Hughlings Himwich

pater, magister, senex

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David Chalmers: Fragments of consciousness

The New York Review of Books

Poetry 180

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The Lost Teachings of Hughlings J. Himwich (1946-2011)

1. Why me, why not a zombie?

2. Mind matters, and vice-versa, matter . . . . .

3. Existence is the consciousness of the universe.

4. Existence becomes aware of itself (i.e. consciousness of consciousness) in man.

5. There is something it is like to exist.

6. Only the logic of metaphor and poetry is able to express the reality and mystery of existence  itself: that there is anything at all and not nothing, that the many are one and the one many,  that everything participates in the existence of everything else.

7. There is a poetics of existence:

                     When night opens like spring
                and stars come out of dark longing
                like flowers out of the earth

                     Then do I close my eyes
                and see.

8. Existence hides.

9. Consciousness: that by which we seek the truth is itself the answer.

10. The searching soul everywhere finds a mirror.

11. Existence is continuously creating the forms of its own being. Thus light and life come into being.

12. The artist, the poet, & philosopher create everywhere the human form. Thus do beauty, truth and virtue come to be. 

13. When your rational mind starts to divide things into this or that, don’t lose sight of the original fullness of being. 

 
14. The first step in the search for truth is the most important one. Don’t begin with a dichotomy.  Begin with a song of praise for Being itself.

15. Where eros is driven out, there you will find only thanatos.

16. What is deadly about rationality is that it strives to explain everything and to reduce all truth to its truth

17. Drift and ye will find.


18. The search for truth comes straight from the heart.

19. Remember, remember, remember: Unless you somehow already know the truth, you will never recognize it when you find it.

20. Your being, your heart mind soul, is that by which you will know the truth when you find it.


21. Don't let school get in the way of your education.


22. All true speech is sweet delusion.

T         23. Truth is like the daughter I never had. Known by its absence.

32.      24. If there were no soul, there would be no death.

33.      25. Every time you think you are your brain, you are not.

34.      26. Will you not also eat the apple core?

35.      27. Follow the sound. It lead you to me.

36.      28. Mind-at-large or no-mind-at-all.

37.      29. Beware lest you make a ghost of yourself!

38.      30. To one who knows how to look everything, even the universe itself, is a mirror. 

39.      31. What I am not makes everything possible.

40.      32. Your best thoughts remain mysterious even to you.

a       33. Death is fire.

2.      34. Blind sight is the very life of the darkness.

3.      35. Mirrors lie.

4.      36. What it is like to be me is you.

5.      37. Do you not know the sound of your own voice? Listen to the wind.

6.     38. Love makes every word sound like a kiss.

7.     39. Come hither. There is no there here.

8.     40. The universe curves like a woman's body.

9.     41. The journey begins when we forget who we are. 

         42. Hand in hand, I wander alone.

         43. What you call truth, I call silence.


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Fragment 2

"When my grandmother was dying, she asked -- Where do birds go when they die?"

A friend told me this story.  It is the true poetry of life.

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Fragment 1

There are lemons in the apple tree.   

(From a former student of mine at Casady School in Oklahoma City, whose name I have sadly forgotten. He wrote this as one of his fragments for a newly discovered presocratic philosopher. After more than 25 years, the fragment stills enchants me.)

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