fragilekeys

Letter to John

Part II
Additions
(June – Aug 4th, 2023)

1

What must be gradually eradicated is the entire movement of auto-suggestion in consciousness.

On close examination, the link between mental phenomena and consciousness cannot be established. No thought will raise consciousness and no thought can dampen consciousness. Only the spontaneous, effortless, “natural” stilling of thoughts will render consciousness permeable to its own clarity— without the interferences of projections, ideations, and judgments; without the investment of the display upon consciousness as real.

As for the thoughts etc. which appear upon the display, they are thoroughly empty, non-binding, and spontaneously released. They are flits of “substance” which at worst will remind us of the impermanence of substance and of its utter inability to define or alter consciousness: they pass before they arise and, finally, have nothing to do with us.

This fact can be contrasted with auto-suggestion: the process whereby mental phenomena are allowed to determine and push around consciousness, or more to the point, the conscious being, who believes that the mental phenomena are its own.

Indeed that is the first result of auto-suggestion: the sense of (independent) I-being, ahamkara, as “owner” (or appropriator) of objective thought, objective reality, objecthood in general. From this node of error flows the entire complex of related errors; but all of them express the same ignorant move, namely: when our consciousness mistakes itself for and globs on to an objective or mental phenomena of the nature “I am, you are, they are, we are, it is, it is all… X.”

One must thoroughly grok not only the unreliability and contingency of any such saying, but also the folly of the entire operation (despite its minor successes to ‘say the real’) as simply a defense against the impartial space of consciousness— against the mystery of the Unattributable which suffuses all attribution and renders it empty. For, in the end, we do not know what is happening— because “nothing” is happening. It is in the coincidence of nothing-happens and it-happens that the miracle of existence is named.

The semblance of definition and alteration in consciousness, however, is perhaps the most difficult thing to disabuse ourselves of, because it boils down to the judgment of existence. Not the categorical judgment (i.e. assigning qualities) but the existential judgment itself: “it is.”

(It may indeed be the case “X is”, but we are limited to knowing the case and not its nature. What we say of X will always carry the flaw of a limited perspective, and it is only in withdrawing from this game that we reapproach the total perspective which treats each thing as it is and thus repairs the rift between being and knowledge. That is why everything is “in the mystical” in the final perception: we cannot know what “it” was, or if it was an “it”; if “it” and “is” do not reveal more a failure to know than anything.)

A thought arises in consciousness, it repeats, it nags us, it provokes us, we want it, we don’t want it, it has importance, it is meaningless— its deployment is unending because we keep vacillating on whether or not the thought “exists,” has meaning, relevance, pertinence. We see its emptiness, its non-binding nature, even its illusory and reality-misnaming nature; but then we forget this, we resubstantialize it, we glob it back on to another thought we also deem substantial, and so the investment in relevance-delusion continues.

This does not imply a judgment of irrelevance on things, but locates relevance outside the mental judgment of relevance. It implies a surrender to the real relevance of presence, rather than a slavery to the false, superimposed, egocentric relevance. This means that relevance certainly is— what could be more obvious?— but it is unlocalizable and indeterminable: not in the direction of the vague, but in the direction of the ever-more-abundantly unknown! On the other side of our attributions of reality is the revelation of the Unattributable.

Ultimately, we do not see the empty, non-binding, spontaneously-liberated character of thoughts because we are invested in some image or sense of I-being, which those particular thoughts are supporting, antagonizing, terrorizing, flattering, and in any case: sustaining “in existence” such that the judgment on the existence of that I-being is, if not positive outright, at least dubiously-suspiciously positive— which indeed always the case. We name this “egoism.”

2

No more performance in prayer.

3

In Buddhism there is no debt to repay. In most theistic systems, there is a debt.

The debt we have incurred through our sin and wrong-action can only be forgiven by God. As a karmic debt, we must pay it off according to the Lord’s justice. But the Lord may always intervene and lessen or cancel the sentence. God is sovereign in this regard. Indeed in this control over moral cause and effect he proves himself Lord of the universe, since life and death are at stake.

The debt however proves too exorbitant (when compared to what it would have been to obey God) for us to pay it off. The incarnation of God must pay it off. Ironically, the human being that shows how far we fall from the ideal, is the only human being who can show us the way back to the heights.

Buddhism however has no need for this, hence in the enlightened state there is no judgment on existence. Good and bad appear relative, indeed, as attributions which simply set the neurotic cycle of sin and punishment, debt and retribution, in motion.

At the same time, in its aspiration to free us from karmic cycles, much is essentially the same. One could even say that the stroke of grace is here even more radical for not requiring a deity: it is “built in” to the universe (the impermanent expanse) that an increase of awareness, of mind-clarity, will lead to an increase in good-making behavior and loving-kindness. The Buddha Samantabhadra is All-Good spontaneously, without any choice—is this not another extreme expression of the sovereignty of Unchangeable, Unlocateable Presence over everything that changes in time and space?

If there is a drama, it is a drama of owing something to God, of making up for having missed the true life. If there is no drama, the true life cannot be missed, and everything rests freely. But both perspectives require or lead to a sort of long-standing trust in being—a surrender of the “I” who would control, in favor of an entrustment to the Indestructible, however the latter is further narrated and figured (Dharmakaya, Godhead, etc).

Does this debt derive from a comparison of our actual selves with the self we intuit was possible? In the theist’s case, the God-man holds the position of the self that was possible. In the case of Buddhism, there is no comparison possible, due to codependent arising, and so no debt before another is possible: every debt would be shared, there could only be a total paying back of everything to everyone—but in the clarity of mind that very “paying back” would be “spontaneous arising”: the drama of debt ceases to make sense.

But, there is joy in the owing, in the striving for the impossible, for the unactualized perfection of God. We also know this because of the incarnation. The God-Man more than anyone loves God. He lives unto the debt Man owes God. He loves God more than enough to pay it, and will pay it infinitely out of love. Our having missed what we could have been sorrows God and the God-Man. The latter shows us that Devotion and Atonement are the same movement in the soul of Man: love is always love-suffering for the beloved, whether the beloved of God for Man or Man for God.

4

The pain of being born is unending
Train the mind in wisdom of the breach
And death will never reach you

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Letter to John

Part I
Letter to John

(Extended Version)

I am marveling at processes of self-narration and their emptiness.

Being part of a tradition offers the benefit of shared practices and stories. The self is able to stand on that soil and root into them. But there is no guarantee that these are not also illusions, regardless of the good benefits they bring. A chain of gold binds no less than an iron chain, as Vivekananda says.

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On the hiatus between affect/feeling/lived/psychic reality/consciousness (“events of perception”), and the means whereby it is communicated through the lexis (laws, syntax, letters, etc.) of human language.

On the hiatus between the human animal/living being, and the “one” who speaks (and self-understands, and tries to express itself, etc.) through the medium of a human language (composed of letters, syntax, etc.)– a medium that was never chosen by it and does not care if it lives or dies.

An inquiry troubled by the degree to which affect/feeling/lived experience is itself “coded” and overcoded by the way one is inserted into language, so that this “lived experience” itself makes its entry into the psyche through the categories inherited from language socialization. Troubled by the way that this “one”–as in one’s self-description, one’s self-situation–itself takes its shape through language, for example in the form of “I am this…”

Aware also of how the mere mention of a word, or the mere sight of a certain image, can send the body into cold sweats, given the circumstances. A rudimentary example of the apparently total extent to which language “triggers” us into mood, into action, into reaction, into resolutions, into perspectives, and so on.

Language in the eye of the beloved, who drives us mad.

Language in the heart excoriated by sadness and grief, seeking a sign of relief in the desert of signs, bombed out by an enculturated vision that sees nothing without its concomitant social value across the diversity of competing communicative systems– and so rarely, if it is attentive to this oppression, finds a way of speech out of the litter of letter-blugeonings, which stick to the psyche’s own dream like ancient grime.

We are compelled and driven and frightened and shaped by what is communicated through language. And when we want to communicate ourselves to others with any degree of sophistication (even to tell the simplest story, you think of it), we pass through this medium, and try to make an entrance into wordedness some way. Even the communication of the incommunicable must find its way through these chains.

The degree to which this coding recurs inside self-experience, one perhaps knows best when one’s thoughts are racing, when one cannot sleep for all the ‘signifiers’ in one’s head, when one is haunted by an idea or image, when one attempts to explain or defend oneself–then these bars illuminate most strongly, and the prospect of any life outside them fades into the rubble of the marks.

Which is not to say the affect/feeling/sound (of humans or animals) would lack meaning. The issue is thorny, because one is always tempted to set artificial boundaries on “language.” One tries to say that only humans have language, but then neglects the communications of other species, as well as the diversity in modes of human language itself. Or one says that animals have language and then risks losing sight of the peculiarity and consequences of human language– as there is clearly a qualitative transformation or phase shift here, a prerequisite for society and all its subsystems (law, economy, politics, religion, romance, art, etc.).

But however it is defined, what matters is the critical stance taken toward the idea that language is merely an instrument or means–the illusion that it does not fundamentally twist what we intend to mean and can be used more or less like a tool.

When the trouble is already apparent: When we are so enmeshed in language, how do we articulate even to ourselves what we ‘intend to mean’ without passage through this medium? How do we make sense of our own affect when it too occurs effected, one way or another, by the language-code?

Leading to the worrisome suspicion: Are we not imprisoned in these chains of words through which we speak? Are we not most enchained when we pretend that we are not in them? Isn’t our nonchalance before this fact, our denial or repression of it, proof that the communication system has succeeded in masking its virus from our affect-perceptual-system?

This is not to say there could not be some level of “non-worded self-understanding” or communion with oneself… call it “consciousness” if you like.

Perhaps in moments of returning to pure consciousness, when it feels as if all context is eradicated; or perhaps if one could reach the extinction of thoughts (Kaivalya) spoken of in the Yoga Sutras, then there would be a kind of restoration of the pre-linguistic state.

But the fact would remain that such a state remains ‘unobservable’ in the strict sense: it cannot be spoken about or communicated, because its referent is the undifferentiated, and there is no way to communicate without making distinctions and differentiations. That fact may remain detested by religion from the standpoint of ultimacy; but this detest relies on what is detested, namely, a communicative system.

The contingency of religion’s assertion of Unobservables, and its asserting the Unobservable’s existence as Ultimacy, is a blind-spot that no amount of meditation or prayer will resolve. The code of these verifactions will continue so long as this projection is appealing to whoever wishes to hide from the horror of language and repress its imprint rather than transform it.

Because regardless of how things may be at the pre-linguistic level of “pure consciousness”, tell me, has it eradicated your desire to speak?

Are you content with the silence of consciousness of self-death, where desire is no more, context is no more, differentiation is no more, communication is no more? It may suit the fancies of a primary narcissism; it is hardly the condition for raising a challenge to the hegemony of standardized language, which makes us vomit and kill.

Hence my interest in the failures of coupling between the psychic and communicative system. I attend to the unwanted fact that, yes, our grandest self-understandings (at least at the level of being communicable) must situate themselves on a terrain that is artificial, and which never permits anything like the recuperation of a consistency of self, such that the alienation is insurmountable–indeed, as irremediable as a death without consciousness.

Consequently I attend to the inarticulated that ‘attends’ any articulation whatsoever (“it is precisely because desire is articulated that it is not articulable” J.L.); and to how writers aware of this hiatus must twist language in order to communicate this inarticulable element (allied to affect, feeling, sound, tone, timbre, raw experience, thought, etc.) in the face of this awful hiatus, must work desperately to turn this dam into a piquant irrigation.

How is there transmittance from consciousness to communication, when “consciousness cannot communicate” and “communication cannot perceive”?

It is when the communication system is so deformed by forms invented of art, as to both tightly control possibilities while also leaving wide open a field for perceptions in the consciousness of others, which may indeed lend to descriptions of the incommunicable, yet only on the side of the other psyches, with whom “contact” is possible only precisely over the gap of the incommunicable.

–October 13, 2023