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Wednesday, March 21



TERRY MURPHY: SIMULACRA AND SIMULATION

We have discussed the move, "The Matrix." In one scene, Neo
picks a couple of small digital devices out of the hollow of a
book, and sells them to some young party-goers in an obviously
illegal transaction. If you look closely and freeze the frame,
the title of the book he takes these devices from is "Simulacra
and Simulation" - the book looks like an old leather jacket, but
it is actually a recent (1981 - early, actually) work by Jean
Baudrillard. A quote:

"Thus perhaps at stake has always been the murderous capacity of
images, murderers of the real, murderers of their own model, as
the Byzantine icons could murder the divine identity. To this
murderous capacity is opposed the dialectical capacity of
representations as a visible and intelligible mediation of the
Real. All of Western faith and good faith was engaged in this
wager on representation: That a sign could refer to the depth of
meaning, that a sign could exchange for meaning, and that
something could guarantee this exchange---God, of course. But
what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to
the signs which attest his existence? Then the whole system
becomes weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic
simulacrum---not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again
exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an
uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference. "So it
is with simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation.
The latter starts from the principle that the sign and the real
are equivalent (even if this equivalence is utopian, it is a
fundamental axiom). Conversely, simulation starts from the
utopia of this principle of equivalence, from the radical
negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and
death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation tries
to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation,
simulation envelops the edifice of representation as itself a
simulacrum. This would be the successive phases of the image:

it is the reflection of a basic reality.

it masks and perverts a basic reality.

it masks the absence of a basic reality.

it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure
simulacrum.

---Jean Baudrillard, "The Evil Demon of Images and the
Precession of Simulacra," in Thomas Docherty, ed.,
Postmodernism: A Reader (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1993)
pp. 194 ff.

_____________________________________________________________________

CEE

dearest friends, here are some quotes from the inner directions
gathering: let's all go next year. it's fun to be in a room full
of hundreds of other nondually ones. love, cee

The mind understands the heart innerstands --Adyashanti

I had to find the answer or I would die --Stephen Jourdain

I am certifiably not a saint --Gangaji

Let consciousness come back for itself, meet every bit of
itself. Embrace everything you ever tried to get away from,
embrace everything you fear, embrace everything you hate.
--Adyashanti

I really wanted to know, I deeply asked with every fiber of my
being, I was ready to give up everything for that one glimpse.
--Tony Parsons

It doesn't get better than this! --Eckhart Tolle

JERRY KATZ

hi cee,

i appreciate hearing these quotes. Meeting you was the first
time I ever drowned in the beingness of another human being. And
I thought I was too old and jaded for a Guru. When you invited
me to visit you in Oakland, I woke up at 4am for a 5:30am
flight. You welcomed me warmly into your home and showed me a
very good time. Your husband was warm and gracious as well. When
you drove me back to the airport I said I didn't want to leave.
You said we're not separating and were right.

_________________________________________________________________

CEE

dear one
you are
the sole existent reality
one without a second
imperishable
attributeless
immutable
self effulgent
rest as conceptless joy my dear
rest in
deep peace to infinity
brilliant as a thousand thousand suns
you are
without attributes or differentiation
untouched by anything at all
perfect in your imperfection
vast and
always already free
alive as every single thing
you are ever indivisable
ever indivisable ever
ever indivisable
rest
as
conceptless
joy
my dear

--------------------------------------------

dearest friends,

here's the thing
i really want to tell you

nonduality is not a unity of separate parts
do you see?
you can't assume you're a part
and try to make it whole
it just ain't gonna happen

tried it for endless eons
impossible
impossible
impossible
you might as well accept the fact that you are

god

you (i)
exactly you
are all that there is

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