12.28.2003

 

Document status: June 8, 2006

Maintained out of interest

Essential content absorbed to and no further action needed for Journey in Being

Hello…

Christmas and the New Year [as you read this] have come and gone. I still want to write to you and I am doing so especially to wish for you all things you desire for the coming year and to thank you for your recent [holiday] letter

Writing this letter seemed as though it would be easy as I was dreaming about it earlier this morning while waking up but now it seems that I might say either too much or too little and that whatever I say might not be quite right; still, here I sit at my computer attempting to write

This year has had one rather large surprise for me. I recall while being driven around London in August 1995 by my brother Robin, telling him about my ideas and writing. I had completed Evolution and Design in 1987. I told him how I came to write it, of the processes that went into it, where I thought the work was lacking and I described some vague thoughts on remedies for the deficit. The central idea was that while Evolution and Design was based in state and process, the new work would be based in something “beyond” that and I may have mentioned the word absolute. Over the years since then I have spent much time thinking about this, the main ideas and the details as well as numerous diversions, uploaded it all to my website [1999] which went through many changes, stopped using the questionable word absolute, but in the end the system remained unsatisfying. I may have deceived myself about this for the ideas were intuitively sound but a reasonably rational basis was missing and seemed remote despite ideas on how to approach the question

That was the way it stood at the outset of my fall vacation of 2002. As part of my yearly vacation of four to six weeks, I spend some time hiking in the Trinity Mountains 100 miles east of Arcata. I enjoy and often thrill to the hiking, the vistas, the storms and the sunlight, the untame creatures from chipmunk to deer to brown bear. It is a time of physical and psychic health. Friends ask me why I have been going back to the Trinities for the last 14 years. It is because, yes there is beauty there, but primarily because there I have a sense of a home, not merely of adventure, in nature – something that I miss during the rest of the year. There is adventure to be had, too, in a snow storm in 1997; hiking the boulder cirque around Papoose Lake; occasional encounters with black bear – nothing overtly dangerous thus far. The Trinity Mountains have also been where I have received much inspiration for my thought – I have yet to be disappointed in this – this is why I sometimes refer to the mountains as “the source.” I started off the vacation having some excellent ideas on space and time while driving the Forest Service road to the Hobo Gulch trailhead to Papoose and Grizzly Lakes. Those ideas found a place in the section on Cosmology in what has become my central essay – Journey in Being; a number of other ideas also found a place in Journey in Being or other essays. After my time in the mountains I spent 2 days in Reno, Nevada where the most memorable event was the buffet at the Atlantis Casino. Touring the mountains and the desert was more enjoyable. On the way home I stopped at a coffee shop in Weaverville at the foot of the Trinity Mountains. It was here that I had “the final insight on the proper nature of – the concept of – nothingness how to view the relationship between nothingness and the world.” After that “everything” fell into place, Journey in Being became, I think, a coherent system, and, with the resultant energy, I was able to integrate and tighten the previously sprawling details. The work began upon return to Arcata in mid-October 2002

This project took through July this year [2003] and the effort was huge. It included an attempt to make every page on the site look professional – an effort in itself considering the number of pages. The surprise mentioned earlier included the fact that the coherence, depth and completeness went far beyond my expectation; additionally, the approach to this state of affairs was direct and avoided the analysis of the nature of knowledge that I had assumed would be necessary. I feel as though I have been a traveler in a new land who accidentally stumbled across strange and beautiful new places. As a result of the “new vision” I acquired new energy and insight which were used to solve numerous problems, revise and rewrite in a coherent way my understanding of a number of important topics including knowledge and concepts, metaphysics, the concept and nature of being, the concept and nature of mind, “philosophical cosmology” which I consider to be a theory of all aspects – not just the physical – of all of existence, language, ethics, transformations of being: possibilities and approaches, the variety of being including machines [computation, its theory and possibilities,] the nature of social and political action. All previously written materials were evaluated and used in the rewriting, interaction of the topics with one another and the whole [Journey in Being] was considered and the essence of everything placed in Journey in Being

As a result I am a little self-satisfied and, as a result of the attempt together with my job and trying to “have a life,” also a little tired – and a little aimless. That means that although there is still much to be done, I am avoiding a plunge in to anything huge. Instead, I want to make other changes in my life: another job, something new in, perhaps another town. I have not yet begun to look but I have not gotten into any of the looming projects either. Meanwhile, it has been nice to wake up in the mornings and not feel a huge compulsion to get down to work at the computer [my paying job is 3pm to 11pm, 5 days a week.] It has been nice to work on a few smaller projects in a leisurely way while sipping coffee or to go into town and visit the bookstores and other favorite haunts

I have just had five days away from work and am going back this afternoon. It was not a holiday for I have been down with the flu which I get every year [yes, I should get a flu shot] and which has been particularly bad this year. I will take a break from this letter and continue tomorrow with a brief account of this year’s vacation and my plans for the future

12.29.03

I had the following thought early this morning. Real religion is essentially, though not merely, political. I refer to mass though not necessarily organized religion and especially to charisma. What was the source of this thought? I have been thinking about the problems that our world faces. I have been thinking about this on and off for many years as is or should be natural for a human being but do not think of myself as an expert on this at all. It seems that the issues can be broken down as “problems” and “how to address them.” The latter includes politics where there is a huge gulf between government and people; I think this gulf, a problem in itself, makes the address difficult. I suppose it is a syndrome of our huge nation states and the nature of the drive to power within them. Individuals need, perhaps, to be more directly involved and under the inspiration of real values. There are so many instances in history of religion addressing just the present need. I know that religions become corrupt as does all power; that many people prefer to have religion private and separate from state, but these are just thoughts that I revisited this morning at the boundary been sleep and wake. One of the driving forces behind the thought was: What instrument, perhaps of charismatic but not irrational force, perhaps something that transcends regional boundaries so that is not divisive, is there or may we create that will speak to the modern situation?

The work described earlier constitutes the completion of the intellectual phase of my overall goal. I believe I have gone significantly beyond previous thought [e.g. everything I have read about the concept of the void or nothingness and, especially, its use in understanding being and cosmology is not inferior but impotent] in a number of fundamental areas. I recognize, of course, that this is my own evaluation and that my work has not yet been reviewed by the academic community. Additionally, there are a number of areas where significant improvement is necessary. The other main phase of my overall goal is “Experiments in the Transformation of Being” in which I ask questions such as, “What are the possibilities of being, of human being?” “Of these, what might be worthwhile attempting to realize? How might such realization be approached?” On a conservative view, the possibilities of human being are limited: we are born, live and die; in between, if we are lucky, we may have enjoyment and achievement. An extreme contrast is the view from the Vedanta: Atman is Brahman which means, roughly, that the self is identical to [all of] objective reality; according to that view no actual transformation is necessary other than becoming aware of what actually obtains. This question was actually an, if not the, original motivation for my interest in and analysis of being and the void [incidentally what I mean by nothingness void bears almost no relation to Sartre’s meaning.] My evaluation of the possibilities of [human] being are not the conservative one; the actual position [all being is accessible to every being] and the details are in Journey in Being. I have looked at a number of traditional approaches to transformation including yoga and, to a lesser extent, western mysticism. In consideration of these approaches and my own experience, I have forged an approach that I call the dynamics of being. Unlike, prescriptive approaches [repeat the mantra] the approach considers the dynamics, asks, “What is essential?” All this is described in Journey in Being. What I want to undertake next are the Experiments in Transformation. Some other goals, not at all unimportant to me but constituting lesser phases of the Journey are experiments in relations between mind and machines [computation,] and social action: use and sharing of the work. I do not want to do this in my present situation and so the urgency of the more immediate goal: looking for an alternative situation [i.e. a job, or perhaps something like a grant]

This year I visited the Trinity Mountains again. I noticed that climbing has become more difficult and that is due to a combination of getting older and not keeping physically active [running] in the past two years: the intellectual project has been my main preoccupation. The hiking was good nonetheless and I spent some nights under the stars at mountain lakes. A high point was watching a brown bear on the opposite slope of a canyon. He or she was foraging and, apparently, did not notice me over the half hour before nightfall that I stayed to watch. I had a number of excellent ideas which I will write out in separate notes; due to the press toward “changes” I will not now take the time to integrate the ideas into Journey in Being even thought some of the ideas represent significant enhancements in content and improvement in argument. For the last week of my vacation I visited the state of Washington. Although I have lived on the West Coast for 21 years this was my first visit to Washington. Driving north on I-5, I experienced a huge thrill as I entered Washington at about 11 pm. I continued to drive north and arrived at Seattle at about 1 am. I spent two days in Seattle. It is similar to San Francisco in its layout, in that it is next to a large body of water – the Puget Sound, and in that the city is quite hilly. I enjoyed my time in Seattle but I think I would not enjoy living there; Bellingham, with Western Washington University, 50 miles north, 80,000 people, Mount Baker nearby to the east has some appeal. I enjoyed a ferry ride to the San Juan Islands in the Sound half way between the Washington mainland and Canada. On my fourth day, I drove my pickup on to a Washington State ferry to the Olympic Peninsula where I toured Olympic National Park; I did not see much in the way of vistas because it was overcast, misty, windy, cold and raining but it was lovely to be among the trees, rocks, mountainsides and creeks, and the ledges where I peered out into the grey nothingness. Of all places, I am happiest when I am in “nature.” The rainfall varies significantly in the Peninsula and exceeds 120" of rain a year on the Western slopes of the Olympic Mountains. The lower slopes are home to rainforests [I think I read that they are the northern most rainforest.] I spent some time hiking in the Hoh rainforest. One of the high points was a visit to the Makah Indian reservation. Driving toward the northwestern end of the Peninsula I saw a sign that said “Most North West Point in the Lower 48 States: 45 miles.” Although time was limited, I did not resist the temptation to go to the “end of the road.” The road to Cape Flattery, the most northwest point, was rugged, often close to the edge of cliffs that went down to the Pacific Ocean. Inland, the day was cloudy and calm; at the Ocean it was clear with high winds – and waves smashing upon the rocky shore. The road went through Neiah Bay, the main town on the reservation where I bought a permit to visit Cape Flattery. In 1999, the Makah resumed the traditional whale hunt that had ceased in the 1920's. Thus far there has been one hunt [1999, successful] even though permission had been obtained to hunt annually. I do not know why the hunt has not been repeated. Perhaps it is due to the objections from environmentalist groups… A few miles before the Cape, the road became unpaved and muddy. The last ¾ mile was an easy trail down to the point atop what I estimated to be a 100 – 150’ cliff that overlooked the translucent pale blue ocean swell that carried sea birds up and down with the motion. A sign said that the birds and other life were attracted by the nutrients carried down to the ocean by the deep canyon creeks to the sides of the point. Beyond the swell stood Tatoosh Island with Cape Flattery lighthouse… I wanted to stand on the point but the situation appeared to be precarious. I lay flat on the ground, legs pointing inland, and reached out with my arms to touch the point

Love,

Anil