Anagoge VI: In the Beginning was the Question

Previously in the Premiseless Imperative Series:
Introduction
Kimetikos I: Foundations
Kimetikos II: Theory
Kimetikos III: Practice
Anagoge I: If You Want to be Saved, Admit That You’re A Sinner
Anagoge II: Achtung, Babies!
Anagoge III: Shooting For the Existential Buzz
Anagoge IV: The Perfect Home in Just an Hour
Anagoge V: Scattered Brains Are Better Brains

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“The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.”
– Erich Fromm

If you’ve been following this series, by now you’re probably wondering where it’s going. When, you may be asking, do I get to have this gnosis thing (if, of course, you haven’t yet experienced it by doing the previous exercises)?

If not, if you don’t have any questions about this process, congratulations! You’re either already enlightened, or you’re so content being unenlightened that you don’t need it. Or, you’re dead. Regardless, you should probably stop reading this and get back to work, especially if you’re dead.

Of course you have questions, though.  So far, each of these posts has been designed to get you to ask questions– that’s been my ultimate purpose here all along. You may, or may not, be familiar with the concept of the Via Negativa,  a spiritual method of knowing God by describing what it is not.  There’s an excellent example of this in the Secret Book of John (this is from the Davies translation):

The One is without boundaries
Nothing exists outside of it to border it
The One cannot be investigated
Nothing exists apart from it to investigate it
The One cannot be measured
Nothing exists external to it to measure it

The One cannot be seen
For no one can envision it
The One is eternal
For it exists forever
The One is inconceivable
For no one can comprehend it
The One is indescribable
For no one can put any words to it.

What you might not know, however, is that one of the definitions of the word “Logos” is Question. If this is the case, I like to apply this meaning to the opening lines of the Gospel of John: “In the Beginning was the Question, and the Question was with God, and the Question was God.” The methodology I’m trying to employ is the Path of Radical Inquiry, the Via Paradoxia, salvation through the Double Bind.

You can’t know anything without asking about it; the question must precede the answer, so it seems to me that God itself is a Question, and its act of asking about itself is the basis of creation and emanation.

I’ve named this series “The Premiseless Imperative” because to succeed, to experience gnosis, we absolutely must try to cultivate an absence of premise, an absence of assumption. We must try to approach every situation, every interaction with the world of forms, without premise. We must try to experience pure Being, communion with the Great Objective Deity (GOD!), but to do so, we must eliminate all prior states of individuation by constantly and deliberately asking questions.

An example: we might think, “such-and-such a politician is evil. Therefore I hate him.” But, if he’s acting according to his concept of good, is he still evil? What are the circumstances surronding him that may have made him evil? Without knowing experiencing every single circumstance surrounding him, does anything other than our own mind make him evil? What about this “mind” thing? What exactly is “mind”? Does “mind” exist as an ideal, or simply as a series of chemical reactions? If it’s the latter, what caused the reactions that made me think so-and-so is evil?

Is it ever possible for us to know something, definitively? And, isn’t there a danger of falling into the error of solipsism, in which we consider ourselves the only mind that exists? Yes, and yes, but the answer to either of these questions is the answer to both. This Answer, a Great and Terrible Secret Mystery, is Gnosis itself.

The act of inquiry is the single definitive act of conciousness. Every great thought, every great philosophy, spirituality, movement, etc. began with a question. Asking questions is also the most radical act one can perform, and the most essential skill needed to live within the confines of the world of forms. Many of the great teachers of enlightenment– Jesus, Socrates, Gautama Buddha and their adherents, for example– chose the dialectic form, question and answer, to impart information to their students. Information doesn’t “stick” if it doesn’t come in response to honest questions.

The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us, how will our end come?”
Jesus said, “Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end?
—–
Mayo: “What is Zen?”
Patriarch: “What is your original face before you were born?”
—–
Socrates: And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Again, according to our interpretation of Gnostic creation mythology, existence began when God asked itself a question, which we might express as “So?” In asking, God began the process of creating distinctions between objective and subjective, self and other. This act of questioning led the God to continue investigating itself, researching itself, learning about itself. Each Aeon God manifested is an additional question, coupled with its own answer. What is Peace? What is Perfection? Where does Understanding come from? What is God? In contrast, the Demiurge never asked about himself; he proceeded under the assumption that he already knew exactly what the heck was going on when he sprang into existence. Remind you of anyone?

Asking questions is Godlike. When we ask questions we fulfill our roles as sensory organs of God in its eternal quest to come to know itself. Let’s look at another way of reading the passage from The Secret Book of John we quoted above:

What bounds the One?
The One is without boundaries
Nothing exists outside of it to border it
How can we investigate it?
The One cannot be investigated
Nothing exists apart from it to investigate it
How big is it?
The One cannot be measured
Nothing exists external to it to measure it

What does it look like?
The One cannot be seen
For no one can envision it
How old is it?
The One is eternal
For it exists forever
What’s the best way to understand it?
The One is inconceivable
For no one can comprehend it
How do you describe it?
The One is indescribable
For no one can put any words to it.

In Gnostic tradition, the Path of Radical Inquiry can be summarized by the second saying from the Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus said, “He or she who seeks should not stop seeking until he or she finds what he or she is seeking. When they find what they are seeking, they will be troubled. When they are troubled, they will be amazed, and will become king over the All.”

Your exercise: read the Gnostic text “The Interpretation of Knowledge.” You’ll notice that the section beginning, “But he was being pursued in that place….” and ending with “…destroyed the arrogant teacher by teaching her to die”contains tons of those little lacunae […] indicating an area in which the text was destroyed.

Once you’ve read through the text, fill in each of the lacunae with a possible reconstruction of what might have been there originally. This probably seems like a crazy and impossible task, but don’t worry about that. Instead, for each lacuna, ask yourself questions, writing your questions as you go. Take the questions as far as you can. You might ask, what should go here? What might this have said? How does this fit into Gnostic doctrine? What is meant here? Who is filling in these lacunae? Try to come up with a dozen or so core questions you can ask about each one.

Anagoge IV – The Perfect Home In Just An Hour

Previously in the Premiseless Imperative Series:
Introduction
Kimetikos I: Foundations
Kimetikos II: Theory
Kimetikos III: Practice
Anagoge I: If You Want to be Saved, Admit That You’re A Sinner
Anagoge II: Achtung, Babies!
Anagoge III: Shooting For the Existential Buzz

“If you contemplate the world, how long it is before you and also how long it is after you, you will find that your life is one single day and your sufferings, one single hour.”

– The Secret Book of James

So, to review: thus far we’ve created our Evil Twin, we’ve begun to learn how to pay attention and we’ve investigated the nature of infinity while shooting for the existential buzz. Although each of these taken individually could potentially inspire the spirit to lofty heights, remember that they’re actually steps in a process.

In the last step, we came to understand that in a very real sense, we each contain infinity, that to God we already exist in all of our infinite manifestations. Using this simple idea, that all manifestations within the world of forms contain a reflection of perfection, a subset of God, we can begin to understand that perfection itself also exists as a subset within the world of forms.

At its core, everything and everyone that exists– *everything* and *everyone*!– contains a reflection of the perfect. Everything contains a reflection of genuine goodness and completeness that we’re not usually able to see.  Everything and everyone contains a spark of divinity.

We often like to sentimentalize this spark of divinity in everything on purely aesthetic grounds. We recognize perfection in, say, the laughter of a child or the colors of a flower or the softness of a dog’s ear. This sentimentalization relies on our perception, and also on “accidents” of culture, society, etc. When we focus our search for divinity in these things, we allow our emotion to cloud our percetion, and we can miss the perfect qualities inherent in the mundane.

If we miss the perfect qualities inherent in the mundane, it begins to reflect on the way we present ourselves to the world. We might neglect to clean up after ourselves. We might walk or sit with a slouch. We might not listen completely to the sounds that surround us. We might recoil from the idea of making our surroundings reflect our sense of place and purpose because it seems like drudgery. We might not take the effort to do the dishes.

We live as a reflection of our perception of the world. If we experience the mundanity of our immediate surroundings as worthless, or fail to recognize the reflected divinity in our houseplants and chairs and knickknacks and soap and clothing, then our quest for enlightenment will be futile.

Some religious traditions decorate their holy places with paintings and sculptures designed to elevate the soul into sublimity. This makes sense; if we reflect our surroundings and are surrounded by images of holy things, we might connect with the holy. Unfortunately, in these traditions, we oftentime lose touch with the holiness that exists *outside* of the places of worship. The Church becomes the House of God and we have to visit God at home to experience divinity.

Some choose to exclude decoration from their places of worship so as not to distract one from contemplation of divinity. This makes sense, as well; less external clutter means less internal clutter. In these traditions, however, we often lose the ability to see the divinity reflected in matter.

So, we prefer the middle ground. We prefer to recognize the divinity within our surroundings no matter where we are, in order to transform every space into holy space. The *contents* of a space shouldn’t matter. It’s how these contents speak to us, and what we experience through them, that becomes important. We can never say just where or when a divine inbreaking will occur. So, instead of building spiritual temples or tracing pentacles on the ground or trying to touch God by attending a service of some kind, all of which are worthy paths but are not *this* path, let us prepare the Way by “transforming” our perception of our surroundings. In other words, instead of asking God to visit us, let’s try to live as though we’re the guests in God’s house.

Remember, the world of forms is an imperfect illusion. Underneath and within the illusion, however, we might recognize the infinity which dwells in all things, and allow it to express itself through us.

Exercise: Take an hour– just an hour, no more– and clean up either your kitchen or your bedroom.  Be as thorough as possible: vacuum, dust, do dishes, fold laundry, etc. While cleaning, be conscious of each item. If you are folding a shirt, for instance, say to yourself, “shirt,” or “this shirt contains an infinite number of points,” or, “God dwells in this shirt.”

Just do it for an hour; if you aren’t finished after the hour, then that’s fine, leave the rest. Don’t listen to music or talk to anyone while you’re cleaning; exist solidly in the moment. Now, keep this room in the same state of cleanliness for at least a week. This doesn’t mean you should clean it right before you continue the exercise– this means constantly being present and aware when you’re in the room.

After the week, provided your room is in the same state of cleanliness it was when you finished your hour, take another hour and clean another room (or pick up where you left off last time). Wait a week and keep it clean, etc. Eventually, you’ll have gone through your entire house.

If your house is already clean, clean it more deeply. Scrub the tub and the toilet. Dust each book individually. Wash the windows. Alphabetize your spices. Organize your filing cabinet. The point is to be present with each of the mundane things in your life, no matter how small or insignificant, and to recognize that each item, even the toilet brush, contains the infinite.

Anagoge III – Shooting for the Existential Buzz

Previously in the Premiseless Imperative Series:
Introduction
Kimetikos I: Foundations
Kimetikos II: Theory
Kimetikos III: Practice
Anagoge I: If You Want to be Saved, Admit That You’re A Sinner
Anagoge II: Achtung, Babies!

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“The fear of infinity is a form of myopia that destroys the possibility of seeing the actual infinite, even though it in its highest form has created and sustains us, and in its secondary transfinite forms occurs all around us and even inhabits our minds.”

– Georg Cantor

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The idea of God as Infinite is one of the oldest cliches in the book. It’s a basis for most religious systems in which God is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, and bigger than a breadbox. The idea is also a basis for all kinds of crazy philosophical speculation surrounding the idea of the “infinite regression,” which essentially involves every single dichtomy’s capacity to regress into an infinite number of permutations. An excellent example is Philip K. Dick’s Infinite Theophany, highly recommended for our purposes. Consider it a reading assignment!

Gnostic mythology also acknowledges the infinite nature of God– not the creator God, but the God above and beyond everything else, that to which we sometimes refer as the “Limitless Light,” or “The Great Invisible Spirit,” or “The Unknowable God.” Because it’s so freakin’ huge, so utterly infinite, it can’t even be described, because as soon as you start trying to describe it, you’re giving it a name, and giving something a name limits it. As some old buffalo-riding bat once said, “The Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao.” For this reason, in Gnostic literature, we often find this Ultimate God discussed in negative terms, such as the following from The Secret Book of John:

He is eternal, since he does not need anything. For he is total perfection. He did not lack anything, that he might be completed by it; rather he is always completely perfect in light. He is illimitable, since there is no one prior to him to set limits to him. He is unsearchable, since there exists no one prior to him to examine him. He is immeasurable, since there was no one prior to him to measure him. He is invisible, since no one saw him. He is eternal, since he exists eternally. He is ineffable, since no one was able to comprehend him to speak about him. He is unnameable, since there is no one prior to him to give him a name.

“He is immeasurable light, which is pure, holy (and) immaculate. He is ineffable, being perfect in incorruptibility. (He is) not in perfection, nor in blessedness, nor in divinity, but he is far superior. He is not corporeal nor is he incorporeal. He is neither large nor is he small. There is no way to say, ‘What is his quantity?’ or, ‘What is his quality?’, for no one can know him. He is not someone among (other) beings, rather he is far superior. Not that he is (simply) superior, but his essence does not partake in the aeons nor in time.

There’s a whole discussion we could have about describing God in the negative (“Via Negativa”), but we’ll leave that aside for now.

Getting a real, honest to goodness sense of this limitlessness can help us produce, within ourselves, an “existential buzz”– an indescribable feeling or awareness of the nature of the infinite. It’s like gnosis-lite, and it’s useful to occasionally shoot for an existential buzz, and recognize it when it happens. To shoot for the buzz, let’s take a look at infinity itself and see what we can do with it as a concept. Since infinity is pretty much one of the most common properties of God, getting to know infinity can really help somebody who is attempting to get to know God.

Infinity wears just as many masks, and is especially useful for those who pursue gnosis because of its wonderful predilection for paradox. Take good ol’ Zeno of Elea, famous for coming up with some excellent paradoxes that have boggled minds for millenium.

Suppose a very fast runner — such as mythical Atalanta — needs to run for the bus. Clearly before she reaches the bus stop she must run half-way, as Aristotle says. There’s no problem there; supposing a constant motion it will take her 1/2 the time to run half-way there and 1/2 the time to run the rest of the way. Now she must also run half-way to the half-way point — i.e., a 1/4 of the total distance — before she reaches the half-way point, but again she is left with a finite number of finite lengths to run, and plenty of time to do it. And before she reaches 1/4 of the way she must reach 1/2 of 1/4 = 1/8 of the way; and before that a 1/16; and so on. There is no problem at any finite point in this series, but what if the halving is carried out infinitely many times? The resulting series contains no first distance to run, for any possible first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. However it does contain a final distance, namely 1/2 of the way; and a penultimate distance, 1/4 of the way; and a third to last distance, 1/8 of the way; and so on. Thus the series of distances that Atalanta is required to run is: …, then 1/16 of the way, then 1/8 of the way, then 1/4 of the way, and finally 1/2 of the way (of course we are not suggesting that she stops at the end of each segment and then starts running at the beginning of the next — we are thinking of her continuous run being composed of such parts). And now there is a problem, for this description of her run has her travelling an infinite number of finite distances, which, Zeno would have us conclude, must take an infinite time, which is to say it is never completed. And since the argument does not depend on the distance or who or what the mover is, it follows that no finite distance can ever be traveled, which is to say that all motion is impossible.

This paradox shows us not only that infinity can be based on addition (i.e. infinity is everything all added together– it’s huge!), but can also be based on division (i.e. it’s theoretically possible to divide something an infinite number of times– it’s tiny!).

Look at it another way: suppose we want to measure a one-dimensional line. To do so, we first divide the line into halves. We then divide each half into another half, repeating ad infinitum. Do we ever reach a point at which we can add up all of the segments of the line and arrive at a single conclusive measurement? Since a point, an object existing in no dimensions, has no measurable length, any given one-dimensional surface contains an infinitely small number of zero-dimensional points. Extrapolating from this, since any one-dimensional surface has no measurable width, any two-dimensional object contains an infinitely small number of one-dimensional surfaces. And, of course, any three-dimensional object contains an infinitely small number of two-dimensional surfaces.

How does this then relate to “higher” dimensions? Well, each three-dimensional object exists in what we might call an “instance”– an infinitely small measurement of time. In other words, we measure time in hours, which are divided into minutes, which are divided into seconds, etc. etc. etc. Following the above logic, there are an infinite number of “instances” within each experience of space/time. Or, to turn this idea on its head, you are an infinite number of instances of a single four-dimensional object which is the sum of your instances! Were we able to look at you from the standpoint of a 4-d object, you’d resemble a sort of snake-like blob that simultaneously filled every single spacial location you occupied during your life. And a 5-d object would contain an infinite number of these snake-like blobs, ad infinitum!

Donnie Darko knows what I’m talkin’ about.

Now toss motion into the mix. Suppose we have a cylinder, like a soda can, and it’s painted blue on one third (vertically), red on one third, and yellow on the other third. Now suppose we lay this cylinder on its side, horizontally, and rotate this cylinder. How would this motion appear to someone on a two-dimensional plane which intersects the cylinder along its axis of rotation? The 2-d denizen wouldn’t see the entire cylinder, nor would she be able to percieve the motion of the rotation. Instead, depending on the speed of the rotation relative to the observer, she would see a series of colored lines flashing in a pattern: blue, red, yellow. If the cylinder rotates fast enough, the 2-d person wouldn’t see anything but a fuzzy gray line! With this in mind, what would a 4-d object look like to someone in the third dimension? What would 4-d odors smell like? Would we be able to “feel” a 4-d object?

Got that buzz yet? No? Let’s keep trying.

Our pal Georg Cantor, quoted above, is the father of set theory, and spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about infinity. He came up with the concept of the measurement of infinite sets using the Hebrew letter Aleph (א). Although the idea of a “set” of infinite items seems odd, Cantor, a devoutly religious man, had an interesting way of looking at the relationship between humanity and the universe using the language of infinite sets.

To Cantor, the human and the universe were equally important, and equally infinite. The macrocosm, thought Cantor, contains an infinite number of points. If we start with the universe, or God, and divide into two, and continue this process of division, we would never stop– we could go on for an infinite amount of time. However, said Cantor, the same can be said for any single object within that macrocosm, humanity included! No matter where one starts within the great chain of being, one can arrive at a manifestation of infinity! Every portion of infinity, said Cantor, contains infinity itself!

This is how infinite sets manifest; the infinite set of points within a human, for instance, is an infinitely large subset of the greater infinite set which contains the infinite set of points within the universe.

So, to continue, infinity is present within everything that exists. If God is infinite, then God is manifest within everything that exists.  As a being with infinite dimensions, God transcends space and time to such an extent that what we perceive as motion, change and time would by necessity appear as a single unit to God, as God would perceive every instant simultaneously. Thus, Existence as what has been, is now, and will be, as we perceive it, is defined by our own limitations! Now, if God exists outside of space and time and percieves it as a sort of motionless block, then God has access to any “instance” within space and time regardless of what we perceive as some kind of linear order.

Here’s an interesting exercise: find a brick, or brick-shaped object, and draw a line from one end to the other. At one end write the number one. At the other, write the number 1000. Now make a few points on the brick with chalk– doesn’t matter where. Once you’ve made your points, touch each with a finger. Some points will be closer to one, some to 1000, some on top, some at the bottom. Do any of these points exist “before” the others? Is it more difficult to touch the points closer to 1 or to 1000? Is it tougher to touch the points on the top, or the bottom? What would the brick look like if you drew a dot on every single individual point on the brick’s surface?

Here’s another exercise: find a block of Swiss cheese– the kind with holes. Mark the cheese’s surface with the same 1-1000 line you made on the brick. This time, mark some increments on the line as well, say steps of ten or one-hundred. Now, carefully slice the cheese into sandwich-sized slices perpandicular to the line. Now, on each slice, assign each hole a distinguishing mark– let’s say letters. So on any given slice you’ll have hole A, hole B, hole C, etc. Try to make sure the holes you mark match their counterparts on the other slices. Now for the fun part: get some thread, and cut enough lengths of thread to represent each hole. So if you have six holes in each slice, you’ll want six pieces of thread. Label each piece of string A, B, C, etc., and then begin reconstructing the block of cheese by threading each piece of string through its corresponding holes in each slice.

And another exercise: try to come up with an algebraic formula representing God, the universe and humanity. Spend as much time as you like.

Eventually, at some point, all of this contemplation of the nature of infinity will give you that buzz. You’ll have a weird ideation about your relative location in the whole scheme of things, and sense the vastness as part of yourself. This isn’t some namby-pamby New Age “all is one” craziness– the idea is to cultivate the ability to call up this feeling at any time, in any place. Using the skills you’ve been developing, pay strict attention to this feeling, and you’ll begin to experience it more often, sometimes in relation to other objects around you.

When you can call up the existential buzz at will, you’re ready to continue.

Finally, another reading assignment: if you haven’t yet, read Flatland by E.A. Abbott. It’s a pretty fast, easy and funny read, well worth re-reading if you so desire!