Journal of (Very) Speculative Philosophy
(The Officially Certified Publication of
The Inter-Galactic Institute of Confabulology)
Editor and Primary Author:
Adam Blatner, Confabulologist Extraordinaire
The Hokey Pokey, a
children's song, really explains the whole thing:
You put your right
hand in. This is an allegory of tentative engagement. The whole
principle of engaging life is stated right off, yet it's not the "whole
self," but only a part. The song progresses body part or section by
part, involving first the periphery and then finally the behind, the
head, and the whole self--trunk and limbs. We warm up to increasing
levels of involvement.
The "put" is
key. It symbolizes our creative action, our chosen activity. We may
choose out of habit, unconscious momentum, just going along with the
crowd, all sorts of reasons---and, indeed, this less conscious choosing
predominates. Very gradually, over the last several thousand years, and
beginning to speed up a little, there is more consciousness involved in
the putting. There is more reflection and insight, knowing what we put,
how we put it, to what use we expect our "put" to be put. Put is a
weird word, too, expressing the cosmic mystery right in front of our
eyes. Contemplate put. Mouth put. Play with different ways of saying
put.
Put your right
hand out. Withdraw it, point it out of the circle, not ours any more,
but mine, and you can't have it. This affirmation of individuality, of
autonomy, of privacy, and the choice to be not involved, invested, even
hinting at the possibility of not even being in the game, is all
indicated. There's a hint of liberation here, of the awareness that
there's an in, a circle, and an outside of the game. But we're just
putting, so we're still in the dance-game.
In some
realities, the dance of Shiva-Nataraj, the Divine Dancer and Dance of
the Kosmos, is the Hokey Pokey.
The song goes on
to re-invite an engagement, as if to suggest that your freedom to put
your right hand out is acknowledged, yet the sense of "come and play
with us" trumps this. The clue is the variable of time, of taking
turns, of giving us some time to be with us, just as the Divine gives
our souls time to be embodied. And we are told that we can be in again
(and again.... and again....).
Put your right hand in, put your right hand out, put your right hand
in....
...And Shake it
All About.
Shake it, baby.
Explore the permutations and possibilities of motion of just a hand
waving. All the movements can be hinted at, the snaky ones, the sneaky
ones, the snotty, shaking-off sticky movements, the waving and
wobbling, fist pump and hammer bang, there are thousands of ways you
can shake it all about, and you can weave these together symbolizing a
dance within a dance, just as our lives operate as lives within lives,
the life of the individual within the life of the profession or nation,
the life of the cell within the life of the individual, the lives
within the lives within the cell, and the lives greater than the lives
we are a part of---all are shaking it, evolving, changing, in process.
You Do the Hokey
Pokey...
No one has ever
actually described the precise movements of this small section of the
Hokey Pokey. The term refers to the whole dance, and people just
generall shake themselves and wiggle and blend into the next movement...
... and turn yourself about.... turning themselves about...
But this
is the core of the mystery, you see. Which way is the right way? Can we
add style? How much can this deed be improvised? What do the
authorities say? What makes them authorities, and who believes this? Is
there a Hokey Pokey? Has anyone ever seen the real Hokey Pokey?
Where does this phrase come from? Might there have been a primal
ur-hero named Hokey Pokey, and what is his mythic story, which today is
acted out as a child's dance? This can be rich in portent and
archetypal resonance! Wooooo!
And you Turn
Yourself About.
This is part of what the mystery of life and death is, being born
near-helpless, dying, near helpless, a 360 degree movement in many
ways. And there's that word "about" again, referring of course to
meaning, as in what not only this song is about, but what life is
about, what it's AAAAALLLLLL about! And through this song we join
in the ritual danced by a thousand tribes---though not always to these
words or in this sequence, but still embodying many of the elements,
the ins, the putting, the out, the turning, and especially the infinite
ways one can perform the hokey pokey.
And yet it's not
finished. The dance is repeated, as days and seasons, moon cycles and
menstrual cycles, life and death and generations, repeated, both the
same and yet different, the spiral of intensity evolves. Your left
hand, right foot, left foot---and don't forget the great schism of
calendrical pasts, in which the high priests of left found rationalized
dogma for making it the left hand that began the dance, and left foot
leads right foot in precedence. As with the egg scholars in the
Jonathan Swift Gulliver stories, wars have been fought over such
foolish details.
The spiral
unfolds right arm, elbow, knee, head, behind, whole self... though some
practitioners have been known to shorten the sequence in the service of
time. (Is this permissible???)
Finally, after
the whole self and a good deal of shaking going on, the dance ends.
Always that end. What do we do then? Something else?
Another dance? Another game? A feeling of exhilaration at being
warmed up for new kinds of interaction, or an edge of sadness if we
feel we must part and can't play more? Such dramas are also what
it's all about.
Resonant Engergy
Fields
Everything has
resonant energy fields. Electrons, pebbles, blades of grass, trees,
mountains, people. These may resonate in more than one
trans-dimensional sub-dimension, too. More complex beings have more
“octaves” or more complex and finer vibrational differentiations than
simpler beings. Squirrels are far more complex in many ways that
pebbles can’t even dream of attaining.
We feel such
resonances between living beings—known as attraction or repulsion, love
or dislike, and we play to these in our wanting to express ourselves
and be known to, appreciated by, or in other ways affected by our
actions. In turn, we play audience to others as they also disclose or
express themselves. The more sensitive among us perceive as-yet-unnamed
relationships with not-ordinarily-perceived others, angels, gods,
spirits, the higher Divine Being fields, and so forth.
Though we
have
as yet no way of testing these perceptions using any physical-based
equipment, that doesn’t mean these resonant energy fields don’t exist.
The love between parent and infant is often palpable, and universal.
Yet we have not yet figured out clear ways of identifying or measuring
such attractions, attachments, desire connections. One could claim to
be loving while at the same time planning to do evil. But mostly, it’s
fairly obvious.The point here
is to make a more conscious, fuller use of that imagery.
Intereestingly: The world of
elves and angels should be recognized as “personifications”—not that
there is “nothing there,” but rather that what is there isn’t
necessarily a “thing,” much less having a discernable physical form.
Yet people tend to project anthropomorphic (human-like) features, so
these fields seem like big or little people, or sometimes even animals.
Soul Concrescence: A Multiplicity-Oriented
Theory of "Reincarnation"
Let's
have some fun! Let's practice the non-ancient activity of
making-it-up-as-you-go-along-ism, also known as improvisational
philosophy. In these webpages I shall be inserting theories and
drawings that illustrate a number of esoteric goodies.
We are
expressions of an aggregate soul experience. Reincarnation does not
happen from a single soul to a single soul, but rather, we are an
aggregate of many, many soul elements, and in turn, we add to and
mature or develop those in various ways, add new ones, let others
wither, so that at our death, we dis-integrate again into many, many
soul elements. These in turn are shuffled and re-distributed into other
souls as they aggregate and form.
This theory is
no more (or less) implausible than the theory of a single soul
incarnating into a single new soul, and it has certain advantages:
First, it helps
to explain the odd bits and incongruous elements in our makeup. Second,
it responds to the implicit question, “have we been promoted or
demoted” by considering that in different ways, a bit of both and then
some.
We draw,
furthermore, from a variety of sources, according to the laws of
attraction. Some souls are more taken from the resonant energy fields
that once involved elves, angels, sprites, faeries, and other
non-physical beings; some from ancestors; some from ideals or people
from cultures that seem to evoke some connection in our present life.
Some extra-terrestrial beings may also be part of this blend.
In turn,
our
soul products at our death infest, invest, influence all manner of
beings—and in the scientific-biological model, there is a certain
unconscious pleasure derived from this, from fertilizing and passing
along our “genes” to many offspring. This drive may be discerned in
many aspects of nature. “Memes” or psychoid complexes may also be
spread this way, realizing that mind-dimensions also are a part of the
Whole of the Kosmos.
Another value in
this theory is that it invites us to explore and enjoy the multiplicity
of elements, motivations, interests, tastes, that make for our
remarkable individuality. Rather than thinking that the discovery of
our “true” self (singular) can be boiled down to a few essential
elements, this approach celebrates the richness and complexity of our
selves (plural). To dance these in the form of a seemingly individual
(non-divided) is like a symphony orchestra finding the music that best
expresses its makeup and inner variety, its full potentials of loudness
and color.
For a good time, check out my cartoons and mandalas in the sub-website about cartoons