Oceanic Symbols in Moby Dick. Mystical Theologies
Presented on: Thursday, November 20, 1980
Presented by: Roger Weir
Symbolism
Presentation 8 of 12
Oceanic Symbols in Moby Dick.
Mystical Theologies
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, November 20, 1980
Transcript:
The date is November 20, 1980. This is the seventh lecture in a series by Roger Weir on symbolism. The lecture tonight is the oceanic symbols of Moby Dick.
...somebody had borrowed by copy. I was going to use a poem by Walt Stevens called The Snowman and you might on your own recognizance, uh, locate a copy of this poem during the week. Um, I'll try and retrieve my copy and have a copy Xeroxed. I'm sorry I have not committed it to memory. But, uh, the general gist was, uh, a poem written in meditation, sort of a standing meditation out in winter, the winter Wonderland of new England. And some of the language went, one must have been cold, a long, long time starring at the glint of light on the ice droplets on the fur boughs. And to have looked with penetration all the while to see the nothing that was there and the nothing that was not. It's something like that. And you'll have to forgive me for not having committed it to memory. I simply, uh, did not think I would be without a copy of the poem, uh, at my fingertips.
This, uh, is exactly what we are now in a position to observe. And I think that some of the repercussions for having arrived at a position to be able to observe the nothing that is there, as well as the nothing that is not, leads us to reconsider primordially what we might estimate our capacity as a being to manifest and engender in this particular formation that we find ourselves. The classic illustration, of course, is that on the plain of nature we think to seem to see the clouds of **inaudible word**. And we intuit that above this must be something which we call reality. And that for us embedded in nature. We must think our way to a **inaudible word** of orientation which will sharpen our vision to look through appearance to reality. This of course, um, is a natural tendency. And one which produces, uh, all the side effects, which we are able to observe in human history. This simply is not the case. It is a procedure which is in every point along the way, a parallel to the actual processes of growth.
And so, we end up in this kind of a schemata, this kind of approach, with what I have termed in the title of the lecture, elaborate mystical theologies parading as logical orders of the world. And it's quite a conundrum that the more we are **inaudible word** with the content of certain ideational systems on the basis that they are rational, that their formality is refined over many generations or centuries as it were. And that we contort ourselves to fit in to this formalized presentation. And must learn the logical procedures development concomitant with those frames of reference and their development **inaudible word**. The more that this is insisted, the farther away we stretch ourselves from any kind of a mobility of the spirit, which would enable us to simply wake up to the presence of what is there and what is not.
And so, in presenting, uh, this particular course on symbolism, I have purposefully shied away at every juncture, from presenting any kind of a plan or any kind of detail case. And have gone in for sort of a Shakespearean model of presenting it seen here in the scene there in an episode and the character, and an event. And hoping that all the while that as the play develops one will become interested in the characters and the events and that the plot will be something which we help create by our interest in the character and our inferences from the event. So that the play is not simply what is on the page, but also is a phenomenon which we participating have helped make. And so of course, one can see immediately that one should not read Shakespeare on the page, but it should play it out in life. The stage is the focus where we and the actors create the play.
Now there's kind of a model, if you'd like to consider a temporarily as a model, is the symbolic model of presentation as versus what conveniently can be styled as representation. That is to say as long as we are thinking that within some realm of the mind that we may make pictures or abstract pictures called ideas, which represent something out there. And that by manipulating and aggregating and planning with the mind images and the minds ideas and of course, logical procedures that are, uh, taking advantage of the current, uh, uh, science of the day and the current, uh, mathematical logical thinking of the day. That as long as the mind is being ordered, uh, therefore these representations are also ordering reality out here. This, of course, is what we would **inaudible word** egotistical and extreme. Will the moon turned red because I think that red is a much more appropriate color. And if I see an Autumn Moon rise and the moon is red, shall I be ecstatic that I have recreated the Heavens? This sort of thing. Even says a line someplace, the epitome of that character who would granulate the gods of antiquity, Thou aren't not **inaudible word** unless I make thee so.
Well, this, um, I think, uh, this, standpoint has been, uh, brought up from time to time. And, uh, I wanted to present to you tonight, several, uh, excerpts, several avenues of development, uh, through quotation, through illusion. So that you could during the next week, investigate for yourself, tarry your process of inquiry yourself, to some of these examples. And then reflect from these areas of investigation on this course as a developing phenomenon and what we've been dealing with.
The first, uh, example I'd like to bring up is from, uh, one of the earliest writings by Krishnamurti. This was published in 1928 in Holland. And it's a little essay that he wrote called The Pool of Wisdom. This of course was, uh, before the order of the star was dissolved. And, uh, this was published by the star publishing trust. And I think you can see that the young distinguished **inaudible word** Krishnamurti was quite a presentable human being.
The Pool of Wisdom. And, uh, his, uh, his, uh, two paragraph set a tone and then, uh, a couple of paragraphs later on. He writes...this was 52 years ago. "What is the kingdom of happiness? Where does it exist? And how can we attain it?" Keep in mind, where does it exist? How can we attain it? What does it mean?
And in what manner can we conquer it? By what thoughts and by what feelings? By what control and by what steady straining shall we attain that perfection of eternal happiness? And into that garden where there are many shadows that give peace. Where there is beauty, tranquility. Where there is destruction of the separate self. I want from the very outset to say that I think in all humility. Though I may perhaps use strong phrases. That I do not want you to obey blindly or listen without thought. That I think in the sincerity, which I feel. And that you must listen likewise if you would properly understand. It is as it were that I am looking through a larger opening at the same sky that is seen by each of you. You were perhaps looking through a smaller opening and perceiving only a part of the firmament. While perhaps I may be looking through a wider window, which shows me the beauty and the glory of that sky. In all friendship, in all sincerity, I invite you to my window and I ask you to quit your small opening. To come and look through a bigger opening at a more beautiful view. In that spirit only do I speak.
Now this process is very close to what we all recognize. Sort of a, the basic children's game in learning is show and tell. Let's all show and tell. And if we are not caught up in this kind of a process of trying to angle through some kind of a parallel, symbolic way of stopping whatever is that whatever is presented into our particular categorical reference and to our particular logical mental shaping. If we can see what is shown and in term without a design show ourselves to someone else. In that participation, in that circling of experience, we come back to this rather dramatic famous Hermetic mode of perception. Of being able to come back to take ourselves to what someone else would have us see. To also invite someone else to what we would hopefully share. And that in this kind of a process of coming back again and again, what occurs to us is that there is some context within which these processes manifest. And that this contact is somehow extremely important, even though it cannot be fingered. It cannot be designated. It cannot be, um, envisioned as some cosmic set of parentheses. Nevertheless, it is there. And permits occurrences to take place and sharing to the point of almost **inaudible word** to happen. And junctures to obtain which on the outside would seem to be almost impossible for them to happen. And yet most of us are sensitive enough in our lives to realize that, uh, these kinds of, um, synchronistic occurrences happen again and again and again. And that, uh, as a matter of fact, we learn to trust the fact that the more that they seem to happen, the more our life seems to reverberate in some kind of a sense of meaning and meaningfulness. Now, this is what, uh, is being spoken of here 52 years ago in Holland by Krishnamurti.
"Wherever we look", he goes on to say,
Wherever we look there is this chaos. This vast unrest. This something that cannot be satisfied. And the contemplative mind that seeks the reasoning of things must ask, must demand, must search out and find if there were anything lasting. Anything permanent. Anything enduring. Any resting place. Is there not an abode where we can be free from desires, from those desires that are unsatisfiable? Where the mind can be tranquil, peaceful, composed. Is there no eternity where nothing changes, nothing decays, nothing can fade. The wise mind contemplates, looks around, sees these transient things and then asks, is there not something that will last. Something, which is eternal.
There's more to this and I'll leave this in the library. There's one example.
The next example, I better write, everyone's familiar with Krishnamurti. This individual's name is **inaudible word**. He lived about the time of Plotinus in India. Was the, was the founder of system of Buddhist analysis called **inaudible word**. And the central...the central conception in the **inaudible word or two** is the sunyata. Uh, classically translated as, uh, the void. Or sometimes empty. These are inappropriate, uh, English words. The English words are, come from a cultural matrix, which, uh, uh, designate these things as flat and negatives. And, um, uh, non, uh, existential of power phenomenon. Or non-phenomenon. Um, this is inappropriate. Sunyata is rather very close, uh, to what we have been familiarizing ourselves with as Lao Tzu's Dao. If you to imagine something for yourself. Uh, if you need a mental image to help guide you, um, think of the, think of the breath of something, um, very refreshing, but having no label. And no particular content. Think of the most refreshing drink you can imagine. Carbonated if you like. But it has no label. It has no bottle. And it has no particular defining shape. It just is. To the extent that logically the mind boggles and says, well, it is not. In any logical system you come up with a conundrum that, uh, um, everything and nothing very often are interchangeable. It's a characteristic phenomenon that the mind. Um, it's an indication of the truth of something else. Something which we're trying to skirt around.
Now **inaudible word**. Now we're taking off stringing another episode of consideration alongside of what Krishnamurti was talking about in Holland. He's inviting us to look through a larger window. We're looking at the same sky. He would like us to have a, a larger view. And he's saying, isn't one of the questions which we would like to bring up and engender, is there not something internal? Something changeless. Something to which and in terms of reference to, we could order a meaning of the world, which would include ourselves. That is the implication after all. That is the desire. The eternal would allow us some coordination and organization. So, what is it? So that we may begin to work on a structure.
In connection with that and stringing this along just next to Krishnamurti, Nagarjuna. This is a, uh, translation of two verses from a series of writings where Nagarjuna gives an examination of things. And the first thing that is really important is form. And form in Sanskrit was Rupa. Namarupa, name and form were usually thought of in tandem, but Rupa. And he writes, "Material form separated from the efficient cause of that form cannot be conceived." The mind cannot conceive it. "Moreover, separated from material form the efficient cause could not be seen."
That is to say whatever is there or here or anywhere that has material form, that has a shape, that has what we would identify as being or existence in various modes. Form has some kind of a causation for it to come in to being that cannot be separated from it. That the mind itself in any of its processes or any of its capacities is unable to make that distinction. If material form is separated from efficient cause, then it follows that form will be without a cause. However, nowhere is there a thing existing without a cause. Again, material form without a cause definitely is untenable. Therefore, any material form which has been thought of, that is has become a concept, cannot become a basis for further conceptualization. And this is one of the startling developments that begins to deteriorate this is kind of the confidence that we might have in this kind of a model. If form is then engendered, any form, anywhere, any place in time, in any mode. If it is something which has been simply conceptualized in the mind and we build upon this within the conception simply within the mind this process in terms of reality. That the linking together has no basis whatsoever in what we would call natural facts.
And this gives us a kind of an unevenness because we would think then that how can there be anything except just isolated nuclear thought within the mind, whatever would be able to form some kind of a matrix, which would give them connectedness, relatedness. The answer to that is that they are already related by nature, by their nature in nature. And cannot be dissolved out of that situation by the mind. Cannot be added to in that situation by the mind. But the mind can only make up myths of parallel myths, which somehow approximate that condition in the world. And then it takes a wonderful little twist by the ego to accept that that must be the case in fact. That the connectedness must be here in the mind because we will it to be so. Otherwise, the world would be chaotic. Would have no real ordering.
Ok that's Nagarjuna.
I want to start next to Krishnamurti and Nagarjuna a man, um, **inaudible word** today. His name is Toulmin, Stephen Toulmin. And, uh, he is a, um, he was a philosopher of science. He was at, uh, Cambridge for many years. He went to, uh, develop the history of consciousness program at Santa Cruz and found out how shoddy and, uh, uh, incapable things were there and, uh, left before he even offered one course. His, uh, his work paralleled the work of Ernst Cassirer, who were eventually we're going to get to tonight. Uh, Toulmin was, uh, extremely famous. He was trying to write a history of science for people like ourselves and kept running across, um, very interesting, uh, phenomenon. Whenever he would try to explain the history of an idea like time. Or the history of, um, the notion of dynamic motion. Because when you consider ideas like this, profound ideas, and you begin to realize that these ideas have a history. And at that history has a career of development that rather resembles the kinds of development that we have seen in other areas of life. One begins to become suspect that ideas are not so much the eternal things that one might have hoped for, or expected for, but rather show remarkable career like an organism that has a Genesis and a young age and a virility and a, a, um, condensation and an old age and a death. And, uh, it turns out that I did have a lifespan of around 150 to 250 years. That great ideas have a time literally in which they obtain and then atrophy.
This, of course, just a second John I'm in the midst of a structure.
This of course came as quite a surprise to Toulmin. So Toulmin being a first-class mind and being unbaffled by, um, many of the procedures that stop most people, decided that he would write a book and he did. The title of the book was called The Uses of Argument. And he decided to apply some of what he had learned to logical form, especially in terms of the argument. And there were some interesting, uh, uh, books that have come out by his students. One Stanley Cavell wrote a book called Must We Mean What We Say. Quite interesting. You can get, uh, into real zen like conundrum. The West really does have Zen masters and sometimes they look like Cambridge dons. It's quite amazing.
When Toulmin was through with The Uses of Argument, he realized that one of the, uh, prime documents that we need in our time, in our civilization, is a rewriting of a document which has formed the basis of so much of our understanding, especially here in the English-speaking world. That was John Locke's book, um, about human understanding, treatise on Human Understanding. And Toulmin said about, and is currently rewriting John Locke's Human Understanding, with a completely new outlook, which no longer assumed that this kind of a modeling of procedure, this kind of a stylizing of reasons any longer has a place for our consideration.
And, uh, as a matter of fact, he writes in the preface here,
The central thesis of the present volume was first presented my earlier book, The Uses of Argument. And the work I have done on the development of scientific thought and related topics during the subsequent decade makes it possible to expound it here at greater length and in a historical frame. This thesis can be summed up in a single deeply held conviction. That in science and philosophy alike an exclusive preoccupation with logical systematicity has been destructive of both historical understanding and rational criticisms.
This is thri, this is throwing a battering ram at the very gates of supposed viable fortresses of understanding.
In sciences **inaudible word** feel like an exclusive preoccupation with a logical systematicity has been destructive of both historical understanding and rational criticism. Men demonstrate their rationality not by ordering their concepts and beliefs into tidy formal structures, but by their preparedness to respond to novel situations with open minds.
It doesn't matter how big a grip of referential logical ordering you have ready for whatever comes up. There is no test rationality whatsoever. Matter of fact it's corrosive to what we would understand as reason **inaudible word**. That rationality in fact, is a preparedness to face novel situations with open minds and acknowledging the shortcomings of their formal procedures, former procedures, and moving beyond them. That is to say that we learn from scratch with an open mind how to begin to form the relationship and the identification and the orderings that are necessary from the situation as it is. And not from some supposed inviable referential computerized center in the mind. In other words, we all have to become hardened instead of machines.
Here again and, uh, just a few more lines from Toulmin. This is in his preference. This book published by Princeton and, uh, drew absolutely no reviews whatsoever. Most professional philosophers pick this up and set it down quickly. He's just pulling the rug out from under at least 300 years of philosophic development. And say it's not only wrong, but definitely destructive of the very basis upon which we would hope to, uh, fill.
Here again, the key notions are adaptation and demand rather than form and **inaudible word** Plato's program for philosophy took it for granted that the functional adequacy of geometrical forms was self-guaranteeing. So that there must, in the last resort, be only one idea of a good and that a mathematical one. The philosophic agenda proposed here sets aside all such assumptions in favor of patterns of analysis, which are at once more historical, more empirical and more pragmatic.
Two more to go. We're stringing up episodes of consideration, um, for your consideration. I want you to hold suspended, if you can, at least the impression that we're beginning to line up rays of light that will form a spectrum of an insight that we have been developing here ourselves. And this is just, if you will, confirmation for yourself that what you're engaged in and doing is not only useful, but sufficiently sophisticated so that you will be very, very happy to have, uh, learnt it for yourself when you have.
This is a, um, a book called Symbol and Reality. This is hardly ever seen even in university libraries. You just don't see certain things. These are the kinds of studies that destroy careers. They, uh, they leave one to question far into the night whether the lectures you've been presenting to your students all years aren't just a lot of gibberish. And perhaps, uh, you're much wanted position in chair might be better turned over to the gardener.
He has a series of chapters in here discussing Ernst Cassirer's work. And of course, Cassirer's great philosophy of symbolic form three volumes, we've mentioned it.
**Inaudible comment from the room**
No, this is, uh, Carl Hamburg is the author of this. And I'll come back to you John. I'm holding it in mind.
We haven't the time to read The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. But we do have a time, and I hope that you will pick up if you haven't, Cassirer's little book called Language and Myth. Because Language and Myth is the fulcrum. It's the juicy little 90 page book upon which his whole approach really rests. And its approach, which as you will see, I think, um, uh, quite meaningful for us.
Chapter three in this book is entitled The Symbol Concept. And he rightly sizes up Cassirer's conception of a symbol as being one of the most, um, powerful ideas of our time. That is to say, in our time, 1980, his idea of about 50 years ago, uh, about what a symbol is, is finally coming to fruition and beginning to obtain. It's sort of like in its first flush of youth and who probably by the end of this century this kind of an idea will be, um, common **inaudible word**. Much like the idea of Freud's subconscious became common prowess in the 1940's.
The term symbolic form is employed by Cassirer in at least three distinct though related meanings. One, it covers what is often referred to as the symbol concept, the symbol function. Or simply the symbolic. Two it denotes the variety of cultural forms, which as myth or religion or language or science, these are all symbolic forms. Science is a symbolic form. Language is a symbolic form. Religion is a symbolic form. The variety of these cultural forms exemplify the realms of application for the symbol concept. And three, it is applied to space, time, cause number, et cetera. All of which as the most pervasive symbolic relations are set to constitute such the mains of objectivity.
Now what he's getting at here and what he finally comes down to. And we don't have to go into the, uh, uh, you know, the philosophic intricacies of it. He has a reverberation between two parallel words. And one is sense in terms of meaning. And sense in terms of perception. And Cassirer, being a bit **inaudible word**, tried to maintain that these two things are distinctly different. That meaning is in the mind and sense somehow relates out to the world here. But he can't help itself. And this man, very perceptive, um, sees that again and again, that Cassirer has through the forthrightness of himself as a human being, put his finger on, on the very point, which would destroy his philosophy as he wanted it to be. Maintaining that the mind is superior and has its categorical bringing so forth. But comes again and again to conclusions which point to the quite this other way. The way of Toulmin and Nagarjuna and Krishnamurti and so forth.
END OF SIDE ONE
And that is that meaning interfaces with **inaudible word** in term of failing perceptions in such a way that they could never be taken apart. That they have no existence separate and just like Nagarjuna. So that the sense of reality always includes sunyata. Just so that meaning always has within itself some capacity for extendedness that reaches into infinity, which the mind is unable to put a limitation to. So that whenever meaning begins to engender itself and manifests itself, it literally lights up for us a glimpse of a eternity. And we see that there is no limitation whatsoever that could be put on the meaning, which has been manifested for it.
And, uh, the experience of this is only dampened when we have chosen to believe that this occurs only within the mind. And that therefore it's because of our naivety as beings that we are, we still haven't explored the mind completely, but if we did, we would find the full extent of the meaning therein **inaudible word**. If we did not have that kind of membrane up of ossification, we would see that we are in fact quite naturally in a position of presence to appreciate that meaning does in fact extend itself to infinity and actual reality. And that we quite naturally participate in the manifestation of that. And this of course leads to a spiritual view of a human being rather than a mental view.
Now I have to come back to Toulmin just for a second and then we'll have a question and take a break.
In order to give you some kind of a matrix where in to put all of the examples that I've brought up, I do the courtesy of giving you here a brief one-page outline in Toulmin's, uh, um, uh, book here of the development. Of the idea. Um, let's just listen to it and, and you'll see what, uh, what is there. I guess we'll start here.
The need for an impartial form and procedures with understood as calling for a single unchanging uniquely authoritarian system of ideas and beliefs. The prime exemplar of such a universal and authoritarian system was found in the new abstracts network of logic and geometry. In this way, objectivity in the sense of impartiality became acquainted with equated with the objectivity of timeless truths. The rational merit of an intellectual position were identified with its logical coherent, and the philosophers measure of a man rationality became his ability to recognize without further argument the validity of the axiom and the formal entailment and logical necessities on which the claim of the authoritarian system is dependent. Yet this particular direction of development, which equated rationality with logic theology would never compulsory. On the contrary, as we shall shortly see accepting this equation made an eventual clash with history and anthropology, inevitable.
That is to say these things have consequences in time and space. They are not simply illusions that are harmlessly circulating in the mind, but they manifest in terms of actual history and events and the engendering of further idea. I think anyone who, uh, is familiar with the history of the 20th century must realize that there has been some kind of a landslide of irregularity at the least to human nature. And that's true.
He goes on, "for the time being, however, this equation held the field." The equation that the mind rationality, the mind ordering, was synonymous with logical ordering. Or mathematical model, which engendered form, which we could identify in terms of geometry. And that eventually in its highest most sophisticated form, this led to the positing of, um, celestial structure. Which could be **inaudible word**. And we wouldn't have to do anything to you or any experiences or any realizing on our own, but simply be carried along by the structure as laid down.
And as long as this equation did hold the field it limited the options considered in the philosophical debate. The impartial form of reason was defined as requiring an unchanging system of Axiom to principles. And the only source open for discussion, the only question, was how should want to blame the sort of those universal principles? Plato and Aquinas and Descartes and Kant each looked for the ultimate source or ground in a different direction. For Plato rationality was ultimately associated with certain ideas external to the human mind. Whose validity was dependent independent of our individual opinions.
Plato had four levels of knowledge and opinion dosa, uh, in Greek was just the first level. And after a while you would get up to where you would, uh, be able to refine them, to actually see with the mind's eye, um, the truth of the situation that had nothing, whatever to do with your opinion. Even if it was well-informed. And if it, even if it was intended to universally. Plato was the closest to, um, the actuality.
The philosopher helped men use their intellect in such a way that the timeless truths about these ideas made themselves intuitively apparent to them. But then for the medieval, the objective ground of rational knowledge lay in the divine mind. Human insight into the permanent principles of rationality relied on Gods grace not on mans skill. Descartes combined these two positions,
This is about, um, um, the 16th century.
"And the ultimate ground for competent in the unchanging principles of rationality lay," for him. For Descartes,
in a harmony or a correspondence established by God between those ideas which the human mind found totally clear and distinct, that is like mathematical equations. And those structures in the external world to which they were supposedly correspondents. For Kant this compromise is not good enough. How could we ever in the nature of the case establish such, uh, an isomorphism between our clear and distinct ideas and any external reality. Wheres the bridge? As a last resort all we could really claim to know about with certainty was the ideas themselves. And our confidence in their rational claims must be internal lying, uh, within the rational organization of thought itself. And the prin...principles of rationality must be those through which we are ourselves give structure to our experience.
And so, the debate, uh, continues. And it's that going on. So that, uh, uh, the next step, of course, is, uh, we must posit that the mind not only has its rational structures but must have an unconscious. Um, and so that there, there's more and more. So, this is kind of a modeling, uh, has gone on until finally, of course, I think, uh, uh, by now quite apparent to most people that this simply is an adequate methodology. And an adequate way of experiencing that presence which comes up quite naturally in any other kind of experience than the ideation which we are taught. In meditation, in nature, in art, in true metaphysic. In any of the real realm of human experience again and again a different quality of knowing and perceiving comes forth. And this model of course falls by the wayside.
Let's pause there with one question from John and then we'll have a, a break.
**Comment from the room** I, I think it's a lot of these questions **inaudible several words**
Okay. Let's take a break.
**inaudible word** human nature has always confirmed to itself that one is on the right track. And that in fact growth is, um, and meaning is developing as one would hope that they finally would. Is that the so-called realms of culture begin to sing to us. And we begin to respond increasingly to all kinds of experiences, which we would style generally as art. We began to look up from our daily grind and just everywhere that we direct ourselves wonderful experiences and real orderings of perception come to life. And it is, um, probably the easiest thing to recognize.
And it is exactly the underside of all this philosophizing that you've, um, been presented with earlier this evening.
Anytime that the spirit really begins to wake up and find it natural motion. The realms of music or art or architecture, literature, dance. All of the realms of human expression begin to appeal to us. And we begin to, um, seek out those experiences. And we find that in very short while using our so-called native intelligence, we begin to understand that, um, we like such and such. We like Henry Moore sculpture but did not prefer this. Or we enjoy, uh, increasingly, um, music by Beethoven. Whereas we find **inaudible word** a little bit old fashioned. Things like that.
I brought two examples of art this evening. One is Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which is a work of literature. And the other, the print by a Japanese artist Hiroshige. This is entitled Evening Snow on Mount Hira. And if we are operating a full open mind even something as, uh, of the cuff as **inaudible word or two** as this print by Hiroshige becomes quite, uh, **inaudible word**. Now this is circular. This particular print is interesting because there is a wormhole that looks very much like lightening against that black sky here. And in terms of sub categorical understanding of art that ruins the print. It works the other way. But if you have an open mind and a different **inaudible word or two** it happens to be quite a unique print. And the word lightning fits in with the fact that it's a woodblock print. The presentation of reality **inaudible word or two**. And, uh, I love that little worm that ate his lightning way in that black there and produced for us the ultimate contrast. And **inaudible word** it gives us a feeling of the spatiality.
But what's interesting also is characteristic of Hiroshige and characteristic of the uniqueness of artistic experience. And the delight in life which the open mind always engenders. That, um, most other friends of this, even **inaudible word** have no black sky in them whatsoever.
And I could only find this little print and **inaudible few words** most prints of evening **inaudible few words** have a big white mountain behind here. This is Mount Hira. And unfortunately, from a categorical viewpoint, it was left out of the frame. So, it's doubly flawed. But from the stance of the open mind, what a wonderful **inaudible word** that there should be a black sky for that worm for be. And we really don't need Mount Hira back here afterall. **inaudible word or two**.
**Inaudible comment from the room**.
Like Moby Dick. There in the ocean of the unknown.
This, um, this attitude of openness. This delight in the uniqueness of actuality. When you begin to notice that in yourself, then some of these Hermetic patterns have really taken root. And have really begun to circulate the light in the old **inaudible word or two**. And those are like indication signposts along the way. That when you step out of the door in the frame of reference of the door, you might see the rising moon and you might pause for 1 billionth of a second and see it as a framed ex, experience. Artistically. As if you had seen a Japanese print. Or you will hear the song of a bird, and perhaps hear I extended my melodiousness in your mind's ear. Something like that. Those are the kinds of indications. Those are the kinds of confirmation of true reason and true rationality. And it is through that, that, uh, we are finally given, um, the kind of confirmation, which has often, um, miscalled validity. In, um these other realms.
In Moby Dick as a literary experience because it's very long. It's a little more difficult to acclimate yourself than it is to like a print from Hiroshige. But the same kind of processes happen. The same kinds of familiarities raise up. And as a matter of fact, with something like Moby Dick because of its vast tapestry and its vast capacity to present. Uh, we have, um, a much larger window, as it were, to look through. If we're just worried about representation all the time we're worried about getting the reference right. And the referential index becomes a sort of a
neurotic barometer within us. Are we getting it just so. Whereas on **inaudible word** we're interested in, um, having here, engendered in the between. In the presence of the pause and to **inaudible word or two**. That's where it's happening.
And so, we're interested in nurturing and bringing forth our share and appreciating, uh, the other elements that are coming into the situation. And, uh, we're creatively alive with a sparkle of spiritual insight because we realized that what we're bringing and what we're doing is participating and actually making whatever is happening there. And that in presentation is a more, um, substantial mode of symbolization.
If we find ourselves stumbling and saying, but what does it mean? And are thinking in our minds, what does it mean in terms of this? We're going down the garden path. But if we're wondering, as in the basis of beginnings of philosophy, what does it mean in terms of the actuality of the situation? Part of which is our participation in it. Then the meaning has that true, wonderful interface, which includes us and our wondering with its development and its success. And this is what we have to engender. And it's something which you pick up out of the corner of your eye on the spur of the moment later on. Rarely if ever as its being characterized at a podium or presented in instruction. Or given to you, um, some kind of a form at the moment. It's usually later on in recollection that we begin to recognize the fact that various elements are in fact, coming together and we're alert and participating in making that recollection come together. And perhaps the next time that we see that situation or that event, or that person, or that character, it comes back into play with a little more fullness. It's then that we have the **inaudible word** of intelligence to be able to **inaudible word** that, uh, quite real and quite beautiful.
This, uh, capacity to enjoy and have confidence and trust our capacity for experience is one of the dividing lines of those who do grow spiritually and those who do not. And of course, it goes without saying that, uh, the more fatherly we experience life, the less chance we have really coming into that continuity, into that flow. We have to, uh, pay the price of enduring all the while to build up the tolerance for the sense of duration, which allows reality to be. And if we're just hitting it here or there, it's like listening to one or two notes out of a symphony. And it's very hard if someone asked you what was the theme, because you just knew a few notes and you had no durational, uh, sense for its development and flow.
And so, too once we get used to it, and most of you who are in, uh, this situation have been coming here for about six or seven weeks now. You're beginning, individually, I can tell through conversations and all through also through your sense of elam that, um, it's beginning to take hold to you.
We have Moby Dick as one of the elements, one of the, uh, suspended meaningful elements because it is such a large structure that it might take two or three years to really appreciate. And we want to have lots of loose ends when we finish. Because that's the way to go out. The way to go out is with it with more entrances and exits than you ever imagined possible, because those are the only real indicators that, uh, we've woken up to **inaudible word or two** just a little bit more.
I want to read you two short sections of Moby Dick. And I hope that wherever you are in your reading of Moby Dick, that you will leave off, mark where you were and take up after the two sections and for the few weeks remaining, um, read from here forward. Uh, the two sections are chapters, um, 85, which is called The Fountain. And 86, which is called The Tail.
And, uh, I think most of you realize by now that Moby Dick is made to be read aloud. It is a living theater of the mind. And Melville wrote it in an age, about 130 years ago, where things like this were read like the family Bible around the fireplace in the evening. And this is an oral poetry. And it is an audio imagery. And it is a music of the sense of drama, which he's dealing with here. And in this he intersperses between chapters that carry forth the story line, the myth, the **inaudible word**, the plot. He introduces chapters which deal with the substance as it were. The facts. Whaling. About whales. About the ocean. About the ship and so forth. Because those chapters and the chapters of the story form together the symbolic meaning of the whole. And he masterfully correlates these two kinds of chapters so that by the time we get to The Fountain and The Tail he's ready to finally let the lion out, let the story lion out, and bring us into that kind of incredible, uh, motion, which only really great works of art have. Paintings by Rembrandt. Symphonies by Beethoven. Dialogue by Plato. Where there's such a massive symbolic meaning in motion and the simulation of possibilities is so incredible that one could read it a hundred times and never plumb its depths.
The Fountain and then The Tail. Just a few pages.
That for 6,000 years, and no one knows how many millions of ages before the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea. Sprinkling and mystifying the gardens of the deep as with so many sprinkling and mystifying pots. And that for some centuries back, thousands of hundreds, should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings. That all this should be. And yet that down to this blessed minute, 15 and a quarter minute past 1:00 PM of this 16th day of December 1851 it should still remain a problem. Whether these spoutings are, after all, really water or nothing but vapers. This is surely a noteworthy thing.
And he's not just talking about water and vapor metaphor. It's symbolic. Something that you vision of it and something **inaudible word or two**.
One of **inaudible word** look at the matter. Along with some interesting items contingent. Everyone knows that by the particular cutting of their guilt, the Finny tribes in general breathe the air, which at all times is combined with the element in which they swim. **inaudible word** herring or a cod might live a century and never once raise its head above the surface. But owing to his market internal structure which gives him regular lungs like a human being, the whale can live only by inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any degree breathe through his mouth. For in his ordinary attitudes the sperm whale, his mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface. And what is still more his windpipe has no connection with his mouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle alone.
And this is on the top of his head. If I remember what the Hopi said about keeping the top of your head up and what's going on.
If I say that in any creature, breathing is only a function indispensable to vitality in as much as it withdraw from the air of certain elements, which being subsequently brought into contact with the blood, impart to the blood as vivifying principle. I do not think I shell air. Though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific word. Assume it and it follows that if all the blood in a man could be aerated with one breath. He might then seal up his nostrils and not fetch another for a considerable time.
That is to say he would then live without breathing.
Anomalous as it may seem this is precisely the case with the whale who is systematically live by intervals. His full hour and more when at the bottom without drawing a single breath. Or some not just in any way inhaling a particle therefore remembering he has no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and on each side of his spine he had supplied with a remarkable involved **inaudible word** labyrinth of **inaudible word** like vessels which vessels when he quits the surface are completely descended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or more a thousand fathoms from the sea, he carried the surplus stock of vitality. Just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carry a surplus supply of drink for future use in it's four supplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable. And that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true seems the more **inaudible word** to me when I consider the otherwise inexplicable **inaudible word** of that leviathan and having his spouting out as the fishermen **inaudible word**. This is what I mean. If I'm molested upon rising to the surface, the sperm whale will continue there for a period of time, exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays 11 minutes and jets 70 times. That is respired 70 breaths. Then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his 70 breaths over again to a minute. Now, if you've got just a few breaths, you alarm him so that he's sound. He will be always dodging up again to make good his regular allowance of air. And not till those 70 breaths are killed will he finally got down to stay out his full term below. Remark however that in different individuals these rates are different. But in anyone they are alike. Now why should the whale thus insist upon having his spoutings out unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air. Air descending for good. How obvious is it to that this necessity for the whales rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For not by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught when sailing a thousand phantoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much by skill then oh hunter as the great necessities that strike the victory choosing. In man, breathing is incessantly going on. One breath serving for two or three pulsations only. So that whatever other business he has to attend to waking or sleeping, breath him up or die he well. But the sperm whale breathes only one seventh or Sundays of his time. It has been said that the whale breathes only through his spout hole. If it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water, then opine that we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell seems obliterated in him. For the only thing about him that has all answers to it nose is that identical spout hole. And being filled clogged with two elements it could not be expected to have the power of smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout whether it be water or whether it be vapers, no absolute certainty can be yet, as yet be arrived at on this head. True it is nevertheless, that the sperm whale has no proper olfactory. But what does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no cologne water in the sea. Furthermore, as his windpipe totally opens into the tube of the **inaudible word** canal and it's not long canal like the grand Erie canal. It's **inaudible word** with a sort of lock that opens and shuts for the downward retention of air or the upward exclusion of water. Therefore, the whale has no voice unless you insult him by saying that when he so strangely rumbled, he talked through it. No, but then again, what had the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say in this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a ribbing so happy that the world is such an excellent **inaudible word**. Now the spouting canal...
You see how he intersperses. He gets you strung out like a Mark Twain story. And what you think is data, fact. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere this little lightening of observation again and again. And he's preparing us. He's preparing our sense of proportion and experience capacity for insight to flash through what's being said to see that there's an enormous drama going on all the while behind the scenes. Hidden among the scenes. And that eventually as this carries on the drama more and more dissolves the data particulars into it motions. Until what is left, reading through to the end of the Moby Dick is only the dramatic motions. And all of the particular elements, which aren't meaning, but they begin to vector themselves and their shapedness as data and begin to streamline themselves as arrows of meaning swept up more and more by this current of the story.
Last chapter. Last paragraph of this chapter.
And how nobbily it raises our conceit the mighty misty monster to behold him solemnly sailing through our tropical sea. His vast mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor engendered by his incommunicable contemplation. And that vapor as you will sometimes see it glorified by a rainbow as if Heaven itself had put its seal on his thoughts. For did you see rainbows do not visit the clear air. They only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mist of the dim doubts of my mind divine intuition now and then shoots in kindling the fog with a Heavenly ray. And for this I thank God. For all have doubts, many deny. But doubts or denial few along with them, have intuition. **inaudible word** of all things earthly. And intuitions of something Heaven. And this combination makes neither believer nor infidel but makes a man who regard them both with equal eyes.
That is to say when the symbolic vision becomes natural and operates in the Hermetic openness, we are no longer hypnotized by the mind trying to polarize the **inaudible word** all the time. But rather complementarity comes into play. In both form and context. Both what is and what is not come in into equal play. And their play is the **inaudible word** of reality in which we court.
"**inaudible word** of all things Earthly and intuitions of some things Heavenly. This combination makes neither believer nor infidel but makes a man who regard to them both with equal eye." Well, I think we'll leave it there. I think you get an idea that given world enough in time an experience like this, uh, just might be interesting.
Let's end there for the...
END OF RECORDING