Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

“Does everybody have such pleasure when they marry?”

“Everybody”—he actually assured her.

“Even the common people?”

“Even the common people—”

“Well all I can say is — it’s much too good for them .”

A woman told me the perfect consummation of marriage was general among the peasants of the Maremma, Italy.

In 1939—a woman — very superior type — (husband also) — who did housework — described to me how the wives in the tenement houses she had lived in ran out of their apartments screaming in apprehension to elude their husbands when they, “wanted to do it.”

The secret Universe of omniscient creative impetus comprises the power-house generating our obvious universe.

From this power-house science has induced innumerable demonstrations of its mathematical abstract potency.

While Religion has aspired to convince us of its authenticity, its authority

RELIGION AND EROS

Since intellection outgrew the aboriginal simplicities it advanced through two seemingly irreconcilable channels

__________

The mystic meditation of early Asia. The Scientific research of a younger Occident. Each a system for investigating the Power Universe to further man’s, “Domination over all things,” i.e., enjoyment of surprising revelations to be drawn into the open out of the unseen.

Difference of these systems:

The Asiatic mystic-scientist handled no laboratorial or mechanistic intermediary for probing the resources of the power-Universe. He found all needed experimental resources in the Mind-Body make-up of the human individual: an ego laboratory.

Inversely to the direct co-operation of the ancients, the occidental scientist interposes between himself and the Power Universe gigantic machinery, microscopic instrumentation to indirectly contact it. An incommunicative contact which compared to that of the ancients seems perilously like interference.

The oriental attained levitation.

The occidental flies a bomber.

The oriental aspiration contacted Power

the occidental, force:

The distinction —

POWER: creative dynamism, consciously operative, solely constructive. 1

In contacting power, lies immunity to the destructive Religion’s salvation .

FORCE merely a derivative of Power isolated, by limitation of intellect from its conscious motivation.

In force lies peril, destruction, fragmentation RELIGION’S DAMNATION.

RELIGION'S POWER OF GOD VERSUS REALISM'S BLIND FORCE wherewith man, mistaking destruction for dominion, furthers the ultimate menace to his perfectability.

Whatever transpired in the Ego-laboratory of mystic research proved so mysterious to the occidentals that finally they easily accepted it as the mystery to end all mysteries: the nothing-at-all.

Albeit to an observer from some cosmic distance the mystery would be cleared—

It is not prohibitive to man, as the complete microcosm, to train his intelligence on his components and gain control of their potentialities. To avail himself of his resources, akin to the atomic, electronic etc. in order to transcend the restrictions of his overt senses.

As the nature of phenomena apparent to us at present depends on the gamut of vibrations to which man, through his senses responds, in the course of his evolution this gamut extends — –

Throughout the ages and still today a few human beings are born who exceptionally react to vibrational stimuli beyond the standard gamut. A simple, rational, electrical extension endowing them with quirks of perception comparable to telepathy, television. . etc. 2

THE EGO-LABORATORY

The religious concept that man is fitted to become consciously involved in the relationship of the perceptible to the imperceptible universe originated in occasional men of precursive genius being aware of Life as a Deific Electricity, proceeding from the Absolute Status , conveying to us our animation, our intelligence, our intuition.

It was the logical conviction of such men that increments from this infinite source of power would be at their disposal the more they adapted their organisms to draw upon it.

The mystic, closing his eyes, his ears, inverted the senses from the multiple outlets for contact, concentrating the various electric currents of mind and body to an unique current, of which, its intensity too great for reception in the concrete world, he sought, through meditation, to analyse the abstract potency.

This concentrated mind, inducing INTUITION found itself functioning, a little, within the realm of causation, a little aware how the laws of the self-rule of the Power-universe operate.

THE ELEMENARY DISCOVERY

The rhythm of breath attuning the organism it aerates to the rhythm of the concrete world, the mystic noticed its interference with the concentration of the mind upon the abstract; each inbreath drawing the mind anew back to its concrete associations. His mind wandered — —

He determined to let his breathing drop out of the way of his attention —and succeeding, that rhythm modified; his breath subsided — —

– — – He felt his body sustained no longer by air but by something comparable to the ether, which, interpenetrating its atomic structure, liberated his organism from biological law hitherto insurmountable.

This lightening of the body, this etheric transmutation of the mind’s instrument, liberated that latent faculty of the mind for reception of a transcendent form of radio transmission.

He found his perception, usually narrowed down to focus on the concrete world as intellect, when released from this focus, to amplify its contacts as it FLOWED BACK ALONG THE CURRENT OF ITS CONVEYANCE from the All-Conscious, whose medium may be likened to INTELLIGENTIAL ETHER.

At this stage of increasing potency his mind became reinforced as spirit; its ultimate dimension attainable being soul, indestructible component of the Absolute.

Subject to his new potency in spirit he found the etheric transposal set him free from the pull of gravity; permitted accelerated locomotion without muscular effort. He gained control of his own electric system, experimented with its use, the electronic transfer of his person through space, the projection of his mental perceptivity to a distance, etc.:

Released from the vibrational circumscription of the concrete whose laws are subordinate to the dominant law 3of the Power-Universe, he came to understand that law by which the functioning of our usual universe may be modified,

(1) The structure of matter rearranged

(2) The materialising function of power

(3) The nature of the elements overruled by Power

(4) Electric life reconducted within the body 4

The control of these psychic exercises operated from a cerebral centrum, named and located by the ancients.

Its contraction emitted a fine line of prolonged sensitivity into distance — — its dilation incepted communication from the infinite knower. The supreme director from whom, the psychic scientist conceived, through increasing exercise of the spirit, full revelation of, and the cooperation with the unseen universe should eventually be transmitted to him.

Herein originated the PRACTICE of religion. EXERCISE OF THE SPIRIT incurring actual psychic gymnastics.

Exercise of the spirit induced ENLIGHTENMENT ILLUMINATION ECSTASY

The experience of illumination was incommunicable; could only, in description be hinted at. LIGHT was not primarily a synonym for wisdom. It indicated the perception of that other light, overtenuous for reception by the organ eye. Authenticated in the past through the research of the man-is-the-measure-of-the-Universe scientist in his self-circumscribed laboratory, this light, a lucence transpiercing the light of the world, is handed down to us in the symbol halo; now passed off as primitive decoration, while modern science makes use of the infra-red — — — — allusion to God as “the father of lights” is not merely sublime poetry.