A Hymn Of Elucidation

Terrence McKenna spoke about imagination in a talk he gave, about how Virtual Reality (VR) is being used in archeology and how he is excited about the prospect of advancing VR tech which will be used to objectivize the soul, let people build the world of their dreams.

There is an aspect of the talk which did spark inspiration for what was later channeled on my way home from work listening to the beginning of the Modern Sovereign episode with Kata. The full intensity of spirit while walking and listening to music I may not be able to re-channel now, but I will try and speak about what was on my mind then and expand from there.

Kata answered the question what his “writtenbyhuman” substack was about by saying that it is a place where his writing will be, a growing digital library. That invoked the thought of my own digital arrangement. I have toyed around with the idea for a long time. I feel torn between on the one hand wanting to spend a lot of time writing each essay, researching it, curating what I put out, building a VISION which each piece will contribute towards in a clear organized manner. But on the other hand I want to just express whatever bursts of thoughts come into my head, no matter how seemingly unrelated, disorganized and incomplete they may be. Maybe it is not the time now to try and build up a philosophy of my own through structure and deliberate, intentional planning, but remove the shackles of expectation I burdened myself with and just let my mind expand without any restriction. In the end this will still be building up to whatever my way of thinking will be when it is more structured one day, because I must first allow the seemingly chaotic nature of my soul to unfold before trying to put order to it.

But what shall be the name for this place? This frontier of cutting-edge thought, of exploration into where nobody has gone before, that is, my mind? Oh but the sheer arrogance of this young man, to proclaim himself an explorer into the unknown, you may think! Cutting-edge is after all a term usually used for the most renowned visionaries of all time, how PRESUMPTUOUS of me to use that term in relation to myself? But it is exactly because I use this term in relation to myself that I think I have not succumbed to excessive hubris quite yet. For these ventures I spoke of are not necessarily located in the objective world, if such a world even exists, but in the realm of the self of mine. As my self interacts with the objective world or approximations of it at the very least, it may seem like that world is what I am exploring, but first and foremost, I will explore the foundations of my mind, as whatever topics I will speak about are not spoken about for the sake of providing objective insight into the matters that are discussed on the surface. There is a vast stream of possibilities, of topics and lifepaths I could walk down depending on the topics I choose to prioritize in my mind and how I am going to interact with them. If my aim was to become an authority, an expert on a certain topic, then the path would be fairly straightforward: read all the greatest thinkers relevant to a topic, write a lot about what said thinkers said, re-read all those greatest thinkers, write some more about what they said, repeat said process a couple of times and voila, I am an expert. But that is not what I am interested in, not right now.

In the future, when I will attempt to engage in more grounded analysis on this blog, I may appear to contradict myself by conducting myself as if my analysis was objectively valid and not merely a superficial appearance of the underlying process of individuation. Oh, a contradiction, how I’ve feared being such a fool who would dare contradict himself for so long in my life. But I know that seeking perfect rationality and consistency in a human being is a futile effort, about as promising as looking for … for … I can not even come up with a metaphor that arises authentically within me as I am opening my mind to the possibility of finding one, because all the ones that come to mind are shallow clichés that aren’t my own, incapable of portraying the true depth of futility and hubris in the endeavor I seek to compare them to. The mind is exhaustive after all. But I won’t spend days ruminating over the perfect metaphor to put into this passage of the text. It did not arise so there is nothing I seem to have to say here.

Anyways, the purpose of this writing is that I may over time start to accept and eventually perhaps even welcome inconsistencies within myself that I spot. Harmony is beauty but real insight occurs where harmony ends and conflict emerges. Is that true? No idea, I’m not going to spend much if any time consciously checking that statement for its validity. That is a task best suited for future me, whether that future me will do so tomorrow or in 10 years.

Now about a name for this venture, what is it I am trying to express? Is it even an authentic expression of mine that kickstarted the process of writing this, or was it the rush of finally walking after a long day of sitting combined with the ecstasy of music, the most mindbending drug known to me? Music is so incredibly strong, this is what I want to express, yet I am gonna undermine the perceived potency of my statement by stating it is not just the music compelling this state of mind given I feel a similar energy now writing despite not playing any music and not physically moving through space.

Anyways, recollecting the state of mind that compelled this piece, it must have been a combination of two inputs: McKenna speaking about the future of VR in building the world of dreams, which made me think about the endless power of imagination and whether it may not be such a negative thing to exercise as it may appear to me the way McKenna phrases it, and Kata speaking about the process of creating his own archive of thoughts, a library. Now I am absolutely terrible at describing my daydreams and imaginations, but I will do so anyways: through my mind raced the idea of evolution, of chaotic expansion and growth. A brain like organic structure constantly expanding into endless pathways, relentless energy finally being allowed to manifest with no structure. No structure? Is such a thing even possible? Structure or consistency, or logic, or linearity, there is something within all these things that is an absolute requirement for existence to occur. If there was no structure, nothing would exist, nothing would be to be. Even what we perceive as chaos is still always following underlying principles which dictate the path of events that is unfolding, if there was no underlying order to reality, it would be impossible to be. There is such a tremendous depth in this thought when I visualize it in my head, yet my grasp on language and perhaps my mind are not capable of doing the true meaning of these statements any justice, to myself and most certainly not to you. Will I ever be able to do so? That is a question that only the course of my life can answer. It seems clear that existence and being requires a structural foundation to be, but what lies beyond that? Is it even possible for something to exist when it is not structured? Following the initially held up axiom no, it is not, but what does this mean for non-existence? When we say that something does not exist, we are only being truthful in the superficial layer of reality because the fact that our mind was able to conjure up the thought and come up with a sort of object or entity onto which we put the label “non-existent” shows that said object does in fact exist, or at least its existence is possible, otherwise our mind would not be able to conjure up the imagination of its non-existence. It seems too obvious to say that being pre-supposes structure and order, how could it not do so, so I am merely making an incredibly obvious, non-falsifiable statement and am amazed at the profoundness of it. Is there a CONTRADICTION here? It does not feel like it, a contradiction is conflict which can’t be resolved except for achieving order, but the feeling I have now is one that there is a higher truth I intuitively know exists but am unable to locate or verify yet. Contradictions with the negative baggage of the claim aren’t included in this sort of feeling even tho from an objective standpoint you could say that. So am I contradicting myself or not? Again, the future will tell.

How are you feeling reading this? Are you bewildered, fascinated, do you feel sick or disoriented because I keep making points without actually delving into them and just wandering off into unrelated trains of thought? Are you part of a very small portion of the people who initially started reading this piece because most people have given up because they couldn’t find any purpose in them reading this completely chaotic verbal barrage of words?

I wonder if there any readers left at this point how they feel. Writing after all is written language, a verbal process of sound. Letters are symbols carrying meaning because while reading we hear the sound of the words being spoken. In past times I kept thinking about how when people read someone’s writing, it is as if they are being put under a spell. Now as I am writing this I am realizing that maybe the trait that links writing and music, both having the potential to be incredibly intoxicating, is sound, since music is sound and written language is a variant of language which is predominantly based upon sound since the inception of our existence as human beings. Writing can have such an enormous influence, eliciting emotions and transferring energy from the writer onto the readers. I may be making it sound more sinister and deliberate than it actually is, without doubt there are writers and musicians that intentionally orchestrate their expression in order to hypnotize people and induce certain states of mind, but there are also those who fail to do it with any effect, and those doing it as an accident, or rather a by effect of genuine self-expression, which can be intoxicating or stimulating in its effect on others, but maybe the underlying nature is different than when it is done intentionally. Am I capable of casting a spell? If yes is that even something I want to do? This is why I wonder what readers would feel like reading this piece.

Circling back to the idea of unchecked growth, of expansion, these were the themes that I felt drawn towards and thus should be displayed in the name of the blog I am publishing this on. I saw a faint vision of something which seemed like tentacles on the head of a humanoid body all in dark purple color, but it wasn’t exactly tentacles because it didn’t carry the negative association that such imagery usually would have in the context of uncanny darker colors. But I have to remind myself that unless I note these associations down right in the moment, I may just be conjuring up completely different ideas in my head that have little to do with the original ideas, so think of this not as the exact imagery I experienced but the memory of the imagery I am constructing in this moment. Serves as a reminder to note these sensations down immediately after experiencing them in the future. But the truth of these moments may only be experienced as they happen and then be obscured forever, even if I note it down immediately, when I will return to it a day or a month later, I won’t remember it and nonetheless project onto the words I wrote down that tried to portray the experience, similarly to how I forgot most of the imagery of dreams I wrote down in detail. But maybe what is lost is only the idea of an exact replica of the moment, but the truth, as in the underlying energy, dare I say principle, this will be something which can not be lost as long as I stay true to myself over time.

Now about the tentacles that were not tentacles, I don’t have a good word for describing them but it seemed like one of two sides that were about to form a neural connection, except there was only one side of connection originating from the brain, the head, and as much as some of these long thing shapes did connect back to their root, the sheer network of connections grew and grew at an incredible pace to the point that the origin grew in relative and absolute size, while more shapes spun and jumped into every possible direction, to the point where it no longer became immediately obvious that they were all of one origin and one space because the scope of them became so large they could no longer all be part of the imaginary field of vision of mine.

I am running danger of repeating myself in a incredibly one-dimensional manner by endlessly repeating terms such as “expansion”, “association”, “experience”, “existence”, “structure” or “endless”, but that can not be avoided during stream of consciousness writing as this, or at least it can not be consciously avoided. Few ideas terrify me as much as being a one-dimensional, boring person being unable to access any real depth of being and mind, but as you may able to tell from this writing, this is not something which holds much influence over me right now, I just want to commit to this state of mind I am in, I have declined dinner as it became ready even though I was hungry prior to writing and my right lat is twitching crazily, but all I can focus on is this way of spontaneous self-expression. Isn’t self-expression a redundant term, isn’t all expression related to the self in some way? Oh well, this train of thought isn’t too appealing right now so I will not follow it. At least now I and you know that I am being self-aware when it comes to verbal and thematic repetition in this piece of writing, and that I consider it okay. This was ultimately just for my own sake since I can’t imagine anyone reading along this far unless they already share this sentiment of mine, not caring about lack of structure or repetition.

Now, what is the name? The name of an empire? I can’t say I’ve read more than half a handful of essays on Curtin Yarvin’s or Moldbug’s blog, Gray Mirror Of The Nihilist Prince, but it is a captivating name that keeps popping up in my mind (that reminds me of another repeating theme, as you may see I will have to come up with a more diverse set of expressions to say “something kept popping up in my mind” because indeed a lot of things are constantly revealing themselves to be a theme in my mind over a longer period of time). On today’s music fueled daydream I kept thinking about the theme of aristocracy, namely aristocracy of the mind. There is a passage of Nietzsche, in fact the ONLY passage of Nietzsche I have read so far, in Beyond Good and Evil which was part of my Intro to Philosophy assigned readings and one of the few 5-15 page excerpts in the book that sticks with me until this day. I can’t convey the way that passage made me feel in any satisfying way now, but let me say that Nietzsche addresses the Free Spirits of the future in what to my ears sounds like an epic speech given to a class of people he was intimately familiar with by a shared nature of being, a charismatic visionary speaker addressing a crowd of likeminded fellows, ready to explode and expand into their powerful way of being, making a promise to the stars. Now let me be clear that I can’t even remember the proper definition of Free Spirit according to Nietzsche if someone who actually read him were to ask me, during that class I realized the way I read that text and the emotions it stirred in me were very unlike what is considered usual for the text and what is commonly accepted as its meaning. I just remember this powerful image, this energy it made me feel and makes me feel even to this day.

How does this relate to the Gray Mirror of the Nihilist Prince? Maybe that term is captivating to me because it conveys the idea of aristocracy, of being chosen to be a certain way no matter how alien or unlike others it is, even though I despise the idea of nihilism. The Gray Mirror is indifferent to what the person looking into it wants to see, it will reflect what it reflects just the same. Maybe the title of this blog is meant to display a similar attitude. Do I consider myself an aristocrat? I do not know if it is a term I find sufficiently descriptive of myself, but if there exists an aristocracy of the mind, or rather of the spirit, then I feel very much aligned with that notion of aristocracy. This also captivates what ultimately should be a central purpose of this blog: to express my self without inhibition, without expectations about who I should be, not from myself and certainly not from others. If there is any nobility and beauty in my soul, then this will be how I will bring it out into the open, no longer hiding it out of fear of its radiance or its potential shortcomings, but embody it because it is the highest destiny I could possible be called towards. If I have a purpose, then this will be how I find it.

Now, but why am I releasing it to the public if it is about self-discovery for myself and only for my self? Because I want to let it be a signal to the other Free Spirits, the greatest friendships of my life were formed because of unapologetic expression of myself, as it is the only way for likeminded spirits to see me and for me to find them. Others may find what I write entertaining or insightful as it relates to their own life, but the purpose of this writing is not to teach, but to express and be. Everything else should come as an after-thought. I may not always be able to embody these ideals properly. Maybe as I stop writing this I shift out of the state of mind I was in while writing all this down, and I will never re-enter such a state of mind and find none of what I said relatable or particularly truthful anymore. Maybe I will turn out to be a self-contradicting hypocrite. But those are the risks I must take in order to become the person that will discover and achieve whatever is the purpose I am called to in this life.

A satisfying name may not immediately come to me, but I want to release this writing directly after finishing writing it no matter what. Crafting a perfect persona or façade is not what all this was about, so I shall let this spirit carry over into my decision of publishing it. I may spend a few minutes peering into my mind, seeing if anything authentically satisfying arises, if not then so be it. Once I have figured out the proper name and formatting for the blog, I will re-publish it there without any changes, to serve as a relict of what started this chapter of my life.

It should be a song. An ode towards authenticity as it relates to the self. But a song is more fitting, an ode is explicitly directed towards another, a song can be sung without any listeners, arising as a product of pure passion. That is what this piece of writing which I don’t think can be called an essay expressed. What is the name? I looked for synonyms for the word unravel because I felt that this was the essence of what I wanted to express yet it’s not the right word, but now I’ve found it.

A hymn of elucidation. That will be the name. A hymn is something whose fundamental structure will stay constant among one’s life. After all, what could be better suited for constant presence in my life than the dedication towards truth and authentic being, no matter how chaotic the process of unraveling will be? With that, I close this chapter, but the book of my life is merely at the beginning. Keep reading to follow along the journey with me.