musings on the 4 worlds

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

Ruminations on the "4 Worlds" in ha Qliphoth:

Music is pure emotion.
Poetry mixes music with logic.
Philosophy is pure logic.
Politics mixes philosophy with emotion.

What is Music? There are only 7 notes recognized in the west, and neither their tones (in Hz frequencies) nor their tuning (by ratio to one another) are agreed upon. Yet whichever tones in whatever tuning, when they are repeated rhythmically, it has a direct impact on cerebral electrochemistry. "Music," in whatever format, induces emotions. The mind celebrates in "major" and mourns in "minor" modalities.

What is Poetry? The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, "poets muddy their waters to make them appear deep." The "water" referred to here would be that of pure emotion, "muddied" (in his opinion) by the rational hemisphere of the bicameral brain's attempts to impose normalcy onto it. Poets invent new perspectives on old observations by using rhymes to accent only precise aspects - censoring by omission all other opinions.

What is Philosophy? If poetry is the "muddied waters" of emotion, philosophy is the attempt to, by convoluted conflation, "plumb the depths" of these "waters" more thoroughly. Philosophy is just poetry without music; removed from its lyrical context, the logical mind wanders blindly about the world, lost in itself. Philosophy cannot prove any useful conclusions about what it claims to study, however, because if it did, there could be no more "philosophers" who "seek wisdom," only "sages," who have obtained it.

What is Politics? Politics is a failed attempt to replace the emotionally motivational component of logical philosophy in a manner as effective as the combination of music with lyrical poetry. However, while musical rhythms and poetic rhyming angularly complement one another, politics is the discordant, cacophonous expression of all philosophies simultaneously; while lyrics provide a false sense of closure, politics incrementally deteriorates optimism.

while the concept of the "4 worlds" comes from the study of ha QBLH, I have here attempted to apply this concept to the realm inverse to ha QBLH, called the realm of ha Qliphoth. Just as the Qliphotic "tree of death" is the reverse side to the obverse "tree of life" in ha QBLH, so too would the "4 worlds" of ha QBLH have a mirror reflection in the Qliphotic realms as well. As ha QBLH studies the "body of god" in its form as the nature of reality, ha Qliphoth (a word meaning "shells" akin, in Hebrew, to the Latin word "quanta") has, as its internal motivating component, psychology, the "mind of mortals." As the "4 worlds" of ha QBLH extend upward and out from the "material" cosmos of Assiyah to the "ideational" eternity of Atziluth, so would the "4 worlds" in the context of ha Qliphoth sink downward from the "upper" realms of "Politics" to the "lowest" (innermost) realms of psychology: emotion. Thus, "music" (equivalent to "pure emotion") would be the world of Atziluth's reflection in ha Qliphoth, while "politics" (equivalent to the combination of philosophical logic with emotion) would be comparable to the QBLHistic world of Assiyah, the "material" cosmos.

math, geometry, physics and cosmology are probably the equivalent schools to the 4 worlds of ha QBLH, as they relate to the material, physical world surrounding us primarily, and only secondarily to our senses, our emotions and logic.

I would posit "cosmology" as equivalent to Assiyah, "physics" to Beriah, "geometry" to Yetzirah, and "math" to Atziluth.

the mind is matter turned inside out. Reality conspires to snuff the imagination, particularly when intuition is combined with deduction to determine the "most likely" truth from a set of "possible" outcomes to an event. The mind is always in motion, interior to the body, even when the body is at rest. Likewise, reality never sleeps.

The mind (or psyche) can be thought of as comprised of a hind-brain component (past memories), a mid-brain component (the 5 present senses) and a fore-brain component (the ego, or guiding principle), and the electrochemical enneagrams traced out within the brain can be classified as "ideas" (isolated bursts), "thoughts" (prolonged cascades) and "emotions" (constant, low-level activity). If you compare these "idea-thoughts-emotionalism" patterns of electrochemical activity inside the brain to 3-dimensional rhombic shapes, it becomes possible to plot them as, respectively, the "points, edges and faces" of any solid (regular or irregular). This visual form of mnemonic can act as a form of "memory castle" to better focus one's perceptions of how consciousness functions.

[Claire M Pruitt]

"Reality conspires to snuff the imagination, particularly when intuition is combined with deduction to determine the 'most likely' truth from a set of 'possible' outcomes to an event."

perhaps it's that we perceive "reality" putting up a "natural resistance" to imagination - as humans tend to do whenever introduced to innovative solutions or ideas that would require the change of current habits, comfort zones, familiar &/or tried and true ways of doing things in order to be implemented... and the more emotionally tolerable the condition or current state is (even if barely or just "workable"), the more resistant humans are to improvements or creative solutions introduced by the imagination?  if so, then would this description of reality be more closely akin to fear...or possibly that reality instinctively (like any organism) is programmed to prevent loss of itself and so automatically and indiscriminately is set to attack all potential invaders and innovators alike?  humans seem most content to work with what they have to work with, or at least until disaster strikes and forces them to seek other ways.  so what of the people who experience mental "mini disasters" on a regular basis?  in this case i'm thinking of one of the commonalities found among the so-called creative thinkers...who see where things are out of balance, inefficient or unworkable and become obsessed to find a solution or better method because these seemingly inconsequential things are perceived in a magnified way to them and so become disturbing and intolerable...whereas the average person may be more content or less affected and so able to function "around" these problems/things without a second thought or emotional reaction?  but nature's version of this seems to have a kind of similar "motivation" but with less outer resistance to its solutions.  one example might be the oyster, which not normally likely to do anything exceptional unless irritated and disturbed by the introduction of sand to its otherwise perfect little shell world and so "then" goes about creating a pearl to fend off the invasion of its space.  of course, it has no clue or interest in the human being's estimation of its final product, but does anything in "nature" really "care" what we think or prize of its many productions?  so we're simply "tuned in" (or not) to things like spirals, golden means, phi etc...as we measure and mark and seek out beauty and balance (and poetic meaning?) in the world around us?  so are we aliens, or self-separated from this tree of life?                        

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

when I was in jail in 1998, in solitary confinement, they gave me haldol and I had a hallucination about the tree of life. I dreamt that I was climbing up the tree, as it was climbing down me. I understood the Tree of Life is the tree that climbs itself. Just so, we are the universe perceiving itself, and when we converse, we are the cosmos exploring itself. Knowing all these things does not make life more bearable however. The saying, "before achieving nirvana I plowed the field, and after achieving nirvana, I still plowed the field," applies to all the enlightened and would-be enlightened alike. We are all merely facets of the 3 jewels: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha; the teacher, the lesson, the students. This is right thought, right speech, right action: to study, to learn and to follow the Dharma teachings of the enlightened Guattama Buddha. All we do in life is merely the light of the most high shining through the kaleidoscope of karma comprising the illusion of maya. We arise as momentary shadows of colored light, we spin about and change, and then there is no longer a pattern alike us anymore. Therefore, the wise and enlightened should not cling to their ego, at the core of their karmic constellations; to do so prolongs the suffering experienced as a result of material existence, and this leads to sicknesses of the mind, crippling physical ailments, eating disorders and premature death. The inversions of these "4 horsemen" are the 4 "noble truths": the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of the suffering, the truth of the end of suffering and the truth of the noble eightfold path. Just as suffering or "sangsara" is considered an illness or an "evil," then the truth of liberation into enlightenment through the eightfold path is an ultimate and universal benefit or "good." The noble eightfold path is, on the exterior, comprised of aspects of right thought, right speech and right action: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration; it is, however, also a reflection in ethics for the 3 bardos: chikhai, chonyid and sidpa realms comprised of aspects of "ylem" (the primary clear light), illusions (the realm of maya), and shadows (the realm of sangsara) in their form as the 6 realms of deity, demi-deities, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and demons between the sidpa and chikhai bardos within the chonyid bardo of illusions. Thus, Vajra (the wrathful lightning-bolt) is the axis around which this 8 spoked wheel of the Dharma revolves, and around which the 6 lokas revolve, and around which the 3 "kleshas" (poisons) of the ignorant boar, the clingy rooster and the averse serpent revolve about as well. Seek the peace at the central still point.

[Claire M Pruitt]

this is great info...thank you!