Light transverses the vehicle of its messenger, in an ocean of information we only drift at the surface.
-Joshua Fleming
Tag Archives: Religion
Loren Eiseley
Except from Wikipedia:
Richard Wentz, professor of religious studies, noted that The Christian Century magazine called attention to a study of Loren Eiseley by saying: “The religious chord did not sound in him, but he vibrated to many of the concerns historically related to religion.” Wentz adds, “Although Eiseley may not have considered his writing as an expression of American spiritually, one feels that he was quite mindful of its religious character. As an heir of Emerson and Thoreau, he is at home among the poets and philosophers and among those scientists whose observations also were a form of contemplation of the universe.”
But Wentz considered the inherent contradictions in the statements: “We do not really know what to do with religiousness when it expresses itself outside those enclosures which historians and social scientists have carefully labeled religions. What, after all, does it mean to say, “the religious chord does not sound in someone,” but that the person vibrates to the concerns historically related to religion? If the person vibrates to such concerns, the chord is religious whether or not it manages to resound in the temples and prayer houses of the devout.”[5]
Wentz quotes Eiseley, from All the Strange Hours and The Star Thrower, to indicate that he was, in fact, a religious thinker:
- “I am treading deeper and deeper into leaves and silence. I see more faces watching, non-human faces. Ironically, I who profess no religion find the whole of my life a religious pilgrimage.”
- “The religious forms of the present leave me unmoved. My eye is round, open, and undomesticated as an owl’s in a primeval forest — a world that for me has never truly departed.”
- “Like the toad in my shirt we were in the hands of God, but we could not feel him; he was beyond us, totally and terribly beyond our limited- senses.”
- “Man is not as other creatures and. . . without the sense of the holy, without compassion, his brain can become a gray stalking horror — the deviser of Belsen.”
Wentz encompasses such quotes in his partial conclusion: “He was indeed a scientist – a bone hunter, he called himself. Archaeologist, anthropologist and naturalist, he devoted a great deal of time and reflection to the detective work of scientific observation. However, if we are to take seriously his essays, we cannot ignore the evidence of his constant meditation on matters of ultimate order and meaning.”[5] Science writer Connie Barlow says Eiseley wrote eloquent books from a perspective that today would be called Religious Naturalism. [31]
Para-Flux-Dox-Uations
What if all things are in flux, in-between paradox and reason, in-between life and death, you and I, darkness and light, that and this, this and that, self and other. What if God is a dream and you are the dreamer, what if Jesus never really died, what if he was just a story, what if Buddha always lied, or never spoke at all, what if buddha was not a saint, nor a prince, but just someone going on unnoticed by the crowds, the ones that we will never read about. What if you said yes, before saying said no. What if those headlights didn’t blind her sight, didn’t cause her to go off course, what if she is still right here with us, what if the universe or universes, has still not yet exploded into being, flowing backwards towards that beginning, two-mirrors two-reflections starring back towards the beginning, and back towards that end, what if the cycles, the stories are all bending, twisting and spiraling round a great gyre, a golden Möbius strip of infinite possibilities. What if the stories of old hold the revelations of tomorrow and the stories of tomorrow hold the truths of yesterday. The seeds are the tree and tree is out walking. What if that day you walked away, some part of you stayed, does it really matter what we try and define, what we try and hold true, or does it matter more than anything, does everything depend upon it, are you the pivot, the fulcrum, everything holding purpose in its place, will it all unravel, becoming known and unknown at the same time, burning and blurring two flickering candles at both ends, burning from their ends towards their beginnings and their beginnings towards their ends, should we run in fear towards that great darkness, that great forgetting, or should we walk, stepping slowly with patience and dignity, with courage and love in our hearts, as witness’s of a story being told, being sold through our perceptions and our actions, being dreamt and being the dreamer. Let us sleep ever so deeply and let us dream ever so boldly, let us wake in our slumbers, and let us wake in our dreaming. Let us forget to remember and let us remember to forget, let us always remember that we never forgot, let us never forget that always have remembered. All things are in flux, in-between language and logic is another world spinning, in-between that world is language and logic holding a conversation. Science and Spirit tearing flesh from bone, Spirit and Science tending to each others gardens. Let us move beyond, moving forward by moving backwards and let us move backwards by moving forward. The Great Trickster is not a fool, Chaos does not wish to steer us off course. Only hoping that we will find it, these paths for ourselves, and rise to the stern of our great ship, the ghost returning to its shell, the captain to its helm, that is your story, our stories, all waiting to be heard, expressed and experienced. Something is feeding back into that Great Serpent swallowing its every beginning and its every ending, each seeds for the other, shedding its skin, to wear a coat of arms of the ancestors and of what is still to come.
Parafluxdoxuation is a prescription to be used only as a topical ointment, its salubrius qualities are of the highest order, it is to be applied when only absolutely necessary and it is never to be confused for a steady diet or meal replacement plan meaning applying it obsessively to all areas of contrast and confusion in ones life. It has highly addictive qualities that may lead to never making a fucking decision ever again. On a few distinct occasions it has been documented in clinical trials that one may dissolve in subatomic transubstantiation, evaporating into the ether upon a complete axis reversal of electron spin resonance, where in we must then re-quantum-locate your approximate momentum and position in space-time using previous technologies from the quantum leap series coupled with a rubik’s cube written with nordic runes and then reallocate some constitution of semblance of you that may or may not be of the same quality or form as before. Side-effects may include synesthesia, chromatic aberration, quantum disassembling and reassembling of parts at random intervals, i.e, like having a cactus for an appendage, or the arm that you had in 3rd grade, in a few cases the male penis or female vagina may have become their own animate entities, where in they would not engage in sexual relations unless they the animate penis and or vagina where given the stage to recite romantic poetry, mostly sufi and greek poems pre- intercourse. Given the above possible side-effects please consult your local physician, physicist and or shaman before applying.
Parafluxdoxuation also acts as an anti-itch cream for the hemorrhoids of existence, to relieve the occasional surface tensions of reality, lubricating the annals of history and your place within its folds.
-Joshua Fleming
Image by: He Xun, Empty Baggage, 2013
http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2016/03/painting-the-paradox/
Hemispheric Personality Test
If A was B and B was A. If each shared their respective crafts, their dreams, myths and imaginations, their observations, calculations and reservations. If logic went out dancing with an axis unknown, if an unknown axis found its pivot, what world would we live in, one of fear and denial, tilted to the curvature of a world slipping off its own edge, or one of love and acceptance, wobbling and counter balancing in daily rotations to find its center.
Does imagination conjure reason in as much as reason conjures imagination?
-Josh Fleming
Image by: Arjan Janssen
Flipping The Coin
Are the roots of spirituality, mythology, alchemy, philosophy, religion and science beyond mere self-driven or self-interested improvements of oneself? Is it by our greater involvement of attempting to climb these immense mountains, to become an adept, to learn more of oneself and the self’s place within this world and that of possibly other worlds, implicitly implying that the adepts are wanting to know what is other than themselves. So the seekers can begin to work more symbiotically within these world(s), within these patterns of the human and more than human world(s).
If by wanting to know oneself is simply wanting to know others. Then by creating this narrative the adepts study and practice of science and spirit is the disciplined art of both sympathetic and empathetic relating and connecting with that self and that other. In doing this we are engaging in a form of passionate, driven inquiry creating a form of altruism. Aptly coined both Science-Spiritus, science breathing the spirit, Heads or Spiritus-Science, the spirit breathing science, Tails. We are all engaged in a balance of opposites most likely fully enveloped in a strange, yet relatable living paradox, wether we wish to acknowledge this or not. By accepting our ignorance within the various religions, philosophies, spiritualities and sciences we can and will a have greater chance of succeeding in our search for answers, at least possibly on a individual level.
Spiritus Lenis is soft breathing is the spiritual or mythical internal aspects of oneself.
Spiritus Asper is hard breathing is the scientific or logical external aspects of oneself.
If we allow ourselves to practice both sides or ways of knowing within science and spirit, or find others on opposing sides to remain in constant dialogue with, then we are in engaging in a process of activism by keeping a bridge between these two worlds. For the betterment of those worlds and all the variable contents within them.
It doesn’t really matter what I believe or what you believe, what matters is that we can keep talking.
-Josh Fleming
Image by: Arjan Janssen
The search for reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.
Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance…
– Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1990
Rumination’s On The House Of Spheres:
A Discourse On The Nature Of Things
A Manifesto of Humor and Its Place as Possibly the Highest Form of Philosophical Reasoning and Knowing
If ever you come upon some quieted suspicions, that maybe, just maybe the Universe(s), is just merely an accidental expression of itself, or a fucked up physics experiment in the lab of some alien adolescents basement, a conversation between a madman and deranged woman, a monocular-myopic all seeing eye-grey bearded overlord, a polyphasic panoply of interchanging waves and particles-expressions of a flower and seahorse, or of a Hindu and Canadian, or a frisbee stuck upon the roof, that becomes a belief system constructed possibly under the influence of mind-bending intoxicates and recreational sport, aptly called “Frisbeetarianism: the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.”, or an explosive corrosive interpenetration of hostel and loving forces of which we have to attempt to mitigate, by syphoning and straining the alchemical bad bloods with that of good, or possibly that it is all of these things and much more, possibly that it holds or contains or rearranges its many houses, just as we shed our sense of fashion statements, possibly it has one of the most, dare I say dark, witty, loving, adaptive, creative, imaginal and ever expansive sense of humor(s) than you or I could ever afford to grasp, then at least your suspicions may rest in the moments of your most uproarious laughter that floods your every vein, as all the rivers, tributaries and streams of your being collapse together in a precious moment of spontaneous acceptance of that very moments occurrence, the kind of laughter thats painful in the gut, that makes you weep, and stretches a smile across your entire being. The kind of moment that can be found not only in laughter, but in silence, in dream, in conversation, in creative explorations of art and science, in religions and spiritualities, in the birth of a child, in learning how to walk tall again, the kind of moment when all of the Adams-Atoms and Eves-Electrons come together to say hello and that your doing just fine, to keep up the good work, to honor this sense of expression, that is a form of quasi-zen-enlightenment in that in the moment of full on engagement, the worries, doubts, and theories, all fuck off and allow you and possibly that of others surrounding to participate in a shared sense of much needed unity and in a compassionate attentive, “Creative-Expression” of release and containment.
At the end of any manifesto worth its weight I believe a belief system should be constructed in its honor and then quickly burned away in a effigy of itself before any one person could fatally-choke or swallow the contents, thereby absorbing a distorted sense of nutrition that becomes a diet and not a medicine, reorienting its meaning, internalizing some half-truth to lead them upon, walking their thoughts out on a leash, pissing on anyone else’s fire, anyone else that thinks otherwise.
In lieu of creating a proper cultish-religious-unorganized architecture I have developed a concept that may be used I believe without any unwanted side-effects, yet please consult your own self-reflective questioning authoritarian of a maturated perfectly groomed sense of ego, or even your astral-ass-hole brother or sister of a soul before administering these words.
To be of Creative-Humorousa is to simply be a part of being a humorousa-disciplinarian or of Humorousive-Disciplinarianism, whereby any entity is allowed to freely and openly engage in the activity of divining compatible humorousive qualities which may corrode or degrade divisive, cynical, or proper-reality sets, to interchange ideas and values, to shape-shift into the seat of your opposite or enemy and say damn I see your point, but I don’t find your chair that comfortable, or just to simply laugh at your inability to fully grasp even the concepts as they dribble off your chin, its also respecting and expecting a return from laugher, to take seriously your work in this life, to move towards some creative legacy that is of your own making, but to also occasionally to enjoy Saturday Morning Cartoons and Sugar Coated Cereals, further more Susan I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised that they all were smoking themselves in the pipe of their own making, to be of and in this Creative-Humorous Temple is to hold a suspicion of beliefs, but welcome any possible faith(s) to instruct or reorder your present syntax, if you are in need of such a tune-up to be performed, a balancing of worn out tire treads, as the roads of life are gravely, dusty and full of shitty pot holes and also full of opportunities that can only exist and present themselves within the same dirty pools laying stagnate in the shitty pot holes of existence itself, for in and along these roads is where we may learn of love through hate, learn of life through death, learn of light through darkness, always try and remember that life and existence maybe of a humorous yet disciplined view of unfathomable creation(s), this may allow you to better adapt to various reality subsets as you continue to wind down your path. So make sure not to forget your “towel”, for it will be deep, you are going to get wet and very cold in the process, of learning how to swim, but you eventually will find some shore to rest upon for awhile, to warm you bones and to contemplate by the fire of your own making, then to shed yourself of that old skin and swim naked and freely back into that abyss.
-Josh Fleming
Inspired by the Music of: RUSH
Image of: Stockhausen performing at Expo ’70, West German Pavilion, Osaka, Japan, 1970.
Belief, the shattered glass occluding ones view. Faith, an open window, allowing the wind to again remind you of its presence as your own.
– Josh Fleming
“Evidence. : Disguised
[14:12] ..e45 (u-44) ..thousands of worlds apart, deconstructing the real, what happened in 74, .. what fell away, memories vanished, cut from the faculties of by which we apprehend, :::fucked up the transmission…, how beautiful, but who can remember, one world masks by another, to assemble itself, is to take apart the other, language can speak without ever saying a word, a depth-perception denied, circa: 2(3)74 ::: spatiotemporal axis apprehends the occipital, plasmatic manifesto, intoxicated by the confession, spontaneous information re-orders the syntax, historical regression, what does not perish persists, to be held in awe, in an infinite multitude, endless possibilities, to seek no further, to cherish this moment and behold its resurrection, to seek no further, enveloped in perfect stillness, a birds song anchors my belief and shatters my faith, never have I known, such love, a vital up welling centered upon its pivot , the transcendent abides within its abstraction, to feel its motion as your own, to seek no further, in this house is our home, in this kingdom that holds no master, nor servant, walking without distance, one cannot perceive its end, to seek no further-in this house-is our home.
-Josh Fleming
Inspired by: PKD Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis of Philip K Dick
Image by: Christine Odlund
Arrivals
How did we get here, where are we going? Our Beliefs are but a whisper, in a language we can not fully understand, 10,000 doors nailed shut without a key. Faith, is the one that was left open, for anyone willing to let go of their Beliefs. The Universe does not summon us through fear, or blind indifference, it simply calls us home when it is time, to enter where no exits shall exist. Death is not some question to ponder upon, some mere in-existence, a night without its morning, but one to relinquish, as life is the answer to our every departure.
-Josh Fleming
Image by: Rose Richards
https://www.behance.net/gallery/34786727/What-We-Are-Made-Of-Dreams
Placing Order Over The Chaos
The Dao does not build in straight lines. Upon the many fields of potential expression, is an ever-changing morphing anomaly of subjective awareness. As we apply our techniques of memory, attention and control, we have created a path, a stream of self-evident artistry, yet are we merely building out over the waves, the patterns, to create our own, to give us some false sense of stability, of order, of identity. Is this clinging to the past, what is keeping us from beholding a future. History is repeating, as we move towards that inevitable end. If we remove the patterns of our convention, of culture, of religion, of self and other, through utilizing various techniques of ecstasy, may we remove these filters, and where could this take us to next? We are in need of a new story, a new cosmology, yet it cannot be told, it must be experienced from within on an individual level. Or we will recreate the world once more in our own image, recreating the cults of the past, bootstrapping ourselves further into Oblivion. Evolution is waiting behind the veil, faith is removing belief, stepping over the known path, to be bathed in the waters of nous, washed clean of what we thought we knew, as we continue to spiral around the great gyre, bending and reshaping realities to embrace another story, one that can never be told, but only be experienced.
-Josh Fleming
Exploring Consciousness 