Deleuzian Grounds. Thought of the Day 42.0

With difference or intensity instead of identity as the ultimate philosophical one could  arrive at the crux of Deleuze’s use of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in Difference and Repetition. At the beginning of the first chapter, he defines the quadruple yoke of conceptual representation identity, analogy, opposition, resemblance in correspondence with the four principle aspects of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: the form of the undetermined concept, the relation between ultimate determinable concepts, the relation between determinations within concepts, and the determined object of the concept itself. In other words, sufficient reason according to Deleuze is the very medium of representation, the element in which identity is conceptually determined. In itself, however, this medium or element remains different or unformed (albeit not formless): Difference is the state in which one can speak of determination as such, i.e. determination in its occurrent quality of a difference being made, or rather making itself in the sense of a unilateral distinction. It is with the event of difference that what appears to be a breakdown of representational reason is also a breakthrough of the rumbling ground as differential element of determination (or individuation). Deleuze illustrates this with an example borrowed from Nietzsche:

Instead of something distinguished from something else, imagine something which distinguishes itself and yet that from which it distinguishes itself, does not distinguish itself from it. Lightning, for example, distinguishes itself from the black sky but must also trail behind it . It is as if the ground rose to the surface without ceasing to be the ground.

Between the abyss of the indeterminate and the superficiality of the determined, there thus appears an intermediate element, a field potential or intensive depth, which perhaps in a way exceeds sufficient reason itself. This is a depth which Deleuze finds prefigured in Schelling’s and Schopenhauer’s differend conceptualization of the ground (Grund) as both ground (fond) and grounding (fondement). The ground attains an autonomous power that exceeds classical sufficient reason by including the grounding moment of sufficient reason for itself. Because this self-grounding ground remains groundless (sans-fond) in itself, however, Hegel famously ridiculed Schelling’s ground as the indeterminate night in which all cows are black. He opposed it to the surface of determined identities that are only negatively correlated to each other. By contrast, Deleuze interprets the self-grounding ground through Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same. Whereas the passive syntheses of habit (connective series) and memory (conjunctions of connective series) are the processes by which representational reason grounds itself in time, the eternal return (disjunctive synthesis of series) ungrounds (effonde) this ground by introducing the necessity of future becomings, i.e. of difference as ongoing differentiation. Far from being a denial of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, this threefold process of self-(un)grounding constitutes the positive, relational system that brings difference out of the night of the Identical, and with finer, more varied and more terrifying flashes of lightning than those of contradiction: progressivity.

The breakthrough of the ground in the process of ungrounding itself in sheer distinction-production of the multiple against the indistinguishable is what Deleuze calls violence or cruelty, as it determines being or nature in a necessary system of asymmetric relations of intensity by the acausal action of chance, like an ontological game in which the throw of the dice is the only rule or principle. But it is also the vigil, the insomnia of thought, since it is here that reason or thought achieves its highest power of determination. It becomes a pure creativity or virtuality in which no well-founded identity (God, World, Self) remains: [T]hought is that moment in which determination makes itself one, by virtue of maintaining a unilateral and precise relation to the indeterminate. Since it produces differential events without subjective or objective remainder, however, Deleuze argues that thought belongs to the pure and empty form of time, a time that is no longer subordinate to (cosmological, psychological, eternal) movement in space. Time qua form of transcendental synthesis is the ultimate ground of everything that is, reasons and acts. It is the formal element of multiple becoming, no longer in the sense of finite a priori conditioning, but in the sense of a transfinite a posteriori synthesizer: an empt interiority in ongoing formation and materialization. As Deleuze and Guattari define synthesizer in A Thousand Plateaus: The synthesizer, with its operation of consistency, has taken the place of the ground in a priori synthetic judgment: its synthesis is of the molecular and the cosmic, material and force, not form and matter, Grund and territory.

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Yantra + Yi-Globe = Yi-Yantra. Note Quote.

The lower and the upper semicircles of the Yi-globe,

where the hexagrams are shown in plane, best serve for direct comparison. There, the structural features common with the yantras are clearly visible: the arrangement of the hexagrams around the center, the concentric circles embedded into one another, and the perfect balance and symmetry.

The analogy between the Yi-globe and the yantras can be recognized in almost every formal detail, if the Chamunda-yantra (Yantra literally means “support” and “instrument”. A Yantra is a geometric design acting as a highly efficient tool for contemplation, concentration and meditation carrying spiritual significance) is taken as an example

The similarity between the two symbols is still more complete with respect to the metaphysical contents. Yantras are the symbols of deities, whereby one part represents a god (generally, a goddess) itself, while the other part stands for the cosmic activity (function) attributed to the deity and the power manifested in the latter; thus actually, a yantra symbolizes the whole universe as well. The power of the yantras lies in the concentrated visualization – completed with the vibration of the associated mantras – capable even in itself of raising and directing cosmic energies into the human psyche, whereby man merges into the deity in his mind and, at last, becomes one with the universe, the cosmic wholeness.

When the properties of the two symbols are analyzed, the following cosmological analogies between the Yi-globe and the yantras are found

The comparison clearly reveals that the Yi-globe and the yantras represent the same spiritual content and that most of their formal elements are identical as well. Accordingly, it is fully justified to take the Yi-globe as a special yantra.

Figure below demonstrates how easily the Yi-globe transforms into the form of a yantra. Since this yantra perfectly reflects all the connotations of the Yi-globe, its name is Yi-yantra.

On the petals (or other geometrical elements) of the yantras, mantras are written. On the Yi-yantra, the hexagrams replace the mantras at the corresponding places. (This replacement is merely formal here, since the function of the mantras manifests only when they are expressed in words.)

Based on the exposed analysis, the connotations of the individual geometrical elements in the Yi-yantra are as follows:

• The two circlets in the center stand for the two signs of Completion, representing the Center of the World, the starting point of creation, and at the same time the place of final dissolution.
• The creative forces, which are to give birth to the macrocosm and microcosm, emanate from the center. This process is represented by the hexagon.
• The eight double trigrams surrounding the hexagon represent the differentiated primal powers arranged according to the Earlier Heaven. The two squares show that they already embrace the created world, but only in inherent (i.e., not manifested) form.
• The red circle around the squares unites the ten hexagrams on the axis of the Yi-globe. The parallel blue circle is level I of the Yi-globe, whereto the powers of the Receptive extend, and wherefrom changes (forces) direct outwards in the direction of level II. The six orange petals of the lotus (the six hexagrams) show these directions.
• The next pair of the orange and blue circles, and the twelve orange petals with the twelve hexagrams stand for levels II.
• The next circle contains eighteen orange petals, representing level III. At its outer circle, the development (evolution) ends. On level III, the golden petals show the opposite direction of the movement.
• From here, the development is directed inwards (involution). The way goes through levels IV and V, to the final dissolution in the Creative in the Center.
• The square surrounding the Yi-globe represents the external existence; its gates provide access towards the inward world. The square area stands for the created world, shown by the trigrams indicated therein and arranged according to the Later Heaven.