Subtle spaces

A hundred and one subtle tracks lead from the heart; one of these goes upwards, to the crown of the head. Going up by it, one goes to eternal life. Others depart in various directions.

(Chandogya Upanishad VIII 6.5-6)

Ancient truth and modern sensibility: “Without Unity, we are lost, isolated individuals.” (True or False?) Experience reveals to us that the sheer presence of an Other is capable of revolutionizing the isolated subject into union with its multiple nature. In short, oneness is an impotent fantasy; the Self is non-unitary, progressive, and beyond reversibility. Coming home to this subtle space, endless change transforms into a chain, recognizing patterns, forming agency, where soon wishful thinking becomes affirmation, and none of It matters if we are not here-and-now.

When I don’t know who I am, I serve you.

When I know who I am, I am you.

(Hanumanji to Shri Ram)

What we desire creates the future. This is true especially insofar as we imbue, enchant, and remember the ancestral forces that evoke the manifestation, maintenance, and transformation of this world in which we live.

What we learn by attuning ourselves to subtle beings, spaces, and forces is to develop an expanded and evolved sense of awe, gratitude, and knowledge of the minor(ity) and molecular dimensions. Minorities, in direct contrast to the molar and majority spaces, are always and already in the process of becoming-minority, causing molecular beings to become unlocalizable, de-centered, and even unidentifiable except from a majority standpoint.

Notably, the active power of the nomadic minority is precisely its vital stand-point of being able to attack the center from within the center. In other words, by continued attunement to the subtle, we privilege mobility and change over stasis and stability, allowing us to dismantle and deconstruct the molar, hegemonic network from within its own systems. In terms of identity, self-development, and the non-subject, it can be further simplified: I become myself by differing from myself as much and as often as possible.

A thing has as many senses as there are forces capable of seizing it.

(Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy)

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.

(Rumi)

The face speaks.

(Emmanuel Levinas)

Every little action is a difference. Do not be deceived: the Self is not some essentialist, ready-made, unitary being, but a non-being becoming continuously created through choice and power of will.

ॐ नमः शिवाय

राम राम