H for Heidegger, bring the smack into his pokey brain and let him
know the real meaning of revelation. You won't need to listen
then, you will want to put your hands over your ears to shut
out the noise of Being, grinding, scraping, boring into your flesh,
great swarms of truth, like ribbons, flutter about you...
As for the Wisdom, who is called "the barren", she is the mother
of the angels. And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene.
But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss
her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended
by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, "why do you
love her more than all of us?" The Saviour answered and said to
them "Why do I not love you like her?" When a blind man and one
who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from
one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the
light and he who is blind will remain in darkness.
All that is merely technological never arrives at the essence of
technology. It cannoy even once recognize its outer precincts.
Therefore, as we seek to give utterance to insight into that which
is, we do not describe the situation of our time. It is the
constellation of Being that is uttering itself to us.
But we do not yet hear, we whose hearing and seeing are perishing
through radio and film under the rule of technology. The constellation
of Being is the denial of world, in the form of injurious neglect of
the thing. Denial is not nothing; it is the highest mystery of Being
within the rule of Enframing.
Whether the god lives or remains dead is not decided by the
religiosity of men and even less by the theological aspirations of
philosophy and natural science. Whether or not God is God comes
disclosingly to pass from out of and within the constellation of
Being.
So long as we do not, through thinking, experience what is, we can
never belong to what will be.
Will insight into that which is being itself disclosingly to pass ?
Will we, as the ones caught sight of, be so brought home into the
essencial glance of Being that we will no longer elude it ? Will we
arrive thereby within the essence of the nearness that, in thinging
the thing, brings world near ? Will we dwell within the fourfold of
sky and earth, mortals and divinities ?
Will insight into that with is bring itself disclosingly to pass ?
Will we correspond to that insight, through a looking that looks into
the essence of technology and becomes aware of Being itself within
it ?
Will we see the lightning flash of Being in the essence of
technology ? The flash that comes out of stillness itself ? Stillness
stills. What does it still ? It stills Being into the coming to
presence of world.
May world in its worlding be the nearest of all nearing that nears,
as it beings the truth of Being near to man's essence, and so gives
man to belong to the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing
into its own.
You give me power! I see myself! I want to speak! Fear restrains me. I
have found the beginning of the power that is above all powers, the
one that has no beginning. I see a fountain bubbling with life. I
have said, O my son, that I am Mind. I have seen! Language is not
able to reveal that. For the entire eighth, O my son, and the souls
that are in it, and the angels, sing a hymn in silence. And I, Mind,
understand.
THE DISCOURSE ON THE EIGHTH AND NINTH.
The time is destitute because it lacks the unconcealedness of the
nature of pain, death, and love. This destitution is itself destitute
because the realm of being withdraws within which pain and death and
love belong together. Concealedness exists inasmuch as the realm in
which they belong together is the abyss of Being. But the song still
remains which names the land over which it sings. What is the song
itself ? How is a mortal capable of it ? Whence does it sing ? How
far does it reach into the abyss ?
I knew the one who exists in me and the Triple Power and the
revelation of his uncontainableness. And by means of a primary
revealtion of the First One who is unknown to them all, the God who
is higher than perfect, I saw him, the Virgin Male, the Triple Power
that exists in them all. I was seeking the ineffable and Unknown God-
whom if one should know completely one would be ignorant of him- the
Mediator of the Triple Power who subsists in stillness and silence and
is unknown.
Now he is reified insofar as he exists in that he either exists and
becomes or acts or knows, although he lives without Mind or Life or
Existence or Non-Existence, incomprehensibly. And he is reified among
his attributes. He is not left over in some way, as if he yields
something that is assayed or purified or that receives or gives. And
he is not diminished in some way whether by his own desire or whether
he gives or receives through another. He is better than the Totalities
in his privation and unknowablilty, that is, the non-being Existence,
since he is endowed with silence lest he be diminished by those who
are not diminished.
He is neither divinity nor blessedness nor perfection. Rather this
triad is unknowable reification of him, not an attribute of him;
rather he is another one better than the blessedness and the divinity
and perfection. For he is not perfect, but he is another thing that
is more exquisite. He is neither boundless nor is he bounded by
another. Rather he is something better. He is not corporeal. He is
not incorporeal. He is not great. He is not small. He is not a number.
He is not a creature. Nor is he something that exists, that one could
know. But he is something else of his that is better, whom one cannot
know. Come O Dreadful One.
ALLOGENES.
The edifices guard the fourfold. They are things that in their own way
preserve the fourfold. To preserve the fourfold, to save the earth, to
receive the sky, to await the divinities, to escort mortals- this
fourfold preserving is the simple nature, the presencing of dwelling.
In this way, then, do genuine buildings give form to dwelling in its
presencing and house this presence.
The essence of technology come to the light of day only slowly. This
day is the world's night, rearranged into merely technological day.
This day is the shortest day. It threatens a single endless winter.
Not only does protection now withhold itself from man, but the
integralness of the whole of what is remains now in darkness. The
wholesome and sound withdraws. The world becomes without healing,
unholy. Not only does the holy, as the track to the godhead, thereby
remain concealed; even the track to the holy, the hale and whole,
seems to be effaced. That is, unless there are still some mortals
capable of seeing the threat of the unhealable, the unholy, as such.
They would have to discern the danger that is assailing man. The
danger consists in the threat that assults man's nature in his
relation to Being itself, and not in accidental perils. This danger
is the danger. It conceals itself in the abyss that underlies all
beings. To see this danger and point it out, there must be mortals
who reach sooner the abyss.
I am Protennoia, the Though that dwells in the Light. I am the
movement that dwells in the All, she in whom the All takes its stand,
the first-born among those who came to be, she who exists before the
All. She (Protennoia) is called by three names, although she exists
alone, since she is perfect. I am invisible within the Thought of the
Invisible One. I am revealed in the immeasurable, ineffable things. I
am intangible, dwelling in the intangible. I move in every creature.
I am the life of my Epinoia that dwells within every power and every
eternal movement and in invisible Lights and within the Archons and
Angels and Demons and every soul dwelling in Tertaros and in every
material soul. I dwell in those who came to be. I move in everyone and
I delve into them all. I walk uprightly, and those who sleep I awaken.
And I am the sight of those who dwell in sleep.
I am a Voice speaking softly. I exists from the first. I dwell
within the Silence that surrounds every one of them. And it is the
hidden Voice that dwells within me, within the intangible,
immeasurable Thought, within the immeasurable Silence.
I descended into the midst of the underworld and I shon down upon
the darkness. It is I who poured forth the Water. I am the one hidden
within the radiant waters. I am the one who gradually dawns on the
All. Within my Thought, it is I who am laden with the Voice. It
is through me that knoweldge comes forth. I exist in the ineffible
and unknowable ones. I am perception and knowledge, uttering a Voice
by means of Thought. I am the real Voice. I cry out in everyone, and
they know that a seed dwells within me. I am the Thought of the Father
and through me proceeded the Voice, that is, the knowledge of the
everlasting things. I exist as Thought for the All.
Now the Voice that originated from my Thought exists as three
permanences: the Father, the Mother, the Son. A Sound that is
perceptible, it has within it a Word endowed with every glory, and it
has three masculinities, three powers, and three names. They exist in
the manner of tthe triad , which are quadrangles,
secretly within a Silence of the Ineffible One.
I am the Image of the Invisible Spirit and it is through me that the
All took shape, and I am the Mother as well as the Light which she
appointed as a Virgin, she who is called Meirothea, the intangible
Womb, the unrestrained and immeasurable Voice.
I am androgynous. I am both Mother and Father since I copulate with
myself. I copulate with myself and with those who love me, and it is
through me along that the All stands firm. I am the Womb that gives
shape to the All by giving birth to the light that shines in
splendor. I am the Aeon to come, I am the fulfillment of the All,
that is, Meirothea, the glory of the Mother. I cast a Sound of the
Voice into the ears of those who know me.
Could it be that the fine arts are called to poetic revealing ?
Could it be that revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so
that they for their part may expressly foster the growth of the saving
power, may awaken and found anew our look into that which grants and
our trust in it ?
Whether art may be granted this highest possibility of its essence
in the midst of the extreme danger, no one can possibly tell. Yet we
can be astounded. Before what ? Before this other possibility: that
the frenziedness of technology may entrench itself everywhere to such
an extent that someday, throughout everything technological, the
essence of technology may come to presence in the coming-to-pass of
truth.
Because the essence of technology is nothing technological,
essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with
it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the
essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from
it.
Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection on art, for
its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth after
which we are questioning.
Thus questioning, we bear witness to the crisis that in out sheer
preoccupation with technology we do not yet experience the coming to
presence of technology, that in our sheer aesthetic-mindedness we
no longer guard and preserve the coming to presence of art. Yet the
more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more
mysterious the essence of art becomes.
The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into
the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become.
For questioning is the piety of thought.
On the Heimarmene
I am the word who dwells in ineffible Silence. I dwell in undefiled
Light and a Thought revealed intelf perceptibly through the great
Sound of the Mother, although it is a male offspring that supports
me as my foundation. And the Sound exists from the beginning in the
foundations of the All.
But there is a Light that dwells hidden in the Silence and it was
first to come forth. Whereas the Mother alone exists in Silence, I
alone am the Word, ineffible, incorruptable, immeasurable,
inconceivable. It is a hidden Light, bearing a fruit of Life, pouring
forth Living Water from the invisible, unpolluted, immeasurable
spring, that is, the unreproducible Voice of the glory of the
Mother, the glory of the offspring of God; a male Virgin by virtue
of a hidden Intellect, that is, the Silence hidden from the All, the
root of the entire Aeon. It is the foundation that supports every
movement of the Aeons that belong to the mighty glory. It is the
founding of every foundation. It is the breath of the powers. It is
the eye of the three permanences which exist as a Voice by virtue of
Thought. Amen.
THE DISCOURSE OF THE APPREARANCE. TRIMORPHIC PROTENNOIA, IN THREE PARTS.
A SACRED SCRIPTURE WRITTEN BY THE FATHER WITH PERFECT KNOWLEDGE.
"What is the way to sing a hymn through the eighth ?"
"Have you become such that you cannot be spoken to ?"
"I am silent, O my father. I want to sing a hymn to you while I am silent."
"Then sing it, for I am Mind."
"I understand Mind, Hermes, and cannot be interpreted, because he
keeps within himself. And I rejoice, O my father, because I see thee
smiling. And the universe rejoices. Therefore there is no creature
that will lack thy life. Thy providence protects."
"Return to praising, O my son, and sing while you are silent. Ask
what you want in silence."
"I will offer up the praise in my heart, as I prey to the end of the
universe and the beginning of the beginning, to the object of man's
quest, the immortal discovery, the begetter of light and truth, the
sower of reason, the love of immortal life. No hidden word will be
able to speak about thee, Lord. Therefore my mind want to sing a hymn
to you daily. I am the instrument of thy spirit. Mind is thy plectrum.
And thy counsel plucks me. I see myself! I have received power from
thee. For thy love has reached us."
"Right, O my son."
"O grace! After these things I give thanks by singing a hymn to
thee. For I have received life from thee when thou madest me wise. I
praise thee. I call thy name that which is hidden within me. a o ee o
eee ooo iii oooo ooooo ooo oo uuuuuu oooooooooooooooooooo. Thou art
the one who exists with the spirit."
Suffering is not discerned,
neither has love been learned,
and what removes us in death,
nothing unveils.
Only the songs high breath
hallows and hails.
Meanwhile, even the trace of the holy has become unrecognizable.
It remains undecided whether we still experience the holy as the track
leading to the godhead of the divine, or whether we now encounter no
more than a trace of the holy. It remains unclear what the track
leading to the trace might be. It remains in question how such a track
might show itself to us.
© John Mann 1984