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Representation & Reality
This idea about representation and the dawn of consciousness has triggered some other ideas I’d like to follow. To summarize the basic idea: perhaps “consciousness” was triggered or passed along by early man by initiation or exposure to representative imagery or analog forms. The example I explored was of a cave painting witnessed by someone who’d never seen representational art. Suddenly, they were confronted with an image which was both an animal and not an animal. Up until this point in their life, they never had conceived of such a paradox. Things were what they were, not something else. It was simple and direct and rooted in experience.
This also makes me wonder about dreams. To an individual who had never before experienced an analog form or or something that represented something else, what would they make of their dreams? For the modern mind, there is a distinction made between “real” and “unreal.” What happens during waking life is (more or less) real and what happens during dream life is not. Where exactly did we get this idea of “real” from though? To the primitive mind, was there such a thing as the real vs. the unreal?
Perhaps real/unreal is a concept that arises as a result of representational/analog forms. It could be image or it could be language, or it could be somehow a deeper structure than that. I’m toying here with the simplest possible definition of real as: something you’ve experienced. By this criteria, a dream is as real as something that happens while you’re awake. Something “unreal” then is something which you haven’t experienced.
If you never had human contact, this definition might suffice, as there would be nothing to challenge it. But with multiple people interacting, each will have their own set of experiences that they consider real. Imagine a primitive conversation that goes something like:
MAN 1: “Last night I turned into a buffalo.”
MAN 2: “No you didn’t. You were asleep by the fire. I saw you.”
Then we’re required to build some kind of objective or consensus reality. This seems to almost require the scientific method: that the experience can be duplicated by other parties with similar results. Maybe consensus reality then somehow conforms to this whole representational/analog form thing. My experiences are real. But rather than saying your’s are unreal, I have to take your word for it. Thus I’m forced into the position of accepting an analog or representation in place of the real thing. Or rather, I have to at least act as though I accept it on some level.
But what if you’re lying to me about what you experienced? I didn’t really believe it when you told me you ran into a bear with three heads, but according to the rules of consensus reality, I had to act like I did. So does that mean that a lie is basically the substitution of a representation in place of real experience? In that case, all language must be a lie - it’s all analog replacing experience. So does that mean that consensus reality is built fundamentally out of lies? Since I can’t actually physically share my experience with you directly, I’m only left with language and representation, which itself is a lie.
Does that mean then that the foundation of consciousness is deceit? Forms in place of forms in place of forms. That reminds me of a RA Wilson-ism that somebody told me. Or maybe it was McKenna, I forget. Anyway, he would give lectures and ask for a show of hands of how many people ever lied on a government form about something, anything. Invariably almost everyone would raise their hands. And he would say that government is nothing more than the accumulation of all these lies. If this is also the case with consciousness, that it’s fundamental nature consists of disconnecting from experience, then no wonder civilization seems totally fucking insane - lies built on lies ad infinitum.
It opens the infinite regress, mirrors inside mirrors. No wonder human religions changed over time from animism and fetishism to the worship of an infinitely powerful being. All-Seeing. All-Knowing. Consciousness accelerated, infinite, unbounded by objects or experience or reality.
Reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s piece where he talks about a game that God plays with him, challenging him to come up with explanations for his mystical experience:
I tried for an infinite number of times; each time an infinite regress was set off and each time God said, “Infinity. Hence I am here.” Then he said, “Every thought leads to infinity, does it not? Find one that doesn’t.” I tried forever.
The Devil, the Prince of Lies (God in his negative aspect) maybe is the focus on the lies that consciousness creates to describe experience, and the insanity that follows. God in his positive aspect though is infinity, the acceptance of the infinite regress as valuable and amazing in it’s own right.
One other thing this reminds me of: the climax in Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (I think it’s that one). Doesn’t it take place in a hall of mirrors? Bruce and the bad guy stalk through this room full of mirrors, and the enemy fades in and out of reality. Bruce is confronted with hundreds of his opponent, and at the last moment, he uses his heart to choose which one is the real one, and puts a spear through him. The representations of consciousness are shattered, and direct experience returns. Is this what gnosis is? Is this what occult and mystical traditions aim for? A removal of all the lies and images and reflections that consciousness has built - a spear through the heart of the enemy, the true and final reflection of the self.
- No taxation without representation!
- Your Data Body and You
- Whew, thats better
- Is Science a Religion?
- Great article about the semantic web
- Prev: Is Cult a Useless Label?
- Next: Spirit as a separate entity
July 9th, 2005 at 8:23 am
The previous story of neo-pagans speaking at mirrors make sense to me now. Maybe it’s the mirror of self-consciousness that alienated humans from direct perception of God.
The purpose of zen meditation is to wipe away self-consciousness. I suppose if we could all do that, the black-iron-prison would dissolve and we’d go back to some kind of hunter-gatherer society with direct psychic link to the divine.
This cannot presently work though, because there are other societies of self-conscious people who could then wipe us out.
No solution known, but it reminds me of 2001. The spark of consciousness propelled us out a dead-end situation, where we were on the precipice if extinction. All of history after that is irrelevant, it leads to now, a lifeless technopia and once again on the verge of extinction, with the only choice transcendence into a new form of consciousness.
July 9th, 2005 at 9:01 am
we really are seeking to cut through the filter of language, culture, money, etc to break on therough to the other side. ouspensky, intertium organum, discusses the idea of the thinking of a two dimensional entity who is trying to grasp what three dimensional consciousness is about. the first thing that becomes apparent is that that the 2d logic breaks down. to understand the 4th dimension, or th 0 dimension we need new logic.
July 9th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Yeah, that does make sense now, doesn’t it? Here’s the link if anybody missed that gem.
July 9th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
“Bruce is confronted with hundreds of his opponent, and at the last moment, he uses his heart to choose which one is the real one, and puts a spear through him. The representations of consciousness are shattered, and direct experience returns. Is this what gnosis is? Is this what occult and mystical traditions aim for? A removal of all the lies and images and reflections that consciousness has built - a spear through the heart of the enemy, the true and final reflection of the self.”
a Fifth Nail to end the “nightmare of history,” the torment of individuated-consciousness?
July 9th, 2005 at 12:41 pm
Weird you should mention the “Fifth Nail” and the torment of individuated consciousness (that’s the blog of that dude who was in the news for child molesting
July 9th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
You’re being facetious that it makes sense to talk at a mirror now, right? I did sort of misspeak… it doesn’t make much sense at all. But I see the habit behind it, suddenly.
Consciousness talking at itself. That’s really the road we went on when we fractured the real and the unreal, yes? I can hardly believe in primitive men amusing thoughts of “their self” and what they think their-selves stood for. But maybe that’s a given, you can’t be like… “well here’s me, the college-educated professional who likes jazz, has a nice wardrobe, and the women all love” when you don’t have any of those things. But I can’t really see Stuart Smalley self-affirmation among bushmen, either.
But whatever the ending, just to try bringing this back on topic… when consciousness took hold and we ceased to be primitive, we lost our divine link. It’s the constant chatter in the head that occludes the divine download. (Or unless you believe Carlos Castaneda… it was put their by the inorganic beings that run the black-iron-prison). Did Castaneda read PKD? I digress…
Sorry for rambling on.
July 9th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
No, I actually meant to reference that - that it does make sense on a certain level that some people would basically worship the reflections
Well, maybe we found another one in the form of the “infinite regress” - again maybe thats the genesis for the mirror-gazing ritual
July 9th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
has anyone ever seen the archons?
they’re real, they look like manta rays
they sustain the chatter and fuel it
they’re like the shadows who are always with us as the slimy underbelly of consciousness
July 9th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
i read somewhere where people took a mirror down to a stream at dusk i believe and did some mushrooms and stared into the mirror. i remember staring at myself on lsd in the mirror,only briefly mind you, and seeing a thousand versions of me smiling,frowning and staring back. a dna memory? our flesh self regresses infinitely like our evaluation of maps of maps. it is infuriating to try to peel the layers back fast enough to catch a glimpse of something else………………………………archeologists keep finding more dirt.
July 9th, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Dear Tim, I’d love to understand what is an “infinite regress.” So far, that one is new to me.
July 9th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
And thanks for the link, Rev Max… I’ll study it soon,
July 9th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
As I understand it, an infinite regress is what happens when you put two mirrors facing each other. Or if you hook up a camcorder to display on a television screen, and then you point it to film that same television screen. I think it comes originally from some kind of logic-argument, but I think this is a much easier explanation.
July 9th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
Tim.. unfortunately I don’t grok that one yet. But it reminds me of something from either the second to or last Dune book…. Miles Teg (a pseudo Kwisatz Haderach… part mentat, part overman) was also nearly trapped in an “infinite regress” or what he called hall of mirrors. I didn’t get it on the first read but there’s always the second…
Intense pain applied to the Ghola to wake him into his previous incarnations…
July 9th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
Infinite Regress=Infinite possibilities. Nothing to grasp onto. All is a mirage.
July 11th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
Yup, that’s a good summation of infinite regress, infinite possibilities. I like that one because it’s a more positive description. Usually cosmological arguments that led to an infinite regress were seen as suspect on the assumption that there needed to be a “first cause.” Of course, that pretty much has gone out the window with the potential implications of modern physics and advanced mathematics.