From: "Edward Moore" <monsieurtexteem-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Soul and Body Two
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 19:40:51 PDT


Hello Luke Pellen.  Our bodies have quite a bit of water in them, don't 
they?  I don't know exactly how much.  Enough to fill, say, a five 
gallon fish tank?  Anyway...

You commented on my Soul and Body:
>
>You're not a Cartesian dualist are you? or a vitalist? I am not sure
>exactly what you are implying - that "soul" and "body" are two 
distinctly
>independent phenomena? 

Not independent.  But like water and the fish tank.  Only we leak, and 
take stuff in.  We only know about the stuff that passes through us 
because we have a body.  But we certainly don't deny the existence of 
stuff that doesn't pass through us... do we?  If we deny anything, why 
do we continue to educate ourselves?  

>I cannot see any scientific justification for
>believing in a "soul" (unless, through successive degrees of 
approximation,
>we reduce it to some arbitrary operational definition); of course I do 
see
>a justification for using the word in a poetic sense.

How can I dismiss science?  How?  When the whole idea of science 
animates the dualistic provocation of lived experience and colorful 
conjecture which we call progress?  "Arbitrary" is more like it.  The 
"soul" (only a metaphor!) is always out there, ready to pass through 
some receptive body....  

> 
>> The soul is a metaphor for the UNIQUE MATTER that makes possible our 
>> animating energy -- our processing energy.  "The mind is a body, is 
>> matter, and the body is a mind -- the seat of consciousness" (Moore, 
>> _The Suicide of Matter_).
>
>Matter (at the atomic and molecular level) is not unique, it is in fact
>completely interchangable [you've met one carbon atom and you've met 
them
>all]. What is unique is the system itself - the assembly and 
interaction of
>these components. 

On what level are we speaking here?  Of what degree...?  I'm no 
scientist, but does the carbon atom receive... oh, what shall I say... 
extra-material influences that affect its responses to external forces 
at a future date?  Does an atom EVOLVE... not physically, but 
SPIRITUALLY?  The power to think above the immediate (or near-immediate) 
produces an idea, or a mythology, of a system that may or may not 
override the formative (original?) system -- thank science for that...

>But yes, there is no mind/matter dichotomy (the East
>always knew this), just as there is really no matter/energy dichotomy.
> 
>> The soul does not dwell in the body.  The soul is energy from a 
process 
>> that PASSES THROUGH THE BODY.  This energy becomes "trapped" in the 
>> MATTER and animates it.  All is random, and is UNIQUE as far as it 
goes.
>
>You are a vitalist! :-)
> 
>> The random gift is immortality -- _poetic_ immortality: the only 
>> possible kind.  It follows a _reincarnation_ -- another metaphor, 
this 
>> time for the artistic METALEPSIS: the illusion of having fathered 
one's 
>> own fathers (Harold Bloom, 1976).
>
>Immortality exists in the purely subjective sense. Did I exist one 
thousand
>years ago? No. Will I exist in one thousand years hence? No (well, 
probably
>not). All I will ever know is the period of my own existence, bracketed 
by
>oblivion. I cannot experience the unexperiencable (oblivion) and so my
>lifetime will have a strange topology; it will be finite and yet,
>subjectively, by living "in the moment", it will last forever: As long 
as I
>am alive I cannot be dead, and when I am dead there is no "I" to speak 
of.

"Existence is elsewhere."  (I couldn't resist)  But did you understand 
what I was getting at when I spoke of metalepsis?  If you are able to 
achieve a total identification with someone who existed a thousand years 
ago (and still exists as an influential force via their writing or art), 
then you can experience the activity of your own thought from the 
distance of the time-span.  Longinus knew of this, in a way, when he 
wrote about the "sublime" in art -- one of the effects of the "sublime" 
being the sensation that the work in question is or could have been a 
product of your own creative self.  If your "soul" is nothing more nor 
less than received influences that pass through your body, which 
"processes" them, only to pass back out into the world when you die, 
then you can achieve an immortality as a spirit always waiting to be 
born... that is, if you leave behind a WORK to be interpreted.  
Interpretation is altering, it defers birth by an "unautonomous creative 
act."  When you leave behind a WORK, you also leave behind a greater 
body... an _incorruptible_ body.  

> 
>> Here the definition of Art must be expanded to include any "artifact" 
>> that produces interpretation, or interpretive acts: the energy of a 
>> consciousness passing infinitely through human brain cells, 
INDIVIDUALS.  
>> Every individual is a brain cell in the _godhead_.
>
>"every individual is a brain cell in the godhead": This is one of those
>strange  analogies - and the easiest one for us to concieve. But we 
must
>remember that hierarchies produce strange results. A collection of 
atoms is
>nothing like a "super-atom" - it is a molecule or compound. A 
collection of
>cells is nothing like a "super-cell" - it is an organ, something quite
>different. So why should a collection of individuals [or brains] 
produce a
>"super-individual" [or "super-brain"] (Godhead)?

My use of the "godhead" metaphor (notice that I did not, neither here 
nor in my previous text, capitalize the term.  That is significant.) was 
not intended to signify a "super-individual," but rather an overriding 
system that our highly (some might say _over_) evolved thought has made 
necessary.  I am by no means religious, although perhaps I gave such an 
impression, but I would never deny the _necessity_ of religion... for 
certain people... an ever-decreasing majority of people.  The individual 
(the "brain cell") is not alone in the world, of course, and is 
incapable of any action that will not produce some sort of result which 
will be felt, however minutely, by a far greater number of other 
individuals than s/he could possibly have knowledge of.

> 
>> The random gift of immortality is bestowed by the moving world -- the 
>> godhead -- on certain individuals called Artists; because these 
>> individuals are or were most conscious of number: they had, as Artaud 
>> has put it, "the obsession of counting," which allowed them to 
"reduce 
>> the chaos of the material world to its principles, [and explain] by a 
>> kind of awesome mathematics how Nature is ordered and how she directs 
>> the birth of the forms that she pulls out of chaos" (_A Voyage to the 
>> Land of the Tarahumara_).
>
>And scientists I take it... amongst the scientists can be found some of 
the
>greatest artistic geniuses.
> 
>> For the artist to achieve immortality, the operation of his UNIQUE 
>> MATTER must consist in its endless quest for autonomy against the 
>> insurmountable odds of the living, becoming godhead.  When Breton 
speaks 
>> of "autonomy of thought," how open, how wide is his field of vision?  
>> The individual... the individual is always a _reincarnated example_ 
>> trying to bring about his own birth.  "Poetic immortality" is the 
>> "collective" life of a far greater "being."
>
>This is mysticism bordering on religion. Is this "being" really a 
being, or
>fantasy? An interesting question to ask yourself is: if I had a choice,
>would I prefer somekind of "God" to exist or not? Personally, I abhor 
the
>idea of a God, it would be a paranoid schizophrenics worst nightmare. 
But
>can I put this thought aside in the spirit of truth? I am afraid not. I
>would, by necessity, have to lie to myself. I fear that unequivical
>evidence proving the existence of God would drive me insane.

The existence of a god who is an individual, or even a trinity, would 
drive me insane too.  But I don't think a true god(head) would be an 
Other, or a creator.  Nor do I think that mankind "created" god... 
rather, I think that mankind is not yet done creating the godhead.

>
>If we, as a collective of components, give rise to some far greater 
being,
>then it would seem likely that we are forever excluded from 
understanding
>the nature of this being.

It would, at this point in our history, seem so.  But we are not 
prophets.  The "birth" of the Christian god, I would say, was the result 
of a despair the likes of which you allude to: the despair of being 
forever excluded from understanding the nature of our being.  Just one 
result.  It all comes down to _hope_.  Art is religion too.  Science is 
driven by this hope, among other things.

> 
>> The artist must pretend to have emerged from an inner void.  The 
artist 
>> creates the illusion of being self-generating, rather than an endless 
>> continuation of a single element, or "train of thought" within or of 
the 
>> godhead.
>
>Does this deny the artist true understanding of himself, if he 
"pretends"
>to emerge, if he "creates the illusion" of self-generating? 

The artist does not know s/he is pretending.  The illusion is a 
spontaneous creation.  The artist's other can only speak of pretending.

>I would say
>that the artist has such intimate self-understanding and mental 
flexibility
>that, in effect, he DOES emerge from the void, he IS self-generating - 
it
>is an attitude more than anything.

The idea of a self is invented or "created," and one should, I would 
hope, understand what one has created.  It _is_ an attitude... nothing 
else.  The word "idea" is important here.

> 
>> AUTOMATISM, of any sort, is a surrendering of the self to the chaos 
of 
>> the godhead... to be thrown about...
>
>We must beware total automatism - total madness...

Why?  

> 
>>    in short, it is a perpetual regeneration of metaphor ontop of 
>> metaphor, without first attempting to strip everything away... 
arriving 
>> at principles, "counting," etc.
>
>But the topology of any sort of metaphor map would be hopelessly 
tangled -
>metaphor beside, above, beneath, and even within metaphor. Were does it
>start? Were does it end? Every strand interweaves with and supports 
every
>other.

Exactly.  And I would argue that metaphor began with religion.

> 
>> Reaction to an infinitude of received influences is _automatism_... 
is 
>> _dissolving_...
>
>You must carefully balance the rate of receiving against the rate of
>dissolving, lest you dissappear...
> 
>> The artist masturbates and continues.  The artist can even become a 
>> god... ENDLESSLY INTERPRETED.  Just look at Christ.
>
>The artist becomes both God and interpretor to himself - more often 
than
>not a cruel and painful combination...

Yes.  But it is a combination that can, and has, produced genius.  
IMMORTAL genius.

I thank you, Luke, for your valuable response.  I'd like to hear more.

Edward Moore
<monsieurtexteEM-AT-hotmail.com>




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