From: "Luke Pellen" <luke-AT-seol.net.au>
Subject: Re: Soul and Body Two
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 97 15:58:07 PDT


Greetings Edward Moore (I don't believe we've met?),


>    How dreadful will be the day, when fate cleaves those two 
>    kinsmen -- soul and body! (Soul & Body II, an Old English poem)
> 
> 
> ... they were separated to begin with.

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? 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.
 
> 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. 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.
 
> 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)?
 
> 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.

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.
 
> 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? 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.
 
> 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...
 
>    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.
 
> 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...


Luke.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Luke Pellen
e-mail: luke-AT-seol.net.au