Subject: The Premature Post,
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 08:07:34 PST



                                  or

                    A Fragment of a Work in Progress

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Boredom arises in the individual who feels that s/he has no more to say, 
nothing more to create.  This is 'simple' boredom, and can be easily 
overcome by physical activity, by sub-mergence in the material world, 
wherein one's actions acquire 'meaning' through the pre-conceived 
_pattern_ they follow.  

A more profound boredom is that which culminates in ANGUISH: this is the 
transcendent boredom of the _idle_, and it involves a transcendent 
_lack_.  This 'lack' arises when one loses touch with the ground(ing) of 
one's being -- and most profoundly when Nothingness, the ever-open(ing) 
space of 'begetting', is closed off.  This closing-off of, or 
severing-of-contact with, the Nothing from which the emergent emerged, 
is brought about by the debasing _pull_ of the 'material' world, and is 
a condition from which one must actively labor to escape.  But for the 
eternal emergent, who is continuously extending his/her presence and 
creative thought into the Nothingness with which s/he has remained 
essentially connected, like flowing water from a spring, such a severing 
or momentary loss is brought about by a substantial flaw or lack within 
the emergent herself.  Such a lack or flaw can be revealed in the 
revelation of a primal dependence, that is, when one realizes certain 
limits that have been reflexively acquired during the primal moment of 
emergence from Nothingness.  The limit which is capable of halting the 
activity of the pure emergent is to be sought in the difference between 
KNOWLEDGE (gnosis) and WISDOM (sophia).

Wisdom is _interior_, it is acquired by the individual who comes to know 
him/herself through EXPERIENCE.  It is said of 'The Father', the All 
(who, judging by his epithets, can be understood as The Nothing), in 
_The Tripartite Tractate_, that "He alone is the one who knows himself 
_as he is_," and so "He transcends all _wisdom_, and is above all 
intellect" (_The Nag Hammadi Library in English_: E.J. Brill, 1978, 
1990, p. 62; my emphasis).  To transcend all wisdom is to have no need 
of self-discovery, or 'becoming'.  Knowledge, then, is _exterior_, and 
involves the contemplation, understanding, and eventually the grasping 
of the nature and 'meaning' of events and existents.  

The revelation of the limit is achieved when one becomes conscious of 
one's existence as a quest for a finite point, or an 'end of becoming'.  
Unlike Bataille, who writes, in _Inner Experience_, "I wanted experience 
to lead where it would, not to lead to some endpoint given in advance" 
(tr. Boldt, SUNY 1988, p. 3), the 'flawed' emergent conceives a personal 
teleology, one which posits the origin as the end, which sees the primal 
Nothing as the serene perfection of Being; and this emergent desires to 
know the 'deeper meaning', the nature, of this silent void.  And, since 
the quest for this end involves numerous acts of creation on the part of 
the emergent, when all activity is eventually exhausted, all that will 
be discovered of that Nothingness is that it is the eternal unknown -- 
which is like unto a brick wall.

"If I said decisively: 'I have seen God', that which I see would change.  
Instead of the inconceivable unknown -- wildly free before me, leaving 
me wildly free before it -- there would be a dead object ...." (ibid., 
p. 4).  ................................................

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Edward


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