The sole knowledge human beings have of the world is the interpretation created by their own minds. This is why eastern mystics say the world is a dream. What is usually thought of as external and substantial is actually made of the same stuff as a dream image. It exists in the same place, the mind, and is mentally projected outside what are perceived to be the limits of the body. There is no essential difference between inside the body and outside. Both exist within the mind. There is no root distinction between the mental and the physical; all is mind. To say the world is an illusion is not to say that it does not exist. This is a common error of those who are too eager to embrace the transcendent view. The salient point is that human beings can never know anything about the absolute world with their everyday awareness. Everything experienced is an interpretation, a metaphor, of something else.
The sole knowledge human beings have of the world is the interpretation created by their own minds. This is why Eastern mystics say the world is a dream. What is usually thought of as external and substantial is actually made of the same stuff as a dream image. It exists in the same place—the mind—and is mentally projected outside what are perceived to be the limits of the body. There is no essential difference between inside the body and outside. Both exist within the mind. There is no root distinction between the mental and the physical; all is mind. To say the world is an illusion is not to say that it does not exist...The salient point is that human beings can never know anything about the absolute world with their everyday awareness. Everything experienced is an interpretation, a metaphor, of something else.
"But the thing is, for Lovecraft, cosmic-existential horror wasn’t the whole story. Not by a cyclopean margin. In fact, a look at his overall body of fiction, and also his personal development as an author, and his various essays about life and writing, and the teeming ocean of thousands of letters that he wrote to a vast network of correspondents, shows that his focus on the cosmic horrific theme of existence-as-nightmare was balanced and complemented by a deep craving for liberation into transcendent realms of beauty and bliss. As I observed just a few days ago in my latest column for SF Signal, “Fantasy, Horror, and Infinite Longing,” this pairing of horror or terror with sehnsucht, the emotion C.S. Lewis identified as the “inconsolable longing” for “that unnamable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves,” is quite common among authors and artists, especially those working in the field of the fantastic. <...>
So Dream-Quest is fully as much about an exquisite experience of cosmic longing as it is about a wrenching experience of cosmic horror. The novel shows Carter yearning for an escape into a dreamworld and to a dream city of eternal solace and beauty, and being opposed by all of those nightmarish figures Tyson mentions. And it’s the recognition of this fact, not just in this particular novel but as it’s threaded throughout the rest of Lovecraft’s life and work, that’s missing from so much contemporary scholarship. It’s not that Lovecraft wasn’t about cosmic horror, but that he wasn’t all about it. Cosmic horror was wedded to cosmic wonder in his psyche. The one bled into the other. They were inextricably united as flipsides or complements in his affective makeup. Their paradoxical pairing was in fact the engine that drove him, since he was perpetually poised on the razor’s edge between perceiving the cosmic perspective as nightmarish and perceiving it as beautiful and liberating. This tension channeled itself into a burning desire to capture and convey both intimations in imaginative form, and the fact that the darker aspect has gotten more press than the lighter one in the popular and even the critical imagination, and has in fact become rote, is vaguely reminiscent of the smear-job perpetrated by Rufus Griswold on the memory of Edgar Allan Poe. But in Lovecraft’s case it appears to have happened by accident, with, perhaps, some help from unsympathetic critics such as Edmund Wilson."
From Cosmic Horror and Cosmic Wonder: Revisioning Our Vision of H.P. Lovecraft by Matt Cardin.
AoY Podcast #174 - American Politics July 2024 Edition
Also known as: “Hello everyone, welcome to episode 12,000 of the Anime of Yesteryear Podcast…”
Download Episode HERE! (Total Time: 3:52:34)
https://ia601603.us.archive.org/29/items/anime-of-yesteryear-podcast-174-american-politics-july-2024-edition/Anime%20of%20Yesteryear%20Podcast%20%23174%20-%20American%20Politics%20July%202024%20Edition.mp3
It’s that grand ‘ol time of every fourth year…
Well, True_George came across an interesting interview on Vlad T.V. The host, D.J Vlad was interviewing the fame Lawyer Alan Dershowitz. The interview touched on a few subjects, after all he was on the inside representing infamous controversial figures, such as Mike Tyson, handling Tyson’s rape conviction appeal. Dershowitz was also a member of the O.J Simpson’s infamous dream team of Lawyers,…
I want to emphasise that I dislike the following authors for a variety of reasons - all of which have come from my own personal study, evaluation and reading of their works or by testing their works. There are other authors I also dislike. But for all intents and purposes these are some of my top "Avoid" authors:
Asenath Mason
E. A. Koetting
Michael Ford
Edgar Kerval
"Nine Demonic Gatekeepers" .... I'm not even going to ask.
Donald Tyson
Rev. Cain
I also avoid literally anything by BALG or O9A and Neo Nazi groups as a whole. I don't tolerate that. I wanted to ensure everyone was aware of this because I am a random influx of followers. If I find out that you're within those spheres, I will block you. You are welcome to unfollow. In fact, I do encourage it.