Meditations on the Ecstatic Exteriority of the Particularated Ego
Meditations on the Ecstatic Exteriority of the Particularated Ego



First Meditation (Foreplay: The Ground Work)
The freely-formed mind denies its own subject, and declares unending war on the vacuum. Space and time, being mere secretions of glistening rivulets and globules of jasmine spray, divide the phenomenal field unevenly, presenting a bias, an asymmetry. SPACE is a hot matrix of infinitely non-viscous fluid, whereas TIME is an emulsion of point forces congealing into parallel crystalline fibers that resist backsliding: a shark skin dimension that a time-traveling body is unwise to stroke in more than one direction. Thus we are fated to spiral into a mystique of citizenship that extends beyond anything other than the absolute mental atomic. Sheer jolts of brilliant flesh leap upstream. A battered universal boat with a clear crystalline deck picks out particulars swimming in a sea of senility. A stirred cloud worries whether ubiquity entails vacuity. (Hint: It does not.) That time, space, transmission, and representation are omnipresent is an acceptable permutation of human performance. A diplomat of the right coaching could be seen through to eternity, while one of the wrong spoils, accumulating a negative moss, barred permanently from the outward.

Second Meditation (On the Ubiquity of the Psychic and its Modes)
Interpreting panpsychism unearths duplicity, that is, two modes of the notion. The first considers each part of existence as mentally self sufficient, thus the entirety of existence contains a psychological plurality. The second considers the psychological unity of the whole, thus despite an apparent physical plurality, the psychological is unitary. In either case the question arises: what are the mental contours contained within? For the pluralist mode of panpsychism, the question is: what are the intentional and phenomenal landscapes of each particularity? Two options are present for each mind: extrinsic and intrinsic. For the unitary mode, however, only one option is present: the intrinsic. This follows from the fact that in considering the universe as an individual, there is no other for it to be related to: it, by definition, can relate only to itself, (which is to say that it relates not at all). But in the case of the other mode, i.e., that in which each proper part of the totality is considered to have, or instantiate, a mind, a further problem arises. Certain specifications of the intentional and phenomenal contours of each psychic individual will not suffice to make each individual psyche as pandemic as the "pan" in "panpsychism" might suggest. That is, if each individual psyche (in this mode) experiences or thinks about that which is less than everything, then psychically, it is less than PANpsychic. Thus, the fullest determination of this latter mode is had when each proper part of the totality allows its phenomenal and intentional contours to envelop the totality, which is to say, to allow each proper part of the totality to experience and think about nothing less than the totality itself. Only in this most full of the determinations of the other mode is a certain symmetry between the two aforementioned modes of the panpsychic given rise to: they intentionalize and phenomenalize all and only the same thing.

Third Meditation (On the Relation of the Particularated Universal to the Spatialized Temporal)
The ability to distinguish universals, (qualities, features,) entails being able to distinguish different tokens of different types, because one only encounters tokens. (Actually, this only holds of the particularated ego, not of mentality in general. More on this in the Meditations to follow.) But how could this distinction be made if all the tokens appeared at all and only the same spacetime points? If all the tokens appeared at all and only the same spacetime points the distinction between different qualities could not be distinguished in experience. If there were no spatiotemporal differences between tokens, no qualitative differences could obtain. To imagine a world with no spatiotemporal differences is to imagine a world of NoSpace and NoTime. Imagine a NoSpace and NoTime world in which you are experiencing only one quality. Now imagine experiencing only two qualities. Have you really imagined experiencing two qualities in the second case? How is it different from experiencing only one quality? Imagine experiencing only pain. Now Imagining experiencing only pain and pleasure. These are your only experiences. You experience them continuously for the eternity of a temporally dimensionless instant. What is the difference between experiencing the pleasure and pain as two co-instantiated qualities and experiencing them as one solitary instantiated quality (a single feeling that is a homogenous blend of pleasure and pain)? What would it mean for you to be able to conceive of the difference in a spatiotemporal Points-ville? What would it mean for the experience to support the distinction? Nothing. Nothing. It is meaningless. Thus: Qualitative differences entail numerical differences. Numerical differences entail spatiotemporal differences. (Qualitative differences entail spatiotemporal differences.) Thus, in a world that allows experiences to be intelligibly OF anything whatsoever is one that allows experiences to introduce differentia into the forms of outer and inner sense, AKA, imperfections in space and time. Contrary to certain abhorrent traditions, however, space and time, while forms of sense, may not be barred from also being objects of sense. Plunge thyself into vacuum and feel the white hot bite of absolute zero against your exposed flesh, and THEN attempt to refute me on this regard.

Fourth Meditation (On the War on the Vacuum)
To wage War on the vacuum entails more than countering loss with mass, but further to counter the entropic with the extropic. Even further still, it requires that the periodic, yet perpetual, be countered with the perpetually novel (the non-periodic yet non-stochastic). The war on the vacuum is fought primarily on a psychic front, though this entails that certain physical struggles obtain. Given this inevitable psychologistic accompaniment of the Dionysian with material dynamism, it turns out that the panpsychic (in either mode) are also soldiers.

Fifth Meditation (On the Equation of the Viscous with the PanOptic)
Viscosity is equivalent to the threefold conjunction of embodiment, subjectivity, and inertia. The antithesis is infinitely non-viscous, allowing for infinite degrees of freedom which in turn allows for the combinatoric potentiality that is the essence of the objective, (i.e., the conceptual) thus instantiating an infinitely elastic and ubiquitous retinal membrane through which the view from anywhere and everywhere is transduced.

Sixth Meditation (Climax: the Spatiotemporal Localization of the Ecstatic Ego)
The particularized (or particularated) ego is that subunit of totality that (i) is unable to phenomenalize or intentionalize the totality, thus making its psychic contours conform to a finite spacetime volume analogous to (but not necessarily coextensive with) the finite spacetime volume of its instantiating matter and (ii) cognizant of the secretion-status of the forms of inner and outer sense. This ego, this psycho-atomic fleck of debris, achieves the ecstatic in resisting the indefinite extensionality of the continuum. In so doing, it is like the drawn string of a bow: awaiting ultimate projection into that against which it currently resists. Upon ultimate release, the ecstatic individual flings itself against the crystalline resistance of time's directionality, and invites dissolution. The infinitesimal increment between the death of integrity and the birth of dissolution defines the minimal and maximal boundaries between the scope of the particularized ego and the panpsychic, panoptic, vacuum that is its enemy. Alas, what has been described so far is not so much the way to win the war as it is to wage it.