Tao Tribute: Erik Satie

It’s not a question of Satie’s relevance. He’s indispensable.

John Cage

Honfleur, May 17, 1866 – Paris, July 1, 1925

"Here lies a great musician, a man of heart, an exceptional citizen"

Possibilities (2 of Wands)

The eagle has an overview of all the possibilities contained in the landscape below, as he flies freely, naturally and effortlessly through the sky. He is really in his domain, very grand and self-contained. This card indicates that you are at a point where a world of possibilities is open to you. Because you have grown more loving towards yourself, more self-contained, you can work easily with others. Because you are relaxed and at ease, you can recognize possibilities as they present themselves, sometimes even before others can see them. Because you are in tune with your own nature, you understand that existence is providing you with exactly what you need. Enjoy the flight! And celebrate all the varied wonders of the landscape spread before you

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Mind can accept any boundary anywhere. But the reality is that, by its very nature, existence cannot have any boundary, because what will be beyond the boundary? - again another sky. That's why I am saying skies upon skies are available for your flight. Don't be content easily. Those who remain content easily remain small: small are their joys, small are their ecstasies, small are their silences, small is their being. But there is no need! This smallness is your own imposition upon your freedom, upon your unlimited possibilities, upon your unlimited potential.

Tao without time

A music outside time and space.

A piece of Tao fallen on Erik Satie and of which he gifted us forever.

ingredients of Tao: the Yuga of Kali

We are the archangels pain of a world that collapses,

we are the children of a new breed unborn,

but he lives through us

as a wind load of new threats and pollen.

We do not know what we mean,

our oracle is sealed

our darkest dreams, our contradictory signs.

We do not have the key,

but we are still faced with a new threshold,

to knock at the door,

to beat as it had in the forest

the first ape, who wanted to be a man.

But we get lost in the revolt,

we get lost in the pride of the rich

or appeal the refusal.

We get lost in the seduction of the government or dreams.

But our sense is not to be victims nor escape

our sense is beyond rebellion.

Our sense is knocking on this door,

cry like children in the night until the door opens.

Sri Aurobindo

standard description:

KalYug (Devanāgarī: कलियुग, lit. "age of (the male demon) Kali", or "age of vice") is the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas described in the Indian scriptures. The other ages are Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga and Dvapara Yuga. According to the Surya Siddhanta, an astronomical treatise that forms the basis of all Hindu and Buddhist calendars, Kali Yuga began at midnight (00:00) on 18 February 3102 BCE in the proleptic Julian calendar, or 23 January 3102 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. This date is also considered by many Hindus to be the day that Krishna died after being mortally wounded by an arrow. Most interpreters of Hindu scriptures believe that earth is currently in Kali Yuga. The Kali Yuga is traditionally thought to last 432,000 years.
Hindus believe that human civilization degenerates spiritually during the Kali Yuga, which is referred to as the Dark Age because in it people are as far removed as possible from God. Hinduism often symbolically represents morality (dharma) as a bull. In Satya Yuga, the first stage of development, the bull has four legs, but in each age morality is reduced by one quarter. By the age of Kali, morality is reduced to only a quarter of that of the golden age, so that the bull of Dharma has only one leg.
Kali Yuga is associated with the apocalypse demon Kali, not to be confused with the goddess Kālī (these are unrelated words in the Sanskrit language). The "Kali" of Kali Yuga means "strife, discord, quarrel, or contention."

ingredients of Tao: Tao Teh Ching

I - OUTLINING THE TAO

The Tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations

arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding

In a few simple phrases the Tao Te Ching (Daodejing, The Book of Tao and Virtue) says all that can be said, and all that cannot be said, about everything that exists, and about everything that does not exist.

Note: the english translation here used is the one by Stephen Mitchell
http://www.duhtao.com/translations.html

ingredients of Tao: the Pattern that Connects

What pattern connects the crab to the lobster

and the orchid to the primrose,

and all the four of them to me?

And me to you?

And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction

and to the schizophrenic in another?

Mind and Nature, 1979

Singular figure of the scientist, one that has made this kind of questions and much more singular person who devoted his life searching for answers. Gregory Bateson was this type of scientist: impatient with all academic forms, he devoted himself to mess up things rather than to order them. Bateson with his work forces us to rethink the whole, to relate what is theoretically correct relationship, leads us to a new and different perspective on things. "Draw the lines of an ecology of mind is to lay the foundations for a science that still does not exist as organic corpus of theory or knowledge," writes in the opening of Steps to an Ecology of Mind, his most known and appreciated book. And that is precisely what Bateson tried to do for a lifetime: to put on the table of the most seemingly unrelated questions, like "bilateral symmetry of an animal, the structural arrangement of the leaves in a plant, the subsequent amplification of the arms race the practices of courtship, the nature of the game, the grammar of a sentence, the mystery of biological evolution and the crisis in which we found the relationship between man and environment. " This is the core, the heart of the search for Bateson: the attempt to discover, describe, systematize the "pattern that connects."

Multifaceted figure of a scholar, he devoted himself during life to multiple disciplines: biology, anthropology, psychology, ethology, so as to make himself the author of a singularly innovative thinking. The formation of Bateson owes much to his father. Biologist William Bateson was a very well known, to him it must, inter alia, the term "genetics". Gregory Bateson graduated in natural sciences and, as in the best traditions in the footsteps of Darwin reached the Galapagos to seal his apprenticeship biologist. Later he devoted himself to anthropology and met and married Margaret Mead with which he led the fieldwork in the island of Bali. Collaborated with the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Clinic in San Francisco for a study of the psychiatric community. In the years that followed deepened communication studies, addressing in particular the behavior and communication of otters and seals in contexts of play. Created its own working group with whom he developed the theory of "double bind." The findings of this group, particularly on family communication and the genesis of schizophrenia will be very important and will inspire more research, laying the foundations of family systems therapy. Its vicissitudes sospinsero him down to Hawaii where he worked on the language of dolphins. All these experiences led him to mature his ideas and then condense to an Ecology of mind that will bring the first official recognition. And hence its tremendous ability to relate the various fields of its object of study to make a figure so exceptional.

In 1972, Bateson published his most famous book, Steps to an ecology of mind, which sought to rethink the human condition. There had thickened studies of a life, his reflections on schizophrenia, on animal and human communication and cybernetics. It is in this book that deals with those who will be the themes of his thought, an attempt to delineate the "connecting structure" that underlies all his work. Research that attempts to systematize definitely Bateson in Mind and Nature published in 1979, a few months before his death. Bateson for each biological organism has the ability to learn, think and decide. If epistemology is the way in which individual organisms and assemblies of living organisms know, think and decide, then everything is epistemology, all is process knowledge. Bateson has devoted his life to finding a property that connects the man to other living organisms and living organisms to the environment. Enemy of all rigid dualism, it was increasingly convinced of the centrality of the relationship. Liquid Descartes because his allegations were "simply shattered the universe in which we live." For Bateson the self is not separated from others and from the context, everything is interconnected, interdependent. Man is part of the whole, it is a key component, an organic piece of the universe. And, like any part of a cybernetic epistemology and is able to influence anything, but is not able to control everything. Along with a number of scholars such as Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Warren McCulloch and others from life to "Macy Conferences" and cybernetic theory that attempts to explain the behavior and dynamics of complex biological systems. Bateson was defined above all a "stir of ideas," but it was also the author of some real breakthroughs as the theory of "double bind" that has permission to look at it another way the problem of schizophrenia. In the latter part of his life, when he was seriously ill, he wrote, along with Mary Catherine, daughter, where angels hesitate. The unity of nature which he allegedly opened up the field to a series of reflections that were the land par excellence of religion. "His thoughts," wrote the daughter, "was understandable perhaps only with the kind of metaphors to which we have used the religion." Atheist training, Bateson realized that he was venturing into dangerous territory, where it was easy to be misunderstood. Obviously, the scientist will be approached with caution, on the other hand, his work had led him to ask questions before which warned of having to field a wisdom and courage of a different type from that followed until then.
That was a major turning of its path of man and scientist

Freely adapted from an article by Louisa Sberlati
www.frameonline.it/Fuoricampo_Bateson.htm

ingredients of Tao: Global Dynamics Processes

Process: a network of changes, exchanges, relationships, activities or actions all related together. A process takes place, or define, a system (system or framework of interaction), a set of entities (elements of the system) connected together through reciprocal relationships visible or defined by its observer. In the systems defined as complex the elements and inter-relationships between them belong to different types, describable or synthesized as system levels, or levels of complexity. Similarly processes that occur in a complex system are describable, or synthesized, into levels of complexity of the process. The broader context of description in which it occurs, or apply, a process is called matrix of the process.

Dynamic:(as opposed to static); by its nature any process is inherently dynamic. A static process is one where the number and type of elements interconnected, the system of interaction, the type and number of interactions are defined and do not change. A dynamic process means a process where the number and type of inter-linked elements, the system(s) of interaction, the type and number of interactions and levels of complexity of the system(s) and process vary dynamically. A particular case of dynamic process is a meta-process, a process of processes, where the elements of interaction are both elements of the system, systems and processes.

Global (as opposed to local and universal), a process by which the system of interaction is the entire planet.

The greatest possible example of GDPs, or better than UDPs, is the Te of Tao, the realization of Tao in the universe, a ...-meta-meta-meta-meta-... dynamic universal process with infinite levels on infinite systems and infinite elements which lasts from about 13 billion years and whose matrix is the indescribable and unknowable Tao:

The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao.
The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.
Having no name, it is the originator of Heaven and Earth;
Having a name, it is the Mother of all things.