The Birds of the Air by Alice Thomas Ellis

Sebastian had devoted his life and his career to the proposition that words should be used with tremendous care, that no statement should be made that wasn't capable of precise utterance, and that anyone who couldn't say exactly what he meant should keep his trap shut. In the heady days earlier in the century when this novel idea first began to gather adherents, it was held by them that a massive, invincible engine was being constructed that would overturn all false, all mistaken structures of human thought - such as religious belief - and clear the ground for true human progress. But as time passed it began to seem that this tool resembled not so much a mighty bulldozer as that useful but scarcely earth-shaking, and indeed slightly anachronistic, implement - the thing for taking stones out of horses' hooves. Sebastian didn't care. His philosophy perfectly fitted his personality, and he had nearly finished his latest book - would have finished it, if it hadn't been for Christmas.

(from The Birds of the Air by Alice Thomas Ellis)
I shall have more to say about this novel, with, I hope, a degree of modest clarity. This writer does things with words.

Conversation Game

So it was a dream and it may be just another story that we tell at the breakfast table. This one was vivid and detailed. I was at a dinner party, enjoying raucous fun and talking about inventing a conversation game. It had just been decided that a ‘stoat’ defeated a ‘boast’, the latter being an exaggerated claim and the former a nip that exsanguinated. It seemed such good sport and the puzzle of how to decide a winner my waking excogitations must leave so.

Think of a hat with slips in that are drawn with several questions and topics that are gauged to the present company. We might ask:

Is a S.J.W. and a Contrarian cross sterile or an obliging mule?

How many roads must a man go down?
(a) till he buys a map
(b) Till he asks a local
(c) Till he decides that he should never have left home

Central heating has killed the art of conversation?

Cliches are cold porridge, unsalted.

The sentence before ‘We never talk anymore’.

Is talking in sentences a thing, really, actually?

And so forth:

Is X living a hand to nose existence?
For the gossips.

Thomas Carlyle on the Trump of Doom

For my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate a word of disparagement against such characters as Hampden, Elliot, Pym; whom I believe to have been right worthy and useful men. I have read diligently what books and documents about them I could come at;—with the honestest wish to admire, to love and worship them like Heroes; but I am sorry to say, if the real truth must be told, with very indifferent success! At bottom, I found that it would not do. They are very noble men, these; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphemisms, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys, Monarchies of Man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the heart remains cold before them; the fancy alone endeavors to get up some worship of them. What man's heart does, in reality, break forth into any fire of brotherly love for these men? They are become dreadfully dull men! One breaks down often enough in the constitutional eloquence of the admirable Pym, with his "seventhly and lastly." You find that it may be the admirablest thing in the world, but that it is heavy,—heavy as lead, barren as brick-clay; that, in a word, for you there is little or nothing now surviving there! One leaves all these Nobilities standing in their niches of honor: the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man of them all in whom one still finds human stuff. The great savage Baresark: he could write no euphemistic Monarchy of Man; did not speak, did not work with glib regularity; had no straight story to tell for himself anywhere. But he stood bare, not cased in euphemistic coat-of-mail; he grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things! That, after all, is the sort of man for one. I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work but with gloves on!

(from On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle)

In the end we may pray for boredom and a technocrat to save us. Donald John Trump is doing exactly what he said on the tin and the New Yorker magazine’s pearly words are clutched but availeth not.

As for the Wall I take counsel from Ezekial 13:12

Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you, Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?

Nevertheless be ye earnest:

Plausibility has ended; empty Routine has ended; much has ended. This, as with a Trump of Doom, has been proclaimed to all men. They are the wisest who will learn it soonest. Long confused generations before it be learned; peace impossible till it be! The earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a world of inconsistencies, can await patiently, patiently strive to do his work, in the midst of that.

(op.cit)

Richard King on Asparsa Yoga in Gaudapada's Karikas (Early Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism)

Writing on Asparsa Yoga: the Gaudapadian Phenomenology of Perception:

Perception is base upon the possibility of contact (sparsa) between a perceiver and a perceived object. An attack upon this notion then is fundamental to an attack upon all “realist” theories of perception. The Nyaya Sutra, for instance, defines perception (pratyaksa) as “the determinate, unnamed, and unerring knowledge which arises from the contact of a sense organ with its object.” This is an inherently dualistic understanding of experience and as such is clearly unacceptable to the non-dualistic authors of the Gaudapadiya Karikas. An attack upon the notion of “contact” is fundamental to a thorough-going non-dual theory of perception. In fact, it is the GK’s position that:

“Consciousness does not make contact with an object, not even with the appearance of an object. In fact, the object is unreal, and the appearance of the object is non different. (GK IV.26)

(pg.154 Early Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism by Richard King)

There is a dense tangle of non-dual epistemology here. What we are immediately aware of is the mental modification (vritti) ‘caused’ by the object. In that sense we are not in contact with the object. But we are also aware of the object as it is because the same reality is fundamental to the vritti and the object. The object is a form of limitation of Consciousness (an upadhi) and it is this which allows it to be superimposed on the consciousness of the perceiver. The ‘unreality’ of the object, for Gaudapada, is due to the fact that it can be sublated. It is not changeless. Objects in the dream world on waking and illusory objects in the waking state are sublated because they are ultimately only true or real as consciousness. In fact the fundamental reality is Pure Consciousness, a boundless (anantam) unity of being in which there is no separation and therefore no contact (sparsha).

It is non-duality which makes perception possible, what Vedanta Paribhasa calls perceptuality. Non-duality makes duality and veridical perception possible to put it aporetically. In disagreeing with King on this point I believe that I am tracing Gaudapada’s core insight which was explicated by Sankara particularly in the preamble to his commentary on the Brahma Sutras.

The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

Just to remind you that you have that more than slightly foxed copy of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. The usual Norman as ‘this reporter’ did not write it, he was hiding behind the arras listening to the flat locutions of ‘Western voices’. And he heard them. Those that know say he got them down pat and it must have been hard for him. How could he have stopped letting Mailer be Mailer? “She really cared about being dainty”. Yes of course, but messes occurred. “She felt like a lady of leisure”. Mailer gutted the language back to kernel sentences. How can cliché have such weight? Because it is a tired bandage.

Read it, hope for a stay of execution.

Sri SSS on Gaudapada

A great teacher whose name I forget said that in the great city of Mumbai (Bombay) there were 6 seekers who understood Advaita. As I am no longer living there itself there must be 5 now. Seriously, the difference between the Buddhist doctrine of Sunya and the Ajativada propounded by Gaudapada is that each successive level of realisation is absorbed or sublated by a greater reality using the adhyaropa /apavada dialectic. The Buddhist sunya is accomplished in one rapture. This is my present understanding which may be altered by my next meeting with the panc rishi. Here is a summary of the procedure given by Sri SSS in The Essence of Gaudapada

Even so, for the sake or benefit of those seekers who are endowed with limited or low-grade intelligence (discriminative faculty) and are having predominantly an extroverted view, point, the Sruti, adopting tile ancient time-tested traditional methodology of 'Adhyaropa Apavada Nyaya' (axiom of Superimposition and Rescission), deliberately superimposes on It certain Dharmas (special features or attributes) which do not really exist in It and relatively rescinds certain other Dharmas, showing that they do not exist in It. Those preceptors who are well-versed in this traditional methodology of teaching are utilizing as an aid to this teaching the empirical logical arguments (Loukika Tarka) in consonance with that methodology.

With this very purport in mind the knowers of the Sampradaya (traditional methodology of spiritual instruction) have stated : -(GIta Bhashya, 13-12), meaning -"By virtue of the axiom of Adhyaropa-Apavada (Superimposition and Rescission) tre Tattwa (Reality) which is Nishprapaiicha (devoid of any world of duality) is taught in full detail." (Doubt) : Even if it is so, does not the defect of having uttered a lie entail them ? Even though the phenomenon of birth does not really exist, they have taught that it exists, is it not so ? (Solution) : Not so. For, they have not at all instructed, preached so in the Paramarthika . (Absolute) sense. Although the Shishyas (disciples) have believed firmly that the Dvaitavastu really exists, in the Absolute sense, none of tIle Dvaita-Vikalpas (misconceptions of duality) of the type -'Sastra', 'Sllishya', 'Guru' etc. does exist whatsoever in reality ; this alone is the ParamaItha Siddhanta (the Absolute philosophical or spiritual teaching of Advaita Vedanta

(page 531)

A Proleptic Reading of Sri Swami Satchidanandendra Saraswati's The Essential Gaudapada

It took me a week to learn to spell his name so I’m going to refer to him as Sri SSS from now on. Reading his Method of Vedanta and the chapter on Pre-Sankara advaita there is but glancing reference to Gaudapada. Those of you who have read M.V. will be aware that he published it at the age of 84 and considering the amount of scholarship in it, 975 pages of 8 point, where are my glasses, type, you will know that it might well take even a dedicated life that long to master the material therein. I therefore surmised that he had written a separate book on Gaudapada’s Karikas. There it is for free download on his ashram’s site.
english books
under the title The Essential Gaudapada

Before I read in it my prediction would be that he might well say something like this. ( a single quotation mark meaning a non-quote speculative attribution, ye Americans) ‘The apparent difference between Sankara and Gaudapada is that Gaudapada starts at the perfectly realised apprehension of reality and stays there while Sankara works his way through the dialectical stages of successive insight using adhyaropa/apavada’. Or words to that effect. I’m not going to read it all, it’s 277 pages long, so highlights but more than ‘just flashing’ on it. How, though, can The Essential Gaudapada be longer than the Karikas themselves?