On Soul

This part of composition would be placed in the Qayserium, under the section Microcosmos.

An essay elaborating on the necessary but empty concept of "I-ness", the genesis of the perception of soul, and the obliteration of the synthetic Self in favor of the opaque but all-embodying World.

1.              We do not reject the inner workings of the soul, but only deny of the phantasy of an inner-world capable of inference and deduction.

2.              The world as we perceived can only be under of sensible qualities, instead of intellectual. And it is from these sensible qualities, a unity that we call as body can be deduced. And only from this united convergence [body] can divergences in reference to it can legitimately drawn upon.

3.              The faults of psychological inner world is by at least two ways; 1) its belief that it can gain knowledge (and thus forming deductions) from intellectual qualities, or 2) it believed that it possessed an inner convergence where it can draw inferences from.

4.              But, as the only way for us to know our body is only through sensible qualities, instead of intellectual, the inner workings of the psyche in forming an inner-body is indubitable false.

5.              Inference can only be drawn from perceivable data that our sensibility can pick up, and for this it requires a fixed border and demarcation from one specific data to another.

6.              If such border were not present, than everything would fall into a discordant unity and then inevitably, nothingness. For, it is the border between data that give rise into specificities, and it is from these specificities our sensibility can pick up the existence of one or more existence.

7.              The inner-workings of mind, utilising only the after-images of sensible pictures from outside can yield no knowledge, but only circular ruminations. It tried to expand itself from an empty yet necessary concept of “I” into an individual and dynamic “I”. But this individual ego, as we said, can only be realised from the specificities born from the external world. In other words, the “I” as soon as it escaped the boundaries of material world, precipitated into a universal and united “I” with no borders and identity. The only way for this “I” to at least attach new colours to it is by appealing to memories, and memories are after all, a mere repository of sensible datum. Thus the best way to understand the heart of a serial killer is not a probing inside his mind, but at the traces he left in his wake.

8.              This “I”, as we said, is a necessary concept but empty. Necessary, in terms that; it provides form and a pole for the content to flow into. Without form, no material can register upon our sensibility. For an example, a sentence without “I” vaporised into nothingness, without aim, hanging in air. It has no pole to latch into, and escaped into nothingness it originated. Yet, this I, for an example, the “I” used by the narrator in novels stand firstly for the narrator, yes, and so display an individual character. But if this “I” of the narrator is so individual and unique, no one can understand the passage, or even understand the content of the sentence. But, nevertheless, this “I” can also be understood by everybody who is literate; it displays an illusion of uniqueness by appealing to the one who writes, but at the very fundamental, this I is the only way he can use to make himself comprehensible to everyone, and ironically, also to himself. And so, it is also empty for anybody can fit into this “I”, in terms of understanding its function. Descartes’ “I” which he claimed to be the sole existence of the concreteness of experience of the individual is false and contradictory. For the “I” is a necessary concept in understanding, but not necessarily in actuality. We can also imagine the Martian, the sloth, the Devil spoke with their own “I”-ness, but this doesn’t add even an iota to their actuality. Descartes’ “I” can only be both actual and existed, if this “I” can somehow obtain physical datum which this “I” can latch into. In other words, the "I" is an illusion of the universal playing to be individual.

9.              And so, the “I” is a necessary concept. To deny this is to be absurd. But we have explained that this “I” is neither unique nor specialised. The only way for this “I” to be me, you or anybody specific is if it can appeal to physical datum that converged into the pole of the “I-ness”.

10.           And so, what of the colourful inner world we framed around this “I-ness”? It is a beautiful world indeed, but nevertheless useless in forming inferences or new knowledge. It is not even capable of producing analytical knowledge for itself, for analytical must be of itself, and this “I” has already achieved complete analytical knowledge when every sane man pick it up knowing it as an essential concept. Why the fact that it is empty escaped from many people mind, I know not. But there can be no further extension analytical knowledge of the “I” other than itself. The “I” is the most complete analytical knowledge we can ever have. It is opaque and itself circular upon itself.

11.           What’s left for the function of this “I”? Is this “I” is in fact the soul? This I know not. The expansion and fallacy of bestowing this empty “I” with extensions has muddled everything. Scepticism running rampant and can only be countered by unfortunately radicalism, for the proponent of psychological extension cannot appeal from anything other than, paradoxically the analogy of the external world. I have heard one who tried to explain the Prophet’s ascension by using the analogy of a fish who had spent his lifetime in the river but one day are transported outside in a water bowl. He was brought to explore the other world and then returned to its habitat. It tried to explain all those wonderful things he had seen but inevitably, no one believed him. While this narration certainly wonderful, but it shows nothing other than a chimera in trying to prove the existence of [an individual] soul, one is even prepared to transpose the entire world with it. It demanded for a water bowl to able to infer an immortal soul capable of knowing other worlds/ sensible qualities while retaining its individuality. This duplication of world, or imagining of multiple world, only make thing worse by instilling doubt to the existence of the external world. If this world can be transposed into another one by a Creature, than is this world even real? Not only it failed to explain why the soul remain individual (it only showed that as long as there is possibility of physical datum, the convergence still can occur), it now raises doubt to the very foundation one being is at first to be known! Aren’t the Holy Book expressed these conflicts by an express proclamation, that only He understood the business of the soul?

12.           Is it possible for this empty concept of to be expanded, forming what we called as personality? Personality betrays a flavour of fundamentality in its application, but from where we know of this personality? I know that I am lazy because I do nothing to complete my work. I do not know that I am lazy from an essential supra-natural urge of laziness, for this is absurd. This personality then is synthetic rather than essential knowledge. It is a synthesis of physical datum converged and process upon the pole of convergence. It then materialise synthetically to form this nuclei of individuality, the cognizant cogniser. The "I" then advances from an essential yet nonindividual concept to a personalised concept, that is the cognizant cogniser. When we read out loud the passages of a novel that uses a first point of view narration, all of the audience can sympathise and understand that this I fit into everybody who listened, but when the reader called upon a name, say, Ali, then this unique Ali answered the call. This Ali, is what we call as a cognizant cognizer. What makes a cognizant cognizer? First, it requires to be placed in a world that he can gain cognition, i.e only in a physical world which this cognizer can be cognizant of the inputs impressing upon him. Secondly, it requires a convergence of physical datum that it can gain peculiarness distinct from other distinct objects. Thirdly, it requires a synthesis to set this pattern of convergence fixed into its cognition space, i.e. consciousness. This consciousness that we always call upon our essence of being, is an essential concept for a convergence to become a materialized nuclei. Without this synthesis, there would be no convergence and thus no subject. The cognizer is a cognizer because it have the power of synthesis. It is cognizant for it is placed in a world that it can gain cognition of the impression. Without these three requirements, everything would break apart into a silence and total obliteration.

13.           How can this transcendental "I" advanced into a unique cognizant? In other words, how could we gain consciousness? This would be a ridiculous question as equal in asking how the soul inserted into the body. Both consciousness, I, soul, body is a plethora of synthetic concept, that is essential in gaining any cognition. It is a priori knowledge that already set in place for one to be here at all. The same as we can answer that the ball falls down to earth due to gravity, but what is gravity we can never answer at all. But observe that the difference between "I" and this cognizant cognizer is the presence of the process of synthesis. The "I" in the public reading was left, in a way, hanging in the air, registered in sensibility but lack the synthesis. We are not capable of synthesising this transcendent "I" into an individual cognizer for it would be redundant. In registering the phenomena of public reading as conscious, we already had performed the synthesis, resulting in the context of the World, a planting in the World. And that is why, the synthesis is not and are not required to be performed at the "I", for the World has already planted.

14.           The World, or the context, the planting is the immediate result of the synthesis. Rather than providing a material pole of self, the synthesis would instead produce a World. And that is why, we gain cognition of the world as in-World, rather than out-World. We are here inside the world, in perfect unity with it rather than gaining cognition form it form outside of it, like an astronomer gain cognition of the sky through the lens and the distance of a telescope. The sense of traditional self is totally obliterated/absent in our cognition of the world, a total integration has occurred. The constellation pf physical datum is set fixed in place by synthesis, as the firmament stood silent and the world became calm, the World is then formed.

15.           I am conscious of all of this philosophizing would not dissolve the notion of soul inside all of us. Kant said that whenever he closed his eye and try to search for this concept that we called as soul, he only stumbled upon something but he can’t get anything else from it. The notion of soul, so sharp , crisp and all embodying a concept is so appealing to us. Our demonstration of the highest peak of individual consciousness, i.e. the World is after all ended with a broad base, an opaque end. This of course is not satisfying for the enterprising soul. From 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 then there must be a 1, this exasperation of a single and sharp end of infinity is innate in every of us. After all, this force of unity might be one of the many laws of nature. But whether an individual soul existed or not, in the form of material, we can never determine. It is wholly a metaphysical debate, and if there’s any advantages from the debate, we can never gain for it, for the goods of metaphysical hold value only in the metaphysical world, like a currency of one nation only possess value in that country not from other. In this physical world, the culmination of what can we call as the soul ends with the conception of the World. To march further, where can we go? And more importantly, for what?

On Fatalism and War

Hi guys :D

I was browsing through my documents and found a short essay, written during my friends and I travel trip. The essay was written in the winter off 2016, on the cruise ship on board for the France port. I can recall that during the time, the world was ablaze with the news regarding the erupting battle in Aleppo. And, of course, some of the people quoted a few Hadith here and there regarding the prophecy of the Great War (al-Malhamah al-Kubra), how the Mahdi roused the Muslims and defeat the infidels et cetera et nauseum. I can't remember wholly the full hadith, but the essay was written in such context.

It is important to note that any of the essays are of experimental values, for I realised that it is a loss for anybody to concede to an idea in the early years and forsake the reading of other ideas, in favour of stability and docility. The points elaborated here in the essay were conceived in me being so steeped in Jungian and Franklian's ideas, it reeks so much. I abandoned most of ideas in the body in light of new ideas and milestones. As Keynes once jeered for him changing his ideas, he retorted, "When the facts change, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sirs?"

And so, here you go, the essay On Fatalism and War. (The italics are of a later edition)

It is normal for the self to remain dormant, like a stagnant pool; only to be shaken when someone creates a ripple by throwing a stone in it. The stone could be of any size and any shape, thrown in any time but it is in the only time the stone thrown that it will create a massive ripple. Out from nowhere, the stagnant pool shudders and roared back. The colour of the pool changed; you can always see your reflection in it all this while, but now it is the colour of silt and dirt. And when the ripple has ceased, like every surge of energy, it will reach an equilibrium and gone to the wind; the pool thus returns to its stagnant state.

An important note; that this is not a critical essay on the attitudes of the fatalists of our age.  This is only a monologue regarding the whims and action of a stagnant pool. Why bother turning our time to the ever-changing action of man while we can stare to a pool all day long, with lesser headache and debating?

The self will default to a relaxed and calm state as no man can retain long trains of complex feelings or thoughts without getting drained. Norms and etiquettes and laws of energy decreed that man should be dormant and stable. He will treat his everyday as indeed just another day and details are unseen except when he channeled himself to commit, as in the case of everyday challenge and burdens.

But then, lo and behold, someone throw a stone into the pool. And what a great ripple it made. Thus, with just a single but great ripple, the pool has forgotten the small ripples created everyday or every week by the rains or wind as it is more expedient to grasp and elaborate on a single major event than the many minor events. The pond is intrinsically prone to polemics. It is more worthwhile in the terms of energy spent and the feedback received. Even in social interactions there are strict application of rules of supply and demand, this capitalism of polemics.

Now let us observe on the mechanism of effect of the ripple to the pond. The pond would not regard the normalized ripples of raindrops as an important event because the self registered it as a part of self.  The body would only respond to something alien, to a new unlocked experience. The alien experience creates such a large magnitude of a response that can be compared as the response of antibodies to non-self particles. The feeling of fear or heightened interest upon the alien experience is due to the channeling of libido from the orbit of unconsciousness to consciousness. Archetypes are unlocked and as a defence mechanism, libido is expanded to explore and to normalize the experience.

The archetype of a battle to end every battle is present in many cultures and religion. The Nordic notion of Ragnarok is then echoed throughout the ages and millennia as the Apocalypse, Malhamah al-Kubra and also the World War. It is somewhat ironic when the self-proclaimed kings of consciousness in the modern era, during the onset of World War I said that “it will be a war to end all wars”, which again echoes the Ragnarok archetype. Yet, even in the end of Ragnarok, this mythical "war to end all wars", yet another beginning sprouted. Can we ever comprehend what an end really means?

The presence of a continuum of understanding must not be immediately subjugated to a doctrine of pluralism. The presence of such a uniformed expression of thought in cultures or what Adolf Bastian termed as “Elementergedanke” is actually pointing the intricate and weaving of experiences shared among humankind as a species, producing a galactic-sized beauty of a tapestry. We must calibrate our understanding to not shudder at every effort to bring humans together as an undercover act of Satan, but as a chance to reconcile the already fragmented people of our species. It is in this time of woes and agony, the right time for us to reconcile the fragments together.

The Ragnarok archetype along with other archetypes that reflect distance and depth are a complex and sophisticated product of culture. The archetypes reflecting distance enabled us to form a perspective of future, and when every two parallel lines extrapolated to the horizon, they will converge to a meeting point at the far line of sight; an end. This distinguished character of futuristic belief will naturally give birth to an end, and it doesn’t have to be entirely fatalistic or grim. But as the archetype of future events produces the feeling of end, it also creates the perspective of depth. Depth and distance creates a path to the meeting point and naturally the woes of life will ultimately give birth to the feelings of sorrow and existential thinking.

The archetypes in the aforementioned categories are also a late product of consciousness. The Greeks, for an instance, have primitive sense of future, or even time. Oswald Spengler noticed it through Thucydides who famously said that before his time there was no significant event at all. The Greeks lived in the present and there was no sense of depth, distance and ultimately future. Pythagoras also mentioned that two straight lines would never meet each other, contrasted by our findings in the previous discussion. The Greeks then are sheltered from any sort of complex form of sorrow and the existential Angst, forever sheltered by the notions with their forever circling cycle of dramas and comedies.

Thus, it is clear why the classicists are devoted to the Classical Ages. The emancipation of time or even its un-existent, are God-like to them. To live above time or if there’s no existence of time at all  really echoes eternity and paradise. Almost all notions of paradise are described as living eternally or with no notion of time at all. And the Pythagorean mindset of the Greeks, where parallel lines will never met will never shackled the Greeks by the apparatus of perception and as Blake said, “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

We have elaborated in simpler terms how the species of Ragnarok archetypes will eventually bore the feeling of acute end and conclusion. We must next examined the side products accompanies the feeling of depth and distance to the modern man, why the modern man can no longer ravel freely in Dionysian orgies and live above time as the Pythagorean man.

The side products from the acute feeling of distance and depth, as we mentioned, are sorrow and angst. The examination upon the sky will naturally bestow within us the feeling of unexplored boundaries and transcendence, as Eliade pointed in The Sacred and The Prophane. Thus, the modalities of depth and distance will give us sorrow and angst. It happens to many of us the Zeno paradox, the losing feeling in conquering distance and space and the subsequent installation of the feeling of doubt whether motion existed or not at all. We, the People of the Delta are the Achilles who forever chasing the tortoise who started the race first, only to end up a point in the distance where the tortoise has already surpassed before. The conception of distance instilled in modern man such fatalistic conception of life and in pursuit of the happiness, which are romanticized in so many works to be only found “at the end”. Even in the fairy tales and children’s fables, the “happily ever after” is at the end of the story. The problem is, to the modern man, whether there is an end after all after all. Also, the toil to reach the end yields to no motion at all.

For what are a "beginning" and an "end" except an expression of the ideal, that can never be captured in experience? Of course in supposing a chain of causality, we rightly presupposed a beginning and an end. But, to choose a finite and determined point in an infinite chain and call it a beginning or an end would only yield a gross contradiction. The problem of a beginning and end of an infinite chain of causality is an antinomy that can never be captured and analysed in experience. We can conceive that there is a beginning and an end, but to presuppose this point x as the beginning, again would be a contradiction, for we essentially try to force something finite to a something infinite. The only way to solve this antinomy is for us to acquire an intelligible intuition, rather than the default sensible intuition all of us have. It is through this intelligible intuition, where concepts and ideals can be investigated on the level of actuality, can only then we solve this contradiction. But for us human being, we can only investigate of what is actual only on the objects given in sensibility. Unless we somehow unlocked this ability of intelligible intuition, the so-called God's mind where in His mind is where everything actual lies, we can never solve this dead end. Until then, we must be satisfied on the axiom that if something is possible in thoughts, doesn't necessarily it follows to be actual too in concreto. As Kant rightly points, thinking about a 100 thalers doesn't end with that 100 thalers in my pocket. 

We have demonstrated so far to indirectly shows how the feeling of an end, sorrow and angst are the natural product of human civilization’s advances. We have yet to show directly that the sorrow and woes of life do not belongs to the unlucky and accursed.

Humans have learnt that what causes pain to be avoided at all cost but ironically it is the pain that advances mankind. It is the discovery of pain sparked the terrible genius of a problem solver, a starting point of an infinite domino trail. It is the experience of pain awakened the first man from his paradisiac dream and slumber and to get working in reality. It is a part of a human’s experience and it is high time for us to recognize and live with our shadows. The reconciliation of two opposites is what make the world and completes it. The night we shall pass and the woe we will surpass.

Therefore, we have shown that the instinct of life to a completion cannot be separated with the sorrow and angst accompanying it. The acute sense of sorrow is a sign of progress or even maturation as the newborn babe cannot feel sorrow, he escaped time and lives in the present, all he can ask or wish is the quenching of his appetite but never for sustenance, which only formed with the conception of depth and distance.

To relate everything into context, I have seen that the recent light on the Aleppo crisis has made some of us pessimistic and burden themselves to search for hadiths on the Apocalypse to justify their sorrow. They scurried for a hadith to justify their pessimism but forget other hadiths that our Prophet reminded us to plant the seeds in our hand even the morrow is the Apocalypse. It is very daunting indeed that the apparatus of religion, which has produced the best of human in our history, has now been used as a suicide tool.

The knowledge of our psychology that there will always be blood and wars never intended to make us be and grow cold; it only demands us to grow wiser. The knowledge of our self enables us to strive for the perfection of our selves, not to bother us with the post-pubescent conception of paradise-on-Earth. Communism and all of the ideologies intending to create a paradise-on-Earth have failed because they search paradise in the wrong place.

It is shameful when we explained to them that the Syrian clerics themselves prevent for any military intervention, they will immediately retorted “We do not involve in politics”. It is indeed daunting how little it needed to stir the youths of today and how shallow their understanding regarding the issues they are speaking about.  Nevertheless the youths of today make an exemplary subject for self-improvement. Never will they agree to wipe the froth of spirit and frenzy at the side of their mouth; indeed they wear it as a sign of pride and medal of participation. And they scorn the thinking people, to be inactive, passive and it is not hard for us to seek ones who will say the thinking people as cold and merciless.

Sent forth, then, these youths burning with passion for I too ever want to see the horizon on fire and the air smelled of flesh and soot. It is then I can prove that the true and wise sages said are true, but they are no longer here, both the sages and the boys.