Laing reports that he finds it more and more difficult to write. Anyone who’s read much of his work can understand why. Indeed, one can foresee the day when he will lapse into the silence either of futility or madness. As he himself puts it, “If one thinks about what is the case and what is not the case seriously, intensely and long enough, one seems either to drive oneself insane or to come to the conclusion that almost everyone else is, or that we all are...”It echoes how I feel about writing these days.
Like Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, most of Laing’s books end with conclusions in which nothing is concluded. “If I could tell you, I would let you know,” he says in The Bird of Paradise. “The statement is pointless/The finger is speechless” are the closing words of Knots. On the last page of The Facts of Life, Laing tells us, “This book makes no pretensions to be a guide to the perplexed. I am myself perplexed.” But, as always, in trying to convey the nature of his own perplexity, Laing succeeds in helping us open our eyes to our own.
What to describe, except the inexorability of our condition...
9 comments:
Harman,
I tip my hat to you, sir.
-MM
Since we do choose to go on (or are made to choose to go on or simply go on) living in this world notwithstanding the inexorable condition that we are in, may be it doesn't do harm in filling your time with your writings and helping your readers fill theirs with reading your articles :-)
Hope to see "Facts of Life Part 2" soon.
The path to Truth ends in wordlessness. If it is Truth one seeks, one has to go beyond words, which means one has to go beyond the very mother of all thoughts and words - the "I". Does one have the courage to plunge into this sea of silence to seek it? Does one have the courage to let go of the "I"?
If one does not, then one can only learn to swim or sail their boat, on the surface, balancing the forces of the "I" and the "You" in a sea of thoughts - words, a sea of waves and sounds, a sea we call the "world".
It is the limited scope of words that you are experiencing. All truths cannot be mapped to words. Some may only be experienced.
Keep writing Harman! Yours is one of the few blogs I constantly revisit and is where I find an intellectual soul brother. Life may be meaningless but it sure is a heck of a lot of fun to ponder its meaninglessness.
And for some profoundly odd reason it doesnt feel like a waste of time to do so.
Ab to ghabra ke yeh kehtey hain ke marr jayeingey
Maar ke bhi chain na paya to kidhar jayeingey
If you are following this path now, your next step will be on the U.G.´s track.
From the Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam:
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.
With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd .....
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."
what do you think of Jung..?
Dear Harman, Think about why you started to write a blog. Maybe that will give you something to write about.
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