Embodying and Enacting Metaphor

Since we are, in fact, constructed by metaphorical processes within natures multilevel structural ontology, there are those who believe that human beings must follow what 'reason' dictates to be the desired end: embodying "God" in the cosmos itself.

When Beginning Meets End

The logic of this rationale, which is found in the 3 great religions, plus Buddhism, is a an attitude towards existence in which the mental needs of the human being supplant and subsume the material facts - and beings - of life on Earth.

The issue of "what God's Will is", is not an easily determined issue. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all prescribe something along the lines of a common morality, and Buddhism does as well, without the inner determinant of a God which has expressed his distinct will to a chosen group, but to a more metaphysically satisfying description: the Dharma.

Like the Yin and Yang of the Taoist symbol, the Dharma implies a flowing being undergoing continuous transformation. This image naturally supports a pacifism and acceptance of what is, and yet, one could argue that 'what it is' fails, to a certain extent, to be properly determined and known; such a complete acceptance of the complex and abstract nature of the whole, seems to have somewhat obfuscated the teleology - or purposefulness - implicitly present in natural processes, and unequivocally in the behavior of living beings in their directedness to process energy in logically meaningfully ways vis-à-vis the goal of living.

Allahu Akbar! The Scientist, and the Magician

If you could define the mental and emotional character of the west, these three ideas come to mind: those who believe they have the absolute will of the creator as revealed through a primary sacred text, written in a holy tongue, conveying the true nature of existence. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each have their plausible accounts that renders all others who live according to a different ethos, living in a sinful way, in opposition to the will of the Creator as Revealed by the Sacred scripture. The feedback loop of such religious cogitation necessarily evolves, naturally, according to cause-effect processes. But never in a vacuum: the Neolithic birthed religiosity, but it did so in a dialectic with others who were self-organized according to different conditions. Biological evolution grows more stochastic and chaotic in overly complex systems, which is why people began 'being spread out' into different genetic categories, itself a function of chance interactions that scaffold the embryological process. Humans in interaction with one another guide developmental functions of fetuses, speaking to a pretty clear-cut structural determinism.

There is a story to human minds, and the story of the side of 'light' is counteracted by a real 'dark side'.

The Magician would appear to be identical to the category of 'elites': kings, queens, and the nobility and priesthood of the kingdom, plus some lower-class vagabonds, would be the 'carriers' and developers of this mentality. This mentality posits a dualism, and would be represented by the number 9 - hence Plato's Ennead - indicating a sort of 'dissociated' consciousness that is only 'half-in' the creative process. However, since the issue of what constitutes existence isn't exactly 'solved', the assumption of a dualistic reality, or an astral realm which exists apart from a physical realm, is still an assumption - an assumption that seems to depend for its metaphysical referents, the same sort of thinking that animates the position of the light side. If one could track the beginnings of civilization 10,000 plus years ago, we would be able to see how the dynamical nature of a body moving along a spectrum of 'symmetry-entropy', produces a mind which reasons according to the 'coherency-incoherency' of feeling states, which speaks to a non-verbal level of self-organization that, speaking to the symmetry-asymmetry of our interpersonal relations, constitutes the frame in which thinking even occurs. Within thinking itself, the dynamics of the body and the body-mind become organized along conceptual categories, this time between antonyms - or ideas which express qualities which in many cases is necessarily the case i.e. light/dark, cold/hot, good/bad, soft/hard, etc. There is basically a structural continuity here, moving from basic thermodynamic and symmetry processes to ideas in our minds.

This sort of thinking, or scientific thinking, is a consequence of important separations, or bifurcations, which enabled human beings too loosen the bounds on their feeling dynamics. The philosopher John Deely traces this back to the medieval Latin ages, or the "dark ages", in which Latin was the lingua-franca of philosophical thought, and not Greek, as it was in the Byzantine world. It is in Latin, and the thinking it allowed to be done, that the separation of church and state was first conceived. Latin, and not Greek, allowed for the formulation of a realist ontology and epistemology which set high standards for truth.

The scientist is a strange character - first formed, it seems, in Athens with Aristotle, who challenged the views of those who confused philosophy with theology, even a theology that is denoted by another term, "theosophy". Speculating as to the causal dynamics of reality in terms of a speculative metaphysics which is believed in as a matter of subjective faith, and not any objectively demonstrable fact, is what makes Plato different from Aristotle, and the scientist different from the religious person.

Indeed, Aristotle understood very rightly that 'higher worlds' seemed to be better understood as potentialities arising from the physical process of our body, than from 'another realm', separate and apart, and acting upon the body as if from 'without'. Understanding it as Aristotle did allows us to acknowledge a dynamical continuity from the molecules which make up our cells, to the feelings we feel in our living and relating with one another, to the imaginative powers of the human mind to generate facsimiles of the lived world, and in such a way that we can exist 'objectively' with one another at such a level. The world is not broken though; just as having a human mind and feeling consciousness obfuscates the self-similar dynamics of the cells which make them up, so too does the 'astral realm' provide quasi support to a dualistic conception of reality. But, and as Dr. Strange teaches us, when the body goes, in all likelihood, and if physical law is to be appreciated and valued as implying something, so too does the mental ontologies which we may 'exist' in within a meditative state.

God in the Cosmos?

As a hypothesis, God is a major claim - the biggest one that can be made. Yet, because it is so ultimate, and because human beings are at such odds with one another, it makes no sense, from a structural perspective, to pay attention to this idea as anything more than a private, or shared-by-consent sort of affair.

What makes science so valuable is that it brings things down to the 'bare level', and allows us to look upon the world in a way so that basic ideas can be accepted about reality, and from there, build upwards so that all people can be protected by the law and enfranchised into a singular super-ordinate structure i.e. such as a democratic humanism, which supports both freedom to be, as well as protection by the state from being taken advantage of by others i.e. laws against murder, theft, rape, child abuse, etc.

Since our own development embodies the relational structures of the society we grow up within, we will never be able to know what sort of happiness, wonder, and growth we as a collective could undergo, until those terms from the French revolution - liberty, fraternity, and equality, become embodied in all human societies.

I just read your text, i might have to read it again.

Pertaining to 'what God's will is', i think a modern understanding would be that God wants to experience itself. God wants to exerience itself to the fullest.

Your soul knows everything there is to know, but knowing isn't enough, it wants to experience. And so your soul will call unto itself all sorts of darkness, so that it may experience all sorts of different things. Without experiencing, you only have a concept.

So at some point, God decided it was time to experience everything of itself. But God was all there was, it had no reference point outside of itself. So God had to split itself, creating that which is here, and that which is there, and the space in which here and there exists in. Everything is made of God. All that exists, and all that doesn't exist, is god experiencing itself.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Human beings, that is we are, the Universe's way of experiencing itself. So I've wondered is human beings are God's way of experiencing the thrill of having limitations by vicariously sharing our experiences of joys and frustrations.

As far as I can tell our omnipotent God has no will. God just exists and is the sum total of everything in nature. And the one thing about nature that seems very clear and constant is nature follows the laws of physics relentlessly. Clouds behave the same way in the sky every day without exception. Nature is very strict in following the laws of physics. So in terms of nature it seems to me God's will is predetermined.

The only reason God exists is because there are truths that are unknown to us. God is all knowable truth. But at it's very root, the idea of God is God is just a word. No one denies the existence of the word God. What the word God means is kind of irrelevant. The word God is defined by every sentence in which is is used. The word God is the alpha and omega of every possible word that has been created or ever will be created. God, as a word, is a representation. God is a representation that includes every possible knowable. Is is also a representation for everything that is not knowable by man. God represents everything real and delusional. As a word, God has no limitations on what is represents.

a reply to: Astrocyte


I'm not fond of the Greek thinking, maybe because I had a grandfather who read uncensored Greek mythology as bedtime stories when I was a little tacker.

My predjudices aside, I think ol' Aristotle might be correct in a way:

Aristotle understood very rightly that 'higher worlds' seemed to be better understood as potentialities arising from the physical process of our body, than from 'another realm', separate and apart, and acting upon the body as if from 'without'.

I would take a slightly more metaphysical(?) interpretation, or perhaps I might venture to say elaboration.

(snip) . . . .potentialities arising from the physical process of our body, (/snip)

Perhaps we create the "higher" worlds on a personal level as Aristotle says. I would suggest the possibility that these "higher" worlds could persist when collective (mass synchronised) consciousness is involved and take on a life of their own.

"Potentialities" --- the potential to be -- the potential to become . . . .

. . . . monsters?



Afterthought

I am not suggesting the "higher worlds" are not real.

I am suggesting they are built from the bottom up.

Speaking of which, didn't the Greeks beleive in other mythical critters called Daimons, even though it kind of Platonic in that sense. Plato believed them to have been intermediate between mortals and gods, like the Abrahamic view of Angels that give messages while demons stole messages. In Judaism Angels where demons and they spread like a Hermes.

It a bit platonically atomic, don't get me started with the Nagas.

a reply to: Specimen

don't get me started with the Nagas.

(big mischievous smile) . . . . I wonder, which button do I press?

a reply to: Whatsthisthen

The Big Red One, lol.