Shards of Wisdom

Disclaimer: The following contemplation is nothing new, but I felt like I need to forward these thoughts, as there may be someone who may benefit from reading it. The purpose is not to oppress anyone to adopt this view of life, but to give a chance for change. You don’t have to buy this, but I do hope that it will at least make you ponder...

We are biological creatures, bound on our limitations that are of nature. We may think ourselves as individuals, but regardless of that we are constrained by the bounds of our very existence; culture, biology and laws of nature.

Our freedom is not boundless. Who we are, is defined by our past which includes the things mentioned above. All we may imagine is defined by our culture and our nature. Our understanding and possibilities are hence limited. There are people who claim that we are eternal beings, spiritual entities. This may not be the case. What if we are after all merely biological processes without a spirit, without a soul?

Within human culture there are many instances, yet they all are bound on same limitations. We born, we live, we die. During this chain of episodes, we may imagine but we really cannot imagine anything that wouldn’t been imagined before. We live the life prescribed by the archetype of our race.

Human beings are social creatures which assimilate into the society by shared symbols. These shared symbols include such as god and other forms of imagination. This may be encoded in our biology, in our nature. Hence it seems that to believe is to adopt in shared set of symbols which constitute societies and their cultures. Communication (whether spoken or written) is the way to share these symbols.

As creatures capable of abstract thinking, we have created concepts of the things we experience. These mental projections – by communication – has created religions and other dogmas which seem hard – if not impossible – to overcome. One has to understand that they are nothing but symbols, which social life seems to demand. Shared adopted symbols leads to more cohesion in societies and communities, while rejected ones inevitably leads in division.

Indeed it is sad, that people who believe in god(s) are divided merely by the characteristics they have attributed their gods. Yet often these differences in the characteristics are only minimal, like the name of the god, while the message remains fundamentally same (love thy neighbour etc.). Same goes with people in general. We all want peace and harmony, yet we fail to achieve it as long as we divide ourselves between us and them, me and you.

Even we certainly share exactly the same reality, which is objective reality; subjectively we live in realities that are ones of illusion. These subjective realities are as many as people, for everyone perceives reality with slight differences. Again, these differences arise from culture, environment and other variables which are never totally similar, not even in case of twins. For every experience we live and observe, makes us what we are.

Seeing all this can be both relieving and painful experience. It is as Plato remarked in cave allegory: First it hurts your eyes, but when you get accustomed to it’s sheer magnificence, you hardly want go back into the cave.

-v

Thank you for your overview of the basics...

It is good, but I already know all of this.

Hopefully it will illuminate at least one person.

Good luck.

-SES

reply to post by v01i0


..2nd..
...I enjoyed your .. thoughts.. was well put and to the point.. of understanding works of humanity's thought procces....
..I will see you in time.. ..

reply to post by SolarE-Souljah


reply to post by Vonour


Thanks - both of you.

Things has been said, but after all one deed speaks louder than thousand words

-v

About human senses and time

Shards of Wisdom Part II.

Human senses are used for perceiving changes. Our skin, for example, is not sensing the constant temperature, nor constant pressure, but changes in them. Our balance organs (equilibrioception) are not sensing acceleration but changes in it, changes in direction etc. We'll get used to smells, darkness, cold, warm and so on.

Time is the feeling that change creates. Whenever there are lot of changes around us, we experience the time to fast forward - but when everything is very still, passing of time seems to slow down. A familiar experience for most of us. So one can say, time composes from events, which are change.

Have you ever wondered, why the grey week days will fall into oblivion? It is because we are used to them, for our brains there is no need for remembrance of them. But instead, we will remember those days and moments when something special happened - some dramatic change in our sphere of experiences.

We may also note, that we get used to things easily and some of us develop a strong resistance for changes - they are like habit conservatists

We may want to be in familiar environment, eat the food we have always eaten, see the shows we've always watched. This is because we feel safe in our familiar environment, and when the change struck, we will be afraid.

Resistance for change is apparent also in our accustomation to odours, temperatures and so on. People from Greenland will find Sahara too hot and vice versa. People of high places will find low valleys and plateaus uncomfortable and other way around.

So maybe, just maybe, a time machine is an impossibility, because time isn't exactly a constant phenomena same for everyone. It might be pretty much a subjective experience which we perceive in this stream of events.

-v

[edit on 8-9-2010 by v01i0]

About religions

Shards of Wisdom Part III.

Religion as a word, as well as sanskrit word yoga, stands for uniting, binding together the two that are divided. These two are symbolized such as (or even four) the heaven and earth, divine and mundane, fire and water, earth and air, god and devil, good and evil and so on – speaking shortly, it is all about the union of opposites. The lofty has to be united with the chthonic. But in order to understand religions, one has to understand oneself. In the end, believing in doctrine of any religion or dogma is a waste of time unless one has the profound understanding of the reality that stands behind the symbols.

What then are the parts of pair which need to be merged? They are the parts of our “soul”, as referred in the lack of more describing word. Soul is our immortal heritage of human race and perhaps the continuum of life in general. Body is our vessel. We have to work consciously with our unconscious, from where the divine emerges. The unconsciousness is the sea through which we all are united. The proof of this is the fact that all religions, at the bottom, declare very much same things, give out similar teachings and have shared symbolism in somewhat astonishing extent. To prove the point further, we humans per se share common grounds as a race. We all share similar psychological characteristics and no form of human behaviour should be strange for us, perhaps except due our cultural variances and prejudices.

There is no need for mysticism nor religious nonsense. All this will just confuse one more, even more so, if one believes for the sake of belief. However, no need to blame religions, for they were infant (no, they are not remnants of some truth known to ancients that has been falsified and forgotten) attempts to describe something that very much escapes all descriptions. And I don’t want anyone to take this as a personal offense for believing in any doctrine. You can do what you will, I just hope for the sake of sanity, that this doctrine carry you until the end. I apologize, but I had to post this, for otherwise I would “sin” against myself, because I then would selfishly keep my foundings solely as my knowledge. Now it may be that I cast pearls before swine, but should that be the case, I think it'll go much unnoticed.

So what I propose is that we should work for this union as did the alchemists of old. One has all the tools in order make the lapis philosophorum and turn the lead into gold. All one need to do is to bring together the two brothers – the consciousness and unconsciousness. For this, one should venture into deepest abyss of one’s soul, where the dragon guards the treasure of great value. Forgive me to resort in obscure terminology of fairy tales...

The thing is that in our unconsciousness, which is partly collective, yet individualized to some degree, there lies the divinity – the god – of which religions and dogmas speak about. It is not really divine, but merely a biological fact that distinguishes human being from (for example) an ant. Ants build anthills, while we humans do different things. The god of ants would most likely look like an ant, while the god of human being (in visions etc) gets form of human being. Sometimes these unconscious images also receive various forms of animals, like goat-headed humanoids and maybe even lizards or even extraterrestrials, and that is due to our evolution. These apparitions are often of demonic character, while they as well have numinous aura.

Depending much on individual structure of our nerve system, we might be able to examine our unconsciousness through visions, dreams or by audible (for oneself only) voices. Personally through much experimenting and practice I have been able to dream consciously (lucid dreaming, or active imagination) and I have also been able to hear voices that have pronounced truths about certain events which I have later to be able to confirm (one case is descpribed here). I think that gaining this ability to venture consciously through contents of unconsciousness is a way to get know oneself. To read more about the techniques I've used, click this link.

Few words of warning though: Should you feel uncertain about contents of your unconsciousness, or you consider yourself as an inbalanced personality, rather skip these tehcniques, for they may cause psychological problems. Always remember that the apparitions, visions, voices, distressing dreams or other psychic events you may encounter are not demons nor other malignant "spirits" but solely contents of your own mind.

-v

About ethics and morals - there is no such things as universal right or wrong

Shards of Wisdom Part IV.

Some people are eager to tell others what they consider to be right and wrong. But these people are blinded to their subjective truths, their personal conceptions of wrong and right - which are pretty heavily affected by culture, education, uprising and other such experiences of life.

Now we are to consider the possibility that there may be no universal right nor wrong, but all our judgements are naturally based on sphere of human experience. We have no idea of what those things may be in themselves, or do they even exist. I can only see that there are appropriate and inappropriate actions which should be evaluated by their context. Highly moral people will blame me for ethical or moral relativism, although I dispel such accusations and say that they themselves are blinded by their subjective understanding.

If we truly observe the existence without any values, without personal and cultural ego, we have to come into conclusion that many things we consider to be wrong, are so only because of culture. We westerns, for example, may think that violation of human rights (which from the beginning is defined by us and our culture) is wrong. But in fact, does a human being have any rights in the front of universe? For example, does the alligator that bites our head off care anything about rights? Does the sun care anything about our rights when it becomes red giant before it's death and burn the possible remains of humankind out alive? What about the christian god then, who flooded the primordial earth and its people?

However, I am not saying that right and wrong are completely irrelevant concepts, but I rather want to point out their cultural relativism. Nature does not care about values, so why should we? Maybe it is time to abandon these values and begin to think in terms of appropriateness. It is hard, because we are so indoctrinated into these opposing values, even so, that the stomach of weak minded people turn upside down when they experience gross "act of evil".

Of course it is hard thing to evaluate things to their bottoms with limited knowledge we have. How can we know what is the best solution, even when we seem to be unable to know what is best for us individually? Well some do more than others. I trust that the nature itself will solve this problem we experience - maybe through extinction of mankind? Well, I hope that mankind takes heed so that the Nemesis of nature will spare us

Good riddance,

-v

reply to post by v01i0


Wise words indeed. I totally agree with you about morals. My personal opinion is that morals are in a way a kind of an alliance of the week against the strong. To keep them in the line.

I'm still looking for the reason that people believe that Reality TV is real life. The multiple camera angles alone should be tip off, but no...it's not. Also, why do paranormal researchers actually believe that they can document anything that's actually occurring in a location by setting up more electronics than SkyLab and lumbering around for a few hours before packing up? What makes human beings so clever and so stupid in the same instant? You'd think that such dichotomy would cause the mind to become stranded in an existential infinity loop, but again, it simply finds a way to marry the two extremes and go get itself a burger.

Meaning of life - simplest of truths

Shards of Wisdom Part V.

Simply put: The meaning of life is to carry the rest of life. In other words, every lifeform uses other lifeforms (as well as minerals) as food. When we die, some worms will eat us - or maybe our ashes are cast into the wind, when they end up as minerals for benefit of other lifeforms.. It doesn't matter. So therefore no lifeform exists for itself, but for the benefit of others.

Plants use minerals from ground, herbiovers uses plants, carnivores herbivores and other carnivores. Once again the cycle comes to it's beginning as more "advanced" lifeforms die and are disintegrated into the soil.

Hey whats wrong with that? Feels like useless? Well don't, can't you see how your life just got a purpose?

-v

Also a quick fix to the Shard IV.

The title shoud be: "About ethics and morals - there is no such things as universal right good or wrong evil.

-v