The Self in Lovecraft and Borges

[Druidic]

For any who missed it, this essay compares similarities in Borges and Lovecraft as well as the deconstruction of Self:

http://www.nyrsf.com/2013/03/until-s...ff-stumpo.html

[SpookyDread]

I had been going to a Cambodian wat for a short while. It's a Buddhist culture heavily influenced by yoga . They would sit and meditate together and chant . When I asked for initiation and supernatural powers.. after gathering that they were all into this from talking to them.. having a conversation with a few of the meditators, was told that the monk doesn't enlighten us. I was really surprised/confused to hear this. When I first met the monk, he gave me a vipassana meditation disc, and told me to go to do the 10 day vipassana meditation. Now.. how is this different than sitting by yourself staring at a wall ?

I would reverse your distinction. Lovecraft's stories are really about ego-Self and the notion of a Buddhist conception would really be a "self" with a little 's' . Reincarnation works in this same way, it is not a Self assimilating another, but really a 'self' becoming again a Self.

When a Self becomes a self, the body might be working double time, consuming lighter Selfs and having more lucid sleep, but its a consumption for the halo'd self , which is really the extraneous aspect of the daemonic or the conscience.

Esotericism is the loss of Self, for self, not the gaining of Selfness. That this is so is shown in Lovecraft again and again by the themes of sacrifice, delirium, the loss of identity and loss of independence.

there is no "Singularity" .

[SpookyDread]

Boogedy Boo

Bride of Boogedy (1987) part 7 - YouTube

this Disney film clip parallels Buddha's enlightenment , only in reverse.

[Druidic]

Like Avram Davidson, Borges seems to have had a love/hate relationship with Lovecraft's fiction.

In the late seventies, I came across a small volume by Borges that was a kind of introduction to North American literature.

He mentions Lovecraft and three stories: I believe they were The Rats in the Walls, The Dunwich Horror and The Colour out of Space. His brief comments made it impossible to guess his own estimate of these stories.

The surprising thing was that Borges, after some of his comments regarding Lovecraft's fiction, mentioned Lovecraft at all in such a book. It only included top notch writers.

Go figure.