"The Land of the Dead"

What a powerful mythological image that concept is! "Land of the Dead". The Egyptians and Buddhists talk about it. Whether they do so in the same way I am not competent to say, but I would wager that they went about the issue in different ways. The only commonality is the tendency to believe that the self survives death.

But does it? I think that a self-aware and honest person, particularly one deeply studied in the physical sciences, would come away with a different conclusion. The universe of objects emerges within a system which seems to have no boundaries or ends. A physical organism evolved within the context of energy transformation of a planet. The cell, a spheroid enclosure, and the Earth, a spheroid enclosure, embody the same physical dynamics based in the same intrinsic kinetic properties: transforming energy in geometrically stable configurations along a path of least resistance.

Everything that exists on Earth exists in terms of the above aphorism: everything is asymmetrical insomuch as the environment around the organism is continuously changing, and therefore continuosuly activating the breakdown of symmetry, increase of entropy, and a functional entrainment towards restoring homeostasis (or internal symmetries) in the form of action tendencies i.e. exploration, etc.

So when an organism exists, is that to imply that the organism exists also in some fundamental ontological sense? Can we attribute the emergence of a creature to an abstract animating principle? Or rather, does every physical process have a proximate physical cause, and therefore, the ontology of the wholeness that emerges can be regarded not as an addition to the system, but as the emergence of a form which ultimately derives its capacities from some fundamental oneness of the system in its wholeness.

The universe is large. The Earth in comparison to the Universe is beyond tiny; comparing our solar system to the other solar systems of our galaxy, or our galaxy to the vastness of potential galaxies, is pointless. This exercise only goes to prove that the human and the universe aren't opposites, but rather, that the human IS the universe "become aware of itself", from within itself. There is a mind within and a mind without, as it were, with the 'mind without' being the literal universe we interact with in our structuring.

Since we are as much apart of the 'mind without', the mind within which we possess appears to exist with reference to the 'mind without' in a geometrically "fitted" way, with a hyper-complex structure, no doubt (this is not euclidean geometry, but fractal geometry). This fact (which many physically and philosophically oriented thinkers can't help but be mesmerized by) means that what we experience in our perceptual reality is more or less a function of the fact that our complex nervous systems are physiologically entrained, or genetically 'synchonrized structures' - clones, as it were, of one another.

We are not clones, of course, insomuch as we each have a different situation and context in our growth and development, we inevitably become different selves with slightly different qualities of expression. This exists as much at the physical level as at the emotional and cognitive level.
But this doesn't mean that there isn't, in fact, a higher unity - a higher and more perceptually singificant fact - an ontological "end point", as it were, which is probably what Chardin meant by his idea of the "omega point".

If we are the universe experiencing itself from within, there is no "jim" "joe" and "john". These identities are relational, and relative. They are functionally relevant and so important to respect, but they aren't anything more than ecologically determined structures, with a 'self' pole (the inside, the brain/nervous system) and an 'other' pole - the social environment, the experienced body. Every individual has a verson of this dynamic. Every individual has a suite of states which they share with others simply be interacting with them. Something in you which performs a function in your functioning can enter me for exactly the same reason, and for a similar purpose. Because we are the same sort of organism, our bodies and brains dissipate - or process - energy in systematically identical ways. Every baby needs to be coddled and loved. It needs its muscles touched; its body brought to another, larger body. The heat needs to be felt; the sucking on the nipple needs to occur; its narcissism needs to be indulged in the first year, until walking begins around 12 months; then, quite naturally, the being that can walk can hear opposition; it can hear no. It'll resist and dislike it, but the parent will continue, and for the sake of attachment, the child will listen and assimilate the meaning-structure.

In this way, every person is archetypally the same. Archetypes certainly exist - and they have a status that could be plausibly regarded as "gods", because they are potencies underlying, or integrating, basic dynamics at various points in the life process, acting as the 'singularity' that collapses biodynamical functioning into a singular vector. But these potencies - or attractors - are not "alive" in the sense of being indpendent of our functioning. They are rather the "gestalt" or 'whole', imitating the universal whole, which integrates the horizontal, dynamical, social reality of ones living, and projects it within our brain as perceptual and cognitive experiences of being a 'certain way'.

That 'way' is a power. The question is, can a human mind survive death, or is our interaction with mythological concepts - like an "astral realm", a "counter-earth", etc, really our interacting with our own internal semiotic plane, with the 'archetypes' playing the role of the other?

Many paranormal investigators have this sort of question in mind. If we are the same universe and the same being, then what does that mean vis-a-vis reincarnation? It doesn't disprove it, of course, as the 'desire to exist' from one state can be carried over as that which animates another. But rather, it does mean that the essence of the self is non-determined, and so, without any particular quality of substance, besides, perhaps, love.

If the world is our screen, our other half, to play with, than the beliefs which grow in a society which experiences the world as inextrciably 'other', as an 'enemy' or 'demiurge', are probably functions of unresolved trauma. Indeed, individualism, the obsession with pluralism and absolute diversity, almost seems to be paranoic and afraid of the 'other', even though, logically, and at root, everything a human does has a social motivation energizing its existence.

So this is what you meant earlier by Is

existing

all things are one kinda deal? That actually makes perfect sense.

I've always wondered what sort of ideas ran through the minds of you souless humans. What a cute little narrative you've constructed. I hear when you people die your minds disintegrate and go back to being disconnected bits of energy. I hope it won't hurt.

Actually a really good essay.
Recommendable to all.

On entropy though, I'm not so sure.
It could also be cyclical.

The physical being, may change bodies, grow old and die, but if there is "spirit", I don't think it is subject to the same laws.

This is where I think current fringe-science says something interesting.
What we are looking for is a tangible type of force.

Like gravity, for example.
But gravity isn't a force on its own.
It's really just a kind of "suction" that big objects make in space, denting it, and causing a "downward" spiral.

The light exists because the darkness pushes it together.

We exist because the lower dimensions (hell) and the higher dimensions (heaven) are pushing us into a kind of denseness.
We're a divine sandwich.

originally posted by: halfoldman
Actually a really good essay.
Recommendable to all.

On entropy though, I'm not so sure.
It could also be cyclical.

The physical being, may change bodies, grow old and die, but if there is "spirit", I don't think it is subject to the same laws.

This is where I think current fringe-science says something interesting.
What we are looking for is a tangible type of force.

Like gravity, for example.
But gravity isn't a force on its own.
It's really just a kind of "suction" that big objects make in space, denting it, and causing a "downward" spiral.

The light exists because the darkness pushes it together.

We exist because the lower dimensions (hell) and the higher dimensions (heaven) are pushing us into a kind of denseness.
We're a divine sandwich.

However it could be that if one doesn't believe that their spirit will remain a cohesive self aware unit then it probably won't irregardless of the force.

a reply to: MissSmartypants

No if it is that way, it happens.
Whether you believe it or not.

So apparently when Krishna was asked, where is this proof of changing bodies and reincarnation, He said you were born a little baby.
And all this time you are changing bodies.
You still a little baby now?
So your body has changed considerably.
So similarly after death, the soul takes on another body.

So if you don't believe you will age, or change from the body you have now, it will not happen?
Whether you believe it or not, we all know it will happen.

What a burden..... to fear or not to fear nothingness. It must occupy a sizable amount of your time. All the possibilities and irreducible complexities, dismissing intelligent design in favor of simple entropy or decay. I prefer believing I was fashioned, it's called Faith, but hay, that's just me..

originally posted by: halfoldman
a reply to: MissSmartypants

No if it is that way, it happens.
Whether you believe it or not.

So apparently when Krishna was asked, where is this proof of changing bodies and reincarnation, He said you were born a little baby.
And all this time you are changing bodies.
You still a little baby now?
So your body has changed considerably.
So similarly after death, the soul takes on another body.

So if you don't believe you will age, or change from the body you have now, it will not happen?
Whether you believe it or not, we all know it will happen.

These cycles can end...all things are possible whether you believe it or not.

The ties that bind meaninglessly are being unbound as we speak...prepare...too see.