A Different Way.

[peter]

The Birth occurs. A sacrifice of sorts - a separation from the whole, excised into a bubble of loneliness and confusion.

It gets better: some acceptance, some understanding is achieved, but inside their is always a struggle, a knowledge that something is amiss. On the sand-dunes of your mind there are only your own footsteps to be found.

Time passes and memories are harvested, unique and special, never to be repeated. Meanwhile the matter takes time. The path will be difficult, but the way is there. Unpick a bit here, change a bit there. A mistake in translation. There are other isolates that might help, some cognisant, others not so.
And gradually the breakdown occurs, and finally the struggle to once again be united, subsumed into the Whole is won. Certainly the second sacrifice, that of self, is required here: but small loss in the face of the gain. And those memories - Ah, those memories! Well they won't be lost. They are forever recorded, added to the collective volume, the infinitely faceted diamond whose faces are but different aspects of the brief periods of isolation, of separation from the Whole.

[Skyweir]

Is this your analogy of the life cycle Pete Is it a statement or do you intend it as a discussion piece ... or were you on the turps the night you orchestrated this wee journey into the human consciousness

I like the prose, a lot actually .. nicely written, engaging .. I now seek the whys and the wherefores Please continue .. if continuance is the object of course .. if not .. its all good

[peter]

Will need to get into the mindset, the place I was at if you like, when I wrote this post Sky; re-reading it at this distance [and after nine hours on my feet at the shop] - I can't do it the justice it deserves. Give me time....

[wayfriend]

"Health lies -- implicitly -- in merging with something (matter) rather than nothing (vacuum)."
-- Samuel R. Delany

"I was born," the Mouse said. "I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you."
-- Samuel R. Delaney, Nova

[Skyweir]

mmm... more questions ..

First .. as you deliberate Pete .. you have commented on memories .. and you distinguish them from what seems to be the physical life cycle, stating they endure forever.

I challenge this somewhat romanticised proposition. Do you elude to a continuation of sorts where memories exist beyond the physical expiration of the body As in a spiritual database of human memories that is part of the universe or the planet .. what

Wf what do you think Samuel R Delaney means re health is connected with matter as opposed to a vacuum

That health must be materially managed Is it the same for wellbeing ie mental health, emotional health etc

And the mouse What is the meaning to be interpreted from that Theres NOTHING worse than HAVING to explain a joke .. as it shreds it is it a joke .. lol

Genuine questions

[wayfriend]

Wf what do you think Samuel R Delaney means re health is connected with matter as opposed to a vacuum?

He said it's connected to merging with matter. In other words, it's better to become part of something that become part of nothing. "Subsumed into the Whole", as peter says. So I thought of it.

And the mouse What is the meaning to be interpreted from that

In Nova, as must of a must-read as you can get, Mouse doesn't understand why Katin is spending so much time and effort trying to figure out what his novel should be about. To be fair, he's spent years working on what the subject would be, but hasn't written a single word.

"How many notes have you made on this book?" The Mouse chanced a tentative light through the hangar.

"Not a tenth as many as I need. Even though it's doomed as an obsolete museum relique, it will be jeweled -" he swung back on the nets - "crafted -" the links roared; his voice rose - "a meticulous work; perfect!"

"I was born," the Mouse said. "I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you."

Katin looked at his big, weak fingers against the mail. After a while, he said, "Mouse, sometimes you make me want to cry."

The way Mouse condenses life's journey so concisely in that passage, and they way Katin is moved by it, is something else peter put me in mind of.

[Skyweir]

mmm... brilliant

Perfect analogies ... both of them.

And thanks for the recommendation.. one more must read on my list lol

[peter]

This was exactly what the post title says Sky; just a different way of seeing our 'reason for being'. It's not my 'world view' - but then what is? I was just playing with the idea that the 'thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to' might just be the natural result of a wrenched separation from a ......what?........ a whole that is beyond our comprehension except for the occasional shadow thrown onto a cave wall. (Note Shakespeare ties suffering, buddhist like, to the material substance of flesh rather than to the mind where it is experienced.) And the memories (yeah!....in the words of FOB, thanks (at least) for the memories) ........ well - if not-being one day discovered being, might it not wish to experience every smallest aspect of it, to examine it from every angle if you like, to record it's every detail before it must be put aside as done?

In the absence of any other clear-cut explnation, seeing life as a fact finding mission on a 'tortuous {as in maze-like} journey' back to 'the whole', well - why not?

[Skyweir]

Ok lets discuss this ... journey ...

Is it an individual journey perspective .. or will we view it as a collective human experience

What is ... the whole .. that presumably awaits at some point in the journey

Yes sure we can shoot the breeze with platitudes and affirmations .. and draw hallmark meaning .. but that gets us no where of any substance

Its smacks of fancy and fictions to appease and soften our mortal quest to avoid our end .. humans share a penchant for seeking greater significance than one mortal life offers.

But that aside .. lets discuss .. let the games begin

[peter]

The journey from birth (the wrench) to death (the reunion) is a solitary affair.

Of the whole we cannot speak.

No where of any substance is exactly what we are striving for.

Our mortal quest isn't that of avoiding our end, but rather one of striving toward it. Our end is actively imposed on us by our tyrannical genes; gerantologists are beginning to understand this process.

Does this scheme have shades of gnostic (bad material Vs good non-material) and Buddhist (illusory nature of self) thinking about it?

I don't think for a minute that the scheme will stand up to scrutiny - but what scheme ever does; even science reveals it's cracks if you subject it to forensic inspection.

[Skyweir]

The journey from birth (the wrench)

The wrench ____ ... _ from the womb ____ ... but thats the beginning of a natural journey from the womb. I had two of four forceps deliveries lol _ .. so ok they were wrenched from the womb .. _

... to death (the reunion) is a solitary affair.

Reunion with what ____ .. the earth .. but your not birthed from the earth ____
What are you implying with the word .. reunion ____

Of the whole we cannot speak.

Why ____ What is the whole, that we cannot speak of ... ____

No where of any substance is exactly what we are striving for.

What ____ Whos striving for nothing ____ Why would you NEED to STRIVE for nothing of substantive ____

Our mortal quest isn't that of avoiding our end, but rather one of striving toward it.

We are striving for death ____ Thats fatally flawed. Most humans fight for life, not death. What humans are engaged on this death quest. I have to this rhetoric is making you sound like a new age Jim Jones.

Our end is actively imposed on us by our tyrannical genes; gerantologists are beginning to understand this process.

Ill pay that .. __

Does this scheme have shades of gnostic (bad material Vs good non-material)

________________ What scheme ____ What does that mean .. gnostic .. bad material vs good non material. And what is non material ____ And how can we compare material with non material ____

I don't think for a minute that the scheme will stand up to scrutiny

You bet it wont. First what is this SCHEME you speak of LOL .

... but what scheme ever does; even science reveals it's cracks if you subject it to forensic inspection.

Really oh my gawd .. you lost me at wrench

[peter]

Well - I've not said the 'diferent way' would work any better than the traditional way(s) of explanation of being.........or that I in any way believe it - but let's pretend for arguments said that I do and try to put the case just so.

One of the core beliefs of the mystery cults of the greaco-roman era was the incremental layering down of the imperfect material form over that of the perfect spiritual 'essance' from which we all initiate. In this original state there was no separateness, no isolation in the way we experience it today - rather a state of all knowing all ......of 'oneness'. Gradually ( in this tradition) the material coalesces, less substantially at first, but then more so as time progresses, and as it does so we (not individually, but collectively over time) pass through the states of inanimate, then animate materialism (inorganic - organic - vegetable - animal - man) until we arrive at where we are today. As we progress 'up' this scale we undergo increasing degrees of separation from our true spiritual core and a concurrent sense of increasing isolation from our fellow beings; today, the 'wall' of Plato's Cave is in fact the wall of our skull - the material world which has imprisoned our all knowing, all experiencing inner soul. Now this is at root Gnostic thought - the separation of a 'good' spiritual' from a 'bad material' plane of existence (the gnostics would have it that we are in hell already) - and the scheme above merely fleshes out (geddit? ) this idea by extending it into the sphere of our own experienced lives.

So we have 'the wrench' that separates us from the exalted unitary state described above.

The reunion into that state post death.

We are as incapable of any meaningful description of what this experience will be like and thus cannot speak of it...... except that it will not include any form of materialism.

We strive toward this reunion at levels to deep for us to be aware - and seemingly abominable to us so familiarised with the 'locked in' syndrome of our material experience: the levels of 'translation' from gene to protien, where errors in this process accumulate over time resulting in ageing and finally death ( part of the process that science is now beginning to grasp).

And so you have life as a journey during which quietly and undetected, our inner core struggles to free itself of it's material prison and return to it's true state of unity with the whole - like a rain drop's journey to get back to the sea.

Like I say - I don't believe it, but like any good advocate I've done my best to defend it.

[wayfriend]

In A A Attanasio's Arthurian series, he describes beings of pure energy who lived with God until the Big Bang, when they were separated from Her and sent out into the new universe of time and matter. They now live in eternal pain. Those beings that we call demons were enraged by their expulsion and spend their lives feeding their pain and destroying everything in this universe, which they hate. Those beings we call angels have chosen instead to channel their pain and work towards finding a path that leads to re-unification with God. Both want nothing more than to merge again with the Whole that they were painfully parted from. Only their attitude towards their quest is different.

[peter]

I'm not sure what the Christian conception of existence post death entails - but I'm betting there is at least some aspect of 'oneness' involved in it - so the concept is not a new one in any sense. Indeed in the Bible we have the words "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word....was God" - not being an expert on biblical exegesis I don't know, but doesn't this phrase imply both oneness and immateriality (the Name and the Thing being synonymous?) as the very origin of things?

[Skyweir]

In A A Attanasio's Arthurian series, he describes beings of pure energy who lived with God until the Big Bang, when they were separated from Her and sent out into the new universe of time and matter. They now live in eternal pain. Those beings that we call demons were enraged by their expulsion and spend their lives feeding their pain and destroying everything in this universe, which they hate. Those beings we call angels have chosen instead to channel their pain and work towards finding a path that leads to re-unification with God. Both want nothing more than to merge again with the Whole that they were painfully parted from. Only their attitude towards their quest is different.

How intriguing

[Skyweir]

So no evidence .. just beliefs, ancient cults, Christian faith .. amounting to what

What if theres no spiritual initiate, no no substantial beginning .. no no substantial after ending .. no questing for the whole because there is no ... whole ...

What if the organic is the whole .. what if the material is the whole

What is spiritual ..

What if we are birthed from matter and we return to matter

And the point IS life .. the connections we make, the experiences we experience, the love we feel .. we live richly here and now .. then slowly decay and become matter again