Unus mundus*

[The following is a kind of summary report to date about a question I have had on the matter of that which has many names, some even forbidden to write or utter. It is also a kind of validation of thought or suspicion I have had from an early age pointing to a oneness or unity of which I am a very small part. 

Just to punctuate a point in time. The experiment and inquiry continue.]

Unified Cosmos: Philosophical, Mystical, and Scientific Perspectives?    

Throughout history, a diverse array of thinkers has posited that an underlying oneness governs the universe, consciousness, and matter. This concept, often referred to as the unus mundus or a "unified world," suggests that the apparent multiplicity of our reality emerges from a single, foundational source.

Foundational Philosophical Perspectives

Early Western and Eastern traditions laid the groundwork for this discourse through rational and metaphysical inquiry:

• Giordano Bruno envisioned an Infinite Universe, an animate and eternal cosmos where infinite worlds manifest a divine unity through both matter and soul.

• Plotinus described The One as a transcendent, indivisible source beyond all categories, from which all reality emanates.

• Baruch Spinoza argued for a single Substance (God/Nature), viewing all individual entities merely as interdependent "modes" of one infinite reality.

• Adi Shankara and Laozi provided Eastern parallels; Shankara’s Brahman represents a non-dual consciousness where the individual self and the world’s plurality are seen as illusions (maya). Laozi’s Tao is an ineffable "way" that harmonizes opposites in a dynamic cosmic flow.

Psychological and Existential Evolutions

In more modern contexts, the focus shifted toward how this unity is perceived or experienced by the human subject:

• Carl Jung used the term Unus Mundus to describe a pre-dualistic wholeness that links the psyche and matter, manifesting through synchronicity in a "psychoid" realm.

• Martin Heidegger explored Being (Sein) as the ontological "presencing" that underlies all things, disclosed specifically through human awareness without requiring total fusion between the individual and the whole.

• Paul Tillich and Ralph Waldo Emerson looked toward the "Ground of Being" and the "Over-Soul," respectively, emphasizing an existential foundation or an immanent universal spirit uniting humanity with the divine.

Contemporary Syntheses and Scientific Inquiry

The discussion has recently expanded to include anecdotal "data" and quantum physics:

• Colin Wilson synthesized these traditions by asserting a unified consciousness reinvested in all living forms . He proposed "Faculty X"—a heightened state of perception—as the means to access this cosmic mind and escape "robot" subjectivity.

• The Penrose-Hameroff "Orch OR" theory attempts to bridge the gap between matter and mind through science. By suggesting that consciousness arises from quantum processes in brain microtubules, it posits a "proto-conscious" fabric of spacetime. This modernizes the ancient quest for oneness by seeking a testable, physical link between subjective awareness and objective reality.

While these thinkers differ in their methods—ranging from Plotinus’s pure rationalism to Jung’s clinical observation and Penrose’s quantum biology—they converge on the central theme that reality is a singular, interconnected whole.

25.02.26 Addition

Sri Anandamayi Ma (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5F7b7dwyvo)

She's not the only one in the world of other-consensual reality . . . consciousness is one word to label the notion, and we are just sparks in its wholeness, or infinite oneness.

Presentation with the assistance of TurboScribe, a precis of which is this (saves reading or listening to the whole thing) and comports with the above re quantum consciousness, etc.: 

[Niels] Bohr's personal diary, examined after his death, contains this entry. Met an Indian holy woman today. She asked me to explain quantum superposition. 

I did. The observer effect, wave-particle duality, the measurement problem. When I finished, she smiled and said, so your science has finally discovered what we've known for 5,000 years. 

Consciousness collapses possibility into actuality. The observer creates the observed. You are the universe observing itself. 

Link 

https://turboscribe.ai/transcript/share/5296233161878268564/Lo24eJ5goYRh9S3OmrN4XzhQ0KY8-0p49qKD4Om8j0Q/the-mysterious-life-of-sri-anandamayi-ma

Transcription

Calcutta, 1926. A prestigious gathering of India's greatest spiritual masters and scholars. In the corner sits a young woman, no more than 30 years old, draped in a simple white sari.

She's smiling, always smiling, but there's something about her eyes that makes seasoned yogis uncomfortable. A famous pundit decides to test her. He recites a complex Sanskrit verse from an obscure Upanishad, deliberately changing one word to see if she'll notice.

She laughs, that mysterious, childlike laugh witnesses could never quite describe, and corrects him. Then she recites the entire Upanishad, from memory, in perfect Sanskrit. But here's what made everyone in that room fall silent. 

This woman had never studied Sanskrit. She'd received barely any formal education. She couldn't even read or write fluently in her native Bengali. 

When asked how she knew these ancient texts, she gave an answer that would echo through the decades. I don't know them. I simply am them. 

Her name was Anandamayi Ma. And what happened next is one of the most documented yet inexplicable spiritual phenomena of the modern age. The child who wasn't there. 

Let me take you back to April 30, 1896. A small village called Chiora in East Bengal, now Bangladesh. A baby girl is born during a violent thunderstorm, and the midwife notices something strange immediately. 

The infant doesn't cry. She smiles. For the first three years of her life, the child, named Nirmala Sundari, meaning immaculate beauty, barely speaks. 

Her parents grow worried. But those who look into her eyes report something unsettling. It's as if no one is home. 

Or rather, as if everyone is home. Her mother later testified to researchers, and this is documented in Bithika Mukherjee's Life and Teachings of Sri Anandamayi Ma. The child would sometimes become completely still, hardly breathing, her eyes fixed on something no one else could see. 

During these states, her body would become rigid, impossible to move, yet warm and alive. What was she seeing? When Nirmala was five, a neighbor found her standing alone in a field at midnight, surrounded by a soft, golden light. The neighbor ran to get others. 

By the time they returned, the light was gone, but the child remained in that same spot, unmoving, her eyes reflecting starlight that shouldn't have been visible on that cloudy night. She was brought home. When she finally returned to normal consciousness, she couldn't, or wouldn't, explain where she'd been. 

The marriage that wasn't. At 13, following the customs of that time and place, Nirmala was married to a young man named Ramani Mohan Chakravarti, who worked as a clerk. But here's where the story takes its first truly mysterious turn. 

n their wedding night, according to multiple testimonies documented in Mother As Revealed To Me, by her disciple Baiji, something impossible happened. When Ramani approached his young bride, he was suddenly seized by an overwhelming spiritual experience. He saw her not as a woman, but as the Divine Mother of the Universe, Shakti herself, radiating such power and purity that the very thought of physical intimacy became absurd, even blasphemous. 

For their entire marriage, which lasted until Ramani's death in 1938, they never consummated their union. But it wasn't a marriage of frustration or denial. Ramani himself became one of her first disciples, often saying, I didn't marry a woman. 

I married God. Yet the mystery deepens. For the first few years of their marriage, Nirmala lived as a normal young housewife. 

She cooked, cleaned, served her husband's family. But those who observed her closely noticed something peculiar. She seemed to be performing these tasks from somewhere else, as if her body was a puppet and the puppeteer was only partially paying attention. 

The initiation from no one. Shabag, Dhaka, 1922. Nirmala is now 26 years old. 

One night, without warning, without any guru, without any external teacher, she begins what witnesses would later call self-initiation. For five hours, her body moves through yoga postures she'd never learned. Her hands form madras, sacred gestures, that take yogis decades to master. 

Sanskrit mantras pour from her lips, mantras she'd never heard. And her body contorts into positions that should have broken bones but instead radiated an eerie grace. Her husband watches, terrified and mesmerized. 

When it's over, she opens her eyes and says simply, today, this body has received all the initiations it will ever need. The Divine Mother has initiated herself. Dr. Gopinath Kaviraj, one of India's greatest Sanskrit scholars and philosophers, investigated this incident extensively. 

His conclusion, published in his letters and documented in Anandamayi Ma, The Mother Bliss Incarnate, by Atmananda, was stark. What I witnessed in Mother cannot be explained by any known psychological or physiological framework. She appears to be a conscious descent of the Divine into human form. 

But the question haunts. If she initiated herself, who was the initiator and who was initiated? The body that defied death. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, as word of this mysterious woman spread, people began gathering around her. 

And they witnessed things that defied explanation. Let me share just three documented incidents, all verified by multiple eyewitnesses. The poison incident, 1924 a jealous woman, believing Anandamayi Ma was bewitching her husband, mixed deadly nightshade into food meant for Ma. 

Multiple witnesses, including two doctors, watched as Ma ate the poisoned food. Within an hour, everyone knew something was wrong. Ma's disciples were panicking. 

But Ma simply smiled and said, This body is watching the poison trying to work. But it cannot. The consciousness in this form is too awake for death to enter. 

She experienced no symptoms. The doctors couldn't explain it. The poisoner confessed days later, consumed by guilt. 

The fire walk, 1927 at an ashram in Dehradun, a ritual fire had been prepared. A log collapsed, sending embers across the path Ma was walking. Barefoot, she walked directly through the burning coals, slowly, deliberately, as if in meditation. 

Her feet showed no burns, no blisters, not even ash. When disciples asked how this was possible, she gave one of her most cryptic answers. When you know you are not the body, the body cannot be harmed by what harms bodies. 

The levitation testimony, 1932 Malita Mashman, a German journalist and later author, came to India as a skeptic. She was granted a private audience with Anandamayi Ma in Varanasi. In her written testimony, submitted to the Society for Psychical Research in London, she describes sitting alone with Ma in a small room. 

As Ma entered meditation, Mashman claims she clearly saw Ma's body rise approximately six inches off the ground and remain suspended for nearly ten minutes. Mashman was so disturbed by what she witnessed that she left India immediately, refusing to write about the incident for 15 years. When she finally did, she wrote, I saw it. 

I don't believe it. But I saw it. The strange feeding.

Here's something that haunted everyone who spent extended time with Ma. Her relationship with food. Left to herself, Anandamayi Ma simply wouldn't eat. 

For days. Sometimes weeks. It wasn't fasting in any traditional sense. 

She didn't appear hungry. Her energy never flagged. Her eyes remained bright.

But her body seemed to have simply forgotten that it needed sustenance. Doctors who examined her found this medically impossible. The human body cannot function without food. 

Yet hers did. Eventually, disciples had to be assigned to literally hand-feed her, like a child, reminding her to chew and swallow. Even then, she would sometimes stop mid-bite, her consciousness appearing to have drifted to some other realm entirely. 

When asked about this, she explained, and this testimony is recorded in dozens of sources, including Gurupriya Devi's, Sri Sri Ma Anandamayi. This body eats when you remind it to eat. It sleeps when you tell it to sleep. 

It is like a musical instrument that plays when someone touches the strings. But the instrument itself has no needs. Psychiatrists called it dissociation. 

Skeptics called it performance. But how do you perform not eating for two weeks while maintaining perfect health and teaching 12 hours a day? The teachings that changed with each listener. Now here's where Anandamayi Ma becomes truly mysterious, more mysterious, perhaps, than any other spiritual teacher in recorded history. 

She had no fixed doctrine. No systematic philosophy. No organization of teachings. 

Ask her the same question three times, you'd get three different answers. Ask her how to reach God, and she might tell you to chant names, or sit in silence, or serve the poor, or go on pilgrimage, or simply laugh. But here's what's extraordinary. 

Each person who came to her felt they received exactly the teaching they needed. Not what they wanted, what they needed. Paramahansa Yogananda met her in 1935. 

Their encounter is documented in Autobiography of a Yogi. He asked her profound questions about yoga and consciousness. She answered with such technical precision about the chakras and kundalini that Yogananda, himself a master, was astonished. 

The very next day, a poor, illiterate farmer came to her with a simple question. Mother, how can I remember God while plowing my field? She told him, sing to your oxen as if they are God. When you rest, thank the earth as if she is God. 

When you're thirsty, drink water as if you're drinking God. That's all. That's everything. 

The farmer left enlightened. Yogananda left mystified. How did she know exactly what each person needed to hear? The core teaching hidden in Paradox.

If you study Anandamayi Ma's thousands of recorded conversations, and yes, disciples recorded everything, a pattern emerges. Not a teaching, exactly, but a way of being that she pointed to again and again. She called it, Keala. 

A Bengali word meaning, spontaneous divine will, or, the play of consciousness. Here's what she meant, though she'd probably laugh at my attempt to explain it. You are not the doer of your actions. 

You never were. Your sense of being a separate individual making choices is the cosmic joke. There is only one actor, playing all the parts.

When you truly realize this, not intellectually, but in the marrow of your being, you become like she was. A clear instrument through which the divine plays. But, and this is crucial, this wasn't passivity. 

It wasn't fatalism. She told the independence leader Kamala Nehru, Javaharlal Nehru's wife, documented in their correspondence preserved in the Anandamayi Ma archives, Work as if everything depends on you. Know that nothing depends on you.

Both are simultaneously true. She encouraged intense spiritual practice while insisting there was nowhere to go and nothing to achieve. She advocated devotion to God while teaching that you are God. 

She prescribed specific techniques while saying all techniques are ultimately unnecessary. Every statement contained its own contradiction. Every answer revealed a deeper question. 

The practical impossibilities. Let me give you the methods she actually taught, when pressed for something concrete. But I warn you, they're deceptively simple and almost impossibly difficult. 

The Nama Sankirtan method. She emphasized constant repetition of God's name, any name you felt drawn to. But not mechanical repetition. 

Each utterance had to be as if you were calling out to a beloved who was lost in a crowd. Desperate. Yearning. 

Alive. She said, call him as a drowning person calls for help. The lungful of water urgency, that's the requirement.

The witness practice. Throughout your day, no matter what you're doing, maintain a part of your awareness that simply watches. Not judges. 

Just watches. Who is eating? Who is working? Who is thinking? Keep asking. Keep watching. 

She warned this could be dangerous. Some who do this practice intensely find that their sense of personal identity begins to dissolve. If you're not ready for that dissolution, stay with simpler methods. 

The laughter sadhana. This was uniquely hers. She taught that divine joy, ananda, is your natural state. 

Fake it until you make it. Laugh for no reason. Smile at nothing. 

At first, it's forced. Then something shifts. Then you realize the joy was there all along, buried under seriousness. 

Students found this the most difficult practice of all. It's easy to meditate seriously. It's incredibly hard to laugh yourself into enlightenment. 

The service without serving. Work. Serve. 

Hope. But inside, know that you're doing nothing. The divine mother is serving herself through this body-mind instrument.

You're just watching it happen. Be simultaneously engaged and detached, she'd say. Like an actress playing a role. 

Fully committed to the character. Fully aware it's a play. The encounters that shook scientists. 

By the 1940s, Anandamayi Ma's fame had spread worldwide. Scientists, psychologists, and researchers began attempting to study her. Every single one left baffled. 

Dr. Alexander Cannon, a British psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, arrived in 1946 determined to prove Ma was either a fraud or suffering from dissociative identity disorder. He received permission to observe her for three months. His conclusion, published in The Science of Hypnotism, I have examined thousands of cases of multiple personality and dissociation. 

Sri Anandamayi Ma is something else entirely. Her states of consciousness are not compartmentalized. They're layered. 

She appears to operate simultaneously on multiple levels of awareness. When you speak to her, you have the eerie sensation that she's fully present with you, while simultaneously present somewhere, or everywhere, else. Modern psychology has no framework for this.

Then there was the incident with Niels Bohr. Yes, that Niels Bohr, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, father of quantum mechanics. In 1952, Bohr visited India for a physics conference. 

A colleague, knowing Bohr's interest in Eastern philosophy, arranged a meeting with Anandamayi Ma. The meeting was brief, barely 20 minutes. No recording exists. 

But Bohr's personal diary, examined after his death, contains this entry. Met an Indian holy woman today. She asked me to explain quantum superposition. 

I did. The observer effect, wave-particle duality, the measurement problem. When I finished, she smiled and said, so your science has finally discovered what we've known for 5,000 years. 

Consciousness collapses possibility into actuality. The observer creates the observed. You are the universe observing itself. 

Then she laughed. I couldn't speak. How did an uneducated village woman articulate in 30 seconds what took me 30 years to understand? The prophecies no one talks about. 

Here's something most biographies of Anandamayi Ma gloss over or omit entirely. She made predictions. Dozens of them. 

And they were disturbingly accurate. In 1938, she told her husband Romani, this body will remain in form, but you have completed your work. Soon you'll be free. 

He died three months later. In 1947, she told disciples to vacate a particular ashram in what was about to become Pakistan. The borders will change, she said. 

Much blood will flow. Leave now. They left two weeks before the partition of India, which no one at that ashram knew was coming. 

In 1963, she met a young man named Atmananda, who would become one of her primary biographers. Before he'd even told her his name, she said, you've come to write about this body. You'll complete three books before you die.

The third will remain unpublished in your lifetime. He did write three books. The third was published two years after his death in 1985. 

But the most chilling prediction, recorded by multiple witnesses in 1980, was this. A Western devotee asked her about the future of spirituality in the coming century. Ma became very still. 

That particular stillness witnesses described as, the room holds its breath, stillness. Then she said, a time is coming when technology will allow consciousness to speak directly to consciousness, across vast distances, instantaneously. This will be both a great danger and a great opportunity. 

Many will mistake information for wisdom, connection for communion. But some, some will use these tools to spread light. The mother works through everything, even machines. 

In 1980, the internet as we know it didn't exist. Yet she seemed to describe it perfectly, including its spiritual dangers and possibilities. The death that wasn't.

August 27, 1982. Dharad in India. Anandamayi Ma is 86 years old. 

For days, she's been in and out of what doctors call consciousness, but what looked more like she was practicing leaving. Her disciples are gathered, many weeping. At 8.25 p.m., several witnesses report the same phenomenon. 

The room fills with a fragrance that has no earthly source. Roses, jasmine, and something else. Something sweet and indefinable that makes everyone present feel simultaneously sorrowful and ecstatic. 

Ma opens her eyes one last time. According to multiple testimonies, including one from Dr. Nalini Sil who was present as her physician, Ma smiles and says, I'm going to my eternal home. But understand, I'm not going anywhere because I was never here. 

The play is ending. The actor removes the costume. But the consciousness remains, always. 

Her breathing stops. Her heart stops. But here's the strange part documented in Dr. Sil's medical report. 

Her body remained warm for three hours. No rigor mortis. No pallor. 

Her face maintained what witnesses called a living quality for nearly 12 hours after clinical death. The attending doctors had no explanation. One wrote, it was as if the life force was reluctant to fully leave, or as if the boundary between life and death was somehow permeable in her case. 

The mystery that remains. Today, nearly 40 years after her Mahasamadhi, conscious death, Anandamayi Ma remains an enigma that refuses simple categorization. Was she enlightened? Every scholar says yes. 

Was she divine? Her devotees say yes without hesitation. Was she mentally ill? Every psychiatrist who examined her said no. She showed none of the markers of pathology, only unprecedented mental health. 

Was she a guru? Not in any traditional sense. She initiated no one formally. She created no systematic teaching. 

She appointed no successor. So what was she? Perhaps the best answer comes from her own words, spoken to Melita Mashman during that same encounter in 1932. People ask me who I am. 

I tell them, I am whatever you see in me. If you see God, I am God. If you see a woman, I am a woman. 

If you see a friend, I am a friend. If you see nothing, I am nothing. The mirror reflects what stands before it.

This body-mind is simply an unclouded mirror. But mirrors don't laugh spontaneously at jokes no one told. Mirrors don't survive poison. 

Mirrors don't levitate. Mirrors don't predict the future or quote scriptures they never read. Unless the mirror is so clear, so utterly transparent, that what we're seeing isn't the mirror at all. 

We're seeing our own divine nature reflected back at us. The nature we forgot we had. The final teaching. 

I want to leave you with one last story, from Swami Vijnananda, a French disciple who spent decades with Ma. It's recounted in his book, Anandamay Ma, La Vidane Unsurrire, Life in a Smile. A famous philosopher came to Ma in 1970 with the ultimate question, Mother, what is the quickest way to God? Ma looked at him for a long time. 

Then she started laughing, that mysterious, childlike laugh. She laughed so hard tears rolled down her face. She laughed for five full minutes while the philosopher sat there, confused and increasingly uncomfortable. 

Finally, when she could speak, she said, My child, you are asking God the quickest way to reach God. Don't you see the humor? The seeker is the sought. The journey is the destination. 

You are already there. You have always been there. The entire quest is God playing hide and seek with himself. 

Then she leaned forward and whispered, But don't tell anyone. If everyone knew, the play would end. And the mother loves to play. 

The philosopher left enlightened, not because he understood her words, but because something in her laughter, in her eyes, in her absolute delight at the cosmic joke, broke through the wall of his seeking. He realized, She's not showing us how to reach God. She's showing us that we never left.

The invitation. Somewhere in India right now, there's a small ashram where her photograph hangs. Devotees still gather. 

They still sing the bhajans she loved. They still practice the simple methods she taught. But the question remains, hovering like incense smoke in that sacred space. 

Was Anandamayi Ma a human who became divine? Or was she the divine pretending, very convincingly, to be human? Perhaps the answer lies not in studying her life, but in daring to live as if the same consciousness that animated her is also animating you. Right now, reading these words, what if she was right? What if you are already home, already whole, already divine, just temporarily convinced of your own limitations? What if the only difference between you and Anandamayi Ma is that she remembered who she was, and you've temporarily forgotten? The mirror is still reflecting. The question is, are you ready to see what it shows? The mystery continues. 

The laughter echoes. And somewhere, perhaps, she's still smiling at the cosmic joke we call separation.

__________
* The statement is a condensation of interactions with several of those AI chatbots that seem to proliferate nowadays and are, unfairly, maligned. They can be useful in sorting through lots of stuff.  

A constellation of sorts

When in Australia earlier this year, I devoted local library time to reading Paradise Lost by John Milton. I almost made it to the final book (aka chapter) by the time I returned home in February, and admit now I have but one book to go.

Upon my return, two of my online English conversation partners--students working on language proficiency through conversation, as I try to extend and expand their knowledge, skills, etc.: They wanted to discuss religion and the Bible, and through that gain greater range of expression, fluency in speaking and better language comprehension. So be it, although one student needed re-direction, having thought  conversation was (my) conversion.

Apropos of the above and the fact each student wanted to discuss the book of Genesis first, I went to King James and began reading. (Students give earnest teachers homework.) The reading was enlightening. I again recalled that the word of God, a book of books, required endless effort by scholars and in my case Catholic sermonizers to understand, that is interpret, what he or He "wrote." Now I get it, the it being the necessity to discern meanings through tireless effort and acquired expertise to arrive at what that sacred text proffers.

Milton does the best God's-word rendition of Genesis, and I will read and re-read Paradise Lost and more from his opus. Us mortals can never fully understand and appreciate what he, a blind genius, accomplished, to wit: A masterful, compelling poetic and learned interpretation, that is re-telling, of the  Genesis story. Paradise Lost cannot be surpassed in my view, so worth more time to savor and learn and appreciate as much as I can.

As for King James, the first lines of Genesis already are up for alternative readings. Then we have God creating man and the injunction to multiply and rule over beasts and bower. Woman comes off, as in Milton's take, not very well or good. Such a sorry history and legacy and burden for our better halves. Then after creating man, woman and families, He, God according the the narrator, comes around to Adam then Eve and the (very) first commandment--not to know good from evil. If you violate this injunction, you (Adam) and your descendants are condemned to death (Milton's gloss on death is helpful here). 

What? All was blissful ignorance and then not so because of particular knowledge? and for this one transgression, to be more fully coincident with the image of God, as He was reported to have made us, we must suffer in this imperfect world? or eternally somewhere warmer, forever and ever?

Why if the good book is God's word, and concerning the Bible my students say every word is His and true, did He write such that there are questions, ambiguities, cruelties, childish admonitions, contradictions, threats, unreasonable dictates, unrealistic or ill advised behavior toward hostile others,  etc. Surely He could have done better, which seems to prove these days that He is a he and not She.

The enterprise of mandatory and endless interpretation of the book-of-books looks more like a hodgepodge of old cultural artifacts cobbled together to keep us busy . . . differing in view among one another and worse. And this inevitable conclusion from the very first sentences of the sacred book.

So. Nice story, or stories, that can be better told in more gifted hands I believe.

Now about those other sacred texts. . . . Let's see, which one?

No. Here's a better idea. I'll continue with Milton and at the same time regularly pay obeisance to Shakespeare. Clearer writing, richer descriptions and characterization, better, more engaging stories all promising less ambiguous understanding of the message(s) and me and my provincial corner of this now (always was) imperfect paradise.

__________

* Dedicated to friend and teacher, Dr. Michael Russo. May we meet again to share insights and discern truths in a world better suited to us. "In light of the above, I believe your dear S. fits as one of the few almost fathomable interpreters of God's word, but can we read and understand what S. wrote?" You may be the only one to make that claim that yes. . . .

Repression redux

Freud doesn't say anything directly in the Psychopathology of Everyday Life* about the imagery of  the Signorelli frescoes in the Orvieto cathedral. "Death and sexuality" in The Damned Cast into Hell (c. 1499) are the strongest themes and features of the scenes and figures depicted. Rather, Freud says he associates his forgetting the artist's name with factoids from Bosnian Turkish life and culture (sex, fate) and his patient who recently "had ended his life on account of an incurable sexual disturbance."

The frescoes are vivid examples of the themes of death and sexuality, and these art works might also be what Freud represses consciously, for he "did not wish to touch upon such [delicate themes] in conversation with a stranger." Note that he not only omits the content of the frescoes in his explanation of what he was repressing but also omits whether he discussed the frescoes in some detail with his travel companion. 

When Freud writes, "The forgetting of the name could not be explained until after I had recalled the theme discussed immediately before this conversation," it is not only the subjects he mentions explicitly that were prior but it must also include what it was about the "famous frescoes" that he found reason for bringing the subject up. That too precedes the end of the unfinished sentence, his moment of forgetting. 

"Our conversation drifted to travelling in Italy, and I asked my companion whether he had been in Orvieto and had seen there the famous frescoes of -- "

Can one think of famous works of art without re-creating in mind their content in whole or in part? Perhaps Freud is committing repression as well as being the subject of the phenomenon he so meticulously, otherwise, explicates.

It is tempting to wonder why Freud himself found the frescoes so memorable but operant seemingly in his own unconscious . . . notably having to do with death and sexuality. Where can we look for possible evidence? More of his own writings and biography, of course. 

PS Titled, "Caution and care in reading and asserting," a proposed second post but better placed here because of the above.

One thing to be aware of: Careful reading of Freud's words he himself provided us is needed, not the words of secondary or tertiary sources. For example, I am pretty sure this is wrong, as written in a Bellevue Literary Press synopsis** of Weber's book on Freud's Orvieto trip and the Signorelli frescoes.

After a visit to the cathedral at Orvieto in Italy, Sigmund Freud deemed Luca Signorelli’s frescoes the greatest artwork he’d ever encountered; yet, a year later, he couldn’t recall the artist’s name. When the name came back to him, the images he had so admired vanished from his mind’s eye. This is known as the “Signorelli parapraxis” in the annals of Freudian psychoanalysis and is a famous example from Freud’s own life of his principle of repressed memory.

The synopsis writer draws conclusions from the text that I believe are not clearly there, for to be frank, Freud appears to contradict himself or is at least ambiguous on this matter of "putting the image of the frescoes out of his mind" (my paraphrase of "vanishing from his mind's eye"). Freud just went on from recollection of themes and frescoes to forgetting and repression because of certain causal factors specifically recalled and revealed

The point, per Freud, was forgetting the name, for he had in mind the frescoes when he asked his travel companion if he had seen them--must have had them in mind--because of--next--the death and sexuality themes he specifically mentions in relation to the Bosnian Turks and the suicide of a former patient. 

In addition, when did Freud recall the name Signorelli? This is another piece of the synopsis that I question. Here I enlist the assistance of OpenAI, which I will take as accurate for now.

Question. When did Freud remember the name of Signorelli after forgetting or repressing it, as related in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life? Does he say in that book? or in another work?

Reply. Freud recounts the episode involving his temporary forgetting of the name "Signorelli" in his book *The Psychopathology of Everyday Life* (1901). This incident is used as a classic example of what Freud terms a "forgetting of proper names," which he attributes to a psychological process rather than a simple lapse of memory.

    In *The Psychopathology of Everyday Life*, Freud describes how he was traveling in Bosnia and Herzegovina and engaged in a conversation with a colleague[?]] about the frescoes of the Renaissance painter Luca Signorelli. However, he found himself unable to recall Signorelli's name at that moment. He remembered the names of other painters, such as Botticelli and Boltraffio, but not Signorelli.

    *** Freud does mention when he finally remembered the name. He states that the name "Signorelli" came back to him only after the conversation had ended and he had left his colleague [not so much as colleague as fellow traveller]. Specifically, he recalls remembering it later when he was no longer in the immediate context of the conversation.

    Freud explains this lapse and subsequent recollection in terms of his theory of repression and the unconscious mind. He suggests that the forgetting was linked to a repressed thought or conflict, which temporarily blocked his ability to retrieve the name.

    The detailed account and explanation are provided in Chapter 1 of *The Psychopathology of Everyday Life*. Freud does not provide a different account or additional details about the timing of this recollection in other works.

All this just another of my observations, in sum: Freud and his words and reported deeds provide endless opportunities for interpretation, and errors.

__________
* https://www.reasoned.org/dir/lit/PEL_freud.pdf 

** “Freud’s Trip to Orvieto.” 2021. Bellevue Literary Press. May 28. https://blpress.org/books/freuds-trip-orvieto/.

UN-faking authenticity

Here is what two AI chat bots answered to A question about transparency of use in what content/artifact creators produce. The prompt was, What elements should be included in a citation of the use of ai in the preparation of a document?

perplexity

When citing AI assistance in preparing a document, it is essential to be transparent and follow the guidelines provided by different citation styles. Some best practices include:

1. **Check Journal Policies**: Before submitting a manuscript, ensure you are aware of the journal's policies regarding the use of AI tools in research[1].

2. **Document It**: Be clear about the AI tool used, including the version, company, and date of content generation[2].

3. **Understand It**: Ensure you understand the AI tool's algorithms and the limitations of its output[1].

4. **Don't List AI as an Author**: AI tools cannot be considered authors as they do not have the ability to agree to authorship contracts or identify follow-up issues with the research[1].

5. **Use Writefull**: If you use AI tools for grammar assistance, consider using Writefull, which can help with paraphrasing and editing research manuscripts[1].

6. **APA Style**: When using AI-generated content in APA style, treat the content as the output of an algorithm, with the author being the company or organization that created the model[3].

7. **Chicago Style**: In Chicago style, AI-generated content should be cited in the text with either a note or a parenthetical citation, but should not be included in the bibliography or reference list[3].

8. **MLA Style**: In MLA style, AI-generated content should be cited with a description of the chat, the name of the AI tool, version, company, date of chat, and URL[3].

Remember to be flexible in your approach to citing AI-generated content, as guidelines may evolve over time and vary depending on the specific context of your research[3].

Citations:

[1] https://www.papersapp.com/highlights/utilizing-and-citing-ai-in-your-research/

[2] https://libguides.ccsu.edu/c.php?g=736245&p=9555042

[3] https://libguides.brown.edu/c.php?g=1338928&p=9868287

[4] https://dal.ca.libguides.com/CitationStyleGuide/citing-ai

[5] https://guides.lib.usf.edu/c.php?g=1315087&p=9678805

ChatGPT

When citing the use of AI in the preparation of a document, it's important to include several key elements to provide clarity and transparency about the role of AI in the writing process. Here are the elements that should be included in a citation of AI assistance:

Acknowledgment Statement: Begin by acknowledging that AI was used in the preparation of the document. This statement should be clear and concise.

AI Model or Platform: Specify the AI model or platform that was used. This helps provide context and transparency about the technology employed in the writing process.

Description of AI Contribution: Describe how AI was used in the writing process. This may include generating ideas, providing suggestions, improving language fluency, or other specific tasks.

Human Input: Emphasize the role of human input in the writing process. Highlight that while AI provided assistance, humans ultimately made decisions about the content and structure of the document.

Examples (Optional): If applicable, provide specific examples of how AI assistance influenced the document. This could include phrases, sentences, or sections where AI-generated content was incorporated or modified by human judgment.

Date and Version (Optional): Include the date and version of the AI model or platform used, if relevant. This helps provide additional context about the technology employed.

Transparency Statement: End with a statement emphasizing the commitment to transparency and honesty in acknowledging the use of AI assistance.

Here's an example of how these elements could be combined in a citation:

"This document was prepared with the assistance of an AI language model (OpenAI's GPT-3). The AI model was used to generate initial drafts of sections related to market analysis and product descriptions. Human editors reviewed and revised the content to ensure accuracy and coherence. This acknowledgment is provided to ensure transparency about the role of AI in the writing process."

This issue, I'll call it, needs more attention as well as some set of commonly held conventions such that we, consumers of text and other forms of expression, know and can place appropriate levels of commendation as well as trust in what we are increasingly exposed to, especially that intended to motivate attitudes and action. No? 

Talks of interiors

Comment after viewing a photo of someone I have never met but was somehow moved by her face.

When one talks of interiors instead of exteriors, that whole other world opens up, some of which can be captured in language and some just escapes the words we know and use. In the face of this, sometimes we are just silent, and other times we invent words or special meanings for familiar words. The experience of grief would be an example of the first; Heidegger's philosophy would be an example of the second. There is the third alternative, sometimes mine, to ask unanswerable questions and try to live with the situation of no-answer, at least not now.

Email signature thought

For rich and poor, never enough. With equal measures of care to provide essential needs, all thrive. Propose designs and supply what will suffice. Start yesterday. Today we're late to the party.

September 2023 email signature thought.

Application of the adequacy of a 'Coincidence'

Transmittal

I finished my dissertation in 1997, and it was published as such in 1998. This is the first time I have re-read parts of it, and so I conclude, it will probably piss you off. What it was all about was an answer to the question of what is it like to have a meaningful coincidence.

Having said that, and accepting a sedimentation of a phenomenon into a rather academic, abstract level of description, I offer it as something to see whether or not your experience of coincidences and meaningful coincidences find themselves in part or (almost) wholly within what is called a descriptive analysis of Jung's synchronicity, narrowed by my work into what we commonly call a meaningful coincidence (Coincidence in the text).

This application of the adequacy of a Coincidence has not been done to my knowledge with my tiny contribution to understanding of what happens to many of us living in the west (western civilization). If you find some insight here, great. If academic bullshit, that's okay also. I'm just curious whether I got some or most of it right, or not. 

Thus this post is open to comments from anyone who stops by and is interested in adding two cents to a discussion started and paused long ago. 

Compare yours with . . . 

The experience of a meaningful coincidence takes place in the course of an individual's life. S/he is on a path or way, and the Coincidence event is like an episode or moment in a larger story. The percipient experiences the Coincidence in a historically and personally meaningful context.

Prior to the Coincidence event, the percipient has had experiences which are related to it. They may be thoughts about familiar issues or concerns, or remarkable yet seemingly random events which become meaningful later. The percipient has experienced some change in the usual pattern of things. This may take the form of a complication or challenge. It may be noticing or doing something out of the ordinary.

Although s/he may not anticipate its occurrence, as the Coincidence approaches in time, the percipient progresses to a more alert and active awareness of what is going on inside and out. This movement can be from little or no awareness to distance and remoteness to eventual openness and allowing life to unfold. The percipient, who is holding matters of interest or concern in consciousness, may make conjectures about that such as, what if such-and-such were to happen? S/he may even take action to allow what is in consciousness to manifest in physical reality.

The perception of Coincidence involves three events. The first is an inner psychic state, something held in consciousness. The second is something observed in outer, physical reality. The third is that these two coinciding at the same time are immediately meaningful. It is at this moment that Coincidence is claimed, and sometimes exclaimed.

The inner event may be simple or complex, singular or multiple. That is, after growing awareness, what is held in consciousness can involve several thoughts and feelings woven together. The outer event can have the same dimensions, but it is also symbolic. The outer event signifies more than what it literally refers to.

The meaning seen at the moment of the Coincidence comes from somewhere deep inside. It is implicit or carried by the simultaneous occurrence of events. It is perhaps like intuition, an immediate grasp, or a kind of present knowing. The meaning at the time of experiencing a Coincidence is different from that articulated later. The second articulation is constructed from the first. It is a considered view with perhaps greater depth and breadth than what was expressed at first.

This reflexive meaning has significance for the percipient. S/he can place the Coincidence into the larger story of a life being lived. The Coincidence may then be part of a personal development process, or perhaps one among a number of Coincidences.

The Coincidence may be attended by other events which support its meaningfulness. These events happen at the same time or around the time of the Coincidence event. They are, in some sense, parallel to the primary Coincidence in meaning. They can be supportive of or complementary to the meaning. They can be other Coincidences, or coincidences which may not be as strongly interpreted as the primary one. They may even be on the order of self-fulfilling prophecies where the percipient takes a role in making them happen.

A Coincidence itself can function within the percipient's experience as a part of other Coincidences, or in a series of same. Sometimes the percipient gives a primary meaningful coincidence more credibility in view of other coincidences and anomalous events.

The language used to communicate the experience of a meaningful coincidence is connotative in addition to being denotative. Words and images strongly associate. There are metaphors and symbols which suggest themselves and extend or expand the possibilities for meaning. At the same time, this language leaves uncertainty as to saying definitively what the Coincidence is and what its full significance might be.

The experience of Coincidence has about it a perfect or almost perfect symmetry. It is like looking into a mirror. What you see is familiar and readily recognizable. If you approach the mirror and find there something a little different, your view is corrected, just as mirror images are supposed to show what is. But what you see might be reversed, as with a mirror, from the orientation of perceiving.

What the Coincidence encompasses may be more than single images. Inner and outer events can be accumulations which feel like they interconnect and constellate--just naturally are or come together somehow. They can be inextricable aspects of a force field and resonate, perhaps through the language and imagery in which they are expressed. A Coincidence, through complementing or counterbalancing, rests finally in oneness, synthesis, integration.

The inner and the outer and the meaning which seems independent of perceiver happening all at once appears anomalous. In the face of the extra-ordinary, the percipient tries to discern cause. S/he implicitly or explicitly asks this question in one form or another: Why and how did these things come together for me? Not being successful in the attempt to find causes, the percipient conjectures. Among the conjectures can be magic or synchronicity, terms for acausal phenomena. The conjecture ends with the cause as unknown or unknowable. But there may be lingering doubt as to what really happened. Is Coincidence what that was? That the events happened at the same time and spontaneously enhances the acausal aspect of the experience.

Feelings are a part of the experience, and they seem to be the result of experiencing something out of the ordinary. This can be astonishment, disbelief, irony. The feelings can be body-felt: laughter, visceral knowing, an uneasiness that comes with the suspicion of being tricked. The percipient can be mildly surprised and amused. S/he can feel like the object of a benevolent or whimsical god. One can also feel harmony and that all is well with the world. What one had in consciousness can be the way it turned out through the Coincidence. There may also be uncertainty about the experience, like a question that has been asked but no complete answer appears possible.

Part of the significance and meaning of the Coincidence seems to be that the percipient finds action implied or suggested. This may be seen as a message received, a wish or hope fulfilled, a new awareness, a personal truth (re)discovered. The Coincidence in this way can affirm, complete, define for the percipient something important along life's path. There is a kind of completeness and synthesis to any earlier disruptions to the pattern of the way things were.

The purpose of the Coincidence in retrospect is about self and fulfillment. If there is any doubt or uncertainty which remains, it seems to be part of the nature of meaningful coincidence. Along life's path, there are important and meaningful episodes which may be extra-ordinary and potentially transformative. But we are still on a path. There is still an open door to a future we choose to make.

Ignore this post

As regards Leibniz and his monads, and if I understand the idea so far--almost accurately--then these bits of my reading and experience come to mind.

1. From Mooney's ethnographic account of Wavoka, the Paiute prophet/mystic.

Black Coyote told how they had seated themselves on the ground in front of Wovoka, as described by Tall Bull, and went on to tell how the messiah had waved his feathers over his hat, and then, when he withdrew his hand, Black Coyote looked into the hat and there 'saw the whole world'.

2. William Blake's famous lines from _Auguries of Innocence_, which is worth reading beyond these opening lines.

    To see a World in a Grain of Sand
    And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
    Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
    And Eternity in an hour . . .

3. Contemplating a fractal image or mandala.

4. My thesis that given a reading of any old book, you can find there all you need to know, provided you think about what you have read plus implicit assumptions, implications, etc. Reading the complete works of the world is not necessary. Ref. https://noematics.blogspot.com/2009/10/recommended-reading.html

5. The butterfly effect.

6. Language as used and then looked up only leads to more words to look up, so the whole and even the exact may be never known, that world's being too big to get one's head 'round.

Contrary to all of this, which may be nothing at all to occupy one’s imagination, consider considering the macro and the micro. Each direction? leads to infinite discoveries, so comprehension or even conception of the whole is not possible.

So there we are, two cultures again? C. P. Snow's conclusion, if I remember correctly, the two, science and the arts, shall never meet, or map one to the other and vice versa. But such was his, and my, hope.

This is all nothing. Ignore this post and get back to work.

Consider the bower bird

Consider the bower bird as inspiration(?) for the scene Conchis paints for Nicholas, from _The Magus_ by John Fowles. I think a strong case can be made.

 

"When I was fifteen, I had what we would call today a nervous breakdown. Bruneau had been driving me too hard. I never had the least interest in games. I was a day boy, I had permission to concentrate on music. I never made any real friends at school. Perhaps because I was taken for a Jew. But the doctor said that when I recovered I would have to practice less and go out more often. I made a face. My father came back one day with an expensive book on birds. I could hardly tell the commonest birds apart, had never thought of doing so. But my father’s was an inspired guess. Lying in bed, looking at the stiff poses in the pictures, I began to want to see the living reality—and the only reality to begin with for me was the singing that I heard through my sickroom window. I came to birds through sound. Suddenly even the chirping of sparrows seemed mysterious. And the singing of birds I had heard a thousand times, thrushes, blackbirds in our garden, I heard as if I had never heard them before. Later in my life—ça sera pour un autre jour—birds led me into a very unusual experience.

"You see the child I was. Lazy, lonely, yes, very lonely. What is that word? A sissy. Talented in music, and in nothing else. And I was an only child, spoilt by my parents. As I entered my fourth luster, it became evident that I was not going to fulfill my early promise. Bruneau saw it first, and then I did. Though we tacitly agreed not to tell my parents, it was difficult for me to accept. Sixteen is a bad age at which to know one will never be a genius. But by then I was in love.

"I first saw Lily when she was fourteen, and I was a year older, soon after my breakdown. We lived in St. John’s Wood. In one of those small white mansions for successful merchants. You know them? A semi-circular drive. A portico. At the back was a long garden, at the end of it a little orchard, some six or seven overgrown apple and pear trees. Unkempt, but very green. Ombreux. I had a private 'house' under a lime tree. One day—June, a noble blue day, burning, clear, as they are here in Greece—I was reading a life of Chopin. I remember that exactly. You know at my age you recall the first twenty years far better than the second—or the third. I was reading and no doubt seeing myself as Chopin, and I had my new book on birds beside me. It is 1910.

"Suddenly I hear a noise on the other side of the brick wall which separates the garden of the next house from ours. This house is empty, so I am surprised. And then . . . a head appears. Cautiously. Like a mouse. It is the head of a young girl. I am half hidden in my bower, I am the last thing she sees, so I have time to examine her. Her head is in sunshine, a mass of pale blonde hair that falls behind her and out of sight. The sun is to the south, so that it is caught in her hair, in a cloud of light. I see her shadowed face, her dark eyes and her small half-opened inquisitive mouth. She is grave, timid, yet determined to be daring. She sees me. She stares at me for a moment in her shocked haze of light. She seems more erect, like a bird. I stand up in the entrance of my bower, still in shadow. We do not speak or smile. All the unspoken mysteries of puberty tremble in the air. I do not know why I cannot speak . . . and then a voice called. Li-ly! Li-ly!

"The spell was broken. And all my past was broken, too. Do you know that image from Seferis—'The broken pomegranate is full of stars'? It was like that. She disappeared, I sat down again, but to read was impossible."

Seems to me: The bower bird as creator of illusions to attract--tease and torment--Nicholas into becoming conscious of who he is, and who others are, in the drama of life and love on and off the island of Phraxos.

 

PS Art slips aside when confronted with the power of realities seen and felt?

Rabbit hole

Hypothesis:

A. Creative illness (Freud, Ellenberg) = dark night of the soul (Christian mystics) = spiritual emergency (Grof, S. and C.).

B. These similar psychological phenomena grow out of a similar "cause" or process: phenomenological-psychological reduction (Applebaum), contemplative meditation (e.g., Dominican prayer), altered states of consciousness (Wilber, Tart, and others), and Freud's psychoanalysis (in his case, his self-analysis).

Next step: Go deeper, including comparisons among descriptions for each concept (e.g., columns and rows mapping(?) characteristics).

References (partial list, draft form):

Which The Phenomenologist. (2021) Key ideas: Applebaum on the phenomenological reduction - PhenomenologyBlog. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://phenomenologyblog.com/?p=616

Ellenberger, Henri F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

Grof, C., & Grof, S. (2017). Spiritual emergency: The understanding and treatment of transpersonal crises. International Journal of
Transpersonal Studies, 36 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2017.36.2.30

Itself Because Not. (2021) The Concept of ''Creative Illness'' - Physicists and Artists Have Found a Common - Sleep and Health Journal Chicago. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://www.sleepandhealth.com/concept-creative-illness-physicists-and-artists-ha/

Charles Rycroft. (2021) Freud's Creative Illness | by Charles Rycroft | The New York Review of Books. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/05/30/freuds-creative-illness/?lp_txn_id=1232790

Smith, David Woodruff, "Phenomenology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/>.

Black dung beetle or?

Will I return after this? and if I have a choice, who would I be? come back as?

One, I have to take a look at what this life has been and if I demonstrated the highest and best capabilities known and available to me to match or exceed. After all isn't it about that? to be all that you can be and more before saying, "See ya next time"?

If it is not about this, life is for whatever reasons we come up with not all of which are lofty. There are those who embrace whatever and hell with all else. Consider the effects of that; don't look too hard. Not that this always leads to messes and worse for others or the world, but this posture or belief or whatever it is has no other reason but satisfy-me-here-now.  

Of course aspiration and just-let-fly and points between assume we can make rational choices, although even in full awareness, we surely don't always make the best ones. We just live, and without 24/7 vigilance, because this is impossible, drift along--mostly--the easiest, most convenient byways. Some have embraced the me-path, mostly. Some have chosen or drifted towards more other- or ascent-oriented paths.

I chose and drifted and was guided to follow less-me paths, although I had to learn lessons that put resurgent-me (a horribly selfish ego) back on a better way, or the best I could find at the time, too often having strayed from what worked best and was, in hindsight, the decidedly better.

So the question: What worked, or what conditions did I find myself in and how did I use or advantage my better self given what I forged or came my way? Given that honest and accurate assessment, I can begin to answer who would I be, or who I would come back as?

It would be nice to know in awareness some options and future conditions before finding a new self with years and years ahead as a black dung beetle in sisyphian hell.

I have no complaint about living-to-thriving this time round. But the purpose, the meaning . . . would that next time I could see that part more clearly and live like or as that. And the form and life's necessities would fit that function.

Is it possible that those who believe this is it and all we will ever have will not come back and we who have questioned, perhaps believed in the possibility of coming back and the like or the as of it will be afforded the opportunity? In other words, the promise is you get what you expect or hope for. Those who take care in this go round get another go.

Rest in that still point, for now.