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CP 2.85. "Let us now consider what could appear as being in the present instant were it utterly cut off from past and future. We can only guess; for nothing is more occult than the absolute present. There plainly could be no action; and without the possibility of action, to talk of binarity would be to utter words without meaning. There might be a sort of consciousness, or feeling, with no self; and this feeling might have its tone. Notwithstanding what William James has said, I do not think there could be any continuity like space, which, though it may perhaps appear in an instant in an educated mind, I cannot think could do so if it had no time at all; and without continuity parts of the feeling could not be synthetized; and therefore there would be no recognizable parts. There could not even be a degree of vividness of the feeling; for this [the degree of vividness] is the comparative amount of disturbance of general consciousness by a feeling.†1 At any rate, such shall be our hypothesis, and whether it is psychologically true or not is of no consequence. The world would be reduced to a quality of unanalyzed feeling. Here would be an utter absence of binarity. I cannot call it unity; for even unity supposes plurality. I may call its form Firstness, Orience, or Originality. It would be something which is what it is without reference to anything else within it or without it, regardless of all force and of all reason. Now the world is full of this element of irresponsible, free, Originality. Why should the middle part of the spectrum look green rather than violet? There is no conceivable reason for it nor compulsion in it. Why was I born in the nineteenth century on Earth rather than on Mars a thousand years ago? Why did I today sneeze just five hours forty-three minutes and twenty-one seconds after a certain man in China whistled (supposing this did happen)? We know perhaps why a meteorite should fall to the earth, if it gets in the Earth's way; but why should the arrangements of nature be such that this particular meteorite was in the Earth's way? All these are facts which are as they are, simply because they happen to be so. We mostly neglect them; but there are cases, as in qualities of feeling, self-consciousness, etc., in which such isolated flashes come to the front. Originality, or Firstness, is another of my Categories."
Another one which I should let stand alone. Here is Peirce originating nonduality and now forgotten, not read, nor known. And he is just as precious as the little vignette he proposes of a sneeze synched round the world. I have such vignettes related to the pigeons who sometimes come and occasion a seraphic dialog on my 8th floor ledge above Broadway.
I love the way Peirce describes instant. The only life possible in the now is to take now and pare it down into something in which neither time nor space is discernable.
Why do we bother with opposites? Can you fathom? I cannot.
I cry at the wonder of universality in everything.
I reach out to the fragments of music, the hang drum sounds of lost dexterity, and marvel at how reality itself flickers unexpectedly from day to day.
Another one which I should let stand alone. Here is Peirce originating nonduality and now forgotten, not read, nor known. And he is just as precious as the little vignette he proposes of a sneeze synched round the world. I have such vignettes related to the pigeons who sometimes come and occasion a seraphic dialog on my 8th floor ledge above Broadway.
I love the way Peirce describes instant. The only life possible in the now is to take now and pare it down into something in which neither time nor space is discernable.
Why do we bother with opposites? Can you fathom? I cannot.
I cry at the wonder of universality in everything.
I reach out to the fragments of music, the hang drum sounds of lost dexterity, and marvel at how reality itself flickers unexpectedly from day to day.
