39.

Performing the Animate Universe

Olu Taiwo

491-500

"The first part is designed to connect the participant's awareness of the moment to their {his or her}

physical journal (defined ... as embodied memory and knowledge). ...

{This assertion might make clearer sense in the context of a Book of Life (as per the Apokalupsis of Ioannes) or of a Hall of Akas`ik Records (as per Edgar Cayce).}

However, the physical journal also focuses on the ... potential for writing lasting effort forms or engrams into the body."

1st stage

"moving the imagination physically through the elemental states of Air, Fire, Water and Earth;

2nd stage

"guided visualization : meeting the guise by dreaming up an animal in a specific environment;

3rd stage

"embodying the animal's behaviours through movment ... ."

"she noticed a wooden door to a potential outside where she was to meet her animal. She proceeded, with some trepidation, to venture outside by opening the door. ... When she opened the door, ... what greeted her was a deserted polar landscape ... -- at which point

a large polar bear came bounding up. They greeted ..., and she proceeded with her dream-body to become the animal ... . {This episode is contrary to all the features of genuine shamanry!!}

{In genuine Eskimo/Inuit shamanry, upon encountring in a dream a deity disguised as a polar-bear, one's dream-body is torn to pieces by said polar-bear deity, but those pieces promptly rejoin, and thereupon one hath (even in the world) miraculous powers thereafter.}

What followed was a journey into the secret recesses of ice in the polar region. She was amazed at the diversity and beauty in ... the amazing architecture of the ice both above and below the icy water teaming with life."

{None of this would seem ever to be bothered with in genuine shamanry. In the Siberian accounts, the shaman instead employeth (in the dream) mystic Arctic-Ocean whirlpools (= macrocosmic cakra-s) to access (by being sucked therethrough) unearthly mystic Otherworlds.}

"Substance is being, becoming and performance : the ground state of the universe is movement.

Movement and substance occur, manifest and flow in cycles : because the ground state of the universe is movement, we should attune ourselves the the rhythms, patterns and cycles of unfolding temporal space.

Participation in the flux and flow of universal becoming : there are various ways of learning to be attentive by developing ways to increase participation in the flows of exchange."

"The ground state of the universe ...

is a verb,

{This sort of verbiage is mere grammaticality, hardly metaphysical at all.}

an animatedness, a becoming that is an unfinished performance and ... we are all making reality as we live and become.

{This sort of declamation is sheer theatricality, akin to Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage ... ."}

This means ... representing an experience of a curved rhythmic flux within a performative and transcultural perception of rhythm ...within a living self-moving physical journal."

"the Return Beat as "being"

the liminal point

{i.e., soul}

at the centre of

{i.e., as centre of control over}

my physical journal;

{i.e., body}

the Return Beat as

"becoming"

{i.e., self-transforming}

within my experience of

a curved rhythmic flux;

{i.e., a composite of cyclic processes}

the Return Beat as a

"performative" nexus

{i.e., behavioural connection}

between the perceptual structure of my mobile studio and the complex transcultural experience of my physical journal."

"With this embodied consciousness we can express our transcultural becoming as we move through the perceptual flux of general space (De Quincey 2002)."

"By ... the autopoietic or self-organizing entities ... everything must have ... a perceptual centre ... as a cognitive reference point and a visceral attractor for phase alignment (Van Nieuwenhuijze ...). This attractor embodies a nexus of our ... experience ..., which is an experience of

information returning through rhythmic and cyclical pathways".

{More actually and praecisely, the "information" is stored, beyond the mundane realm, by Akas`ik deities in their own transcendent caverns.}

p. 496

"with reference to Whitehead's notion that inherent in matter is an elementary proto-form of consciousness ... inanimate objects can be redefined as being spatial temporal events having an animating interiority or, according to Whitehead, having no "external adventures, but only the internal adventure of becoming ..." (A. N. Whitehead [1929]...:80). ... that objects are oscillating events in a state of becoming provides a useful distinction between animating

p. 497

events with an interiority that have no external adventure and autopoietic systems that do. This is explicated ... :

[quoted from Maturana & Varela 1980, p. 78 :] An autopoietic is ... a network of processes of production ... of components which ... through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes ... that produced them".

"anima ... depending on context ... could mean the self's in-here-ness, the individual's soul as distinct from the out-there-ness of the individual's dfferent persona described in Jungian psychology.

It could also mean the feminine aspect present in the deepest recesses of the the male personality complex.

{This is a use (especially in his Red Book) by C. G. Jung of the term, namely as a goddess met in dreaming by males. Of course, by the same token /animus/ can aequally refer to a god met in dreaming by females.}

Essentially, however, the term anima refers to the animating principle within human beings ... ."

{Such "animating principle" is first and foremost regarded as capacity to keep the material body functioning : it is thus the propre link (occultly visible as a luminous cord) between soul and material body.}

p. 497

"the Yoruba ... Ashe can be translated as "so be it". However, it also relates to

the proto-animating principle of becoming, concerning the spatial and temporal existence of all things ... .

{In the context, "becoming" would mean (at least to the Yoruba themselves, in their own Lukumi` religion) 'becoming redincarnated into a succession of lives'.}

From this perspective, the world of the unborn (future) is constantly negotiating for its place to exist in the world of the living (present) while holding and carrying the world of the ancestors (past) inside its currently evolving form."

{This is stated in perhaps the most awkward and potentially misleading form possible. More clearly stated, the unborn are said to be at praesent in Heaven; the living in this world are considered dead in the perspective of the denizens of Heaven; and the as-yet-unreborn ancestors are said to be identical with the "unborn" in Heaven.}

p. 498

"the Yoruba {metaphysics}, where the world of the living ... is ... seen as sharing the same spatial and temporal fabric or substance and the world of the ancestors ... and the world of the unborn".

{The Otherworld can (not only according to Africans, but likewise according to all non-atheists) be witnessed in dreaming; which dreaming-universe could be said to share "the same spatial and temporal fabric" as the waking-universe.}

"Bliss ... is about feeling divinity. The bliss factor ... can be seen as a universal factor for giving us the motive force inspiring our endeavours. ... Bliss opens ... creative possibilities ... within individual consciousness."

"Einstein's ... space-time ... is at the heart of my thinking ... . {Really?! How absurd!!}

{Einstein's notion of "space-time" in his conjectural "relativity-theory" is well-known to be utterly irreconcible with space and time in quantum-mechanics, and is therefore rejected by every reputable physicist.}

If we are to accept the cosmological proposal that at the centre of any galaxy is a black hole ... ."

{No "black hole" hath ever been observed by astronomers; instead, a quasar is to be witnessed at the centre of each galaxy.}

40.

Incantory Riff for Global Medicine

Ronald Grimes

501-12

""The Ainu say that the deer, salmon, and bear like our music and are fascinated by our languages. So", continues Snyder, "we sing to the fish or the game, speak words to them, say grace. ..." (1990:75)."

{The fact of the matter is that we sing to the divine controllers of the animals; and those divine controllers therefore misguide (betray) the animals to be ambushed and slain by us. (This much -- affirming of the betrayal -- is agreed upon in all hunter-gatherer cultures.)}

"The performances ... are what earn the attention, the grace ... of the animals and plants and spirits, the council of all beings."

{Never the animals themselves, but rather the deities who control the animal-species, are invisible spectators at ritual events, according to all archaic religions (AmerIndian et al.); and likewise any "council of all beings" consisteth of such deities only (never, of course, including any of the material-world animals themselves).}

"nirvana which is no place other than samsara. In short, ... the planet, ... earth's space and history".

{False! Quite actually, Maha-yana always hath as its goal incarnation in the 'Pure-Land' (S`uddha-loka), which is an immaterial divine universe utterly distinct and different from the material universe.}

p. 507

In a gift economy, the animals are willing to trade their very skins and feather for a song and dance. ...

{[according to all aboriginal peoples :] In exchange for being entertained by religious ritual caerimony, the deities controlling animal-species are glad to betray their "protectee" animal-species to be slaughtered by merciless humans. (To the animals themselves, there is never proffered any choice.)}

p. 508

"creatures ... are the true congregation, ... And the kind of performance they require is ritualistic."

{Not "creatures", but instead the Creator (or rather, Controller)-Deities, are stated (by every religion of every tribe that hath ever existed), to require ritual religious caerimonies to their glory.}

"In Thailand, ... monks {praesumably with approval of, if not indeed under orders from, their abbots} have begun ordaining trees. ...

{It is utterly hypocritical to "ordain" a tree, unless a divine controller of that species hath appeared in a person's dream, demanding that such be done.}

At first the monk led people in sprinkling holy water on the trees. Later he upped the ante by requiring village leaders to drink holy water in front of a statue of Buddha by a tree. This way, community leaders ... pledged themselves to its protection."