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NOTES
* Materialism is a qualitative experience. The cultural
/epistemological /literary assumptions that follow in the wake of this
not being acknowledged are also experiences, also qualities, which lead
to the unthinking assumption that a hammer is only a hammer, a tool. A
utilitarian adjunct of anyone with a utilitarian purpose.
*There is, inherent in thought, a blank spot in the moment
of conception. However, the thought itself, if entertained in a contemplative
way, yields an experience of itself as a quality. Such a quality must be
considered as belonging to the void, and if it is, the gap out of which
it appears may be understood at last as the birth trauma of the idea.
*The nature of materialism as a mental construct is such that it yields
utilitarian associations, and the materialistic thoughts tend to direct
the train of thought away from the qualitative experience of the thought
itself. That is to say, the thought of a hammer does not tend to offer
itself as the essential experience of the hammer as an ontological awareness,
but rather the thought of the hammer tends to offer itself as linked to
further ideational content-- nail, board etc. . . .That this did not used
to be true is obvious to anyone familiar with the Thor myth, or the Lady
of the Lake, or any symbolic reading of signs
.
*Symbolism is now reserved as a special instance in the state's repertoire
for the reinforcement for the social order
ð The construction of social symbols serves to obscure the resonant participation
in numinous reality.
*Symbols in the service of the market reinforce the materiality that drives
the marketplace, putting the material tautology ( I am what I
own. . .) in place of the divine tautology -- "I am that I am."*
ð The deconstruction of the symbolic leads necessarily to the indictment
of culture-- especially when the "something more"
that is always left in sense perception (Merleau- Ponty Primacy of perception)
is disallowed (positivism) or seen only as a resonance in the service
of the "felt-quality" of materialism
*It is not possible for thinking to observe itself in the moment of thinking.
It can only think about that moment afterwards. For this reason there
is the lacunae that appears to be part and parcel of all thought. But
this is, as Dr. Steiner pointed out, is simply a consequence of our organization--
that we are 'perceiving beings" and as perceiving beings we do not
perceive ourselves perceiving, but instead perceive our thinking only
after having thought. This moment of unconsciousness is a fecund and fertile
moment in which the possibilities of the logos are opened and the organism
itself is obscured in the conceptual moment. It is as if the entire organism
must stand still and wait for the thinking stream to be born. And then,
if it is desired, we may turn and direct our attention to that which we
have just thought. This is exactly how a poem happens, save the poem depends
on, or is simultaneous with, the quality of the word as music, as a gift.
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