Year Seven

Aesthetic Exercises to Accept the Mind and Mirror the Mind of the World

Presuppositions

The mind is the extension of the body.  Many errors have arisen from the basic errors that the mind is something separate from the body and in its separation can break through the body’s parameters.  The latter error has been accentuated through our actually having extended the body’s powers using our minds; this extension is, most generally, called technology.  By extending the body’s powers to the extent that humans now primarily live in the extension rather than the body itself, we are prone to the impression that we have broken or can yet break free from the basic limitations of the body:  sex, death, suffering, particularity. 

We are prone to this impression not due to the evidence, but to our hubris, which continually objects to the reality that we are the subjects of the universe more than its masters.

This objection rouses the mind against nature and the body, even as the requirements of the body force us to fulfill its dictates.  This antagonism, combined with inevitable compliance, forms a base schizophrenia in the human soul, a schizophrenia now characteristic of humanity collectively.  Few are the souls who can maintain their fire through a deeper tension, and unite their mind and body according to the body’s principles.  Those who unite mind and body through the mind’s principles have not really unified the two, for the mind’s unity is always a false unity, being less than one, being representative of a part.

It is not simply that the mind generally is an extension of the body, but that every idea is an extension of the body.  Every belief, principle, dogma, notion, system, idea, is a desire of the body codified into language by the mind.  Even the most honed philosophy emerges from a particular desire of the body:  for order, for example, or escape from the body’s tortures.  For even the body tires of itself.

The body wants contradictory things, but not at the same time.  One moment the body wants to be left alone, the next it wants to be touched; one moment the body wants to be touched gently, the next it wants to be ravaged.  One moment the body wants to be tender, the next cruel; one moment weak, the next strong; weeping, laughing; fragmented, whole.  The mind naturally wants to contain this unpredictable beast, and by saying that the mind emerges from the body, we are not saying that one should allow the body, being foundational, to rule.  The reader should remember that the initiate must proceed through body, will, mind, soul and judgement, and know each equally; as we will come to see, each of these spheres rules, but only in its own sphere.  Each wants to claim the others for itself, but each claim is false.

Each idea we have supports either a specific physical urge, or, if the idea is less transient, our own temperament embedded in our body.  These Exercises are designed, to the extent possible, to enlarge the artist so that she, or at least her art, is greater than any specific idea she has, greater than the idea or collection of ideas embodied in her.  Only by mirroring the body of the universe, and so its mind, can the artist produce art worthy of its name.

Ideas the artist has should be treated no differently by her than the emotions she has:  with indifference and curiosity initially, followed by an attempt to transform that emotion or idea into art.  But we are getting ahead of ourselves; this transformative process should be integrated and natural by the end of the Exercises; it is too early to expect it to occur now.  Yet it may be helpful to give the initiate occasional glimpses of what she may expect after her preparatory years, if only to provide some perspective beyond the immediate concerns.

To accept the mind is to accept the myriad contradictoriness of the mind and the mind’s habitation and grounding in the body.

Meditations

Meditate on the mind’s desire for control of the body and how this desire is itself an ambivalent emotion and enterprise.

Meditate on how the mind, in discovering the basic building blocks of the body, thinks that in this discovery it has superseded the body.  To what extent is this thinking true?  To what extent is it false?

Meditate on the mind’s purity.

Meditate on the mind’s desire to be the world.

Meditate on the mind’s playfulness.

Meditate on the mind’s cruelty.

Meditate on how each of the mind’s tendencies (its purity, unity, caprice and cruelty) surpasses the same tendencies in the body.  To what extent does this surpassing increase the same tendencies in the body?  To what extent can this surpassing stay wholly or in part in the mind?  Explore the myriad effects of this surpassing on the body and the world.  Further explore the nature of these effects¾their limitations and freedoms.  Explore how this surpassing may simply be a function of the mind.

Meditate on the mind’s tendency to unify and divide, and its equal tendency to transform its unities and divisions into edifices.

Meditate on the mind’s orientation toward pleasure and power.  How are these two orientations in conflict? How are they compatible?

Meditate on the source of this tendency to turn the mind’s products into edifices.  Must these products be transformed? Can they be transformed into other things?

Meditate on the mind’s ability to create a world parallel to the world of the body, a world that reflects the body’s world but does not emulate it.  Does our ability to reflect on reflection originate from the same mirror as the original reflection or does it create another mirror? If the latter, in what position does this mirror stand in relation to the first mirror?

Meditate on the reality of and method by which a few minds subsume many minds.  How is this relationship related to the relationship of the general and the specific? Nature and society?

Rationale

As the body lusts for the pleasure and procreation of bodies, so the mind lusts for the pleasure and procreation of the mind.  But whereas a body cannot be all bodies¾all bodies, despite their different shapes and sizes are still largely the same size¾a mind can come close to being all minds¾to use the physical world as an analogy, mind sizes vary from mites to mountains.

We expose ourselves to the common simply by living; we are surrounded by repetitions of the same.  But the mind in its power¾and the mind desires to extend power¾is about breaking these repetitions (although the large mind will see that even these breakings occur within a larger repetition) and so we explore by the mind by travelling to its frontiers, for we find with the mind that all places not at its frontiers are simply lesser versions of what are at its frontiers. 

The mind in itself creates two kinds of entities:  the first, in their purity, are kept within the mind; the second use the body to attempt to show themselves in the world.  The first are known only by individual, internal experience, for as soon as they are communicated, the body is used.  Thus we know no entity of the first type other than through ourselves; this is our reflection that only we see.  It is our desire¾it is each of our desires¾that this first type can and will be communicated, and our desire is so strong that the second entity is created, although these latter entities vary in purity¾from the simplest (use of oral language) to the most complex (at the limen of present capability and experience).

By purity we are not attempting to establish a hierarchy of good and evil, better and lesser; we simply refer to our mental experience that the mind’s processes are in themselves pure and that the body’s processes in themselves contain impurity, and that in channeling the former through the latter, the former inevitably become impure.  We do not decry this process; we simply acknowledge it.

Despite the reality that those whom we in our collective experience elevate to the highest stratospheres of divinity are those who diligently and consistently practice the most minimum translation from the first to the second entity, we still en masse devote our lives to translating as much as possible.  This is both because we have an overwhelming urge to move the mind through the body and translate the first entity into the second entity, and because we would never glimpse the first entity but for the second.  We also intuitively sense and historically know that the, beyond the risk of utter eternal anonymity, of burying greatness selfishly within the mound of one’s mind, the human species tends to resent those who do not follow its common practice and continually attempt to move the mind through the body.  But these tendencies¾to move the mind through the body and to restrain the mind within itself¾are utterly different actions and are reflected in the structure of these Exercises by our having included both motions of active climbing and of falling.

Because of the risks involved in keeping the mind close to itself, few attempt it, and because of society’s inevitable perspective (the inevitability of this perspective the initiate should reflect on) on those who do so and the constructs of interpretation that are erected in relation to such people, we have come to know that the boundary between madness and genius is thin and sometimes non-existent.  This, then, is a third risk for those who take such an approach, for the constructs of the world may very well hammer the flaming nail of genius into the permanent hole of madness, and it is true that the world’s constructs are well honed to do so.

Yet while many are trapped in their minds without anything to say, it is also true that the greatest among us are always those who take this risk.

So the products of the mind move from within itself through language, sound, image and movement into the world and are turned into stone and eventually are destroyed or crumble.

So we explore the primary products of the mind:  religion, philosophy, literature, technology and science; all mind activities and products are of these five categories.

The reader may object that technology, science, and particularly literature, philosophy and religion, are less products of the mind than products of the soul¾at least any of these worthy of its name:  that which leaps forth as fire, destroying and creating.  True.  But, as we shall see in the subsequent phase, while the soul is involved in these mind products, even as the body, will and judgement are, all five of these categories are created by virtue of the mind’s drive toward pleasure and power.

The greater objection is that these categories spring not from any single area¾body, will, mind, soul or judgement¾but from the fiery cooperation of all five.  This objection has more merit and we will return to it in our closing comments; meanwhile, for practice purposes however, we must explore these five categories and it seems in our humble judgement that the mind is the best, albeit not perfect, habitat for them.

Method

As with the body and the will, the mind’s exercises are divided into three years:  religion, philosophy and literature; technology and science; and non-mind.  As with the will, there is a qualitative divide between the first two years, which focus on the two primary products or outputs of the mind, and the third year, which focuses on the fulfillment of the mind through its negation.

Seventh Year:  Religion, Philosophy and Literature

Literature, philosophy and religion are primarily the invisible products of the mind¾philosophy being the most invisible, following by literature, then religion.  We will speak more of this factor of visibility later.

Much has been written about the historical relation and progression of these three aspects of the mind; we are thinking of the primacy of religion, the rise of philosophy, the slow weakening of religion and philosophy, and the gradual rise and dominance of literature.  We are not in disagreement with this perspective, but prefer to think of philosophy and religion as being perpetual products of the mind and thus see them not as weakening, but as being subsumed under the canopy of literature.  Relations and definitions change, and for those many who observe relatively superficial changes, these changes are substantive; but there are certain tendencies of the human spirit that are natural and persistent¾philosophy and religion are among these.  Thus the place to look when relations and definitions are changing is not at the past relations and definitions but under them.  Many observers fail because their prepositions are incorrect.

Religion and philosophy are seen to be diminishing because they were viewed as solids, and if one is committed to viewing them as solids, then they indeed are failing; however, if one views them as changing substance¾from solid to liquid or even solid to gas¾then one sees them as being transformed but not necessarily diminished¾they may in fact be strengthening.  For water and wind beat down the rock, but the rock defeats neither water nor the wind.

Furthermore, philosophy and religion begin as spirit or wind, and those who require rocks because their souls are full of them prefer to change the wind to stone.  But philosophy and religion laugh and dance behind the stone’s back; they frolic under, toppling monuments.  They delight in the cracking of edifice.

So literature, although there are vast industries devoted to turning it to stone, is now the paragon of invisible nimbleness.  And for religion and philosophy to thrive, they must hide in literature’s laughing mouth.  This must be the stratagem of those who work on the religious and philosophical frontier; all others are journalists and historians.

Periodically, after long preparation in the tectonic depths, demanded by bodies as they increase their relations, taxonomies of knowledge change.

The initiate must begin at the root of these products of the mind, and climb laboriously to the tree’s ever-sprouting branches, watching always for giant carnivorous spiders, for they are many.  Many are the spiders, many are their names.  How we would like to give a course to the initiate on the genealogy of spiders and their instincts, but it would be best if she learns these on her own.  May she be bitten, but may she not die.

The initiate should master the masterpieces and forms of the three outputs under discussion.  This is difficult but possible in a year, assuming that she stays far away from secondary sources¾oral and written¾of which the academy is the ever-churning factory, and its charred workers, whom society politely calls professors and pays well for their obedience, the operators and machines.

She should begin with religion, focusing on the primary sacred texts of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Confucianism and Islam.  She should read less to absorb the content¾such is for the devotee or priest¾and more to absorb the form.  What is distinctive about religion’s form?  Among religious forms?  Why, compared to philosophy and religion, have so few religious texts been written?  What difference does the elemental change we spoke of earlier make to the religious text?  What effect might it have on its form? Its content? The number of members in its set?  How does one write a sacred text from wind rather than stone?  From under literature’s weighty and capricious umbrella, protecting its creators from the acid debris of those who love stones?

After religion, the initiate should migrate to philosophy.  In the West, this early on became separate from religion, whereas in the East they remained intertwined.

She should focus on Heraclitus, Plato, Augustine, Kant and Nietzsche, reading Pythagoras, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Schopenaheur, Kierkegaard and Heidegger if she has time.

Some mystics should also be read, although they do not fit easily into any category:  not religion, for religion is suspicious of their orthodoxy; not philosophy, for philosophy is suspicious of their rigor; and not literature, for literature has not typically been the mystic’s aim and frequently the mystic writes competently at best.  The initiate should read Eckhart, Jabes and Weil and perhaps St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila.

The reader may wonder whether the psychologists should be read, particularly the founders:  Freud and Jung.  But the psychologists teach us little that is not found in religion and philosophy; all they do is transfer the content of religion (the divine) into the content of psychology (the human); this was a necessary task, but largely a utilitarian one.  While translators can bring art to life and the best are artists of a sort, they are not primary artists and in themselves are worthy of study among cloistered academics and the masses greedy for spiritual bonbons. 

In literature, the initiate should minimally read The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Greek tragedians, The Metamorphoses, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Baudelaire, Moby Dick, Ulysses, Kafka, Auden and Blood Meridian.  From there she should expand outward to the likes of Sappho, Beowulf, Goethe’s Faust, Blake, Dostoevsky, and George and T.S. Eliot.  Some works, such as The Aeneid and Proust, are famous and may contain curiosities, but are not great.  As a rule, the initiate should avoid reading anybody not dead for at least fifty years; she should keep in mind that perhaps only one or two books from her generation will be of any worth when weighed on time’s indifferent scales and almost everything¾if not all¾that is contained in the torrential downpour of current books is as well absorbed¾if not better¾by living in the present rather than by reading about it.  By the end of these Exercises, the initiate will have lived.

Throughout these readings in religion, mysticism, philosophy and literature, the initiate should be considering distinctions and evolution of shape, absorbing technique rather than intellectualizing it, and pondering on the relationship between the common themes these areas address and the particular ways they address them.  When the initiate has completed these Exercises¾assuming she has neither died nor found her place in one of the many attractions along the way¾and is no longer an initiate but an artist, she will devote the remainder of her life to creating a work or works of art that too will address these same common themes¾for these are the world through human eyes¾but using content¾and more importantly¾in a style distinctly hers; during these years of development¾and during this seventh year of immersing herself in the world’s primary art¾she is absorbing the world through her eyes and this combination of world and self¾common, unique, traditional, unsettling¾she will give birth to an inner vision¾at first dark, chaotic¾which will in turn, in time, give birth through a mirror to an external correlate of that vision.

If the initiate is chosen, she will this year be reading her peers in the ancient royal house of style and vision.