive forward, for this is no place for doubting or worrying about doubting or the cold antithesis of becoming, this is where one moves without boundary. One can posit even the most outrageous notions about oneself and the world and see what these notions truly signify; nothing here is outrageous, for all is calm and bathed in light. Oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ordinary notions about oneself seem bizarre here. One can choose to meditate upon oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worries or concerns or other small things and they become objects; solid things which are tangible and understandable. Nothing can sap the positive energy or bring you [paradoxically] into the material world of imaginary doubt. Rather, it becomes the imaginary world of material doubt, if one can understand this simple reversal for all it is worth. This, however, is not merely a world of reversibles or a mirrored world, but one can begin by turning everything on its head in order to get there. This is how the ordinary world becomes strange; by turning things on their heads and seeing if they still work in reverse. But the effect of this is no mere reversal; it is an immaterial plane without hidden parts or phantoms. If one were to take in one hand the material world of regulars and take the imaginary world of regular reversal, one can see a combined reality where not only everything becomes a possible, everything already is, and greatly enriching. It is as though the soil of your true homeland can regenerate your spirit here, and each new exposure to this secret country brings one more concretely into the world of reality. The superfice of reality

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becomes deep with this new vision, and yet the ability one has to be disturbed and worried about the world of reality is not diminished; it is heightened. My fear of the world of reality becomes enlarged more and more often now, but this fear itself has a purpose. It is the fear of reality which causes one to find ones place there. This is not simple to understand, because one would automatically assert the opposite as correct. But fear is not the reaction that we always thought it was, for we do not as yet behold and understand fear in the mantle of our consciousness. Fear that the material world may end will develop the spirit and further enrich living life. Fear of material reality drives one to find what one fears about it and to prize that fear as the instigator of understanding. Fear becomes its own form of bravery in the face of the world of reality; if one did not fear, one would not need to be brave, and to have neither to begin with would make realisation impossible and without meaning. One must behold both genuine fear and genuine bravery if one is to pass through this mediating stage of reality and into the new reality of Love. If not, then we do not prize Love in our mantle and reality will be forever confusion and misery for the duration of its own, individual eternity. This is the downward spiral of the loveless individual who has not realised what he is, and he will defend the worthlessness of his existence with all his might. His insanity spirals and he prizes the meaninglessness of life and all the disingenuous parts of it. He goes down with the ship without learning to swim, even when he is offered to be helped. He prizes the descent into the cold sea of unknowing maintaining the whole while that he was correct and must stick to his decisions. Fool. This book is itself trying to be itself and in doing so it has become

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something else, and yet it still looks like a book. The doubts have not yet returned, and so I am up here without clouds.

It has been such a very long time since I sat down to write and so many thoughts, valuable and valueless, have passed through the fleshy matter of my brain without being recorded here. [But they were recorded elsewhere.] And will you detect the feint and subtle presence of these thoughts when you begin reading here? Will you notice the changes in my self that pierce through the flat, permeable space of monologue? I will return here to an earlier theme, one which was revived some days ago with a work colleague.

I looked incredulously at him when he criticised my ignorance of the events that took place in the Russian school of Basra a month ago; I did not know the name of the school whatsoever and I did not know any detail of what happened there. I said to him that why should I know what happened? (And I was indeed looking for an answer in all honesty.) He said that one has to be aware of what is going on in the world. I said that entertaining oneself with the knowledge of bloodshed and slaughter by someone’s report was perverse and obscene. What ‘awareness’ of life can one derive or form from reading the newspapers or watching the news on television? Surely it is neglectful to one’s own life; awareness of reality does not come into one’s senses with any kind of quality through reading a newspaper. I thought about Baudrillard’s statements on the virtuality of world events and I finally understood what he meant in those words, (willingly or unwillingly it does not matter here.) Not only can one not know or trust in what one is watching in the virtual space hidden behind the prejudice of

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objective reportage, but that one is also avoiding one’s own immediate reality in the distraction of the virtual reality. This virtual reality only can be said to ‘exist’, (and in what way I am not totally certain of,) when it enters the actual reality of consciousness, and thus requires spectators from afar. I do not know about all of the ‘events’ that are occurring right now, (and so does nobody,) but what if we were ‘aware’? Does it not seem through virtual reality, that we are attempting to create for ourselves an omnipresent awareness of real life through perfectly controlling the medium of information? And what if we were present at each and every horrific atrocity occurring in the world at all times? Who would wish to be present? Would it not certainly induce madness or complete anaesthesia? (Do not forget that whomsoever is editing this ‘news’ is doing so according to your desire, your desire to buy this news. And do they consciously not report the good news of the day, or are we only interested in horror?) It is we, in our own minds, that produce this distinction between good and evil, and this flatness is perpetuated by culture, leaving us flat. We deny this self-evident fact of ours, and it appears as though it is only the media pundits who are aware that we desire to furnish our awareness of life through horror and perversion; they relish the child-murders and 9-11’s of this world because it furnishes their pockets. What has the photograph become by the severe abuse of this medium other than a fallen object, bringing to life the fable of the Indian’s soul being stolen, just like an awful cliché. And are we clichés? Such intense nausea cannot be held down; it must be ejected.

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I have returned to this point because I believe it to be of very high significance when it comes to the expansion and enriching of reality; it also a point that we readily deny; our demented and insane lust for good and evil, the earthly product of our confused desire. Good and evil do not now merely exist, (for God is dead;) we have made them exist for our satisfaction alone, through our desire to be God, (and hence the medium for it is omnipresence and omniscience.) In virtual reality can we not also be omnipotent? We deny this obvious fact.

But, if this is the case, (just to contradict myself just a little bit more,) why then are the things that we do largely mediocre if we are capable of anything? We desire the Real, but in an edifying form such as a newspaper or programme, and does this constitute our lack of God’s essence; of creation? Because we behold destruction with relish, it has itself become a form of good; destruction is easy, creation is difficult, and hence we value destruction because we are mediocre and have limited attention spans. But who among us can truly destroy; for does not the true act of pure destruction contain within it the seed of creation? It is of course easier and more widely verifiable if we discuss this situation, media and desire, in terms of late Capitalism and it’s class-structure, but I do not actually care about this anymore. It is a crude, base and easy understanding of human interrelations; I would rather struggle on my thin ice which can find no proof and doesn’t need it either. Why would I seek to know about classstructure and Capitalism if I was not prepared to do anything about it? Marx was right; only the first revolution will succeed; all others will be tainted by Irony and will be doomed to fail. Let us not flog

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the dead horse of Marx; let him rest. How can anyone act decisively without a concrete set of morals? The only genius of morality is the truly unintelligent and violent person who holds no pretence of being good; he who has no conscience and merely acts directly from his desire and his desire to destroy. You can read about it in the Times, daily. Which political activist, in their blind denial of all the options and alternatives, is strong enough not to need to justify their opinions and actions? And what will happen when I have read all of the books in the world? Will I regret not having written them all? What good is knowledge if it does not ascend to a higher place beyond itself? It cannot be this senseless scribbling! And why should this pulpy and grey fleshy organ called a brain be anything other than what its functionality dictates? (Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one reason why I can write this stuff.)

I ask so many questions that I can never hope to answer, and yet it is not my place to answer them either; they do not exist. I know what purpose is. I have not explicated it here. I have merely demonstrated my embarrassing human ability to be embarrassed and conceited. It was a celebration. Did you not notice what was actually taking place the whole while, or did you think me identical with the above words and sentences? Do you think that I should explain, and hence ruin the carefully contrived mystique in the soul of poetry? Do not forget about Art; for I am an Artist and that is my true medium for care. I do not find my work interesting either; hopefully it is something else, (for interest, an economical term, is what we have in tabloids.) This is just an illustration. You cannot imagine in your private place what this work is for me, for I am bound to it like a brother. If you were to do the same, to write down

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everything you could regardless of how shameful or ridiculous you would sound, you might still not understand me, but you might understand your own thoughts. This is not like self-help or psychotherapy but it is if that is how you decide to read it. And furthermore, it should be of no interest to you and you probably stopped reading a long time ago. Do we look at van Gogh’s art as self-help, or does it contain something higher? How did I come to be this way; confused and yet energetic into the bargain? What lust is implanted, in such an artful way, that I am driven so? I know nothing of ends and very little of means, and my means are strangely determined. I become more unfathomable in my Self the further I am led by the merry way of ‘self-knowledge’, (all of this said in Irony, sadly.) I say ‘further’ and not ‘deeper’, for deep self knowledge is not for explanation, it is instead Done, as in Thy Shall Be…

Exercise: Meditate upon the concept ‘Done’ for at least ten minutes; this is what I have just done, and you need to be in step with me.

This is the prayer to an unwilling god that we make each day, though the meaning of the prayer cannot be heard in our own ears; we are even unaware that we are praying at each moment of each day, in every action that we make, and this I have stolen from Malebranche yet again. I trust in every thought that passes/slips through my mind and I record all of it where possible, Eumolpo. The meaning of and for this is not intended for me; I am merely a witness to my Self, and I have been employed to produce a map of my mind. Like Daedalus, I am. Who can navigate their own

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consciousness? Is one a Ulysses or a Nasrudin? Who is Greek enough to reside in an ordered and peaceful architecture of memory? But we do not consider that reality is the ultimate and infinite architecture and art; a place to be eradicated in our own creation. This is the space of Being, for in Being here one is nothing. Will we become outmoded in our art or will we become ‘Classics’? Perhaps it is forgetfulness which is our mode, an inversion of the Greek mind, for we do not wish to be remembered by the spirit of time, we do not wish to remember our Selves; we detest the labour of our lives too much to continue working throughout eternity. We do not wish to be realised. Marx only comprehended the very tip of the material iceberg in his works of art that he took to be books of scientific and practical doctrine. Are we fated the same way, or shall we be realised in the art of life?

I return yet again, as if after a bout of hysteria, to the point I belabour so oft. I think, (and look at that example of positivity!) that, in making ourselves aware of the news in the world, that we avoid our own consciousness. Why busy ourselves with the details, (and details include only what is not excluded,) with this stuff which has been going forever, since the first murder, (I mean when someone invented the term murder, not simple ‘killing’,) when it becomes perfectly apparent that Time has never moved? I shall discontinue my talk about perversion, profiteering and neglect of the Self with regards to awareness. All that came before was merely the preparation of the next point, and by including the preparatory work – Do we contribute to awareness, sitting upon our backsides, watching the world go by when our lives are passing by also? Is it

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that we give these events the absolute minimum quality of attention to ‘feel’ as though we are aware of what takes place besides our Selves? And in simply ‘feeling’ we have only the vaguest impression of having done the ‘right’ thing, that we have done good in becoming vague and doing nothing else. Who thinks, I mean really thinks and believes, that in watching the news they are in fact partaking in life? To what degree? Who sincerely believes that in watching the ‘new-s’ that they have injected quality into their awareness and not merely an empty quantity? What do you do with this news once it is in your head, other than spit it out as gossip to other people who think like you, other people who pretend to be aware and only seek justification in this by talking to you, testing your allegiance to this cult in asking if you heard about… When somebody asks if you ‘heard about…’ try to see this as a test of your awareness; this person is seeking to be justified by you; you are about to lend credence to his meaningless lifestyle and his worthless awareness. This is anti-awareness; it is a great sleep that descends over the conscious with only the bare minimum of activity to remind us that we are alive and aware of it. We are ignoring ourselves and our ability to create our own ‘new-s’. Do we even call into question the validity or signification of that which claims to be new? We do not tittle tattle about the ‘old-s’ anywhere near as much, excepting in books of scholarly worth or tabloid ‘biographies’. Awareness does not happen on the backside; there aren’t nearly enough nerve-endings in it! Look at yourself reading a newspaper, look at which stories you select to read and why you choose to read them, look at your patterns of desiring. Why do you desire these things, (the very same ‘new-s’ every day)? [I know that a lot of you will think ‘I only read them for the sport, anyway.’ I

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shall leave well alone.] What do you see looking back at you from the pages or the screen, other than yourself on your arse?

You, all these years, have merely sat down to watch your species doing itself fantastic harm and wrong though you do not know ‘wrong’ even though you are positing it, (for it does not exist out there, no matter how bad the new-s.) You have made this bad, for you inject good and bad into the world. You are unaware, in seeming to care for others, that you have harmed yourself. And this is not the contemplative life, for who of you truly ruminates and meditates upon the news until having reached a mystical understanding of it? It is gossip for a gossiping mind, a mind that cannot stop gossiping to itself, a mind that enjoys a scandal. Please tell me, (for I do not understand,) why it should be that in watching the news one is expanding consciousness through awareness or improve existence? I have missed some crucial piece of knowledge that everyone else appears to have in their possession. I survive perfectly well without the news; what I do is to pay careful attention to what is in front of me; my wife, my work, my loves; my reality. If you believe me to be deluded in this profound conceit of mine then I have just answered your objection. If you believe me to be deluded in this profound conceit of mine, then your conceited opinion of my conceited opinion speaks volumes, does it not? Nobody is right, for there is no such thing except in the mind of the deluded. Pseudo-awareness, in my understanding, reads as mere laziness, the absolute laziest life that bides its time before death. You ‘care’ for life that is happening in a virtual reality, hence you shall only ever ‘virtually care’ for it, you will ‘virtually exist’, (virtual in the sense of not quite making it, or existing in the

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smallest possible sense.) Do you become a witness, as I am, to your virtual, second-hand and flat existence, or are you still going to defend it? Remember; if something is permanent it means that any attack will fail. So you should never defend something that you truly believe in, otherwise your defence will prove to be its weakness, its transience.

Do not get me wrong; I need to hear my own voice in order to hear how idiotic and conceited I am until I realise that these opinions and thoughts do not even belong to me. I am aware of this fact. If you have become aware of this fact, it is only because you have become aware through your own awareness of your own conceit. The conceit is what you own, not the thoughts or opinions. Conceit is your property. Do not be deluded by this hall of mirrors that sounds like your own voice in your mind, for it is not yours. The conceit is yours. This voice, (which you think is my voice,) is in fact only another of your voices in your mind, as though the whole while you had read translated books and never a book in your mother tongue. Do not think that you can ever know me, for I am merely a part of your vast schizophrenic consciousness which shifts and twists endlessly like the perfect maze. There was no Minotaur in there, but how would you know unless you decide to confront it, your brother, the voice in the dark which terrifies you and embarrasses you in your own mind, in your fear of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dark. There is no Minotaur; if the maze was so good that its architect was puzzled by it, the presence of a Minotaur would only be a ruse to distract you from the real danger, the danger of trusting your own knowledge. A maze cannot kill you, only your inability to negotiate it will kill you. To that end, when the Minotaur is calling your

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name from seemingly all sides, think that Echo is with you and protecting you, not confusing you and killing you. I have stopped fearing my own maze now; rather I stand in awe of its complexity; reality is a masterpiece of work. My soul is nourished to be inside, unlike one who starves to death in a maze that merely â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;losesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; you. I stand and watch my reality shifting at all times and growing more complex; it is a most beautiful creation, and yet you are its author. This simple realisation will change for ever your sense of propriety. One must be sure to understand each voice that one encounters in this life whether it be in a book, television, a friend or anyone, for it exists in your mind before you encounter the object; it is part of a pattern in your reality and you must not feel alien to it lest you be alienated from all other parts of reality. Schizophrenia is not a thing to fear for it is a key and method to absolute enlightenment; it is a great game, Le Grand Jeu; so laugh at its riddles and play its games with a smile and a song in your heart. I feel so much energy welling up in my soul and it amuses and delights me to the highest degree; I am privileged to experience the greatest act of creation unfolding with me at its centre. I grow more delirious and insane each day, and it brings reality closer to my eyes, contradictory to the common belief. Do away with the terrible rituals of life, of other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives. Recognise the rituals, the play, Le Grand Jeu and laugh at it; it belongs but cannot keep you from existing. Do not fear the everpresent madness of Self, for it is your friend; you shall carry it everywhere in your Greek-box of a mind. Realise the fact of love as a companion for your fear and walk hand and hand in both.

Why is it that people delight in preaching the ethic of hard work when they also believe that identities are handed out on plates? But

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this is wrong; they do work hard, for it is their life’s work. Or they work hard at not knowing themselves. It’s a fairly worthless enquiry and I can see that now. All statements are leading to the same something, indeed. I am in the ultrasound department at King’s College hospital, watching how people are. I think, at this special moment, that I will take back all of the thinks and things that I have said in this book, for I have fallen foul of each and every thing that this book knows and stands for; in short, it has been a self-portrait. There are so many lies. Is this moment special, or is it like all others, veiled? Is it another lie? Again I see, as I always used to, the depths of insanity in each and every thought, but I can also appreciate that my schizophrenia is an existential golden link in my awakening. It is clear that each thought that I have which relates to another thing, be it a person or object, is a [hollow] reflection. The difference now is that this is no cause for abject fear, rather it is my boon. As these things exist in my reality, they also belong to it’ it must be the case that the voice I am seeking does not exist exclusively in those things in which I choose to perceive them, rather having prejudices of this kind hinders my awakening. No thing possesses this quality but me, and if I am to be awakened to myself I will perceive this thing in all things as they exist in and for me. This is the attainment of Self that all persons must work toward; discovery of Self is discovery of the way that Self is manifest in the apparent ‘external’ place of reality. This is my conception of oneness, wholeness. Objects will seem strange when they are at once you and not you at the same time, and this is no cause for fear, for it is every day and it is the first stage. This is the ultimate Love which at first appears as fear due to Love’s strangeness to you. I do not speak of the love of emotion

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when I say Love, for this is the narrowest knowledge of Love that a person can have. Love goes beyond mere feeling, for the emotion is manifest on the surface as effects, and yet Love is the cause, though we have never encountered it. The love of emotion causes a blindness to the acceptance of Love; it binds us to this body and this world which is not yet ours, for we reside in the surface with emotion and not in the spirit with the cause.

The objects in the world appear to grow more strange in the way that they lose their concrete objecthood as they are achieving true objecthood. Analysis cannot reveal this phenomena, rather it is like a truly magnificent work of art which resists concrete knowledge. Semiotic understanding is a pale shadow in the whole experience of life as living, for semiotics, as in any other system of thought or science is itself part of life and thus cannot understand in totality life itself, or that existential strata residing above itself. Thus, it can be said that any science or system of thought cannot understand itself excepting in its own terms, and as we have seen, its own terms are part of life and not life itself, for their can be no system of thought that unveils the significance of life.

Interruption or Eruption of the voice: There is a chasm of difference, (and a wonderful chasm it is,) between saying that something is the case, saying that there is some wonderful and majestical reality out there for us to discover, some promised land, and making and believing that something is the case. It is too easy, apparently, to say things; a fool could affirm a productive donkey without legs if he so desired it, though to all else it

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would seem folly. And is this book nothing other than folly; on man’s attempt to say a great many things about a great many things without even having stepped from the hearth of his house? As always I stepped on this idea whilst I was in the toilet, (and it is so often the case – I wonder why people read in the toilet and don’t write?) It is a thought that has buzzed around my head for a great while now, though in the normal forms of scepticism and self-doubt; a low ego, in short. (Low, but only in that it is still thinking about itself; it is a duplicitous low, to be sure.) It has now reached a more crystalline state in my thoughts; that I could say a great deal of things and superficially affirm them all, if my affirmation existed only in the denial of opposites, as a form of blindness from disqualifying facts. I am enjoying this revelation, for the ambiguity which is its bedfellow is indeed complex and enriching; a doubt which is not orientated by the ego; is that possible? It has been the fault of many religious teachers and personages that they have said a blind truth and convinced other to be blind through the attraction of their own blindness. But can we say, as a teacher or prophet; “Do not follow me!” Surely, this is the most prodigious revelation that can be given over to people from the spiritual realm into the material? I think that if a person says a thing, the person who encounters those words must themselves be convinced of the love held between them to hear what is said and not merely listen. If only we could take on board the teachings of our loved ones when they said “Do not worry!” or some other simple

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and yet true truth; but the words do not penetrate; we continue to worry, we continue to believe the words of our self, (which only loves us like a bastard brother does,) and continue. We disrespect the love that we have for our loved ones when we do not hear them because we hear only ourselves; we do not love them because we love only ourselves. What would occur if you discovered your love for me above the love that you hold of your self and all of its opinions, and all that I said here was imparted from one friend to another with sincerity? What if you could see through me with transparency and hence see through yourself also with utmost transparency; would there be any number of small differences or dislikes between us, or would there merely be some lofty form of relation between people which goes beyond the representation of our selves onto reality and nothing more? Try; try as hard as you can and with no effort to speak of, to accept something that either I or another friend says to you. If you are disturbed and your friend says, “It does not matter”, or, “Smile”, accept only that. Perhaps they are giving you the key to what your discomfort has prompted you to search for. Just accept it as a good, for your love of them goes above and beyond your love of your self. This indeed is a revelation, and is not merely substanceless words that I have written. And in that I have listened to this piece of advice, what might in the first instance be taken for an inflated ego can, in the second instance, be known to be humility.

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If I say that “This music is the most useless use for music”, all I in fact serve to say is that I understand in myself what is useless, (a special part of me,) and I merely contemplate how I have represented my uselessness onto the world. I foist my uselessness onto a world that knows nothing of uselessness. The world and I grow ever further estranged. I am empty; thoughts drift across the still and mirror-like surface as do clouds in an azure sky; I, am full of nothing. Why should one write when one is content? Contentment is like the dream of life, a life without its worries. A mule without its ticks. Last night I dined with my wife at the Hare Krsna centre in town. I cannot see from where the enlightenment should come in such a lifestyle. (And it does indeed smack of a stylised life and nothing more, though a devout Krsna-follower would say otherwise.) These ‘disciples’ choose to follow a prophet because they themselves are not their own prophet? Their desire is set so low, that it seeks not to have any ‘material desires’, because for them material desires equals material worries, and their form of weakness could not possibly stand the test of worry and learn what they have to gain from it. Neither, in this respect, do they appreciate desire; for them desire is the desire of things, a baseness and a binding to a world that causes worry and not happiness. But it was desire that made Krsna what He was; what He allowed Him to know about Himself. To imagine for a moment that enlightenment will come from following, an example, a model, a hopeless ideal. Becoming enlightened to your self will not become complete in merely following one who has become his or her self. We travel to Delphi to know about the way we are, and not the way someone else is.

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Follow and do not follow, said one prophet to the next.

Any person that is truly on their own road to enlightenment, (and from this vantage point can I know how all others are â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not that it is the same road, but we are all following our own road; the same yet not the same, following and yet innovating. The path we tread is new; we have discovered it for it is ours, and yet it is ancient, for many, many people have trodden it anew; can you see their footprints masked by your own? You must, however, tread it afresh. You will of course know these things and many, many more if your desire has brought you to this place with me; but what is my task if not to bring this story forward both to me and to you? My work is a combination of both my intellectual and spiritual desire that have united for some purpose over and above themselves. My work shall be an ode to Love, to the perfect harmony between creation and destruction. I am not a clever person and neither do I seek to be such a person as this. I seek out only my impetus to create and destroy, for it is this impetus that holds the key to this devotion. Every word that I write will be a part of this devotion and not apart from it; it shall not be some explanation or investigation of it for I have no such distance at my disposal. It shall be the act of devotion itself. A clever person will describe what I am doing in perfectly reasonable terms. But as his or her words will describe mine, so will his or her intellect describe mine, will gravitate around but never penetrate the locus of my understanding. Cleverness will never bring closeness to anything. Worldly cleverness is in fact an impenetrable barrier that reduces hope as it tightens its grip, but is also the first phase of our realisation in this. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, although this type of prophecy is not

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very fulfilling. So shun your cleverness as I have; I make no claims in the advancement of the intellect, and thus do not look in these quarters to find the locus of my understanding. It would be like using a sieve to serve soup. An intellect of any worth should know its place, and that place is the place of the intellect. We do so often allow the faculty of the intellect override its station; it steps out of line. This is good, for to be in a line is no good when one faces a wall. A chariot cannot go far if one horse rides according to its own independent agenda. How intellectual is a person if he can ask such a question as this? Can the intellect be quantified, let alone qualified? This is indeed blindness; do we allow our other faculties such a biased privilege?

What is the difference between a spiritual man and an intellectual man? Neither of them is a man.

What is the difference between a spiritual woman and an intellectual woman? Neither of them is a woman.

Was there a difference in asking this question once of men and once of women?

So if you desire to be clever in reading this then you cannot be prohibited in this, for you shall be prohibited in so doing. Take heed of what I have said as an unintelligible book to an intelligent person of either sex; you might discover an intellect of the spirit or the spirit of intellect, and good luck! I am introducing myself at all times to the world, like a medicine cannot be administered all in one go lest it have the contradictory effect of death as opposed to

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life. I have not realised any effective way of composing myself in the world and so I merely introduce myself into it, like one might introduce wine to a child. Why talk when words can also sing? Talking is seriousness and indeed we must save our face and be serious! (Take me seriously – please do; it would be so comic and yet so appropriate, don’t you think?) It is so often the case that in the reading of comic poets that one misses the point at the point of humour. Don’t laugh, for one will miss the revelation; laugh at all the rest instead but not in this part, lest you desire to be only an audience and not yourself. No laughter with others can taste as sweet as Schadenfroh in one’s self. The flowering of wisdom always results in a laugh or smile; in that does tragedy die unto itself as comedy is born; this is no other than Schadenfroh, the wisdom of the poet. It is your place to decide how to use me; your understanding of me will belong to you as an object independent of me in my orb of reality. Your treatment of me will belong to you, and treat it like your other slaves of intelligence. But you are not me – yet!

I have only one Love; Everything. But do I merely love the concept of everything and thus shun everything from my Love? Does the first necessarily lead unto the second? If I wrote only the idea of everything will I not be disappointed like any other idealist? Or, if I love the idea of everything, (and thus the idea of Love,) will I come to lose everything? The idealist loses everything only in that he or she had a great nothing to begin with, yet clutched at it and gripped at it so tight that the idea slipped through their fingers and disappeared downstream. Or, will I love the idea of everything and yet be disappointed in anything as in the other misery of the

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idealist? Or, if I love the idea of everything will I come to love everything? How I love is in question – not ‘everything’. I am a fool, but this suits me well. Were I reasonable and logical about sensible objects I should never enjoy them, and would only misuse them. Was don Giovanni a cad or a misogynist, or did he love everybody except himself? [Read Kierkegaard on Adonis; the God of Love cannot love himself – contradictio ad absurdum.] If I have one problem it is that I know the problem of problems. Do we forget that the philosopher’s stone is the hard kernel of philosophy, as though philosophy were a fruit? It can convert base things into – what? Gold? And what is the value of gold above something base? What use would a philosopher have for gold except to make himself rich and powerful? Do not mistake the alchemy of the alchemical – something designed to convert cannot in itself have a tangible and permanent form. The philosopher’s stone does not exist for his usage, but his hard kernel might lead to yet another fruit, though he shall never know of it. If you chose to use me well, you will prove that you can use anything well for it is the user that brings good and not the object-systems of reality. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder unless you are Helen.

A bad workman blames his tools. Do bad tools likewise blame their workman? This saying is so common and yet men and women continue to blame their realities. Do their realities likewise blame them?

Unless a man or woman finds his or her place, he or she will be forever displaced; everything will appear [to him or her] to be out of joint with him or her, he or she will not fit, he or she shall be

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miserable in this man-made and woman-made confusion. When a person finds their place then shall they understand everything; for they will be best situated to understand when they are harmoniously placed within reality. He or she can then understand the hidden secret of their ambition and their desire, but only then! Do not be fooled into thinking that realisation of self is the end; it is only a primary stage of Being. There is still much work to be undertaken beyond this stage and so must one dispense with this tragi-comic reality where one is burned over and over again on the same flame, miserable and joyful over and over again on the same worry. Joy is to be lost as is misery; they must be stepped-over until we see them as the object that they comprise –and the rest.

An unenlightened person with ambition; what a strange creature is this? A superabundance of brute force to compensate a lack of spirit? He or she is driven – yet to what end? To death? The unenlightened person is always aiming towards an end – and thus is sealed the self-made achievement of their doom. He or she labours and plots night and day and is dedicated – like a baby is dedicated to the sound of his own screaming. But there is no question in a Roman mind; only chimeras in the guise of successful answers.

An unenlightened person with desires? The mirror-image of the enlightened person’s desires, to be sure. Indeed, both are the same; in what could the difference lie? Enlightenment is not to be qualified, as is un-enlightenment. Only the unenlightened person uses the term “Enlightenment” to describe a fantasy that he cannot attain or understand. But what with this constantly crazy mirror?

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And it is indeed a crazy mirror that shows only your self in the world looking back at you; a juvenile consciousness indeed.

I am both enlightened and unenlightened; because I say so. As all people are. My eyes still drift from one to the other and settle only for short periods of time before some distraction leads my eye back to the other side of the coin again. But the godhead is three in one; and a mind of opposites cannot understand three objects in one object, or one object consisting in three. And so it must be with our feeble term â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Enlightenment.

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