 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Adam Blatner, Imagination-ologist
What’s It All About?
Well may you ask. Human minds are limited. Even when they’ll have evolved significantly (if we don’t extinct ourself—yes, let’s use the word extinct as a verb!), we’ll still be limited. Alas for dreams of grasping the whole and understanding it. I may allow for the idea that some few people get vivid enough glimpses of the Big Picture—and for them, these are profoundly mystical experiences. Maybe they do see "The All" (also known as God, the Ground of Being, The Greater Wholeness of Existence, Tao, Brahman, and by innumerable other names), or maybe they see just a part but from their tiny minds, even this glimpse seems to them like the All. I don’t know.
But I do know this: I have been vouchsafed a mind that perceives through a glass, darkly, but with some little bits of light (if I press my nose up against the glass), and what I see is that you can see things from a lot of angles! First, to the right, what is known as the "Big Bang" in matter/time/space/energy is from a trans-dimensional perspective an emanation of unity that in certain senses seesms todivide int two, then a bunch, and as it emerges it takes on more forms! In a highly multi-dimensional cosmos, the same situation can be viewed in different ways. For example, take, well, us. Here on the left is a picture of our world, highly stylized, condensed, cartoon-ified. But this same world is holographic—as a whole or in part—even tiny itsy bitsy parts—other patterns can be discerned, each illustrating its own principles.
The key is that your expectation, your imagery, your unconscious symbols are both created by you and chorded with the symbols of the cosmic archetypes.
To the right are five views of the cosmos or some local sector thereof--
Noticing its glistening sparks reflected off the water...
... a "badge" of honor, a radiant "flower" for your lapel..
... an unstable balancing act trying to find its center of gravity
...progressive orbitals, rich with vibratory movement...
... a moment's stability in crystalline form..
space doesn't follow the same rules at a transdimensional level...
Within this realm there are other forms evolving and devolving, hinting at form itself, symmetry, dynamic pulsing:
Pulse 1
Pulse 2
Elaboration 1
Elaboration 2
Matrix 1
Matrix 2
At the trans- dimensional level, forms flicker in and out of existence, gathering psychic energy that may or may not find expression in inspired art, dance, music. I am showing the visual form here, but know that these forms also represent musical chords and melodies, and evoke in minds images of more complex environments, smells, architecture, and feelings of movement.
We see on the left three variations: Pulses, elaborations, and matrices. These filter and channel chaos at the interface of mind and transcendental realms of activity. At another level, as shown on the right, simulatneously, other pre-form wombs seek coherence:
Thus, the emergence from chaos is elegant, though yet a mystery. (As Huston Smith noted, a mystery is a category of phenomena that, the more you learn about it, the more further questions open up!)
There are moments of the illusion of “getting it,” its order seems to come clear; and other moments of just noticing its glistening sparks, flashing occasionally into brilliance.
Ultimately, you may be led into realizing that “it” is also you, and you are to varying degrees doing “it,” co-creating the “out there” that seems to be happening to you. This is uncomfortable, because you don’t know how you do this. Much of this creative process is unconscious and it could be fairly said that it is not “you” that is doing this, but the beyond-you.
Freud talked about the id, superego, and ego. Let’s add the meta-ego, the beyond-I. In a way, this overlaps with id, which is often imagined as rather primitive. Parts of it are, but other parts—dare to consider this—may overlap with what some mystics call “higher wisdom.” And anyway, these components of the psyche are just hypothesized constructs—if they exist, they do so as dynamics without clear boundaries, as abstract processes of unimaginable complexity, in a mind that is at times divided, even dissociated, and at other moments, or at other levels, at the same moment, non-divided. (Alfred Adler made this point, trying to counter the way patients of the Freudians saw themselves as the helpless playground of conflicting sub-parts. We also can choose to ally with a guiding ideal and take increasing responsibility to move in this direction—thus Adler called his theory, not psycho-analysis, but rather individual (not-divided) psychology.)
Returning to metaphysics. On the left is a key expression of a typical emergent phenomenon, drawn diagramatically. It's not easy to capture these in vision---but easier than trying to describe these by words. They are building blocks of our existence.
On the near right is the movement of this through pre-time-space, on the far right is its elevation and beginning elaboration as it becomes more manifest.
We'll end with a contemplation about how such a development may blossom (looking for the right words to use here) And finally come to harmony in what I call the "star of the heart," a sub-type of what in geometry and electronics is a "lissajou curve"
In summary, I have been informed by my higher ups that many may not understand the aforementioned, but some will allow it to play in their minds as does an oracle. What matters is not so much a "correct" understanding as the evocation of deeper currents of imagination, activation of the muses, giving juice to the axis of inspiration.
