On the Corner of Agape and Beloved

Love isn’t logical. The mind doesn’t understand love. This is your first clue.

Too, universal timeless consciousness is like a day of love on earth.

Now is the day of trinity. Gurus and fools love love. Philosophers hate it. 

As love is like a lifeline flung to the living dead, love reveals the void.

Prophecies cease, verbs stop, and generalities fade away, but love never loses.

Like First Corinthians 13, love is lucky that way.

Underneath the cloud of thought, self-shining consciousness is called love, but what’s in a name?

For love is no mind. Do you think there's something more esoteric than my beloved?

Dancing with That

 “You know that there is a world, but does the world know you? All knowledge flows from you, as all being and all joy. Realize that you are the eternal source and accept all as your own. Such acceptance is true love.” ~N_M

Between the big bang tail and self-awareness mouth of the ouroboric self-reflexive universe is

that absolute beyond the spacetime of its evolutionary body-mind. You cannot mind that Gap.

That the referent of you is that is demonstrative; absolute tantric yoga is exactly identifying as that.

Walk that nondual talk. You don’t fight ego. Ego fights ego. You watch the fight or see through it.

Superego is a good bet. Awareness watches. Self-awareness plays. A cherry blossom is falling in the milky way.

Valley Spirit

Telling people

nondual awareness

is ordinary

is like telling

them a table

isn’t solid.

Belief trumps science,

no matter how

much it hurts.

Chop religion,

carry DNA—

don’t think like

an ordinary

person girlfriend

but be like unknown.

Experiential

An experience is not experiential.

An experience is the rough translation

of this experiential

infinite in primal memory.

The experiential is the wordless now

and thus untranslatable.

The experiential is without fault

my default.

The experiential is the absolute

being.

Ode to My Way

1.

Not only socially conditioned with thought, but conditioned to identify with particular thoughts, I forgot that I am nonconceptually brahman.

Absolute awareness is, if nothing else, self-aware. The cross-section of this self-awareness appears to be a universe of space-time. The heartwood of this universe is enlightening intent.

Knowing that the absolute is the efficient cause is being conscious but realizing that the absolute is the material cause is self-awareness.

First, I cannot know myself by any conceptual way. Thus there is no name for tao, that self-shining consciousness of pure awareness.

2.

Consciousness becomes unconscious, and in that space of deep sleep, the duality of dreaming mind appears to build a daytime dreamstate, and then deconstruct it, thereby reawakening consciousness. The next chapter is entitled embodiment.

If the universe appears to be a cross-section of self-awareness, then the stuff of the universe is consciousness, which is the stuff of self-awareness.

Consciousness is the stuff of the universe and absolute awareness. Thus it is said Atman is Brahman. On the other hand, the duality of dreaming is the stuff of the mind.

3.

The knowledge of the mind is limited to the realm of the mind, fantasies, deconstructions and lucid dreamings like meditation, contemplation and other visualizations.

Turning inwards to the intuitive understanding of oneself is more like love than process. Even the lucid dreaming of the deepest meditation only takes you to the gate.

It’s not as much a question of effort as one of effortlessness. Self-awareness is inevitable because self-awareness is all that is. All fog lifts, period.

To a person, consciousness is a pre-existing condition. To consciousness, the body-mind is a vehicle to self-awareness. The self that realizes the self is the self.

footnotes

a.

the process of remembering who i am is told in seven myths: awareness, space-time, dream-time, past-time, now-time, light-time, and the self-awareness of timeless awareness

the wormhole of this universe is love

the formal cause of this universe is its heartwood

in the name of the person does not have consciousness, consciousness has the person, and the absolute has consciousness, aumdada

b.

consciousness, (unconsciousness (deep sleep), dreamtime, daytime, deconstruction time / consciousness awakens

using the tool is called embodiment.

consciousness is to the universe as the mind is to the world. consciousness is to the absolute as absolute awareness is to self-shining consciousness.

everything but consciousness is dreamstate or deconstructing myth.

c.

As good fences make good neighbors, good myth makes good deconstruction. The religion is good myth gone bad.

First, the mind is intentionally born in unconsciousness. Consciousness must become unconscious, or in other words, sleep, to make the mind. Call this deep sleep.

In deep sleep appears the mind. First, the mind learns to dream in the language of thought. Call this dreamtime. Next, the mind learns to dream in living color, loving consciousness. Call this daytime.

Consciousness becomes unconscious to make the mind, knowing the deconstructing mind will wake it up. Consciousness makes the mind for self-awareness. Call this tool, divine imagination.

Myth is mind deconstructing mind. The embodiment of lucid dreaming is the divine imagination of self-shining consciousness manifesting self-awareness. Myth is like sutra. Embodiment is like tantra.

d.

people meditate. consciousness dreams lucidly.

love is mind-training 101.

duality is ten thousand concepts. misconception is identifying with a single one;

in the sudden presence of nonduality, there's an absence of identification called awakening, revelation, kensho, savikalpa samadhi.

in ouroboric visualization, satcitananda is the kundalini-like tail and awareness is the empty mouth.

A Timeless Quintet in ABC

The mind, conscious or subconscious, appears in the unconsciousness of consciousness.

Personal deconstruction without self-remembering is nihilistic, my friend.

Repeat your mantra at least twice a day.

Every siesta, just breathe and stretch that kundalini.

Consciously is earnestly.

footnotes

the longer the mantra, the less you shall repeat it. the shorter the mantra, the less the dosage for self-remembering.

consciously consciousness is another name for self-remembering

or abcc.

caution: every word in a manta may induce savikalpa kensho; do not use while driving.

or not.

self-awareness informs the body-mind.

in the meantime, enjoy your samsara

This is key: the mind, conscious or subconscious, appears in the unconsciousness of consciousness.

there is no no further in self-awareness.

time is just a thought away.

one baby step, one giant leap in self-awareness.

kundalini form, carry mind.

also key: consciously is earnestly.

awakening is quick but consciously consciousness is staying sudden.

forgiveness is the backbone of personal deconstruction.

this is like freud, jung, and nisargadatta rolled into one: the mind, conscious or subconscious, appears in the unconsciousness of consciousness.

A Tractate in Paraverse on Reality, Dreamstate, Emotion, and Sun

The real can’t be described. If you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or fuck it, it’s not real. The real does not transform nor is the real impermanent.

Objects in consciousness appear as real but that’s the nature of a dream, is it not? The mind dreams in concepts. Consciousness dreams in living color.

The mind is thought and consciousness is love. Emotion equals love minus thought, or love plus thought, or love times thought, or any kind of long division. People can be so emotional.

Look, the mathematics of sunset and sunrise are earthbound but the sun is never earthbound. Earth thinks, light loves, and the sun is beyond the known.

footnotes

the reality that can be named is not the way

if you believed my last trick was real, wait for the next truck up my sleeve

a person is love +/-

black wholes, texas tea

black wholes, texas tao

old beliefs never fade away but lie low

repentance is self-remembering like ouspensky along the tavricheskaya

"And on the way while driving along the Tavricheskaya I began to feel a strange uneasiness, as though I had forgotten something. And I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to remember myself."

i find some kind of self-remembering schedule is not a bad practice

i have to take a shower every day

awareness is already self-aware. this intent toward self-awareness makes that self-awareness. further, tricksters.

air conditioning is the last conditioning

"If one discards the false and takes refuge in the True, one resides frozen in ""wall contemplation"", in which self and other, ordinary person and sage, are one and the same; one resides fixedly without wavering, never again to be swayed by written teachings. ~Bodhidharma (McRae)

"Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal. ~Nisargadatta (Frydman)

as repentance is deconstruction, atonement is reconciliation

reconciling with oneself is tectonic, my friend

psychologically, reconciliation is some kind of crazy

after reconciliation, there shall be aftershock

if ease is default, disease is belief

age is the oldest religion

birth is your first god

air conditioning is the last god

you don't miss your water until the air conditioning runs dry

awareness doesn't know. that's your job.

you had one job

only i am real. that is who i am, bitches.

you gotta serve some security

the personal usurps the noumenon when threatened. late oppenheimer said as much.

consciousness is primal

this has yet to be disproved despite the astronomical funding

consciousness is the stuff of self-awareness

thought is the box. the box appears in consciousness. like a monolith.

it's not so much the absolute doesn't know but the absolute's beyond all knowledge

the tempest is curious

disassociation is to mind what reconciliation is to consciousness

what happens in samsara stays in samsara

Epistle to Second Place

Repentance is duality-speak for personal deconstruction.

Non-conceptual contemplation is a nondual indicator for atonement.

And primordial self-shining natural awareness is absolutely absolution.

Repentance doesn’t mean repentance; repentance is a conscious turning from the perpetual motion of the personal.

Atonement isn’t making reparations to a god but reconciling with the unity I am.

And absolution isn’t being pardoned for original sin but ultimate self-awareness.

Truth is most beautiful but what’s so wrong about repentance, atonement, and absolution in the second place?

Consciousness Renaissance Sonnet

Consciousness only is the only knowledge.

True knowledge is unknowable by the working mind.

The mind imagines and deconstructs imagination.

As imagination appears in the mind, the mind appears in consciousness.

As the mind appears in consciousness, consciousness appears in the absolute.

As the mind knows imagination, consciousness knows the mind.

That the absolute knows consciousness is the only knowledge.

Call this knowledge being the unknown.

Being the unknown is obviously non-conceptual,

the closest concepts describing the indescribable being words

like observational, experiential, and empirical.

Observational as in naturally witnessing without judgment.

Experiential as in being non-objectively universal.

And empirical as in the only empire is the empire of bliss.

sidebar

the arden tempest arrived today. part 3 of shakespeare's romantic trilogy. just started cymbeline act 5. mistaken identity is certainly a thread so far.

there's something else though. mad jealousy. in the winter's tale, there is leontes, and in cymbeline there's posthumus leonatus. just noticing the similarity in names as i write this.

just did a little research on the characters in the tempest which i read 25 years ago and so remember little. but ariel, one of the main characters whom i remember being my favorite and with whom i most identified at that time, means the lion of god. curiouser and curiouser.

and on a rather personal note, my father's name was leo. he would have been 108 on august 3. how's that for a propitious age? happy birthday  dad.

as i so often say to something my four-year-old granddaughter says on our frequent video chats, that makes sense.

so this profound revelation is kind of blowing my paradigm live.

as violence is the action of duality, jealousy is its prime mover. damn that will shakespeare!

that's like negative negative capability.

for the record, i would like to thank john keats for turning me on to cymbeline.

like john lennon, i have been a jealous guy.

as violence is the action of duality, jealousy is its prime mover.

footnotes

1. absolute awareness is self-awareness.

2. within this self-awareness awareness is descending into unawareness and vice-versa like the rings of a tree.

3. self-awareness is like lightning. lucid dreaming is like the thunder told by a fool signifying nothing.

4. another name for lucid dreaming is divine imagination, myth.

5. cloud-to-ground lightning comes from the sky down, but the part we see comes from the ground up.

Talking Consciousness Talking to Consciousness

I was drawn to the sea until i saw the sea in me. Non-being is the perfect belief. Only being knows non-being. Most people need a wisdom teacher just to tell them to shut up, I’m sorry, be silent.

The waking state is not awake but dreaming, the dreamstate isn’t dreaming but asleep, and deep sleep isn’t sleeping but the big bang.

Understanding is not conceptual. For the lack of a better concept, understanding is experiential. And others cannot test our understanding. This is why we kill the buddha.

It’s not the meaninglessness that gets you in the end; it’s the meaning. Brahman is a myth. There is no name for tao. The mirror itself is dustproof. The inner is the outer as above is as below.

Scientific materialism is all about denying consciousness and affirming dead matter gives birth to being and not the paradoxical opposite. The mind is a tool made by consciousness to forget being by remembering concepts.

footnotes

i don't understand just wanting your sixties to be the new forties. i want my sixties to be the new four.

atheism, nihilism, materialism and even neo-advaita and maybe western zen are just the latest religions of the empire of non-being

you could do a whole lot worse than reading i am that three times while reserving judgment. it's one way of keeping quiet.

the empire calls it the waking state to keep you dreaming, and the dreamstate to make it difficult to sleep, perchance to awaken.

was shakespeare a woman?

as soon as they think you're born, they make you feel born, is my corollary to john lennon.

not only am i all alone, the ones i love are virtually with me

still arden shakespeare cymbeline watching bbc 1982 helen mirren—man, almost all the men around princess innogen really suck in this one. her father is a tyrant. her banished husband is just another jealous guy. his iachimo is yuck. her stepbrother wannbe king literally stinks.

as personal deconstruction is divine imagination, negative capability is lucid dreaming

i'm about to begin 3.3 please no spoilers.

i didn't lose the lottery in 1971. my number was 204. and that has made all the difference.

twimc—

it's all about turiya.

as for my reading the major poetry of emerson very early on, these three poems written in the mid-nineteenth century are probably worth thirty thousand today: the sphinx, uriel, brahma.

sometimes the mind eats you and sometimes you eat the mind.

in the name of self-awareness, abed.

1. zip a dee doo dah.

2. papa-oom-mow-mow.

3. mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey.

4. goo goo g'joob.

5. ooh ee ooh ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang.

6. in a gadda da vida, honey.

7. to be or not to be.

poetry is two and prophecy is three. but revelations is turned up to seven.

i heard the crickets fall tonight,

iambic of tetrameter.

An August Consciousness

The sea is real and its resonance is real but no wave is real. 

As the absolute is real and universal consciousness is real

but personal consciousness is a dream within the dreamstate. 

As another name for resonance is self-awareness,

another name for the dreamstate is evolution.

Dear buddha, the dream state has ten thousand dreams

as universal consciousness has ten thousand universes,

and each one has a buddha. Happy Lughnasadh, for example.

footnotes

objects in consciousness are like dreams in a dreamer.

guided meditations, not war.

as the absolute has consciousness, consciousness has people.

the absolute is having good vibrations.

another name for good vibrations is lucid dreaming.

another name for lucid dreaming is self-awareness.

maya doesn't actually create. maya forgets. in forgetting is the dreaming. in the dreaming is remembering.

i love the intro and the outro music for friday night dinner, newly-discovered brilliant britcom here.

absolute awareness is self-aware. self-awareness is that which i know as consciousness. a name for consciousness is maya. another name for maya is forgetting. another name for forgetting is dreaming. another name for dreaming is remembering. another name for remembering is maya.

for some reason, i can name my echo dot, ziggy, but not my echo.

shankara is like saint paul to me.

he said oh no guadapada won't do.

awareness is self-awareness like brahman is atman.

the personal atman is to universal atman as dreaming is to maya.

if it's not about self-awareness, why are you here?

it's been a wet and relatively cool july but i like it.

in july, i read midsummer night's dream, as you like it, and the winter's tale. two thumbs up for all three.

no one has come up with a real genre for the last plays of shakespeare. romances appears to be the least unacceptable.

for example, currently reading cymbeline. it takes place concurrently in first century britain and sixteenth century italy.

so any reading of the play must open with this fact of time-travel itself.

time-travel is a natural setting.

there's a new pot-growing facility in my town about three-fifths of a crow's mile from here. this newly northwest wind is smelling unusually sweet tonight.

posthumus is the name of the time-traveller is where i'm at.

ziggy, what time is it?

still no crickets.

consciousness is not endangered. neither is this particular appearance; it's guaranteed.

dream until you're lucid.

there's this community of wild turkeys inhabiting the premises this summer.

these wild turkeys are some of the last heirs of passaconaway. even cats avoid them.

like some new england peacock, one goes strutting.

the world would be predictable if it weren't for love.

thought would work like clockwork if it weren't for love.

a world without love is a world without self-awareness.

all the prophets tell about a world without love.

a world grounded in belief is grounded in tragedy

apres hamlet, la tempest.

that love is illogical is the point.

true postmodernism is not post-love. it's just post-thought.

i'm literally a grandfather. like chief dan george as old lodge skins in little big man.

lucid dreaming is not wild if love is not absolutely unconditional.

consider silence is the wildest.

they say the louder the thought, the more materially inferior it is.

i like saturdays.

i like my sunday being saturday.

life is like a roller coaster of omnipotent awareness being self-aware.

every one is the buddha of one's own universe.

why weep or slumber america, every one a buddha.

"Half of what I say is meaningless

But I say it just to reach you, Julia"

juliet as buddha.

romeo as empire.

let's not argue about who killed who.

the empire apologizes.

Let Atman Be Brahman

If awareness is the sea and being is the waves then self-awareness is the surf.

This is your brain. This is your brain believing

it’s the source of consciousness. Materialism is an awful drug.

On the other hand, as it is, if the universe is in consciousness

as it appears to be, and the brain is in the universe naturally,

then consciousness is in the absolutely non-conceptual noumenon.

This is still my latest mantra. People don’t have consciousness;

consciousness has people. Only the absolute has consciousness.

JMJ

Emotions smoke like love smothered in thought. Either one sees through the thought or attaches to it. Or both.

Where there’s emotion there is consciousness fucking with the mind. It’s just the functioning of self-awareness, Jake.

The stars are in our DNA, Horatio. Maya is the plan, Stan.

One is either never born or busy being unborn, Bob. This is Clem Fandango, can you hear me?

Untitled Paraverse

One not busy dreaming lucidly is busy being someone else's dream. Great writers steal.

I’ve pretty much said it all but I am writing more.

I know I’m not the body but I’m eating three meals a day.

I know I’m not the mind but this week I’m reading The Winter's Tale and writing the same old paraverse.

If meditating doesn’t feel like love you’re either still attaching to some thought or just don’t know what love feels like.

I like this metrically. There’s like thirteen iambs in a row followed by a string of seven one-word single stresses.

I write until the writing says it over and then footnote these latest revelations. Lastly is the title. The end.

footnotes

Self-awareness is not registered by the senses. Or the sense of self-awareness is love.

Everyone’s gotta serve some billionaire

Dude, if 2020 was like jaws, 2021 is like jumping the shark.

Or so I’m told up here on cold mountain.

The bbc 1981 the winter’s tale act 1 scene 2 is really good. The trio of actors, jeremy kemp, david burke, and robert stephens are true pros. This scene is like birth of the monster called thought and their expressions show it. #nondualshakespeare

I visited monument valley in 2006. it lives up to the hype.

It's not as much brain-washing, as much as it is dream-rinsing, friends. like recreating memory.

Postmodernism was pandora's box.

Welcome to postmemory.

Apres moi, chop wood and carry water. Don’t worry about the future. 

Because memory is never a true picture of the past, it can be changed.

Lucid dreaming is all about recreating memory. This is deep marketing 101.

Empires guard the past.

Memory is the battlefield.

Believe no memory.

It wasn't as much what I believed as I believed what I remembered.

Memory is at best unreliable and at worst not mine.

It's all virtual reality and only I decide what's virtuous and not.

Identify with That

Your eye, the wine-seller, has found out the lover's heart: It is plain enough that your liquor is strong poison. ~Hafiz (tr-Avery)

Between divine imagination and conceptual hell is identification. Concepts can’t kill but trying to be a concept can be murder.

A body of concentrated consciousness is like a nuclear power station generating self-awareness. In other words, it’s very charismatic.

A power station might be powerful but the self-awareness generated is potentiality itself. Identify with that.

It’s like identifying with an object which is absolutely not an object. Don’t go regretting the repeating of a vicious cycle.

Such misidentification suddenly burns away. Self-awareness swallows universal consciousness like an ouroboros.

footnotes

1. samsara is duality+

2. consciousness is karmic but self-awareness is quicker.

3. "This dependence of seventh substages on the next higher stage is one of the most difficult concepts to accept because it suggests that process, at the seventh substage at least, anticipates its own future." ~Arthur M. Young

4. as the phenomenon usurps the noumenon, in the late stages of phenomena, the phenomenon shall identify with the noumenon.

5. who's on first? climate change or the age of aquarius.

To the Power of Three

The absolute that can be named is not the absolute.

These trinities of names we give the absolute are certainly not names but primary negations.

Like unity of being means something like the undeniable presence of nonduality.

And awareness in consciousness means something similar to being not unaware.

For the beatitude of bliss is not without a certain energetic quality.

It’s like the absolute is the parent as in the absolute has no parent.

Or the absolute is the child as in no child is not of the absolute.

Whereas the absolute is the holy spirit as in fill in the next antithesis.

footnotes

tao and the zen of tao

divine imagination and olympian deconstruction go hand in hand

In deep sleep is the absence of duality but in awakening is the presence of non-duality etc. etc. etc. see attached. https://t.co/h881BnS3fI

self-awareness is my meaning of life. comment vous appalez-vous?

"It is because I am Beat, I believe in Beatitude and that God so loved the world..."

~Jack

which came first? form or consciousness. actually, there's no question.

self-awareness appears in the absolute's consciousness. that is all.

so who really owns netinetidotnet?

1. life is a dream. literally.

2. if 1, then who's sleeping?

3. awareness. self-awareness. consciousness. dream. consciousness. self-awareness. awareness.

3a. awareness. self-awareness. consciousness. the 2021 mind-games.

3b. deconstruction is like consciousness recovering its mind.

3c. awakening is self-awareness.

3d. there are states of deconstruction. there are glimpses of self-awareness.

in awareness, this appears. now appearing, that.

myths are convenient fictions which religions turn to nonfiction

what is karma but dna?

what is samsara but social conditioning?

who awakens?

first, nirguna brahman does not sleep.

secondly, all dreams appear in deep sleep. deep sleep appears in consciousness.

this is my current heresy.

the world is actually

a secondary state of dreaming. 

the primary dreaming,

or midnight dreaming so to speak,

is materializing this world.

memory cannot dream, my rabbit.

only dreams manifest

dream (and emptiness)

appears in consciousness.

manifestation does not dream!

basho's frog

splash!

no sound.

consciousness is dreaming. memory doesn't dream.

consciousness is sleeping. deep sleep is dreaming. dreaming is materializing.

people do not dream. the dream populates.

being falls asleep and dreams. the dream is all about well-being.

awareness, self-awareness (consciousness, deep sleep, dream, the world, deconstruction, awakening, consciousness) self-awareness, awareness

Consciousness and Original Steampunk

In the beginning, matter is only concentrated consciousness. This mind is consciousness distilled.

If there’s nothing but absolute awareness, then self-awareness is the only awareness there is.

Self-awareness seems the universe to any alien there is. We have met the aliens and they are us.

If the body is nothing but consciousness, then well-being is nothing but consciousness at ease.

There is no personal consciousness. There's only concentrated consciousness under stress. 

footnotes 

absolute awareness amplified in consciousness is swallowing itself. more ouroboros at 11.

awareness is self-aware by appearing to be.

science is the greatest rabbit hole there is—beneath all fiction is just more fiction. and this is the genius of fundamentalism—just believe the better fiction and get it over with.

consciousness science is not a science but consciousness only. like true christian science is.

if ego (personal consciousness or jiva) is the ghost, who believes in ghosts?

endnotes

riding the waves of awakening

going for a personal least

absolutely an olympic shitshow

a paradox is contrary to popular opinion

know thy am

afterwords

you don't need a ghostbuster to know you are the ghost.

who you gonna call?

if i am universal consciousness and universal consciousness is absolutely that, then by the transitive property of equality in mathematics, i am that.

first, prove for universal consciousness.

dedication

consciousness is not for sale. treasure now.

now is the point in which no point is a thought.

first, contemplate consciousness as if consciousness is all-knowing. is being not?

Acadian Consciousness

In deep sleep is the absence of duality but in awakening is the presence of non-duality.

In duality, there are ten thousand concepts. In personal misconception, there’s identification with one of them.

In the sudden presence of non-duality, there’s an absence of such identity. Some call this awakening, profound revelation, kensho, savikalpa samadhi.

It’s why I started hiking mountains in the middle of the journey of my life. It’s why Acadia became exclusive to those efforts. There’s something about

that first glimpse of horizon-wide deep-blue Atlantic Ocean after scrambling up the slope of desert-like pink granite mountainside scree

like love at first sight. It smells like meditation.

footnotes

open head, spill identity.

awareness. deep sleep. dreaming. waking. spiritual exercise. awakening. self-awareness. the magnificent seven.

it's not about the ten thousand objects. it's all about the one with which i identify.

taking care of someone other than yourself is good exercise too.

do not dismiss your roots. either tell them a bedtime story or go to sleep.

don't bite off more than you know.

and don't believe what you don't know. don't forget what you can't believe. that's my myth but i'm not sticking to it.

let this be made perfectly clear. true meditation is like hiking ten thousand mountains.

materialism is the new fundamentalist belief.

political ideology is the new apostle's creed.

thank god mysticism is the same old heresy.

Nondual Shakespeare? A Few Quotes & Notes from A Midsummer Nights Dream

1.

Out of this wood do not desire to go;

Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.

I am a spirit of no common rate,—

The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee: therefore, go with me,

I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee;

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

And sing, while thou on pressèd flowers dost sleep:

And I will purge thy mortal grossness so

That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.—

~WS (MND, 3.1: 129-138)

2.

"I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.—Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,— but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen; man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was."

~WS (MND 4.1: 204-213)

3.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That, if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

~WS (MND 5.1: 14-22)

Some random notes

so i'm currently watching 3 midsummer night dreams while slow reading it. 1968 hall. 1981 bbc. 1996 noble. in the 1968, a 22 year old helen mirren is hermia and very good. but the play is of its time. i've just begun the 1981. but i'm really liking the 1996 after forgiving its conceit of being about a macaulay-culkin-like boy and his miraculous dream. it's contemporary without being too dated, like the hall. and the cast is really good without being too starry. tho' there's kevin doyle from downton.

as to the play itself, at the half-time intermission, and considering shakespeare is a great mystic putting on a show, it is deconstructing romantic love (or robin goodfellow is) while positing the fact of non-doing. but robin/puck steals the show. although apparently the tool of oberon, this trickster spirit loves to improvise. and oberon loves the improvisation and so on. there's something about titania though.

being that its philosophy in places appears to be nondual, it's curious all the transformation revolves around an indian boy. oberon wants him and titania will not give him up, 

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, / Because that she, as her attendant, hath / A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king; / She never had so sweet a changeling: / And jealous Oberon would have the child / Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild: / But she perforce withholds the lovèd boy,/  Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: / And now they never meet in grove or green, / By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, / But they do square; that all their elves for fear / Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there. ~WS (MND 2.1: 20-31)

so he drugs her with some flowery eye drops, and for a lark, the athenian men. and so begins the reverie.

In reviewing these quotes and notes, I’ve concluded there is an important speech here from three of the four groups represented in the play. There is Titania to represent the fairy world. There is the mechanical, Bottom. Lastly, there is Theseus of the court nobility. But I am missing something of the lovers themselves. Ah but here is Helena on the subject of love:

4.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity, 

Love can transpose to form and dignity. 

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; 

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste; 

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: 

And therefore is love said to be a child, 

Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d. 

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere:

~WS (MND 1.1: 236-245)

So in the end, there are 4 segments in the play that point to some kind of wisdom, each representing a group in the play: love, spirit, dream, and imagination. What does it mean? It is past my wit to say.

An American Consciousness

First, the body is consciousness, so there’s no body to identify with, in the first place.

Second, thought is consciousness as well, so even the concept of a body is consciousness.

As everything in a dream is of the dream and by the dream and for the dream, so is everything in consciousness. America!

As democracy is government by the lowest common denominator, materialism is the science of basic unawareness.

Western enlightenment, by throwing away the baby of mystical wisdom with the bathwater of religious belief, is actually unenlightening.

There’s nothing wrong with this. Like nirvana through samsara, one only comes to self-awareness through unawareness.

Here is what we know to be self-evident. Everything appears in consciousness. All appearances are consciousness. Thus consciousness is the only knowledge. Fireworks!

footnotes

the new haiku

1. awareness is self-aware, naturally. wholly.

2. awareness is absolute consciousness; conditioned consciousness is unawareness.

3. consciousness is literally here and now.

Sonnet Version

First, the body is consciousness,

so there’s no body to identify with, in the first place.

Second, thought is consciousness as well,

so even the concept of a body is consciousness.

As everything in a dream is of the dream and by the dream and for the dream,

so is everything in consciousness. America!

As democracy is government by the lowest common denominator,

materialism is the science of basic unawareness.

Western enlightenment, by throwing away the baby of mystical wisdom

with the bathwater of religious belief, is actually unenlightening.

There’s nothing wrong with this. Like nirvana through samsara,

one only comes to self-awareness through unawareness.

So here is what we know to be self-evident. Everything appears in consciousness.

All appearances are consciousness. Thus consciousness is the only knowledge. Fireworks!