+) ~ o ~ +)
The Messengers‘ Mirrors?
Water is absolutely crucial to our birth, lives and health — but it has a sort of ‘opposite’ — or strange sibling. Although this opposite must also exist (at least as a possibility) for us to exist — this substance must not be included within us or we become very physically ill. Contact with it damages organismal structure in ways we do not completely understand . Unlike water, it is opaque by virtue of reflection. Like water, it ‘warps’ reflections by its shape and when disturbed. But unlike water, its surface gravity causes it to deform in a regular way when splashed. Whereas water forms irregular curved isolates and branchings which may later retract toward their parents, this other substance forms flattened spheres under the forces exerted by Earth’s gravity.
Clear water in a pond can produce (at least) three visual planes: the bottom, the surface, and the reflections upon the surface.
Water is like spaceTime.
Mercury is, as they say, another story altogether… Does it roll, or flow? Why would philosophers, architects and kings associate mercury with eternal physical life, or the capacity to transform any metal?
Surely there is some basis to these beliefs, which actually killed China's unifying emperor — a man who had survived innumerable assassination attempts. Ironically, it was his trusted scientists and doctors who killed him by administering a potion concocted to extend his youth.
Could something similar happen at a planetary scale?
[-=~ o ~ =-[]
As with water, Mercury is also a physical subposition within timeSpace of a (specific, peculiar) metaposition to timeSpace — but we might imagine that it comprises a closer subposition (to the superposition it shares with water) within one domain. In other words (from one admittedly speculative perspective which I will offer some evidence for) it is more like their mutual source.
The substance is an opaque, reflective, liquid metal so dense that an iron cannonball will float in it. It remains liquid at room temperatures, and only solidifies at -320 F (-).
It is legendarily and metaphorically associated with ‘the messenger of the gods’, and has one of the strangest histories of any substance known to man. Many have associated it variously with the capacity to transform other metals (note this), and with the fountain of youth — is this not a strange and compelling combination?
It is also a mirror, but unlike water, it is always opaque by virtue of its metallic reflectivity. It cannot be ‘opened’ or rendered transparent — but it can be spun — in order to make certain kinds of mirrors… The most obvious and peculiar observable quality of mercury is immediately apparent: while water may comprise a mirror under certain conditions, mercury always comprises one — and in small quantity this mirror wants to be round. Its capacity to flow and reflect associate it clearly with communication and speed. It is always emitting light through reflection and it rolls/flows very rapidly downward in any available direction.
Yet there are a few other correlations with ‘celestial messengers’: mercury is reminiscent of the moon, and mercury poisoning dramatically affects the CNS, and actually unbuilds and kills developing neurons. Exposure damages crucial structural elements of our bodies and nervous systems, and can cause tachycardia, high blood pressure, hypersalivation, and tremors or shivering. In case it isn’t overwhelmingly clear, anyone and anything that would distribute this substance into the food chain is an assassin, no matter what it is advertising. But it’s a special kind of assassin; the kind that attacks the very basis of human intelligence, thereby setting you up for all sorts of further attacks and vastly more devastating catastrophes because anything that damages our intelligence damages our ability to detect and respond to it. Of course, mercury isn’t the assassin — the emitters are.
The CNS is one of your body’s most crucial and central communications assets.
Water, is like bodies and leads to minds.
Mercury is like how bodies communicate (mirroring and instant inter-reflection).
I suspect the alchemists thought mercury to be a superposition of water, and were seeking the next superposition above that, which, while it may have something to do with gold, invaluable for other reasons.
Yet both water and mercury have something to do with mirrors, reflections, and [the mystery at hand]. What is it?
-+ . ~ o ~ . +(
“There is actually a very familiar object that looks just like the mouth of an Einstein-Rosen bridge: a glass Christmas ornament. Such a spherical mirror reflects, in principle, the entire universe around it. The farther an object is from the mirror’s surface, the closer its image seems to lie to the mirror’s center. Of course, if you were looking at the mouth of a hyperspace tunnel to another universe, you would not see the mirror image of our universe, you would see what looks like the mirror image of another universe.”
—Rudolf von Bitter Rucker, The Fourth Dimension, 1984, pp. 118-110.
To get to the next tier of this weird ladder, we must make a radical leap which goes far beyond mere representation, into the domain of relation. We move now from physical instances of metapositions to relational instancings.
The relational reflection of ‘attaining a superposition in relation to timeSpace’ might be visualized as a quasi-spherical ‘warping mirror’. Such a thing strains the imaginations of prodigies and the insane — but we may model it as a local instance of (multiple possible) transtemporal metaposition(s) of one or more universes. Unexpectedly, if one succeeds in discovering such a ... participant... I suggest we would discover that it expresses the personality trait we would generally define as playfulness; it’s [usually] friendly.
Such a participant could be understood as a metareflective superposition of what we call “mind”, but would include your own mind as a subprocess.
Allow me to conjecture about some of its capacities: it can take on shapes under the influence of various forces and their interplay. It sometimes behaves like a very weird superposition of metals (in general) and water — and may or may not pay attention to gravity and other timeSpace forces in any of myriad methods. It can use these in amazing ways that are otherwise impossible from our ordinary perspectives — all of them catalyzed by relational goals such as learning, play and communication.
One thing that does appear to be relatively reliable is that each person or being is a unique instance of this… relationship. Or perhaps, is actually a unique physical instance of it. In either case, to explore it directly results in self-reference, such that the relationship is intimately involved in more than a single way in the foundation of the self and of organisms in general and human beings in particular.
Ordinarily its communications are largely (consciously) indetectable, but they may comprise ‘summing games’ involving changing shapes and transports of likeness between them (a kind of cognitive arithmetic that requires extra dimensions such as meaning, purpose, or understanding). During our constant relation with this (transport) it emits something we experience as relational momentum. In the earliest phases of childhood, I suggest, we experience this as momentum directly as the source of learning.
Later, we will be trained to channel the flow components of this relationship in order to create more formal (representational) resources which are really more for our cultures than our own development, and as soon as this begins, the transport we previously knew begins to fade — because its momentum has been stolen and redeployed (as is possible with various “freely accessible’ forces such as flowing water, flowing air, &c.). This is the beginning of the ongoing process of total compromise which our waking imagination will become subject to as we mature.
But the relationship remains active, even when compromised or obscured, and at night, when we dream, it is vibrantly activated. The participant I speak of, this [variable identity token] — exceeds all possible linguistic classes; but could be playfully understood as a superposition of mind, which is certainly a superposition of language. If you create a new language class, the participant has already superceded it. You can play around and point toward it in language, but, the moment your recipient activates their languaging resources? Pow, they cannot detect this thing any more. At least, not without some rather unusual training…
Let’s just say that you cannot usually introduce someone to this by pointing it out to them…
…but, if you happen to have “a bit of spin” you might have a shot at
transferring some of that momentum “across the interface”.
Conscious or semi-conscious contact with the linking-element (that which connects us to what we are extensions of) may cause confusion in the CNS (which must adjust to having new modes (metapositions) of previous inputs). In some situations this may produce unexpected symptoms such as shivering, vertigo, sounds that are physically sensed, shaking, vibrations within the body, and other phenomenon. So can some forms of psychoemotional disturbance or hyperextension such as mania. Perhaps this is because these situations both involve the linking-element.
In the event that these symptoms appear to be the result of contact, they are not necessarily evidence of toxicity, and may be the result of the CNS adjusting to the local introduction of changing streams of temporality and the sudden effulgence of relational novelty. Similar experiences may happen in the transitions from waking to sleeping and from sleeping to waking as well as the experience of the onset and resolution of dreamstates. They can also occur during intense emotional experiences such as falling in love, accidents, and contact with other life forms.
|