Reality Beyond Realism

[Keith Davis]

I got out Norman Brown, which has been sitting, unread, for several years. Read the preface. I keep returning to the insights of non-duality, which is what struck me like a beautiful hammer when Slothrop had his “moment” at what, for me at least, is the climax, and point, of GR. 

Www.keithdavismusic.com

> On Jun 28, 2020, at 11:23 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ian, thank you for sharing that. Your grandfather's book sounds really
> fascinating. I've been working on some ideas for a more novelistic
> treatment of "mineral consciousness," an idea I believe I first encountered
> in *GR. *Finding the right ways to tell that kind of story has a lot to do
> with why I'm teaching the class.
> 
> 
>> On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 9:20 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