The text of the manuscript that I found on the dead man in the dog park - "The Topology of Karma" - was loosely organized into “sections.” Some sections were numbered and had titles, some just numbered. For example the first several pages of the manuscript carried the title “Un-Mapping the Duality, Section 1.” While the internal structure of the manuscript does not always feel linear, I decided to respect the original organization of the text. With this in mind, I will present the manuscript as a series of numbered “sections” and I will supply my own tentative headings where section titles were amiss in the original text. Each such section will conclude with an interpretative intermission of my own. I have chosen to also use the space at the end of each section to share some of my investigative findings about the author of the text.
The text of the manuscript is notable for a mix of poetic passages and declarative propositions. A few years ago when I shared this text with one of my philosophical colleagues, he jokingly referred to it as “the Russian Tao Te Ching.” I am no scholar of Daoism myself (and neither was the gentleman that I just mentioned), but my own repetitive reading of the text does support at least a superficial parallel between these two texts, if not in theme but in its provocative and frequently paradoxical style.
So, here it is - an initial sample of it - the very first pages that I myself have read so many years ago. It is time for you too to plunge into this murky topic. It will, I suspect, feel on some level like a game of whack-a-mole where each and every conceptual pore on the surface of the text is a dizzying rabbit hole, and where an occasional paragraph break throws you into an unexpected, high-speed, Moebius-style u-turn.
[Section 1, Un-Mapping the Duality]
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
What happens in Moscow, stays in Moscow.
What happens in Tokyo, stays in Tokyo.
What happens here, stays here.
Each coordinate of the Universe is its own archive, its own history, its own karma.
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Karma is what's been happening here, where you are.
You are a Place that is aware ... of its own history.
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First, you have to own your history.
Then, you have to disown it.
Otherwise, it (history) owns you.
That is Karma.
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There is a difference between Place and Space.
Space + Karma = Place
Place – Karma = Space
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Space is pre-Karma.
Place is post-Karma.
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Karma is the identity of the Place.
Karma is a place with its own mind.
Place is the mind of Space.
Place is the Karma of Space.
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Mind is a dwelling for information.
Mind is a home of history.
Mind is a museum to the Original Cause.
Mind is the Consequence of what happened here.
Mind is a happening, which is Karma.
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Consciousness and Space are not two.
Consciousness is what Space feels like before it becomes a Place.
Consciousness is what Space feels like before it becomes a Mind.
Consciousness is pre-Karma and post-Karma.
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Consciousness + Karma = Mind
Mind – Karma = Consciousness
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This writing, by the way, is not poetry.
It is not verse.
It is just a ticker tape of consciousness,
Expressed vertically, as it actually is.
The Stream of Karmic Consciousness (which is Mind) doesn’t flow from here to there.
It flows from without to within,
Coiling itself ever more tightly,
Into a Uroboric knot.
(Now, that was an attempt at poetry, so disregard it at will; you know poetry when it breaks off the line with a comma, giving you just enough time to take a quick breath as you level up from a tangent to a tangent…)
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