Kuan Yin explains it all: Love and my Theory of Knowledge.

I’ve been trying to finally write down my view on epistemology (theory of knowledge) for a long time but I have had a hard time to get a good example in order to show, more than tell, what I’m rambling about.

I thought of dancing first, but then I realized that I had to strip a lot of thing from this concept in order to make it fit, although some day I plan to make a demonstration (I’m using the examples thou). Then I thought of dominoes, but I’m still working on that one for some other madman’s rambling.

Finally, Kuan Yin was merciful enough to give me a good example (thanks to Campbell too, who actually wrote about it in Myths to Live by).

Campbell tells us that one day (and please check the book if you want to read it whole, this is just a summary of Campbell’s summary), an astonishingly young woman came to a remote village in China, near the Yellow River, where people never heard of religion before. She carried a basket full of fishes which she sold in the town’s market and then disappeared, this happened for a few days and the young men all over town had taken note of this mysterious, beautiful young woman. One morning, some of them stopped her and pleaded with her to marry.

She replied “I’m just one woman, I can marry all of you”, following with: “If one of you can recite by heart the Sutra of the Compassionate Kuan Yin, he is the one I shall choose”. They had never even heard of such a thing, but that night they studied the Sutra. The following morning they were thirty.

Now, getting back to epistemology, this could be defined as “material knowledge”. Corresponding to Jung’s earth/sensorial psychic trait, the young men of the village where learning about the girl using her senses: seeing her come and go with her basket, no interaction had been previously established, so only senses had been used in “learning” this young woman. Also, reciting the Sutra means only repetition, there’s no more interaction with it than just getting to know this thing in his material part: it’s letters, words and phrases. In dance, we learn of it using our senses by seeing people dance, touching your dancing partner, listening to music.

To these thirty men, the young woman said “If any one of you can explain the Sutra, he is the one I shall wed”. Only ten came back.

These men studied this Sutra, they analyzed it, broke it down in parts to be tested, compared, you name it. This is “intellectual knowledge”, the air/intellect Jungian trait. In dance, you learn this trait while learning the steps of the dance, this is what professional dancers do when learning a choreography, but there’s more to dance, and Bodhisattvas, than a ritual (as Kung-Tse would say) and that’s the difference between good and great.

“If any one of you can in three days realize the meaning of the Sutra, he is the one I shall marry surely”, with this, the young woman dispatched the remaining men once again.

Now, these men knew the Sutra and its explanation (how it works, I assume a literary analysis). Why would she ask them to realize it’s meaning? Isn’t knowing this thing what’s important?

Well, no.

While material and intellectual knowledge are based on the thing itself (like the water that fills the lake, very Yang-like), there’s more to it. The following are, by some reason, types of knowledge that most Occidentals either take for granted or just take as “non-sense”, this is knowledge that comes from around the thing itself, by it’s sole existence and interaction with the rest (like the basin that makes up the lake, very Yin like).

The first one has to do with the relation of this one thing with the rest of the Ten Thousand Things, what is its place and how it correlates with everything else, ergo, meaning. Now, the context in which the thing is evaluated gives different answers to this question, like the meaning of WWII has when viewed from different angles and times: it’s not the same for a German in the first years of Blitzkrieg, or in 1945, when they ran out of supplies; or for a Jew before and after the creation of the Ghetto; or for an American before Pearl Harbor or after they came into Berlin in Sherman tanks.

This is “intuitive knowledge” the fire/intuition trait of Jung. Fire you ask? Just let me tell you that in the I Ching, Fire is also called “lo Adherente” (Clinging, Adherent), and you can only adhere if there’s something else to cling to. In dance, You may now the dance and its moves, but are the partners that give it meaning, its definitively not the same see two long-time dance partners how know each other for a long time, than two people that might be great dancers by themselves, but have just met.

Finally, only one men realized the Sutra’s meaning, his name was Mero (Meru?). The beautiful woman smiled and said “I perceive that you have indeed realized the meaning of the blessed Sutra of the Compassionate Kuan Yin, and do gladly accept you as my husband. My house you will find this evening at the river bend, and my parents there to receive you”.

Mero found a little house at the shore. In its entrance, an old man and woman greeted him saying “We have been waiting for you a long time” and led him to their daughter’s room. The room was empty (a great metaphor, see below), and through the window he saw the footprints of a woman’s feet in the sand, which he followed, to find in the water’s edge two golden sandals. He turned around and the house was gone, and in that moment he suddenly knew: the young woman had been the Bodhisattva herself, “and he comprehended fully how great is the benevolence of the boundlessly compassionate Kuan Yin”.

As I’m writing this, I’m also learning, I just realized something.

The final type of knowledge has been around since the beginning of the fable. It has been implicit in all the narration and thus, it has never been treated openly until now. After all these obstacles Mero finds the young woman’s room empty, now it’s time to remember how this story came to be: Mero was in love with the young woman and asked for her to marry him, but when he finally achieves its objective he finds the room empty, whatever he wished for was not there. He sees footprints in the sand outside the house (his “prize”), and remembering/learning what his feelings were originally and now, he goes after the young woman. This is the last type of knowledge: emotional knowledge. If intuitive knowledge has to do with the thing’s relation with everything else, emotional knowledge has to do with the meaning of the thing within itself. Dancing with a friend is one thing, but with a lover is a whole different ballgame…

To end this rambling, as an Oroboros, emotional knowledge is the Alpha and the Omega of the fable, and being this a “self-development” one, it has a linear progression, so it needs some further explanations.

First, this fable points the interesting fact that the same knowledge that is finally attained is the on that drives the plot from the beggining. The knowledge is there, but it requires the rest of the types to finally “get it”. This is what Jung says about individuation and what the Arcana of the “Wheel of Fortune” refers to.

Second, these types of knowledge are not mutually-exclusive: you may be an excellent dancer, but with no soul; know the steps, but fumble with a new partner; suck at it but have memorable dances with a loved one.

That’s it, the fun’s over.

KX.

Scary Shit: a cry for help into the void of the Cyberspace.

Dude,

I'm freaked out. I've been playing for too long with the universe and I might be finally get somewhere, something, that in my case, is scary.

My Jung studies have led me to Synchronicity, from there I sought Hume and Khun's works (which I still have to read, but that I know their basis from summaries), now, from there, I get to the Pratitya-samutpada before I even knew it existed.

I've been willing to know about synchronicity by destroying causality, an exercise that led me to the whole "Unified Field theory" essay (can I call it that?, it's just a ramble), from there I understood that X can't exist without a Y, in other words, the reactive principle (in this case, the "Formula" from the UFT) can't live without the active principle (the random, generating Independent variable). So, the search for this independent variable is useless, leading to an oroboros that states the same problem as Determinism's First Cause problem (see also: Deism).

Now, with this in my head, I get to Jung's synchronicity and causality. From there I get that the solution is not one OR the other, IS BOTH!!!

ergo,

Pratitya-samutpada

You see, active/reactive principle, Yin/Yang, Determinism/Randomness, they're all opposite pairs that can't exist without the other.

I need help,

KX.- Think Damnit!

The Hermit King of Swords Talks: Closer, Jung and the Cosmos.

[Previously unreleased]

WARNING: Do NOT read if you're easily offended when your dogma comes crumbling into your hands, if you awake thinking about the next lie to make your life bearable, if you've lost the sense of wonder when you see the world slowly plunging into a new dark age or if you just are too lazy to think and try to look for truths hidden in the madman's speech.

Please, save me the trouble.

For those who remain, I'm broadcasting to all stations, reply at your own risk and feel free to not talk to me again if you just don't like what you see.

I'm high on workload, jadedness, a good movie and a rocking tune I'm branding in my brain looping it on winamp.

I'm fucked up, and I like it.

"I sincerely appreciate your honesty" its an unlikely phrase in a movie where everybody gets laid with everyone else (or mostly everyone else) and revenge, pity, horny and savage fucks are well implied, never shown, but very well described thou.

And in a sense, this phrase makes up for all the movie.

I'm the least experience person here to know about this, once again I'm fucked up, but like the hanged man seeing death near in the tarot, and the prince who acts with no fault in front of his people, I've practiced at least a couple of those principles in the never ending cycle proposed by the plot of this movie. Cycles, interesting thing that comes to me head now, since the singularity point can be so near and so far right now...

Technoshock, Singularity point, two presidents ousted in a day, inmediatecy of information, double CPU processing power every 18 months, Bioethics, a new ex-Nazi Pope, go ahead google it.

It's interesting that you read a little of a topic and you think you're a master of it, but I do have Jung close to my heart: reconciling myth and self is a daunting, ethical work that gives something that people have forgotten in the western world: Meaning (yes, with a capital M). Westerners have the problem of separating, giving exact pockets of thought to different parts of the Cosmos (I like this term better, it more holistic). Easterners are more about coincidence, something Jung called synchronicity.

And what does this have to do with Closer?, nothing at all, I'm just amazed you're still reading.

Closer is about one person, one self. Earth, wind, fire and earth are the terms I use, they're simpler than Ego, Shadow, Anima and Animus, but then again, defining those is like asking Phaedrus to define Quality. There are opposites and fellows (?), there are relationships within opposites and interaction with fellows, "honesty" is such a dirty word in this movie as a teenager explaining how he masturbates to his surprised parents.

Earth?, Anna. Highly receptive, totally embracing. I'm amazed how amazing she looks in this movie without glitter or face, an Autumn woman sitting in the breeze. Alice and her alter ego, whomever that is, embrace wind: highly mental and cynical, did she ever felt in this movie? anyway, she disappears and reappears like, guess what, the wind thru a summer-hot corridor in a house with no back-yard. In opposition, they are slut and mother, angel and paradise, movement and settling point.

Guys are more fun to write and less hurtful, Doctor (since I've laughed so hard hearing his parliament, I don't even know his name) has the Jungian fire in him, think of him as the wand in the tarot and the intuition function in Jungian psyche, the is driven by grief, by revenge, by love, by reckoning but he's always witty and resourceful.

[Personal space to admire this character and the actor who personified him.]

Then again is Jude Law, who like cup of water flows from one love to another, highly emotional, makes all the mistakes and get all the girls, just to fuck up again. It's sad, it's horrible, it's beautiful and cool at the same time.

There you go: Ego, Shadow, Anima and Animus. Sort them yourselves, I have to work tomorrow and I'd like to stay sane after writing this.

Finally, "I love you" is said more time than tea is served in the movie (and its shot in London!), the stupid notion that this phrase means anything after the first 45 minutes of the movie is hardly bearable, a shot in the heart for romantics who shout in the darkness of cyberspace songs about no one (projection people, it's called projection). And there the notion of Jungian, eastern philosophy, determinism, chaos theory and comes together in the most wondrous way because you see, after all this I've said:

I don't get the movie.

I don't get it, I'm so fucked up that I don't get why they just don't kill their egos, leave the system and look for a new chance, but no, they stay and struggle with the same again, again and again. Like Odin hanged with the three Crows, like the arcana with the square up and the triangle down (numerology people, numerology!), like an addict staying on and off the fix (btw, this is my fix).

So, "I love you" is (and I declare it MUST) be stripped from it's "forever" implicitly, it must be assumed that is a notion of here and now, and that it doesn't guarantee more than that. "Forever" is the static principle that allows entropy to destroy something that is beautiful just by dying and being reborn time, and time again.

Sincerely appreciating you honesty,

César X / NetDragon / Kaiser Xavier / the Hermit King of Swords and the Knight of Wands.