Alternate Perceptions Magazine, April 2022
IT
by: James Edward Carlos
Visible, invisible, a fluctuating charm amber-tinctured amethyst inhabits it, your arm approaches and it opens and it closes; you had meant to catch it and it quivers; you abandon your intent. Marianne Moore
(The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. p. 958. The MacMillan Company. The Viking Press, NY)..
a china marker drawing by the author, Carlos
In considering English pronouns, in particular the use of it as frequently italicized in this essay. I emphasize the issue with my inclusion of Moore’s prefacing poem. This essay assesses implications of the word it with derivatives – and potentially its, it’s, and itself; a question arises about significances implied in the surrounding proverbial landscape when this gender-neuter pronoun is involved. Gender-qualified in some other languages as to noun-assignment as male or female, in the English language it is basically gender-anonymous or androgynous by insinuation. Moore haunts the premise of her observation of the jellyfish while being haunted in turn, enough so to share with others by writing her throbbing poem. Provocatively, though, Moore’s intent is not really abandoned – we are involved! We bear witness to her poem and thus the essence of the jellyfish in her instance.
The pronoun is basically noun-oriented, part of an expansive measurement of an object held within its structure. My concerns involve grammatical offshoots and signifiers of what is implicit as to carrying additional implications, such as temporal and/or spatial significances not readily apparent as in A Jellyfish (for instance, time is suggested as are implicit emotions regarding the spatial intimacies). Within either thrust as an internal component of the English pronoun, I further consider what thoughts might be provoked as to pronouns’ function/s regarding subject and object as to context and content, and what kind of internal sentence “space” is configured into the meaning in that linguistic environment. Moore’s use of the word “quivers” suggests the magnetic pulsation that is language-oriented with the concepts of subject and object. The quivering is a sensing, a diffusion via the poet’s arm’s length and implied hand and fingers implicating the poem itself as internalizing the writing by shifting and echoing her insight. Suggested thereby dilation, the sense is one of opening one’s vision to the abundance of light, being aware of time and space yet indicated as prior to the lids closing! We have that time, in between birth and an impending premise of death to consider what gives as often as we are thereof intrigued and inspired. Ultimately, through the gist of several exploratory essays on the subject of conveyance regarding it, I ask what might this anonymous gender and the multiple usages of philosophical ideas ultimately imply with such a pronoun, as with the haunting and frightening aspects implicit in the Marianne Moore poem above? Her beginning implies such ambiance that is a recognition of philosophical demarcations with what is visible being simultaneously congruent with what is possibly viable or not, being invisible. Dexterity is fascinatingly implied. A pause immediately thereof wonder is defined predicating the structural process to follow, which causes us to find a proper distance to the denizen/s in our midst and seemingly advocating the poem’s mystery. Must we abandon the it, or accept the rhythmic and pluralizing repetition, or see It or a possibly expansive IT or itself-Itself as an inclusive broadening in scope? Moore cuts to the quick of our fascination with her acknowledging the beauty and the danger in looking too closely into the matter and adjacent issues, by speaking about it.
As an offshoot of the verbal process and the seemingly instinctual, perhaps primal, perhaps spiritual, resonance of it, and of It as inferred in the Trinitarian peak of a Judaic scheme for God’s Consciousness based on Jacob’s dream of a ladder between heaven and earth: (Crown of Light-ITSELF, Wisdom-HIMSELF, and Understanding-HERSELF). A corralary structure and a transverse male-dominated brotherhood as subject material appear, historically, in the Roman Catholic-Christian Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost). I suggest that we might find a genuine premise for the inquiry into the concepts of subject and object as per theology, and likewise in philosophy, the sciences, and the fine arts including literature, including poetry, and, within such possibility an infusing corollary by physicist Albert Einstein’s discovery of the melding of space and time as spacetime; i.e., Moore’s poem challenges us to consider how these concepts interact and meld.
These various systems of thought may bear the imprint of the beginning of all terminology and all physicality, in the birth of consciousness during the first moments of a Beginning of Eternity (currently theorized as The Big Bang but this theory is also being soundly challenged) or as an equation in/of infinity and as melding with the sense of a void, as a four dimensional system of expansion ultimately. Close encounters offer such thoughts as experiencing. Such a notion is provocative at the very least. In the discussion to ensue, being and nonbeing find a definite and certain inherency, as do additional polar and human biological development inclusively with each stage in our persistent changing; all such is pertinent to close encounters from my current understanding including mystical consciousness.
In speaking of primal perceptual modes of basic conceptual configurations in the various levels of consciousness, remembering the shifting perspectives of the human condition is helpful when entering into and moving through the various levels of maturity and aging as of life on this planet. We physically move through separate incremental and developmental stages in keeping with the concept of spatial awareness inherently related to temporal adjustments (our breathing, in fact) and the implications of each such stage akin, I believe, to a soul maneuvering through the vestiges of both space and time as in a series of incarnations. Our physicality is always changing. The process of enacting is gradual, but these perhaps quiet references remain in the adult’s mental interiorizing, and often become a focal point for new deliberations, both conceptually and abstractly.
Each close encounter, generally speaking, manifests a diverse new range to our perceiving. The entirety herein speaks eventually to the process of awareness expanding, i.e., to a consciousness forming in an individual, I infer, that all such changes bring new challenges. Such challenges are frequently environmental (such as our movements into outer space) and the interacting of concepts when the entirely mental and emotional environment is broadened, say as being in flights within the vaster cosmos. I include close encounters as soulful interactions with diverse species wherein the great range of consciousness reaches the individual’s need for defining the continuing earmarks of the eventual expansion. A reoccurring need is to understand levels of aggressivity experiencing the earth’s frequent predatory nature, forcing being/s, as such, to be equally fierce for grasping, commanding, and augmenting the stages of becoming. Face to face with such challenges we are often defensive and/or agnostic about the reality of endeavors we do not intellectually grasp.
Our happenstance is often within the multiplicities we need to weigh to become who we might be in a given lifetime. With the extremities involved we learn important psychological effects – that of sympathy and empathy by which conscience is induced. As an artist I hope herein to exemplify from my own aesthetic grasp of the nature of our humanity’s initial grasping of these constructs in these next few pages. I assert that a human child is naturally, mentally, abstract in dealing with the environment and human embodiment. A possessive nature rises when such a mannerism of its as ownership begins to relate to the surround including the body to a form of guardianship, and thus as a responsibility. I believe we are to be shepherds of this magnificent planet.
Noting the pronoun’s multiple usage as in an impending manner (anticipatory) and portending (shifting/altering of meaning), we might ask if it represents a grammatical science in itself as in an object-oriented process, and, thereby, acts as a source for an objective noun and proper noun; i.e., it suggests itself to be an object of definition somewhat descriptive, more or less specific, inherently metaphoric, and aiming for edification if not exactly clarification. My conjecture is that a kind of inherent and hidden truth is lurking, perhaps secretively, in the usage of the code our language system indicates.
Illusion.
It acts as a camouflage, an apostate of potential, a presumptive prophetic cast on expectations, in manner something like John the Baptist coming forth to proclaim someone else of importance and only momentarily drawing attention to himself. Chameleon-like its appearance sometimes precedes the actual nominal appearance in a given sentence, grasping an essential hue (perhaps memory, about perhaps incarnation and reincarnation/resurrection implicit) from a preceding sentence or paragraph and acting about that essence by providing a possible coloration and thereby offsetting the labor of actual demarcation; it is like a midwife waiting the birth of the noun. In a manner of seeking origins, what comes first - noun or pronoun? Of course as a word, we are aware of its being pro noun with its prominence. Ultimately its and it’s cling to their forbearer, it.
As the instance of provocation in this essay, the thought arises as to it in its elusiveness and illusory qualities, while acting as a coy felon of inebriation (i.e., a Dionysian similitude ritualized to confuse and seduce). It feigns being seductively corruptive, hiding satyr-like within the thicket of words. As a mysterious and frequently used mirroring device for an eventual coupling, it is heard from the grounding mass of words prescribing event. In each instance is the particular noun from which and to which it is destined to follow, and to which it implies as part of a relationship is actually forbearing. Too, in this backward and forward toying with each other, it tends to obliterate temporal intimations adding a dreamlike quality to the mental maneuvering involved. Yet the thought of this is illusory because of noun and pronoun being separate words regardless of meaning intended (or hidden and revealed). The pronoun and the noun are situated in placements away from each other in the sentence and they sometimes find themselves in different sentences or paragraphs. The idea of a liaison suggests a cursory, illusionary, portent in their surround, one passing to the other.
From within a range of being as destined, even if declaimed to be the master of proverbial, definitive, objectivity, it acts as an echo while sometimes presenting the mirror opposite of such a reflective principle in that something remains hidden and elusive in aspect. But, thereby implicit in objective connotations, and not the mirroring echo from its distance, it hides therein feigning a hidden substance (e.g., within, similitude, implicit, conditions, cite, site, to exemplify). In this sense, it is a reverberation both of the connections between spaces and relevant to temporal conditions; it is tension (as in French with gender, qualifying a noun’s assignment of sexual allusion adjudicating somewhat of a breadth, tease-personified and a subjective diversion (and diffusion) from the objective presumption implied. It is the proverbial and seductive androgynies of both genders. Thereby language ultimately translates itself from within the very naming of the process of utterance wherein it signifies in the seeding of thought into both oral and written transcription. Each such language usage is a verification of the depth contained in our wording, and similarly hidden, as if part of a code.
Abstraction.
Or, we might consider it being something else, something intended or at least implied to be the very same in nature, thus a mere thereof, although inherently the pronoun proffers a more subtly sinister connotation in its essence as an abstraction. As abstraction demarcated as imitative and/or parallel, it is part of a rhythm of substituting while subsisting, part of a (perhaps poetic) plot rising out of human delectation for form. Perhaps the intimation hints of an ultimate form, but form moreover as confabulation to de-rectify consciousness in order for some potential enlargement…or diminishment which alludes to stereotyping with its repetition as if concluding a process; it then becomes paradoxical as an anomalous injunction, proverbial as to its brevity and repetition, suspicion tendering.
It acts as a kind of anti-entity, perhaps as a form of rebellion to the utmost proper noun comparatively, and in this sense of abstracting experience into parable (which might be viewed as the ultimate abstraction and which borders on poetry). It offers a connection, therein, to mythmaking as a move from something to something else vaguely. Legend is inferred. Inferred, too, is the use of an idea of abstraction in modern and contemporary artworks that often tends to elude content while transferring to something else - design mostly, as if free of any substantive content. In such a case the implication is that it is dominant and independent, i.e., not needing the relationship or content otherwise as if the other is an infringement while negating any inference of initial entwining. As a divergence in diverging from something, abstracting suggests that the pronoun is possessing its own sovereignty.
Source and Reoccurrence.
It becomes in some sense each of these probabilities in turn, dependent on the author’s conformation, so that subsequently it is all a manner of such possession. It acts almost as a tabula rosa absorbing (and thus becoming nominative in the wake of itself) while denying (e.g., while replacing noun) and feigning texture in a flat-footed speeding toward a prescribed destination, often with repetition upon repetition (the clatter of horsepower - gasoline over an earlier means toward fate). In some sense, then, its becomes a regard of memory (short-termed memory usually) as internalizing it, self-referential to the power of the word, but not clearly efficacious in that regard, since it can be endlessly repeated and may attach to anything nearby and thus everything in turn on its wayward journey through the geography of a given paragraph. Flirtatious, it attracts various nouns (and authors), when it’s (i.e., it is or otherwise possessive as with its) commandeering the seduction complete. So...much like an undergraduate nurtured on the idea of return and recollection yet reconnoitering for some sort of current relevance at the midnight hour, it can imply more as an easily shifting allegiance to the next possible event, person, or object (noun, implicated) especially in the next paragraph possibly rendering a capricious involvement. It acts as a denouement for consciousness. Its, possessive in denouement, incurs and perhaps sustains memory aspects as integers of human frailty for shortcuts. This results sometimes in short-circuiting, subtly altering, meaning otherwise implied while pretending verification. As memory evocation, too, it is an augmentation given to forgetting its appropriate nominal adjunctive source, especially, perhaps, in English. Becoming unmoored through overuse it ages incongruently as an emblem of fragmentation and thus, in deed, a mark of senility. Or, just plain laziness perhaps induced by fatigue (that persistent overuse). Corruption gathers to itself and is recognizable as dispersal and fragmentation when it modifies more than one subject in a given paragraph.
Minds of Recourse and Reverberation:
Cerebral, Trial, Logical, and Mystical.
As it exemplifies, a cerebral mind senses conflict emerging. As abstracted, sustenance (when reified) breeds contempt, a court-contempt for the defining royalty or vice versa who “after wearing no clothes” ultimately shares the same human psychical and emotional limitations and cultural degradations.
When It is held in distant abeyance within the trial mind, justice and rightness are avoided. A form of amorality, perhaps akin to democratic instigations at some levels of intimation configuring a relationship, loosely by content, but transfigures what is modified and what is therefore rationalized while masking perhaps a greater, higher, more secretive morality that is teleological, universal, and transcendent. Something always seems hidden in the crowd of words. If such spiritual inclinations are in the basic presumption of pronoun usage (seated at the right hand of the defining power) it emerges as a qualifying religious impulse, something akin to law. And, seemingly thereof a harbinger of prophecy, (or at least to what is expected), i.e., intending a teleological destination always elsewhere, ahead possibly. Close encounters seemingly moniter such and eventuality of time and space as close knit, so we remain unsure of what really is now. It intends at some level a secret code of conduct, a ritualized personification peculiar to itself beyond the perhaps intentional, usual, ordinary-folklore mores strained in over-usage, feigning a mythological birthing, by its various and many authors. With consideration of more cerebral and mythical aspects is It or IT the Secret in and of liturgies in religious idioms regarding faith? In funerary services in the religious impulse, the pronoun it as separate undertaker seeks status quo as an object and simulates a feigned order seemingly useful in rational discourse as if the logical/anti-logical thesis (with summative conclusion) could possibly prevail in philosophical and in theological circling. The circle seems to foreclose on the idea of a spiral with its echoing process and open-endedness, unless we can locate a procedure wherein they work together as a vibratory injunction to shapes and to a shaping of the pronoun thereby. I am thinking herein of crop circles in fields, offering the expenditure of inclusive variety of properties that link encounters to conceptual, geometrical images. With displacement as effecting a hierarchy, such as pronouns actualize, comes a religious relevance; such a characteristic comes into this possible alignment when dealing with the after-treatment of death by suicide, to illustrate the systemization, since a mourning response looms over and enters into such a process as in the Catholic liturgy as commemorative exercise, like the Funeral Mass. The victim conceived therein as a once-was object is excommunicated thereby completing the notion of objectivity. The potential of necessity or of wisdom in the decision is too often ignored. Objectivity pervades the implicit ritual usage of the intent (ultimately Ipse - Self - for ITSELF) and thereby language-used, momentarily at least, nominatively empowered (i.e., an object).
Yet, any advent thereby implied leads the questioner toward a seemingly faithful resolution, at least momentarily. Hence, influence is a motivation for those remaining. Damnation, hell fire, and brimstone become part of the wayward folks who do not or have not followed the tenets of the variable faiths. Mystery deepens when we confront the source of the faith of our indulgence and our personal reasoning in supporting said tenets and principles. The rising portent is part of the mystical, deeper spirituality, of our longings.
Mystical Consciousness And Imagery.
By contrast to these logical, cerebral, and trial systems of thought, at the level where the pebble hits the lake (as if leapfrogging through time, with a spatial punctuation) is another reckoning of consciousness - visionary and mystical consciousness (the epitome of close encounters). Mystical affirmation slides into an impending crisis with description (via vivid, surreal and intense imagery) because of its own denouement affirming a cessation while advancing integrity beyond the norm; the mystical process involves then a seemingly necessary disaffirmation in succession before further affirmation and/or reaffirmation of its premise. Pronouncements coming from close encounters are so mysterious yet absolute as to the moment of arrival, so much so that the mystic endures an insistent feeling of a necessity for affirming the opposite (or at least, another direction) in order for the cosmic sensibility to paradoxically sustain the original intent. The intent is operated in a manner that seems incognito so a balancing is sought through the dissent that is seemingly, initially, an effacement but ultimately is not but an expansion of the premise. That pinnacle is a deliberate wholeness and with a slight shift of nuance is holy. All distinctions in expressions of these experiences are vibrantly subtle.
The surreal and often ironical nature of the mystical event as displayed in every close encounter, and the subtle metaphoric conversion of imagery from the mystic’s personal visionary history and mind-set drives the mystic to attempt describing the inherent nature of reality as experienced. The mystery in and of the process of elucidation, often through metaphor and imagery causal to the mystic’s personal-soul history, is often (as well) relevant to the mystic’s particular culture; the metaphoric implications go beyond mere “as-if” imagery (the implicit it) to the sense of physical reality as achieved by way of perception of physical objectivity, physicality (itself) understood via the mystic as being the true metaphor and thus experienced continuously as experience ongoing.
An experiential factor is imperative. Ultimately, the implication is that it - the metaphorical reality of a multi-universe expansion regardless of the possible metaphorical images being theorized by quantum physical theory (e.g., as in Michio Kaku’s Parallel Worlds) is human experience in its source. Consciousness is a complex proliferation of imagery at multiple levels simultaneously in the human embodiment, and thereof the effect is multidimensional. The awareness of dimensionality happens whether visible or less visible to the human observation, and whether the after-effect in terms of cognition sustains regular awareness or is an expansion cosmically; the compounding expresses a sensibility not hitherto awakened. Likely the process of linkage evolves into what is transcendent as in the various levels of religious, spiritual, philosophical, theoretical, scientific, literary, creative-artistic, ascendancy, and thereof mystical and thus insistently (somehow) revelatory. Although this process is not essentially based in opposition except by accident of design for purposes of fulfillment whereof the mystical connotation of an essential balancing when the encountering experience as vocally or written as described by intent remains and continues as ineffable. Any nominative take will elide or slide into the factoring as metaphoric imagery from it to it to it. Each it thereby usually acts as a personification, abstractly poised, and thus is symbolic even ritualistic in nature. It holds its place in a narration.
A mystical consciousness frequently is expressed via a stream of images by which occurs a shift from metaphor to metaphor (i.e., frequently – image to image), the implications being bearings of and substitutes for it as itself. Without proportion the mystical expression is exemplified thereby in a stream of consciousness absorbing all that nature offers in a transcendental denaturing of cause by reversing the principle. To verify the wholeness of the meaning stated thereafter includes stating the opposite affect, not as a contrary measure but as a fuller, deeper, magnification of what the principle is. We acknowledge that it is conjunctive.
Mystical Consciousness: Experiencing Metaphor.
Although for some folks a mystical declaration is an expression generally unknown or thought about, as mystical consciousness speculates through eidetic metaphor, the mystical is a process of imagery. A substantive connection exists between mystical inspiration and the physical forbearance that becomes metaphor’s form, often displaced into a narrative issuance as suggested above. The appropriation, however, of an existing essence, is coherent with close encounters. The shifting elements are juxtaposed elements, the major affirmative connection between corresponding “likes” associatively. Thereby, the mystical message swirls in a constant slippery shifting stream of consciousness - redactive only to an essence of gathering in, inclusive of all aspects of any polar, bilateral, and oppositional disconcertion that might appear. In a metaphoric stream of expressions, the it of mystical consciousness will enact Itself as over-lord, frequently ascertaining a symbolic connotation.
We are reminded of historical and religious visionary nourishment for the mystic, i.e., mystics recognized or not over historical time, by the recurring night visitation of an angel in the form of a man who overwhelms with his embrace such as with the prophet Muhammad in the cave, and the similar Beloved who visits St. John of the Cross in his dark night of the soul, and in the dream-visionary altercation of Jacob with the angel/s somewhere on the ladder of up and down between heaven and earth. Too, in a twist of gender in keeping with other ancient cultural “mythologies” and “legends” having something to do with creation origins, Mary, the virgin paradoxically becomes mother while remaining virgin. Through the visitation and agency of the angel Gabriel, the conjunction formed will suspend time and space between each other. For the mythic aspects to have relevance to the culture at hand, such conjunctions are implicit. As parallel in the current Aquarian Era the passage follows a similar manner of assimilation in a new orientation, yet recurring mode. Albert Einstein and the nuclear atomic physicists and mathematicians following in the wake of the prow, eventually alter the Newtonian course of historical overtones regarding physicality as in our recent historical past, and once again evolving. At this level the various scientific fields inferred by those captaining the vessel on the surface, a widening arc or spiraling of the subatomic activities deepens into an oceanic depth.
The cosmos once again opens its deep dark skies to a religious fervor for the next ultimate speculation. Within the soaring, just a bit, you might feel the spiraling in the formulating of ages all around us all.
Although the Blessed Virgin, Mary, and divine son, Jesus, parlayed the past earlier mythologies of virgin births and immaculate conceptions now shifts toward the concept of the Big Bang - a micro-atomic metaphor for Creation. In the rise of Jesus (perhaps the newest version of a god to appear) in the early pantheon we might find the process continuing in the pattern set by previous ages (I refer to this current and developing Aquarian Age) and moving on from the Piscean Age’s version of “God” as “Father,” the apex of “Crown of Light” of a Trinity and Pantheon, the mantle being passed to “God, the Son” seemingly on this time around. A similar trinity of deity attributes seemingly remains unfulfilled.
Each Age/Era worshipped a range of deities who came forth but in this essay I refer frequently to the Judeo and Christian impulses mainly after the Arian Era had given the mantle to Jehovah, God - The Father (now in that new Piscean Era seemingly elevated as the next version of the supreme god of the Trinitarian apex to appear). The pattern of succession had been cast in the various eras preceeding with their own antecedents that demarcate the shift from one age to another. Osiris had been god of the Living and the Dead in the second great Egyptian shift moving back from these more past recent consortiums (Heaven, Olympus, Aaru-Field of Reeds), to Ra, The Sun God in the initial age of the Egyptian kingdoms, and before that arose as deifications: An/Anu, Enlil, Enki, Inanna, Utu, Ishtar, and Ninhursag in the Sumerian pantheon and Akkadian. Babylonian culture/s centered in Mesopotamia. (See Betty Rhodes, on line, for a more complete version of these listings of gods per period of time; my selections are mainly western deities in the world configuration).
In that historical journey, subsidiary gods appeared such as Dionysus (a son of Zeus and a mortal woman, or as Hadrian’s “creation” of the beautiful Antinous (Hadrian’s young male consortium) perhaps sometimes linked in statuary with Dionysus as sharing a title for the artwork/s, somehow pressing the anthropomorphic embodiment along with the intertwining of gods and heroes along with such as Alexander, Genghis Kahn, Plato, and others such as Queen Mautmes impregnated by Thoth, the goddess-Hera sharing a realm with Zeus, The Akkadian-Sumerian goddess Ishtar-Inanna, and other mystical versions drawn out of botanical and cellular parthenogenesis referencing reproductive strategies. This passing on and into a new deification as the enacting of another age that is, in turn reenacted, each in turn, as reoccurring Creation beginnings. The ordering of deifications falls in line with the beginning of a new Age/Era with its new deities, new technologies, and transformations. Such patterning likens the entirety to a mythical panorama. A cycle becomes an equation. The Kings and Queens are dead! Long Live the Queens and Kings!
Traces. The Method On The Cuff.
I intend to be refractory in this exploration, writing a tracery of an illustration based on a couple of particular usages (to be confirmed later in sections to follow) as related to other illustrational material, in accordance with and inclusive of the aforementioned appraisals. I attempt to inject a somewhat reasonable and justifiable observation accompanied by various appropriate lengths of quotations complementary to the issue involved in order to command a system of verifications for, indeed, a stream of consciousness as above in the succession of time. This legacy will continue as appropriate to the manner of delivery of the pronoun in its logical usage. I unapologetically utilize various sources that appear affirmative to my effort and in this method confirm a love of reading that finds intimate connections between different authors and thoughts. In this sense I operate, in part, through a scholarly and associative stream of consciousness with an invisible view of comparisons understood.
I offer my grasp of such implications appearing in the metaphorical system of mystical consciousness (by attempting some manner of order on this stream of consciousness) to act as a guide concerning descriptive and annotative complementation with an intuitive regard to more logical efforts readers may bring to the essay. I especially address philosophers, including those who are theologically and metaphysically attentive but whose efforts involve a more usual kind of academically accepted speculation (or in certain cases, insisted upon formulaically) through the regular system of introductory thesis/anti-thesis, thereby comparative and a summing up or synthesis.
Ironically and similarly, perhaps, mystical affirmation insists on parallel but immediate de-affirmation of what is offered to avoid proscription and prescription. The sense of this is to turn any similarity regarding the immanent frequency of possible stereotyping of the issue back on itself by denying the absoluteness of the initial inventory of thought with regard to thesis and anti-thesis. Although a similar manner subsists--affirmation to de-affirmation and then to reaffirmation (versus thesis to anti-thesis to then a conclusive supposition), the mystic is nonetheless guided conversely to the philosopher’s manner in the mystic’s attempts to rationalize or to more appropriately understand those provocative, confusing, and surreal mystical encounters. Included are those visionary and surreal involvements with beings, events, and messages. In this manner an ongoing mystical endeavor is inclusive but not conclusive, nor exclusive due to historical changes and mannerisms of acceptability and denials. At least in contemporary terms the philosophical system appears to be bound to a formula that language has produced, whereas because the mystical insistence as within close encounter narration is decidedly image-oriented and therefore often presented in a visionary manner; the sense of metaphor transcends a mere grammatical connotation rising to the level of experience as of itself. Fine artists attempt this, and it is rough!
Because of metaphoric dimensions realized, the mystic-adept eventually comes to lack the fear and need for the “regular order” sought by those philosophers and theologians who provoke delineated formulas for sequential and/or comparative descriptions, conclusions, answers of sorts with some bearing being of especial importance thought safe by relying on formula. Levels of morality and amorality (higher codes of morality perhaps) enter into the addressing of issues.
I confer that this juxtaposition melds with a mystical over-viewing that ideally confirms nothing tangible or theoretically solid in the manner of mystical encounters (because of their individuality, specificity, and metaphorically personalized imagery per encontrant plus the plethora of memory narratives and images bearing the insistence of memory as re-formed lives). Such acts, essentially, are suggestive in the manner of poetry, akin to Marianne Moore’s poem, A Jellyfish, quoted in the frontispiece to this consideration, it being in the shifting, sliding, and gathering-up of metaphors. Nor do I suggest such aphorisms are literarily descriptive in any way of metaphoric relevancy toward being any kind of lasting pattern indulged by the author beyond this manuscrlpt series of separate but related essay’s temporary and limited cohesiveness and authorization for creative flow.
Patterns discerned thus are recognized to be momentary, inclusive of life events to that particular moment of the encounter. Once a pattern is discovered a momentary commentary on the mystical procedure may feel called for or the encounter precedents as formulations for impending propositions, but recognizing patterns is not a conclusive proof of such. In that way, an essay, such as in this study, is to be viewed as a metaphor, too, and only part of an ongoing process. The recognition is that Itself is manifest as a nominative pronoun (a proper noun thereby) and expansive in nature, i.e., both inclusive and expansive simultaneously at all moments of becoming what is. Hence, continuing in the following passage I demarcate sections (with titles) for the reader as I have above, as an attempt to map the terrain by local site situations (including any citing of various lengths). Mystical consciousness, the beyond that is usually prescribed in the literature and of some accord as the mind shifts and gathers in what the pronoun, it, seems to inescapably render substance (and an indirect acknowledgement) even when hiding within words such as indicated early in this exploration with additional examples herein: “literature”, “edit”, “spirituality ”, “situations”, “similitude”, “implicit”, “conditioning”, “within,” “individuality,” “quality,” etc. – (We note the it within and suffix-self are hidden as though self and the internalizing of it does not exist. Both act, though, as an implicit internalizing. The repeating mechanism continues of metaphoric implication as to a subjective inherence from the base of acknowledging by hanging on the coattails of such objective notions there of and as if other); all references are in various aforementioned paragraphs in this writing.
In that meaning is to be interpreted after an encounter, the quality of imagery is sympathetic to mystical encounters that employ a certain degree of empathic morphology. Dream language as an altered state of consciousness follows the metaphoric approach to meaning, like close encounters, by utilizing visual imagery as well as language although prophecy is frequently hidden in the eidetic imagery in mystical encounters, visions, and dreams.
APRIL Issue 2022
Alternate Perceptions – Editor Brent Raynes.
