Heraclitus: Everything Flows, Everything Vibes
BW Weekly Newsletter, last Sunday's edition 13 July
Contents:
Foreword. Some advice.
Everything flows, everything vibes (10 sections)
Bio-individual Podcast on Self-Transcendence - Links
Members Section - 2 important guided instructions
1. Foreword
My apologies being late with this. I was called away urgently and had to attend to that, my time is limited for this work.
Indeed, democracy has manifest, so for those of you who apparently can’t read and voted, the ayes have it.
I’ll be providing an MP3 update in the next couple of days, which I notify you when it’s been uploaded here. Some of you apparently want to walk around and listen to this, while enjoying the dulcet, potent sexual tones of my ‘Straya’ accent. Indeed, the elders here will recall a time when women used to charge for such services. And here you are getting it for a few Aussie dirhams a month, or less for the free subscribers.
Some general words on the work before we kick things off.
I’ve noticed Reich is mysteriously coming back in fashion. Every man and his dog is now an esoteric Wilhelm Reich expert now. Kevin and I did the deep dive months ago, I’ve been doing the in depth series here for months.
Amazing how things just happen like that on this side of the internut isn’t it? Yet podcast struggles to grow, though we did hit 1000 the other day on youtube - so we appreciate all help in that respect to help us get the word out. I dislike begging like a porper and even mentioning it. Likes, subscribes, shares with friends, mentions…it all helps us grow, get new people on the show in future, provide more real information etc etc
Kevin and I have always suffered from this - being trendsetters, as the inferior and desperate for attention ape hard won knowing and unitse it, making it into a greasy, difficult to digest and horrendous tasting staple - McKnowledge.
One thing I will say is this. Or rather repeat, since I’ve been saying this for years because I’ve suffered from this. Talking, reading, sharing screen clippings is one thing - but your only way of gaining anything from this is do-ing.
One of the things we need to realise about ourselves as humans, is how we can trick ourselves about our true intentions.
More often than not, we have extremely petty reasons for undertaking certain actions. It’s typically some shade of narcissism that drives us. And we can fool ourselves in order to obtain it. This is one of the dangers of working by yourself - that is even if you work at all, which most people do not. I can tell they don’t. The way I can tell they don’t is nothing makes sense when they speak to me. I’m not sure what they’re saying to me.
Editing the Hyatt videos, and watching how he eviscerates people and their true intentions, it makes me think of myself and all the ways I’ve done this over the years. He breaks people down, the kinds of people who would happily give advice on how to live, what to think, whats legitimate or not - and he tears them to shreds. Their basic component drivers are so utterly pedestrian it’s hilarious, and almost sickening to watch at the same time. Granted, not everyone was so bad. Still.
This is one of the many reasons I keep my language very specific. I don’t go on exotic tangents. I never give advice on what are wrong or right ‘modes of living’. I never really even give advice. I never tell you how to live. Always beware of people who do this. No matter who closely aligned with you they say they are.
The problem is, this work, more than any other type of work - and particularly, more so even than so-called ‘spiritual work’ - takes honesty. Honest appraisal. And that’s something we’re largely not designed for. This is the art of self-overcoming, if there is such a thing.
We cover this up using exotic means. Words, petty arguments, reactivity. When what’s underneath is nothing more than a desire to be known, or seen as clever by a communtay - whatever else.
Never forget that, and if you’re here for the work, resist the urge for online tummy rubs from people you don’t even know. It is critical that the right frame for learning is adopted. I wish I knew this from the start. Which is why I keep saying it here. Being humble, open, and resisting the urge to be seen as an expert when you’re not. These are all ways that you will benefit the most from the methods presented.
It’s very likely, the desire to come across as a “secret esoteric source of secret novel information” to the townspeople is itself a drive that is holding you back! Something you’d want to work through with Reichian work - if anyone did it of course, which by and large they don’t. They talk about it and read about it.
That’s the thing. It’s easy to have nice theory or share a screen clipping, but this work, what Kevin and I speak about, is the work that would force you to examine unpleasantries like, why you’re aping someone without acknowledging them, as one example.
As Dr. Hyatt used to relate when people came to work with him. Paraphrasing:
“Some people stayed for a few weeks, months. They’d do a little bit of the work but then they’d move on. Because that’s never what they were after. They wanted to be liked, have some new words, seem original, be accepted by a group or develop a new vocabulary that would maybe help them get laid or appear smart or edgy. They were never here for the work.”
It seems petty but it’s not: It’s a super important point to be successful in all of this. For any of this to be of any use to you. Things like twitter are a problem because they encourage bad behaviours - it’s so much easier to be edgy and cool with screen clipping then it is to work by yourself, without acknowledgement for years. To feel pain. To really learn how it all work. Social media, seeming smart on podcasts, whatever it is - that’s the easy road.
Kevin and I have done this work for 20 years or more, developing our own modalities on this basis.
I work with people in real life in my specific modality, and I’ve developed a very specific model for this work, learning from what I do. So, reading my substank or e-book, you may get a bit, but unless you do it and stick the course, you simply will not get it.
If you want to see what happens, there’s no way out of doing something. Using the method, and undergoing the process.
Attention seeking, the desire to seem smart and original to your peers, is worth absoloutely nothing. And yet, that’s typically all I see people doing. There are some of you who are not doing that, and are working through things. These are the guys who mostly remain silent, interestingly enough, and will see the full benefits. Because they’re not focused on attention seeking. They’ve come with an open and curious attitude.
You will be surprised, if you do the work, what direction you will go in. It will be different to me, or Kevin.
The best way to do this is to avoid trying to come across as smart, and aping other people. If you do that without acknowledging them which happens all the time for some reason, you are the one that suffers. Because it shows that you were never in it for self-transcendence - you’re innit it for petty purposes, for self-acknowledgment. This posturing is the anti-thesis to the real work.
The work method is not the same as making an esoteric thread or a podcast or whatever else. When learning something, you need to come from a place of genuine curiosity. this is the only way to make progress.
This is why this substank is different. The podcast is different. I don’t care about the theories of others, what’s in fashion this month or whatever else. Even though it momentarily makes me want to chimp out, I don’t even care about the straw-men that are constantly levelled at me.
We have a purpose here, and if it goes out of fashion next month, it doesn’t matter. At all.
If it didn’t rob me of deserved subscribers for my decades of social-life destroying hard work, I actually take people aping me as a compliment. If you do this just remember, you’re not me, you don’t have the same linages, experiences or outlooks, so you’ll never be able to do it right - it’ll just be a sad parody. But more importantly, you’re missing out on truly getting to the bottom of your own work and specialisation.
Finally, for my most valued subscribers, I have the first recording of the forthcoming course coming out sometimes next week. Aside from the other work you’ve been doing, this is the one where everything else will start to make sense.
Below are 2 more important meditations, where we’ll learn some required skills.
Finally for non-paid subscribers, I’ll be making one of the videos for the mindfulness course available sometime this weekend, so you can get a feel for non-dogma mindfulness and what it is.
until then,
HAVE NICE DAY
(i) Everything flows, Everything vibes: Process, Antagonism and Charge
Most philosophers, if asked what were the most basic constituents of their ontology, would probably name things and properties.... There is, however, an alternative ontology, one generally attributed in antiquity to Heraclitus that takes things themselves to be only temporary manifestations of something more fundamental: change or process.... I do want to claim that an ontology of processes is better suited to understanding the nature of life and the living. (Everything Flows (p. 187)
In addition to releasing a "non-dogmatic" zazen-type mindfulness course, I've been in the process of releasing a (growing) set of short guided meditations. Primarily designed to accompany the regular discipline of sitting. The idea behind these short 'active investigative-type' meditations was to induce awareness of specific aspects of experience. The experience of process that exists before conceptualisation. Ergo, this is not a conceptual place.
This feature of meditation is genuinely re-energising, allowing us to rest and approach life from a completely different vantage point. A more primordial vantage point. 'Pointing out' instructions are an effective means of speeding up the deepening of regular sitting work. One of the significant weaknesses of traditional meditation approaches is the propensity to simply miss 'what's there'; I know I wasted many years this way. This can be rectified with relative ease by utilising active investigation and instructions.
One of these meditations was what I called 'Heraclitian flux'. The purpose: opening the meditator to the awareness of the flux-like nature of reality. This is, of course, not a concept; it is something seen. The spontaneous arising and passing away, or flashing in and out of reality. The Buddhists tradition, one that I have trained in for a long time, mean this feature of experience when they say 'impermanence'. After reading Heraclitus, I firmly believe, that his 'reality in flux' was no mere abstraction for him. It was him describing his direct perception of impermanence and deriving his various descriptions of the processual forces of reality.
Using meditation, we can also notice this feature of experience as the primary phenomenological truth of our experience of reality, beyond that of words and concepts, moving into the see-ing of process. Or more correctly, noticing what is prior to words and concepts.
This instability, reality in flux, spontaneously renews as it flashes in and out of existence. This can be seen, it’s not just me talking twaddle. So without a doubt, no man steps into the same river twice. And not only that, there isn't even the same man to do so. Those who've managed a bit of see-ing of this truth, through my course work or otherwise, will also be better able to grok the following ideas.
I hope that meditation and the below will expand insight into why Heraclitus was very much correct, despite being ignored for centuries by the mainstream. Why some believe his time is yet to come. That he will inevitably come back into style and revolutionise our scientific understanding of the world. And from my perspective, why this matters for our understanding of ourselves, our nervous systems and how to create a spark - fire.
With this in mind, today's newsletter was also inspired by a collection of essays I've been autistically consuming for the last week - 'Everything Flows Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology'. A series of groundbreaking essays exploring the technical assumptions we've tended to make about biology and reality as such - albeit concerned explicitly with the biological sciences. The authors propose, much to my liking, that most apparently insoluble questions of biology and science are issues more of how we view or map natural phenomena. The framework we try to fit them in to. Cultural assumptions formed partly by metaphysical beliefs or semantic and linguistic structures we're not necessarily aware of, that have been imparted by long-dead men - for better or worse.
These assumptions, the authors contend, are incomplete and upside down. Downstream of such assumption lies our purely mechanistic view of 'substance, particles or things'.
Anyone semi-conscious for the last 2-3 years would be aware of where this thinking tends to inevitably lead, but the impacts have been around for millennia. Subtly ruling the roost from the collective unconscious of the Western world.
Instead, the various authors take the position that nature and biology are constituted of processes. This is why they named this new scientific-metaphysical framework process biology. The idea is, on its surface, I think pretty intuitive; the living world is in this view, as one of the authors, Daniel J Nicholson, tells us:
"...a hierarchy of processes stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. We can think of this hierarchy in broadly mereological terms: molecules, cells, organs, organisms, populations, and so on. Although the members of this hierarchy are usually thought of as things, we contend that they are more appropriately understood as processes." Everything Flows (p. 3)
Process biology asserts that we incorrectly view 'things' as static, stable, and 'made up' of atomised substances. The correct view then is that there are instead hierarchies of dynamic processes in nature. Such processes in nature are not of 'things', they are more fundamental or foundational. For one of the authors, 'things' are merely 'precipitates of processes'. When we focus on things linguistically and conceptually, in an every day sense, we are focusing not on the underlying phenomena but the precipitates.
This is the crucial part to wrap your laughing gear around - so to repeat - things are precipitates of processes.
(ii) It’s SO Obvious, Isn’t It?
This kind of thing is one of those apparently obvious givens that many 'esotericists' online would arrogantly assume as being such a 'sinple' deduction, 'one I came up with years ago', and therefore not worth warranting further discussion. For those of us who aren’t as clever as they are, the impacts of this are very profound. I contend it is yet another case in the debilitating esoteric luggage warehouse of things that we like to say are really so obvious - which, we can, in absolutely no way seem to live in line with.
Down to our vocabularies, the way we view ourselves, the way we work out, the way we practice, the way we view health matters, supplement, avoid cherry tomato...whatever...almost nothing of our perceptual biases is truly in line with the processual view of ourselves and nature. In fact I contend this is why the great spiritual traditions even exist; they are trying to make process clear.
We tend to act under the spell of the opposite view: a view of particles, things, supplements for x-pathway, this hormone is doing this, 'I'm static, and this is my wife, statica'...The ‘homunculus in me’ is fixed, but the world moves around...I don’t though, I’m stable, unconditioned and eternal.
It's easy to mock, but this is how we're all acculturated to see things. No one's to blame for this state of affairs; we all think this way as an inheritance. The view has proliferated intensely in the West for hundreds of years to the point where it's completely automatic in each of us, and a relatively radical undoing is required to untie these knots. Any case...
This excellent collection of essays, then, seeks to turn upside down the worst excesses of this line of thinking - and I want to clarify excesses, not do away with what now exists altogether, but to reassess and re-contextualise it.
Nor is it to say the original purveyors or the ardent supporters of the ‘current mose of seeing’ were or are 'wrong' in simple binary terms. At this substank we are of course non-binary. We do not embrace the accursed Aristotelean law of either/or that we all have such a hard time breaking out of.
It would be more correct to say that thinkers like Democritus, iSocrates, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, etc., possessed an incomplete vision - granted, in some cases to the degree that it was more or less completely mistaken, but that’s ok. The issue is that it has lead to some truly retarded outcomes over the last few thousands of years.
From my own perspective, I like to view what the authors are doing as reintegrating a right-hemispheric view of the world and in the sciences. And the grand vision of the enigmatic Heralictus. And others like him. And amazingly, a lot of the problems we thought were problems are easily resolved when taking such a view. Who would of thunk it? But I’ll leave you to read the book and drill down into the requisite level of detail at your own leisures.
(iii) COMPLEX WEBS OF PROCESSUAL HIERARCHY
You may recall me slamming Ray Peat Supplement neurotics & moleculecells as I call them, with facts and logic last week. I was overjoyed to find this book because, in many ways, it confirmed for me what I had intuited from understanding dynamic ‘process-structure’ as being superior, or more fundamental, to static ‘parts and things’, or the precipitates.
In that articool, I attempted to point out that structure, although partially a mechanistic sounding framing, is integral to the functionality of dynamic co-dependent processes of the body.
For example, this hierarchy of processes in the body can only function well if the processual system functions as it should. Working dynamically and vibrantly in time and space, with a vast complex of interdependent inter-conditioned processes thriving in an ecology - from which it is, importantly, not seperate.
So, from the highest point of view, metabolism is more than the interaction of specific molecules, pathways, hormones and extreme health neuroticism within a static structure. But it takes a de-energised and integrated left-brain to grok this, as the geniuses that read this blog now well understand.
Metabolism is the life activity of all the continuous processes of cells and tissues. They all act in a hierarchy, each process at different time scale. All interacting and mutually reinforcing one another in a constant state of flux and, importantly, dynamic antagonism.
This life force flows in multitudinous directions. Inconceivably complex webs of interrelations of processes, not simply the function of 1 or 2 hormones that you need to supplement or optimise - necessarily.
Many fundamental inputs and wastes, in line with the thermodynamic laws, the most minor constituent parts that we tend to be obsessed with, are simply one level of the totality of the hierarchy of processes in our bodies and in nature itself.
Yet, the precipitations of processes are what we talk about. It is the totality of our frame of being able to communicate. Even in this, I am consistently forced to recruit ‘machine-like’ or ‘mechanism’ type terms. And even when we take a higher view, we still only ever relate it to precipitates or the actions of precipitates in narrow, specific scopes. This is why I’ve had such a hard time trying to bring down this work to the townspeople. I know Kevin has the same issue. How do you explain this to people?
One way of understanding the flux of the body and its structural relationships in time and space, can be the art of becoming conscious of these complex interactions through integration and awareness practices.
Further, we can no longer view ourselves as a bag of skin in a seperate environment. We are of an environment, not in it. Within a hierarchy of dynamic ecological processes that are, technically speaking, without superfluous barriers (as it relates to our complete understanding, obviously you still don’t want to get stabbed. That’s not what’s being said).
The integrity of the whole influences the parts, and vice versa, in a spontaneous, fluxing and incomprehensibly dynamic interplay:
"...this (fixed, static) familiar and widespread view. The various structures that an organism exhibits are not really fixed but are instead continuously maintained by a large number of carefully regulated processes, which endow them with their relative stability. These structures cannot be taken for granted in our physiological explanations, as they must themselves be accounted for by the various functional activities that enable them to persist through time. It is, therefore, incorrect to assume that structures are prior to functions or that functions are determined by structures. The processual nature of organisms means that changes in their functional demands will tend to result in changes in how they maintain and regenerate their respective structures. In biology, the relation between structure and function is not linear and unidirectional, as is often supposed, but circular and symmetrical. Neither of the two can be privileged over the other or even be understood without appealing to the other. This key insight was already recognised by the organicists" Everything Flows (p. 31).
In essence, this is a right-hemisphere re-imagining of biological science, which is much needed as we are (hopefully) reaching the crescendo of suffering under the brutal regime of petty-tyrant left-brained 'experts' who seemingly cannot resist taking stupid actions from their woefully incomplete point of view. In many ways, the static view of the world is indeed the view of the midwit.
Many in our spheres put the actions of the authorities and molculecells down to pure malevolence - undoubtedly, there are elements of this. I actually prefer a cognitive explanation, as you know. I tend to think they are the worst victims of the assumptions and incomplete conclusions we are sketching out the reasons for here, even if they are the most fanatical proponents.
‘Static Things’ experts, with a brain asymmetry.
(iv) Heraclitus, Buddha & Processual Becoming
This book does a fine job of analysing the origins of our substance-based ontological view of biology. The authors tell us that the conflict between entities and processes, our approaches to understanding reality, represent an age-old conflict. Perspectives promoted by some of the influential philosophers I mentioned before.
So how does Heraclitus fit in, and why does his idea of the unity of opposites and the nature of matter in flux, matter to us and our psycho-physiological practice? How can it deepen our understanding of it?
Heraclitus stands as the emblematic figure of process philosophy in my opinion, and he's referenced as being so in this book several times. The Greek maxim panta rhei (meaning 'everything flows') concisely expresses Heraclitus' belief in the universal state of flux I've described previously. And relates directly to a processual understanding of biology & reality itself.
Not only did Heraclitus emphasise the pervasiveness of change, but he also recognised its vital role in explaining stability over time. His views stand in stark contrast to those found in the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, team static. Their ancient tradition championed the idea of indivisible and immutable material atoms, and a static universe. This view more or less won out, becoming influential paradigms for subsequent theories of substance in later centuries.
As any reader of my blog knows, the primacy of process was also recognised by Eastern philosophers for thousands of years. In fact, German philosophers in the 18th century even made the case that Heraclitus and the Buddha may be the same person.
I consider the Buddha the greatest ever (remembered, at any rate) diagnostician of our condition. To the deepest possible level, he recognised the inter-dynamic, essentially 'self-less' or ‘static-identity-less’, borderless interaction of all life and matter in the stream of our experience. The impersonal flux of experience itself with ourselves as simply another impermanent conditioned process within the totality pf the great ‘whatever-the-fuck-it-is’.
The Buddha became enlightened (on the 4th day of his being under the Bodhi tree), by recognising the complex interdependency of hierarchical processes. What he termed 'co-dependent origination'. He synthesised a method of practice in which the aim was to see these great truths as a means of philosophical emancipation from the worst elements of experience, positing that through the wisdom of seeing the truth, particularly the conditioned impermanence of these processes and our identification with them - one would basically no longer take it all so hard.
As Richard Gombrich tells us in his excellent book, ‘How Buddhism Began’:
“The Buddha’s interest in how not what, his emphasis on processes rather than objects, could be said to be summarised in his teaching of the paticca-samuppada, conditioned origination...his clearest statement that consciousness is simply a process expresses this fact by saying that it is dependently originated...it is categorised according to the cause that produced it. When it arises in dependence on the eye because of forms it is classed as ‘eye consciousness’, and so on through the 6 senses, ending with ‘mind consciousness’. This is just like fire, which is classed according to its (material) cause as a wood fire, a grass fire, or whatever. I don’t think the Buddha could have put it more clearly. No fuel, no fire. So if there is nothing to be conscious of there is no consciousness.” (pp 48)
My new way of viewing the Buddha’s radical approach, is that he changed the ‘things’ extant in the religions of the time, and flipped the things over into processes. This is clearly seen in his doctrine of khandha, the 5 aggregates as one example.
The five khandhas are bundles or piles of form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness itself. Not only the the Buddha make these non-things processes, but he asserted that processes are themselves conditioned, without any self-involvement, by other sets of causes. In this way of seeing, Buddha’s reaction was against the stasis of the Upanishadic outlooks of soul and self. Showing instead complex orders of process in place of stasis.
According to the literature, very interestingly indeed, like Heraclitus, he got this idea from observance of fire. Buddhist readers will know that he delivered a sermon aptly named “Fire Sermon - the way of putting things as being on fire”. From that sermon:
The ear is burning, sounds are burning...
"The nose is burning, odors are burning...
"The tongue is burning, flavors are burning...
"The body is burning, tangibles are burning...
"The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.
SN 35.23 Adittapariyaya Sutta: The Fire Sermon
Very very similar to this, we hear from Heraclitus:
“This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.”
And very enticingly:
“The phases of fire are craving and satiety.”
(This in particular gives us insight into how antagonistic opposites work for Heraclitus, and how everything is of fire. Reflecting also on what the Buddha said, I’m sure they mean the same thing…more on that in the last chapter.)
Now arguably both men took away different conclusions from their experiences, or different prescriptions. Although, Heraclitus and what he thought still isn’t known for sure, perhaps there are more similarities than what we think.
Nonetheless, the fathers of the processual both saw fire and the nature of fire as constituting the very nature of reality itself. Impermanent, in flux, every-changing, lighting passions, craving, arising and passing away or cycles of craving and satiety.
It’s interesting to think how the fire-worship of the Indo-Europeans may have inspired this. We know how this would have come to the Buddha, by way of the Zoroastrians and the Vedic culture, and I suppose by way of Parmenides for Heraclitus:
“We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete. It was not or nor shall be different since it is now, all at once, one and continuous.”
(Incidentally, one of the meditations I recommend here and have done as a guided meditation is to meditate on fire. And one can easily see how Heraclitus and the Buddha came to the conclusion that fire is in all things, and all things of fire. Fire provides both men a vision of the universe of perpetual change; revealing the secrets of consciousness and phenomena to them, it shows us the heat, and the spark of metabolism, the heat and motion that animates all things in flux).
Any case, a diversion there I thought you may find interesting, and is nevertheless related to this. Back to the subject at hand…
(v) A Necessary Counterbalance for Modernity…
Heraclitus's process-focused view of the universe, as it is turning out, exists as a legitimate, scientifically backed and necessary counter-balance to the substantialism or moleculecellism of Leucippus and Democritus…Aristotle or Plato...and its modern proponents, like Kant or Descartes, who promoted or solidified such views in our collective consciousness.
If we think of this influence of substantialism through Aristotle and particularly his students such as Plato, we get some idea of how influential this line of thinking has been on Western Civ, mostly by way of the medieval church. In fact, you see such outcomes all through medieval Christian doctrine; even in esoteric doctrine non-processual views are highly pervasive, even when pointing to something not so.
It's probably true that many of our cultural achievements, like machines or computers, are likely related to this excess. So it’s not all bad. Some people talk about this with some tone of Spenglerian fate, as if, 'sorry, that's just the way it is and the way it will remain until the West has fallen and billions die'. But does it have to? I don't buy it.
In part, the work I present here at this snrubtack, is to try and break these abstractions and modes of seeing, shaking off or balancing out the ideas of long dead men if they don't serve us any longer. These views are not just intellectual; we should be starting to understand how they are literally represented in our perception of the world and the body and its movement - and even our perception of our body in the world. Our tensions, how we react to things - the whole kit and caboodle.
So I don't accept it as the fate of the West and billions, at least for the readers here. I'm probably wrong. Might as well try.
(vi) My High Level Views on Logos
I want to provide a very high-level breakdown of Heraclitus and his Logos, which serves as the thing that unifies his opposites.
Before I get secret kang’d - I don't pretend I'm an expert or understand his historical context in any depth. I'm not interested in discussing the totality of his philosophy; I'm coming to this with mostly fresh and naive eyes. I want to present how I view some of his fragments on logos and other things, according to my meditative and insight based practices, and how this plays into the general idea I hope to be conveying.
His philosophical framework stands on what is known as the "unity of opposites." Like the river, ever-changing in its waves yet persisting in its flow, an organism also appears to be constant yet variable. Our very physiologies constitute a part of this; it manifests as a ceaseless current of dynamic hierarchical processes. It is unstable, yet the instability and antagonism of opposites, opposite drives, brakes and accelerators, define our existences, and are the very thing that grants us coherence.
According to his perspective, all entities, living or inanimate, seamlessly merge into a cohesive and unbroken unity. Heraclitus identified perpetual movement and unending transformation as the fundamental characteristics of this reality, which we have expressed as "everything flows."
Opposites were essentially alternate yet complementary entities intimately linked by this Logos to form a coherent and ultimately harmonious relationship. Even if it doesn’t seem that way in the trenches. Simultaneously, he emphasised the interconnectedness and unity of all aspects of existence, summarised in one of his fragments as "all is one."
These supposedly dual antagonistic elements in our experience found unity and interconnectedness through the eternal Logos, which served as the cohesive agent that bound them together. The world itself consists of a law-like interchange of elements that are symbolised by fire as the ultimate constituent; from fire, all things come.
The unchanging parameters of the constant flux described by Heraclitus maintained the interplay between difference and multiplicity while upholding the unity of phenomena. Logos provides grounds for merging opposites, synthesising them into a harmonious whole.
In terms of humanoids, I believe this antagonistic interplay is best represented by the regulatory, there we go with the left brain dumb dumb language again - you see what I mean - co-conditioned interplay of our autonomic processes. Which forms my mostly general purpose for writing this as we will see in the last sekshun.
It's still up for debate what logos meant for him and there’s tonnes of papers on it. I'd like to offer my own take, which is different to anything I’ve come across and fits in with the framework I present here at Breathwish substank.
Again, before I get the global flood of tears from people itching to take me out of context - I know nothing about the Greek language or Hellenic philosophy - although I have spent much time reading these fragments and letting them 'sit'. I let them sit like a koan. that’s how I read his work.
I also acknowledge the term logos as it used in the fragments probably meant different things in different contexts and had different interpretations at different times in Greek history, including in his own time. With that out of the way...please, no more secret kangz nitpicking in my DM's, I beg you.
The ultimate nature of logos as unifying opposites, and enabling exisdunce. I understand that from an ultimate level, I think it is roughly equivalent the Zen Buddhist experience, or reference to 'the deathless one' or 'the unborn'. ‘Rigpa’ in the Tibetan tradition.
What I term in my short course, and other Buddhisty people term 'awareness'. which is the all-pervasive "mirror" on which reality and multiplicity, duality itself, is reflected, and without which conditioned experience and co-originating process cannot exist. For a full treatment of awareness, you can refer to my video lecture on it for members. I don’t mean it as in 'AWFL ‘I’m self aware’ or whatever. I mean it as the tangible backdrop for phenomena. When that the Buddhists seek to ‘find’ to use a poor term.
I have spent much time discussing the non-duality of experience on this blog as an 'experiential 'unity of opposites'. Non-duality is not the rejection of phenomena; it is more the realisation of the unity of all things within experience, the subject and object and that such things are not truly opposites, they are one and the same - and all other dualistic categorisations - the unity that underlies all things, that the 'cattle' can't see, even when it's pointed out to them. This is not to say that there aren’t dualities that we experience, but our experience of them is in fact truly non-dual. Awareness itself, is non-dual.
Hear me out.
Heraclitus says of logos:
'It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my logos and to confess that all things are one.'
"Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which tends to unite and that which tends to separate, the harmonious and the discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things.'
'The limits of the soul you could not discover, though traversing every path.'
Prince Gautama:
"Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else."
Som nice Mahayana Buddhist takes:
"The mind's capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odours with your nose, tasting flavours with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind. At every moment, where language can't go, that's your mind.
The sutras say, "A tathagata's forms are endless. And so is his awareness." The endless variety of forms is due to the mind. Its ability to distinguish things, whatever their movement or state, is the mind's awareness. But the mind has no form and its awareness no limit. Hence it's said, "A tathagata's forms are endless. And so is his awareness."
Some more from Heraclitus:
'Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.'
Mahayanists:
"The light of the sun is the manifestation of the clarity of the sky; and the sky is the basic condition necessary for the manifestation of the sun's light. So, too, in the sky two, three, four, or any number of suns could arise; but the sky always remains indivisibly one sky. Similarly, every individual's state of presence is unique and distinct, but the void nature of the individual is universal, and common to all beings."
Now importantly, I’m making this claim from an experiential point of view. As a matter of a tangible experience of consciousness through my Zen practice over the years, and it’s from this point that I believe Heraclitus had the same thing. and that makes sense, as in a cognitive way, human share the ability for these so-called experiences of the ultimate. There is no way they are culturally dependent. What comes may be, including the intkerpretation, but not the thing in itself.
Awareness can be seen as the unifying backdrop against which dualities arise. When Heraclitus says that all things are one, he is making the claim that all things are unified since awareness itself is in all things necessarily. It is the non-dual mirror on which all phenomena are reflected, all dualities. For me, Logos represents this phenomenological truth, and in this way Heraclitus shows us his mysteries..
I stake the claim, that coming into contact with awareness shows us life as a stream, the ultimately, ultimate process.
(vii) God is Just
What are the features of awareness?
‘Awareness’ in the sense I mean here, is kind of like a cold isness. In conversation with my Zen master, he once related to me that the reason some Zen Buddhists talk about compassion, is because awareness itself, does ‘not care’ (his words). It has an inhumanness or a non-concern with conditioned dualistic phenomena that occur.
All things in the world, all interrelated processes can happen within awareness, and it simply remains constant, all-pervasive, and uncaring about the conditioned phenomena that arise. When we think of the fragment:
“To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.”
This really sounds to me like the same thing. Indeed, a Buddhist would say all things are just since all things are of karma.
Of course, whilst dualism grants us desire and aversion to these phenomena, from a perspective of awareness, All tings are permissible within awareness, since they occur whether we are desirous or averse.
As Heraclitus says, from this divine perspective, all things are processes that simply occur within the great unifying awareness, so they are just, as they are required by the great drama, the great process that unfolds.
I’m not arguing for exact equivalency as I said, nevertheless, from a perspective of the unifying feature of reality, awareness, all things are completely just and simply meant to be. According to the laws of karma, or conditioned samsaric experience in the terms of the Buddhist tradition as one example.
(viii) Antagonism of Opposites and Reich
Given I'm sperging out on Reich, I'll be throwing him in the mix here as we get an interesting complimentary perspective from him. In some ways, I see Reich as an early 'process' proponent, ultimately hounded and marginalised for his courageous fight against muh static substancecells.
Reich explores something he terms as "Functional Identity and Antithesis of the Autonomic Nervous System", which elaborates his thoughts on the function of the ANS in terms of his orgonomic science.
Reich has equations for this if you read his essay, which can be found here.
There is a noteworthy similarity in Reich's equations when we substitute Heraclitus's Logos with the Common Functioning Principle of the antagonistic yet interrelated functions of the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic branches of the Nervous Systems.
From my perspective, Heraclitus was probably the first European thinker to grasp, with reason and insight, a fundamental principle of life itself, in what we now understand to be a function of the processes of nervous system. The interaction of opposites leads to stability—this is the same unity of opposites that Reich describes as identity and antithesis. Which for him, are the antagonistic opposites that lead to vegetative functionalism.
This matters for us and our practices, how we determine what beneficial emphasis is. And thus, how we need to tweak our practice.
(ix) Dynamic Antagonism & Charge for the Work
"Harmony needs low and high, as progeny needs man and woman.”
“From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony.”
“The cosmos works by harmony of tensions, like the lyre and bow. Therefore, good and ill are one.”
"...a subsystem that possesses precise control over the diverse processes responsible for adaptive behaviour within a particular environment. However, the functionality of this subsystem is contingent upon specific body plans that have adapted to various interactions. The NS is an integral part of a body plan that includes both primitive and differentiated organs. These organs fulfil the metabolic and biomechanical needs of the MC animal, enabling its behaviour. Apart from controlling behaviour through the neuroendocrine system, the NS also oversees the development and maintenance of the body's metabolic processes.” (Everything Flows)
One of the questions I ask my elite superiors on the esoterical right is how can you have elite without un-elite. The superior castes without the peon masses. Beautiful without mid-women in hollyweird. This isn’t overlooked by anyone by any stretch, but sometimes it’s worth considering when you find yourself frustrated when dealing with the hoi polloi.
I want to talk now about why this matters for us, and why reading the all of above is useful to begin to frame what is beneficial for us.
Viewing our interaction in the world as a process, reality as a borderless, flashing, flux; how do we acknowledge this in our day-to-day life and practice? How can we use this? Can we actually change our see-ing to be see-ing of process and not stasis? Good question, I think fairly obviously so.
For me, the formula is:
ACTIVE RELAXATION—>CHARGE—>TENSION—>FRICTION—>AMPLITUDE—>DISCHARGE OF VITAL LIFE SOURCE—>REPEAT
This is the process that we want to integrate or reintegrate into our biology and awareness as a governing principle in its hierarchy of processes. With us as the guiding conditioned process.
This strain induced by binding opposites leads to the quality of the 'amplitude' and 'charge' of pulsation - as we discussed last week. This is something I see in my work and sensory data I collect.
The lyre and the bow in Heraclitian terms. Craving and satiety.
So, methods of conscious ANS regulation present to us, as conscious beings, a primus processus we can manipulate using Heraclitian principles and practices.
Bringing together Reich, the Buddha, Heraclitus, other people like this, and process biology - learning to see it in reality, in ourselves through mindfulness, bodywork and breath-work, exercise and movement, our interaction with others and our self-perception - constitute a means for us to increase vitality and pulsation. A guideing principle.
It is a way in which we no longer give in to the somatic therapy-type, traumary, squishy feelings and pleasure and overly-trauma viewpoint, nor the autistic hyper-sympathetic, mechanistic left-brained extremism that defines our world right now.
It is the integration of both polarities that we seek. The right amount of tension in the right place at the right time, the right functionality, the right full and proper energetic response at the right time to our ecologies.
In process biology, they critique the virgin substance biology, in which say, genes dictate all, with little or no feedback back downwards. Process biology acknowledges that all these things and dynamic and interact. And in the same way, our psycho-physical work should be so, as well.
My objective in this substank newsletter was to try and demonstrate the following:
1. A process base view of physiology, in which the thingness of molecules is an 'emanation or precipitation' of something more critical underneath - governing processes that basically exist outside our sensory purview.
2. The Heraclitian view of the process of dynamic energetic frictions as constituting not only unity; but the functional unity and amplitude of our vigorous constitution - the vital pulsation of this synchronous amplitude, relies on our seeing ourselves for what we really are - which is not just seperate unified things with solidified identities. Everyone loves latching on to these, but I’m telling you, they are always self-defeating if you cling too hard.
We can see this vital amplitude in terms of metaphor - like starting a fire with flint and a knife. (Which I learned to do the other day properly - hence the analogy).
By striking the proverbial 'blade and the flint', we reinstate the interplay between expansive and contractive poles of the nervous system - or positive and negative; however, you want to put it. Pulsation, or strength of energetic charge, is derived from this give-and-take of opposites.
This does NOT imply:
I am NOT allow oodles of squishy harmony, hedonism and fee fees in stasis as somatic therapists, or some sweetness and light meditators like to sometimes assert.
I am NOT allow the static extremely tense, statue-like, hardened warrior-core extreme sympathetic emphasis at all time. Extreme contractedness.
It is possible to be too harmonious from bodywork and have no charge at all - just as it is possible to be too much of a stiff.
I have made some crappy diagrams to illustrate this process-principle over time, which should assist you further to intuitively grasp things.
Loss of dynamic tension: Somatic, trauma types - seeking squishy feels and ‘flow states’, a chronic loss of tension. Also the ‘depressed archetype’. Ironically typified by outbursts of aggression on occasion. A loose bow.
Chronic increase of tension: Those ‘not in touch’. Hyper-stressed, chronically stimulated and highly reactive types. Increase in baseline tension over the course of life, usually ending in hyper-tension and other chronic stress-related issues. ‘Static Reactive’ state, and contracted, retentive process.
Interplay between both polarities, regulated by sine-wave like interaction of polarities. Amplitude is strong, energies of ‘give and take’ through time functioning as an integrated process. ‘Processual Integrated Physiological Responses’. Tension and relaxation within tissues as required, fostered by excellent structural integrity.
For vitality to emerge, we need to master both polarities. The deeper we can go into each with mastery, the greater the spark or the fire we can create. In this, we become a process as we actually are. The fire of vital energies becomes free to express itself as it must.
The greater the disparity in potential, the larger the available 'electric charge' becomes. In a practical sense, the greater our access and ability to allow these opposite forces to express themselves in the physiology and mind, the greater the amplitude our physiological control provides, and the greater the charging and discharging of vitality. The easier the blade and flint generate the spark, and we catch alight.
Remember, all comes from fire.
I may expand what this practically means in coming weeks, but I think you get the idea.
(x) Final Words
Our mastery of the process, therefore, cannot be severely limited by an obsession with mere molecules or static component parts. in this outlook, we miss what must be done.
They are the representation of the health of the dynamism that lies underneath. Once we recognise this and practice accordingly, we are granted access to vibrant, energetic response, our birthright.
We see everything 'outside of us' as a process. We can also see our bodies forming a part of this totality, also in flux. This is a true view of ourselves, experientially available to us, not just intellectually. And for members, I have put together a miniature guided course for perceiving this truth directly.
I also want to make the claim here, with little or no evidence, that we could have a genuine chance of breeding or facilitating superior future types through mastery of these processes. which has so far been left completely up to chance.
I have discussed with Kevin that I can't see any reason meditation or other forms of 'autonomic manipulation' should exist if they will have no part to play in the future. Why even bother having it if all we need to do is 'fuck, kill and pump out units' a very substantialist view for sure. That makes no sense, it’s the kind of idea that comes from mechanical, static assumptions about reality.
“…Organisms, according to this picture, are organized systems of processes, namely more or less integrated, ‘stabilized’ ones. It is because of this kind of integration, because of the specific (synchronic and diachronic) unity that organisms exhibit, that we might be tempted to see them—mistakenly—as things.
In fact, however, biological identity is thoroughly and irreducibly processual. There is no identity of the organism beyond the one it produces itself by maintaining a controlled exchange of matter and energy with the environment. And there is no organism—no form—beyond this process of producing identity, because exchanging matter and energy with the environment is just the way in which the organism exists at all. Organisms exist processually, and hence persist through time.
Persons are processual from head to toe. I leave it to future endeavours to combine the bioprocessual approach as sketched here with an elaborated non-Cartesian holistic view of the human person so as to complete the ‘most profound metaphysics’ required, as Hume rightly surmised, for a way out of the personal identity dilemma.” Everything Flows (p. 375).
Bio-Individual Podcast - ‘A Dialogue on Self Transcendence‘
I’ve behind on this also. Although i was thinking, there’s so much info in the episodes we’ve done, maybe it’s not a bad thing to stagger releases every now and then.
Kevin brought this one up, why do this work at all? What is self-transcendence? Is it even a thing?
The exceedingly naughty term ‘path’ - is it relevant?
We offer our thoughts on this, and what mean.
As usual, appreciate likes, comments except for the dumb ones, if if it is a dumb one please at least understand the position before calling me a prick. Shares with your friends if you like this kind of material. All we ask! thanks!
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This week I have provided 2 meditations. Both very important for what’s coming up in the next few weeks.