On the Question of a Daemon

( Arthur Koestler on Creativity )

 You’ve seen it before? Perhaps you found it scrawled in goat’s blood on the walls of an abysmal abbey, written in the crabbed hand of one who purported to teach the whole of the law...Ain Soph

Just so you understand that what happens in the past may have set the course for humanity in thinking such and such so  is with some concern that anyone would think that what I had to say resounds with such historical distaste of what the future might bring?

Historical Figures Lead Us to the Topic of Entanglement

 
We do no want to be ever so arrogant that we cannot see the seeds of the past had paved the way for our understanding of that future and spread the progression of the subject so as to be well founded in experimental processes necessary.

But, said Timarchus, I see nothing but stars leaping about the hollow, some carried into it, and some darting out of it again. These, said the voice, are Daemons; for thus it is. Every soul hath some portion of reason; a man cannot be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh and appetite is changed, and through pain or pleasure becomes irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort; for some plunge themselves into the body, and so in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed as to some part, but the purer part still remains without the body, — it is not drawn down into it, but it swims above, and touches the extremest part of the man’s head; it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. That part that is plunged into the body is called the soul, but the uncorrupted part is called the mind, and the vulgar think it is within them, as likewise they imagine the image reflected from a glass to be in that. But the more intelligent, who know it to be without, call it a Daemon. Therefore those stars which you see extinguished imagine to be souls whose whole substances are plunged into bodies; and those that recover their light and rise from below, that shake off the ambient mist and darkness, as if it were clay and dirt, to be such as retire from their bodies after death; and those that are carried up on high are the Daemons of wise men and philosophers. See:A DISCOURSE CONCERNING SOCRATES’S DAEMON. - Plutarch, The Morals,

The question raises the idea that with "matter trained" we had lost our way in terms of what matters. What we work has somehow become the the part of the belief that we no longer hold to what spiritually might be capable of, but steadfastly have chosen matter as the principle of some higher intelligence?

Philemon and the Liber Novus

Giving a dream to a Jungian analyst is a little bit like feeding a complex quadratic equation to someone who really enjoys math. It takes time. The process itself is to be savored. The solution is not always immediately evident.The Holy Grail of the Unconscious

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.

As Socrates travel through the citizenry of the time the question of what was to issue forth from, was always held in the bated breath of Socrates, that he would hear the wisdom of the Over-soul?

How many "degrees of freedom" to see that the chance always exists that what will come forth, is the illumination of something that resides within one's own self and completely accessible.

 The upcoming publication of Carl Jung's Red Book — a record of his fantasies and hallucinations during a sort of breakdown — has excited Jungians the world over. But is Jung still relevant today?

According to a New York Times Magazine article by Sara Corbett, the psychoanalyst Jung "got lost in the soup of his own psyche" when he was 38. He said he was "menaced by a psychosis" and that visions were coming at him in an "incessant stream." "In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,'" he wrote, "I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them." His method of "plummeting" was to write these fantasies down in what is now called his Red Book, a volume full of cramped text and intricate paintings that his family has guarded closely until recently. Now it has been translated into English, and will be published in October. See: Does Carl Jung Matter

Some might find some faint relevance to Robert Pirsig's journey,  to find that such compulsion to materialize in figurative speech, something that arose within Pirsig himself, also arose in Carl Jung?


This is a photograph of author and philosopher Robert M. Pirsigtaken by Ian Glendinning on the eve of the Liverpool conference of 7th July 2005.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1 Chapter 1.(Bold added by me for emphasis)

While being presented Pirsig's book for reading,  and the subsequent work that arose from that time,  also pointed toward something  real and potential within any of us in my mind, that we might considered in one context as delusional, could be an aspect of our own self as we learn to see this aspect as the higher self "manifest within our own dreams,"  to know what can exist "both delusively and real, subjectively as an imagery of creative recognition is an access to that collective unconscious. The key here is a fishing line, hook and sinker to know that the fisherman has really got "an idea on his mind" as he castes his line.

If one is to understand the "wisdom of illumination," under this context,  then it will ring more true to those who have familiarity in seeking to understand the makeup of the person we are. Some might even recognize an aspect cognitively arising in familiarity with what they observe in the real world.  For them to know that subjectively the imagination is strong and very capable in merging with the areas of  continued research in discoveries in science at the microscopic level.

It seems that anomaly by it's discovery takes keen observation and not just luck. It's a kind of observation that connects many things and not having taken the time to look, will have past the time of as an aspect of probability, and life circumstance, that really holds no meaning? It was just a "moment in time," gone unnoticed until someone close to the path of realization came  along and discovered it for them self.

That's the realization,  that in this opportunity as always existing, it was just waiting for you.

The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus (The New Book), is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung between approximately 1914 and 1930, which was not published or shown to the public until 2009. Until 2001, his heirs denied scholars access to the book, which he began after a falling-out with Sigmund Freud in 1913. The book is written in calligraphic text and contains many illuminations.

I was excited when I heard news of this book.

As some will know I am a fan of Carl Jung because of what he represented to me in terms of self discovery and understanding of what one finds when one takes  a look at what they are capable of finding inside. You will pass this off very quickly as a subjective adventure, and relevant only to what can pass off as some supernatural event within the context of science's requirements.

But what I want people to know, regardless of their background in science, that such a pursuant to understand the greater complexity of what they can find inside does not relegate them to quackery and crack pottery. It's basically learning something about them self now having taken time.

The Red Book was a product of a technique developed by Jung which he termed active imagination. As Jung described it, he was visited by two figures, an old man and a young woman, who identified themselves as Elijah and Salome. They were accompanied by a large black snake. In time, the Elijah figure developed into a guiding spirit that Jung called Philemon (ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, as originally written with Greek letters). Salome was identified by Jung as an anima figure. The figures, according to Jung, "brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life."^[3]

The Philemon figure represented superior insight, and communicated through mythic imagery. The images did not appear to come from Jung's own experience, and Jung interpreted them as products of the collective unconscious.

The Rhetorician

This raises all sorts of questions, the most basic of which are: “What counts as `looking’ vs. `not looking’?” and “Do we really need a separate law of physics to describe the evolution of systems that are being looked at?” Sean Carroll

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

AN INQUIRY INTO VALUES

Robert M. Pirsig

Afterword

This book has a lot to say about Ancient Greek perspectives and their meaning but there is one perspective it misses. That is their view of time. They saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.

When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

Over the last couple of days my mind seems focused on time lines. It seems I am adjusting perspective, while knowing full well that while the day can be assessed, and so a life. One is facing the past as Pirsig did in writing his book. Imagine him actually looking to his past as it recedes to where the words become "a place" and behind, a sun shines. We see where such an adjustment of thinking here helps one to see what Pirsig was doing.

Plato:

So in that case it was not normal experience that suffered, but what came out of the sickness that allowed an "ultimate realization" that you or I do not have to contend with, but sick men who struggle to search and found something, that normal people would not. So this is why the time line is important to be realized.

It can indeed seem quite confusing but it is an interesting idea here, much as one could be unsettle here with the Chicken before the egg scenario. This took me back to some of the things Sean Carroll wrote. This is not about biology or creationism, but about how perspective has been orientated in a historical sense to how we see it today. For Pirsig and Nash, they had to recount their past in order for us to understand their struggle.

Sean Carroll has a interesting set of four entires about the backwardness of the arrow of time and how it would appear. This is an interesting exercise for me on how perception about the current direction of the universe could have represented "the Egg before the chicken" scenarios.

Incompatible Arrows, I: Martin Amis
Incompatible Arrows, II: Kurt Vonnegut
Incompatible Arrows, III: Lewis Carroll
Incompatible Arrows, IV: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chicken or Egg

Illustration from Tacuina sanitatis, Fourteenth century

Reverse chronology — narrating a story, or parts of one, backwards in time — is a venerable technique in literature, going back at least as far as Virgil’s Aeneid. Much more interesting is a story with incompatible arrows of time: some characters live “backwards” while others experience life normally.

***



PHAEDRUS. - Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD]Edition used:

The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, translated into English with Analyses and Introductions by B. Jowett, M.A. in Five Volumes. 3rd edition revised and corrected (Oxford University Press, 1892).


Phaedr.I think that I understand you; but will you explain yourself?

Soc.When any one speaks of iron and silver, is not the same thing present in the minds of all?

Phaedr.Certainly.

Soc.But when any one speaks of justice and goodness we part company and are at odds with one another and with ourselves?

Phaedr.Precisely.

Soc.Then in some things we agree, but not in others?

Phaedr.That is true.

Soc.In which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has rhetoric the greater power?

Phaedr.Clearly, in the uncertain class.

Soc.Then the rhetorician ought to make a regular division, and acquire a distinct notion of both classes, as well of that in which the many err, as of that in which they do not err?

Phaedr.He who made such a distinction would have an excellent principle.

Soc.Yes; and in the next place he must have a keen eye for the observation of particulars in speaking, and not make a mistake about the class to which they are to be referred.

Phaedr.Certainly.

Soc.Love belongs to the debatable class.

Now to which class does love belong—to the debatable or to the undisputed class?

Phaedr.To the debatable, clearly; for if not, do you think that love would have allowed you to say as you did, that he is an evil both to the lover and the beloved, and also the greatest possible good?

Soc.Capital. But will you tell me whether I defined love at the beginning of my speech? for, having been in an ecstasy, I cannot well remember.

Phaedr.Yes, indeed; that you did, and no mistake.

Soc.Lysias should have begun, as I did, by defining love.

Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son of Hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than Lysias the son of Cephalus. Alas! how inferior to them he is! But perhaps I am mistaken; and Lysias at the commencement of his lover’s speech did insist on our supposing love to be something or other which he fancied him to be, and according to this model he fashioned and framed the remainder of his discourse. Suppose we read his beginning over again:

Phaedr.If you please; but you will not find what you want.

Soc.Read, that I may have his exact words.
Phaedr.‘You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive, they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain I ought not to fail in my suit because I am not your lover, for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown, when their love is over.’
Soc.He begins at the end.

Here he appears to have done just the reverse of what he ought; for he has begun at the end, and is swimming on his back through the flood to the place of starting. His address to the fair youth begins where the lover would have ended. Am I not right, sweet Phaedrus?

Phaedr.Yes, indeed, Socrates; he does begin at the end.

Soc.No order or arrangement of parts in his discourse.

Then as to the other topics—are they not thrown down anyhow? Is there any principle in them? Why should the next topic follow next in order, or any other topic? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but I dare say that you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the succession of the several parts of the composition?

Phaedr.You have too good an opinion of me if you think that I have any such insight into his principles of composition.

Soc.At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole?

Phaedr.Every discourse should be a living creature, having a body, head, and feet.

Certainly.

Soc.Can this be said of the discourse of Lysias? See whether you can find any more connexion in his words than in the epitaph which is said by some to have been inscribed on the grave of Midas the Phrygian.

Phaedr.What is there remarkable in the epitaph?

Soc.It is as follows:—

 * ‘I am a maiden of bronze and lie on the tomb of Midas;
    * So long as water flows and tall trees grow,
    * So long here on this spot by his sad tomb abiding,
    * I shall declare to passers–by that Midas sleeps below.’

The discourse of Lysias had no more arrangement than the silliest of epitaphs.

Now in this rhyme whether a line comes first or comes last, as you will perceive, makes no difference.
Phaedr.You are making fun of that oration of ours.

Soc.Well, I will say no more about your friend’s speech lest I should give offence to you; although I think that it might furnish many other examples of what a man ought rather to avoid. But I will proceed to the other speech, which, as I think, is also suggestive to students of rhetoric.
Phaedr.In what way?

Soc.The two speeches, as you may remember, were unlike; the one argued that the lover and the other that the non–lover ought to be accepted.

Phaedr.And right manfully.

Soc.You should rather say ‘madly;’ and madness was the argument of them, for, as I said, ‘love is a madness.’
Phaedr.Yes.

Soc.And of madness there were two kinds; one produced by human infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.

Phaedr.True.

Soc.Four subdivisions of madness—prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic.

The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the description of the last kind of madness, which was also said to be the best, we spoke of the affection of love in a figure, into which we introduced a tolerably credible and possibly true through partly erring myth, which was also a hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also mine, Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung the hymn in measured and solemn strain.

Phaedr.I know that I had great pleasure in listening to you.

Soc.Let us take this instance and note how the transition was made from blame to praise.

Phaedr.What do you mean?

Soc.The myth was a creation of fancy, yet true principles were involved in it: (1) unity of particulars in a single note; (2) natural division into species.

I mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. Yet in these chance fancies of the hour were involved two principles of which we should be too glad to have a clearer description if art could give us one.

Phaedr.What are they?

Soc.First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear.

Phaedr.What is the other principle, Socrates?

Soc.The second principle is that of division into species according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any part as a bad carver might. Just as our two discourses, alike assumed, first of all, a single form of unreason; and then, as the body which from being one becomes double and may be divided into a left side and right side, each having parts right and left of the same name—after this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts of the left side and did not desist until he found in them an evil or lefthanded love which he justly reviled; and the other discourse leading us to the madness which lay on the right side, found another love, also having the same name, but divine, which the speaker held up before us and applauded and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits.The dialectician is concerned with the one and many.

Phaedr.Most true.

Soc.I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and to think. And if I find any man who is able to see ‘a One and Many’ in nature, him I follow, and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.’ And those who have this art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians; but God knows whether the name is right or not. And I should like to know what name you would give to your or to Lysias’ disciples, and whether this may not be that famous art of rhetoric which Thrasymachus and others teach and practise? Skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them.


***

The idea here is that the argument can be held in objective analysis as a defining relation to perspective about what is real, in the here and now. So any describing from it's source to something more defined topologically in movement from the vacuum, is a move to a finer substrate of the reality? What shape in the valley? Which one?

While scientifically engaged, "what if" internally you face the past as a lesson in history, and look upon the world, as our sun? Change it up, and the world is our past, while internally a sun shines behind us. This asks that the internal world is configured according to this dimensional perspective. Subjective yes, but allegorical to what any state of mind garners as it rests to it's ideological state?

Heaven

In the modern age of science and space flight the idea that Heaven is a physical place in the observable universe has largely been abandoned.[citation needed] Religious views, however, still hold Heaven as having a dual status as a concept of mind or heart, but also possibly still physically existing in some way on another "plane of existence", dimension, or perhaps at a future time.[citation needed] According to science there are unobservable areas of the universe (everywhere beyond earth's Particle horizon), although by their very nature it is not possible to observe them.

In this examination of "position" we are always facing our past. If we are to examine our scientific position, is this then real in how we analyze all of the experiments that are currently being undertaken?

You see, looking to an event in the cosmos, this orientation of looking back is to place "a measure" between the earth we stand on, and the event. The event is receding as we are gazing. While some of this observation is picked out in Pirsig's afterword, the subsequent revelation given by Socrate to Phaedrus raises some perspective in my mind about what I had always believed.

As I look at the world, it is receding, yet, internally connected as if in a Ambigram of continuous rotation. It has to be symmetrical, in that asymmetry is to move into the world, while internally, it has always been where symmetry resides?

Why move into an objective status of scientific belief that what can exist in relation to the values that science call its dimensional, is the realization that such an existence is as if matched internally according to the degrees of freedom that we match according to the nature I had assigned Colour of Gravity.


***

See:

Incompatible Arrows

Our Consciousness can "Contain the Future?"

Memories Arise Out of a Equilibrium

Understanding our Angels and Daemons

So, every "story line" is about a Journey? IN Angel and Demons, we follow the story of Professor Robert Langdon.

The Vatican summons Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) from CERN to help them solve the Illuminati's threat, save the four preferiti, and find the hidden bomb. Langdon listens to the Illuminati message and deduces that the four cardinals will die at the four altars of the Path of Illumination. See: Angels and Demons

So in relation, I pointed out that Dan's Brown's book which I read, and the  film I have yet to see has it's differences, while we see the transfer from one medium to the next.   Same storyline. Pirsig's touch with the recognition of the Chautauquas, "the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer."

Anyway, I presented the Dialogues of Plato and the Plays of William Shakespeare as forums in which characters real or imagined, help to move forward the reader under "ideological progressions," as if,  dealing with this inductive/ deductive realization of information and probable outcomes once given the scenarios which are displayed for the mind to entertain.

Earlier in this thread I had mentioned Robert Pirsig and it is here as well I mention, "The Beautiful Mind." Both situations here are recognition of the Demons both indivudals(John Forbes Nash) under go,  as their story written is told in a life lesson and in John Nashes case, a film. Must we recognize that genius courts closely the aberrations of a sane and inquisitive mind, who looses touch with reality. Not so different then, when one who holds to this "other agenda of the Illuminati" in the Angel here Demons story here?

After suffering a nervous breakdown, Pirsig spent time in and out of mental hospitals from 1961 – 1963. After undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression, and was treated with shock therapy. Pirsig had made a progressive recovery and had discontinued psychotherapy in 1964. He later began working as a freelance writer. See: Robert Pirsig

So who was Robert Pirsig's Demon(Daemon)?

The words daemon, dæmon, are Latinized spellings of the Greek δαίμων (daimôn),^[1] used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Ancient Greek religion, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" (see Plato's Symposium), from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans See:Daemon (mythology)

If one has the chance to read Robert Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , one should most certainly do so. I had seen this book lying around over the years and never really gave it much notice until a gentlemen spoke to me about the issue of "Quality and the Good."

Being a reader of Plato and seeing this influence in science today, I was after something quite substantial as I look to see how ideas could enter the mind, and that in general, not to conceive of it as an portend of evil( that Daemon), but as an acquisition of the inquiring mind of the student to reveal "a higher wisdom" resides in each of us.

This was part of setting the stage if you might, to recognizing this "dual nature,"  as an inductive/deductive relation we use in our relationship with the world. So in this sense,  a scientific position and responsibility of becoming an open person to receive information,  as you delve ever deeper into the nature of things. I am not saying this is the way it is, just that it is a "point of view" I was able to gather, once one does their  own homework. Pays attention to the politics. What is "self evident?"

So indeed Noise presents a "climatic realization of assumption after assumption." In the real world,  we are only armed with what we are expose too? Is this not the way it seems? Why such medium exposure might be thought of,  as to the "way the world is according too," which point of view. You have to be given the power back for discernment of what it means to you and ever the role of a scientific mind as to inquiry, for being responsible.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.

It is important to know then that Robert Pirsig's Angel or Daemon, was Phaedrus( depends on how you look at it in terms of what was given to Pirsig). As real or imagined the story line in the Journey across America with his son, was the realization of the lost years in an identity that went on a excursion, and never came home until the breakdown. John Nash had his own characters in the film, discovered later on, were the imaginings of a mind,  lost in the battle of what is real with paranoid schizophrenia. For John Nash it was always then later on in dealing with reality the struggle of who John Nash was while facing these imaginary people.

So while I say "real or imagined" one understands fully here that while we had identified the use of characters under the notion of "creative writing of Plato or of Bacon's Shakespeare,"  it was apparent that in the cases that I have sighted of Robert Pirsig and John Nash, that while sick mentally,  genius and brilliance were courted.

While I would point to John Nashes mathematical astuteness while sick, I am more wanting to point out the "Quality and the Good" of Pirsig as I continue. This is an understanding of that finer attribute of theoretical thinking that we ventured too. To see if reality by experimentation thusly engendered, then qualifies. How indeed did progression be marked if it did not allow one to see anew, with a new perspective and experiments are validated. In sociological thinking of our everyday,  how did our assumptions prove we were thinking theoretically, while assessing the politico defalcates of position and inherent of a party? What is the basis of this discernment then we can discriminate the truth of applied rights of constitutions written for democracies were written for freedoms and rights?

Oh Dear!... How Technology has Changed Things

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beautya beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.--BERTRAND RUSSELL, Study of Mathematics

The "Talking Pictures" Projection Wagon-

In the 1920's about the only entertainment that came to the rural community of Leakey, Texas was the traveling tent shows. This form of family entertainment would come to the canyon about once a year to the delight of all. Everyone looked forward to the horse drawn wagons that brought the much anticipated entertainment to town. In later years the horses were replaced by the Model T Fords but this form of transportation did not deter the excitement.

See:"Leakey's Last Picture Show" by Linda Kirkpatrick
Vintage photos courtesy Lloyd & Jackie Shultz

It is important sometimes to hone in on exactly what sets the mind to have it exemplify itself to a standard that bespeaks to the idealizations that can come forward from a most historical sense. It is in this way that while one can envision where the technological views have replaced the spoken word in movie pictures, we can see the theatre above as an emblazoned realization of what changes has been brought to society and what may have been lost in some peoples eyes.


This is a photograph of author and philosopher Robert M. Pirsigtaken by Ian Glendinning on the eve of the Liverpool conference of 7th July 2005.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1 Chapter 1.(Bold added by me for emphasis)

I wanted to take the conversation and book presented by Phil and immortalize it in a way by laying it out for examination. Regardless of my opinions and viewpoint, the world goes on and the written work of Robert Pirsig persists as a "object of the material." In the beginning, no matter the choice to illuminate the ideal, it has been transgressed in a way by giving the symbols of language to a discerning mind and verily brought to that same material world for examination. How ever frustrating this may seem for Pirsig, it is a fact of light that any after word will reveal more then what was first understood. Reflection has this way about it in the historical revelation, of how the times are changing. Things dying and becoming new. The moon a reflection of the first light.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.


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IN announcing himself in the written work with regards to the IQ given in signalling the identity of the character Phaedrus, it was important that one see this in a way that excuses are not made, and allowances not be set forth for what was to become the lone wolf. John Nash too, had his excursions into the bizarre as well, was to know that in the "end of his synopsized life," a certain contention that he had to deal with in this inflection of his disease, as part of his make-up. Was to deal with, while now, he continues to move on with his life. He is aware of the intrusions that personage can do as it infringes from the periphery, as ghosts of his mind too.

To me in reading John Nash's biography in historical movie drama, was to bring attention to what cannot be condoned by exception, when allowing genius to display it's talents, while causing a disruption not only to themself, but to see the elite make allowances for these transgressions. Pattern seeking is not to be be rifting the idea, that we cannot look into the very structure of reality and see what makes it tick? Just that we do not get lost in travelling the journey.

Practising escapism was to deny oneself the responsibility of becoming whole. To allow for genius, as an exception, would mean to not recognize that the intellect is part and parcel of the greater whole of the person called Robert Pirsig or John Nash.

Who of us shall placate failure as a sure sign of genius and allow the student 's failure as acceptable? This was a transgression seen from another perspective and as afterthought realized in a mistaken perception "about broadcasting Phaedrus" as some towering voice from the past as relevant in todays world, because of the location and time in history?


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Click on link Against symmetry (Paris, June 06)

While I may use the alias of Plato and look at the substance of his written work, it is also from that view point such a discussion had to take place within the context of the written prose about two people in this Socratic method, that while worlds in the dialogues existed in speech, no such persons were there at the time. Yet, such thoughts are transmitted and established in that historical sense, and moved forward to this time.


Against symmetry (Paris, June 06)


To me there are two lines of thought that are being established in science that in Lee Smolin's case is used to move away from the thinking of the idea of Plato's symmetry by example. To see such trademarks inherent in our leaders of science is too wonder how they to, have immortalize the figures of speech, while trying hard to portray the point of view that has been established in thought. These signatures have gone from Heisenberg to Hooft. And the list of names who have embedded this move to science, as a education tool, that is always inherent in the process. That reference is continually made.

IN this sense I do not feel I had done anything wrong other then to ignite the idealization I have about what that sun means to me, as the first light in a psychological sense. Where it resides in people. How divorce we can be from it while going on about our daily duties existing in the world. That there also resides this "experience about our beginnings." To ignite what the word of geometrics has done in the abstract sense. How much closer to the reality such a architecture is revealed in Nature's way, to know that we had pointed our observations back inside, to reveal the world outside.


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See Also:

Stargazers and Hill Climbers

Evolutionary Game Theory

Inside the Mathematical Universe

The Soul=λόγος,θυμος,ἔρως

21 Grams

The title of the movie comes from the work of Dr. Duncan MacDougall, who in the early 1900s sought to measure the weight purportedly lost by a human body when the soul departed the body upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material, tangible and thus measurable. These experiments are widely considered to have little, if any scientific merit, and MacDougall's results varied considerably from 21 grams, but for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's mass [1].

When garnered to thinking about the soul, it's value in weight, always seems to occupy my mind. Even though the topic has been deemed foolish, by historical debate. It is the cornerstone of my relating "emotive colourations" to a value of our mind, tied to the current state of being.

Hall of Ma'at

In art, the feather was shown in scenes of the Hall of Ma'at. This hall is where the deceased was judged for his worthiness to enter the afterlife. The seat of the deceased's soul, his heart, was weighed on a balance against the feather of Ma'at. If the heart was free from the impurities of sin, and therefore lighter than the feather, then the dead person could enter the eternal afterlife. Other gods in the judgement hall who were part of the tribunal overseeing the weighing of the heart were also pictured holding a feather.

See:Egyptian Myths

You had to know of course what this picture above means from my own soul interpretation to understand what this blog is about. While of course speaking to everything science is and does, it never did answer the deeper questions I had about the soul. You had to know that given the set of circumstances in my youth that such motivation can be like Einstein's own, that this degree and direction of life, can have it's motivational factor determined. See "Einstein's compass"


God's Equation, by Amir D. Aczel, Pg 14

From a early age, young Albert showed great interest in the world around him. When he was five years old, his father gave him a compass, and the child was enchanted by the device and intrigued by the fact the needle followed a invisible field to point always in the direction of the north pole.Reminicing in old age, Einstein mentioned this incident as one of the factors that perhaps motivated him years later to study the gravitational field.

So you see such factors in our youth can determine something about our future. Is this quest "motivational and soulful enough" for such time to be taken. Sought as the soul's quest in this lifetime?

The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sapience, rather than the brain or any other material or natural part of the biological organism. Some religions and philosophies on the other hand believe in the soul having a material component, and some have even tried to establish the weight of the soul. Souls are usually considered to be immortal and to exist prior to incarnation.

The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly, even within a given religion, as to what may happen to the soul after the death of the body. It also shares as a PIE root of spirit.

Socrates and Plato

Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considered the soul as the essence of a person, being, that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. The Platonic soul comprises three parts:

1. the logos (mind, nous, or reason)
2. the thymos (emotion, or spiritedness)
3. the eros (appetitive, or desire)

Each of these has a function in a balanced and peaceful soul.

The logos equates to the mind. It corresponds to the charioteer, directing the balanced horses of appetite and spirit. It allows for logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance.

The thymos comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to hubris -- the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.

The eros equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state.

So in a sense we have a historical construction of the valuation being, that while developed from a philosophical view, I had found some relation to the way I'd awaken, my own Mind map. So by developing this model I wanted to be reminded of the integration of what lies outside of us physically(what is this field of endeavour?)

Logos (Greek λόγος) is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion. It derives from the verb λέγω legō: to count, tell, say, or speak.[1] The primary meaning of logos is: something said; by implication a subject, topic of discourse or reasoning. Secondary meanings such as logic, reasoning, etc. derive from the fact that if one is capable of λέγειν (infinitive) i.e. speech, then intelligence and reason are assumed.

Thumos

(also commonly spelled "thymos") (Greek: θυμος) is an Ancient Greek word expressing the concept of spiritedness. The word indicates a physical association with breath or blood. The word is also used to express the human desire for recognition.

In Homer's works, thumos was used to denote emotions, desire, or an internal urge. Thumos was a permanent possession of living man, to which his thinking and feeling belonged. When a Homeric hero is under emotional stress he may externalize his thumos, conversing with it or scolding it.[1]

Plato's dialogue Phaedrus and longer work The Republic discuss thumos as one of the three constituent parts of the human psyche, along with logos and eros. In the Phaedrus, Plato depicts logos as a charioteer driving the two horses of eros and thumos (i.e. desire and will were to be guided by rationality). In the Republic's Book IV, the soul is divided into nous ("intellect"), thumos ("passion"), and epithumia ("appetite"). Thumos is the emotional element in virtue of which anger and fear are felt.[2]

Eros

(ἔρως érōs) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Modern Greek word "erotas" means "(romantic) love". The term erotic is derived from eros.

See: Thematic Resolutions