Chapter V
Synopsis
I. The Macrocosm as the sum total of symbols referred to a Soul, p. 163.
Everything in history & nature are symbols; what matters is not what it is but what it SIGNIFIES. Actuality is the world in relation to a single soul- for every man the projection of the directed (time) on the domain of the extended (space). Symbol bridges the “here” (our proper living space) & the “there”, the extended. Macrocosm is the sum of all symbols relating to 1 man. For each a World, but no common external "the world" for all. The conscious begins with a child’s intuition, without clear world for a soul, meaning is inclusive of all, moving to a highly refined intellectual world (late Civilizations) in which separate specific signs are known. Individual Macrocosms relate between men of the same Culture; the greater relation the greater the understanding; between Cultures (Faustian understanding of Indian) such relations are low,, understanding of the Culture’s symbols is low. The imortality of great art is an illusion; we interpret alien Culture’s art with reference to our own art. See Mind Map i
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Symbols, actualized, exist in the extended (Space), are BECOME & rigid. Waking consciousness reflects on the moment already past; it forever views the Past, the transient. All things, all significance is transient once it enters the extended, it has begun & ended. Space & Death are related; Space implies Death. Only man knows death, man emancipated from sight by language, possesses the idea of transience, memory of the past as past & irrevocable. We are time, & possess an image of history which contains death. When the child becomes aware of death he becomes man. All philosophy, science, religion, art proceed from fear of death. The roots of: Egyptian art (tomb temples), Greek art (funerary urns) Magian art (catacombs) Faustian art (cathedrals) centre on this this fear & the disposal of the dead. The primitive seeks to bind death, limit it with causality. This impulse is the first projection of Soul; the ego & World split, the font of all cultures, personal conduct of life is born, forms take on meaning. Things relate to man, now man relates to things as emblems of his existence. Symbolism proceeds from the fear of death.
"Alles vergiogliche ist nur ein Gleichnis," p. 167.
All that is become is mortal, dies: the West, Roman Empire, all vanish, man, Earth & star systems. The riddle of transience, death, can be enunciated with the concept of depth. Things extend themselves but self-extension is not depth; world experience involves depth with distance. Mathematics incorrectly treats depth as a 3rd dimension with length & width. Length & width are seen by our sense, this is their limit: depth is an expression of Nature, the World. Sensation gives length & width, contemplation gives depth. Involuntary, it varies between men & Cultures. It provides symbolic content for a given order specific to a Culture, open to infinite variations. Each Culture has its own depth perception, each has its own Nature.
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III. The space problem (only Depth is space-forming), p. 169.
Kant erred thinking he had solved the riddle of Time-Space, he has the perception of late Civilized man (technically defined space, devoid of life or sensuousness, dead); another Culture will have a different Space. Time-Space (& depth) cannot be defined; depth depends on the viewer’s distance. Kant linked Space with geometry; this was shown to be fallacious by the non-Euclidean universe. Experiential depth cannot be defined but artists & poets feel & express it. Mathematical dimensions are abstractions, do not have limits; experiential depth is limited to the portion of the universe we see: the visual universe, defined by light. Greek cosmology reflected this limit. The Faustian world posits infinite space.
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The non-Euclidean universe reflected the nature of Mathematics (timeless, causal logic), it is outside sensation or experinece.
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Life subjected to Time forms Space. All extension (Space) is achieved with depth; Time is the process of extending, first visually as surface, later intellectually, to depth & distance, the world (rounded). Space is what we feel in direction from here to there; the depth experience expands into the World. Like the irreversibility of Time, this direction too is one way, from us to the horizon, forward only. Just as causality is Destiny rigid, so spatial depth is time rigid. Rigid Space is the elemental & powerful symbol of Life itself. We see or perceive Space where as Time is a perception.
Cultures produce living, unique (Culture defined) expressions of direction (space):
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Classical: near present excludes distant & future
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Faustian: direction energy, eye for most distant horizon
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Chinese: free wandering, near & far but reaches goal
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Egyptian: resolute march down the path once entered
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The world-idea of a Culture born out of its prime symbol, p. 174.
The realization of distance & time allows extension of the symbol & leads to birth of Culture & its prime symbol. Examples of Cultural Prime symbol:
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Classical World view of near, limited & self-contained Body
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Faustian World view. infinitely wide & profound 3D Space
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Magian World view. the Cavern
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Classical Body, Magian Cavern, Western Infinity, p. 174.
The prime symbol will allow us to deduce the entire Form language of another Culture (and note the lack of such in the primitive). The interpretation of depth rises to create a picture, one that may re-emerge & speak to another Culture with feelings (but not understanding). It is actualized through the form sense of every man of the given Culture, permeates the Culture, in Science, art architecture BUT does not define it as it is inconceivable, cannot be defined with words (themselves symbols). For the West our prime symbol is infinite space. NO other problem has consumed so much Western though. Yet the Classical world, no thought or questions on it; they cannot even think of it negatively. For the Classical man the prime problem was the material origin & foundation of all sensuously-perceptible things. Their extension was the material, the optically definite, immediate present, comprehensible. Against this, diametrically opposed, the West has music, orchestral, ethereal music, bodiless tones, echoes of Infinity
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Every culture arrives at its own language, comprehensible only to those of that Culture. We cannot know Indian thought or Greek & the “universals" of Kant are univesal only to his culture. It is not that one is in error but each has their own world, language, symbols, art, fully accessible ONLY to that culture. There are a plurality of Prime Symbols, the depth experience through which perception extends itself to the world- significant for that culture- none can be transferred to another & no Prime Symbol ever re-occurs. So too the individual's macrocosm, it cannot be truly known by any other soul. Each of the Prime Symbols is capable of forming a complete world out of itself, which when past, incomprehensible- as the West will be too someday.
