Dible pp.

Dr. Dr. David Dilworth

PHI 310—American Philosophy

Emerson’s Circles

Rev. Sir Randy Dible (ULC, Kt. SD), Sentinel, Tarati

September 30, 2009

“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary

figure is repeated without end.” Thus begins Circles. Indeed, we find in astrophysics (science of astronomical

nature) the black hole—whose limit, the event horizon, from which there is no escape of any physical nature— is

merely the penultimate limit of the universe as we know it. The eye, that is the I that I-Am, the Self, is the

singularity, whose presence we have to assume, but being beyond physical nature, it is the very Same singularity

(there can be Only One true ideal of the infinitesimal singularity), of ‘the Whole Shebang’1, about which emanation

(radiation) and gravitation have origin and telos. As the singularity of matter’s mass is to physical nature, so the eye

— insofar as it represents the ideal point of all perspection2, the very Seeing or knowing done by Being3—is for

‘Man’, (that is, for Man’s soul, or Man the archetype) the source of Man’s spiritual nature. In fact—and in deed!—

the world we know comes from the Eye, by which is meant the spiritual Eye, none other than the Self who only

exists in the world as its limiting case, its horizon. This ‘Eye’ in this sense is also called ‘Bodhi’ in the Sutra of the

Heart of Transcendent Knowledge the Tathagata Buddha Sakyamuni spoke of at Vulture Peak mountain. It is the

1
Maya. Walt Whitman meant by the term what I mean here by the ensuing expansion from the primordial origin,
and it carries the same sense as the ‘high inflationary period’ of astrophysics, as well as the ‘densely-packed region’
of Tibetan Buddhism (the poet James Keyes, a.k.a. George Spencer-Brown, Only Two Can Play This Game, pp.
125). Whitman also meant by the term simply the house or office: common notions which also carry archetypal
significance, at least, to a Transcendentalist poet (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-whole-shebang.html).
2
Perspection itself, or ‘perspectivity’ (the very point of perspectivity, from which beams vision), is the abstraction
or idealization of the Origin of extension (just like of the mathematical Continuum, or Real number line, R); and just
as extensive points on the Cartesian coordinate plane only have meaning in reference to the point-source, the center,
from which all falls away, is gone with all reference, to know the thing in-itself, which is without reference (beyond
the Principle of Sufficient Reason), or only with ‘pure self-reference’, or difference in-itself (mind the distinction
between distinction and indication, or difference and reference).
3
Also called “Being Seeing Being” by Professor Spencer-Brown (1973, Esalen American University of Masters
conference transcripts part 4: http://www.lawsofform.org/aum/session4.html).
 Dible pp.2

first crossing from the Void4. “A Buddha, of course, has to go through this region to reach the void.”5 But let us

appreciate this first line of Circles in reference to the frontispiece:

“Nature centres into balls,

And her proud ephemerals,

Fast to surface and outside,

Scan the profile of the sphere;

Knew they what they signified,

A new genesis were here.

Repeated without end, new significations are found by scanning eyeballs, and this can be

anthropomorphically interpreted in reference to the psychophysics of perception, or biologically as centers or unities

or units of autopoietic closure6, which are self-referentially-closed subjective forms, open to objective relations. But

these spirits obliviate in their recognition—or recollection (correction; reconnection)—of the true identity as the

Great Spirit that is Life Itself, the realization which so obviates. The contemporary and common empirical notion of

the Big Bang expansion of the physical universe is supposed to begin from a singularity and end up as the physical

nature of the universe we can meditate upon, as if it is an expansion ceased, though we know by our abstract model

that it is expanding at a truly inconceivable rate, faster than anything, at the speed of light. But the poet is not so

empirically blinded, for he can see by a transcendental intuitive sight that the universe (literally, the one-turn) is

expanding with his mind, at the speed of sight7! Far more than eyeballs alone, these centered balls of Nature enjoy

the illusions of the surface world, of the outside world, as individual minds that take individual perspectives8.

4
Professor Kurt von Meier, alluding to Spencer-Brown; ibid.
5
Spencer-Brown, Only Two, ibid., explicated by Professor Kurt von Meier at
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/v/vonmeierk/8-05TA.html
6
Autopoiesis (literally, self-creating) is the systems biological and difference-theoretic theory of life as self-
sustained stasis of closure of feedback in ‘dissipative structures’. This biology term expands the definition of life.
7
This is the sight of ‘Sight without Light’, whose expansion is of an infinite rate, for it is ‘Being Seeing Being’.
8
The jiva or jivatman of the Hindus here are sentiated by—the best religious and metaphysical analogy would be—
the individual purusas of dualistic Samkhya philosophy.
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Emerson is correct, of course, to indicate that the repetition of the primary figure is without end, indefinite,

and we must take it as sound cautionary advice if we are to move on! “It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the

world,” he continues. A ‘primary figure’ or emblem that is the very key to the perennial mystery of why there is

something rather than nothing, is this precise structure which underlies all other structure, for it is the Principle of

Order: the eye and the horizon as the first circles, so the first distinction and its crossing out, a reference to the Laws

of Form of Professor George Spencer-Brown, who seem to be in strict agreement with Emerson who next calls this

primary figure or emblem “THE FIRST OF FORMS! [my capitals and exclamation!]9. Every end is a beginning,

says Emerson.

This endlessness is articulated as beautifully by Emerson as by the ‘authors’ of the Upanishads: “…every

end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep another deep opens.”

But Emerson does not mean that there is no permanence at all—(which flies in the face of the evidence)—it is

merely a matter and meter of degrees, a transparent law to God10. “The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid.”

Worldly investiture, insists Emerson, is quickly rendered obsolete (end of the same paragraph; Emerson again could

easily be mistaken for the author11 of the Vedas). “Everything looks permanent until its secret is known”. This

secret, discussed at length above, Emerson calls the key, the ‘primary figure’, or ‘highest emblem’, of the cipher of

the world. Emerson gives us the key to it all! The key that unlocks the doors of initiation to the highest

understanding, Emerson tells us directly: it is this primal structure of circles without end, which begin with the Self

and proceed to endless horizons. And when that Self is revealed, upon the revelation, there is simultaneous

withdraw, and it is re-veiled! Thus, though the world ever begins with the ‘subject of subjectivity’12, it never so
9
This should come as no surprise to the Laws of Form scholar, for C. S. Peirce’s influence on Spencer-Brown is
emphasized in a number of articles in the special volume of the mathematical, mystical and metaphysical (one could
call the genre ‘analytic mysticism’) journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing on Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form
(Volume 8, 2001). And of course, Emerson’s influence on, and agreement with, Peirce on these matters is well
known (especially to this course instructor: evidenced by the recent article in Cogito).
10
Circles: top of page 229 in The Portable Emerson, and midway down page 403 in Emerson: Essays and
Lectures.
11
‘Author’, that is, if one accepts the orthodox understanding of the divine origin of the Vedas and Upanishads
(‘authors’ if one takes the relativist-constructivist, overall skeptical— and too often characteristic of the odium
academicum—perspective of sacred scripture).
12
A phrase from Kant and Schopenhauer, which means the Self in the most rarefied, exalted, and innermost sense,
which ever recedes from view, but ever remains while everything else passes; the phrase is also used frequently by
the Hari Krsnas to mean the Maha-Atman (Great Self) identical to the state of Asamprajnata (unconditional) or
 Dible pp.4

ends, only endlessly reflects the “eyebeam” of the Self, within— guess where— itself. Thus the emanation

fleetingly settles in diodes13 (Emerson’s ‘unit’: Emerson’s ‘balls’—testify!) of spiritual light amplified by the

stimulated emission of radiation that comprises the contexture14 or continuum so illuminated (by spiritual L.A.S.E.R.

diodes)! “Every thing is medial” (Circles, ibid.)

The perennial key to the greatest of mysteries is a structure in a sense, but a structure that resists dogma in

its simultaneous revelations and reveilations, remaining ever still and untouched and unseen at the center of all

things. This is a metaphysical emblem, and the very basis of the true and timeless foundation. To be sure, it is a

foundation but not a dogma, because the circles continue endlessly to be made: “Whilst the eternal generation of

circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides.”15 The ‘eternal generator’ or ‘central life’ contains all circles, and is

superior to creation. “Nothing is secure but life, transition, and energizing spirit…. People wish to be settled; only

as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

This unsettledness is what we are left with at the end of Circles. It is an unsettledness we can only hope

for, the purpose of which is to allow us to draw a new circle, to forget everything we know, and be surprised. “The

way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.”

Nirvikalpa (not admitting an alternative) Samadhi.

13
An essentially electric device, such as is prakriti (primordial nature) according to Samkhya Yoga philosophy.
14
Contexture means and arrangement of interconnected parts, or the ‘act’ of weaving or assembling parts into a
whole, in the sense of fabrication or composition. But I mean by the term “a logical domain were all classical
logical rules hold rigorously”, a la pioneering American immigrant mathematician Gotthard Gunther, a central
figure to the essentially mystical ‘new school of cybernetics’, Second-Order Cybernetics.
15
Circles, pp. 238, The Portable Emerson, pp. 412 Essays and Lectures.