I did promise to say something
more on the topic of the post before the previous one… but something happened
to take my mind in a different direction. What I had to say is best said after
sharing the following excerpt; it happens that I have shared this excerpt
before on this blog but I focused on a very different aspect then…so it seems
quite apt to share it again.
"I was cleaning a room and, meandering about, approached the divan and
couldn't remember whether or not I had dusted it. Since these movements are
habitual and unconscious, I could not remember and felt that it was impossible
to remember - so that if I had dusted it and forgot - that is, had acted
unconsciously, then it was the same as if I had not. If some conscious person
had been watching, then the fact could be established. If, however, no one was
looking, or looking on unconsciously, if the whole complex lives of many people
go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.”
~ Leo Tolstoy's Diary, 1897, excerpt from Victor Shklovsky’s ‘Art as
Technique'
It seems to me that if moments that are lived unconsciously are as if
they had never been, then moments that have never been but are made conscious
in the mind would be as if they actually were. These would be our contemplative
worlds or worlds of imagination buoyed up on literature or philosophy or any of
the arts… they give us the sensation of intense living even when our physical lives
may be routine or fairly unconscious. Such lives I would say are not as if they
had never been… because they are very much lived consciously though on a
different plane. What defines living then does not relate to material reality but to
consciousness… as Tolstoy himself hints.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:00 am
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