h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Az,

Just emerged from watching Greece win Euro 2004! And I don't even like the game ( not much into sports....too much compulsory sport at school, I guess...) but I caught the second half of the Greece-Czech match, and thought the Greeks were brilliant, so I was rooting for them.

I'm really interested in your remarks about connectedness. The thing is, the recognition does not require any effort. Indeed, all effort is by definition based on the notion that there is a "doer" to make the effort. The unity, as you affirmed, can only be lived, not "done," nor understood, nor objectified in any way, which would be a dualistic effect. Once the awakening to the unity occurs, there is a relaxation into that way of viewing things, And, curiously that's where the trouble can start, because the old mode lingers as habitual patterns of behaviour, despite the absence of a "doer."

This is very paradoxical and hard to explain, but things just seem to happen quite OK without the need for a doer, or a personal 'I'. The mind does its job of comprehending mundaner reality and relating to it, the emotions continue to feel their reactions to the world, and the body, as it always has done, gets on with bodying . The sensation is as though one were being lived, impersonally, independently of the all-grabbing ego-self. Indeed, the ego, the great demon of many systems, is clearly seen for what it is, a substanceless process devoid of effective reality, composed of habits, formed to ensure the survival of the organism. And in this context, the ego falls into place and does its job of simply being vigilant for danger. It ceasesd to be a problem.

From the outside, there is no sign of any change, no lights, no fireworks, the same old person ( except perhaps for a certain lightness of being arising from the liberation from the need to be 'someone')although that apparent 'person' has effectively ceased to exist.

The vastness of unbounded awareness, supporting all manifest existence equally, supports the apparent being, consciousness becoming conscious through the individual mind/body apparatus, for as long as it survives.

My personal feeling is that much of what is called depression is in fact awakening to the impersonal unboundedness, but without the understanding of the experience to put it in context ( as happened with me thirty-six years ago.) The impact of that vast emptiness is overwhelming to the snmall ego-self, if it has not been adequately prepared for its own annihilation. Which can be scary, as many "awakened" have attested...read particularly Susan Segal, Collision with the Infinite.

Life is like a box of chocolates.

Except that it isnt at all. Life is actually precisely like life. I am given to feeling and thinking that life the universe and everything cant actually be *understood* only accepted.

I have tentatively thought along the same lines as you Chai, I have the feeling that depression comes about because people are not aware of the unboundeness around and within them. The struggle to deny true nature sets up many troubling contradictions within people.

It is ok to think that a giant invisible beetle pushes the sun around the sky, but when your experience tells you other-wise there can be some difficult realineing to be done. It is difficult to accept you know nothing when you have a frame work of knowledge that is based on "absolute truths". The evidence suggests that we actually know very little and can actually *know* nothing at the quantum level. At best we can explain what we dont know.

When we, wrapped up in the small whirlwinds that are our lives, get close to grasping the sensation that our particular current is just a temporary subset of a greater whole, from which we are never seperate though we move in a different direction or at a different pace for a while. There can be peace in these moments or terror that everything we have learnt is no defence against that which we are some of us taught to fear. If you are willing to let go and have no absolute truths to frantically grasp after the emptyness is a tranquil experience.

Those are my feelings anyway.

one love

Blicky, you have put your perceptive finger on precisely the stumbling block for most people: the terror of emptiness, which, rather than being recognised as our own essential nature ( Judeo-Christian culture does not support the view), is seen as a feqarful void to be filled with the endless distractions and anaesthetics we call our consumer-obsessed civilisation.

Just back from a midnight walk. Watched a huge no longer quite full moon rise golden over the sea. And suddenly there was a heron, poised in the moonlight. A few moments later a fox trotted smugly by on its way to raid a dustbin.

Wah.

Night,

Chai

Your description of your midnight walk is very evocative, Chai..

Hi Nogg.



OK, I'm happy with that. The rules apply to energy; or perhaps more accurately 'describe' energy. Although you seem to want to say that they *are* energy. I have myself sometimes wondered whether the rules or properties inhere in particular bodies, locations or the universe itself. This might be another unanswerable question or, at least, one without empirical consequences. We might as well follow Chai and envisage it as a unity. It seems to me, though, to be more a way of looking at things than a description. Hey, a tad Kantian - particularly if we *have* to look in a particular way.

toxx

Sorry If I missed a bit but arent the rules simple descriptions of how things relate to each other.

Imagine a man on an Island completely isolated. He is neither rich nor poor fat nor thin, no need to limit his consumption or tax his expenditure. He cant steal or slander, there is no need for laws.

If the universe were bigger contained more or indeed less doesnt it work that the laws would be fractional affected by these differences depending upon the scale of the differences them selves. The laws are not absolute but like so much else relative.

So in that sense the rules, the way all the stuff (which is energy) affects all the other bits, are indeed energy.

I think

<>

Well, it seems *someone* has to be doing the experiencing in order for anything to have a relative relationship with anything else. So it seems that if things exist without our knowing about them and being able to experience them, then they can only exist as a concept. Which may or may not be 'real'.

Having had bizarre experiences myself of 'other realities' I still cannot say if they actually exist. But this does leave me open to the possibility that they can and do exist.

Meanwhile, *this* particular reality that most of us seem to accept as being real seems quite enough to be getting on with and dealing with on a daily basis.

The rest is just theory. Though I am often quite tempted to believe that 'there is no spoon'.

az

I dont think I was trying to say there is no one or no self to experience. our experiences are just as much products of physical laws as the attraction between planets or ionic atoms.

We are still real. (whatever that means)

Having had bizarre experiences myself of 'other realities' I still cannot say if they actually exist. But this does leave me open to the possibility that they can and do exist.

If you look at the back of your house it looks different to the front or even the inside. Have you consideredyou might be looking at the same reality in a different way or without your usual filters?

We might be like sand on the beach one pattern of riples that disappears with the next tide thought beach still remains.

one love

<>

Aaarrgh. Don't get me started down that slippery slope, blicky! My personal grip on generally accepted 'reality' actually takes quite a bit of effort on my part. To stay *here*. Whereever that is.

As a child I used to fear that I was quite insane because I felt so many other things. I thought they were going to take me away and do shock-therapy like they did to my mother. So I learned to start behaving 'normally' and to keep all that other stuff to myself, indeed to push it out of my life as far as I could because it scared the heckity out of me. In case I got 'found out'.

I don't even know what all that other stuff *is* but I know I've been there and have experienced these things. Eeek -

az

I agree with Chai - it's the getting rid of, or rather the letting go of, the ego which is the all-important thing. Though very difficult, because the ego keeps jumping back in.

But it's perhaps while trying to stay ego-less, that strange experiences (maybe like yours, azahar?) may occur and that can be quite alarming.

hi glub,

And welcome to the thread.

Well, the ego is what defines us, so letting go of that is quite a scary idea. And yes, the ego does keep jumping back in - it *wants* to exist!

When I had these experiences as a child I wasn't alarmed at all. In fact, they felt quite peaceful. It wasn't as if they threatened my ego, but rather gave me a broader idea of what *I* am and what this thing I called *me* was. It wasn't as if I - as me - was about to be obliterated, only that I might become more of what I was already, if that makes any sense. So it didn't exactly frighten me, but I just never knew how or where to put these experiences in the day-to-day life I was actually living. And later when my mother got sent off to mental hospitals for shock treatment - because she was *different* - I felt I had to hide this part of myself. I didn't want to share her fate.

Personally, I'm not interested at all in letting go of my ego - I quite like 'being here' and 'being me' most of the time. Though I recognise that I let go of certain ego aspects more and more, bit by bit, as I get older. They become less important somehow.

It's also the compassion aspect I talked about earlier. You can't ever just say - 'I've decided not to have an ego now!' - because that will probably rip you to pieces psychologically and emotionally. It's more a sort of process whereby you start to drop stuff here and there that you no longer need. Doing this gently and with compassion for who you are, or recently were, seems the best way to go about this.

I reckon as long as I'm alive I'm always going to have an ego. But I do like the idea of it gradually making its peace with that *thing* we cannot ever name but sometimes call god. Or fred. A bit like growing into oneself only to become everything. If that makes sense.

az

:><:bookmark:><:

F

Adelaide

Re Bizzare....

From a Christian point of view of course it's bizzare, it would be hard for any Christian to accept my particular point of view of Paul or Christianity as a whole.

From my particular viewpoint Paulanity would be a better description, reading acts and Pauls epistles, it is as if all the apostles that actually met Jesus dont really know what he said, only Paul really knows. And from my point of view this puts Paul at the centre of early Christianity not Jesus, from Pauls point of view and the established theology of the church.

I view Pauls Epistles from a systemic, psychoanalytic and post structuralist point of view, as such the gospels and epistles represent snapshots of a discourse, with missing chapters. Paul is by the admission of Acts at odds with the Jerusalem Church, as such why is he so hated and reviled by Jews? Could it be that the Jerusalem Church was not an isolated small group of individuals, but rather represented the prevailing denomination of Judaism circa 50-65 ad.

Then The Jews who are so cross with him also represent early christians, and Pauls attacks on the Jews represent atacks on the 'Jewish Christian' origins.

God rescues Paul by making him a Roman Citizen, Gives him the ear of not only the Governor, but also of Agrippa the puppet king of Judea, Who he sits and Jokes with before being bundled off to Rome on a ship.

On the Journey God takes a personal interest, brews up a storm and a rescue. Once in Rome Paul is given his own house and a very loose leash. Especially considering that he was responsible for stiring up dissent in one of the most disenting parts of the empire, something the romans frownd on quite a bit. ect....

For one thing this all sunds like the ramblings of an egocentric that feels god has nothing better to do than look out for his needs. For another it could also be easily taken as evidence that Paul was working for the Roman State in the first place.

I also find it interesting that there are two different traditions about Pauls Death, 1) he was executed in Rome 2) he went off to live out his life in Iberia,

The first of these arises out of Nero's persecution of the Christians, the other out of a verbal tradition still current in the 4th century.

I know that Christian practice has always to follow the written word but there is also good evidence that Verbal Traditions are not as flimsy as some historians would have you believe (The Quran is checked against a Mular's memory not a written copy of the book)

Paul is I belive promulgating a pacifist religion where you get rescued by god (Who is preoccupied with the lives of individuals) not by resisting opression.

At the same time the Jerusalem Church is tangled up with the other revolutionary Movements of the Time. Nazorean means Keepers of the Covenant and there wasn't a town called nazareth until the third century as far as we can tell (Probably settled by the Nazorean sect that survived the Judean-Roman war 68-74 ce) Keepers of the covenant can also be described as Zealous for the Law, the Zealots were the ones who fought the war against the Romans.

Paul wants a pacifist religion to keep the slaves quiet, so do the romans, the Nazoreans Sicari ect want the romans out.

Therefore I believe that Paul is an egocentric Roman Spy who believes he can stop a war all on his own and retired quietly to spain when his employer Nero went off the deep end and the War broke out despite his efforts.

Interestingly one of the main appologists for Paul was Ignatious Bishop of Lyons, a new roman town built circa 75 ce... and which became the home for almost the whole Herodian family that survived the war. Is this why Pauls writings were so much more 'valid' than James's, Peter's Thomas's ect... most of which are now lost to us...


Sorry Pauls role in the early church is one of my hobby horses.





RE EGO

The issue of self interests me, and I think that it is a thorny one in deed. I believe that discovery and loss of self is the most difficult of journeys, but I feel it is essential. Children are on the first part of the journey they need the self and need to discover it. Without the self they are merged with the other people in their lives, and are like leaves in the wind blown this way and that on the desires, wants, and needs of others. But when we reach adulthood we begin another journey to loose ourselves, to the infinite. There is in this a sense of balance. I would develop this to say that the self is real and necissary, but it is also intangible and exists on a boundary between reason and passion.

I believe Lau Tsu understood this,

The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way
The Name that can be named is not the constant name

The nameless was the begginning of heaven and earth
The named was the mother of all things

Rid yourself of desires to observe it's secrets
allow yourself desires to observe it's truth.

To all the honourable and good contributors to this thread who have encoutered my ideas about Paul + early Christianity before

Sorry



I was raised in a good Cristian houshold and pretty much lost my faith at 15, mostly because Christianity didn't accomodate my somewhat ambigous sexuality. Before that I think I probably believed as strongly as anyone I knew, I still want to believe even though my reason tells me it's all bunk. So I get quite caught up in the 'story' I feel like I have discovered for myself. Like any good convert I sometimes get caught up in evangelising and have probably done so more often than I should on this thread {I'll probably do so again I'm only human}.

I also get a bit concerned that it comes accross as trollish and it isn't intended to I just enjoy my passion for the topic...

Toxxin

Forgot to reply to your note on Appalacian Music, this highlights my big interest in music, the imense variety that exists, the appalacian music links quite strongly to english folk music and is probably more representitive of it than anything in the UK at present, but it is also mixed up with other European Folk styles so I wouldnt exclude their inluence as well

re: ego again

I think of the ego as being a collection of defence mechanisms, certainly necessary while you're growing up, but since they distort perception, the more of them you can shed when you are older, the more you will be in touch with an undistorted reality.

I see my consciousness, ego, self, whatever as part of my body, in the way that I see abstraction contained within any physical thing as part of that thing. And I would say that seeing distinct items, including 'my body' as much as 'a leaf', is a production of the mind. But my body is a self-contained unit as well as part of the universe. As is my consciousness. And I don't think its particularly connected to any other consciousnesses any better than our standard communication allows, which doesn't seem a great deal.

The idea of shedding ego completely puzzles me. It is matched in the idealogy with compassion, but what drives the compassion? Objectively I'm sure at least a couple of you who've just claimed egolessness are moral relativists as I, so that can't be it. Subjectively the choice of the self is the driving factor. So why not cruelty for its own sake? Or even why not just nihilism?

The only think I'm taking from this that seems in any way real could be summarised: don't seek out warmth, be its source. But that is for my own, entirely selfish reasons .

Incidentally, you could call energy and space properties of matter, since energy in the form of radiation can be considered as changes of space. I would expect you could switch it all around too, so matter and space could be a property of energy etc., but that's just different ways of looking at the same thing. I can't remember what that was a reply to, but I was thinking about it a page or two ago.

It may help to remember that 'ego' as a psychological term is of fairly recent origin. In Vedic and Buddhist traditions, the word used is "ahamkara," which translates more-or-less as "the sense of I." It was Frued's translator ( Lytton Strachey???I'm not sure...) who used the Latin word for 'I', ego, to translate the perfectly ordinary German "ich" that Freud used. In much contemporary Buddhist writing and translation, the "ego" has become demonised, but as Azahar said, as long as there's a discrete body, there will be the necessary mechanisms, and a "sense of I."

Ironically, it is precisely the attempt to suppress or even eliminate the demonised "ego" that leads to some of the more bizarre behavious on the 'spiritual fringe.' It is by definition impossible to eliminate the ego, because that which thinks it's doing the eliminating is just another aspect of the self, still within dualism, still the so-called ego.

The "sense of I" however, can be transcended, so that in the state where silent awareness witnesses the ongoing stream of thoughts, sense-impressions, feelings, emotions, memories and so on, there is no "doer" identifying any of the processes as "mine." It's a very subtle but crucial distinction.

The transition from one state to the other is often referred to in the mystical literature as "dying to the self." Until it has been experienced ( usually as a sense of great relief and liberation ) it is the scariest thing imaginable. And in the west our entire culture exists to shore up that extreme sense of individualism, and to play upon the ego's needs and inadequacies.

<>
I am afraid I just can't relate to psychoanalytic anything! Freud = Fraud, and believe me, I have studied him and his works enough to be able to say that with some confidence. Post-structuralist? What does that mean to you?
I am sure you know that not all the epistles credited to Paul are now thought to have been written by him? Nevertheless, all the epistles predate all of the Gospels by some decades.
Paul was a Jew, who prided himself on his learning as a Jew. He was also, a Roman citizen. Why blame him for taking advantage of that? Any of us would, in his circumstances.
<< he went off to live out his life in Iberia,>>
I was quite unaware of that tradition! Where did you learn of it?
<< know that Christian practice has always to follow the written word but there is also good evidence that Verbal Traditions are not as flimsy as some historians would have you believe >>
It depends what sort of Christian you are! Protestants eschew verbal tradition, Catholics don't. I have defended the reliability of oral history against some atheists here!
Paul is I belive promulgating a pacifist religion where you get rescued by god (Who is preoccupied with the lives of individuals) not by resisting opression.>>
What is wrong with pacifism? (Did you mean pacifism, or did you mean passivity?
<>
I'm sorry, I think you're taking conspiracy theories too far. Paul a Roman spy? No fear!
<>
I can see that!

Freud

You won't get an argument from me about Fraud, his withdrawal from the Abuse hypothysesis, just to further his professional career annoys me deeply.

He only real contribution, in my opinion, was to argue that humans have conscious and unconscious thoughts (usualy derived from our relationship with our parents) and that our unconscious thoughts are as big an influence on our behaviour as the conscious ones, whilst there are insights into peoples motives in his writings, I believe these are for the most part as a result of luck rather judgement.

Psychoanalytical thinking today has a much better scientific base, read John Bowlby or even Peter Fonagy for a more modern view of the development of the human mind.

Post Structuralism.

To me Post structuralism is a viewpoint that accepts that the nature of reality is such that language defines existance but questions whether one narrative is more or less meaningful than another, it is in essence a perspective that admits to the reality of social structures, e.g. the family but argues about what forms these structures can or should take, or even if they should be discarded and replaced with an alternate structure, Post structuralism essentially argues that there are as many truths as there are individuals to experience it.

The Iberia narrative.

I have encountered this in a number of places, (Not least from my mum {A good Protestant})the most straightforward to find was a Catholic Website 'New Advent' I think its called, were its significance was somewhat played down in favour of the more traditional narrative.

Oral Tradition

I would be reluctant to take too hard and fast a line about how oral traditions are valued within diffeent frameworks as there is learly a good deal of variation. However the Christian Church particularly in the 3rd and 4th centurys appeared to be obsessed with codifying what was written, as against oral traditions.

The Gospels,

As written texts there is a tradition that the letters predate the gospels, most recently however even relatively conservative scholars have been arguing that Mark at least (Who spent as much time traveling with Paul as with peter, according to some sources) was written at about the same time i.e. 50ce. More convincingly from my point of view the sayings gospels are felt to date from the years imediately following Christs Death i.e. Thomas (Dissmissed as non cannonical in the 3rd and 4th centuries and then curiously in the 19th and 20th centuries, dismissed because some of the sayings could be found in the canon, I am not sure what that means)

Pacifism

I have no problem with pacifism at all and regard myself as a pacifist. My argument is that in conjunction with a number of other factors Pauls actions seem to meet Roman needs, they were very concerned with the disruption in Judea. Their standard strategy of aligning local gods with roman gods to create cultural mutualism hadn't worked in Judea (I am a Jelous god... ect ect ect) so they were looking for ways to subdue this troublesome province, trying to convert the local religion into a less troublesome form would seem a logical development of their standard approach. As I described in an earlier post the evidence of acts especially when linked to the writings of Seutonius Josephus and Tacitus give a picture which suggests that 1) Judean Christianity really regarded itself as Judaeism and 2) May very well not have been particularly pacifist. I again ask why the Jews and particularly the Sicari were so angry with Paul if he was just a troublesome member of a relatively minor and obscure Jewish sect and: why did the Romans feel it was so important to protect him from them. The Roman Citizen angle doesn't ring true as the Romans were quite happy to ignore citizenship when it suited them.

The Romans were also quite adept at getting Jews to switch sides, e.g. Josephus. In the War 68-74 ce he started out a Jewish General and ended up as one of Vespasians right hand men.

Conspiracy Theories.

Conspiracies are to my mind too easily talked about, it is rarely possible to find a smoking gun, or a smoke filled room. Most so called conspiracies would seem to me to be times in history when the needs of divergent groups come together and something which meets those needs then happens either by a joint effort, by delegation or because individuals take it upon themeselves to act on the wish, either spoken or unspoken of the vested interests.

What can we say about the Romans at this time.

Were they having a problem in Judea? = Yes
Did they manipulate Religion as a means of population control? =Yes
Did they promote passivity in their slaves? = Yes
Did they Use Spies? = Yes
Could they turn on their allies at a moments notice? =Yes
Did they use citizenship as a bribe? = Yes
Did they promote division in enemy cities/peoples? Yes

It doesn't require a conspiracy to see Paul as a Roman Spy. The things he does in acts and writes in his letters can be read in two ways.

1) Either he is a pious man whos good fortune in the face of outrageous persecution by people he views as freinds is quite extraordinary.

or

2) He is a spy sowing disention, switching sides as it suits him, encouraging slaves to be non-violent, manipulating religion as a means of population control.

The fact that all this backfired on the Romans in the long run just goes to prove that non-violence is more powerful than people think. And in the short term it did mean that when Vespasian and his son Titus quelled the rebellion in Judea the disent among the Jews inside the city of Jerusalem made the besieging armys job all that much eaisier.

The later Persecutions of Christians I think arrises out of the fact that Pacifism proved stronger and more resilliant than the Romans had realised and became a thorn in their side, poetic Justice you might say.



Ego

One of the problems I have with discussions of Self and Ego is that different people use the terms in different ways. Old Fraud's use of the term ego seems to me quite different to the way people use it today, in Fraud's terms when people today say someone has a big ego, Fraud would have said the opposite was true, and that the Superego or Id was dominating an underdeveloped ego.

I wonder if The self has two complementary purposes for the individual, which could be described as:

To allow them to feel significant enough to be insignificant.

I think I might puzzle on that one for a while.