Hronir
In
the most ancient regions of Tlon, the duplication of lost objects is
not infrequent. Two persons look for a pencil; the first finds it and
says nothing; the second finds a second pencil, no less real, but
closer to his expectations. These secondary objects are caller hronir,
and are, though awkward in form, somewhat longer. –Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Jorge Luis Borges
Who has not learned a new and obscure word, only to find it popping up
several times in the succeeding days? Who has failed to note how
constant or repeated meditation on any topic seemingly causes that
topic to emerge unexpectedly in our daily experience? It would seem
that a very dilute and attenuated form of solipsism operates through
these mechanisms- we do not wholly create our reality, but merely
garnish it with tidbits unconsciously generated in thought. Some would
explain this away by saying that when we learn a new word, or keep our
thoughts on a certain topic, we simply become more likely to notice it
in the world around us. While that may very well be the case, I think
it is far more accurate, instructive and interesting to take a more
paranoid view- we’re not simply noticing these things, but manifesting
them in our reality.
There is no conclusive or
scientific way to determine whether this phenomenon is the result of
attention or manifestation. We must simply make a generalized judgment
based on how likely we would be to encounter certain things in our
lives. In my own personal experience, the strength, ubiquity and
inevitability of this phenomenon make it seem very unlikely that
attention alone is responsible. Yet I lacked any explanation for what
was going on here until I began reading about and practicing the occult
disciplines of dream awareness and astral projection. These studies
introduced me to the idea that reality is inherently
thought-responsive. Different levels of reality have different degrees
of thought-responsiveness. The dream level is highly
thought-responsive. While dreaming, we no sooner think of something
than it appears before us. The difficulty is simply achieving the
degree of awareness necessary to be able to control one’s thoughts
while dreaming. According to Tibetan traditions, certain bardos
(reality levels) that we experience after death are even more rapidly
thought-responsive than the bardo of dreaming!
Our waking reality is thought-responsive as well, but here the process
operates in a much slower, more turgid and contorted fashion. If you
think of a dolphin while dreaming, it would appear immediately. Here,
if you think of a dolphin, nothing would happen. If you resolutely
thought of dolphins for an hour every day, and continued this practice
with dedication, you might eventually come across a discarded library
book on dolphins in a local puddle, but half its pages would be
missing, and it would be in Spanish. Not only is it more difficult to
generate objects in waking reality, but when these objects appear, they
posses certain curious warpings or distortions that lend them an air of
tantalizing uselessness. Several times while searching through second
hand shops, I have come across items that conform with astonishing
precision to my tastes, which, I assure you, are abnormal in the
extreme. (Orange and purple, anyone?) Yet these items are inevitably
flawed or compromised in some fashion rendering them useless.
The Argentinean author Borges (say it: Boar-hayes) mentioned this
phenomenon in his short story Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, in which
these objects are called hronir. In the story, hronir are
generated by people searching for lost or hidden objects, but I think
the term can be generalized to any object that manifests as the result
of thought. What is particularly interesting about hronir, and what
Borges describes so enchantingly, is their subtle, even infuriating
deviation from our expectations. If the hronir in question are simply
objects, this is merely frustrating. But people too can come into our
lives like hronir, and if one has the misfortune of falling in love
with such a one, the results can be as comical as they are devastating.
How are we to explain the curious defects of the hronir? I think that
there are several causes for these aberrant characteristics. First, the
sort of thought that most often generates hronir is diffuse,
semi-conscious and protracted. Gestating long in the obscure
shadowlands of unelucidated desire, hronir emerge misshapen and
unfocused. Second, our reality seems to have a sort of gelatinous
quality, transparent yet distorting, clear but impeding, which garbles
the translation of intent into reality. It is as if our thoughts pass
into nearby but hidden planes of reality, where they tunnel through
inscrutable labyrinths and collect in unseen pools, before re-emerging
here, whether by slow dripping, or sudden and sloppy births. Perhaps if
we could but focus our thought and intention more coherently, these
shadows would recede, the gelatin would melt, and we could make of our
world at once what we willed.
These factors
lend a distinctive flavor to our reality, rendering it achingly
beautiful but somehow unsatisfying. Our reality gives us exactly what
we want, but we are to too weak and distracted to want anything firmly
enough. Like a distant but kindly relative trying to guess what we want
for our Christmas present, the world always gives us something, but the
gift is all too often ill-fitting, or pertains to interests expressed
at some period in the past. Dear old Aunt Mildred is still giving you
the ceramic tortoises you collected in middle school, though you long
since lost any interest in that particular field. Likewise, I have
often noted that the best hronir often relate to things that I was
intently interested in during some period in the past. Diffuse or
sub-conscious interest will generate hronir quickly, but these are of
lower quality. Focused, intent interest seems to collect and ferment in
higher and more distant planes, before re-emerging here in a form that
is more perfect in shape, but all too often irrelevant in time. As
Borges most evocatively noted “Hronir of the eleventh degree have a
purity of form not found in the original.” Indeed, my life seems in
many ways to be filled up with items epitomizing my desires of past
times.
Perhaps over lifetimes, our personal
generation of hronir accumulates and cascades, creating whole
realities, filled with things similar to those we have long desired,
but which are somehow never fulfilling. Untold myriads of beings are
struggling incessantly, aching with desire, reaching after the things,
people, and situations they desire. But the treadmill of time spinning
below their feet keeps satisfaction out of reach. This cunning process
of hronir-generation is like a diabolical contrivance wrought of
desire, thought and intention. Hot rivets of lust nail it together.
Those trapped inside this fraught contraption wear blinders of
ignorance, just like the blinders that horses in treadmills must wear.
Like those in Plato’s cave, they grasp at dim reflections of things
that they seem to remember from somewhere.
Even
if we begin to recognize the cogs and workings of this
hronir-generating universe around us, even if we can finally be made to
hear the groan of its ponderous mechanisms, which like the clattering
of railway carriages has become inaudible with time and familiarity,
how are we to get out of it? Is this desire to escape… a desire which
itself can get caught up in the works and become fuel, generating the
most poignant and terrible hronir of all, the long and distorted imago
of liberation? Or, perhaps, if we continually feed the mechanism on its
own vomit, distilling and refining the hronir of liberation, can we at
last attain a “hronir of the eleventh degree,” more perfect, clear and
intense than anything in our reality? This universal solvent may be the
azoth of the alchemists. I certainly hope, and even dare to suspect,
that amid all their transparent apparatus, recursive tubes and
self-devouring concoctions, they found it.