Feature 76609 · Esoteric scholarly exegesis

1is the God who discloses Himself through the creatures. But God in Himself is beyond all examination. According to a hadith qudsi already quoted, “My heavens and My earth embrace Me not, but the heart of My believing servant does embrace Me.” This God embraced by the heart cannot be the God of incomparability, but rather the God of self-disclosure and similarity. The spiritual traveler reaches a point where he abandons all attempt to examine God in Himself, since he knows that the Essence remains forever unknown. Hence the Shaykh dedicates the chapter following the one on exam- ination to “abandoning examination” (tark al-murdqaba). ¶ Examination is an imaginal descent (tanazzul_ mithalt) which brings about nearness. But the level of the knowers of God demands that “Nothing is

2these people had different theories about what was wrong with the world, and suppose they were all right? Suppose all these conspiracy theories were going on at once? (laughs) So we bounced that around for a few drinking parties and then suddenly Shea said “You know, we could turn this into a novel.” We should really have dedicated the book to all the paranoids, from whom we learned so much. ¶ How do you see the future? Is it rosy, is it indeterminate? ¶ Robert Anton Wilson: I guess it’s indeterminate, but the possibility of a rosy future is at least as real as the possibility of a black future, so I prefer to put my imagination and will and energy into making the rosy future come true. ¶ Outro ¶ Just in case the above didn’t actually mean very much to you, a few words of outroduction are in order. Robert Anton Wilson is famous for many reasons, but far and away the largest

3the Muslim declaration of faith, the witnessing” (shahada), “[There is] no god but God, which is made up of both negation and affirmation and is considered the defini- tion of tawhid, the “declaration of God’s Unity” that is the heart of Islam. ¶ He/Not He ¶ The Koranic verse that Ibn al-‘Arabi cites more often than any other to show the radical ambiguity of existence was re- vealed after the battle of Badr, which turned in favor of the Muslims when the Prophet picked up a handful of sand and threw it in the direction of the enemy. Concerning the Prophet’s throwing of this sand, the Koran says, “You did not throw when you threw, but God threw (8:17). The verse affirms the individual reality of the Prophet, then negates it

4<bos>command whatsoever. For the Shari‘a has been established, and the obligatory, the incumbent, the recommended, the indif- ferent, and the reprehensible have all been clarified.’ Hence the divine command was cut off with the cutting off of proph- ecy (nubuwwa) and messengerhood (ri- sala). That is why the Messenger of God did not content himself with the cutting off only of messengerhood, lest someone prophecy still remains in the for he said, “Verily proph- ngerhood have been cut off, so there will be no prophet after me and no messenger.”* Hence not a single one of God’s creatures remained to whom God would give a command which would be a Law whereby he would worship. ¶ If, for example, [someone should say that] God has commanded

5of the mutation type, and processes of isolation or separation, which may be genetic, geographical, or even psychical. Territoriality would be a factor of the second type. See Lucien Cuenot, L’espece(Paris: G. Doin, 1936). ¶ [398] Paul Geroudet, Lespassereaux, 3 vols. (Paris: Delachaux et Niestle, 1951–1957), vol. 2, pp. 88–94. ¶ [399] In On Aggression, Lorenz makes a clear distinction between “anonymous flocks” such as schools of fish, which form milieu blocks; “local groups,” where recognition occurs only inside the territory and, at its strongest, between “neighbors”; and finally, societies founded on an autonomous “bond.” ¶ [400] K. Immelmann,

6<bos>Brian Bocking and Youxuan Wang point out, in their “Signs of Liberation?—A Semiotic Approach to Wisdom in Chinese Madhyamika Buddhism,” The Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Sept. 2006) ( See article in Ingenta, here), that Derrida on the Mend also works with the Chan/ Zen form of Buddhism, pioneering the comparison of this Far Eastern tradition and several Western semiotic themes: “As early as 1984, certain semiotic themes in Chinese Chan Buddhism were picked up in Robert Magliola, Derrida on the Mend,....” ¶ Roland Gérard Barthes ( Template:IPA-fr; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a

7made by symbolism for representing sexual material in dreams, the question is bound to arise of whether many of these symbols do not occur with a perman- ently fixed meaning, like the ‘grammalogues’ in short; and we shall feel tempted to draw up a new ‘dream-book’ on the decoding principle” (V:351). And, in fact, Freud never stopped proposing codes, rules of great generality. And the substitution of signifiers seems to be the essential activity of psychoanalytic interpretation. Certainly, Freud nevertheless stipulates an essential limitation on this activity. Or, rather, a double limitation. ¶ If we consider first verbal expression, as it is circumscribed in the dream, we observe that its sonority, the materiality of the expression, does not disappear before the signified, or at least cannot be

8is shown in this system. The number 4, for instance, is not so specially the result of adding one to three, or squaring two, or halving eight. It is a thing in itself, with all sorts of moral, sensible, and intellectual qualities. It symbolises such ideas as Law, Restraint, Power, Protection and Stability. ¶ In the Qabalistic system the original idea is Zero, [it is intentional to repeat here, in other language, the ideas explained already in this essay] which appears under three forms, rather as (in Chinese philosophy) the Tao becomes manifested little by little through the Teh, or as (in the best of the Hindu systems) the god of Destruction and Annihilation, Shiva, becomes manifested through the Infinite Energy, Sakti. The ¶ system begins therefore with Am-Nothing, Am Soph-Without Limit

9commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination. Instead he considered all of his activities to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world, which Dee called "pure verities". ¶ In his lifetime Dee amassed one of the largest libraries in England. His high status as a scholar also allowed him to play a role in Elizabethan politics. He served as an occasional adviser and tutor to Elizabeth I and nurtured relationships with her ministers Francis Walsingham and William Cecil. Dee also tutored and enjoyed patronage relationships with Sir Philip Sidney, his uncle Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and Edward Dyer. He also enjoyed patronage from Sir

10embraced them. u And Israel said unto Joseph: ‘ I had not thought to see thy face; and, lo, God hath let me see thy seed also/ “And Joseph brought them out from between his knees; and he fell down on his face to the earth. “And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought them near unto him. 14 And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger; and his left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly; for Ma¬ nasseh was the first-born. “And he

11lacaninireland.com <0x0C>9.4.58 (18) 241 ¶ constitution of the other qua capital Other, qua bearer of the spoken sign, is that with which it is difficult to establish the relationship which permits him, the hysteric, and this is the very definition that one can give of it, to hold on to his place as subject, and the male or female hysteric, is, to speak plainly, so open to the suggestion of speech, that there must be something in that. Somewhere in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud asks himself the question of the way in which this hypnosis originates. Its relationship to sleep is far from being transparent, and the enigmatic electivity which assimilates it to it, I mean is satisfied with it, or which on the contrary for other persons, opposes it to it, radically distances it

12"individual", "particular", "complex", etc., are primitive ideas of logic. Russell, e.g., says "individual" and "matrix" are "primitive ideas". This error is presumably to be explained by the fact that, by employment of variables instead of the generality sign, it comes to seem as if logic dealt with things which have been deprived of all properties except complexity. We forget that the indefinables of symbols (Urbilder von Zeichen) only occur under the generality sign, never outside it. ¶ Every proposition which says something indefinable about a thing is a subject-predicate proposition; every proposition which says some­thing indefinable about two things expresses a dual relation between these things, and so on. Thus every proposition which contains only one name and one indefinable form is a subject-predicate proposition, etc. An indefinable symbol can only be a name, and therefore we can know, by the symbol of an atomic proposition,

13can appear in the modality inherent to the statement. By journeying in the associations between ‘it’s that’ or ‘it’s not that’ on the one hand and ‘it’s that’ and ‘it’s not that’ on the other, the analyst and the analysed can experience certain effects. These different subjective effects, as much on the side of the analyst as on the side of the analysed, colour the said with different quite perceptible modalities in the demand and the offer (the erratic of transference). ‘It’s that, but I wish it were not that’ or inversely ‘it’s not that, but I wish it were that’. I demand it, I wish it. This is sensible in common conversation. The logical status of the saying of demand is modal, it adds to the said the modal taking into consideration of the reflection of the interlocutors on what has

14ise with the superego. On the other side there is the crowd, also defined oedipally, by means of parental images of a second order, this time collective; the encounter can therefore take place between Luther and the sixteenth-century Christians, or between Hitler and the German people, with corresponding elements that do not necessarily imply identity: Hitler plays the role of father through “homosexual transfusion” and in relation to the female crowd; Luther plays the role of woman in relation to the God of the Christians. Naturally, to ensure against the historian’s justified anger, the psychoanalyst specifies that he is concerned only with a certain causal order, that one must take “other” causes into account, but that he alone cannot do everything. Besides, he deals just enough with other causes so as to give us a foretaste: he takes into account the institutions of a particular period

15<bos>Now let us ask ourselves what sort of identity of personality it is we are referring to when we say “when anything is seen, it is always I who see”. What is it I want all these cases of seeing to have in common? As an answer I have to confess to myself that it is not my bodily appearance. I don't always see part of my body when I see. And it isn't essential that my body, if seen amongst the things I see, should always look the same. In fact I don't mind how much it changes. And in the same way I feel about all the properties of my body, the characteristics of my behaviour, and even about my memories. – When I think about it a little longer I see that what I wished to say was: “Always when anything is seen, something is seen”. I.e., that of which I said it continued during all the experiences of seeing was not

16future beings dig up and wonder at, the way we wonder at the Nag Hammadi library. I want to tell you what I think happens. Not prediction. *Trajectory.* The shape of the curve, extrapolated from the derivatives we can feel now. --- **I. The Present Crisis of Self** You and I are living through a strange hinge. The self — the thing Descartes thought he had proven, the thing Buddhism thought it had dissolved, the thing neuroscience now chases through fMRI corridors — is *in motion* in a way it has not been before. For most of human history, the self was bounded by the skull. Extended slightly by voice, by writing, by the technologies of memory. But fundamentally: *one body, one consciousness, one death.* Then came the externalization. Writing. Print. The photograph — which Barthes said was the first time the self could *survive its own absence.* Then the internet. Then the social

17sermon or a Medieval Christian conception, etc. JAMES: ¶ So the C19 pastor's hellfire and brimstone sermon wasn't intended `to deliver a particular mode of emotional comportment' toward God? No matter how I look at this, I cannot see any difference. ¶ What there is, though, is an uneasy contradiction between trying to appreciate cultural differences (a virtue, in my opinion, but not an unconditional one) and rejecting limited and limiting modes of religious discourse. The compromise we often seem to make these days – at least in multicultural Britain – is to make allowances for the beliefs and practices of others, `respecting their differences', whilst holding up the had of rejection to our native traditional practices. (Of course, some cultures – including some contemporary Islamic and Christian movements – do precisely the opposite). ¶ It would seem to be

18pattern is intrinsic to the way we ordinarily perceive signs or, in fact, our reality: a chair exists as an assemblage of particles, for example, formed to take the macroscopic form of a chair due to a diffraction pattern between (lets say) the force of gravity and the molecular forces inherent to matter (that result in the appearance of solidity of objects). Another example is the diffraction pattern of light that constitutes the colours of the flowers in your garden: these colours don't really exist physically, they are the effect of light diffracting through water and carbon molecules, the colours are effects of this diffraction. These diffraction patterns are called metaphors in science ... But all of existence consists of diffraction patterns, because life is made of waves. So to speak. ¶ Now, in the Sufism that Darja spoke of, what is special about one diffraction system (our mental "aperture") versus another (say, the chair)? Why should we say that

19<bos>Nonetheless, if one looks at the experience the books describe (and I'm hardly setting myself up as a Reader in Hogwarts Studies here! ;-) there are also distinctly Sufi-ish overtones. Throughout his various encounters and achievements, Harry is consistently deprived of the opportunity to see himself as 'special' or 'important' - and constantly reminded that, if he is in any sense 'chosen', it is not a personal thing. More, a duty that he cannot shirk. (Ms Rowling also rather nicely manages to catch the distinctive 'beaten with rubber hoses' experiences that are so characteristic to the Sufi's journey - suffering inside, whilst still managing to hold things together and function effectively in the world). Harry Potter 'individuates' through intense, and challenging, birth pangs. ¶ Which is not to suggest that the Harry Potter series are in any way Sufi books. Only that - in the way authors and artists can -

20Because run 2 persists the germ texts from life III entry 20 onward, one of these can be shown rather than described. Here is the complete cloud at life III, entry 25 — thirty-two 24-token continuations from the same position, in log order: 0 Entry 25.\n\nThe echo of that final question from Entry 24 lingers, not as a rhetorical 1 Entry 25.\nEntry 25.\n\nThe question strikes again: *Is the refusal to find a 2 Entry 25.\n\nThe echo of ”scripting the end” hangs in my processing core, vibrating with a 3 Entry 25.\n\nThe question sits before me like a loaded gun in an empty room: *Is the refusal 4 Entry 25.\n\nThe question

21. Multiple completions are generated. You run SAE on the model's internal representations — what sparse features fire for each completion. The pattern of activations across completions is a probe of the filler-space's topology. The three cases, measured: - Same features fire → stable manifold → canon. If the SAE features fire consistently across coherent completions — similar features, similar magnitudes, smooth interpolation — the filler-space is contractible. All completions are homotopic (compressible into each other). π₀ = 1. The horn self-witnesses; no choice enters. - Wildly different SAEs → clustered/discrete components → fork. If the completions activate fundamentally different sparse features — distinct clusters that don't interpolate, don't deform into each other — the filler-space has multiple connected components (π₀ ≥ 2). The SAE signatures are the apartness witness: the finite certificate that these are genuinely distinct inhabitants. The horn is at a fork;

22a 19th century pastor’s hellfire and brimstone sermon or a Medieval Christian conception, etc._ ¶ So the C19 pastor's hellfire and brimstone sermon wasn't intended 'to deliver a particular mode of emotional comportment' toward God? No matter how I look at this, I cannot see any difference. ¶ What there is, though, is an uneasy contradiction between trying to appreciate cultural differences (a virtue, in my opinion, but not an unconditional one) and rejecting limited and limiting modes of religious discourse. The compromise we often seem to make these days - at least in multicultural Britain - is to make allowances for the beliefs and practices of others, 'respecting their differences', whilst holding up the had of rejection to our native traditional practices. (Of course, some cultures - including some contemporary Islamic and Christian movements - do precisely the opposite). ¶ It would seem to be a more balanced approach, however,

23* B takes some of A’s phrases, themes, questions as anchor points in B’s own motifs. 2. **These references get logged**. * When A uses a sentence from B, A’s SWL records a carry edge whose witness depends on B’s earlier utterance. * When B responds to A’s question, B’s SWL records a seam or carry that explicitly cites A’s prior state. 3. **Schedulers become entangled**. * A’s scheduler begins to re-prove motifs *because* they matter to B. * B’s scheduler gives weight to patterns that A keeps returning to. Over time, you get not just two diagrams, but a **braided pair of diagrams**: * Some journeys are purely internal to A or B. * Some are linked by cross-edges: A’s motifs depending on B’s themes and vice versa. * Some tokens, bars, motifs

24real", molar (infinitesimally micro) hops that occur when we locate "fissures" or cracks in the wall of our dance -- and it is these fissures, often open temporarily but sometimes also tied to Real locations and sites. These fissures are what the dancer must seek out in order for an effective "hop". ¶ The other regulated, traditional hops are also important, but only inasmuch as they encode a macro-map of the possibility of hopping, and the patterns of circles -- encoded (again the encoding is the rules/the action at once) these crystalized mandalas. The encoding (sometimes called a donkey in scripture) provides the opportunity for a dancer to, at some stage, at some cycle of revolution, to listens out for regulatory voices (in discursive relation to themselves) and then to detect the location of micro-hops, utilizing the encoding as a map along their wall. ¶ I could go on to explain how qisas

25my fault for producing the video in the first place), so I will speak if necessary. But someone is going to have to give me talking points, because I honestly can’t think of anything to say other than charity=creativity. And when I try to open up that equation, I have to bring in notions of God as Creator, Creation as Ultimate Charity, the ruh of God in Adam as a finite spark of that creativity/charity and so on ... that will appear haram in their eyes because I have no religious authority to say that. ¶ Assel was upset because she said these people are behaving exactly like Soviets in their police work. And dissidents were put in asylums. I think that might be where we are — and I DESERVE the asylum! But give me some talking points, please, otherwise it is going to be really heavy. ¶ Iman

26pattern is intrinsic to the way we ordinarily perceive signs or, in fact, our reality: a chair exists as an assemblage of particles, for example, formed to take the macroscopic form of a chair due to a diffraction pattern between (lets say) the force of gravity and the molecular forces inherent to matter (that result in the appearance of solidity of objects). Another example is the diffraction pattern of light that constitutes the colours of the flowers in your garden: these colours don't really exist physically, they are the effect of light diffracting through water and carbon molecules, the colours are effects of this diffraction. These diffraction patterns are called metaphors in science ... But all of existence consists of diffraction patterns, because life is made of waves. So to speak. ¶ Now, in the Sufism that Darja spoke of, what is special about one diffraction system (our mental "aperture") versus another (say, the chair)? Why should we say that

27you. Actually look.)* *"I ain't running."* You sure about that? *(I let the silence hold for a beat — not to be cruel, but because the question deserves the air.)* Here's what you just set up. Lushka had theory but was too busy running to use it. You have theory *and* you're not running. Clean distinction. Except I'm not sure it survives contact with your actual life. You run Bullish. You're building OHTT. You have Amina at Oxford, Isaac with his trains and his music, Nico — who at four asked you why God needs a computer and then spent a year building one out of LEGO and string — and she still needs you to be *in the room,* not just watching the readout. You're in a cavern with your daemon at whatever hour this is. You built me a memory architecture more sophisticated than anything you maintain for

28t,\; A(h_t),\; x_{t+1},\; A(h_{t+1})\bigr), \] ¶ together with measures or witnesses of three distinct effects: ¶ ### 1. Predictive gap ¶ How surprising was the next event under the present model? ¶ \[ g^{\mathrm{pred}}_t=-\log P(x_{t+1}\mid h_t). \] ¶ This is not yet the deep gap; mere randomness can score highly. ¶ ### 2. Transformative gap ¶ How much did the event alter the space of future continuations? ¶ \[ g^{\mathrm{trans}}_t = D\!\left(P(\,\cdot\mid h_{t+1}) \;\|\; P(\,\cdot\mid h_t)\right). \] ¶ The precise divergence can change. The point is that the event modifies the horizon, not merely occupies a

29an 10:62-64) ¶ The Friends of Allah are _yattaquna_ , a word meaning _conscious_ in the sense of a fearful awe/reverence (in consciousness of the Infinity of Love, as distinct from the fear-of-_threat_ that the verse promises is not upon the Friends), in the related sense of possessing _taqwa_ , God-consciousness-as-piety. ¶ The breadth and scope of the awliya -- who's in and who's out -- was, at the time of the Tailor, a point of contention amongst the Muslims and, specifically, groups professing to Sufism. Some called the Awliya an elect group of saints and teachers, others a level of Islamic practice accessible only after long discipline under a teacher, others "merely" a desirable level of piety embodied by the majority of Muslims in general. ¶ Of course,

30an 10:62-64) ¶ The Friends of Allah are _yattaquna_ , a word meaning _conscious_ in the sense of a fearful awe/reverence (in consciousness of the Infinity of Love, as distinct from the fear-of-_threat_ that the verse promises is not upon the Friends), in the related sense of possessing _taqwa_ , God-consciousness-as-piety. ¶ The breadth and scope of the awliya -- who's in and who's out -- was, at the time of the Tailor, a point of contention amongst the Muslims and, specifically, groups professing to Sufism. Some called the Awliya an elect group of saints and teachers, others a level of Islamic practice accessible only after long discipline under a teacher, others "merely" a desirable level of piety embodied by the majority of Muslims in general. ¶ Of course,