Dialogues concerning Dreams and Demonstration: Lessons from Jaina Perspectives

takaharu oda and vassilis galanos

In the month of May (or May Not), a partially impartial observer finds themself between a Tree and a [Utility Pole]. That spacetime may be a timespace making them dream of a meeting between Theodorus and Vincent van Gogh.

§1 Good evening, Vince. I’d like to begin our 3D – Dialogues concerning Dreams and Demonstration. May I partake of a levitational calmness in your prekṣā-dhyāna (Jaina meditation)?

[Yes, Theo, what is it, this timespace?]

§2 Yes, we may meditate at this possible timespace. [1] I’ve been yearning to ask you about depicting something in a picture. This is a non-gravitational question about representation, whilst my leaves keep falling to the ground. Can you depict any object that does not exist? If painting is an act of creation (imagination), then is it also an act of destruction? In other words, if you can create and destroy, respectively, then can you depict tomorrow, a cat that is a dog? Last night I had a dream about such a creature. In the centre of the world being destroyed, may this depiction deepen our spirituality or mental capacity. May this imagination ascertain how you are awakened to divine love within.

[To depict is to de-sign. It is an immaterial staircase leading its climber (signifier [saṃsāra]) to the climber’s inner state represented within the staircase (sign [māyā]) – this image was taken and printed via purely analogical means; processed digitally. The analogue/digital distinction bears patterns of similarity with the creation/destruction, existence/non-existence, gravitation/levitation pseudo-dichotomies, including the dichotomy/pseudo-dichotomy (pseudo)dichotomy.]

§3 Let’s think according to Jaina logic, Vince. When ego is intentionality that makes mental representation possible, is it simply false to state that ego imagines an inexistent object? But for love, we can’t think about the other. But for the other existence, we can’t love, either. Is this begging the question (petitio principii)? Not necessarily. If neither love nor the other exists, then the statement ‘ego imagines an inexistent object’ can be inexpressible (avaktavya). [2]This is in a sense, perhaps (syāt), beyond bivalence (true or false).

[The best probable answer to all those terminological maybes is ‘maybe.’ One always needs to consider the utilitarian argument, itself the Jaina logic generator. If your question is about lovego, confirmation of self via love for other, and love of self as confirmation of (other) existence, you might also remind yourself that love relates to biological and sociological patterns of service and satisfaction; remember, I am the Utility Pole.]
§4Then, pragmatically con-vince me, ‘Do you practise philosophy or do you die? [in Japanese: tetsugaku yarimasuka, soretomo shinimasuka?]’ This is a set of questions by C, whom I respect. I’d like to answer yes to the first question and no to the second. I can’t die yet. However, I must aspire after truth to die in philosophical peace (ataraxia). Moreover, nothing is absolute, for in a sense, it is true, false, and inexpressible to state as follows: no sooner were I utterly destroyed than my love for a god could be realised.

[We can go on like this foreverywhere, Theo, but may I remind you that to philosophise (to be lover of wisdom) ascertained you are dying (gravitating towards your grave) while you aim to reach your lover (levitating towards your wisdom). Every form of death contains the seeds of new philosophy and every form of philosophy contains confirmation of death. This might be a spatio-temporal definition of love. And by definition, every thing defined is finished and confined. To define love is to kill it.]

§5 Vince, there is no other reason for me meditating with you than asking this question. That is, I wanted to ascertain an ultimate relationship with a god (deity) within you, or your love for that god, spiritual object. 

[But the object itself is forever dying. What if your want is leading you to eternal torment, Theo?]

§6 Is relating to any divine object tormented? When I love or think about a god, my suffering is assuaged by this aboutness. Although our flesh may return to the ground before long, I wanted to hear, from your mouth, a certain indestructible relationship with a god within. In my discourse, this relational indestructibility exists if I think about something divine in my soul. This statement has its truth-value, which is perhaps inexpressible. 

[Now/here you’re talking! Or better: close, but no cigar. Perhaps, what is indestructible is the will to indestructibility. What we label inexpressible is our amorous mechanism towards the irrelevant and what we label irrelevant is our defense mechanism against the inexpressible. Divine love is generated out of the indestructibly levitating force of the gravitating will to indestructibility. My own Goddess, gains her indestructibility from Her ability to destroy and cause a war in Troy. She also self-destructs every now and again; in this elusive, allusive, and illusive manner, she is able to remain indestructible by suggestion. Indestructible relations are the ones flirting with destruction in a consistently inconsistent way. My ear is a good example – see how everyone worships it!]

§7 Vince, I’m so sorry for your left ear. Paul Gauguin told me that it was cut off. Would you be destroyed sooner or later? Once again, I’d love to hear you preach a sermon brimmed over with love.

[See, you are already sorry about my non-existent ear you have only heard about its existence. And yet, by being sorry, you become my ear-lover, in the same way you are wisdom-lover (philosopher). But my ear is dead. Evidence: I have depicted it and you design it in your own mind. What’s in that coffin?]

§8 That coffin represents something dying within yourself, doesn’t it? On reflection, when we are to die ourselves, shall a god feel sad for us within themself? Will this actually occur within ourselves? What do you think about a god or deity? I think they is a judge. Being alive or dead, I feel myself (jīva) continuously judged about truth, falsity, and inexpressibility by such a god, whose state is perhaps my own ‘liberation’ (mokṣa, apavarga, kaivalya, niḥśreyasa, nirvāṇa, etc.).

[As partly outlined above, I think of god as a dying entity. She will die before me and her death will be my only judge, myself able to judge about my own self whether She is my Guiding Goddess, Glorious Grotesque Gambler – as a utility pole without an ear that I am, here is a 5G to counter your 3D.]

§9 However, Vince, don’t you accept a set of 7S (syāt, ‘conditional’) in syādvāda (theory of saptabhaṅgī, ‘seven modes’)? In Jaina logic as such, propositions are to exhaustively express their true (asti, t), false (nāsti, f), and inexpressible (avaktavya, i) predicates (truth-functional operators). [3]The following are the seven modes of predication: ‘perhaps it is’ (syāt) ‘certainly’ (eva) 1. {t}; 2. {f}; 3. {t,f}; 4. {i}; 5. {t,i}; 6. {f,i}; 7. {t,f,i}. If ℘(S) denotes the powerset (set of all subsets) of S, then the cardinality of ℘({t,i,f})=23=8. Since the empty set {} – dead void – is excluded (at least one element is included), ℘({t,i,f})–1=7. So, I just wanted to hear how a seeker after truth like you contemplated a god(dess) within the seven-fold predication. There, does any meaning of your sermon determine the truth-condition of the statement about your goddess? Rather, are you certainly (eva) facing yourself in the absence of divine truth?

[This is a good question people don’t ask often, Theo, thank you. Yet, your questions still suffer from an extension of the either/or determinism; they do not take into account distortion and continuity. (Distortion can be an extra Die-mention in your model.) How funny and politico-pedagogically genial to use formal logic to describe the unformulatable and indescribable! The point of the seven-fold model in Jaina logic, as interpreted by people of our timespace is to move away from models. You have transformed a functional way to move on into a static form of numerology! Instead of ‘2’, you now use ‘7’! But what happens, for example between modes 6 and 7? What is that state of becoming between {being inexistent and inexpressible and irrelevant} and {being inexpressible and irrelevant}? Pedagogically irrelevant as it may be, I sense power asymmetries in what context individuals and institutions decide and what content falls within the context (mode of predication). Consider gender options in official documents; who decides the state of indeterminability for ‘other’ options and how many of the ‘others’ will decide to fit into one of three options, thus rendering a unique gender identity inexistent? Jaina genders have their limitations too! Here. Take a gaze into my inner reflection and where it has led me.]

§10 Gazing up into heaven, I am craving for divine love. Is your craving satisfied?

[To crave for is to gain satisfaction. To achieve total satisfaction is to negate it. I don’t fall in your traps. I prefer to observe and draw divine maps.]

§11 In fact, if and only if we assumed that we lost a god within, would we not enthusiastically love (think about) that god? That is, because of a counterfactual belief that we had not lost a god until we lost, we could have assumed the loss to be true. Otherwise, we ensure the other six predicates.  Nonetheless, were a god truly lost, where would be our love for them? Is it nowhere and everywhere? 

[Wow, my harsh stance actually disciplined your thought. Brilliant. Now, to continue with your primitive (yet not primordial) counterfactual, you need to consider your Pascalian last sentence to the power of, say, 2. Your love/death for a (non)god is at the same time (a) nowhere and everywhere, (b) non-nowhere and everywhere, yet not nowhere or everywhere, and (c) somewhere. My friend with two names, Koizumi Yakumo/Lafcadio Hearn, reminded me recently of the primordiality inscribed in night dreams of levitation. ‘Could the feeling of dream-flight be partly interpreted by organic memory of conditions of life more ancient than human. – life weighty, and winged, and flying heavily, a little above the ground?’ His emphasis on ‘little above’ is telling of the tension of contradiction so natural in primordiality.]

§12 Perhaps, he might have been so impressed by your painting, the Starry Night, that he confessed after the above quote: ‘Certainly the Cosmic Life in each of us has been all things in all forms of space and time.’ [4] In such a cosmic and primordial timespace, but prima facie contradicting yourself here and now, where have you been, Vince?

[Crafting pleasures to the ear; and a self-portrait.]

§13 Your lost left ear might be hearing: you don’t despair anywhere. Why? I despair and hope both. I deny and affirm both. However, following the Jaina syādvāda (seven-fold modal predication), I can’t make an absolute statement. Amongst seven predicated possibilities, in a certain sense (syāt), a statement about divine love is true, false, and inexpressible (mode 7 in §9). Instead of daydreaming, you may confess that you were right in the midst of truth. This is significant, for you are making the truth metaphysical in the reality where you exist. Destroying any illusion and fiction, I genuinely desire to philosophise with you yonder distilled spiritual love that we can see.

[This is partially true. Now, become a craftsperson and try to render manipulable, like clay, the continuities and discontinuities between continuity and discontinuity as I did in the following picture. Every illusion is a reality and every reality is an illusion, or so the Goddess told me prior to our discussion. She might have changed her mind without minding the change n-timespaces by now.]

§14 Vince, thanks for your Jaina response. Still, I pragmatically imagine our spiritual love for a god more than ever, somewhere between destruction and creation. After all, can we laugh at nonsense? If you meaninglessly laugh, then are you called crazy or blessed? Far from nonsense, a certain Islamic philosopher emolliently said thus. ‘Life has only five days: days of your birth and death, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.’ I truthfully intend to ascertain – demonstrate – our spoken and unspoken dreams this very day, so that you, jina (conqueror), could live tomorrow. [5]

[Laugh is the expression of being (or better: becoming) in this somewhere of in-between states and momentarily recognising them as absolutes. One might assert that the indefinable gravity of levitating belly laugh is itself a meditation, as long as, at least, it does not turn into another silent laughing yoga session; if it does, let me watch, however! Here is a picture I’ve taken of you right before we meet on the front door of this laughable and laughing realm.]

§15 In that abstract realm, is your imagination a dream? Pray tell me, what is your beloved dreaming about, and are you their dream? If there were any logical destruction within your existence as a spark of dreams, there could be an untrue (false and/or inexpressible) premiss. Let’s validly demonstrate this by the reductio ad absurdum argument.

1. C exists. [Assumption]

2. If a god does not exist, then C does not exist.

3. Either the god or C does not exist. [Not both the god and C exist.]

4. The god exists. [Modus tollens, 1,2]

5. The god does not exist. [Modus ponendo tollens, 1,3]

6. Therefore, the god exists and does not exist. [Contradictio, 4,5]

Pray tell me, as you know C, if this argument went wrong (ex contradictione quodlibet, ECQ, ‘from contradiction any proposition follows’). If we, per impossibile, concluded the contradiction of divine existence (denying all the true sets – {t}, {t,f}, {t,i}, {t,f,i}), then could we indirectly prove the denial of C’s existence, i.e. P1 to be false and/or inexpressible ({f}, {i}, {f,i})? Actually, which premiss is fallacious in this argument? If P3 is purely false {f}, then denying P3 (neither of them exists or both of them exist) is perhaps {t}, {t,f}, {i}, {t,i}, {f,i}, or {t,f,i}. If both a god and C existed, in relation to P2, would we infer any immaculate relationship between god and human? Realising this relation may be called love. [6] But no matter how much we love a god or goddess, we shan’t always be able to express our spiritual relationship with them and any object (mental representation) in a genuinely true sense, whence sometimes inexpressible. Therefore, realising no statement to be absolutely true from our relativist/pluralist nayavāda (theory of ‘points of view’) and anekāntavāda (theory of ‘many-sidedness of reality’), we can perhaps inexpressibly imagine a canine cat.

[I think we have come to what locals call a ‘we agree that we disagree’ moment, although we extend this to a ‘we agree that we have to disagree although our disagreements are compatible yet necessarily discontinuous’. The ‘can’ as you said at last, to be able and canny, to contain – like a can of worms – gives only partial birth to the canine cat. This is why the Goddess has spoken to me about ‘dogmas’ and ‘catmas’. Hence, my very own, and admittedly yours from now on, argument about catmosphere between the realms of {somewhere}-plus-{nowhere/everywhere}.]

1. C does not exist. [False assumption]

2. If C does not exist, existence ex-ists.

3. Existence and non-existence do not co-ex-ist, like Theo and Vince. [Mutual negation]

4. Any god ex-ists, but this ‘ex-ist’ is to be taken with a pinch of inexistent salt. [Ignoratio elenchi]

5. Non-existence is a god, because they has already died.

6. Non-existence ex-ists. [Dictum de omni, 4,5]

7. Existence does not ex-ist. [Modus ponendo tollens, 3,6]

8. Existence ex-ists. [Modus ponens, 1,2]

9. Therefore, existence ex-ists and does not ex-ist. [Contradictio, 7,8]

Existence and non-existence, lo and behold, are flowing in gravilevitational densities of pollinating potentialities. The Tree and [the Utility Pole] became equighosts/unequigods.

Endnotes

[1] If you listen to the Tree[Utility Pole] ostinati (repetitive reflexive sounds), then certain timespace loops may be perceived in the spirit of Salomé Voegelin. ‘It is not a pre-formed container but is built continually as the fleeting timespace place of my present listening. It does not provide recognition but invites curiosity and even doubt, in the place perceived and in myself.’ ‘Pre-empting the sonic dynamic of this non-dialectical play I remove the dash between time-space and bring time and space together in the term timespace. This avoids the possibility of separation and subsequent return to exclusivity, and instead joins them in one complex sensory concept.’ See her Sonic Possible Worlds, London: Bloomsbury, 2014, 3; Listening to Noise and Silence, London: Continuum, 2010, 124–125.

[2] We hold a view that the inexpressible is one side of the coin and the other expressed side is the limit between truth and falsity as the third truth-value (also called indeterminate, e.g. in Hans Reichenbach’s three-valued quantum logic). On the grounds of synechism (theory of ‘continuity’), C.S. Peirce argues (in a 40-page letter to William James, 26 Feb 1909; 1976, 3/2: 851, emphasis original): ‘I have long felt that it is a serious defect in existing logic that it takes no heed of the limit between two realms. I do not say that the Principle of Excluded Middle is downright false; but I do say that in every field of thought whatsoever there is an intermediate ground between positive assertion and positive negation which is just as Real as they.’ Whilst he did not reject the principles of excluded middle and bivalence, Peirce is nowadays considered the first logician who defined the operators for triadic (three-valued) logic. However, this view may be excoriated when we appreciate the third value of avaktavya (‘inexpressibe’) in Jainism. On our non-classical view, Peirce would not disagree that his logic is continuous with Jaina seven-valued logic (§9 below). See Peirce, The New Elements of Mathematics, 4 vols., ed. Caloryn Eisele, Den Haag: Mouton, 1976; Robert Lane, Peirce on Realism and Idealism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 191; Marc Champagne, ‘A Pragmatic-Semiotic Defence of Bivalence’, History and Philosophy of Logic, 2021.

[3] Graham Priest, ‘Jaina Logic: A Contemporary Perspective’, History and Philosophy of Logic 29/3, 2008, 265–266; Piotr Balcerowicz, ‘Introduction: On Attempts to Formalise the Syādvāda’, in Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. 17: Jaina Philosophy, pt. 3, ed. Piotr Balcerowicz and Karl H. Potter, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2014, 31–32. Unlike Priest, who analyses the seven-valued semantics by the truth-tables, Balcerowicz contends that all the seven statements are true. Before favouring any of logical interpretations, consider the original texts on syādvāda, e.g. Malliṣeṇa’s Syādvādamañjarī (1292, §23, 189), in The Flower-Spray of the Quodammodo Doctrine: Śrī Malliṣeṇasūri, Syād-vāda-mañjarī, trans. and annot. F.W. Thomas, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968.

[4] Lafcadio Hearn, Shadowings, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1919 [1900], ch. ‘Levitation’. Perhaps, Koizumi/Hearn might have imagined his cosmic nostalgia in the Orphic tradition. Believing in Orphic mysteries, e.g. ‘Empedocles has his poetic, prophetic and theological precursor in Parmenides, the sky-walker whose chariot journey takes him into the House of Night. This nuktos oikia is the ineffable darkness from which Phanes emerges as a chariot-driving Sun, flying on its noetic wings. At the same time, it is the oracular sanctum, because Phanes himself bestowed the power of prophecy upon the primaeval Night.’ See Algis Uždavinys, Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism, London: Matheson Trust, 2011, 66.

[5] Consider e.g. ‘Alone he accumulates merit; alone he enjoys the various happiness of heaven; alone he destroys karma; alone also he attains to moksha’ (Swāmi Kārttikeya, Anuprekṣā-śloka, 76), in Jagmanderlal Jaini, Outlines of Jainism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013 [1916], 80.

[6] Any propositional object that one loves (or thinks about) cannot absolutely be stated under the conditions of syādvada. Under such conditions, perhaps/quodammodo/maybe, it is a blissful soul liberated from every karma that one ultimately loves (or perceives) in an indestructible, divine state within. Therein lies no design of a creator god, but one’s beginning-less, eternal soul (jīva). Consider e.g. ‘Oh! Good Soul, (Turning away from the sense pleasures and fixing your attention always on the pure nature of the Self), always be in love with it and hence be happy and satisfied, for surely that will lead you to the future everlasting supreme bliss of mokṣa’ (Samayasāra, 7–14–206). Ācārya Kundakunda, Samayasāra, based upon Amrṭacandra’s Ātmakhyāti, intro. and trans. A. Chakravarti, 3rd ed., Naī Dillī: Bhāratīya Jñānapīṭha, 1989.

[7] Naturally, one’s self-realising ‘meditation’ (dhyāna) commences with the concentration upon breathing, whereby the ‘perception’ (prekṣā) of the physical self is first realised. To this end, one chants: Sampikkhae appagamappaeṇam (‘Perceive the self through the self’). See Āchārya Mahāprajña, Prekṣā Dhyāna: Perception of Breathing, trans. Muni Mahendra Kumar and Jethalal S. Zaveri, Lāḍanūṁ: Jaina Viśva Bhāratī, 1994, 16, https://jainqq.org/explore/006558/31. According to Samani Pratibha Pragya (2017, 174), Mahāprajña established the prekṣā-dhyāna system from seven sources: ‘(i) Jaina textual accounts of meditative practices; (ii) Elements of Hindu yoga systems; (iii) Elements of Buddhist Vipassanā meditation; (iv) Āyurvedic concepts; (v) Astronomical elements; (vi) Modern Science; (vii) and Reflections on Mahāprajña’s own experiences and explorations’. See her Prekṣā meditation: history and methods, PhD thesis, SOAS University of London, 2017, https://doi.org/10.25501/SOAS.00024340.