M & D Read. Chap 25, p 253

[Joseph Tracy]

Recall that the context for talking about the “soul journey” of death is a discussion and respectful argument about their journeys and work for the Royal Society and how that Society favors science conducted in “Chartered Companies” . Dixon finds the confines of this arrangement suspicious, and Mason argues they are safe and  the way of things:

“In any case,” says Mason to Dixon, “both Pennsylvania and Maryland are Charter’d Companies as well, if it comes to that. Charter’d Companies may indeed be the form the World has now increasingly begun to take.” 
“And I thought ’twas a Spheroid . . . ?”   (p. 252). 

Contained in this probing joke  about the shape of the earth we find that Dixon is profoundly suspicious of the alliances of power against the wildness and intrinsic freedoms of humans and places, seeing a kind of conspiracy against the wholeness or circularity of nature, even against the largest and most profound realities science has revealed.

Despite his defense of Chartered Companies and their safety, Mason did not want to return to Capetown. Dixon turns Mason's reluctance to go on this journey to a deeper concern that troubles Mason- the jouney of death -  how there will be no foresight  on that trip…

“unless tha’ve brought along a Remembrancer, as some would say a Conscience . . . ? something stash’d in thy Boot-Strap to get thee going upon a cold Day,— and cold shall it be,— a part of thy Soul that doesn’t depend on Memories, that lies further than Memories . . . ?”” (p. 254). 

Conscience is a topic of deep and central concern among Quakers.  Not where we came from or hope to go but how. Dixon seems to feel that that “ Remembrancer” is our essential weight and meaning. 
'Remebrance' has the word ‘member’ at the core. The implication not so much one of recall of a story, but rejoining of a living body.

Like no other book, in M&D Pynchon slowly develops conversations and observations that go to the roots in time and mind of the current forms of civilization and spiritual discourse. Mason and Dixon, the often reluctand surveyors of these emergent forms and territories give us a conversational, non-combative view into the frontiers  of that terrain.  I begin to feel that this should be required american reading  like Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn.

> On Apr 25, 2018, at 5:55 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Starting with a riff/joak? about reincarnation, TRP pushes to answer the
> question of what
> could survive after drinking from Lethe:
> ---" a part of thy Soul that doesn't depend on Memories, that lies further
> than Memories...?"
> 
> Emerson's Oversoul? Jung's 'Collective Unconscious'? A different Eastern
> [Hindoo joke coming] notion?
> 
> Comment period begins.
> --
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