Author: gnox

The Greek word apocalypse means literally discovery, the uncovering or revelation (revealing) of what was hidden from consciousness – sometimes hidden because of our immersion in it.

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.

— Wittgenstein (PI I.129)

We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re certain it wasn’t a fish.

— source unknown

The veil of habit hides the Firstness of the phenomenon, generalization dissipates the force of discovery, percepts are overgrown with perceptual judgments. Yet ‘there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed.’

It is easier to discover another such a new world as Columbus did, than to go within one fold of this which we appear to know so well; the land is lost sight of, the compass varies, and mankind mutiny; and still history accumulates like rubbish before the portals of nature.

— Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

— George Orwell (1946)

If a sign or a sentence tells you anything,
you have to believe it in order to read it,
and you have to read it in order to tell
whether it tells the truth or not.

In the beginning is the •

Of making many books there is no end.

— Ecclesiastes 12:12

And sometimes no beginning. Those with too much to say, it seems, do not write. Isaac Luria, when asked why he didn’t put his teaching into a book, is said to have replied,

It is impossible, because all things are interrelated. I can hardly open my mouth to speak without feeling as though the sea burst its dams and overflowed. How then shall I express what my soul has received, and how can I put it down in a book?

— Scholem (1946, 254)

Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.

— Tao Te Ching 32 (Feng and English)

Sometimes the best time to stop is just before beginning.

The universe is, as it were, an awakening Mind. Now just as we say this man has such and such a character, not because of any ideas he has this minute present, but because under suitable circumstances such ideas are bound to be evolved by him, so the universe may be said to be governed by a God insofar as it is bound more and more to conform to the ultimate result of the evolution of pure ideas. But the sole Ancient of Days is Continuity in the abstract, a spontaneity which might be assumed to be very slight, though it is probably enormous.
As to the continued existence of the soul after death, the general idea of Continuity, if unreservedly accepted, hardly permits us to doubt it. The difficulty is, that there is no positive evidence in favor of it. It seems, however, easier to account for such defect in other ways than by a breaking off of consciousness. That the second element of consciousness, the reactive consciousness, ceases when external stimulation ceases, is certain. We see it in sleep. But the mind does not cease to exist in sleep; and many persons perform their most difficult operations of thought best in their sleep. They wish to ‘sleep upon’ a difficult question. There is no more reason to suppose that death at once causes the annihilation of mind. Whatever may happen later, at first it can be nothing but a sleep. To be awakened, the soul must in some way be acted upon. But there our information ceases.

— Peirce, unidentified fragment (NEM, introduction to Volume 4, xxiv)

There’s where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussofthlee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the

— end of Finnegans Wake