reality

WIDER HORIZONS – An essay on experiential limits to truth

“The intellect [as] a local effect of evolution, a flame, perhaps accidental,

which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow

passage open to their action; an lo! forgetting what it has just told us,

it makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can

illuminate the world.” Henri Bergson

Revolutionary insights are bound to occur every few centuries. Evidence for this is clear since we stopped regarding earth as the center of the universe nor our solar system as the only existent planetary system; the “island universes” discovered in the early 20^th century later became proof that we float inside a great vacuum filled with galaxies and our position is not in any way advantageous: we are merely an anthill in a vastly greater desert. Revelations of this sort change the root of all our understanding of the human being and his position in this strange universe. The above discoveries lead to a re-conceptualization of our place in the material plane. There are other revelations that force us to reevaluate our previous conceptions at a cognitive or intellectual level. Kant believed to have transformed philosophy with the same impact that Copernicus’ theory revolutionized astronomy. However, his philosophy as influential as it is, couldn’t produce the radical transformation its author had anticipated. In more recent times Heisenberg dramatically redefined the future of physics with his Uncertainty Principle, setting a perennial barrier to the accuracy of information we can obtain at the subatomic level. It will be safe to speculate that world-changing insights will continue to appear throughout history.

Because we are so immersed in our own opinions and hold with unswerving faith our convictions, it is no surprise that it becomes difficult for us to accept, much less digest, what new ideas are pointing at. The evolution of human knowledge is constantly pushing for wider horizons, breaking free from assumptions that were once crowned as truths but are in reality only provisional scaffolds that permit the growth of more profound insights. Such may be that case with our idolatry to matter; ever since science usurped almost every field of knowledge proclaiming that epistemological certainty is only possible through objective (that is, physically oriented) evidence. Steadily ever since Einstein tried to unify electromagnetism and gravity there has been an increasing wave of believers in a unified theory of reality; which in closer analysis is a pretension to explain the entire universe, or all that is, by physical mechanisms. It rests on an unproven assumption that can be summarized like this: because we are able to perceive the physical universe with our five senses and technical apparatuses, everything we perceive can be explained from that which we perceive. In simpler terms we are convinced that there exists nothing more than what we are able to perceive or deduct from our perception, and although this sounds like the plainest commonsense, we should carefully rephrase that assertion to: we can only discuss what we perceive. But we should not discard beforehand the possibility that this world, every phenomenon at the experiential level, may be simply a fragment of a vaster and greater reality. This does not imply that that greater universe which we cannot perceive should be a concern to science and philosophy but it simply comes as a warning to our proud advancement of knowledge. My case can be summed up in the following way:

If our awareness and intelligence arose out of earlier biological experiments, its persistence on this planet must only be explained by the advantages it has given to our species. Its function has been to assist the survival of our kind and not as we now presume, to solve the riddles of existence. Intelligence did not arise to survey all the scope of whatever exists but only to aid the organism in its survival with its immediate environment. This may be a total and insurmountable obstacle for the arrogance of science and philosophy; merely because there may be dimensions of reality we are not designed to perceive, causes that may influence the physical universe which are not strictly perceivable nor deducible from physical phenomena. This condition could set an experiential limitation to our knowledge –not unlike the uncertainty principle – forever and ever concealing absolute truth from our grasp and revealing us not as possessors of facts but merely as gatherers of illusions.

knowledge_in_21st_century

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Awe and confusion swirled together

pain

Pain by Hands of Crimson (deviantart)

We fling ourselves out into the depths of this tumultuous motion (there is always an implicit decision to stay alive) – we are agonizing in the effusion of forms, attitudes and energies of this world, we succumb to the simultaneity of all events, approaching a boiling point which will end in a devastating orgasm. This life that with relentless power can lift you to regions of unshakable astonishment will drop you with equal force into the pits of boredom and suicidal retreat. It becomes an experience so intense that all those wonderful insights attained by your constant awareness to the profundity of existing forms can be, and will be, torn apart by the abysmal fissure that comes in between reality and our conceptions. Our epoch has demystified the themes of history, art, philosophy, science – any study that pierces Being and divests it from the shallowness of routine – themes we are engaged in by our simple breathing and acting in a world that is constantly being measured, recorded, discussed and because of these, it is being doubted more than ever.

Out of the circumstance of standing on the axis of what is to come and while repeating beyond illusion the experience, over and over again, of existing as part and parcel of this monstrous universe – out of all these circumstances there arises a sentiment which remains for the most part unspoken yet when united to the urgency of our desires it wishes to break through as a divine voice, a repercussion that will echo through the immensity of space and time, an outpouring of this vital disbelief that defines our existence; in short, an eternal statement understood and recognized by everyone:

Can all this be real?

Exactly because the world’s diversity can only be matched by its incomprehensibility the human being, passenger in life, is unable to remain in the state of absolute veneration (the all-too-common fear of the unknown) and must distract himself with whatever nuisance is thrown in his way. Fortunately, there is excitement in monotony; there is pleasure in painful depressions.

We are obeying something vastly superior, something that always exceeds our two modern poisons: reason and technology. We aspired to imitate nature with those silly contrivances. We, subjects to our bodies, to history and the course of the planet, we return to bed every night insulted simply because we cannot deceive ourselves much longer: the world we have come out of has created itself and us without the tool of reason; and in that inexplicable unreasonableness it has fashioned machines infinitely superior to our latest technologies – we see it all around us, the biological world, a miraculous product abandoned by the silent God of Purposelessness.

After we finish with this continuous enigma, we open our eyes to challenge again the naked world, to tease it with our actions and desires….

“oh what a world” we say,

and reenter the game once again.

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Trapped in nothingness

It seems to be I am locked inside this excessive silence. That while I look up into the hazy azure of the sky or into the windy skies of night I discover an impenetrable void, a silence that cannot be breached, a solitude that is here to stay. My arms plead with desperation for a sign, my ears are on a pilgrimage in search of a sacred word – a confirmation that life can be trusted. A revelation or miracle that can transform these wild gyrations of nonsense into a lively and trustworthy universe. Long tunnels of agony and atrophy seem to be the destiny of those that aspire to awaken and revive human life from its muddled lethargy. But being trapped inside an inescapable chasm, I have only the ignoble expanse of space to address and all of creation turns its back on me and answers back in SILENCE. I am not insightful enough to interpret my own frustrations, I cannot tell if it is a general trend in this new age or if I stand alone in this inexplicable confusion. Furthermore, the only remedy comes in strings of lyrical eruptions that at first sight seem vague and meaningless, but are in fact projections of the real ambiguity and hollowness that resides deep within. It is unnecessary to find coherence when one is no longer servant to the tyrant of reason, it is superfluous to propound theories when the intellect is too weak to grasp reality. So, the image is inevitable: floating in cold nothingness, silent solitude. A journey through emptiness, a constant motion through space finding every now and then a naked planet, an aura of beauty and patiently collecting the dust of time in expectation of a glorious sun – surrendering to the all-powerful ground of being.

Isolation

Isolation.

Breathtaking isolating metaphysical estrangement. I am the voice of a prison, an oasis of consciousness locked up in a bottle that is floating on an ocean of beautiful nothingness. There is nothing but myself. But “myself” isn’t human. Consciousness is the moment of absolute silence before sneezing. We are the void that is never heard, we are the undercurrent of a stream that can never rise to the surface; we are motion without name. The unreality of it is not a punishment – it is a promise that nothing – nothing can condemn us to eternal misery. Every pain is a thorn, every joy is a petal: but there is no rose to eternalize them. Life is a dream that will never surrender the mist of its illusion.

We are a particle in that dancing mist,

flashing in the light of time,

vanishing in the darkness of boundless sleep.

If…

If stories had some sort of reality I would narrate my dissolution amongst the heavenly bodies; if fantasies were not merely fictions I would vanish careless in the wind; if words were not all vain and empty I would tell everyone that life is a bubble of dream and we are nothing but footprints on sand.

If changing the world meant anything I would form a new republic; if truth existed I would refute the philosophers; if god existed I would be fearless to leave this world…

On my 26th birthday. January 7th 2008

A line of thought

We haven’t reached the spiritual vertigo of Zarathustra, for in his abundance of knowledge became weary of too much wisdom; nor are we broken down by so much grief as Titus had to endure. We are not too small to be completely insignificant, nor great enough to awake with daily pride. Our real circumstances are somewhere in between the extremities, our toils are not fully tragic or heroic.

We battle through the repetitions of the calendar and if we strive to send out a message, a moral for our collected personal histories, what unclouded expression can give meaning to the facts of our plainer existence? What, for instance, is the final message of the universally acclaimed films of Forrest Gump or Amelie? What feature in their unwinding plots seizes the spectator’s mind-body and synchronizes its fictitious reality with our own living novels? The former film is a wonderful exposition of the Ying-Yang character of any human life, yet in the end the legendary up-and-down events of Gump’s life become simply a background for the truly memorable moments of his life as he describes them to his life-long love: gazing at the stars at night, contemplating a sunrise, running by a crystalline lake, and surveying without distinction the earth and sky. The latter film from the onset exposes a lover of life in her most basic and simple experiences: sticking a hand into a sack of beans or skipping pebbles on water.

For both films, besides the eternal search for love, these aforementioned singular and unpretentious experiences somehow seem to magically justify the turmoil of existence, our inevitable mortality and the lurking solitude that hides away in every human heart.

But while Zarathustra, Titus, Forrest and Amelie lie tranquilly behind the surface of a book’s page or the film’s screen, what is for the true mortal being the climax of his life? When do we find the ultimate recognition of our satisfaction, and if we do, are we able to leave behind forever the racing dream that we have called our daily reality? In other words, once we find a simple reason for our being, can we then allow it to return to non-being?

The search for fulfillment needs not reach the extremes of intellectual inquiry of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra or the emotional explosiveness of Shakespeare’s Titus, perhaps our day to day lifestyle will be enough if it be endowed with sufficient awareness, a recognition that behind our meals, offices hours and snoring sleep an intuitive beauty akin to what Forrest and Amelie felt in their rudimentary experiences is available to us.

After all, is not the triviality of the familiar set before the grand theater of stars and galaxies? Is it so surprising that this world as it is, is just enough, that we need seek no more, progress no further, attain nothing more…

Had today been the last day of this earth and we the living saw and participated in the last scene of this earthly play, would not every last smile turn into a divine sign, every last meal a most sacred ritual, every last conversation a most treasured bible, every last kiss a most unnatural miracle.

The potential of the ordinary is quite extraordinary once we acknowledge how rare and marvelous is our neglected existence.

The oppression of language (two poems)

The following two poems explore the human need to express everything we experience and the impossibility of absolute correspondence between lived experience and our descriptions. I wonder why we cannot contain the purity of experience in ourselves without exchanging it for the artificial-reality of words and symbols. Wouldn’t it be better to leave the flux to itself while we join in its silent (nonverbal) dance in an ahistorical frenzy? For what are our conversations but a miniature-history of the world and our lives? Must mankind be forever trapped in the webs of a descriptive situation? What’s the need to define place, time, mood, thoughts, hopes and expectations?

Is life too great for anyone to bear alone that we must reduce its intensity and infinity to the limited bounds and finiteness of language?

If we cease to communicate (purge) life could we die from an overdose of life itself?

These are the dry leaves of the 21^st century
Falling upon our feet that coil
A path as snakes on a dune of sand

These are the subway noises
Under the surface of our routine
Where are our shouts of ecstasy?

These are the ripples of passion
Unborn embrace of earthly bliss
We are one catastrophe away from paradise

These are the memoirs of all power-lines
Showering us with light of illusion
Approaching twilight for today’s relics

These are the end-products of pleasure
Fascination with the wonders of plastic
And a what-for question left unanswered

These are the dry days of the 21^st century

Fetch me nature’s product in a plastic bag
While this blue-eyed kid stares at me
As I dance to the melody of pure purposelessness

Talk to me about an Asian photograph
While this train takes me to your hometown
As I write lines of life’s ineffability

Promise me there is a higher plan
While I grow old with laughter
As I adjust my twisted underwear

Abandon me for taking the trivial for the profound
While the grass is still wet outside
As I swear life’s grandeur is best unexpressed

A prospect of madness

Would you call me mad if I can confess of a certainty in the prospect of the future, even when I fully acknowledge that the vicissitudes of Time can easily outsmart the most rigorous mathematical prediction; yes I was sure that in ten years’ time I would be looking back to this very same day – today – as the fantasy of a naïve child’s imagination that mistook the nature of reality for that of a game: haven’t I erred in my conviction that life is best lived through the transformation of its contents into those poetic representations that plunge me into an ecstatic state of mind, in other words, in trying to grasp life by its tail by scrutinizing every tottering thread of Time had I not missed the meaning of reality by inspecting it too minutely, too unsparingly as to leave out of the range of my investigations the global experience of existence?

I saw in that Delphic vision a day when all these conglomerates of experience that surround me today would be no more than the debris of a vanished Past, a trivial irony that would have no more power to excite my cynical laughter. That day will come when I rent a paltry hotel room in Belgrade, killing my time with a lousy inexpensive hooker and when night comes I will stare despairingly at the ceiling wondering if abandoning my youthful delusions was a wise choice, since by then I would have purged myself of any prospect in the road of human creativity and would be living in the pulsation of every naked minute, suffering like every other human being in the claws of the beast of existence. And every so often I would glimpse outside my window to see a crumbling civilization and I shall utter words such as these:

Withered petals gliding down
Breaking from their cone
Into scattered puddles in the street
Let each petal leave my rose
Each desire run away
All sorrow, regret and concern
Vanish below –
What is it to me that we must die
Why should I carry the burden
Of Fate’s indifference to us?

Strangers in the city

As strangers in the city
Their eyes meet briefly in a terrible gaze
In the depths they see the emptiness

A hungerless abyss – terror inexpressible
As the pieces move on the chessboard
History, its strategy unknown and obscure
Layers of reality unfold
As strangers that we always are
Appendixes to a greater immeasurable reality
Suspended in our lonely ignorance

Sharing fleeting glances in our anonymity

The Mold of Reality

THIS IS HOW I SEE IT…

Artists, poets, musicians, philosophers, scientists – in short, anybody who creates becomes a sculptor of human reality. They all exhibit aspects of human life that are present – or possible. One life is not enough to survey all the possibilities that can be brought upon the living experience; we must share with each other the Spectrum of the Possible, because we need more than two eyes to visualize the totality of human existence.

In a world where most men and women are concerned primarily with “making a living”, that is, having enough money to buy stuff and have sufficient comforts for raising a family; in this world the prospects of poetry, pure science, art, philosophy become irrelevant, if not insignificant, at least, secondary.

But my view is contrary to this widespread carelessness. I conceive life as this:

We are a crowd of gazing eyes all found in the depth of a lush valley. Most eyes are focusing on the ground, ensuring that each step is safe, reasonable (and profitable!). But amongst this majority of conformists there are a few visionaries that focus on more than just the flatness of the ground. These few are studying the trees around, gazing at the stars, describing the colors of insects, monitoring the motion of the wind, and endless observations take place that are ignored by the mass of robotic somnambulists. All these irrelevant and beautiful things the minority gazes at are equally real as the beaten path most walk upon.

To end this metaphor I kill everyone and then ask the reader to capture what human life would have been without these few wanderers:

it would only be a muddy track of monotony.

No complex forms of nature (trees), no immensity of space (stars), no microscopic detail (color of insects), no invisible mystery (motion of the wind), etc.

ONLY A
MUDDY PATH…

This is the importance of the poet of human existence, of the artist of human potential, of the musician of the human imagination, of the genius of human exploration. They give depth to human life, they bestow on reality a wider dimension.

Some come upon this rotating planet to fill the mold,

Few others come here to fashion this mold.