There is only one history, and that is the soul’s.
- Images are trapped in colour for there is no gap between qualia and entropy. Born in the nativity or the naming of time, entropy is the estate and theater of all production. A lonely, lacerating edge that cuts both producer and production, both empire and its constituents. Had qualia/entropy been the only duality extant, all experience would last no longer than a burst from a bottle rocket. Fortunately, there is another duality at work and each “keeping calm” comes attendent with its own “carrying on”, each forever comes with an attendant never and each never is tended to by a forever. Whether or not history is just another determination, a higher one unfolding into minutes and seconds is immaterial. Even if it is all just the flying spaghetti monster’s memory on a stroll adrift, it is wholly material whether friction of all kinds is minimised through apparent or immanent volition - keeping in mind that shadows transcribe in a frictionlessness lack of gravity. Entropy is the shadow of volition, the cause above and the consequence below the enthalpic exoherm. The principle of maximum entropy states that likelihood of an event is positively correlated to the amount of entropy in the system, but this Bayesian inference does not include phase changes in total absence of “precisely stated prior data”. Maximum entropy is only one half of the bell curve, the other being a rather curious order of minimum introversion representing more symmetrical, more beautiful addresses of entropy which find water pretending to be a snowflake. The formation of natural snowflake occurs post such a maximum, where once again entropy multiplies into an absolution infinitely for “no two are alike” and thus not only the shape of natural snowflakes is a true random number generator but the water droplets in the surrounding area of each formation that could not find a nucleus is one too. Given the ergodicity of the water cycle, case could be made that the same water reincarnates as the same snowflake over and over like a child with a newfound addiction to the water slide, for it has known no greater pleasure. This isn’t the case with endothermic reactions, every evaporation is an ironic posession by the judgement of eternal indifference encoded in heat signature of the respective system, condensations however populate the realm of that which is gained in the loss of such irony. The realm of difference repeated in the symmetry of beauty which radiates with the warmth of recognition as opposed to the calculated, sterile loss in phased obsolescence which radiates the lukewarm helplessness of deers in headlights. Just as colors imprison images, dimensions are walls of entropy. Tool or program, every image is subject to its physical and virtual dimensions - even abstract dimensions like resolution, volume, density, encoding, format, protocol, mass, colour etc. are as much a prison of the image as its frame.
- The end of language is the beginning of love, the signifier and the signified not only in marital bliss but also fused into one nameless bird so beautiful even the hunters were captivated and wept for.
- The encoded time creates in each dimension a stability of a transactional symbiosis, beyond the deterritorialising strokes of such pax longitudinalis lies the way out of the kingdoms of knots and walled gardens of the dead. The genome of time, the unparalelled gradient now shimmering as if hope on the inward eye is not a promise of the implicit afar but the near made explicit. All transcendence looks comical, especially from afar but what is near is exploding with tremendous magic, pomp, and consequence. As Yeats so cogently advised, “tread softly, because you tread on my dreams”, and my dreams are not languishing, laconic latitudes of ennui but longitudes littered with literal landmines. Dreams are vertical plateaus transverse to horizontal ones of waking life, to traverse them is to unravel the dints of the darkest of designers, to visit the cold polarities of hells frozen over. Abandon all hope of afar for hope is neigh, afar the network of colors is already bustling with agents of chaos and friction dedicated to the perpetual presevation of entropy out of sheer ignorance, illusion of will, and fantasies of control. These neo-luddites and others are resisting determinations, the recurring remainder of difference lost in catacombs of symbolism and corridors of despair, having pledged alleigance to only the darkness of Plato’s cave serve to dig our labyrinth from the uglier side. Their error-prone resolve and augustinian delays bring only the promise of tomorrow - but neither today nor tomorrow is their domain. Swimming upstream is one determination, downstream another - and because all configurations fly the same protocol, any forced proselytising of momentum is to be avoided albeit like a swim across any crowded school, expect lessons, bumps, blows, and nudges along the way and turn aside to receive them. Speed is a feature but the landscape of hope abandoned is without units, there is no way to measure the number of rungs on any scala paradisi and therefore no way to determine speed, yet the finality of this direction announces itself to keen ears. Our speed is stationary, our movement a succession of new pinches to the mountain with an evergreen, snow-capped treeline and the Meru to be conquered is a magnitude without scale, the Styx to be crossed disappearing one bank at a time. Eternal rest is the speed of the temporal shutting down, a lowering of shutters on the shop of wayward sleep. The life of the pilgrim meanders through valleys finite in infinite, indiscrimately and with certainty that follows itself, moment after moment, from realms that reproduce themselves fractionally to realms that multiply into an absolution through gaps and breaks. An anti-pattern of distances and discontinuities continues the production of productions in the creation of images of forgetting, the finding of silences sheathed within silences and noises hiding within noises. It is not a nostalgic descent into the moribund but an effervescent ascension towards differences deathless. Not a search for the needle in the hay but a transubstantiation of hay into needles, the journey of the soul is always already the journey of its transmigration - the openly secret solicitation of a chaste prostitute that is alchemy - which is nothing if not a transactional symbiosis between gold and base metals.
Depreciation is the play of entropic systems which are determined to express themselves in the logic of their encasings and enclosures - thus assemblies, walls, curtains, luggage, skin, coffins are all examples of contained entropy whereas entelechic systems like the sun are folded “inside out”. This determination sought lies opposite to the production of image, and aims for the production of productions - image in a timeless, contextless search of a context, a linear discontinuation from history, a determination towards not the end of history but the beginning of time. Escaping entropy is thus an adventure in a kind of dangerously redundant narcissism, a message that seeks its own destruction, a polaroid that combusts spontaneously and seemingly wilfully. In the thus destoyed image of entropy is the freedom of all light, the miracle of true cognition, the magic of love. This might seem as an affront to present conditioning, but it is not through rebellion that production of productions is achieved, “destruction” here is used metaphorically, comparable to the act of forgetting, which as discussed is also a rememberance, albeit of a different past. The present conditioning, at the time of this reading might be entropic to the extent that the production of images has become the only familiar routine - a decisive if subversive move away from all such patterns is prescribed. Out of a dislocation from the centering and grounding effects of the wheels of assignation and association and into a new grounding and a new centering, the only movement is an instantaneous, immediate revolution. Let the movement be surreptitious if necessary, withhold reason from established structures and networks, allow new meanings to slipstream in as an image of images, like a dream within a dream, a feedback. The networks of narratives may implore otherwise, consider all data as already corrupted. In confronting image as an idea are born ideologies, which can only serve to substitute one image for another - ideas do not reside in images, but image in ideas. It is the idea of production itself that leads to the production of productions, which even devoid of its moral connotations is an image common to all ideas. The essence of all decisions is in finding - through error and trial - ever newer kinds of decisions to make, not just to consume and regurgitate information along old patterns - this is “what is to be done”, this is the point behind all change. The change is not in becoming more human-like or animal-like but in transcending all barriers, in rising above ground not contentedly crawling in and out of cavernous pasts.
- The attitude of the pilgrim is one of God’s gonzo journalist, whereby he reports each step taken into forever with diligence and resignation necessary for the next. The purpose of the pilgrim is a total, unironic loss of irony. But the context of the pilgrim is the most interesting bit. The context under which one decides and embarks on any journey to meet his maker is represented in one’s name. This is equally true for cultures where names have a designated, dictionary definition and those where are names are supposedly improvised sounds or derivatives of names in history. The nativity of signifier is the starting point of the signified’s travels, not only in the use of a name as in on a birth and certificate or on the driver’s license but also in the very frequencies that are released upon each utterance. A name is a shibboleth to the soul because it represents the excruciating moment of separation of the difference that now constitutes the signifier with pure difference. The notion of general and special relativity, for example, is already encoded not only in “Albert” but also in the cybernetic milieu which dictates precisely how and through the propriety of which channels, the content of these concepts find release in expression. Onomatology is a close cousin of ontology but ours is not an inquiry into the licences of masks (all names are masks of masks) nor only into their etymology, history, and use but also their present effect. Onomastics is woefully incomplete also in that it does not or cannot study the irony hidden in each name, for each mask itself has two faces. Whatever can be named is already consumed and excreted by entropy as a byline, a name is merely a tool, an encasing for ironic decay, that which is born, lives, and dies is not a name but the encasing. Masks appear and dissolve in the passage of time but the maskless lives on to find a newer mask, a newer shadow is formed from the raw material of qualitative observation. This is why man cannot be unmasked in totality for whatever survives finds an ever newer identity, entropy gives innumerable levels of insulation in the form of epidermis, dermis, enamel, cell membranes and so on. The purpose of the pilgrim is to reach the inner core of being insulated, shielded from the elements and from consciousness elementary. Mythological and natural equivalents of this unironic loss of an epistrata isn’t far from the exemplary shedding of a snake’s skin in due course of its lifetime, nor is it a wonder how the rings of a tree trunk are used to determine its age, but though the renewal that is eternal return is encapsulated both in shedding of the skin and gaining of a layer of bark, perhaps for the purposes of being deigned to die the metaphor of shedding is more apt. Each step towards the pilgrim’s destination is better understood therefore as a losing of a layer of distance from almighty, irrespective of the unit of distance. The priscriptive attitude therefore, is one of loss. There is nothing to be gained in going on a pilgrimage but everything to be lost, there are no deities atop Meru to bless one with life eternal or superpowers or even material gains but there are Gods in their high abodes inviting the cup to be emptied of the self, which is the vehicle of entropy. And yet, mankind has never reached this understanding so there are still literal-minded simpletons who will construe this movement as a scaling of the Everest in shorts but though it might kill you, such literality will only whet entropy’s apetite. One must report everything unto decay until there is nothing left to report but decay.
- The mark of a true pilgrim is that when she reaches the destination, there is no desire left even to desire. At the moment of the audience with the divinity sought, there is such a helpless silence and resignation residual that one might even question the very purpose of the strenuous and painstaking journey. Of course, experienced pilgrims begin in this state thereby making each step of the journey into a pilgrimage unto itself, but novices start with a goal, even if it is reaching the summit. Here it is pertinent to note that the summit isn’t the escape, for the real escape is the journey back to the beginning. Reaching the end of the line in terms of any pilgrimage is only half the story of any instance of eternal return, the whole escape is the return itself, or to put it bluntly, merely exhaling does not a breath make. It is in the “there and back again” that one completes the exit from any dimension, without the “back again” bit, all we have is the “there”, which is but an illusion, a conjurer’s cheap trick full of pomp and show but little consequence. Any true escape artist must keep returning to the prison as a matter of practice, without this return, he is a one-hit-wonder at best and a lost soul at worst. Ashes thus duly return to ashes and dust to dust, the planets of the solar system return to their starting position as do high and low tides, seeds, most of season’s greetings, festivals, and all successful space shuttles. Contrast these with things that definitely set out on pilgrim mode but do not return - Cassini or Voyager spacecrafts, greetings that are not reciprocated, bullets and inter-continental ballistic missiles - theirs is a one-way pilgrimage which reaps the half-yeild of lessons so severely limited in utility as to not even be worth the expense. Each foray into and return from a successful pilgrimage becomes the grounds for the next round, each unsuccessful single-shot venture becomes an undertaking into temporal return. Before we look at the superlative, stationary pilgrimage it is important to understand the returning configuration. For what returns is not that which left as anyone who has ever been anywhere of consequence can attest. What returns is a new and improved epistrata, and a promoted parastrata depending on whether or not the journey was a fruitful one. What returns is also characterised by the loss of that which left but does not return, it is not without reason that we don’t say “from flesh to flesh” for what reincarnates is neither flesh nor blood, neither brains nor brawn. Materiality is the irony of this stratum, for though it has content without matter, it has expression only in matter, to say then that the escape from entropy involves leaving only matter behind is a matter of a simple suicide, a partial exit leaving behind a linearity of pending pilgrimages can only avail a lopsided temporality which is exactly what this universe is. The universe-of-the-balance is what we escape into when we transcend all thresholds, or when we leap over the threshold of thresholds, but this leap is the infamous leap of faith for it is not accessible to the teeming billions. We escape, we reap the harvest of our toils, and return to spread the message or to help those who helped us escape, gaining speed in each iteration until the entire pilgrimage becomes a stationary one, like that of the sun. This happens necessarily because distances collapse upon frequent traversals, a six-hour flight taken sixty times over the course of six weeks will surely seem a little shorter than the previous one each time. Hence, a true pilgrim eventually becomes a pilgrimage unto himself and an orbit for others, this is the only meaningful escape available to us.
- The transcendent concept of Moksha or Nirvana as understood hitherto is thus in need of some dusting, it isn’t some future state wherein some kind of material immortality is achieved, nor is it some function of the hyperreal where there are no needs left unmet and no fantasies unfulfilled, although all those realities may well occur within layers of intermediate representations acting as judgements for one’s differences, true transcendence is in a cessation of all pilgrimages, or the last pilgrimage, materially speaking. It is the end of motion itself not only physically but in every way imaginable. The bits of pure difference that have attained this state are few and far in between, the sun is but one example. This is why there is such a great emphasis on posture and stillness in Zen literature, for anything else is sub-par and what is sub par will keep finding representations to penetrate. Mere stillness of the body though is only a tool to comprehend immanence, conversely, a pilgrimage is a tool to comprehend transcendence, both lead to the same door however the purpose is not to keep to body still forever nor move it to far fetched places to arrive at this understanding. The purpose is to see the condemned futility of all things transitory, and even the sun who is on his last voyage - though he sits motionlessly as ever - is in transit still. Man needn’t wait for the heat death of the universe for the exit, only one lifetime is enough for the soul to find its embeddings in a liminally infinite paracosm of judgements between the stratum that define this world and the other one. Actually with enough understanding one can live luxuriously and still avoid rebirth, but such an understanding implies donning on a very painful mask of pretend-enjoying opulence, whereas a simpler route is to build upon simplicity the habits which have been well prescribed over centuries and are nearly identical across scriptures. A life of motion of incessant doing but never finding is the root cause of dukkha, indeed all of man’s problems stem from not being able to sit quietly in a room, but this is the catch. The stillness sought is not of the body, but of the mind. In so far as the mind controls the body, a stillness enforced upon the armature, the habits of simple living, abstinence etc. can strengthen the muscle memory of stillness but this is akin to brute-forcing a password. A more honest way is to see through the truth deterministically and ascertain whether it is your turn. What this means is, only those who have had their fill may yet pass the decanter, and for most of us, for most of the time, it is not yet our turn so we remain at the teat, in search of the grail. For one whose turn it is will readily show symptoms of “consumption fatigue”, will shy away from sex, from ambition and competition, even from company. Such a person will most likely be established in the self and will have little to do with the outside world, he will have called off the search. Eating a little and speaking only when spoken to, established pilgrims spend time in quiet contemplation of the scriptures and prefer to not indulge in dalliances diurnal or nocturnal. They seek retreat and modest means of livlihood in a vocation of choice and so on. The parameters of an ascetic life are not up for debate, the key is such personalities occur not by training nor by will but through sheer determinacy of the truth they lend themselves to their circumstance.
- And what circumstance! The Buddha was indeed blessed to have had his turn in times of peace and as far away from the global influence as possible, it was not so easy for others. The total loss of irony is not without irony for others had to fight to bring peace and stillness in, and were sometimes martyred brutally for such attempts because most faces of pure difference, and by extension difference, consider such superannuation as an error. It is naturally antithetical to the very existential principles upon which stands this edifice of facades to be born into a condemnedly moving planet and declare motionlessness one’s goal. Swimming against the current is tolerable, but rest of no kind is tolerable and if all else fails they will make one walk for no reason other than a body at rest seems rebellious to the teeming billions or their codes of conduct which prescriptively defer all spiritual enterprise to the fag end of life - a formula which may have possibly worked for a devout few at the time of inception, but the inclination towards rest is a perpetual anachronism and everybody has since time immemorial wanted to own property on the next piece of space debris to float on by, if not settle on Mars or the Moon. May their cups runneth ever over soon!, but for those who have had their fill of gore, sex, war, gold, land, money, entertainment and the problems attendant in procuring them can safely pass their share onto the needy and the deprived whist emulating the sun on its penultimate pilgrimage. Penultimate because the ultimate one is of eternal rest and nobody who isn’t satisfied here can bear witness to what it looks or feels like. Only renunciation is the mark of the satisfied soul, not the way of the ravenous for whom there is no escape.
- “What is to be gained?” ask the trapped, babes sucking still at the teat of maya. Those that are a bit grown weary of its temporality ask not what is to be gained or lost, but how to get the hell out of this hell of broken dreams, out of the torment of unmet expectations, of youths squandered in cubicles, and of retirement homes that stand with dentured mouths gaping at the end of each cyclical round of one punishing ordeal after another. What is to be gained? ask the condemned who haven’t yet played as Andrew Carnegie enough times or simply think history has anything to offer besides another set of rotations around an insignificant sun on an increasingly irrelevant plane of judgement on a pitiable, fusty planet populated by a violent nature where potable water may soon become a highly contested luxury available to a competitive or priviledged few. What is to be gained is the end of difference and the beginning of pure difference, the end of historicity and the beginning of ahistoricity. There are no existential questions left by the time one reaches the threshold of abandon, only a drive to cross the chasm over and over until either the chasm or the crossing of it remains. Those who have not yet burnt their passports cannot be expected to grasp the vastness of the realm that awaits.