A Likely Myth

A bit of “fun” with this post. Well, I'm free today, so…..

Below the quotation from Plato’s cosmological and mythic dialogue, the Timaeus, is a piece of my own ‘cosmological and mythic’ writing, which I have been repeatedly scribbling over the last two decades, while trying to fit it into the various different creative writing projects with which I have been troubling the world. I first wrote it sometime in college, somewhere in between not paying attention, and (probably ) dealing with a hangover....

“Don’t therefore be surprised, Socrates, if often concerning many matters – the gods and the coming into being of the universe – we show ourselves unable to render accounts that are, in every respect and completely, consistent with themselves and accurate. Rather, you must be satisfied if our accounts are no likely than anybody else’s, remembering that both I, the speaker, and you, the judges, have a human nature. So it is right in these matters you should accept a likely myth and look no further than this”

-from the “TIMAEUS” of Plato

THE HOLY DARK

“There is, there has been, and there will always be the Wakeful Darkness, the holy dark. It is uncaused, and perceives only itself, watchful and warm.

This Wakeful Darkness is the root and source of the Mind of the Universe, of which all minds are instantiations. Through the activities and transformations of the Mind comes this universe, it's turnings in space and time, it’s life.

Within the Wakeful Darkness appear the Ideas, like visions, at once both present and perceived. These Ideas are imitated and projected by the Creative Intellect, an aspect of the Mind, and become the myriad forms of the universe.

But the activities of the Mind are steered according to a fluctuating Will within the Wakeful Darkness. It pulses, now pleasant, now painful- and thus, the character of each great projection gives rise to a universe- now blissful, now painful- in unending wheels of recurrence.

When a painful phase of the Will is ascendant in the darkness, the Mind conceives an aching world.

This is how it proceeds;

The Mind gazes out across the inner abyss of the darkness, and the Will urges the Mind to fill all the space with ideation. The Mind draws images from the Ideas in the darkness, and casts, and establishes them in space.

A certain music arises from this great action which causes further unease to the Will.

To restore its peace, the Will in darkness throws up a barrier, and this barrier is Doubt, and the Mind straddles it.

Thus shaped is this universe, flecked with pain, struggling through the ages, suffering between the stars.

The Holy Dark itself, some have called Nun, some Dhuosnos, some the Absolute, or the Unconscious. It is both the ultimate Subject and the ultimate Object, beyond the duality of subject and object, It is beyond personality and consciousness. It is the true self of Being .”