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DENIAL STOPS HERE
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DENIAL STOPS HERE
by ZeroInfinity » Thu 22 Jun 2006, 22:17:56
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ZeroInfinity - Wood
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Re: DENIAL STOPS HERE
by Atlantean_Relic » Thu 22 Jun 2006, 22:22:10
So I'm not an Organic organism about to be crushed by the harsh reality that is the Universe. Good, I thought I had death to look forward to.
Actually this Sums up my view of the Universe: It is all a game.
Actually this Sums up my view of the Universe: It is all a game.
Was a long and dark December
When the banks became cathedrals
And the fog
Became God
When the banks became cathedrals
And the fog
Became God
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Atlantean_Relic - Tar Sands
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Re: DENIAL STOPS HERE
by ZeroInfinity » Thu 22 Jun 2006, 22:33:12
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Atlantean_Relic', 'S')o I'm not an Organic organism about to be crushed by the harsh reality that is the Universe. Good, I thought I had death to look forward to.
Actually this Sums up my view of the Universe: It is all a game.
Actually this Sums up my view of the Universe: It is all a game.
At one extreme of its meaning, "myth" is fable, falsehood, or superstition. But at another, "myth" is a useful and fruitful image by which we make sense of life in somewhat the same way that we can explain electrical forces by comparing them with the behavior of water or air. Yet "myth," in this second sense, is not to be taken literally, just as electricity is not to be confused with air or water. Thus in using myth one must take care not to confuse image with fact, which would be like climbing up the signpost instead of following the road.
Myth, then, is the form in which I try to answer when children ask me those fundamental metaphysical questions which come so readily to their minds: "Where did the world come from?" "Why did God make the world?" "Where was I before I was born?" "Where do people go when they die?" Again and again I have found that they seem to be satisfied with a simple and very ancient story, which goes something like this:
"There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can't have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn't be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black.
"In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn't, for if the world went on and on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself. It comes and it goes. Now you see it; now you don't. So because it doesn't get tired of itself, it always comes back again after it disappears. It's like your breath: it goes in and out, in and out, and if you try to hold it in all the time you feel terrible. It's also like the game of hide-and-seek, because it's always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn't always hide in the same place.
"God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.
"Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's the whole fun of it--just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self--the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.
"Of course, you must remember that God isn't shaped like a person. People have skins and there is always something outside our skins. If there weren't. we wouldn't know the difference between what is inside and outside our bodies. But God has no skin and no shape because there isn't any outside to him. [With a sufficiently intelligent child, I illustrate this with a Mobius strip--a ring of paper tape twisted once in such a way that it has only one side and one edge.] The inside and the outside of God are the same. And though I have been talking about God as 'he' and not 'she,' God isn't a man or a woman. I didn't say 'it' because we usually say 'it' for things that aren't alive.
"God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.
"You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn't really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It's the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world."
This story, obviously mythical in form, is not given as a scientific description of the way things are. Based on the analogies of games and the drama, and using that much worn-out word "God" for the Player, the story claims only to be like the way things are. I use it just as astronomers use the image of inflating a black balloon with white spots on it for the galaxies, to explain the expanding universe. But to most children, and many adults, the myth is at once intelligible, simple, and fascinating. By contrast, so many other mythical explanations of the world are crude, tortuous, and unintelligible. But many people think that believing in the unintelligible propositions and symbols of their religions is the test of true faith. "I believe," said Tertullian of Christianity, "because it is absurd."
People who think for themselves do not accept ideas on this kind of authority. They don't feel commanded to believe in miracles or strange doctrines as Abraham felt commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. As T. George Harris put it:
The social hierarchies of the past, where some boss above you always punished any error, conditioned men to feel a chain of harsh authority reaching all the way "up there." We don't feel this bond in today's egalitarian freedom. We don't even have, since Dr. Spock, many Jehovah-like fathers in the human family. So the average unconscious no longer learns to seek forgiveness from a wrathful God above.
But, he continues--
Our generation knows a cold hell, solitary confinement in this life, without a God to damn or save it. Until man figures out the trap and hunts . . . "the Ultimate Ground of Being," he has no reason at all for his existence. Empty, finite, he knows only that he will soon die. Since this life has no meaning, and he sees no future life, he is not really a person but a victim of self-extinction." 2
"The Ultimate Ground of Being" is Paul Tillich's decontaminated term for God" and would also do for "the Self of the world" as I put it in my story for children. But the secret which my story slips over to the child is that the Ultimate Ground of Being is you. Not, of course, the everyday you which the Ground is assuming, or "pretending" to be, but that inmost Self which escapes inspection because it's always the inspector. This, then, is the taboo of taboos you re IT!
http://www.terebess.hu/english/watts2.html
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ZeroInfinity - Wood
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Re: DENIAL STOPS HERE
by Atlantean_Relic » Thu 22 Jun 2006, 22:44:34
So I'm a sick Sadist 
wait that also mean I'm Emo and Bush ![[smilie=icon_scratch.gif]](https://udev.peakoil.com/forums/images/smilies/icon_scratch.gif "icon_scratch")
![[smilie=llorar.gif]](https://udev.peakoil.com/forums/images/smilies/llorar.gif "llorar")
wait that also mean I'm Emo and Bush Was a long and dark December
When the banks became cathedrals
And the fog
Became God
When the banks became cathedrals
And the fog
Became God
-
Atlantean_Relic - Tar Sands
- Posts: 724
- Joined: Mon 24 Oct 2005, 03:00:00
- Location: North of Id, west of Oz, and infront of the damned rabbit
Re: DENIAL STOPS HERE
by ZeroInfinity » Thu 22 Jun 2006, 22:48:40
Understanding Our Own Minds
What does this mean? To understand something, first of all we need evidence of its existence. Here, therefore, we are trying to use something (the mind) to understand itself and produce evidence of its own existence, somewhat similar to the Drawing Hands of Escher that depicts a self-drawn drawing (see illustration). An inherent paradox where something in the system jumps out and acts on the system as if it existed outside it. And when we examine our own minds, this is exactly what happens. According to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, understanding our own minds is impossible, yet we have persisted in seeking this knowledge through the ages!
Everything and Nothing in One Breath
Consciousness is not an object, so you cannot say it is something. And yet it is not nothing. Nothing is void; it has no attributes, no qualities. Consciousness is empty of any thing, and yet there is something endlessly compelling in that emptiness. When you contemplate consciousness, you discover a mysterious sense of knowing that is both knowing nothing and knowing everything at once. Whatever you are becoming cognizant of, its nature seems to be everything—fullness, completeness. The emptiness is full. That's why the emptiness is compelling, because it is full of the knowing of some mysterious everything that is not a thing. It's everything; it's nothing—you can go on forever: everything, nothing, nothing, everything, always meaning the same thing. If you could say everything and nothing in one breath, perhaps you could capture the paradoxical nature of consciousness.
What does this mean? To understand something, first of all we need evidence of its existence. Here, therefore, we are trying to use something (the mind) to understand itself and produce evidence of its own existence, somewhat similar to the Drawing Hands of Escher that depicts a self-drawn drawing (see illustration). An inherent paradox where something in the system jumps out and acts on the system as if it existed outside it. And when we examine our own minds, this is exactly what happens. According to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, understanding our own minds is impossible, yet we have persisted in seeking this knowledge through the ages!
Everything and Nothing in One Breath
Consciousness is not an object, so you cannot say it is something. And yet it is not nothing. Nothing is void; it has no attributes, no qualities. Consciousness is empty of any thing, and yet there is something endlessly compelling in that emptiness. When you contemplate consciousness, you discover a mysterious sense of knowing that is both knowing nothing and knowing everything at once. Whatever you are becoming cognizant of, its nature seems to be everything—fullness, completeness. The emptiness is full. That's why the emptiness is compelling, because it is full of the knowing of some mysterious everything that is not a thing. It's everything; it's nothing—you can go on forever: everything, nothing, nothing, everything, always meaning the same thing. If you could say everything and nothing in one breath, perhaps you could capture the paradoxical nature of consciousness.
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ZeroInfinity - Wood
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Re: DENIAL STOPS HERE
by ZeroInfinity » Thu 22 Jun 2006, 23:12:45
'They' say eyes are the windows to the 'soul'.
It is with 'our' eyes that 'we' can see and percieve of the physical universe around 'us'.
But if 'you' look very closely and directly into the eyes of another 'person' WHAT is there to SEE? LK Two seemingly different 'people' staring into each others 'souls' see no-thing and no-one. Darkness with Darkness. It is like an infinite recursion of 'nothing' not-SEEING 'nothing' and vice versa.
So 'you' discover there really isn't a 'person' behind the skin, the flesh and bones. Behind this mask and facade there lies a mysterious 'nothing', and it is only with this 'nothing' cognizing 'something' that anything can exists, and yet it is only with the illusion of other-than no-things (which stems from the original 'no-thing') that the 'nothing' can have anything to 'reflect' off and exist by.
It is with 'our' eyes that 'we' can see and percieve of the physical universe around 'us'.
But if 'you' look very closely and directly into the eyes of another 'person' WHAT is there to SEE? LK Two seemingly different 'people' staring into each others 'souls' see no-thing and no-one. Darkness with Darkness. It is like an infinite recursion of 'nothing' not-SEEING 'nothing' and vice versa.
So 'you' discover there really isn't a 'person' behind the skin, the flesh and bones. Behind this mask and facade there lies a mysterious 'nothing', and it is only with this 'nothing' cognizing 'something' that anything can exists, and yet it is only with the illusion of other-than no-things (which stems from the original 'no-thing') that the 'nothing' can have anything to 'reflect' off and exist by.
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ZeroInfinity - Wood
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