John Dunn

Mind is freedom

Sunday, 26 February 2023 at 17:39

The world wishes to be penetrated by the thinking that relives the process for which it is petrified in forms, as nature, as the past, as history. For these forms, taken up outside the process from which they have sprung, and having become sensations, images, and thoughts, are the non-truth that sickens us. In truth, the petrified world is the spirit, which presses on in us as life. (Massimo Scaligero)

Mind is freedom

To the common herd, nature and history, are both absolute otherness.

Nature is without final ends, extraneous to mind; something we can only know as phenomenon.

History is the fathomless sea of the past which loses itself and disappears in the far-off land of the prehistoric. It is the history of men's actions,the actions of men whose soul can only be reconstituted in an imagination devoid of any scientific justification.

Both are full and radical otherness, which has become the common perception.

Both have been withdrawn from the common mind.

Nature and the history to the common herd are abstract nature and abstract history, and, as such, non-existent.

The otherness which is the fundamental characteristic of the common herd’s view, were it as absolute as it appears, would imply the absolute unknowability of nature and history, but it would also imply something even more critical, the impossibility of mind.

For if there be something outside my mind in the absolute sense, my mind must be limited by it, and then it is no longer free, and no longer mind since mind is freedom.

© John Dunn.

Nature and history cannot exist apart from me

Sunday, 26 February 2023 at 17:25

The being of thought is what radically operates in the world - not what is determinately thought and passed down from generation to generation as knowledge or history. The being of thought is the spirit in its infinitude that contains, within itself, feeling and willing in their incorporeal essence. It is not thinking, but its Logos, or pure principle, that thinks the whole of human thinking, enlivening itself directly in those rare thoughts that do not renounce, even in the sphere of nature, the source from which they arise. (Massimo Scaligero)

Nature and history cannot exist apart from me

They appear to be two different types of reality, other than myself.

The other than my mind, which is outside of my mind, is nature.

The other in my mind is history.

The American continent is a natural fact.

The discovery of America by Columbus is an historical fact.

Historical facts have a certain law, which every one who narrates or remembers the history must respect: a law which requires an absolute form of otherness.

But they are not different in themselves as facts.

Nature and history coincide in so far as they imply a form of otherness from the "I" which knows.

This otherness also implies abstraction.

However, the truth is that if nature and history are to have a concrete reality they cannot exist apart from me.

© John Dunn.

I am the absolute Creator

Sunday, 26 February 2023 at 17:09

The “I” does not know opposites if it actualises itself in freed thinking, where the essence of each entity lives. Such an essence, in its very essence, is identical in everything. In truth, the world’s central unity tends to manifest in us as the rising power of thought, through its continual demand for determination. (Massimo Scaligero)

I am the absolute Creator

When in my thinking I do not recognise myself, do not find myself, am not living in myself, the reality which comes to be the thought in which my thought meets itself, in which, that is, I meet myself, is for me nature, something apart, i.e. abstract.

I may try to think of nature as a concrete reality , as an object in itself, but the only object I can think is an aspect of me.

The object is then no other than the life of my thinking, it is the absolute “I”.

As such it is the ultimate reality.

I may try and tap into it for separate objective knowledge, but ultimately I will find only the absolute “I”.

As the absolute, I have nothing to contrapose to myself and find all in myself. I am therefore the actual concrete universal. I am the absolute is, in so far as I affirm myself.

Deprived of my internal causality I would be annulled, pulled down by the fallen angels;

But in causing myself I the Creator of myself and in myself of the world, of the world which is the most complete that I can think, the absolute world.

© John Dunn.

My thinking is the Becoming

Sunday, 26 February 2023 at 17:00

The Becoming of nature is affirmed only by my thinking


Objects which we normally believe we think, and that, within us, arouse desire,world vision, and culture, in effect, have yet to be truly thought by us. They are only reflected by thought in the act of their appearing. (Massimo Scaligero)

My thinking is the Becoming

What I have thought cannot be what is now thinkable.

My thought has become a thing, nature, matter, a ‘fallen angel’, outside of my mind.

My thinking is the Becoming, and it is only in the Becoming that my thinking is.

My thought gone is simply what has become, the conclusion or result of the Becoming, it not the Becoming, nor my thinking.

And yet… whilst, on the one hand, my thought cannot be my thinking, it’s origins are pure, which leaves it concrete and eternal.

Nature, on the other hand, in the very act in which I affirm it is denied, that is, spiritualised. And on this condition only can it be affirmed.

© John Dunn.

Good riddance

Friday, 24 February 2023 at 21:02

The seeming solidity of nature was no less than the translucent inwardness of my thinking.

Each of us needs to be the “I” that we each say we are, so as not to have an objective world opposite us, nature in opposition, a reality that is recalcitrant and painful. The “I” does not know opposites if it actualises itself in freed thinking, where the essence of each entity lives. (Massimo Scaligero)

Good riddance

As soon as I had rid myself of the illusion of a natural reality then this mysterious nature, impenetrable by the light of the intellect, appeared as the Becoming of my thinking.

The spirituality of the cosmos was unveiled in all its purity as soon as I began to think of it in the concrete from which I had previously abstracted it, i.e. in the process of my thinking.

I can no longer surprise a natural reality without positing it as an idea, and so I discovered that the seeming solidity of nature was no less than the translucent inwardness of my thinking.

© John Dunn.

By motorcycle to the Great Chesterton Windmill

Wednesday, 22 February 2023 at 20:19

Below can be found the text to the commentary I will be using on my latest video production, which I hope to publish on my YouTube video channel in about five days time. I will announce the publication here on this website, but better still, please subscribe to my channel to be notified.





By motorcycle to the Great Chesterton Windmill

Hello, and welcome to the ride.

I’m in Warwickshire, just east of the Fosse Way.

There’s the left turn I’m looking for.

And there on the right is a rather unusual building, standing in the distance.

It looks like I’m not the only one interested in this iconic Warwickshire landmark

No, it’s not a water tower, but rather a windmill.

To the other side of that windmill, the land drops down to the Roman FosseWay. And because of its hilltop position, that landmark can be seen from miles around.

Now that was not just any old windmill, but one built to a special one-off design by the architect John Stone, back in the seventeenth century.

I fully intend to take a closer look at that great landmark, but there’s one other place I’d like to see first that has a close association with it.

I’m riding to the place that gave its name to the great windmill, and that place is Chesterton, a mile or two away.

Seeking out historical places of interest has given me wonderful motorcycling opportunities over the years… roads and little lanes like this, through avariety of landscapes that bear the scars, marks and imprints of those that have trodden, worked and fought on the land before us .

And I also think that any excursion, whether it be by motorcycle, car, bicycle or on foot, is always better for having an object, or goal in mind. I could take no pleasure in riding around just for the sake of it.

There has to be a mission.

And, with that in mind, I like to use my motorcycle to seek out the ancient, the quirky, the monumental, and enjoy the ride, taking in the views, and “reading” the landscape, its geology and history, as I do so.

Over there, in the distance, on the horizon, you’ll see the church tower of the village of Chesterton, the place after which the Great Chesterton Windmill was named.

Well here I am at Chesterton. And what does Chesterton consist of? Only this church and a neighbouring house. The village is no more; the settlement here, certainly since Roman times and probably before, is no more, the dwellings erased from the landscape. Even the old manor house is long gone. The only evidence for this place at one time being of some significance is the medieval church, outstanding for that long row of castellations across its tower and roof..

Let’s take a look.

Wheredid all the people go, you might be asking. I don’t know for certain, though there is some evidence in the name of a nearby farm, Ewefields Farm. It’s highly likely that the lord of the manor here kicked the peasants off the land, enclosed the fields, and introduced sheep.

St Giles at Chesterton is a long low church mostly dating from the 14th and 15th centuries.

There’s the sundial over the porch, embellished with the words “See me and be gone about your business”.

Well I’m not going to be put off that easily.

There’s no structural difference between the nave and the chancel, which creates a tunnel-like effect down the building

But it is the west end that interests me today.

At the west end of the church are the memorial monuments to the Peyto family, the local lords of the manor.

Onthe south wall is a late sixteenth century alabaster tomb of Humfrey Peyto and his wife, Anne, watched over by their many children

On the north wall is the 1619 memorial to William Peyto and his wife Eleanor, which was commissioned from the Sculptor and Architect NicholasStone, who was famous for being the master mason to James I and Charles I.

Here is the man I’ve come to see. This is the 1643 memorial to Edward Peyto and Elizabeth his wife. It was Edward Peyto who commissioned the great landmark windmill.

This memorial was made by John Stone, son of Nicholas Stone. As mentioned before John Stone was also the designer of windmill commissioned by Edward Peyto, and also the architect of the Peyto mansion behind the church.

Let’s take a look.

I’m at the opposite side of the church to the one I first entered…

…just walking to the site of the Peyto Mansion.

There is the gateway arch designed by John Stone to stand above the pathway that led from the Peyto’s mansion to the church…

And there once stood the Peyto mansion, but…
…the mansion is no more, having been demolished in 1802.

Edward and Elizabeth Peyto would have walked from their grand home, through the arch, to their special entrance to the church through that door there, long since bricked up.

Right, having met the man who commissioned the great windmill of Chesterton, as well as some examples of other work done by the windmill’s architect, it’s time to ride over to the hilltop landmark itself.

Are these sheep descendants of the one’s who replaced the peasants of Chesterton?

So,as I have said, the windmill I’m riding to see was commissioned by Edward Peyto, and John Stone, who designed the now lost manor house, was the architect.

Some of the building accounts for the windmill have survived and we know the names of several of the craftsmen, how long they worked and how much they were paid. For example, John Richardson and his son were employed as stone masons and were paid 15s 6d for half a day digging stone at the quarry, and 15 days’ work at the windmill itself. It is also recorded that sailcloth for the mill was bought at 9d per yard from a Mr Saunders, who supplied 97 yards for £3 12s 9d.

There’s the windmill again. It’s time to start walking to see what it’s all about.

There you are, the great landmark that is the Chesterton Windmill and, as I’m sure you can see, it’s not just any old windmill this, but one built to a one-off design. When he commissioned the windmill back in 1632 Edward Peyto certainly wanted something unique, and he got it.

The location is most suited to catching the wind, standing high above the flat plain below. From here you can see the site of a Roman town that once stood on the Fosse Way Roman road below.

The most striking feature of the windmill is the way that the cap and turning mechanism which holds the sales sits on six semicircular arches, on piers, the outer faces of which are arcs of circles radiating from a common centre.

The machinery was repaired in 1776 and again in 1860. Chesterton Windmill continued to be used until shortly before the First World War when the winch which turned the sails into the wind failed to operate, and milling became impossible.
Truly a unique design, there being no other anywhere in the world.

© Dr John Dunn.

Disillusioning

Tuesday, 21 February 2023 at 22:04

Disillusioning

The common herd represents nature as concrete and actual reality.

It ignores entirely the true character of thinking as absolute reality. Naturalism is the necessary consequence of such ignorance, a naturalism which is the fallen thought of fallen angels.

Fallen thought is the conception of a reality which is the opposite, and nothing but the opposite, of mind.

If my mind had such independent reality confronting it, I could only know it by presupposing it as already realised, thereby limiting myself to the role of simple spectator.

What is this apparent other-than-mind that so seduces the common herd? It alone is nature, one which fallen thought does not require to be deduced from anything. To fallen thought nature is itself the first principle.

The problem of the deduction of nature did not arise until I left the false standpoint of fallen thought and so rid myself of the illusion of a natural reality.

© Dr John Dunn.