A Phenomenology of the Implicate Order
Reading White’s The Alchemical Body brought to
mind the strong connections between the Nath sampradaya and my
phenomenological explorations of Western alchemy; (phenomenology taken as
the science of experience.) I’ve begun to explore the phenomenal
worlds of thought, and of sensation as analogs to the two-headed vessel of
Indian alchemical lore and practice. The fiery heat for the transformation
can be supplied by the fluids and psycho-mechanics of desire and lust. The
path or throat between the vessels may lie as a tunnel beneath experience;
just as Bohm’s implicate order lies ontically before and spatially beneath
the explicate.
Adopt for the minute, after the general design Ken
Wilber provides in The Atman Project, the shape of the Work as an
arc. Trace the ontogenic (recapitulating the phylogenic?) development of
the magickian up from the early ground of undifferentiated, oceanic
body/thought experience of the womb and immediately post-natal bliss (the
aeon of Bes?) up through the body/sensation focussed, group-mind tribe
(the world of the goddess?) to the top of the arc. Here find the mature
and reasoning adult "ego" where body/sensation and mind/thought are
sharply differentiated. (Most of our species don’t make it even quite so
far as the mature adult! The world of Osiris?) Beyond this rational adult,
dive back into the body and into the existential Centaur phase (the
solar twins?) Going beyond, experience what Wilber calls the subtle, and
the causal realms (Maat ?)
The reintegration of the experience (pathos) of
mind/thought with the experience of body/sensation, as it necessarily
occurs in this dive back, distills the nectar of the gods for the
enjoyment and transformation of the magickan. I’m finding that it is at
this stage of reintegration that the importance of the formulae of
reversal (the Tunnels of Set?) comes most into play.
Up from blissful oblivion, through tribal passion, my
"mature" consciousness reveals the world as explicate order (á là Bohm) of
the known and rationally comprehended consensual reality. As I move up
along the arc, the body and sensation are first embraced by the tribe, and
then are abandoned and isolated by my individual mind and my experience of
thought. Over the top of the arc, through the angst (fear and trembling
anyone?) of the Centaur, my body re-asserts itself as my own death. On
into the subtle and causal realms I find that coincidence disappears, as
synchronicities abound. Time makes a phenomenal shift. I listen to the
wisdom of my body, and find it carries the direct experience of an
implicate order.
While the meaning of the explicate twinkles in
existential doubt, and then fades in chaos, my body brings along the
certain knowledge of the implicate. The reversals of reintegration
capture profound experiences not available prior to the Work. All I have
to do is listen. "Who feels it knows it"
(Bunny Wailer Livingston.)
