Link to PART 1

Link to PART II


PART III

So at this point I felt the need to move. I stood up and my arm crossed my field of view as I reached for something to help me up. Trailers, or tracers followed my arm - many, many tracers whose translucency diminished the further from the source, my arm.

I am breaking the persistence of vision of reality itself, I thought…

For those unacquainted, the persistence of vision (POV) is what permits us to see a film strip projected at 24fps as a continuous motion. Each frame is independent, but flitting by at this speed induces an illusion of continuity, of one seamless image, of one unbounded temporal reality.

Our eyes gather information differently. For many years POV was thought to be the active principle through which we made sense of the moving world around us, until this myth was debunked in 1912 by Max Wertheimer who attributed our sense of reality and continuity to two optical illusions : beta movement and phi phenomena.

« Beta movement is a perceptual illusion, described by Max Wertheimer in his 1912 Experimental Studies on the Seeing of Motion, whereby two or more still images are combined by the brain into surmised motion.
The classic beta phenomenon experiment involves a viewer or audience watching a screen, upon which the experimenter projects two images in succession. The first image depicts a ball on the left side of the frame. The second image depicts a ball on the right side of the frame. The images may be shown quickly, in rapid succession, or each frame may be given several seconds of viewing time. Once both images have been projected, the experimenter asks the viewer or audience to describe what they saw.
Generally, audiences will claim that they saw a ball move from left to right. They did not, in fact, see this, but the cognitive process of perception links the two images in time and causality. »

« The classic phi phenomenon experiment involves a viewer or audience watching a screen, upon which the experimenter projects two images in succession. The first image depicts a line on the left side of the frame. The second image depicts a line on the right side of the frame. The images may be shown quickly, in rapid succession, or each frame may be given several seconds of viewing time. Once both images have been projected, the experimenter asks the viewer or audience to describe what they saw.
At certain combinations of spacing and timing of the two images, a viewer will report a sensation of motion in the space between and around the two lines, even though the viewer also perceives two distinct lines and not the continuous motion of objects referred to as Beta movement. The phi phenomenon looks like a moving zone or cloud of background color surrounding the flashing objects. »
Wikepedia

But somehow I knew that what I was witnessing was neither of these phenomena, but my breaking of POV – an imprint of each former image was left behind in my mind, as if I had somehow overridden the « motion erasure software ».
Which got me thinking… So I looked directly at my arm and waved it about. No tracers. I focused on the lake outside the window and waved my arm to and fro. Tracers. But as soon as I shifted my attention and focus to my arm, they disappeared. If I looked directly at it, its nature changed. Sound familiar ? The phenomena reminded me of the particle/wave nature of reality, of the double slit experiment, of Schrodinger's cat – in short, quantum mechanics and more specifically, probability.

Recently I read God’s Debris by Scott Adams ( http://nowscape.com/godsdebris.pdf ) - a quick, simple, inspiring read (albeit a little flawed IMO) that I highly recommend. The section on probability got me thinking that maybe the entire universe regenerates probabilistically moment by moment (a moment being an immeasurable, nearly infinitesimally small unit of time), and that it is this constant regeneration of probable events that creates our illusion of continuity, and of time itself. (as we know from quantum mechanics, the larger (i.e. more mass, or energy) an object has the less it is at the mercy of probabilistic forces. In God’s Debris, Scott Adams ties gravity to all of this. Unscientific postulations, poetic musings only ? perhaps…)

So… In my be-acided (acidic… !) state I had another realization : the tracers were perhaps a POV phenomenon with regard to the constant probabilistic regeneration of our moment-to-moment reality. In other words, a glitch in the «erasure software», as I called it, was allowing me to witness at least some of the past in my very own present ! A form of limited, unidirectional time travel… !!… ???
Or stranger still, maybe it was cognitive beta movement : the witnessing of the construction of our temporal reality, one image at a time, our minds filling in the blanks removed by the neurotransmitter substance to achieve continuity -

And create time itself…

Probabilities resolved and manifest, projected onto the present, a concretized version of what William James called « the theatre of simultaneous possibilities ».

Crazier and crazier.
And curiouser and curiouser.

My thoughts fell to the contract again. The contract I signed, forgot that I signed, and now have broken. Words come to me from somewhere deep inside, strangely ordinary words now burgeoning with import :

KETCHUP
FRIDAYS
LEGO
SPAGHETTI
SATURDAY
MARSHMALLOW
L (a hollow, billowing capital)
F (idem)

Words, and letters, whose importance, because of the contract, I was never meant to intuit. Words ridiculous in their mundaneness. But Signifiers. Incomplete directions on a jigsaw map. Words from somewhere else, from the ROOT, from the building blocks of consciousness, chosen by us unwittingly to point toward the point of origin. THE origin. The ORIGIN.

THIS IS THE PLACE. THE PLACE I ALWAYS RETURN TO. THESE SUBSTANCES TAKE ME THERE WITH GREATER AND GREATER PRECISION. THE PLACE OF RECURSION, THE PLACE IS THE INFINITE.

(The substance itself no longer matters. All keys are equal, be they tryptamine or diterpenoid. They have become one.)

But they are imperfect these words. I know them, recognize them only in this state, arrived at through neuro-chemical alteration – but imperfect. Because, again :

we are missing letters. missing sounds. missing the point.

Another word flashes into my mind. I refuse to force a shape on its shell ; choosing to let it out phonetically, to hone its imperfections, I say :

SMAASKMA-GRELLETI

It sounds like the place. Like a key to the place. And the very place itself.

A key that opens itself.

Words fail to describe a word that is not a word. The place is the LOGOS. The word. The two are inextricably entwined.

Is this madness ? Is this the sound of my sanity dripping from my teeth and splashing on my boots ? Is this forbidden ? By myself… ?

I entertain the idea that TRUTH is a concept, a reality, in 6 829 400 000 little shards, scattered all over the planet, each small truth a part of a culture, each culture a part of a whole, but incomplete on its own, like a jigsaw puzzle piece found in a garbage hump in a cul-de-sac alley. Little shards that when joined make a patternless motif, the sum total an indecipherable mosaic of all conscious entities. GOD. THE INFINITE. ME. YOU.

7 billion little slices of truth all scrambling around claiming they know the whole truth.

« The desire of Man being Infinite, the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite.
Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio
only sees himself only.
Conclusion. If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philosophic &
Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still unable to do other than
repeat the same dull round over again.
Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is. »
William Blake
1788

Among the almost 7 billion are those who unwittingly and deftly, as a matter of course, of daily routine, dissimulate and cover up. These are the ENCODERS. They passively codify all that is knowable and all that is unknowable through the simple act of living. Those who see only themselves see only, as Blake puts it, the RATIO, and «stand still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again. »

While another part identify clues or « insignia » or lettrage or symbols or sound, or the unfurling of a thirsty fern under the canopy of arms above, or the wave washing up the shoreline inexorably, or the root digging through humus with nexus tendrils, or the blood that seeps through sand in the wars we wage…

These unfortunate souls are the « DECODERS », fated to dig deeper than the deepest gully, than the darkest ocean – and never to find satisfaction no matter how profound they delve… those miserable souls who see « the infinite in all things ».

Music, film, poetry, fiction, drama, art, CREATION. All signifiers of truth, culled from the bottomless gully, reaching toward, intimating, but never capturing truth. 2 dimensional directions on an 11 dimensional map.

WE ARE ALL COMPLICIT. WE ENCODE OR DECODE. WE VEIL OR UNVEIL. AND LIVE AND DIE. SOME WISER DEAD. SOME DROWNED IN IGNORANCE IN DEATH.

This is where I was in hours 6 through 10 of this gloriously melancholic trip. A sadness clutches at my spirit and I weep blood and all is RED RED RED. I think :

This is too much. Too much to fathom. I cannot bring this back. It is incompatible. Incongruous. I feel the opening. I accept the opening. I accept the YAW. But the YAW must stay here – it envelops, consumes and radiates from within and all around. And it is part of the PLACE, at the ROOT, at the infinite, at the infinitely recursive binary paradox… I MUST LEAVE YOU HERE. But I will be back. Even if someday I don’t come back…

WE ARE APPARATUS. MERE APPARATUS. MIRROR APPARATUS. THE LOGOS. THE WORD. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE.

That’s PART 3 my friends. One more to go. The summary will be more cheerful, and shorter, I promise.

Thanks for your time (even if it does not exist !). I offer this humbly and can only hope it inspires.

JBArkkrABJ

PART 4

mama mia i'm enjoying this....profound insights my dear brother....very profound...

L&G!!

I should have read this when coming down yesterday. Now I only faintly sense those "things" behind the words. But still I can see it's very well captured.

What you describe with the suspension of POV I think happens in the world of the mind also. I mean in the usual state of consciousness what you think of (an idea that your awareness focuses on in/as the present) goes away in the next moment when you focus on something else. The train of thoughts, you know. But on acid, the time it takes for an idea thought of in the "past" to fade away is much longer. It's the same thing as a visual tracer: you are still aware of the ideas thought N steps before, they are still present in consciousness. As if the capacity of consciousness would grow, as if it could hold more information, more ideas in the present. (This may be somehow linked to the perceived time dilation effects.) If we carry this to the extreme, we may think of a state where one manages to pull together the entire past/future (all ideas) into the present, therefore making past/present/future into one.

About the encoders/decoders duality:

I very much struggle with this, because I was always of the opinion that the world must be somehow helped. That there is an ascension from ignorance towards bliss, a global illumination at the end, the images of God's kingdom fill my heart with awe and longing.

But my trips tend to lead me towards an understanding which is much bleaker. In summary, what I see is that God has a responsibility to care for EVERYBODY, and thinking through this I find that the current world - as it is built/operated - is actually already the most perfect possible construction to embody the spirit (its shards) in its current state. In other words, the existence of decoders/encoders is necessary.

My dilemma stems from the fact that I'm a dreamer of the future of the spirit, I dream of the ways of evolution, and in this quality I sometimes feel like an enemy of (the current version of) God. I sense that this "God" wants me to accept the status quo as it is now (think of the Architect in the Matrix) while I am a bit like the Oracle, who wants to push things forward... but to what end? Thinking it over rationally, which is better, to accept our status as a bee in the hive and working as a bee, until death? Or trying to escape, dreaming of a better society?

Is our sadness justified?

(The mother is always crying, when she sees her son being killed. Even if she completely understands that this is necessary to be so. Breaking the heart is an expression of the absolute.)

Thanks Antrocles. A pleasure writing them. Helps me understand what happened to me to a degree; I never undertake a voyage without a pen and paper near me. It fades soooo fast...

JBArk

pretty obvious you have a consistent relationship with the written word my dear brother. your writing is exceptional. your ideas are both poetically elucidated and affirming in their relatability. in other words....i get you my brother. in an awesome way.


you give us all a LOT with your poignant words.... thank you.

L&G!!

A deep, theatrical bow of gratitude and humility...

JBArk

That is bleak to you? I find it uplifting, reassuring to FEEL that things are the way they were meant. That maybe the misery has purpose, if that purpose be only completion of the construction...

Maybe that's just me !

Anyway, it's not really a feeling i have in the day-to-day.

JBArk

No, I feel that way, too. The darkness turns to light if one thinks it through... That's part of the magic.

I just like to play with this. You know, the sadness of the ego, when it has to release those grandiose theories. Hup-hup. It's soooo sad. Let's mourn over its terrible, terrible fate together, while the Cosmic Sun is preparing its ascent on the horizon...

You made me giggle...!

Definetly ready for part four. Excellent read. Lots of familiarity.