THE PARADOX BETWEEN LINEAR- & CIRCULAR PERCEPTION
Spiritual & Philosophical Context
Plato’s Allegory of the cave provides an excellent image of the ego’s self-imposed imprisonment through specific familiarized patterns, symbolized by the shadows on a cave wall. In the allegory, Socrates tells the story of a group of people who have lived all of their lives chained to the wall, in which their only view is the blank wall before them. The people watch the shadows that are projected on the wall by the changing light and begin to ascribe form to the shadows. The shadows account for the entirety of the prisoners ‘ limited experience of reality.
This points to an important aspect upon the conditioned perspective of the individual, indicating the paradox of relative truth: Our entranced ego ascribes meaning to the shadows of life, engaging in the drama as if it were the most gripping soap opera, and yet ignorant of the source that creates the shadows before it - “the light of the spiritual sun.”, Mark Jones writes. Both perceptions of life are real & valid, and both represent facets of the dual nature of the cosmos, yet, they contradict each other.
A similar symbolism and analogy of this paradox resides in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis through Linguistic relativity.
Our language - a product developed through an acquired experience & lived perception of life - restricts our thought processes – our language shapes our reality. Simply, the language that we use shapes the way we think, how we see the world and therefore indicates the relative perception we inhabit.
Upon investigating this paradox in my own practice, I came up with the following questions: What, in my life and artistic practice is the same - but not? Where can I identify PARADOXES? How do I deal with this separation? How do I deal with the BINARY - wanting there to be resolution, but one part of the duality is contradicted by the other part and yet both of them are presenting truths?
I got aware of the multiplicity and paradox of perception in my artistic process in contrasting the linear- with the circular perception in my artistic creation on multiple levels, further detailed below.
In the section “EVOLUTIONARY CYCLES & PSYCHOLOGICAL BACKGROUND”, I elaborated some personal experienced pitfalls that happened when I engaged in solely one side of the polarity. The acquired mindset of only committing to a reductionistic scientific mindset, the left-brain, logic, rational & linear aspect of the mind, which is a huge part of my cultural heritage and thinking pattern that I grew up in, where reduction & separation of the world into their corresponding sub parts are perceived to be the only path to truth. It is easy then, for instance to get caught up in the awareness of sequence based processing as strictly linear in perception.
Evolutionary Astrology & the Buddhist Heart Sutra as a paradox of dualism
The Pluto complex as described in Evolutionary Astrology within the context of Jeffrey Wolf Green, Mark Jones and Simon Vorster, delineates a paradox of dualism between the ego - the linear perception of one’s emotional arc of life - and the self which can only be ultimately transcended through the realization of the non-dual nature of reality - circular in perception. (I refer the word ego primarily to a psychoanalytical sense, originally from “Das Ich” (Freud) - The “I”)
Mark Jones in his work “healing the soul” elaborates: “From the vantage point of the ego which sees before it a linear world of cause and effect, the polarities within the world (Yin & Yang, the Polarity points in Astrology, the programming partners in Gene Keys) appear to be real. The apparent dualism of ego and self, or Samsara and Nirvana also appears to be real. But as the Buddhist Heart Sutra beautifully teaches, Samsara is Nirvana and Nirvana is Samsara: they are both the same. This is the radicalism of non-duality.”
The concept of saṃsāra is closely associated with the circular concept of reincarnation, in which the person continues to be born and reborn in various realms and forms. The growing body of evidence for reincarnation {Christopher Bache PhD, Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life, as well as from Richard Rudd } as the soul and its development with the karmic cause and effect through the lens of Evolutionary Astrology in the context mentioned above, shine light on the paradox of the individuated awareness - ego - as linear and the infinite being - the soul - as circular, and is inspiring my artistic work significantly. The Perennial Philosophy - with it’s emphasis on long cycles of soul evolution - informs this research
While it is important for me to contextualize this work within the field of non-dual nature as circular - transcending the linear plane - it is equally important to remain grounded in material reality - in a linear perception. Within the relative world, the polarities are both relevant to our divided experience and they are explored as valid observations to the perception and impression of the individual. My artistic research and musical outcome in creating circular rhythmic electronic music with a linear sequence based framework is my poetic contribution to this paradox between duality and non duality.
The paradox between circularity and linearity in my own aesthetic and musical creation, as as well as in the context of Classical Indian Music
I additionally got confronted with this paradox through the complex of analyzing the musical rhythmic- and melodic structure of the music I was creating. On one hand I looked at the musical creation clearly as a circulation. In my initial interpretation, as well as my perceived experience, the rhythmic and melodic structures occurred in cycles and transcended the linear perception, because the improvisational approach gave rise to a transformative potential in the sonic creation, which unfolded an open mode of listening that was not bound to linear patterns, analog to African Polyrhythmic Drum Circles, or Classical Indian Music. Each sequence is filled with new rhythmic & melodic combinations through improvisation, as well as materializes in a generative feedback, resulting in a constant, sometimes very subtle developing flow - rebirthing in cycles within the musical structure. Yet, in the same manner and as an analogy to this perceptional paradox, my own musical creation confirmed to a linear lens through sequence based processing, as a main building block of the musical framework.
An example of this paradox resides in examining the cycle within a micro- and macro perspective. It can be seen as a linear phenomenon in the way of replication, like when the earth is rotating around her own axis, as well as around the sun, we are witnessing a linear approach of spring occurring every year, followed by summer, then autumn and so on.
On the other side of the polarity we are also witnessing that the vital force - life itself - is constantly manifesting in new cyclic ways through manifested evolution.
We see this paradox between linear and circular perception also within Classical Indian Music. The Taalas are the rhythmic cycles or patterns that form the foundation in both, the Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian) traditions, albeit with some variations in their structure and terminology. They provide a structural framework for both the melodic and rhythmic aspects of a musical composition or performance. Each Taala has a unique arrangement and rhythmic sequence (linear), which helps the musicians and listeners to keep track of the rhythmic cycle (circular). It is interesting to note, that within Vedic Cosmology, the cyclic patterns represented by the karma and reincarnation of the soul, is omnipresent within the philosophy, spirituality and practicality of Classical Indian Music as well. Karma is a Sanskrit word meaning action, or deed, understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect.
Like each planet has it’s on gravitational field and astral bodies that are orbiting around them, all planets in the solar system orbiting around the sun. Like the solar system, the overarching framework of my research describes a concentric system, artistically expressed through a common stable resonance that gives the music an ambient character. Analog to a Raga - and in a wider sense, the function of the Tanpura in Classical Indian Music, - there is an underlying melodic and modal centerpiece that integrates and contextualizes the improvised circulations.
Why is rhythm viewed as a cycle in Indian classical music? Technically, any rhythm that repeats is cyclical. But smaller cycles can sometimes fool you into thinking of rhythm as linear. The same trap exists with any broad kind of phenomenon in nature. Understanding this cyclical nature of rhythm and melody is essential for improvisation in Indian classical music.
In my research I came along this fine line between linearity and circularity as a phenomenon, that is based on my perception. Again, initially, to me it was intuitively clear, that I was making music on a cycle based nature. Sonic fluctuations that are working through a rhythmic potential, explored through improvisation always carried a distinct fluidity, a flow and dynamic, which reminded me more of breathing rather than a fixed structured and “quantized- sequenced” phenomenon. Since I built a modular instrumental surface, that is constructed on an sequence based improvisational framework, I still needed to confront my perception. There is a fine line, a paradox between a linear & a circular phenomenon.
