Lost Philosophress

 

The Great Carnival II by EricTonArts

“The world is full of princesses dreaming of love. The world is full of searching for communion beyond self.”

Thank God for Philosophy Sunday!

I float in my own personal chaos. Tired. Very much alive. Every day closer to death.
Of course, my life unfolds in this way, or I perceive it as such, because I’m a Nexistentialist.
Life is an existential carnival. I am a fool and a priestess. I am performer and audience zugleich. I am visitor and resident. I am dead and alive. Lost am I, amidst fractal, material, organic, physical, and… spiritual?... realities.

What on Earth is spiritual anyway!? Physical-I, I-human have no sense of it. And yet, spirituality is talked about by many others. It appears in ancient and contemporary scriptures, as well as cultural collections of scriptures, such as the Bible or the Upanishads, compiled by people coinciding and clashing at certain times in space. Spiritual, they say.

Most importantly, spirituality is actually lived by people, or so they claim. What does it mean to live a spiritual life? True, in communion with God, I feel the happiest. Trust in God gives me solace. But I don’t know how to explain those moments of serenity and bliss, when they are only fleeting.

Fleeting faith exhibits in the human species. Fleeting moments of faith arising and passing in a carnival of fleeting phenomena. Countless, uncategorizable, fleeting phenomena. We can certainly try to categorize, as our organisms do this naturally, cognitively. However, life is impermanent and cyclical. Innumerable occurrences, experiences, and momentary manifestations of the mind remain indescribable. Every instant cannot be remembered. It is logistically impossible. History is selective memory. Scriptures consist of literary choices. The question is: What is to be stored in memory, what is to be discarded into the unknown? 

Recently, I came across the most beautiful opening line to a book I have ever read:

“Human nature is not altogether unchanging but it does remain sufficiently constant to justify the study of ancient classics.” (S. Radhakrishnan, 1951) *

What lies beyond cognition (i.e. the (organic) brain and its functions (i.e. nature, Prakrti)? What lies beyond the perceptive sensory world? What lies beyond these words?

Something certainly does. As is evident by how many of us organic creatures (terrestrials) coexist. Organized, complex and simple systems; material phenomena including microorganisms, macrocosms, elements, the physical, nature… Prakrti **. We represent tangible expressions of a force*** that transcends us as particular manifestations. Are we but temporary formulations of something immaterial which transcends it all? What lies beyond embodiment?

Forces, such as systems, cycles, mathematics, physics, magic (i.e. animism), all form part of materialization, even if they transcend individual phenomena. For instance, my body is idiosyncratic, but it is articulated by systems (nervous, skeletal, muscular etc.) that reoccur in uncountable organisms. Thus, these systems transcend my particular body. Life is itself a transcendental force. Cells die, organisms die, stars die, but life goes on in other cells, bodies, and suns.

Does a force beyond all always flow, creating a transcendental reality? Or is there a phenomenon which does not flow at all? Then, can “it” be called anything at all?

Samkhya I

Is dristi Purusha?
Is gazing spirit?
¿Es la mirada espiritu?
Ist der Blick Geist?

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* The Principal Upanishads. S. Radhakrishnan, 1953. 39^th impression 2023.
** Samkhya philosophy. Concept encompassing all that is, nature, the material universe etc.
*** or forces?