Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 19:09:50 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: The unfathomable Depth of Wonder



The Valentinians spoke of Depth.  For them this Depth was a
non-spatial, non-temporal are(n)a in which a(-)cosmic dream/drama was
acted out.  This Depth served as a sort of 'anti-space', a nothingness
forever capable of receiving the residue of hylic Thought; one might
even say that this Depth was, for the Valentinian Gnostics, _Love_: "a
powerful _daimon_, an intermediary between _theos_ and _hyle_" (Plato,
_The Symposium_, my rendering).  For this Depth was not actually
OUTSIDE the experience of the existing subject, but rather
transcendently active WITHIN the living experience, being dependent
upon the seeking subject for its articulation.

The possibility of creating something, a concept, a text, that has no
place in reality, that cannot serve even as a metaphysical grounding
for a theory of being, since Depth exceeds being's necessity -- this
possibility must be considered an act of pure creation, for rational
discourse can only account for its presence and effectivity by
consigning Depth's possibility to the realm of myth ... YET: (in
brackets) "even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for
the myth is composed of wonders" (Aristotle, _Metaphysics_, I:2).

The power of Depth resides in its lack of origin, either in the form
of a purely precedent _something_, or a 'thing' derived from our
quasi-creative, textual-interpretive (hylic) existence.  Conceivably,
to push aside causal progression, the idea of Depth may stem from a
remembrance (_anamnesis_) of a primal potentiality resident in the
emergent being.  The all-purpose nature of Depth may thus be explained
-- if Truth is the patency of being, then that which lends beings
their obviousness in the face of the world must, of necessity, be
all-purpose and beyond the realm/grasp of language.  The Depth cannot
be frozen (preserved) by cryogenic discourse.  The tortuous texts of
the Gnostics, which deal with the primal moment, reveal this.

The 'Depth', then, as a 'something' which cannot be trapped in
discourse, can only find its true expression in _mythology_ -- in a
cosmogony that reveals (un-veils) the emergent Mind in its imposed
direction, and therefore lays the groundwork for the resulting drama
of salvation. 

  ...................................................

Depth reveals itself in the interstices of language, not as a lack but
as a personal FORCE resplendent in its individualistic virtues ...
allowing the self to rely only upon a phantom, on the merest pretense
of a spirit, a guiding light (-- "for light is a bond, and no ignoble
thing" [Plato, _The Republic_, book VI] --) since the Depth gives to
the self a space, an opening calling only for expression,
_engendrance_, and not groundless creation ... nothing having to do
with the void, that greatest of hazards --

The Depth is not the Void, for the void is that fertile darkness which
writhes in externality and accepts all sorts of seeds; it is a chaotic
space that yields to the basest of desires.  It is possible that Depth
is the Void penetrated and delimited -- but by what?  ... There is the
wish, by virtue of which no existent would ever have emerged: the wish
to no longer be unrevealed, without measure and containment, de-void
of the possibility of inward movement (salvation), the wish to no
longer be spared by the Void, but to enter into contestation with it
and to become a CAUSE.

Even time has an origin, and space is derived from anti-space ... so
Depth is understood as the unspeakably brilliant mono-transcendent
aptitude of all things.  A conundrum.


~~ P.V.













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