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Gene Poole
#1098
- Saturday, June 8, 2002 - Editor: Jerry Katz - Home:
http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm
ANNOUNCEMENT
Bob Rose's new issue of Inner Traveler is available
online.
Bob maintains a consistently high quality, loving,
passionate publication. The writing excels. The graphics
are very rip-off-able.
Current NDS contributors include the electric Michael
Read and word sculptress Vicki Woodyard.
Read it at
http://www.meditationsociety.com/it71808/index.html
And
for anyone in the Philadelphia area, you can study
meditation in-person with Bob.
ANNOUNCEMENT
http://www.sulekha.com/column.asp?cid=208080
The
above link takes you to my latest Sulekha column,
where I analyze the Kashmir issue, and America's
choices.
Regards,
Rajiv Malhotra
FOUNDATION: http://www.infinityfoundation.com
MANDALA: http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/indic_mandala_frameset.htm
_____________________________________________________________________
MARALENA
I was wondering what exactly the "Interplay
Performance"
is/was? I am a student of Sufi Studies, and so far,
that name or program has not shown up. Is it some sort
of spiritual or satsang group?
NINA
http://www.interplaync.org/asheville.asp
I
guess you could call it a sort of spiritual or satsang
group. It is an improvisational movement and
vocalization method that is geared to get one (back to
being) embodied. As far as I can tell, there are a few
'templates' or 'forms' that the group uses to structure
interaction, but primarily it is people responding and
expressing certain 'cues' (stated or unstated) from
their stories and the stories of their fellow players.
Though I noticed that each person seemed to have their
own language of movement and vocalization, these
expressions are informed by the group and may include
anything that 'works' - including a big sufi dance
circle. You just nevah know what might happen.
__________________________________________________________________
Image by Al Larus
DAVID HODGES
All this talk and imagery about donuts has reminded me
that, in the mathematical study of topology, a donut's
shape is called a Torus. In computer science we talk
about abstract classes, and that a multiplicity of
objects are created from these singular classes. Well,
the donut as an object is created from the class Torus,
as are:
The Bagel The Cheerio Spaghetti-O's Tires Rings of all
kinds, like the Ring of Power in "Lord of the Rings"
The
Space Station in 2001 A Space Odyssey
The torus is a symbol of infinity. It is one of those
interesting objects where, no matter where you start or
what direction you travel., you always eventually come
back to where you started.
I have included a picture of a torus at the end of this
post.
To imagine a torus, do this thought experiment: Take a
rectangular sheet of very flexible plastic or paper.
Join the long top and bottom edges so that you make a
cylinder with open ends. Now carefully bend the cylinder
around in a circular motion until the open ends join.
There you have it: a torus.
Even though it has a hole, a torus is all one surface.
Even if you go through the hole you are still on the
surface of the torus. To prove that it is all one
surface, imagine that your job is to paint it, without
stepping on the painted surface. Picture yourself
starting out in one place on the surface and spreading
paint as you go. Eventually you will have "painted
yourself into a corner" without, in fact, having reached
any corners or edges.
The thing that you can do with a torus that you can't do
with a sphere is that you can go through it without
going inside it. You can walk through its middle without
leaving its surface.
A sphere (think of the sun) tends to radiate and run
down. It tends to collapse or explode. A torus, on the
other hand, is self balanced. Energy flows around and
through it. It is self-sustaining and self-referential.
There need be nothing else except the cosmic Torus
(unless it is the cosmic Tortoise that carries it on its
back!)
The torus is one of the great archetypal shapes. Whoever
invented the wheel was implanting this first crude
practical application of this shape. Whoever invented
the donut was doing the same.
Its shape and power are hardwired into our brains, with
powerful attractive symmetries pulsing down from our
race's future.
The torus shatters the assumptions of Flatland. It
shatters the notion that the Universe is a linear
progression in time and a spherical expansion in space.
In his book "Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the
Mechanics of Consciousness", Itzhak Bentov says: "We
have a closed universe that forms an elongated hollow
torus. Encased within this torus is an inner torus of
protospace...our psyches, which contain all our
knowledge, expand periodically into that space for a
very short period of time at practically infinite
velocities. The human psyches form an interference
pattern with psyches of all other consciousnesses in the
universe."
The Universe, says Bentov, is shaped like a donut.
Space/time is not straight, it is curved. Go far enough
away from earth and you'll meet yourself on the way
back.
Bentov postulated that the donut hole on one side was a
black hole, sucking in light/space/energy, and on the
other side was a white hole, radiating out all of
creation and mistaken by today's scientists for a
one-time event called the Big Bang.
What I am saying is that, on the other side of the Big
Bang that gave rise to our Universe is a the hole of a
very bad-ass donut.
The torus provides a unique conductive mechanism for the
pulsing flow of high energy that is the pump and
oscillator of our Universe, as well as for the
interference patterns that create Cosmic Consciousness.
The nearer you get to the radiant hot frictionless force
fields of the center of the cosmic donut's hole, the
more the opposites collapse and the original causal,
absolute nature becomes manifest.
The torus's hole becomes the valve or gate though which
the universal plasmoid high-energy pulse alternately
appears and disappears.
The flow of the super energy does not fly off elsewhere
(the donut is All That Is) but instead it flows around
the surface of the torus in ultra-chaotic quantum
particle/waves within which are constituted the very
substance of the Universe, Galaxy, Solar System, planet,
life, species, and us as people: our society and
culture, our snack food, our Dunkin Donuts Old-fashioned
donuts served with a nice hot cup of coffee.
Perhaps all donuts (and their fat-free cousins, the
bagel) are universe generators, and our fascination with
them comes from the fact that our secret mission as a
people is to create and consume as many of these toroid
treats as possible.
So, I suggest that the reason why NDS went off on this
jag about donuts was that the cosmic super-intelligence
was (and is) transmitting knowledge to us about its
nature via the consciousness interference waves on the
surface of that memetic NDS donut.
[illustration: a computer-generated torus]
VICKI
I am writing a broadway musical about this....working
title is "A Torus Line." Anybody wanna be my angel...
___________________________________________________________________
HEIDI
The Donut is merely the Klein-bottles' underage
kid-brother:
http://www.jcu.edu/math/vignettes/Mobius.htm
One
note about topology and revolutionary evolutionology
(an un-as-yet-tested technology for smearing the
cortical intellect out to encompass the entire known and
unknown universe of Being), is that conclusions of all
kinds (such as: "The Donut is All That Is") would seem
to be success for the original (ordinary) mind. But it
is only the LACK of finality, conclusiveness, that keeps
men driving toward success.
Hence, The "linear/mobius mind" vs. the "spiraling
Klein
mind".
______________________________________________________________________
JOHN DUFF
..the Fourth Way is primarily geared [in the literature]
towards developing the third state or
'self-consciousness' while other teachings, Advaita for
instance, speak more to 'objective consciousness' or
'seeing things as they really are'.
HEIDI
This is a clarifying statement, as it touches an
emotional fire which burns within many, feel/thinking
something like: "How can I adequately explain myself to
myself and others, while not appearing to be nuts or
schizoid?"
"Ways" are not available to humans in order to assist
their innermost "wish" to evolve (which is a legitimate
genetic need) - they are available to obscure whatever
possibilities existed for such, forever.
This is true for the 4thway as well as for Advaita. Both
douse the fires within, in just the same way that the
"breath of life" would seem to extinquish an external
fire, except that the forcefullness of the exhalation,
when not adequately mediated, intermittently only adds
oxygen to the blaze, giving one the inner impression of
activity appropriate to the starving emotional
realization.
What if there WERE no "ways" - what the HELL would
people do then? They'd have to go it alone, they'd have
to muster their own inner resources to embark upon the
journey which seemingly has no beginning, no end, and no
landmarks or milestones.
"Ways" are millstones around the neck, and the sooner
one settles into the firm, unshakingly dominant
realization that you ARE alone, and you KNOW nothing,
then the quickening, which is your birthright can begin
to eradicate the silliness which heretofore passed for "
pleasing personalities" engaged in "cocktail
conversations" at the "realizers' convention".
Image by Al Larus