🪟 32 - Infinite synchronicity

Frame & Axiom #32 (Part 4): On confronting the infinite.

Table of contents

PART 1: NATURE » on the relation between man and nature: man as feeble and the consequence of forces.

1. Solutions of right framing

2. Perpetually incomplete datasets

3. The potency of stories

4. The brilliance of ordinary language

5. Perpetual imbalance

6. The tyranny of socialisation

7. Authenticity and the problem of self

8. Know thyself to be not a god

PART 2: COURT OF JUSTICE: » on the relation between man and justness: reality as court and canvas.

1. Metaframing

2. Into the unknown

3. Peaks and troughs

4. Gratitude for things as a whole

5. Judgement Day

6. The pursuit of emptiness (happiness)

7. The Narrator

8. The Actor

9. Boundaries of infinity

PART 3: HOUSE OF MIRRORS » on the relation between man and others: the necessity of love and compassion toward the ill, that is, us all.

1. Sentient mirrors

2. Relations of mirror frames

3. Artistic purity

4. The speck in your brother’s eye

5. Beyond contentment

6. Roots of sanity

7. He Who Forgets

8. The frame of love

PART 4: EXISTENTIAL LETTERS

1. Love as consciousness

2. Playtime with solipsism

3. Entering the psychical universe

4. The Mythical Crisis

5. Inner Space Exploration

6. Being and Quietude

7. Infinite synchronicity

🪟 32 - Infinite synchronicity

‘The Singing Butler’ (1992), by Jack Vettriano

Dear Inquirer,

To the one who ponders the silence, who descends into the abyss from angst, there opens the doorway into the narrow road.

He comes into contact with the very object of his angst. In doing so, none of it is eased. But is this not expected of having to make an acquaintance from angst? Picture a young man in an old bookshop on a sunny day, who spots a lovely lady perusing in the corner. Picture him as if straight out of a rom-com, mustering the courage to approach and creatively strike up a conversation on a whim. He sheepishly puts forward his opener: “Hey! Come around here much?”

Throughout this interaction, from the moment of captivation to his approach, there is indeed no point at which the tension eases. Rather, the only difference with his making first contact is that the entirety of the tension in him rushes to the forefront—it firms up within his consciousness, completely taking over his attention and conduct. In the moment of the approach, it is as if life bears no meaning other than his being in the immediacy of the approach itself. And so it follows for you, dear inquirer, for this is akin to the experience of making first contact with the Unknown from angst.

Now, you might point out a sharp difference between interacting with a romantic interest and the Unknown. How can this relation be? Longing drives the former, whereas angst drives the latter. To that, I would argue that the angst over approaching the Unknown itself arises from a secret longing—a longing to entwine one’s own existence with reality itself: a primitive, existential longing. As such, I think it is plausible to relate first contact with the Unknown to the romantic interest. They are both equally a matter of attending with the fullness of being to what the soul ‘reaches toward’—a craving for a certain cosmic satisfaction. And it is a craving in which one stakes his wish upon something beyond his power—on a certain ‘synchronicity’—yet it is the accompanying sense of powerlessness and the despair of failure that forms the position from which angst necessarily arises¹.

Now, our understanding of approaching the Unknown may be helped by the analogy of approaching a romantic interest, but between the two there still lies an infinite difference. With the man approaching his romantic interest, his longing may end by virtue of its satisfaction, in the capturing of the lady’s heart. This is easy to visualise in the character of Don Juan, for whom capturing a woman’s heart is akin to capturing a kingdom—the kingdom of a woman’s heart, by the waging of his love. But it is quite erroneous to presume the same of the Unknown. As long as human nature remains to be human nature, there persists a feature² of reality-as-experienced that existence itself is fragmented, broken, incomplete. There is an infinite gulf between life’s inexplicability and the ‘cosmic unity it reaches toward’ (which suffices to be named ‘God’) that cannot be bridged. That us moderns tend to think otherwise—that cosmic unity is represented within the logical progression of man’s ever-increasing power over nature—is comically presumptuous. There is a reason for much of our crisis of hopelessness and malaise. We have fallen where pride has gone before.

What is all this to say? With the approaching of a romantic interest, the entwining of a person and a fellow is quite palpable. It adds up like a working algebraic equation where both sides have entirely different numbers, yet still maintain correspondence in nature and therefore maintain relatable-ness to each other. Take, for example³: 2(xy + 9) - 4x = x (5 + 2y). As a lion is to a lion or a lioness, a person is to another: universally equivalent. Any pronounced sense of difference is merely a difference pronounced. It is some formal or informal specification within the universal whole. But it is precisely the universality of the whole that makes any difference intelligible to the other in the first place. Let alone this!—if you and I were truly different, you should theoretically not be able to understand anything I am communicating here. Hence, between one and a fellow there is a universal equivalence. On the other hand, the entwining of one’s own nature to the cosmic unity it reaches toward is impalpable. It simply cannot resolve, like an equation where one side is a finite number and the other infinity. In the numeric example: 2(xy + 9) - 4x = ∞. In this way, there is a fundamental principle to reality: each individual bears an irreconcilable gulf between the fragmented self and the cosmic unity it longs for. And it is this disunity that arouses angst, that is revealed first like a ghost, in the loose awareness of an all-determining problem that cannot resolve, and then decisively when it is confronted.

Inquirer! Do you still need any more convincing on this matter, or have I done what is required of me in illuminating it? Do you not feel the same sense of hidden dread within you? Do you not sense, like me, that there is something off, something eerie and ghastly about the way reality is laid out? Ah! It is precisely this disconnect that makes reality commonly suspect and easily given away as a “simulation”. Now, that is usually expressed as mere speculation, but you can see from what I have elucidated how it is in many ways a ‘true speculation’. Oh, and even physics—the veritable God of modernity (as modern symbol of the Absolute)—is suspect insofar as it flows amicably from the principle of fragmentation. For instance, ponder how Schrödinger’s cat (which posits that opposing states can be simultaneously active until it is fixated upon by observation) could simply be the phenomenological effect of a psychical make-up that dreams in completeness but only perceives incompleteness. Yes!—reality-as-experienced seems to unravel itself within universal law as such. It seems undeniable that in each person, there is an immutable tension between the subject and its cosmic dreams, born of an infinite difference that cannot resolve.

“…The nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain…”

— Tocqueville, in Democracy in America

‘Diving in’ (2020), by T.S. Harris

My fellow inquirer, this is what I have found. The sooner you can confront this reality, the better. For from it the borders open to all that is most deeply submerged in the basement of human matters: matters of existence and life itself.

Once it is confronted, one inevitably finds oneself to be at the inflection of choice: to either remain in “blissful” ignorance—having the radio always on in the background—or to plunge into the dreaming abyss of the fragmented mind—into all that is invisible, unknown, and negating. Now, inquirer, if you would prefer the former, the “bliss” of ignorance… I regret to admit that there is not much I can offer you. I doubt that much of my writing to follow will be of any use or gratification, but my word of caution is to know that existential matters will not stop ‘knocking on the door of your heart’, therefore any such “bliss” will be a bliss merely in spite of—of a shallow, consolatory nature. On the other hand, inquirer, if you find yourself plunging within, I would most heartily applaud you and cheer you on! You have taken the most punishing and the most rewarding task available to anyone: you have set yourself on a quest of the inner life. Now, no sooner than when you take the plunge, will you plummet headfirst into the den of the great Unknown… Quick—pat the dust off your clothes. A meeting is nigh! The mother of all ghosts, Mystery, dressed in a gown made up of everything inexplicable, is about to see to you where you are. Certainly, as a foreign visitor, your hands will shiver with the burden of angst, which will only rise to the front of your mind once you come across Mystery herself. And see!—whatever words of comfort you had armed yourself with (through the plummet) have dissipated into the cacophony of this environment. Whatever worth in groundedness it previously held has now been lost; for it is now the ‘ground below grounds’ on which you have set foot, and you have not yet laid a measurable footprint upon it. Every footstep you take from here reeks with the mist of uncertainty and doubt…

But, my dear inquirer, have you come this far just to back out? On your quest, I have only one word of advice for you, my fellow inquirer, and this comes from having gone on my own (even though one is never done with it). And no, it is not something silly, like ‘keep going on and persevere through the storm’. It is much more practical than that. You must remember that this meeting is unlike others. It is not towards the end of knowing her inside and out, not towards, say, asking for her hand in marriage—a fully-entwined unity—though this is all too easy to assume, perhaps even a temptation of power. You see, Mystery is of a different species… a higher species. It can be said, of the spiritual species—a being that is fully omnipresent and yet moves of its own accord, though it is invisible in its movement and incomprehensible in its accord. Mystery is, in other words, all-enveloping and all-knowing. And she will not fail to prove her immeasurable strength if you tried to test her. Perhaps, her world can be conceived as the extradimensional foreground upon which our reality is relatively dissolute.

Now you must forgive me, for while I wish I had some uplifting words to offer, here at this juncture, it is appropriate that I refrain from doing so. It may be disappointing but altogether unsurprising to hear, but as long as reality remains fragmented—that is, for eternity—one necessarily continues to live on in angst. Here I find my mind wandering over to a certain conceptualisation in pop-philosophy or pop-Buddhism: is this not precisely what they mean by “life is suffering”? Yes, when I hear or say such a phrase, my allusion is not only to the suffering of physical sickness, not even impending death, but an ongoing spiritual sickness born of an eternal misalignment. The Christians and Greeks conceived it as a “moral sickness”—though I have arrived at this juncture of thought not quite by a strict sense of moral justice or injustice, but by a rather simplistic personal experience of all-consuming anxiety (which leaves room for further investigation, including into the moral causes as such). But even though I realise each of us to be “sick” as such, I would still be wary not to go as far as certain philosophers in deeming life as hardly more than a sickness itself—that would be a lamentation or wailing masquerading as a representation of life, as if life was itself an eternal damnation. No! I see “suffering” as our burden of uneasiness to carry, our “heavy yoke”, yet even as we carry it, life is not fully captured in its burdensomeness. While suffering is true of the whole, it is certainly not the whole case. It is in this mediated sort of way, inquirer, that I am fond of seeing you as Schopenhauer suggests: as compagnon de misères, my fellow sufferer⁴.

But now this begs the question: if not the overzealous power of will, if not the illusory “bliss” of ignorance, if not eternal wailing, what response is left in the face of angst? I would certainly not recommend a bullet to one’s own head. Nothing is quite as depraved, as much an enmity of life’s spirit, as that⁵. No! Inquirer, I am persuading you towards something rather quite simple. It is to resignation—resignation to the immutability of the nature of things—yet it has to be a resignation that is not final, for it is still only one part to play out within the inner life’s coming-of-age. Such resignation is perhaps a kind of ‘amor fati’: to love or realise the necessity of your fate, though not in the Stoic sense of circumstance, but in the sense of the nature you have been given over to.

Still, keep watch, and don’t let your guard down! Even ahead of resignation, there lies yet another temptation. (It is undeniable that the ultimate quest of the inner life is fraught with correspondingly ultimate dangers.) Even we as sufferers ought not to laugh manically at our fate in a Camusian sort of revolt, as exemplified in Kierkegaard’s aesthete who, upon opening his eyes and seeing the real world “began to laugh and [hasn’t] stopped since.” This is a bastardised form of resignation that realises the omnipresence of Mystery and seizes upon the reality of separation but nevertheless decides to mock it by placing himself defiantly above it. It is as if the man, having plummetted down into the domain of Mystery, opted not to pat the dust off his clothes—that would be far too serious and pathetic for him—but rather to strip himself spiritually naked, place himself at the largest doorway, and scratch his crotch with euphoria towards whosoever dared look him in the eye. This is an attitude plausibly more vile than a rejection of the unknown out of mere foolishness. Icarus flew too gravely close to the Sun, but only out of his own youthful naivety. Such a contemptuous man is to be credited with committing a much greater injustice, a cosmic injustice. If only there was such an easy pass!

Now! Let us peer down the narrow road. Let us set our attention to where the light shines. Let us imagine a woman who has found herself in the deep end, and she has crossed the cavern into the inner life admirably, displaying an abundance of wisdom in her flair (after all, as Kierkegaard aptly puts it, “woman is closer to God than man”⁶). Pertaining to the infinite separation in her, there is certainly no complete resolution. But there still lies a certain completion within the incompleteness, so to speak. How so? She finds fuel enough for life itself in taking earnest stabs at harmony, in weaving together the myriad of sounds into a certain cosmic chord. Within the dialectic of her soul’s eternal ‘reaching toward’ ultimate unity, she dances, and she dances in full freedom and full humility. One might be able to feel, without her saying so, that it was as if she was a beloved daughter of the infinite itself. Perhaps it is owed to a measure of divine mercy, that there exists in our world a drop in the infinite ocean of cosmic resolution that is sufficient for the immediate (insofar as it is sourced from the infinite as such). Or, on a more tragic note, to circle back to the analogy of romance, it is as if the man loved a woman he had justly resigned to never being with, with whom he nevertheless retained in her infinitude as his muse. In this way, this man is also ‘completed in his incompleteness’. This contrasts with the man who continues to despair in his longing for what he refuses to concede as impossible, something he cannot attain. He is one who appropriates his portion of the infinite and lunges at it, expecting to conquer it by his own finite accord. He treats what in actuality demands resignation as if it demanded power. Against the infinite, such a response sets him grievously at odds—the finite may resign to the infinite, but the infinite cannot resign to the finite. Earth may resign to Heaven, but Heaven cannot resign to Earth.

Thus, inquirer, it all falls on this movement of infinite resignation. It is in resigning your finitude to the infinite accord—that you can begin to settle into a just ‘reaching toward’, and thereby begin a dialogos by which you can be attuned to synchronicity with the infinite. And at the point of attunement, your ears will be opened to the language of Mystery herself, after which she will become revelatory, and you will find in her an eternal wellspring of amusement. Then, at this point, you will be able to grasp the comfort of quietude that the Stoics speak so fondly of. For the den of the inexplicable Unknown will remain stubbornly in its place—yes—but it will assume the form of a house. Maybe even, a home.

…

“… The real enjoyment is to disappear into the infinite so far that all that is left is enough to savour the disappearance. … to spread a small sail and then with infinite speed skim over the surface of the sea. That is pretty much how it is with your voyage over the sea of life. Alone in one’s kayak one is sufficient unto oneself…”

— Kierkegaard, in Either/Or

Till next time,

Euwyn

1. Why, with approaching women, some men move forward with rapturous confidence, while some men become completely crippled.

2. Or in engineering-meme terms, a “bug” (in the manner of ‘a feature, not a bug’), considering the way things are feels unintended—to put crudely.

3. Mathematics was never my strong suit. In fact, it was my worst and most hated subject, hence I don’t have the brainpower to write an original algebraic equation. (I stole this from a Google search.)

4. Arthur Schopenhauer, in Studies in Pessimism: The Essays: “The conviction that the world, and therefore man too, is something which really ought not to exist is in fact calculated to instil in us indulgence towards one another: for what can be expected of beings placed in such a situation as we are? From this point of view one might indeed consider that the appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de misères. However strange this may sound it corresponds to the nature of the case, makes us see other men in a true light and reminds us of what are the most necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity, which each of us needs and which each of us therefore owes.”

5. G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy: “Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. … The man's crime is different from other crimes — for it makes even crimes impossible.”

6. Kierkegaard, in Either/Or: “Woman is weak — no, she is humble, she is much closer to God than man is.”