The existential blogger

To blog is to live. It is the act of thrusting one's naked essence into the indefinite void, of offering up one's humility and pride and passion and stupidity, one's eloquence and wit and desperation, into that by and large indifferent fog we call the blogosphere.

Why do we do it? For the momentary diversion of the few hapless strangers that might happen upon our markings in the cybersand? What real virtue lies in the exercise of virtual virtuosity?

Perhaps it is because we know deep down in our souls that there is something inexpressible yearning in us to be expressed anyway, like singing the blues during a tsunami, or playing chess with death. Is that overdramatizing what is going on with this phenomenon? How else to explain how even the most mundane narrations become peculiarly compelling once they have been bloggified!

A parenthesis on panpsychism

In my previous post Communique from Neverland I expressed a certain disquietude with being categorized as a panpsychic and felt that there was something there that did not quite mesh with the quantum cosmosophy that I am experimentally espousing. Now I see what it is. According to the definition on FutureHi.net, panpsychism is "the belief that mind, or consciousness, is omnipresent throughout the universe and is a fundamental aspect of the universe. Examples of panpsychic beliefs are that atoms have atom consciousness, rocks have rock consciousness, trees have tree consciousness, planets have planet consciousness, and the universe has universe consciousness, and so on." The probem with that is that it presupposes that there is an outside world! All these projections about what kind of consciousness might exist are posited on the qualities that we perceive "outside" ourselves. That's what I really mean when I say there is no there there! Any cosmology based on the myth of objectivity is bound to be bound in some kind of philosophic parenthesis.

Panpsychism is right to assume that we inhabit some sort of conscious matrix. But the warp and woof of it is nothing but ourselves. Does that sound lonely? It is indeed. Only an entity which knows true loneliness can ever break on through to the other side, to the incomprehensible true meeting with another quantum being. The quantization of consciousness is the fundamental principle, but it is not posited on the categories we see in the physical world. Let us not begin and end our investigation into the nature of things with the things themselves; they are part of the magic lantern show that has been conjured up for our entertainment by the incomprehensible, inexhaustible creativity inherent in the fiery furnace of formlessness. Quantum consciousness is based on the much more radical quantization of pure witnessing monads.

Communique from Neverland

Having noticed that I have been classed as a "panpsychic" by the good people at FutureHi.net, I felt it behooved me to find out what this thing was that I was supposed to be. My first thought was that it might have something to do with Peter Pan. But on that site it is explained that "Panexperientialism or Panpsychism is the belief that mind, or consciousness, is omnipresent throughout the universe and is a fundamental aspect of the universe." In other words, everything in the universe is made out of mind.

I would not disagree with that statement, except that it seems a bit limiting. If the stars, rocks, and seas, as well as the vast multitudes of living beings in the world, everything that exists, is a thought form, a construction of consciousness, then the conditional aspects of that creation must reflect the conditions of mind that constitute them. The objective world becomes a mirror for our fractured psyches. Unless, that is, the partial awareness that we bear is not really causative in this creation; the mind of God is the ultimate subjectivity that is molding things. But that seems too remote to me. In the various forms I perceive, I can only grasp them in terms of what I know and what I am, not in terms of what I am not. For as soon as I see something that is not me, it instantly becomes me. My knowledge of it is only a reflection of that temporary coalescence of thoughts and impressions that I call my self. Now, with that understood, it somehow makes the universe a little too small and claustrophobic, like watching a 60s Bergman movie. Which means that the world in which I find myself is inherently not one in which I feel totally comfortable. Too many pirates, crocodiles, and lost boys—lost souls.

Divine discontinuities

"Time is an illusion...death is an illusion." From the standpoint of our limited three-dimensional reality, that is correct. Certainly the appearances of changing phenomena, plucked through the narrow chink of our senses, are not to be regarded as "real" (although they seem real enough to the experiencing ego). The discontinuties that rock our world from time to time are relative fluctuations in a personal reality construct that is inherently unstable, a house built upon sand.

If you read Janet Sussman's book The Reality of Time you will learn that time from the higher-dimensional physics perspective is much different than the narrow linear referential time sense we all live by. "Real" time has an aspect of randomness and freedom; its shifts are experienced by us as actual breaks in the fabric of spacetime. It is as if at these junction points a tsunami of information from higher dimension pours into ours and our mental constructs are simply swept away.

John Lentz in Transposition holds that the greater godbeing of this cosmos is actually undergoing a shift out of its own reality structure into a new life that is unimaginable even to it. If that is the case, King Kong and Godzilla could come crashing through your living room and you would not bat an eye. There will be matters of greater moment engaging your attention at that point.