Metacosmic Circularity²

Let us reluctantly continue with our attempt to harmonize Christian metaphysics with metaphysics per se. 

I say "reluctantly," because this is a job so vital to the vertical economy that no one wants it, so it has devolved upon me to come out of retirement and deal with it, notwithstanding my lack of qualifications. 

In yesterday's initial approach we touched on the subjects of cosmogony and original sin, and of how horizontality and outwardness can constitute a "sin" against the verticality, transcendence, and inwardness that constitute our very reason for being. 

This is again not to go all Manichaean and imply that there is something wrong with materiality per se. But a man who is fully plunged into matter, with no trace of verticality, is no longer a man, rather, a tenured beast or end-stage political activist. 

As we shall see, maya can be a wall or window; come to think of it, it can be an ascending telovator or a bottomless mineshaft. We decide. Or deicide, disrespectively.

Schuon speaks of a "duty of inwardness"

without which we would not be men, precisely; this means that that pole of attraction which is the "kingdom of God within you" must in the final analysis prevail over the seductive magic of the world....

To be "horizontal" is to love only terrestrial life, to the detriment of the ascending and celestial path; to be "exteriorized," is to love only outer things, to the detriment of moral and spiritual values (emphasis mine). 

In a Christian context, it is perfectly fine to love horizontal things so long as the love is a vertical prolongation, so to speak. We have only to look for the union label -- union with the Divine. Every mystic says as much -- that the things of this world speak of their creator. Metaphysical transparency, and all that. 

Seriously, if we couldn't see through things, we couldn't see them at all. Rather, like animals and journalists we'd see only surfaces with no essences. 

Every scientist sees nothing but essences. It's just that their curiosity stops short of inquiring into essentiality as such. Following one's nous in that direction would plunge us into subjectivism, and that would be a sin against science!

I do understand your point, and the point is precisely backward. 

For literally nothing can be as objective as metaphysics. It doesn't mean metaphysics is "complete," for this requires a subject and all this implies. 

But for now you need only remember that "Transcendence is objective inasmuch as it concerns the Divine Order in itself" (ibid.). Naturally it becomes "subjective" on contact with man, but only "inasmuch as it refers to the Divine Presence in us."

To put it another way -- and this will lead us back to Christian metaphysics -- it turns out that both objectivity and subjectivity are anchored in the principial world of the Trinity.

Let's say, for example, that the Son is a kind of exteriorization or objectification of the Father, only literally. Down here we experience only distant echoes of this eternal procession. Farfetched, or insufficiently fetched?  

The latter. To repeat what was said in yesterday's post, 

this intra-Trinitarian procession, which is perfect, must be the cause and explanatory reason for the procession of creatures as well (Torrell).

This creature, anyway.  

the procession of the Son is the model, the exemplar and the reason for the procession of creatures in the natural order, where they imitate and reproduce something of the divine nature.

Not only do I agree, I agree². In short, Yes². On steroids. With bells on. 

"The whole course of time is immersed," writes Torrell, 

in the Trinity. Exit-creation and return-divinization are embraced in the eternal cycle of the divine processions.

Is this enough for one day, or are we just getting startled?!

Let's see what Thomas has to say.

in all creatures there is a representation of the Trinity in a vestigial mode, in the sense that we find in each of them something that we must necessarily refer to the divine persons as cause.... 

If God is necessarily in all things, and God is a trinitarian dance of eternally generous exit and infinitely loving return, then we'd better take 'er easy for now, for the next post will be a big one. 

Putting the Kosmos in the Cosmos

Good book: St. Thomas Aquinas Volume 2: Spiritual Master, by Jean-Pierre Torell (https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Thomas-Aquinas-Vol-Spiritual/dp/0813213169/ref=sr_1_3?crid=36K6KQ0JMLM2R&keywords=jean+pierre+torrell&qid=1678037835&s=books&sprefix=jean+pierre+torrell%2Cstripbooks%2C160&sr=1-3).

I'm going to first highlight some passages that, it seems to me, indicate a way to reconcile Christianity with the primordial and perennial metaphysics of Schuon. 

The passages below are yoinked from chapter III, God and the World, and illuminate Aquinas' Sphinx-like teachings on "God's presence in the world, and the world's presence in God," in "a circular movement of creatures who have come forth from him and are led back to their origin, now viewed as their final end." 

The Big Circle of the Creator mirrors the lil' circle of creation; come to think of it, it puts the kosmos in the cosmos, i.e., the order in the ordered.

In the exit of creatures from the First Principle, we observe a kind of circular movement owing to the fact that all things return as their end to that from which they came forth as their Beginning....

Now, as we have already said, since the procession of persons is the explicative reason for the production of creatures by the First Principle, this same procession is therefore also the ratio for their return to the end.

The second paragraph in particular made my eyes perk up and my ears bug out, because it suggests that the vertical circle of creation is indeed a distant exterior reflection of what goes on inside the Trinity: not just As above so below, but As inside so outside, so to (or three) speak.

There's much more, but before proceeding any further, this might be a good place to bring Schuon back into the discussion. As mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm always fooling around with one or another of his books, most recently his penultimate one, The Play of Masks. 

One might say that Schuon wrote in a fractal manner, such that nearly every book mirrors the whole doctrine, and this one is no exception, except it's even more compact than usual, coming in at just 90 pages and earning an adamantine 10 on the Mohs scale of hardness.

About the curious fractal structure of Schuon's corpus, he adverts to it in the Foreword without using the word: "the chapters are small independent treatises which often summarize the entire doctrine"; the whole is right there in the parts, so to speak, and vice versa. 

I suspect something similar is going one in my output, which is why, as mentioned a couple of posts back, I can no longer communicate to a general audience unfamiliar with the past 17.5 years of blah-blah-blogging. 

Let us flip to p. 55, to an essay called Delineations of Original Sin, and try to relate it to what Torrell says above about the Up and In of the Trinity and the Down & Out of creation.  

Vis a vis "sin," which is another word for "separation from the Principle," Schuon says that we might distinguish it from guilt per se -- after all, original sin doesn't involve any action on our part, but rather, is an echo of the rupture of man's of original justification -- and pay heed to 

the presence in our soul of a tendency of "outwardness" and "horizontality," which constitutes, if not original sin properly so called, at least a hereditary [in the vertical sense]  vice that is derived therefrom.

Our existence takes place within the complementary poles of vertical and horizontal, inward and outward, "Kingdom of God" and thingdom of materiality. 

Perhaps we should emphasize at this juncture that we're not talking about a Gnostic or Manichaean rejection of materiality, rather, its divinization, ultimately via the Incarnation that facilitates our return to the Principle (which Torrell discusses, and more on which as we proceed).

"To be 'horizontal," writes Schuon, "is to love only terrestrial life to the detriment of the ascending and celestial path"; it is "to be 'exteriorized'" and "to love only outer things, to the detriment of moral and spiritual values." 

It constitutes a, or better, the, "sin against transcendence," because "it is to forget God and consequently the meaning of life." This "outwardness is to sin against immanence, thus it is to forget our immortal soul and consequently its vocation.... [And] this neglect predisposes to the indefinite repetition of the original transgression."

So, speaking of fractals, it is as if the flight to horizontality and exteriorization, both in general and in its particular manifestation, is a more or less distant echo of the fall.

Back now to Torrell, who situates the Principle of Creation in the generation of the Son from the Father:

this intra-Trinitarian procession, which is perfect, must also be the cause and explanatory reason for the procession of creatures as well.

I agree, but what went wrong down here? Who goofed? And what can we do about it?  

To be continued....

Not Every Train Wreck is Buttigieg's Fault

This new layout looks gay.

I know. I'm working on it. Besides, the preferred, uh... Homo-American, please. 

Must it be literally daily? 

Seriously, how much Bob does anyone really need? Why not Daily Bob, In a Manner of Speaking, or A Smattering of Bob Now & Again? Why tax what remains of your audience? You saw what happened yesterday. 

Yesterday's post had a serious point. I just never got to it. Also, if one is going to improvise, one is going to fail. Way it is. 

Breaking News: this seems to be happening more often. How old are you, anyway? 

I know, I know. It's just that... How to put it... 

For many years, it seems that I was "blogging to." Now it is as if I'm "blogging from." Retirement simply aggravates it, because I'm more or less always in the place from. I no longer have to find my way back into it. Rather, out of it. You could say I'm trying to write my way out, or at least bring back a small souvenir.

...

...

Dueling ellipses, eh? Okay, I'll bite. From where? 

Speaking of mine, you just now reminded me of something I read the other day about train wrecks... who was it... 

Booty judge?

Homo-American, please.

No, it was in the liner notes of a CD by the Allman Brothers. It's a comment by drummer Butch Trucks about 

the pressure on me to hold everything together. If I didn't really focus on that, it could turn into a train wreck -- and it did on occasion! That was a part of who we were, because we weren't afraid to have a train wreck every once in awhile.

So, if one is going to be operating out there on the edge, there will be train wrecks.

Edge of what? Besides, you don't always have to hit that orange button up there -- you know, the one that says >Publish.

Would you like to be my drummer? Didn't think so. Besides, it's all a part of Who Bob Is, nor is Bob afraid to fail.

See breaking news above. And don't start referring to yourself in the third person. You're not Bo Diddley.

And you're not Jerome.

Blogging to and blogging from. Say man, what's the difference? 

I think it has to do with the nature of theology, I mean the real kind. There's a fake kind -- or, not so much fake as... 

Well, it's like the difference between a human jukebox playing carbon copies of their greatest hits on stage -- the fucking Eagles come to mind -- versus a band like the Allman Brothers, who never played it the same way twice.

Or Wayne Shorter, rest in slack. Only a few jazz giants are still standing: Sonny Rollings, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett... 

Shorter was a very cosmic guy.

Yes he was. He always played from, but then again, he was always searching for at the same time: seeker and finder at once.

And just because it's my favorite photo of him:

Homo comoedia

What must existence be like in order for it to be a joke?

Start over.

What would the world be like without humor?

Late night comedy all day long?   

How about this: what must the world be like in order for humor to exist?

Are you asking me? Bec-

No, let me guess, and you tell me at the end if I'm correct.

Let's think this through. In order for a joke to exist, there must exist multiple levels of reality in addition to the the levels that must already exist in order for human beings to exist. In other words, we're talking about levels within levels, or rather, multiple levels on the human level.

It seems that even the most basic joke -- the fart joke, let us say -- must require at least two levels that exist in tension until the "punchline" occurs with the breaking of wind. 

Two primordial ancestors -- let us call them Mutt and Jute -- are sitting by the fire. Here is some of their conversation, unedited for obscurity:

Jute. — Are you jeff?

Mutt. — Somehards.

Jute. — But you are not jeffmute? 

Mutt. — Noho. Only an utterer.

Jute. — Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you?

Mutt. — I became a stun a stummer.

Jute. — What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause! How, Mutt?

Mutt. — Aput the buttle, surd.

Jute. — Whose poddle? Wherein?

Mutt. — The Inns of Dungtarf where Used awe to be he.

Jute. — You that side your voise are almost inedible to me. Become a bitskin more wiseable, as if I were you....

Mutt. — Ore you astoneaged, jute you?

Jute. — Oye am thonthorstrok, thing mud.

I don't get it.

No worries. Campbell & Robinson have translated it:

--Are you deaf? Deaf-mute? What is the matter with you anyhow?

--Not deaf, but I have suffered some damage from a bottle in a local tavern -- or rather, from a battle at Clontarf.

--Horrible! But come on! Wise onto yourself! Wake up!

--Are you astonished, you stone-aged Jute, you?

--I am thunderstruck; I am Thor's thunderstroke...

Congratulations. You lost the last reader.  

Granted, I picked a poor example, or rather, far too rich, for Joyce's 500 page joke operates operates on so many levels that no one has ever fully gotten it. It has countless self-referential jokes, with many a smile to nondum if you are abcedminded to the grand funferall in this meanderthalltale! It's just that 

The movibles are scrawling in motions, marching, all of them ago, in pitpat and zingzang, for every busy eerie whig's a bit of a torytale to tell.

Whatever. It's not too late to start over. 

Laugher results from the collapse of tension between levels.

Good. How about some examples, and not from Joyce?

Alright then, Wodehouse:

It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away.

He was staring incredulously, like one bitten by a rabbit.

He crouched in the wardrobe like a weevil nestling in a biscuit.

Old Mr. Saxby looked like something stationed in a cornfield to discourage crows.

He gave me a long, reproachful look, similar in its essentials to that which a black beetle gives a cook when the latter is sprinkling insect powder on it.

He heaved himself up in slow motion like a courtly hippopotamus rising from its bed of reeds on a riverbank.

He, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat. We stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other by chance at the dog races.

His face darkened. He looked like a halibut that's taken offense at a rude remark from another halibut.

Like the head of a great fish, lying on carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted an explanation and apology.

Hungry is not the word. I felt like a homeless tapeworm.

He vanished like an eel into mud.

Uncle Tom always looked like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow. 

His IQ was somewhat lower than that of a backward clam -- a clam, let us say, which had been dropped on its head when a baby.

George stammered. He produced a sort of sizzling sound like a cockroach calling its young.

I haven't felt so relieved since the afternoon in West Africa when a rhinoceros, charging at me flashing eyes, suddenly sprained an ankle and had to call the whole thing off.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," he replied, with scarcely veiled derision.

I have a memory like a steel trap, but it doesn't always work as it should.

One prefers, of course, in all occasions to be above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body.

Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil the mood with explanations of why these are funny, only to say that each of them benefits from the juxtaposition of sober and silly, serious and absurd, high and low. 

Back to what the universe must be like in order for humor to exist. I suspect humor is much like music, in that it is universally present in every culture known to man except for the progressive left, where it is both impossible and impermissible. This latter is equally important, for it is more proof that the left is so unfunny it's funny.

In the past we've discussed the importance of music, in that perhaps we love it because it reveals something essential about the structure of reality. Supposing humor as such also reveals something fundamentally true of existence, what might that be?

What must existence be like in order for it to be a joke?

Start over.

The Religion the Audience & Me Works Out Betwixt Us

I forgot to get a pic of the cosmic potato -- or potato cosmos -- mentioned in yesterday's post. However, that doesn't mean I can't describe it. I suppose it would be easier to do so in a podcast, but I'm partial to the view expressed by a writer that writers shouldn't do that. Rather, they are writers, and writing is hard enough without cheapening it with... cheap talk (https://www.gawker.com/culture/writers-shouldnt-talk?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email).

conversation does not allow for revision or retraction. Why should writers be exempt from an otherwise universal indignity? They, too, are people, and people speak and misspeak. Still, I have always thought that there is something peculiarly invidious, even offensive, about the expectation that writers talk, at least in their capacity as writers.

I am particularly conscious of this, since writing for me is still an aspiration and not an accomplishment. I have only to peek at my early posts to appreciate this. Much of it is winceworthy by today's laughty standards. 

My inner standard would combine the piercing meta-intelligence of Schuon with the aphoristic irony of Davila and the perfectly crafted humor of Wodehouse. Speaking of which...

Lately I've been spending my spare timelessness dilating the mind and just letting the light flow in. However, it's not conducive to writing, this for two reasons. 

First of all, it's a passive modality, when writing is an active one. Second, it is as general as general can be, when writing must be particular. While I would like to write about "everything," one must of course begin with something.

Get back to the potato. We're dying of suspense.

I will, but I need to mention something else. How to put it... It's that, over the years, it seems that I have written myself into a corner, in that the person we know of as Gagdad Bob has coevolved with his audience, such that each evokes the other.

So, the other day I began writing a book, the sequel to One Cosmos. I didn't get far -- three sentences, I think -- before it dawned on me that it just wasn't working, because without my already existing audience, I myself don't really exist. We've come too far together for me to even know what it was like to write in the abstract to no one in particular. Who are all these assouls? 

No, I'm not getting sentimental about my wonderful audience, like some Grammy award winner. Rather, it reminds me of Duke Ellington. Conventionally speaking he was a "piano player," but in reality his instrument was the orchestra. 

You probably know next to nothing about Ellington, but even folks who know a little would probably lump him in with the big swing bands of the the 1930s, but as we discussed before on that other blog, there are geniuses and there are idioms, and the two should not be confused.  

I'm especially intrigued by "primitive" musical geniuses such as a Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, who expressed their genius via the idiom of blues. But to reduce them to "blues musicians" is to overlook the more universal category of genius. "Genius" is a kind of x-factor that distinguishes the musical magician from the mere musician, whether that musician is merely workmanlike or a virtuoso. 

Analogously, as there are saints who are not sages, there are true artists who are not virtuosos.  

Getting back to Ellington, although he was a complete musician who also happened to be a fantastically expressive pianist, this simply wasn't enough for his musical vision, which required the whole orchestra and the individual voices within it.

The big bands of the 1930s began breaking up during the war years, and by the 1950s were largely a thing of the past. But for Ellington, the orchestra remained his primary idiom.  

Which leads to my "idiom." It seems that it has become "blogging," with all its spontaneity and creative immediacy. But not just in the abstract. Rather, a certain sensibility has emerged in the ever more... selective space between blog and audience, such that I wouldn't know how to write for any other audience. Rather, I'd have to start all over and invent a whole new audience, so to speak.

What's the word, Petey?

Parasitic? 

No, the other one.

Exploitive? 

No... symbiotic. And synergistic. 

I suppose the ironic thing is is that it all started out as a pretend cult, only to become a real one. 

I wouldn't put it that way, oh Mystic B'ob, 11th Degree Peltmaster of the Benevolent Order of Transdimensional Cosmic Achievers.

That's not how I mean it. Rather, it's more like the well-known phenomenon of having a favorite band that few people know about. To the extent that the band later goes on to widespread success, it's usually at the cost of betraying its original sound and audience. The band gains millions more fans but loses the original cult of hardcore loyalists.

This has happened to me many times. For example, I was an early adopter of Springsteen in 1975, before he became the vulgar arena-rocker, painfully self-conscious pseudo-artiste, and super-wealthy progressive fascist. Likewise R.E.M. before they too went that way in 1988.

THE POTATO!

That right there illustrates the problem. I will discuss the cosmic potato -- in great detail -- but imagine doing so to a wider audience beyond the twelve? I literally couldn't do it, because it would require 17 years of explanation to get them up to speed. All of you will get it. Just not the other 7 billion soyim.

So, it looks like I've written myself into a corner cult, the kind that no one can join but no one can leave. And every member is a follower and a leader. Because I think we've all, in some form or fashion, adopted the Raccoon sensibility of THE RELIGION THE ALMIGHTY & ME WORKS OUT BETWIXT US.

A Cosmos Made of Potato & A Vertical Circle Made of Wheat

(Words of Petey in red.)

Man needs to climb the Cosmic Mountain in order to give his life meaning. 

Which one?

There's only one, but the modern world gives human beings a wide array of counterfeit ones, which is why climbing them does nothing to relieve the emptiness, and often exacerbates it.  

Concur. My son is set to finish climbing one of those phony mountains called "high school" in a few months, but he already knows it means nothing, and no, he's not cynical, rather, the opposite. But talk about the Special Olympus! If literally anyone can climb it, it may be a sign that you're standing on a not-so-great plain.

I remember back when I was contending with the Matrix, I wanted to have a college degree -- the subject didn't matter -- only because I was happy working in the supermarket, but didn't want people thinking I was so stupid that I had no option but to work there. I never thought of it as an accomplishment. It was all about status -- as it still is -- only I was aware of it.

Wasn't it the same with grad school? 

Yes, I wanted to be like the Nicholson character in Five Easy Pieces, who has a blue collar existence working in the oil fields but was a musical prodigy who could have presumably chosen to be a concert pianist. Except in reverse, in that I had no gift or accomplishment or virtuoso background to "give up." Rather, I had to acquire one in order to throw it away.

Come to think if it, my current life isn't too different. Even my son commented that taking all the time and trouble to become a clinical psychologist isn't the sort of thing one simply abandons at the first opportunity: eight years of grad school, 3,000 hours of supervised internship, passing the licensing exam, and numerous other hoops. Now, that was a mountain. But who cares. I'd rather sit in the backyard and read mystical poetry.  

I'm going to be sick. You think you're so cool! You remind me of an insecure high school kid who refuses to try out for the team so he can boast about how great he could have been. You're worse than Uncle Rico!

Is that what this is? 

That's what I think. Look at you, always working on the Ultimate Book you'll never actually finish. After all, it's the Ultimate Book! You're too cool to write a normal book, one that people might read. Same with the old blog -- you think that repelling readers is a measure of success! Well, congratulations -- you have three readers, assuming you even read yourself.

Over the line, Petey! I thought we were in this together.

We are, but let's get back to the Cosmic Mountain, because the Chinaman is not the issue. How exactly are you climbing it? I'm only a sherpa. I can't climb it for you.

Well, I made some progress yesterday, or rather, some progress was made while I was there.  

Meaning what?   

Meaning that the whole problem is one of structure or organization, or at least that's what I keep telling myself. You can't presume to write about Everything without Something to hang it on.

Go on.

Well, yesterday, in three different places, the same idea appeared, and I think this idea goes to the structure. That was such a coincidence, I assumed you were behind it.

It's possible.

First, this passage from a lecture by Bernard Lonergan:

If you are seeking certain knowledge of things through their causes, you start from the thing, and you work to the discovery of the causes. When you have the causes, you want to check; so you work back from the causes until you can construct things out of them. The scholastics called the first part of this movement resolution into the causes, analysis. The second part of the movement was synthesis.

So the Cosmic Mountain is a "movement of the things to the causes, and then the causes back to the things." 

The old vertical circle. That really preoccupies you, doesn't it? 

Sure does. I feel like the guy in Close Encounters of the Third Kind -- yesterday I made a Cosmic Mountain out of potatoes.

No, really. Well, not potatoes, but on a huge piece of cardboard. When my wife has a minute, I'll show you a photo. I don't know how to work a digital camera.

Of course. You're too cool for that.  

Anyway, this second quote is from The Irreducibility of the Human Person, in which the author writes of how this "ultimate structure" is revealed to us in the Mass, in which "we receive gifts only to offer them back to God." I'll bet one in a hundred communicants realize that this is what's going on, this recirculation of metacosmic energies.  

The vertical open system. 

Precisely. After all, if it doesn't exist, then you're not here speaking to me.

You said there was a third passage, Let's see if you were paying attention.

the cosmogonic movement is not merely centrifugal, it becomes centripetal in the final analysis, which is to say that it is circular; the circle of Maya closes in the heart of the deified man (Schuon).

That was Sunday. What about yesterday?

Ratzinger, speaking of the Mass, writes of "the cosmos as a process of ascent," with the Eucharist providing "the movement of the cosmos with its direction; it anticipates its goal and at the same time urges it on."

So the Mass is a participation in the Great Vertical Circle?  

Stop pretending you don't know that.