Unknown (and possibly unknowable) languages
“Paradoxical consciousness”
by Jon Rappoport
April 5, 2017
This brief article might be of interest only to certain artists. I say that because there are paintings which exceed language and suggest unknown connections of meaning. You look at a certain painting and you see something in it which implies meaning. You sense the meaning is there, but there is no translation. There may never be a translation.
You paint something that is unknown to you. It has a richness (AND a contradictory implication or an extreme dissonance or a paradox) that exceeds anything you’ve ever done—but you can’t explain it. You can only look at it. Your mind doesn’t process it and come up with “an answer.” The suggestion is of a different sort of consciousness, but that consciousness has no name or description.
So the unknown thing stands. It is there. Someday, someone might come along and say something startling about it to you. Or not. The situation is unpredictable. Certainly, no one who is steeped in a devotion to the Familiar will ever be affected by the painting. That will never happen. Even if such a person registered the fact that he didn’t understand the painting, this would be of no interest to him. It wouldn’t be provocative.
When you talk to people about the far reaches of consciousness, if they are interested, they feel they have some sort of answer or description. They believe they have at least a general outline of what this new consciousness would be. They have a net, as it were, and they are anxious to put it around this new state of mind.
But suppose that is nothing more than a tendency to want to make things familiar? Suppose there is consciousness and meaning that resists whatever is familiar? Suppose this painting is presenting something that will outdistance any such labeling? Suppose there is meaning that defies any explanation with which we are familiar? Suppose the painter can create something which stands outside any and all nets, including his own? Suppose the painting presents a paradox which escapes translation, or any attempt to resolve and connect its parts?
And yet, suppose the painting presents meaning?
In that case, finding the meaning will need to proceed by some process which we do not understand. “Process” is an incorrect word.
Who knows? Perhaps standing before that painting, on and off for five years, will begin to allow something that can’t ever be expressed in words to start to bleed through.
Something direct, something with definite and specific impact, something that has no name.
And seeing that and experiencing it will provoke and signal, in the viewer, the emergence of consciousness that grasps the formerly incomprehensible.
Is this possible? I say it is. Can it happen? I believe it can.
In which case, a transformation would begin, in the viewer. He would not be able to describe it in words. But at some point, he would embody it.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Outside the Reality Machine 
The problem with words is that they are inadequate as a means of self expression, and more than inadequate as a means of communication, in many areas of life. Consider not just painting but also mathematics, ballet, music, and more. A description in words is never going to get to the heart of the matter.
I beg to differ in one respect. Novels and Poetry. For example, what Henry Miller was able to do in his novels. His stream of consciousness paragraphs imparted more than the words themselves — so to speak.
Language is a matrix – a framework of letters but also a facade. We talk about the letter of the law vs. the spirit – the rough representation vs. the intent. Meaning is intention. It is possible to perceive someone’s intention without a word being spoken. Too many words hide intention. The more we rely on words for understanding, the more we become blind to the intentions of others.
A certain artist caught my attention in my 20’s – I was completely fascinated with his work. I couldn’t tell you why, other than it evoked something I couldn’t describe. Not mystical, nor metaphorical, nor impressionist. It was almost like those amnesia stories, where someone is recovering from a memory loss, and meets an old friend, and feels that he should know him. but can’t say how or where or when. But there is recognition. That’s it – meaning without description is the same thing as recognition without the answers to “who, what, where, how, when, or why” to explain it.