Place for video essay "adaptation" embed
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Script (new draft):
Laruelle describes "vision-in-One" as the experience of the One that regards itself as sufficient, ie, not needing any additional "philosophical" concept like "Being".
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First draft:
Epigraph: "'As though we reflected back to surfaces the light which emanates from them, the light which, had it passed unopposed, would never have been revealed.'" ---Deleuze, quoting Bergson's Matter and Memory in "Immanence: A Life."
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Over time, power unfolds (i.e., "power" defined merely as ability to affect and be affected, in the same sense as Spinoza’s “affectus”), and in this precise sense, "power" "becomes" itself until passing into something else---until that unfolding or "becoming" meets a greater power, a greater “gravitational” force:
“A life” unfolds (Deleuze, “Immanence: A Life”), individual beings (or whichever term you prefer: "souls," "wills," "drives," "forces," etc.) popping out like “whitecap[s] on the surface of the ocean” (DFW, “Good Old Neon,” Oblivion (Back Bay), p. 152), these "beings" best described as small whirlpools or spirals of accumulated "repetitions" (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition), these beings then unfolding until the spirals of repetitions finally fall back into the greater gravitational power, the absolutely and entirely negating power of death as we understand the concept, that greater force annihilating or obliviating (entirely, to be abundantly clear) the “pure virtuality” of “a life” as it is “incarnated” in a “wound” (“Immanence: A Life,” again). The phrase "accumulated repetitions” refers to Deleuze's “second synthesis of time” (as described in the second chapter of Difference and Repetition, "Repetition for Itself"), also termed as the synthesis of the “pure past;" the "pure past" is also what Deleuze calls "virtuality" ("virtuality" or "the virtual" opposes "actuality" in Deleuze's metaphysics). In the annihilation of "virtuality" at the moment of death, there is a “clearing of space,” as it were---a full opening onto a brighter, whiter light:
On what I'll term as the "first order of Being"---at the moment of singular negation which is death (and also at the moment of birth, the same concept played in reverse)---there is a passage or transition from Deleuze's "virtuality" to what I'll call a "second order of Being," which is “matter,” "matter" which is also energy and light, as in Einstein's E = mc^2. (I'm attempting a similar project, here, to the one Henri Bergson describes in the opening lines to Matter and Memory, Bergson also being an important thinker for Deleuze's philosophy: "This book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter, and tries to determine the relation of the one to the other by the study of a definite example, that of memory."). Then, on that “second order” of Being (which is matter/energy/light), space-time unfolds, expands (as in the "expansion" of the universe described by contemporary physics) from a singularity "point," which "point" is the universe's own “birth” in the Big Bang. Various "curves" or “points” on the fabric of space-time generate their own smaller singularities or "centers" of gravitational force in the expanding space, but the space (and the light passing through it) still otherwise expands, paradoxically resisting the force of "gravity" (this paradoxical expansion akin to Weil’s concept of “grace"), a phenomenon physicists have thus far only been able to explain through the non-entity that is “dark energy”---described by Dr. Matt O'Dowd (PBS Space Time) as an "energy possessed by empty space itself: by the vacuum" [source linked below]---"dark energy” akin, also, to Buddhist “emptiness,” in that it’s only a force which negates what gravitational force already exists (this force constituting the fabric of space-time in general relativity: matter). In Madhyamaka Buddhism, for example, “conventional objects” or “truths” are the “matter” negated by the “ultimate truth” of “emptiness:" "dark energy" (also called the "cosmological constant") and "emptiness" are both only placeholder terms, in this sense [... if I understand the "dark energy" concept correctly: still want to do more research into this area---just testing the idea out here, to be clear!].
Space-time unfolds, becomes itself, increases its power (its ability to affect and be affected beyond the surface of its “event horizon” (i.e., the "event horizon" of a "black hole," a "black hole" merely being the name for a gravitational center so dense it becomes a singularity, a "point of no return" for traveling light); in Deleuze & Guattarian terms, this “event horizon” might be akin to the “skin” of a “body without organs”)... until it reaches the greater gravitational force it was always already spiralling into from the moment of its conception. We may, at the end of the universe, after “heat death,” pass into yet another "sphere" (i.e., beyond the sphere of the “observable universe”) into yet another fundamentally different order of Being, the hypothetical “third order” of Being, which may, like the passage from the first order to the second (from virtuality/memory to matter/energy/light), add a fundamentally different dimension to Being. On the "first order," we exist as 3D beings who "actualize" from repetitions (a.k.a. habits both "conceptual" and "physical"---the imposition of this distinction itself only being a habitual projection of subject-object dualism, a conceptual habit pattern termed by Buddhist scholar Jay Garfield as "primal ignorance"---habits which sustain the pure virtuality of "a life")... these repetitions or "habits" sustained only by opposition to the difference which the "fourth" dimension imposes, this fourth dimension being time's unfolding as manifested in "mechanical necessity." Then, on the "second order," we move from 3D space to exist as light itself---along with gravity (and the additional "cosmological constant" of "dark energy"), the only other "constant" in the universe as described by general relativity---as it exists in its full "actualization" as the 4D fabric of space-time itself. On the hypothetical "third order" of Being, then, there may exist a “space-time-[?],” a 5-dimensional order of Being (as alluded to earlier) which, when existing on the "second order" as four-dimensional "light," may present itself as yet another opposition (exactly akin to the opposition between repetition and time's unfolding on the "first order"): and this "higher order" opposition may very well be explained by the presence of the "cosmological constant" in the form of "dark energy," a "constant" which needed to be added to the equations for general relativity in order to explain the shape and expansion of the universe as measured by physicists... all of this then continuing in an endless series of unfoldings, lives/universes coming to be and dying and passing into ever-increasing spheres of Being, as in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Circles:”
“The eye in the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end… St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose center was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere” (Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Barnes and Noble), p. 202).
Emerson's description is uncannily similar to the material universe as described by general relativity; every "point" on the fabric of space-time is its own "center," also in the same sense as Weil describes in another essay, "Implicit Forms of the Love of God:" "... to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul" (Waiting for God (HarperPerennial), p. 100). What Deleuze describes as the "wound" incarnated in "a life" is what Weil describes as the "free choice at the center of each soul:" it is the opposition, fundamental to life as we know it, of the "accumulated repetitions" of memory (which generate "virtuality") against the encounter with difference which time's unfolding always presents, "time's unfolding" always actualizing itself on the "second order" of Being, "matter:" again, this unfolding is what Weil describes as the "rule of mechanical necessity," or, in other words, the force of "gravity" as described by general relativity ("gravity" is the only "force" in the universe as described by general relativity, hence its equivalence with "mechanical necessity").
So, here’s my Life Praxis (that is, if there is any “Praxis” beyond Mystery: “Mystery” in the sense of Noam Chomsky's “problems and mysteries” analysis of “free will”): Living in the mortal, material bodies which we do, we carry the weight of our own birthing into "a life" as an accumulation (or even sedimentation) of repetitions, habits, memories (again, in a quite literal sense, as described above). These repetitions create a "gravitational" force of expectation or prediction, expectations or predictions which then allow for Deleuze's "third synthesis of time," the synthesis of the future, essentially a projection of a repetition stored in the "virtuality" of the "pure past" (again, this is memory) onto what we imagine as a potential "future;" we must do this, ultimately, to avoid dying for as long as possible by eating, sleeping, etc.: if all of these habits (borne of looping patterns of prediction or planning and fulfillment of those predictions) which constitute "a life" disappeared, one would be, in a quite literal sense, nothing but matter: matter in its absolute subjection to the literal, physical force of "gravity." What I like to call the "Great Fear"---fear of the absolute negation of "virtuality" or memory which "death" represents---is “gravity” on the "first order," i.e., Weil’s notion of “gravity:”
“Gravity. Generally what we expect of others depends on the effect of gravity upon ourselves, what we receive from them depends on the effect of gravity upon them. Sometimes (by chance) the two coincide, often they do not” (Gravity and Grace (Routledge), p. 1).
“Gravity” closes you to Being. Expectation, in a quite literal sense, is a weight which one carries: the unbearable heaviness of expectation, even of “hope,” that thing supposedly as light as a feather. As much as I love Dickinson, I prefer Aragorn here: "Then, we must do without hope. There is always vengeance!" (John Hurt as Aragorn in Ralph Bakshi's adaptation of Lord of the Rings). One must avenge one's own birth/death, "redeem" it or "counter-effectuate" it (the latter being Deleuze's preferred term):
Through “waiting,” an act in "sitting with time" (as in Weil's concept of "waiting:" "waiting for God")... through awareness (in the Buddhist meditational sense, especially as in “samadhi” or “single-pointed” concentration: bringing one's concentration to a very sharp “point,” a “point” more like a surface, the surface of a lake or ocean…)… most essentially, through listening (as in Pauline Oliveros’ concept of “deep listening,” or John Cage’s understanding of “silence”): the singular One of “a life” may open (may love), paradoxically, through closing (through fear): may become light in its inevitable spiralling toward the dark center of "gravity" or repetition or habit, the "point of no return," death (or, in the case of the "death-in-life" of the Freudian "death drive," one spirals into a vampiric existence of slavery to repetitions, this "enslavement" being the transition from habit to addiction): increase its (your) power and become “grace," become light itself, "light" only another name for "becoming." Wait, and listen.
Love the Great Fear---the "Great Fear" being, again, merely my own label (subject to change) for the "gravity" we all must carry, living in the mortal, material bodies which we do (I'm not planning on dying or facing "nirvana without remainder," as early schools of Buddhism may have termed it, anytime soon ("remainder" referring to whatever life is left to live in your current material body after achieving full integration of the doctrine of "no-self" into one's doings, or in other words, after achieving "nirvana")---rather, I'm planning on "increasing my powers" for as long as I can: is there anything else?)... Love the Great Fear (I'm speaking as much to myself as to you, here), and ride it like a wave, as in Morrison's description of a climactic "leap" into air itself from the final lines of Song of Solomon:
"'You want my life?' Milkman was not shouting now. 'You need it? Here.' Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees---he leaped. As fleet and bright as a lodestar he wheeled toward Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it" (Song of Solomon (Vintage), p. 337).
Face the light and ride it: ride the burning light of things as they are, always different as encountered. Sit with time, and witness the light of what's now “too big for you" (Deleuze on facing the “event” in Difference and Repetition): let the event of your own negation---in other words, the change (and change is always happening: as Matt Lynch aptly put it in his review of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, "This life is all lives. We are all already something else.")---pass through as you narrow to a very small “point,” “your life’s quote unquote point, its as it were sharp point or tip, and that canned cliches such as fear seized me or this is something that only happens to other people or even moment of truth now take on a horrendous neural resonance and vitality when —" (DFW, “B.I. #20 12-96,” Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, p. 299).
Next chapter.