Satisfaction, I Ponder.

9 July 2005
another day in paradise


the satisfaction of making frozen yogurt, started this flow..
ponder on satisfaction, its punk night, my 25th anniversery.
25 years ago, 25 long years, at 5:55 in the morning april 9th 1980.
25 years ago......hummmm??
Satisfaction.
I ponder.

So far I have outlined three progressively comprehensive Recogni-tions.
Each was real eyezed after a period of conscious effort in the appro-priate direction.

In each case I had some reason to believe that there was a goal to be sought.

In the first two instances I was aware that there was something more remaining to be realized, because the sense of incom-pleteness was only partly liquidated. In the third instance this liquidation seemed to be complete, and then I simply turned my back upon the full individual enjoyment of it for such period of time as might be necessary to fulfill some more comprehensive purpose reaching beyond individual concerns.

In contrast, the culminating Recognition came with the force of an unexpected bestowal without my having put forth any conscious personal effort toward the attainment of it. Thus, in this case, my per-sonal relationship or attitude was passive in a deep sense.


During the day preceding the final Recognition, I had been busy writing and my mind was exceptionally clear and acute. In fact, the intellectual energy was of an unusual degree of intensity. The mood was decidedly one of intellectual assertion and dominance. This feature is interesting for the reason that it is precisely the state of mind that ordi-narily would be regarded as least favorable for the "breaking through" to mystical modes of consciousness. The rule seems to be that the thought must be silenced or at least reduced in intensity and ignored in the med-itation.

In the records of mystical awakening, it is almost always made evident that preceding the state of Illumination there is at least a brief period of quiescence of conscious activity. Sometimes this appears as though there were a momentary standing still of all nature. For my part, I had previously been aware of a kind of antecedent stillness before each of the critical moments, though it was not translated as stillness of nature.

But in the case of the fourth Recognition, the foreground was one ofintense mental tension and exceptional intellectual activity. It was not now a question of capturing something of extreme subtlety that might be dispersed by a breath of mental or affective activity. It was more a case of facing an overwhelming power that required all the active phase of the resources of consciousness to face it.

The Event Came after retiring. I became aware of a deepening effect in consciousness that presently acquired or manifested a dominant affec-tive quality. It was a state of utter Satisfaction. But here there enters a strange and almost weird feature.

Language, considered as standing in a representative relationship to something other than the terms of the language, ceased to have any validity at this level of consciousness. In a sense, the words and that which they mean are interblended in a kind of identity. Abstract ideas cease to be artificial derivatives from a particularized experience, but are transformed into a sort of universal substantial-ity.

The relative theories of knowledge simply do not apply at this level. So "Satisfaction" and the state of satisfaction possess a substantial and largely inexpressible identity. Further, this "Satisfaction," along with its substantiality, possesses a universal character. It is the value of all possible satisfactions at. once and yet like a "thick" substance interpenetrating everywhere.

I know how weird this effort at formulation must sound, but unless I abandon the attempt to interpret, I must constrain language to serve a purpose quite outside normal usage.

This state of "Satisfaction" is a kind of integration of all previous val-ues. It is the culminating fulfillment of all desires and thus renders the desire-tension, as such, impossible. One can desire only when there-is in some sense a lack, an incompleteness, that needs to be fulfilled, or a sensed goal that remains to be attained. When in every conceivable or felt sense all is attained, desire simply has to drop out. The result is a profound balance in consciousness, a state of thorough repose with no drawing or inclining in any direction. Hence, in the sum total, such a state is passive. Now, while this state is, in one sense, an integration of
previous values, it also proved preliminary to a still deeper state.

Gradually, the "Satisfaction" faded into the background and by insensible gra-dation became transformed into a state of "lndifference." For while satisfaction carries the fullness of active affective and conative value, indifference is really affective-conative silence. It is the superior terminus of the affective-conative mode of human consciousness.

There is another kind of indifference where this mode of consciousness has bogged down into a kind of death. This is to be found in deeply depressed states of human consciousness.

***
The "High Indifference," however, is the superior or opposite pole beyond which motivation and feeling in the familiar human sense cannot reach. But, most emphatically, it is not a state of reduced life or consciousness. On the contrary, it is both life and consciousness of an order of superiority quite beyond imagination.
***

The concepts of relative consciousness simply cannot bound it. In one sense, it is a terminal state, but at the same time, in another sense, it is initial. Everything can be predicated of it so long as the predication is not privative, for in the privative sense nothing can be predicated of it. It is at once rest and action, and the same may be said with respect to all other polar qualities.

I know of only one concept that would suggest its noetic value as a whole, and this is the concept of "Equilibrium," yet even this is a concession to the needs of relative thinking. It is both the culmination and beginning of all possibilities.

In contrast with the preceding Recognition, this state is not charac-terized by an intensive or active feeling of felicity. It could be called bliss-full only in the sense that there is an absence of all pain in any respect whatsoever.

But I felt myself to be on a level of consciousness where there is no need of an active joy. Felicity, together with all other qualities, is part of the blended whole and by the appropriate focusing of individual attention can be isolated from the rest and thus actively realized, if one so desired. But for me, there seemed to be no need of such isolation.

The consciousness was so utterly whole that it was unnecessary to administer any affective quality to give it a greater richness.
I was supe-rior to all affective modes, as such, and thus could command and mani-fest any of them that I might choose.
I could bless with beneficent qualities or impose the negative ones as a curse. Still, the state itself was too thorougly void of the element of desire for me to feel any reason why I should bless or curse.

For within that perfection, there is no need for any augmentation or diminution.

While within this state, I recalled the basis of my previous motivation and realized that if this state had been outlined to me then as an abstract idea, it could not by any possibility have seemed attractive. But while fused with the state, all other states that could formerly have been objects of desire seemed flaccid by comparison.

The highest conceivable human aspiration envisages a goal inevitably marred by the defects of immature imagination. Unavoidably, to the relative consciousness, the complete balance of the perfect consciousness must seem like a void, and thus the negation of every conceivable possible value. But to be identified with this supernal State implies abandonment of the very base of relative consciousness, and thus is a transcendence of all relative valuation. To reach back to that relative base involves a contraction and blinding of con-sciousness, an acceptance of an immeasurable lessness.

In the months following the Recognition, when I had once again resumed the drama in the relative field, I have looked back to that Transcendent State as to a consciousness of a most superior and desirable excellence.

All other values have become thin and shallow by contrast.

Nevertheless, I carry with me always the memory, and more than a memory, of the immediate knowledge of it, and this is something quite different from a mediately conveyed and abstract portrayal of it as a merely possible consciousness.


this night of angst, the fire missed us, but it caused us to have a better relationship with the neighbours, its as though the event was a sparky release for "breaking" the shell of Self-induced-xenophobic isolation, collective Null, state of indifference... you grok the high indifference...
you live it, RealEyes to create Hir-Flow.


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