The Ferryman’s End

Burnout

The ferryman’s craft is his primary survival skill (Sanskrit: dharma), mental, physical or emotional. Fundamental his (or her) skill is to create and transmit difference, thereby to survive

For: ‘Only difference makes a difference’.

The difference he/she transmits (read: puts across) is his/her original, thus unique contribution to everyday life, and by extension to the whole life (or creation) process.

Those who transmit difference are (ferrymen). Those who don’t, ain’t.

The ferryman’s craft/skill sinks and he dies if and when his capacity to create difference diminishes. Remaining the same (i.e. non-different) he (is compressed out, i.e. diminished and) cannot touch (the shore ≈ the other ≈ difference) and be touched. Unable to touch he fails to become real, identifiable and energized (i.e. via fusion), consequently ceases/fails to become (rather than be).

Losing touch, i.e. disconnection, is inevitable (as the Sakya (to wit, the Scythian) Buddha rightly observed). That’s because touch (i.e. contact) is momentary (i.e. quantized ≈ digital). Since ‘only random contacts (i.e. events) can strike’¹, each touch or contact must be different. Sameness cannot touch. For an individual to stay alive, i.e. to be fully real (and continuous ≈ animated ≈ spiritual), conscious (that is to say, monitoring series (to wit, bites) of iconized differential contacts or instructions) and joyful (i.e. fully energized (read: enlightened) as result of @1 (between two random contacts) fusion²), that individual must continuously touch or be touched, differently.

The reward for successful transmission (i.e. for ferrying, read: communication of difference, hence of the basic input to (or food for) life) is joyful (i.e. ‘high’ energy, read: ‘orgasmic’) self-realization with or without transmission content³ related consciousness.

The individual who seeks stillness (i.e. quiescence, for instance, in meditation or relaxation), who abides in sameness (i.e. the ‘here & now’ as Eckhart Tolle foolishly advises), initially reduces undesired (i.e. life detrimental) differential contact (i.e. experienced as inner turbulence and interpreted as distress (Pali: dukkha)) and the unpleasant (thereafter unbearable) heat it generates. Further (> complete ≈ @100% ≈ @1 ≈ perfect) reduction of differential contact (resulting from, for instance, excessive meditation, as in Zazen, Yoga and so on) leads to the elimination of all stress, both life supporting and life degrading, resulting initially in trance (to wit, the various states of absorption), then in coma ≈ non-life.⁴

The ferryman’s craft/skill is his capacity to create bits (i.e. quanta) or bites (i.e. analogues or relativities) of difference (i.e. food that gives life). Anyone who creates difference, thereby making real and/or inventing a real new shape, ferries from dying to living.

Interpret the ≈ symbol to mean equivalent.

1 … Random (or wholly different, therefore unpredictable) contacts (or instructions) collide in a relativity vacuum, therefore present for contact at the rate (or quality) of c, thus producing a c² (read: c squared) moment of absolute realness. Hence, ‘1c² is’.

The notion ‘1c² is’ results if and when the dodgy equation e = mc² (e and m are merely different states of an unknown ‘force’, hence fundamentally tautological, meaning carrying mighty redundancy) is fully compressed. Since none of the symbols of Einstein’s infamous equation, to wit, e, =, m, c and squared are independently defined, and certainly not in quantum mechanical terms, e = mc² is merely a suggestive metaphor for a relationship yet to be clearly described.

2 … Energy (to wit, life support capacity) release, experienced as enlightenment (i.e. as increase in brightness (as a surge or rush of either energy or speed) or of lightness (i.e. as in levitation), happens as aftereffect of either fusion or fission (hence or problem solving), and that pro rata (as developed in atomic power plants). Hence the Great Awakening (≈ Arousal), and which is alternately experienced as the Great Enlightenment, happens as the result of a full or complete (=@100%) ≈ Great (i.e. initial state capacity related) release of stored energy or the acquisition of maximum external energy.

3 … Content happens as the after-affect (or after-image ≈ Gestalt) of a series (or string) of individual (hence random) contacts (i.e. of an instructions bite). Consequently, content, for instance, ‘time, space and form’, happens as iconic analogue display, hence belongs to the dimension of relativity. In short, individual (random) contacts (or strikes (read: instructions)) function as quanta (or units ≈ bits), therefore are best described with the rules of quantum mechanics, and series (or bites) of individual contacts (≈ quanta) function as analogues and are best described with the rules of relativity theory.

4 … For non-life (also non-death, in this story meaning existence on the river between the shores of sameness/death and difference/life) read: Nirvana. The ultimate goal of Indian Yogic training, hence the goal of Yoga as such, was (and still is) the attainment of (i.e. release into, i.e. moksha) the deathless (Sanskrit: amara or amata) state believed to be singular (i.e. kaivalya). Though much disputed by professional Indian and Western Yoga teachers who take the scholiast Patanjali at face value, the deathless state happens prior to or after the experience of conditions of ‘being’ (real animation), consciousness and joy (viz. sat-chit-ananda).

Note that contrary to popular opinion both moksha (Pali: mukti) and nirvana (i.e. both nirvana 1 and nirvana 2) are biological/natural rather than spiritual/supernatural attainments.

Home

© 2021 by Victor Langheld