Reality Beyond Realism

[Keith Davis]

Alright! The Plist is rockin’!

Www.keithdavismusic.com

> On Jun 28, 2020, at 9:21 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> My Grandfather, a geologist writing in the 1930s, produced a rough draft of
> a work tracing the evolution of consciousness from the earliest discovered
> life forms at the time of his research to the present time. His prose is
> very story-like in the telling of the geological study. I have been looking
> at his work after its having been buried away in boxes in family basements
> for more than 80 years and seeing there hints that Western thought was well
> along that inquiry leading to the dissolution of self-reflective
> "objectivity". Richard Grossinger delivers a heavy-handed wallop on noggin
> of positivist approaches to scientific inquiry in Dark Pool of Light that
> might be a direct outgrowth of ideas swirling around in the dark corners of
> depression-era phenomenological thought.
> 
>> On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 5:16 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I love both Campbell and Brown.  Brown's Life Against Death clearly was a
>> *major* inspiration for Gravity's Rainbow.  And Jung was Campbell's mentor,
>> more important than Campbell himself. They are all western discoverers of
>> aspects of ancient eastern philosophies, even if unintentionally, which
>> makes them all that more valuable.  I'd add Stanislav Grof's transpersonal
>> psychology to that western mix.
>> 
>> What is usually called "mysticism" is an unavoidable aspect of a deeper
>> dive into eastern takes on illusion v reality.  Strict materialism will
>> have to be discarded when one personally encounters those deeper realms.
>> Even so, those deeper realms will largely remain inscrutable, yet
>> undeniable.  Ancient texts might help.  Gurus might too, but I avoid them.
>> Direct experience is my guru, maybe to my detriment.
>> 
>> Your inquiry is very cool.  Have fun with it.
>> 
>> David Morris
>> 
>>> On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 5:56 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Thanks David,
>>> 
>>> Certainly ambitious, and much more an inquiry than a top-down lesson on
>> my
>>> part. Growing up, I had much more schooling in (mostly Western) lit than
>> in
>>> non-Western spirituality. So literature was the first thing that allowed
>> me
>>> to feel like I was seeing through the first couple layers of illusion.
>>> 
>>> Campbell, Brown, and others have pointed to artists as modern-day
>> shamans,
>>> bringing people in contact with the real. I want to see how stories can
>> (or
>>> can’t) do that when I have also come to understand reality as starting
>>> where storytelling stops.
>>> 
>>>> On Jun 28, 2020, at 4:52 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> My God, this seems an ambitious task!  In Buddhist or Hindu or other
>>> ancient eastern schools, ubiquitous reality is seen as an illusion, a
>> veil
>>> one hopes to see past.  Individuality (personal identity) is also seen
>> as a
>>> false reality, at least partly so.  Many lifetimes of observance by a
>>> select few are sometimes required to see beyond the illusion of common
>>> reality.  I wish you all the best.
>>> 
>>> David Morris
>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 3:06 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Fellow Plisters,
>>>> 
>>>> Starting July 1 I'll be leading a class you and/or people you know may
>>>> find interesting. The class is called Reality Beyond Realism:
>>>> Storytelling for/versus Enlightenment.
>>>> 
>>>> It comes out of a tension I’ve been feeling in my own work in recent
>>>> years. The tension is basically this. On the one hand, the telling of
>>>> stories is maybe the original human activity. On the other hand,
>>>> stories also seem to represent our most formidable limitation as
>>>> individuals and as a species. Buddhism (and related traditions) seems
>>>> to agree with contemporary science (neuroscience, quantum physics,
>>>> etc) in the claim that our notion of individual “self” is ultimately a
>>>> kind of delusion. A fiction we compulsively tell ourselves, which may
>>>> have once been adaptive, but may no longer be so. There are stories at
>>>> the bottom of all our sufferings and all our social strife. This is
>>>> easy to see in personal psychological dysfunctions (depression,
>>>> anxiety, etc.), political cynicism (which relies on limited and
>>>> outmoded stories), as well as deliberate misinformation (i.e. "false"
>>>> stories).
>>>> 
>>>> So the tension leads to the question: can stories actually take us
>>>> closer to individual and collective enlightenment? And the related
>>>> question: Is what separates us from a more enlightened world the
>>>> telling of bad stories, or the telling of stories altogether? As
>>>> people who are uniquely attuned to the telling of stories—who may even
>>>> look at (literary) storytelling as a kind of calling or chosen life’s
>>>> work—is it possible for us to really use them for “good”? Can stories
>>>> get us free, or do they only imprison us? Can they bring us closer to
>>>> “absolute reality” or can they only distort our apprehension of
>>>> things?
>>>> 
>>>> So this “class” is a four-part inquiry where we will look at some of
>>>> the conventions of Western realism as well as some texts that
>>>> deliberately subvert those conventions (this will include some Pynchon
>>>> excerpts, of course). We’ll try to see what other kinds of stories are
>>>> possible or desirable, whether stories can be used to dismantle
>>>> stories, or whether they inevitably entrap us in the constant karmic
>>>> ping-pong of the world of forms.
>>>> 
>>>> Some of those conventions of storytelling will include: the
>>>> individuality of subjectivity, the linear and strictly forward
>>>> movement of time, the mechanics of cause and effect, certain
>>>> epistemological regimes and attendant values (including capitalism,
>>>> scientism, post-Judeo-Christianity, etc.), as well as the more
>>>> literary-specific conventions of stories built out of language (i.e.
>>>> subject-verb containing sentences) and the form of the prose story
>>>> (with its beginnings/middles/ends, conflicts and rising action and
>>>> climaxes, etc.).
>>>> 
>>>> The course will be four sessions, on consecutive Wednesdays, starting
>>>> July 1, 6-8pm Eastern Standard Time. It’s run through this very cool
>>>> organization called Incite Seminars, which is trying to bring
>>>> ambitious learning out of neoliberal higher education institutions and
>>>> rebuild it together with the people. They’re Philly-based, but now
>>>> operating on Zoom. The classes run on an “enable-as-you-can” (i.e.
>>>> donate-what-you-choose) structure. A few people have signed up already
>>>> but I’d really love for there to be a diversity of
>>>> perspectives/experiences involved. If you think you might know someone
>>>> who would be interested, I’m including a link to the class page, where
>>>> you can read the full description and fill out a registration form:
>>>> https://inciteseminars.com/reality-not-realism/
>>>> 
>>>> Also, if you have some favorite relevant excerpts, other reading
>>>> suggestions, or ideas for the direction of the class, I'd be happy to
>>>> hear and incorporate them.
>>>> 
>>>> Love,
>>>> 
>>>> Smoke
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>> 
>>> 
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l