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Docta Ignorantia XXIV Polytime Again One of MacArthur's favorite stories about Halsey concerned the day a visiting admiral was coming over in Halsey's launch. The sea was rough and the coxswain was having trouble reaching the ladder. Halsey, on the rail above, watched in growing impatience and finally began shouting orders to the coxswain, below. The man was a career seaman and proud of his abilities. He did not like Halsey's impatience with a difficult situation. 'Listen to that old son-of-a-bitch giving me orders,' he said, in exasperation. Halsey heard the remark. Shaking with rage, he yelled back, 'Don't you ever call me "old".' Your intuition is always operating non-dualistically (Shema Israel) while your intellect is usually working qualified non-dualistically. This is understandable. Our culture does not provide a syntax for non-dualistic discussion. This is another reason women have a hard time here. Intuition, feminine and masculine, is inherently non-dualistic. It is our greatest cognitive resource. But our literary/theological/philosophical traditions provide us with, at best, qualified-non-dualistic syntax for communicating and, mostly, dualistic syntax: agree/disagree, win/lose, here/there, yes/no, right/wrong, etc. The more the shame. This is why I went to Vedas, to get a syntax that would do intuition justice. There's no other source for such a syntax that is systematic. People hope physicists and some others will develop a non-dualistic syntax, but this is a forlorn hope, since, those folks are not looking for that at all. They are looking for particulate indivisibility, which is an absolute contradiction, i.e., a dualism of gargantuan proportions. The only thing indivisible is the whole, Universe Itself. Your love is fiction. Bible and religion behind that, but your real love is fiction. And you use fiction to do your exegeting. This is not entirely a unique thing to do, but to do it deliberately, as you rather do, is. Potter and other women have found fiction an amenable way to do exegesis and their work is deeply appreciated and very influential. Perhaps there is an element of nature in it, that women find fiction the best way to exegete what they feel needs to be brought out. So, for several weeks, I have been trying to think of a way to describe polytime in a manner that could be used to inform one of your characters. Here goes. How does a character operate in polytime? First, it is an operation. It is not a condition except in the sense that the condition is an operation, an activity. Exegesis via fiction is amenable, probably, for one reason because it gives this sense of action, which is usually missing in the formats of scholarly exegesis. The Prophets NEVER exegete in a scholarly fashion. They exegete by operation, by action, by 'fiction.' So I like this idea of exegeting by fiction. First it is operation, not condition or a state. Operation is female aspect. Condition is male aspect. This is important to grasp. Next, in polytime, a character is doing one thing that an observer sees at one moment but also many other things that the same observer does not see at that moment. Seeing is inherently limiting, as cognition itself is. To see THIS you have to, temporarily, not see THAT ... and that ... and that... etc. A character operating in polytime is aware of their operating in several fields while the ordinary observer is not. The ordinary observer sees only what they see about the character at one moment, at an excerpted instant. Next moment, they may see something else about that character. Probably, both of the observer's 'seeing' are accurate (and other 'seeings' as well), but none of them is 'what the character is doing.' The character is always doing that plus .... plus .... plus .... etc. Always more. Always more .... Now, the character can be more or less aware of what they are doing. A Sage is more aware of their operation in polytime -- i.e., more aware of the various things they are doing simultaneously -- than an ordinary person is of what they are doing. A Sage is a genuine see-er in this sense. And there are degrees of Sage-ness. Some are more aware than others, some less, etc. But personalities, however, Sage to ordinary, are aware of operating in polytime to some extent. This is why most resent being called a this or a that, being labeled, being categorized at all. It's because they are aware, to some extent, that there is more to them than any label can indicate. On this point, there is a significant and interesting phenomenon, namely, that people with little polytime awareness really resent being labeled while people with much polytime awareness, being aware of the game, and rather revel in it. Those with much polytime awareness -- Sages -- enjoy the labels, knowing they are all true and all false at the same time. They enjoy the process itself, for, the process is Life. In other words, Sages are beyond praise and blame, just as the Vedas declare. They are always doing the work they came to do and they pay no attention to accolades and diatribes, caring for neither. Sages care only for their work, which they accomplish. Then, they leave. To resent labeling, therefore, is evidence of low awareness. Or, those who fight against departmentalization are themselves departmentalized. Or, the faults we find in others are just the faults we have in ourselves and nothing more. So, it seems to me that this character who operates in polytime would make a really interesting and literary phenomenon. They can be doing this and that, more or less self-aware, simultaneously as they are doing that and this, more or less self-aware. And characters around can be more and less aware of what the polytime character is doing and of what they, themselves, are doing. For, really speaking, all are operating in polytime, whether they are aware of it or not. I think polytime could be expressed by both the narrator and the characters. The idea is to show what the character is doing simultaneously, say five specific things, that five or more other persons are seeing in their own way. And, the things the character is doing are in different degrees of subtlety, from more to less. Maybe start with two or three things just to see how it would go and then add in more as you find how to do it to your satisfaction. I think the effect could be very intriguing and such as would keep an audience riveted. I hope this helps. I've been trying to think of ways to help with the conceptuality. The key seems to be simultaneous operation in polytime, which, if I remember correctly, was my original phraseology when this notion came to me in '72. The other key is, the operator in every situation is the taking of it, not the situation itself. Seeing, as Teilhard says. The five steps of prayer you gave both imply and mention this fact. This fact escapes most people, however, it is not wrong to way. Most think the situation itself is operating, but this is not the case. The situation is. The operating is the taking of the situation. Religion is the effort (piety) to employ a 'taking' which is healthful and salvic. The five steps of prayer you mention show this quite clearly, even to the point of an 'unseeing' of what is not health-and salvation-producing. Vedic syntax for health-and non-health-producing 'taking' is vidyamaya and avidyamaya, respectively. Both are maya (power, delusion, female), but one leads to health/salvation and the other leads oppositely. I have maintained for a decade or more that a Christian Theologian cannot claim that title until they are able to preach/exegete the entire Gospel from Ecclesiastes. I still feel this way. Implicitly, you are proving the point again. But you know, I was not aware of these passages (Ecclesiastes 3:14ff) as they are, indicating and illustrating polytime. The awareness they indicate is mine since as long as I can remember, but the passages themselves I did not have. You know the Book better than I do, especially since I've spent 20+ years away from it delving into Sanskrit and its texts. I love the Prophets because their words are always in polytime and they have this capacity to indicate and set in motion worlds upon worlds with a few cryptic pen-strokes, a few choice (Primal, Ur-Typical) words and metaphors and compel attention through releasing the internal imaging processes. Jung saw this. This is the work of fiction. Female is power, operation, ontos. Male is structure, state, cosmos. Female is negative. Male is positive. These are inseparable. Negative in this context is not a valuation, not pejorative, and neither is positive. These are operational qualities. It can be argued that our society suffers because its lines of communication, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, are crossed and shorting. We take male aspect for female and female for male and try to think one is more important than another, etc. Evidence of this is everywhere. Again, we revere wickedness and call it good and disparage goodness and call it dangerous. This is insanity. But we call it propriety and will harm any who dare call it what it really is. This situation is a crisis. Johannes Pedersen understands time/number/history/phenomena as Prophets do. My UTS thesis comparing OT theology and cybernetics theory employed his insights, especially regarding the words shophat and mishpat. I developed Pedersen's grasp, but his was the first I encountered after Heschel's with which I felt familiar.
Adwaitha Hermitage
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