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The Awakening Icon
This, the 1st sculpture of Victor’s Way, and which is
actually a highly complex icon, can be interpreted (i.e.
clicked open) in 5 ways. 1.
A chick is born/liberated from
the egg. 2.
The new is born/liberated from
the old. 3.
The living is born/liberated
from the dying. 4.
The future is born/liberated
from the past. 5.
A solution emerges (i.e. is liberated) from (the prison of) an unresolved
problem. Note: the infant
is blind (Indeed, all
biological systems are fundamentally blind, that is to say, they operate on
blind auto-pilot (or as an un-initialised Bio-Nav
or Bio-Turing Machine), albeit
capable of learning to see/navigate via hind-sight/memory. The icon
depicts the moment (actually a state of the basic bio-function/program of) of
awakening to (≈ start-up as) a new reality/world, that awakening
(experienced as consciousness, Sanskrit: chit)
resulting from contact with any (random)
datum. Awakening happens if and when sameness, and which is dying, is touched
and changed by difference. It’s ‘difference that makes a difference’ and
gives life. Consequently it is ‘difference’, and any
bit of difference will do, that has a fundamentally ‘spiritual’ function. Impacted/touched
(hence instructed) by a random (or differential) contact/event (i.e. represented by the Finger
sculpture/icon, and in ancient Buddhism called ‘the other shore’, see the
final sculpture/icon, i.e. the Ferryman), the
infant (as new life) emerges into, and so becomes, a new reality. Since its
response to the new reality is as yet undeveloped, i.e.
because first contact is spontaneous and blind, it is totally overwhelmed by
that impact. Because the impact is total (because happening @c in a
relativity vacuum, to wit, as ‘one without an other’, therefore as Brahman) it is experienced as absolutely
real (≈ true, Sanskrit: sat).
Consequently at (initial) contact/awakening observer (i.e.
experiencer) and observed
(i.e. the
experienced) are (experienced as) one. It is contact that gives the infant (as it does a blind man)
sight (indeed, memory operating as hind-sight). Because the initial impact (such as a first love,
car or beer, to wit: a 1st, hence a pure differential) is
experienced as absolutely real ≈ true (i.e.
authentic), it also experienced as absolutely perfect. It’s because the blind
infant (i.e. the new and therefore not yet adapted,
hence relativized life) has not yet developed the capacity to relativize the
contact/strike that it experiences its response (to random contact) as
absolute undifferentiated (meaning total) ‘being/realness’. The infant
responds to liberation into/as that undifferentiated ‘is’ness’
(or ‘being’) with an overwhelming surge/tsunami or rush of energy (elsewhere
interpreted as enlightenment)
and boundless (Sanskrit: ananta) joy (Sanskrit: ananda). It’s the initial response of absolute realness and
perfection, hence of absolutely pure at-one-ness (Sanskrit: kaivalya) prior to time, space and
form (i.e. the parameters of relativity), which
so-called spiritual adepts, actually extreme ‘gymnasts’ of the profane, i.e. of actual reality, seek
(to re-access*). They, like the Zen Masters of
medieval China, want to re-experience with full consciousness (and so be
liberated by) the rush of the breath-taking rapture that results from the
awesome experience of absolutely real (because authentic) and perfect
‘presence’ ≈ ‘is’ness’ (and which the ancient
Indians called sat-chit-ananda, to wit, being-consciousness-bliss). The rotting fist represents yesterday, the decaying past (i.e. as egg-shell or prison), and which is experienced as sameness, relative and imperfect, hence sorrowful (sorrow signalling a decrease in survival capacity**). The infant (to wit: the new, as new view) represents tomorrow’s promise (i.e. as virtual fact, hence real to the brain) of the attainment of absolute realness, of perfection and of joy (joy signalling in increase in survival capacity*). See … The Finger *… The ability to start
over as new (to be, with Oscar Wilde, young again), i.e.
to experience the given, the ordinary or the common as absolutely new and
uncommon (i.e. as wholly different, to wit, to taste a strawberry as though
one had not tasted one before and be blown away by the experience), thus to
experience the undiluted impact (and joy, rapture or bliss) of the new gets
increasingly difficult as one grows older. The basic training of Chinese Zen
served to recover the ability to create authentic and therefore enlightening
(i.e. liberating) experience, meaning to live an
fully authentic and therefore happy life. **See my book ‘How to make and fake happiness’ |
