Dr. Bogus Jorge: The Physiognomy of Dream

Presentation and Introduction by Arnold Nusp

Transcript follows:

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the Morpheus Suite Lectures and to present to you our first guest lecturer Dr. Bogus Jorge. Dr Jorge is the author of The Physiognomy of Dream, he is a two-time recipient of the Visionary Mayhem Award in Epistemological Ontology. He is currently teaching Metahistory and Metaphysical Philosophy at the Grand Academy of Lagado in Balnibarbi.

The Morpheus Suite Lectures were founded in 2001 by the Mens Obscura Morning club of Montreal. Their objective was to make cutting-edge philosophical discourse available and digestible to us average folk. I will try therefore in the few moments allotted me to bring you up to speed in all matters concerning metahistory and metacosmogony.

The first obvious observation is the seeming redundancy of the prefix meta. The attachment of the prefix meta to disciplines such as history and theology signifies a very crucial moment in the evolution of human awareness. Metalanguages evolved simply to be able to refer to themselves. More accurately, metalanguages evolved as soon as we emerged outside of a level of language awareness and tried to express our higher vantage point. Obviously the language we emerged out of could not supply us with the coordinates of our new position.

Let's consider the Allegory of the Cave, that base model of experience given us by Plato in book VI and VII of the Republic. When the freed figure ventures up the stairs and discovers there, midway, a fire and assemblage for the projection of articles to cast their shadows upon the wall of the cave, he will henceforth require the prefix meta to distinguish between the shadows as they appear on the wall and their matrix, a stencil mask placed before the flame. Meta signifies a higher level of awareness.

Photography is still our best metaphor for experience and will serve well here to illustrate traveling through levels of awareness. A student presents a photograph of a man holding a photograph and the class begins to discuss the image. The discussion continues for several minutes before someone makes an aside comment about the coffee ring on the border at the bottom left hand corner of the print. The author of the image requests that the commenter elaborate on his remarks about the coffee ring and a conversation ensues about where the image stops, and the world starts. Many students are of the opinion that the white border around the photograph is within the realm of influence of the image much like the theatre that surrounds a play and therefore it must not contain any element that might distract our attention. The author points to a large splash of paint on the wall beside the print and asks if we have been distracted also by this visual element. The question we are being asked seeks to locate and define the membrane that contains this microcosm, how far we perceive the power and influence of this frame extending. But then a very surprising thing happens. A student examining the photograph very closely suddenly cries out that the photograph within the photograph, the one the man in the picture is holding, also has a coffee ring on the bottom left hand corner of the white border.

That is the spark that lights the fire of illumination. We are no longer confined by the photograph, we are no longer sitting before the shadows of Plato's cave, we have jumped a level, and now we are outside our bodies one degree, watching ourselves looking at a picture. If, after class we were to discover that all of the framed portraits of university faculty in the building and all the posters and notices tacked to bulletin boards or taped to door windows had coffee rings in the bottom left hand corner we would continue to perceive the field of influence of this work extending to larger and larger circles as it swallows more and more of the world we live and breath in. If, we extend this swallowing to its final resting place we will ascend out of the cave and fall to our feet blinded by the brilliant light of the sun or, to use a more recent version of this fable, awaken as Neo in the Matrix pulling tubes from our brain.

But meta awareness is not only the stuff of dry intellectual dissertation , it is a necessary rudimentary part of functioning and communicating in our complex, multifaceted world of perpetually mobile frames, intersections and points of reference. If while playing toy soldiers with my son I suddenly shriek out "AHHHH a large hand has grabbed my soldier". My son only shrugs his shoulders and says "come on dad don't fool around", knowing that the dimensional leap was a condition of mind, in this case an undisciplined mind.

By screaming "AHHHHH a large hand has grabbed my soldier", I have simply drawn attention to what was being ignored for the purpose of sustaining an illusion. Robert Frank did exactly the same thing in photography in 1958. He played the role of the child in the fable of the emperor's golden gown. After 120 years of pretending that photography was devoid of convention, that nature transcribed herself directly or was caught upon the tacky surface of the emulsion, Frank disobeyed the unspoken conspiracy that maintained this illusion. Suddenly there was the irrefutable truth that representations of reality had always been constructions. If it were true that nature transcribed herself directly, without artifice or convention, without a predetermined human visual language, then how was it possible that there had never been bare light bulbs, the backs of heads, unfocused masses of light, crooked walls or leaning buildings in photographs before? Robert Frank had clearly exposed the aesthetic components of photo realism and in doing so perhaps even pointed to those perceptual conventions that organize our awareness of the world.

The history of the world begins with speculations about cosmic eruptions and primary chemical and organic building blocks, proceeds through the formation of civilisations and leads to modern day. At this level of awareness the word history represents a "series of real life events". The first chronicle documenting "the series of real life events" was also given the name "history" perhaps it was called The History of the World. Today there are countless numbers of these histories of the world. Each history is a representation of "the series of real life events" that explain our arrival at this point in time. The word "history" is also used to represent the chronicles that historians write, and the section of the library where they can be found. If I wanted to study these "histories" in order to study the context in which they were written, to compare them, to catalogue their styles , techniques or research methods, I would be compiling a history of histories. If I were asked my field of study I would answer, "History" and be perfectly right in saying so, in fact my answer would be more accurate than that of a historian who answers the same way. For now with our new higher level of awareness we can see that the historian does not study "history", he studies "a series of real life events". In order to avoid misunderstanding we must call the student of the history of history a metahistorian.

Ok, let us continue up the stairs of Plato's cave. Having freed us from our harnesses, Plato allows us to see the elevated roadway and the fire. He has carefully ushered us to the fire and shown us the low wall and the men who carry the articles done in stone and wood used to cast the shadows on the cave wall. We did not choose to follow Plato further along the elevated roadway, but remained instead at the low wall.

This is precisely where Descartes begins his work on crafting lenses and casting shadows. Using Plato's premise that vision is analogous to the acquisition of knowledge he forges on to prove scientifically that seeing is simultaneous to understanding, or even perhaps, that seeing is the result of understanding.

For Descartes the mind was an indivisible entity gazing out at a world of infinitely divisible bodies. The human mind causes motions in the bodies by moving a small part of the brain. Motions in that same part of the brain produce sensations and emotions. The crucial point becomes distinguishing the nature of these mental entities from the physical bodies. Descartes argued that bodies differ from how they appear through senses. Colours, sounds, smell are merely sensations existing in thought, and there is nothing in bodies that resembles them, just as fire does not contain pain.

Working from Plato's premise that vision is analogous to the acquisition of knowledge, Emmanual Swedenborg posits another model in which the human mind plays only a passive role. Swedenborg's view was that man is contained in and surrounded by an infinity which light, the divine messenger touches and carries to the human mind. Matter then, is the membrane that separates the divine kingdom from the earthly garden, such that we perceive truth's topography when it pushes its face up against the firmament. Precisely as Johanne Lavater, the father of Physiognomy envisioned the human face as the material manifestation of the spirit.

Today these models of experience are considered to be outdated, since they presuppose a finite state of the infinite exists outside the mind. If this were true, our perception of matter would remain unchanged forever since its moulding principals are immutable. Love or hate could never change a face. We would be able to perceive beauty in what we hate and ugliness in what we love.

In fact, neither the human mind nor the universe is finite. What is finite is any momentary connection between the two. Isn't this really what Plato meant? After all the Allegory of the cave is a metaphor for the human mind, not for the world. The world is depicted in every stage as a level of understanding.

But these 18th century theories represent the farthest point that rational science could conceivably venture into the realm of mind. Since modern science admits it is not equipped to prove subjective reality, it cannot substantiate the existence of pain, bliss or insatiable rage. It cannot study experience, and it cannot refute nor postulate the existence of the human mind.

A new science was needed to delve into the mysteries of mind, to map irrefutably and unambiguously the nature of human experience, a science that would most likely be unable to make even the most rudimentary postulations concerning the phenomenal world. That science is Metacosmogony the study of inner space.

In Metacosmogony the material word is represented as flickery projections of a deeply rooted foundation program used by the mind to organize and store experience. We refer to this core program as history. The structure the program provides is by no means indelible, nor resilient to the fancy of polymorphically perverse whiptail dendrites that courier the minds fire form cell to cell. This is how history can be transformed or even discarded by so much as a badly digested bit of beef, a small bottle, a mushroom or a jack-plug to a portal in the back of the head.

Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Dr. Bogus Jorge.

Dr. Arnold Nuss is director of circular research in Ontology
at the Politecnico di Turino in Piedmont

(Dr. Bogus Jorge)

Thank you, thank you very much.

You know when I was in grade school I learned that the whole theory of the material world was based upon the speculation that there might be particles like planets with orbiting satellites. I remember picturing a bunch of scientists on wooden ladders with magnifying glasses examining a movie screen meticulously and with the patience and methodology that René Descartes had taught them. On the screen John Wayne is shooting holes into long haired screaming men who fall off their horses like Raggedy Ann dolls. Periodically, a scientist cries out in excitement as he comes closer and closer to identifying the most reduced component of the illusion. Finally a scientist so exhilarated that he falls from his ladder exclaims in a joyous triumph that the universe is composed of glass beads.

I thought even as a youngster that what I was taught at school had to be consistent or it wasn't worth much, and this lesson was simply an elaboration of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Imagine my surprise when the teacher didn't congratulate me on my astute perception.

The next step in my evolution was to read Franz Kafka. Kafka is a superior guide for those interested in understanding the nature of the world and our relationship to it. His teachings are worth a hundred of those who cut and sew animals in laboratories and measure and weigh the surfaces of the world. Franz Kafka taught me a very important lesson. He taught me that Gregor Samsa did not from uneasy dreams awake to discover himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect, but rather he showed me that I had awakened from uneasy dreams to discover myself transformed into a giant insect seer.

Later Joseph Campbell helped me understand that the myth of ascension is a metaphor for human spiritual movement or growth. When I look outwards I see my inner struggles projected on forms. I see my own inner constitution. That the world is what we see, and what we see is the world. This is what makes photography magical. The full impetus of documentary photography is that very magical ability to sit comfortably before the large screen retinal projection of another human being and understand the path and quest of each of us.

Here then is the most important factor on your quest to seeing the world as it really is. You cannot perceive what you do not understand and you cannot understand the world.

Remember those scientists up on the ladder in the movie theatre? Was it ever possible that their labours lead them to nothing? Could it ever have occurred that they find nothing at the end of their quest? When scientists invented the electronic microscope and used it to look at micro particles did they actually expect that it was possible that they see nothing through it? They had to see something; they could not perceive "nothingness". What they saw was their primitive understanding.

Perception is the arrangement of a sensory material into patterns of understanding. Today we cut into a human body and see a rather complex if not baroque assemblage of archaic networks of tissue and bone and we build societies accordingly with heavy cables and wires that get tangled and knotted. In a thousand years we will open a human body and see only light. Our cities will transmit energy with no vessel or network of paths. If our perception of the body remained the same, independent of our understanding of what we are looking at, (a tangle of knots and squishy liquids) then God would be an imbecile, or some kind of primitive low tech engineer. We are the primitive, low tech engineer, the tangle of knots is the best we can do when looking into Gods active light and the miracle of life.

You know the thing about history is that it's backwards. We are at the end of the story it's the beginning history seeks to write. Historians have served us our History in sedimentary layers, Cainozoic, Mesozoic, Palaeozoic, Pleistocene, Palaeolithic and Neolithic. These smoky veils that curtain time are dense and dusty, The historian who ventures into their shaded folds can at first only faintly discern the dull and smothered cries of those voices buried beneath. As he descends deeper through the cloudy ash, he will eventually be able to touch their thoughts. What separates the historian from history is slumber. It is easier to see the dream when you begin with history and then move slightly forward into the present or into tomorrow's history. The historian has the advantage of knowing that he is searching. We do not attend the voices calling out to us from above the slumbery veils.

From our side of the dusty membranes of time we only know that after many long silent eons humans began dropping out of the sky. Today the planet is covered with them. We also know that the first few humans that dropped out of the sky appear to us to be retarded. We are like the programming of an arcade game watching a kid come through for the first time. He appears to us to be slow and stupid, but with each consecutive play he develops, ascends levels and eventually becomes a wizard.

Metacosmogony is interested in determining where we were before we dropped into the game .

Metacosmogony is a new branch of metaphysics that was thrust upon us by the discovery of the Mesopotamian manuscripts known collectively as Nanr in 1990. After Nanr the humanly perceivable world was understood to be a completely independent subset of the natural universe.

Nanr says we are like characters in a book. Before we were characters we existed as an integral part of the psychic stream of our author. Let me read you the seventh preface to Genesis, the first book of Nanr

The world of course is the place we know, and not the place we don't know. So the world is what's out the window. You can't look there for clues about links to another world. History is of this world, so it studies the legitimate claims and pedigree of its inventory, which is also of this world. For example one fine morning there is a two hundred thousand pound rock sculpture outside your window. When you get close to it you see it comes with a gallery label that clearly identifies its title, medium and date. So the ticket says it's been there for five thousand years. Don't even think of refuting the authenticity of the ticket; they'll just do that Carbon 14 thing they do, which they invented to resolve disputes just like this one.

No really, without getting paranoid just think everything living and dead in this world comes with an etymology that explains how and when it got there. The thing is not to dispute it; the thing is to walk around it. Things are coming and going all the time, people, events objects, all dropping out of the sky or suddenly appearing as if they were always there. Since it is only possible for two dimensional minds such as ours to perceive linear chronology, you can guess for whom this little sweet sauce was concocted.

So things suddenly entering into this arcade game appear with papers. Retroactively historical they are immediately integrated in the story even if they appeared in the final chapter. They come with roots that plant them back at the initial plot development. Facts are rendered real by footnotes. Everything has a footnote that explains how things fit in the greater puzzle. The fact and the footnote though, are written with the same ink on the same page at the same time. So you cant know that Stonehenge has been standing unmoved since the early bronze age, you can only know that implicit with the sensual appreciation of this dusty porous monument of mystical power is seeing it buried by the smoky clouds of sedimentary levels of perceived temporal distance. Don't forget the point of what I am saying to you this morning is that we are in the mirror. Things around us can do what they bloody well feel like. Or more accurately, much more accurately, things around us can do what we bloody well want them to, but we lost that knowledge.

Nearly a thousand years before the invasion of the Akkadians the Sumerians had already written the manuscripts that describe perfectly clearly the art and science of awakening. The scrolls known as Nanr were written by dream scribes and placed on this side of the firmament as a sort of emergency escape hatch, in case a traveller ever lost the ability to awaken. The manuscript was cleverly inserted in the deepest cloudiest echelon of sedimentary past, precisely where a lost Sumerian, learned in the ways of the mind would search for it, and yet hidden irretrievably from any rustic barbarian who might find himself trapped in the billowing folds of its cage.

Our world was most likely inseminated and cultivated in a Mesolithic Monastery somewhere considerably west of the Semitic Sphere even possibly as far west as the Amq Plain on the lower Orontes. I can not say with any confidence why our world was created on that day, I have at times thought that it was a kind of game. There is also speculation that it may have originally been a penal colony, or asylum, a way for the collective community of human minds to quarantine sick or troubled citizens. There is even a fascinating theory by Dr. Philippe Falstaff who suggests that this realm is a work of art in which self generating interacting mobile elements were left to grow within given parameters.

Nanr does not explain why the realm was created it only provides rules and regulations, including a quick exit for those who have become too entranced by the play. Nothing from this side could with any science or certitude venture to discover or conjecture about what exists on the other side of the firmament. That is, nothing except Nanr, since Nanr was written on the other side and planted here in our realm in such a way as to conform to our rules and regulations. Nanr is the only portal that can return us to direct experience of the world. When Nanr awakens the reader, he may exit at a time of his own choosing and as easily as this

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