Love and Loss (Jason Silva Video)

Human beings are hungry for an ultimate understanding, some kind of cosmic communion, a treasure at the end of the rainbow, a pot of gold. We all dive through the looking-glass, we all tumble down the rabbit hole with this idea that there will be some final answer, some ultimate meaning, some noetic quality that is rendered more real than everyday literal reality. Carl Sagan the astronomer, he used to say that "understanding is a kind of ecstasy." 

We are cognitive ecstasy addicts; we are living for these peak experiences, these exhilarating neuro storms of intense intellectual pleasure. But these moments, they tend to be fleeting, part of the human conundrum is that we have these glimpses of ecstatic illumination, and then we fall back into the shadow.  For a moment the curtain parts, and what has never been seen is devoured by the eyes. It's distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory. We immediately memorialize these fleeting glimpses of the eternal of the everything and fall back into ourselves, frail, finite and flawed.

What do we do? I believe the immortal words of Houston Smith who said "how might we turn our passing illuminations into abiding light, how might we render ourselves holy." we have this aspiration to engender godhood, to engender divinity to become infinite you know and there are moments right to the tune of the perfect song. When the right instruments harmonized together the right chorus resonates with your heart and with your soul, you get lost in the music you get lost in the moment, and everything becomes one. These peak experiences, these mystical encounters with the numinous what Otto called the Mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. They vindicate our faith, they make us think yes, yes, yes, there is something more and sometimes in the iris of the lover's eye and when exchanging lip-to-lip communication with a lover you think, "oh my god I could just die in your arms."

Jamie Wheal calls this the "bliss fuck crucifixion" to die into the moment, to say yes and become reborn. Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, calls this the "apotheosis" right after the supreme war, you overcome, you are renewed, you are reborn, and you realize that you are a god. But I could be wrong; it could all be biochemistry. It could all be the secretions and communication and electrical signals between neurons a rendering, a matrix of mind and meaning, that at the end of the day means nothing.  Because we die, we end up in the ground. We rot and disappear forever what the fuck! The duality of gods and worms 

What do we do? What do we do? What can we do? how do we have this dance, if we know that it's not forever Miguel de Unamuno said "Eternity! Eternity! That is the supreme desire. Nothing is real that is not eternal!," I don't have an ultimate answer. I take the plunge constantly. I meet a girl; I extend my hand to hers. I try to play the right song, I say "render a holy moment with me and have this dance." "Let's be as gods outside of time," let's commingle with one another in a space that is timeless, that is beyond self, that is beyond you or me, that becomes just us. Let 's render a holy moment. Let 's have the eternal dance.

And then love falters, then the breakup happens.  Then entropy rears its ugly head, and fuck, what do we do? we get back up and try again