sublime and the silent sky

IT certainly is a truism that time has a way of changing all things--time perhaps is change itself, change iteration, mediation, transformation. Since I wrote Hymn I was introduced to Derrida and deconstruction. Ah! I can feel your pain and imagining wincing at the thought of trying to fathom his impenetrable text and his destruction of everything rational and sensible. I mean that is what he was up to--right? 

Well that is precisely what he is not up to. But I am not going to address this here. At this point I want to just acknowledge that my views have changed since the entry of Hymn--although in some ways, I feel the spirit of that post is more profoundly realized both philosophically and in life. 

Beside encountering a much need corrective through Derrida's deconstructive writings, I have also studied Emmanuel Levinas, Kierkegaard, Kant and Nietzsche. In their own way, each have helped me deepen and question the metaphysical heritage articulated in Hymn. 

I am thinking of the sublime now. The sublime is the encounter with what exceeds my ability to assimilate, to totalize, to make my own. The sublime ruptures the presence--the self-proximity that closes off the rupture of the to-come--of the unheralded arrival of the Other that cannot be anticipated or controlled. The sublime exceeds mental appropriation as a temporal effraction and eruption of the beyond. It is the wild beyond abstraction-- it is the wild of abstraction.  It resists my attempts to domesticate it--it withdraws from my drive to assimilate it. 

Isn't this the impulse toward transcendence? It is the recognition of the always excessive wild that is Other and from which I am not separate. 

Hymn to a Silent Sky

The vast silence in Nepalese high country, its expansive vistas and high altitude- awareness is a conscious intensity and irreducible mystery. There is much debate today in consciousness studies regarding the nature and limitations of our capacity to fully understand consciousness. If we view consciousness as a thing it becomes a discrete element into our matrix of thing-logic, then consciousness is an element of circumstance that can be broken down endlessly into a phenomenal meat-grinder. What if this view is a result of meat-grinder logic, but fails to grasp the genuine nature of consciousness? What if mind is the circumstance of consciousness, and consciousness itself is prior to mind? What if consciousness is not a faculty, but the force of existence itself, that is consciousness as self-identity?

Observe what happens when we merely talk about consciousness. When we discuss consciousness we make into an “it” from the third person perspective. But consciousness is always and primarily, first person: we know consciousness primarily and always from our interior experience of existing, not from our exterior observations and analysis. Even if we object that much is known of consciousness, behavior, and psychology, it remains that those fields of knowledge and study exist only because we know that we exist—that we are concerned (Heidegger) with our existence. It is also possible that the exteriorizing tendency of consciousness—the capacity to separate the “I” from objects—can be turned inward. Our “I”, that always allusive presence, becomes a “me” of objectified introspection. Whatever arises in the field of consciousness can be objectified: made into a separate thing that can be broken down endlessly.

But what is really happening when we objectify an act of consciousness? We are distinguishing the immediacy of our conscious presence( here now in this moment) from consciousness as a concept/object, (something that appears in our mind's eye). This is why when we turn inward to find our “me”, we are left with an infinite regress. When we think about ourselves, we think in terms of appearances, concepts, representations which are all objects in our minds eye. Like light from a distant star, we are percieving objects of the past in our current awareness. Anytime we try to grasp ourselves as an object of perception or consciousness, that object will always be a memory and a mere facet of our current awareness. Thus, our current and pesent presence can never be an object to itself.

Whatever we conceive as our “me” is an ephemeral thing—it appears as an “object” of circumstance, and then it disappears. Our awareness always stands present, like the sky with clouds forming and disappearing.

Descartes' famous dictum: cogito ergo sum, haphazardly translated as “I think, therefore I am”, is a good way to approach the formless presence of consciousness. The translation is haphazard, because the words “I think” and “therefore” immediately conjure certain presuppositions we hold here in the west. “I think” doesn’t mean thinking in the usual sense of objectifying thoughts about the world. Remember, when Descartes wrote his famous words, they were a conclusion to his formal application of doubt to literally everything we think we can know. Our place, beliefs, and even the “me” of awareness may all be illusions, dreams, or phantoms in a virtual reality matrix. Hovever, even if all this were true, the “I think”, that is my awareness of being (and therefore having concern) is presupposed in even the most strident skepticism. In other words, even if every possible perception or belief can be doubted, the act of doubting itself arises in the being of consciousness' awareness of its own existence. Thus, the “therefore” is not a causal link between the act of thinking and fact of being, it is actually an indication of an inversion of ordinary sense of causal sequence. The ever-present "I Am" is inherent in and prior to any thought or doubt. Ken Wilber stated it most succinctly when he phrased Descartes famous phrase the following way: “Consciousness, therefore Being.”

Being is self-existing; existence is self-effulgent being that is an interdependent arising of endless perspectives. Consciousness is the affirmation of the primacy of being; the essential, first, and unmediated “communication” of consciousness is its own existence: ‘I am’.

The communication of the being of consciousnesses is not externally imposed on consciousness; it is consciousness. Consciousness is the feeling of being as the “fact” of being as apposed to the “what” of being. And further: this consciousness is radically non-objectifiable. If “you” reach to the back wall of consciousness the “you” disappears into an endless, formless intensity of presence. Even the articulation of ‘I Am’ merges into the great an unfathomable mystery of self-identical being.

In this sense consciousness that is self-positing being, or being’s primary manifestation of self-identity, is itself formless awareness. As Francis Lucille says, it is a welcoming space. It is in this welcoming space where we enact self-holding in being, that is a fundamental embrace/forgiveness of our manifestation here. All of the elements or strata of our lives that are otherwise unacceptable to us (hidden, broken, refused, repressed, oppressed, ignored and otherwise unloved) are allowed to arise and be “held” in the forgiving space of this consciousness. It is only in consciousness they breathe and are given room to follow their natural trajectory, and then fade away into the formless and unknowable mystery of life. It is in that welcoming space, we fall into a place where we can move in freedom through and beyond these tendencies. These tendencies are not merely bad, negative or immoral acts, but any emotional allegiance that blinds us to the great love, and silent sky being, and welcoming consciousness for all and everyone.

All phenomena arise “within” the space of consciousness; all phenomena are the spontaneous self-development of consciousness. The space of consciousness can be an indifferent witnessing, or the most profound self-acceptance and forgiveness imaginable. The back wall of consciousness, that what is prior to consciousness, is an ultimate intensity that is radically nonobjectifiable. It shines forth, self-positing in joyous dance its own existence by radiating the endless worlds

Consciousness as self-identity is the ultimate proximity. It is unmediated touch, that is self-existing and not separate from anything that arises. So when you are ready to sit back into this hermetic space of ease, the welcoming sky that is itself untouched and indifferent, you will discover that consciousness extends into the world not merely as some airy fragrant space, but as touch itself. This touch is fundamentally the intensity of being, but it is phenomenally extended in the body as all forms of beings, events, and places. Since all references are the spontaneous self-development of this touch, ultimately there is no external reference or point of view of this touch. It is the heart of consciousness, vulnerable and inseparable.

This process of falling into the silent sky, and feeling the vulnerable heart of consciousness as touch, is not comforting. It is the primary breath, or spirit, that graces the endless walls of these great mountains. Familiarity, my comforting self-identity, falters in the presence of this great and endless presence. I am left with nothing but to open the hand, and release the ghosts of the known into the great “cloud of unknowing”. This touch feels like failure, it is not “right”. It cannot be abridged by any map, for it is found even most profoundly when our American notions of “success” meet the cul-de-sac of our fleeting identities.

Trekking in the high country, situated out of a predictable cultural context, and moving physically against my own limitations, I am placed in an arena that is an ultimate intensification of consciousness. Of course, to get the benefits of such a trek, I must approach the trek as prayer: open to the unknown and assuming the posture of invocation and humility. Invocation is not the words spoken to an unknown, mythic deity, it is the posture that is taken in daily living through conscious intensity; it is an attitude of openness that approaches the unknown not only as a student and devotee, but as your very self that always already is and will be.

And it is even more than a trek: it is a pilgrimage, travel in the genuine sense of the word. In many occasions, we look at our spiritual heroes and wonder about their great awakenings. We hear about the nature of consciousness, teachers, exotic yogic practices, but the primary thing has always escaped me until now: travel, pilgrimage. Leave the womb of America, drop the convenient lifestyle, stretch into a conscious intensity, and submit to the sacred arena of the Large.

May the silent sky of being bless all sojourners on this great, uncharitable path to our destiny in the unknown.

Nepal is Love: Trekking Recapitulates the Spiritual Journey

I realize when one thinks about Nepal one may think of it as a third world nation, with political factions, poverty, and problems with resources and growth. Faced with the interminable unknown and in the face of the “other”, we shrink in fear or roll our eyes in cynical detachment, masquerading our provincialism and dogmatism as sophisticated intellectualism. We forget that Nepal has many of the problems facing first world nations, simply less insulated in its delusions that everything is “okay”. Yet it is precisely, and paradoxically this profound sense of “okay-ness” that Nepal communicates.

I dream of Nepal as space and touch, as in some metaphors of consciousness. Consciousness as space is openness of welcoming of the manifestation of phenomena. The welcoming space of consciousness is love and forgiveness. Consciousness as touch is the primary expression of being positing its own existence. Consciousness’ first movement is self-positing: I am. It is the only miracle; all other miracles are transformations of the primary miracle. Consciousness is the self-expression of being. This feeling is best understood as touch which an unmediated sensation of proximity.

“Nepal is Love” is an invocation towards feeling-consciousness that facilitates the high spiritual odyssey of my future trek and visit to monasteries. “Nepal is Love” facilitates this intensification of consciousness, pressing consciousness beyond the circumstance of mind to its primary ground. As an invocation, “Nepal is Love” is a prayer, but not a prayer to the great other, but an open gesture to the great unknown that is both completely beyond the present conception of things and completely inseparable from all that is arising.

I should be clear: by high spiritual odyssey I don’t mean “high” in the sense of morally or structurally superior, I literally mean high as in altitude. Perceptually, one’s perspective is brought to bare against an expanse of immense proportions that brings us into direct conflict with many of our basic assumptions. It is this high perspective that Gene Gebser in The Ever Present Origin, cites as the beginning intuition of emergent rational mind. Gebser perhaps takes this as a unique event and response, as the different point of view a mountain gives credence to the intuition of “different perspectives”. (Summiting probably gave an impetus for the emergence of an evolutionary structure that had already developed) However, for the contemplative individual, differing perspectives is not the only gift of a “high perspective”. Being up high affords one the recognition of how limited one’s self-perception is, and that the weight of self-perception (its center-of-the-universe importance) is illusionary.

Of course, one could argue that we are merely swapping self-perceptions: one that is low and provincial for one that is high and expansive This argument would possibly hold sway if the gifts of “highness” ended at expanded awareness. For one thing, particularly in the Throne Room of Sagarmatha, our perspective comes face to face with our own sense of mortality and finiteness. Paradoxically, it is in our provincial dreams where we forget the vulnerable sweetness of the passing moment and the deterioration and suffering of all around us. We are trapped in a childhood stasis, a TV trance of endless cartoons. We live unconsciously, as if the body we abuse and the loves we wound are our interminable entitlement.

In the mountains, the vastness we encounter is not only the vastness of perception that takes in whole geological formations at once; we also encounter the vastness of life and its ubiquitous intensity. The polarity of our lives shift from containing nature as pets, gardens, plants, parks, to nature engulfing and contains us in a vast and unspeakable process. We encounter the immensity of the Large, the timelessness of ancient time, and violent but silent transformation. The existential reality of death, and therefore, of our imminent dispensability cleans the palate from our chronic constipation of mental systems and beliefs. We are afforded, at least in analogue, a direct perception of what is arising. We are not attenuated towards fasting in the west, whether it is fasting from food, people, places, or concepts. We eat these cultural memes hysterically and chronically as if searching for the edible deity of ultimate and endless pleasure. Our current obesity epidemic testifies to our chronic constipation of which Nietzsche poignantly asks us: “What does your body say about your spirit?”

Retreat, silence, leaving behind the comforts of habitual adaptations brings us directly against our fears. It is there we confront the “unlived lines of the body” and move beyond the self-satisfied veneer of pop-consciousness. A long trek does not necessarily immerse us into complete silence, but it does afford long stretches of confrontation with silence and self. We are pushed to our limits physically, we are placed in unusual and perhaps uncomfortable cultural contexts, and as we stated earlier, we are awakened into the realm of the Large.

Trekking recapitulates the spiritual journey, pulling life into a singularity where then the ground that transcends life, and in which life arises, can shines forth in immaculate clarity.

Preparation

In the spirit of the archetypal quest, I am preparing for a long trek in Nepal this November. I have been dreaming of going to Nepal my entire adult life, as it represents the pinnacle of the questing spirit, an open and generous spirituality capable of embracing ambiguity and the unknown, and the adventure of traveling through ancient lands and cultures. Further posts will detail my preparation: logisitcal, spiritual, psychological as well as random thoughts about American culture. First...why the title? Next post...