Structure, Tarkovsky

An intelligent structure is not capable of understanding a structure of greater intelligence than itself. So how is a structure like the individual self supposed to evolve towards an order of greater refinement since the only real knowledge is that which moves us beyond the limits of our selves? How are the manifestations of a greater intelligence, in the broadest sense of the wisdom of the whole being, to work on a lesser self?
Humility is the simple answer. The personality is defined by its own limits, and is so a rigid structure incapable of intelligent advancement. "I lay down my life that I may take it up again." The personality lays down its own self, and into this open space can flow the life beyond the old self. This being the principle upon which art works, and in which lies the vastness of its importance.
For instance, a narrow self resists the open spaces of a Tarkovsky film, and this shallow, hard entity sustains itself by means of its cynicism. By contrast, mainstream Western televisual art sustains this artificial entity by feeding it an unceasing stuttering flow of camera angles and shallow excitements, where the viewer is narrowed to a point of hypnotic concentration, as opposed to open awareness.
The person who surrenders to works such as Nostalgia and Mirror ideally becomes allergic to the ordinary 'artistic' effluences, as why should an order of intelligence be attracted towards an order of intelligence of lesser refinement than itself?
An excerpt from Mirror here.
And re-inforcing the earlier points, from Tarkovsky's Stalker:

When a tree is growing, it is tender and pliant, but when it's dry and hard, it dies.
Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.

Papal Infallibility

For whosever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Gospel of Luke 14:11

In the First Vatican Council of 1870, the Roman Catholic Church produced their declaration of Papal infallibility, which "is the dogma in Catholic theology that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error[1] when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation."(Wiki)

Words can be the most obscure and treacherous of substances, so first what is signified by 'the Church' here, which declared itself infallible, is not some organic spiritual entity but certain human beings acting for what they perceive as a common goal. The psychological fact of a perceived common goal among individuals does not of course mean that the common cause is an independent living being, such as a 'nation state' or here 'Church'.
And so the existential nature of what occurred here was that certain individuals declared themselves infallible.
"In certain matters" qualifies a constraining and reasonable voice. But what is it to be infallible and "preserved from even the possibility of error"? It is to be tautologically utterly perfect; to be God, regardless of whether 'God' exists. This absolute perfection is the nature only of such an absolute divinity, and not even that of a god, such as exists within the pantheon of the Greeks' wilful, quarrelsome deities. No, infallibility is the preserve of only an absolute divinity, in whose mind life is born, preserved and may dissolve at will- to digress a little into such a nature.

Back to the papacy's declaration of infallibility. One cannot choose one's moments of infallibility. To be infallible is not a quantifiable state, applicable only at certain moments. To declare oneself as infallible at certain times requires infallibility in the first place to produce the infallible declaration.
And this is where the crucial aspect of Papal Infallibility lies. As shown, for a flawed entity to pronounce one's occasional, yet absolute perfection is an innate absurdity. Only a perfect being could know itself to be perfect. So what is going on? To understand requires treating the declaration specifically as a statement of logic, and treating it not simply as absurd reasoning, but accepting it as wholly true and justified.
That the declaration of their infallibility is, as it logically must be, an emanation of their infallible nature. They have, to use appropriate terminology, set themselves on the throne of existence, exalted themselves to the pinnacle of creation. They are God. And rather than dwelling humbly within a Christian brotherhood, they are absolute rulers over a hierarchy of lesser beings, who exist beneath them.

Whether the full implications of Papal Infallibility were understood by those individuals who pronounced it is largely irrelevant; that is, whether it was a fully conscious, or somewhat unconscious act. Either way, it is the real meaning of the declaration, and its subsequent subconscious life-force as an idea, though these were not, and are not, stupid people, and it is hard to see that they could not have understood the implications of the declaration of their infallibility.

Is What Is

"The self is infallible. You are exactly as you are."
"And so are you."
"You seem to be taking that as as something of a personal attack."
"And wasn't it?"
"Emm...no."

Wine Human

"Like a good wine, human beings need to breathe."
"Very true."

Island

A note within a symphony was heard in a loud and pompous voice to say, "Where is this composer? I see no sign of him."

Mysticism

The essence of true mysticism is where the mind does not lose itself in external thought-forms, but experiences itself as is. Thus the ultimate nonsense of trying to reason oneself towards truth or progressing towards truth through levels of ascension, such as in the occultic paths of freemasonry and many other such Tower of Babels doomed to self-collapse.

Luminary

If light began to worry about the depth of darkness it needed to conquer, it would fade.

Personal Relations

"No, I'm not calling you an asshole. I'm just saying you have a marked tendency to behave exactly in the manner of an asshole."
"And you want me completely out of your life?"
"Yes, but it's nothing personal. It's just that I find you psychologically repellent."

The Stream of Language

What may be called the particular formal structures of a language are intrinsically connected to how a consciousness that uses that language sees itself, or has the capacity of seeing itself. And also connected to the previous post on a culture's inseparable entwining within its own language, to look at the simple expression of basic emotional experiences as expressed in the Irish and English languages.
In English one says "I am happy," or "I am sad." In Irish these would most simply be said, "Tá áthas orm," and "Tá brón orm." These are however far from parallel senses of being. In the English, such expressions begin infallibly with "I", and this I is then happy, sad, etc. In the Irish language, consciousness pours itself into a linguistic form of very different significance. To truly translate to English, "Tá brón orm" is to mean "Sadness is upon me." Here the self is placed within life and in a humbler more unified relationship to that life as a whole, as opposed to the narrower English form that begins with a solid entity of a self that is placed at an artificial centre of of the world, rather than dwelling within and part of that world. In English, everything reaches out from this centre of the individual ego, whereas in Irish this self is a far more passive aspect of existence.

Here the Irish is a much more satisfying form by which the human consciousness understands its place in life. There is then, of course, the question as to the sensibility- Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, etc- that forms the language into which it then flows in the first place, but what is clear is that when a culture loses its language and has an alien one grafted into itself, as in Ireland, what is occuring is far from a superficial window-dressing of the soul.

Cultural Immunity

The greatest immune system protecting a culture is its own language.
If the immune system of a culture is too protecting, the culture becomes a stagnant monstrosity; the solidification of certain energies in time. Loyalist marchers come to mind.
If the immune system is too weak, then the culture is liable to be overrun. If a country- say Ireland- had its own language, then it should prove much more resistant to, for example, the invasion of the worthless tabloid and celebrity 'culture' springing primarily from Britain and the US.
Though of course, the benefits of a culture's own language go far beyond merely defensive merits. That culture's whole historic sense is bound up in its language- think, if in England everyone spoke French for the last hundred years and English was little known, how much of the cultural reservoir would simply vanish from the common memory? This naturally explaining the heavy priority placed by experienced colonising powers on erasing the colonised's language and subsequent sense of self.

Moral Teachings

Poverty is a vice as it encourages destitution. Poverty should be discouraged and destitution avoided.

Odilon Redon- La Cellule d'Or 1892

Recently attracted by this painting by Redon, which coincidentally transpires to be the cover of Tolstoy's What is Art, which I just received. Redon an artist whose naive images often tread a thin line between charming and somewhat off-putting.

Positive Negative

The idea of nihilism contradicts the idea of nihilism.

Linguistics

An important new document by some of the world's leading linguists has declared that words are "imaginary." This, they admit, leaves them in a somewhat embarrassing situation, both linguistically and otherwise.
"It's hard to know what to say," said an academic.

Isaac Newton and the Defeat of Doubt

Isaac Newton is famous for discovering that the apparently unrelenting consistency with which things fell downwards from above, even if having been propelled from below, was a result of more than mere chance, and so was a set of pracical affairs set to continue beyond the horizons of all conjectured human futurity. This certainty in the ongoing downward pull of objects was of great help to man's progression as a rational animal on this earth, enabling him to plan ahead and to act in the sure knowledge that the earth was the natural and inevitable habitation for earthly matter, and apples and the like could continue to be harvested without fear of their escape into the further reaches of unattainable space. 

“You know the way things fall down?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“It’s going to keep happening.”

A great period of uncertainty had closed.

Victory for the West- US Troops Successfully Murder 61 Afghanistan Children

Story here. Sixty-one children who won't grow up to threaten our freedom, which they surely would have learnt to hate if they hadn't been blown to shit by high-powered modern weaponry, fired from a safe and abstract distance.
A military spokesman or intellectual lackey might, and surely would, question the linguistic legitimacy of 'murder' in this situation; that the deaths accruing from firing highly destructive missiles into large gatherings of civilians in their own village are incidental, not intentional. Naturally this is simply an example of the maxim that all evil needs is an excuse, however meaningless, to become respectable.

Spin

A fascinatingly vital work, using satellite feeds, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s, especialy focused on the Clinton won Presidential campaign against the elder Bush. Spin as described "is a surreal expose of media-constructed reality", where with behind the scenes footage of people like Bill Clinton, Larry King and Bush, reality is shown to be far stranger than fiction, and what people imagine to be reality pure fiction. For instance, between the ads, King tells a strangely zombie-like Clinton that media tycoon Ted Turner "would serve you... I'd call him after you're elected." See also how, if you're not approved from media figures on high, like Democrat candidate Larry Abraham, you don't get to exist. Manufactured 'democracy'. Watch https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/spin/

Vehicle

Two figures crawl out of a hole.
"A work of art is a vehicle containing truth."
"And the more truth, the greater the work?""
"Yes."
"But a vehicle goes somewhere. Where does the work of art travel?"
"Through time."

Rembrandt- John the Baptist Teaching

Light & Shadow

The brighter the light the more clearly delineated and dark the shadows of that which is out of that light. The murkier the light, the more uniform all appears.
To unfortunately make the analogous nature of this all a bit too obvious, there are certain false notions of spirituality that imagine that the brighter the light the more all is embraced as one, whereas in reality the more in truth the more clear that which is out of truth. This idea itself of all being accepted into one Truth is simply an emanation of the murkiness where vision is clouded and ultimately becomes the mandate of Hasan bin Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

The Will To Truth

"People tend to be only interested in as much 'truth' as confirms them in their ignorance."
"Yes."

Self-Contained

A leading figure has described literature's great mission being to create a literary language devoid of all external reference. Thus will literature finally become a pure art-form, he said.

Subjectivity Overcoming Of

Subjectivity requires the thought of subjectivity, objectivity, etc. All amounting to the ever shattering fragments arising from this self-imagined universal dualism. In silence all this intellectual artifice disappears, or rather fails to emerge. And since in silence it cannot emerge, it then doesn't exist as a reality or problem."

US Anthrax Murders Sourced from US Bio-Defense Program

See short clip from History Channel here. "All the spores were sent for immediate forensic testing. The bacterium that killed Robert Stevens was identified as the Ames strain. A strain long favoured by and under the near total control of the US Bio-Defense Program."
Terrorism emanating from the authorities fighting the terror are actually the ones creating the climate of terror? How astonishing. Admittedly it would be slightly more astonishing were not this terrorising tactic such a standard controlling mechanism of government. Though there is always the get-out clause of the lone nut theory for those so inclined.
Naturally it is very easy to govern someone in the absolute sense of control over their consciousness if you are intentionally triggering states of fear and anxiety. Such a mind isn't not free in some dreadful future, but unfree in that present, and such fettered consciousnesses extremely easily manipulated from that state of fear into acquiescing to necessary measures the state is wessentially claiming necessary to alleviate that insecurity and fear; while also feeding off the attendant ego lusts of hatred and love of bullying violence. The vicarious triumph of one's self through the bloody, high-tech victories of the state. Though as some may realise that alleviation never quite arrives. For example, hot on the heels of WW2- the Cold War, and hot on its heels the War on Terror. Which isn't to say the grand stand spectacles of terror don't exist occasionally to justify the hype. They are vital creations and components of the media industry, where news and entertainment are manufactured for the pleasure of all, and the lines between the two are blurred for the benefit of the loyal citizens. As when CNN had the line "The Empire Strikes Back" underlying their 'news' programmes while covering the exciting attacks on Afghanistan after the even more exciting events of 911.
As Thomas Mann wrote in Dr Faustus:

...in the era of the masses, parliamentary discussion would prove utterly inadequate as a means of shaping political will; that in the future what was needed in its place were mythic fictions, which would be fed to the masses as the primitive battle cries necessary for unleashing and activating political energies; that henceforth popular myths, or better, myths trimmed for the masses, would be the vehicle for political action- fables, chimeras, phantoms that needed to have nothing to do with truth, reason, or science in order to be productive, to determine life and history, and thereby to prove themselves dynamic realities.

Stream of Consciousness

The stream of consciousness in literature, as is often called, should rather be described as a stream of words. Only a lunatic, much learned though he may be, could imagine consciousness is identical to the transmutation of the flow of sense-perception and feeling into a more or less elegantly succession of those peculiar substances, words. Whatever consciousness is, it most definitely can't be reduced to this babbling onrush of language. A succession of words should be content to described themselves simply as a succession, or indeed a stream, of words.

The Point of Perspective & the Search for Truth

What is the reality of the point of perception from which one observes oneself within disciplines such as philosophy and psychology?
Is the fullness of the reality of a sphere comprehensible to a point within that sphere, or is this an absurd proposition, and the only way a sphere can know itself fully is existentially as a sphere?
One might argue that the point of perspective expands with knowledge, though one might as easily argue that the point contracts with 'knowledge', since knowledge amounting to the notion of the point within the sphere actually knowing itself as that sphere is an absurdity.
Thus the immeasurably more satisfying indirect, analogous, artistic forms of talking about truth that actually shake the foundations of the point of perspective, rather than the rational abstract means which serve to solidify the illusion of the point, convinced it is growing in knowledge, heading for truth, just around the corner.
The more falsely sure the point within the sphere of its intellectual knowledge, the more abominable the intellectual and ensuing practical results. Thus materialistic communism, fascism/neo-conservatism, etc and a myriad of less obviously insane insanities.
Another variation is the neurotic, where the point's self certainty is undermined, but it has no faith in the sphere within which it has its existence.

The Usurper

There is the belief that Christianity grafted itself onto this anciently celebrated period around the Winter Solstice, chose this period as the opportune time to celebrate Jesus' birth, and so gradually effected the passing from one faith to another relatively seamlessly. Attempting to to do otherwise would be an act of cultural crudeness doomed to failure. Now we have the same process of a new faith being grafted onto an old, and in this case the orgy of consumerism at Christmas and New Year's marks the new god of human materialism. 'Human materialism' as it as nothing to do with faith in the natural world which could theoretically amount to a kind of materialism. This modern religion is specifically restricted to the materialism of human imagining and creation in the form of consumerism. So the new faith of materialism/consumerism, which is a kind of anti-faith, as it is ultimately truthless, effects a coup d'etat and usurps the celebratory season by imposing its values onto that time, with the core rituals now involving maximum consumption of consumer goods by consumers. Out with the old, in with the new.

A Good Alibi

All evil generally requires is a good alibi to become respectable.
All evil requires is a very good alibi to become virtuous.
All one needs generally do is examine the alibi to be back with naked evil.

The Birth of Man

Through use of remarkable imaginative powers, where I coalesce my being with the great psychic forces that lie hidden from the eyes of the profane, I have recently witnessed the great moment in time when we can truly be said to have become human; this moment being the formation of language by our upwardly mobile ancestors.
The scene: A cave somewhere in the Eastern Europe. Four hairy, smelly individuals; animal of strength & stupid of expression, gazing with all the rapture of dumb beasts at another being, but this one endowed with the faint but unmistakable signs of a deeper intelligence. He has a piece of flint held purposefully in his right hand, & emanates an air of somewhat hesitant pedagogical authority. He bursts forth into speech:
"First what we have to establish are the rules of grammar. Otherwise, all will be shapeless chaos & the darkness of utter nebulosity. If we want to make ourselves understood we need to have a firm & vigorous grasp on the subtle intricacies of our tools of communication. Grammar is the bedrock. Our language must be a perfect instrument for both the utilities of everyday living and the abstractions of philosophical discourse; able to probe & discern the subtlest shades of consciousness, and yet perfectly attuned to the rudimentaries of day to day living. One must not scorn the prosaic."
At this point I was called back to the concerns of this world, but, and with a feeling of pride, I quickly scribbled the lines,
"Rousseau, Rousseau.
More true than you did know."

Soul Discovery

Scientists are claiming to have located the precise location of the mythical philosophical entity known as "the soul," which they say they discovered while investigating a hitherto scantly explored region of the brain near the right ear. This discovery proves that the soul doesn't exist, said the scientists.

The Individual

"The individual is a self-sustained imaginary point oscillating between two oblivions, one of which is also imaginary."
"I find that an unsettling thought, though I haven't the faintest idea what it means."

Tolstoy & the Great Lie

He told himself that before proclaiming an unreasonable thing to be unreasonable one must first study the unreasonable thing. This was a trifling falsehood, but it led him to the great lie, in which he was now stuck fast.
Tolstoy, Resurrection

Most people are, obviously enough, less intelligent intellectually than the intellectuals who have attained some measure of public acclaim, however petty and ultimately false such figures might ultimately be. Even with ample forewarning of, for argument sake, the bigoted fascism of one such figure- perhaps even a favoured author- the individual tells himself, "Yes, but I will be fair and judge for myself." However, like the crowd in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, he is very far from being able to judge for himself, and carried away by the eloquence, or simply appearance of eloquence, of the favoured author, he comes away happily reassured that the dreadful things said of the author were unwarranted, and can continue with an easy conscience in the direction he was steering himself, wholly unaware of the great vines of lies entangling that self.

Van Gogh's Night Café & the Descent into Hell

A curious line in the Christian prayer, The Apostles Creed says of Jesus that after he "was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended into hell."
As everyone knows, life is infinitely more mysterious than imagined by all but the very few, entwined as that life inextricably is with consciousness. And without wishing to pursue the possible eschatological subtleties of that heretical sounding thought of a divine consciousness entering infernal regions, that line came to mind while looking at Van Gogh's great painting, The Night Cafe, of which Vincent wrote: I have tried to express the idea that the cafe is a place where one can ruin oneself or commit a crime... The picture is one of the ugliest I have done."
The scene is saturated with hallucinatory menace; a place where Dostoevsky's Raskolnikovs and Stavrogins could inhabit with suitable unease. And of course this is far more than about mere 'place'. Just as elsewhere in Van Gogh's oeuvre, heaven is an extension of the individual consciousness united with the 'external' world, so is hell here a seamless extension of the individual mind.

*Though the resolution of the picture here does make it more unfocused and garish than in reality. Click to enlarge & it improves.

The Cannibal

"The artist cannibalises himself. When he has devoured everything, he perishes."
"The artist or the person?"
"Good question. Perhaps Hemingway realised there was nothing left to devour. His life had become a thing devoid of substance for the artist, and so..."

El Greco- Laocoon, The Redemptor

El Greco belongs as a metaphysician(every significant artist is a metaphysician, a propounder of beauty-truths and form-theories) to no known school. The most one can say, by way of classification, is that like most artists of the Baroque, he believed in the validity of ecstacy, of the non-rational, 'numinous' experiences out of which, as a raw material, the reason fashions the gods or the various attributes of God.
Aldous Huxley- 'Meditation on El Greco' from Music at Night.