SACP's Time & History: East & West 9/28-10/1/00

[john grimes]

Bina,
   Here is an updated, more precise version of my Abstract for my paper. I
have also sent this to you via snail mail.
    I have also sent my membership application in
   Thanks.
    John


Abstract for Time and History: East and West Conference
Columbia, MO Sept 28-Oct 1, 2000
John Grimes, Michigan State University

MYTHMAKER DAWNBREAKER:  TIME AND TIMELESSNESS

        That, which never had a beginning and which supposedly made a
beginning, can surely make an end! The twin tantalizers be they: space and
time, Being and becoming, I and Thou, time and timelessness. The siren song
of the universe alluringly begins there. Begins? When is the true
beginning? Logically, one can always ask the question, 'what went before'?
There? Before space unfolded and the river of time from its ice-cave of
eternity began to flow, where was there?
        A mythmaker is a storyteller, an instantiator, anyone and everyone,
you and me. Myths are the songs that we sing, the stories we tell. They are
the language which allows their user to deal with phenomena in relation to
a framework. Not only are they an universal linguistic phenomenon, they are
the universal linguistic phenomenon. And yet, one must be alert. Beware of
booby traps, pitfalls, bogs, quicksand, canebrakes, and the slough of
despondency. There, at the beginning, the sign says, "enter at your own
risk."
        For a mythmaker, to paraphrase Dante,  there is the stage of the
gathering of the scattered leaves of the book of the universe. For a
dawnbreaker, what is entailed is 'a journeying beyond' - a 'breaking of the
boundaries.' The universe is perceived and, as such, it must be given its
due. Space and time are (seemingly) part of the make-up of the cosmos. The
problem for the Dawnbreaker, the Absolutist, the Transcendentalist, the
Advaita Vedantist, is to solve how the transcendent, beyond space and time,
radically pure One became many. Exactly how and why, did That, which is
immutable, eternal, One and non-dual, reveal that which It is not. It is on
this rock that the "nothing ever happens-ists" (ajativadins) crash. On the
other hand, the mythmaker must account for any blemishes and impurities
which might spoil the prototype. To account for the appearance of space and
time is as difficult as to attempt to explain them away. I leave it to
others to tackle the Mythmakers. I will address the Dawnbreakers.