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

>>..those who have physically enjoyed just wandering
can more easily do so in the mind.. <<

Once again your insights cause me to see
what has been before my eyes all along. Ah yes, the
boundless vistas and possibilities of Nature do incite
the mind to equally vast panoramas and labyrinths.

The best quiet moments of contemplation and imagination
do come after a brisk encounter with the out-of-doors.

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A698835

I suppose that increased blood flow, oxygenation, fresh
air and muscular exercise allow for the mind's expansion
in kind when at rest after an outing. Which again raises
the chicken and egg question of whether the unseen forces
of the supernatural are inside or outside our bodies.

(BTW the egg came first, there were eggs before there
were any chickens - fish lay eggs, dinosaurs laid eggs)


~jwf~

jwf

Are you familiar with the "Ground of our Being" Christian Theology of Paul Tillich (for me at least)

This sort of connects the concepts of Soul and Heaven. Each one of us contains a fragment of the very essence of the dynamic of Life, that dynamic finds expression in the appearance of the material world and all its forms that give our inter-active senses some idea of a physical reality, but the dynamic is the essence of everything.[Einstein]

Unless people have learned to suppress and/or repress it that fragment within us- like a bird that belongs to a great host- calls and responds to the calls from the rest of that dynamic. Hence in those marvellous texts of Cranmer, wherever two or three are gathered together the sum becomes much greater than the parts and there is access to something greater- a port or portal.

But as this Ground of our Being is in all life- including the life of rocks and stones, we can also aggregate our own fragment there- because Nature neither has nor needs our intelligence nor our willfulness- and therefore does not produce "Lost Sheep" as much as Humankind.

A song of mine from the Sixties:

As I walk down the lanes of this life I see
Nature all around me
See Nature all around.
Then I feel I can touch a Spring of Life
Or maybe it has found me
Maybe I've been found.
Sound of children's laughter
Sighing of a tree
Even crying after
It's song for me
A moment of eternity.


See the sea with its semblance of timeless
See it never change
Sea it never change
See the waves that roam on it so mindless
Waves so freely ranging
See them freely range
A Wave is just a wheel
Of water from the sea
When the wave dies
It sets it's water free
Just like you and me.


So like the salmon leaps the fall
We're swimmers all
In the Stream of Life.


[Note that means Life is swimming upstream, against the current which flows against us in order that we may be energised and achieve]

Cass

@ ~ jwf ~

> panoramas and labyrinths. <

The sixties.

Nice poem (I call it that because the tune eludes me).


>> Each one of us contains a fragment of the very essence of
the dynamic of Life... the dynamic is the essence of everything. <<

I can get my head around that. But because I still have a
residual ego, it frightens me on an emotional level to even
consider losing my individual identity to a hive mind.

That said, I do believe in the collective power you describe:
>>...wherever two or three are gathered together the sum
becomes much greater than the parts and there is access to
something greater - a port or portal. <<

Because I believe in belief, the power to change things through
a focused and concentrated extension of personal will, it makes
sense that a collective ritual or prayer will have exponentially
greater power to influence mind and matter. And THAT is what is
so frightening about organised religion. Get a billion people
doing a simultaneous raindance and you'll get floods of biblical
proportions. Get a few billion believing in the end-of-days and
floods will be the least of it.



~jwf~

jwf

Re the individual ego.. Perhaps this is what is meant being born again.. and therefore dying first. Because of the particularities of my childhood I "set the counter back at zero" when I started a real life as myself.. Some of that poem Introspection found its way into a song cycle "The Journey from Child to Man" which I wrote about the age of 31 when I felt that I had found an identity of sorts- as husband and father: the self-made man. But because it was self-generated, self-invented (like my songs I am entitled to modify and change them because they do not really exist out of me) and looking out and in to both infinities the idea of losing my identity and being at one with everything did not, does not frighten me.( same problem again with my songs- I have five different kinds of guitar and have times when I just go musically in a totally different direction.. One of the reasons why I never joined a group)

I suspect- because I have no real relevant experience that the individual ego that people feel they need to cling on to may come from the desperate sense of loss and belonging that must be motherhood. Like most Dads (I suspect) I let my wife have priority in contacts with our children because there is a really visceral need just to know that they are ok: and this interface must assume a great significance in the baby, child etc who understands just how important that one human tie is to another human being so that it becomes once again a kind of umbilical cord.Bob Dylan 'I want you to surround me so I know that I am really real"- that's lover's talk. But mothers are something else-especially I have been told by Jewish friends Jewish mothers..


I am not sure that "organised religion" actually has that power..I suspect it of being mere brainwashing..and a very human sense of collective wealth and power.hence your image of making things happen.. when the spirit is beyond, below, above, within and without things. But then I have a very English attitude to ideas like the Liberty of the individual and the greater strength that comes from the positive and creative engagement...

And your "hive mind" image assumes actions in time and space.. Tillich wrote of "The Courage to Be".. Not to be caught up in the processes of livig but just to say "I am" and feel that in existing you already exist as part of everything and everytime.

A few years ago I wrote a song driving a few miles from here to a music club.. It summed up some ideas about God.

One verse

"He comes to me in quiet times
And funny times as well
He is a Lord who never was
And nowhere does he dwell"


"Everlasting" means outside of any time dimension
And "universal" means nowhere since we define where we are by where we are not.

Cass

Cass

>> Re the individual ego..
Perhaps this is what is meant being born again.. <<

Perhaps.
Do people who are born again get a second belly button?


~jwf~

>>I believe in belief,

I believe in disbelief, so actually I don't believe in it.

The belief in disbelief is the mantra of the atheists.
That's where people like Dawkins have failed to see
that organised disbelief becomes, by definition,
just another belief system.

~jwf~

As Bottom said, I have had a dream. And what a dream it was!
After having analysed others here I feel it only fair to share mine.

It began by entering my house, a large bungalow about a 100 feet
back from a fairly busy rural highway. I heard the TV was on and
since I normally live alone I was curious who my guests might be.

A female figure, who might have been my late mother or perhaps an
old girlfriend - in any case someone whose presence would have been
'normal' and not distressing at all, sat in my big comfy chair. There was
another, younger, woman in another chair (and possibly a couple of
(her?) children were wandering about).

I looked at the TV and saw that the PVR (digital recorder) was
in record mode while another program playing on screen. I mentioned
this to the strange woman who said yes she was recording something
else while she and my 'known' guest watched the program I could see
on screen - which looked marginally interesting but the details of it
are lost now because I heard noises in the kitchen and went there
to discover a man (presumably the strange woman's husband) cooking
up a storm (figuratively speaking).

When I opened my mouth to speak to him a jet of water rose from my
crotchal area like a fountain and I dashed off to the bathroom to
find the toilet bowl had been removed and since I was already in
full stream mode I had to drop to my knees and try to aim for the
hole in the floor.

A small animal ran over my leg and peered into the hole. At first
I thought it was a rat but it was much larger, like a fat cat but
with twin stripes down its back and tail - like a skunk but with
two stripes and they were yellow.

It turned, deciding not to explore the sewer pipe and out of sheer
curiosity (twin yellow stripes?) I followed it into the hallway
where the strange woman's small dog encountered it cautiously and
sniffed and then nipped, frightening it straight out the front door
I had entered but apparently not closed. Both animals were heading
straight to the roadway.

A man at the end of the drive scooped them up, one in each of his
arms with a large smile on his face to assure me (in pursuit) that the
situation was under control. But beyond him in the middle of the road
another man was holding a large goat sized mammal between his legs
and was using a broad flat-bladed paintscraper as a chisel, beating
it with a scultors' hammer to cut slices off the goat's(?) nose like
cheese or solid chocolate.

There seemed to be no traffic on the road and the man holding the
small animals seeing my consternation smiled even more broadly and
with silent gestures assured me the man in the middle of the road
was also nothing to worry about.

At this point, over-burdened by so much calmness and re-assurance of
normality from everyone I had encountered my mind snapped and I awoke.

- Was this just a bed-wetting terror dream?
- Why did the skunk have yellow racing stripes?
- Was the goat a large chocolate Easter 'bunny'?
- What were they watching on TV?
- What were they recording?
- What was the man in the kitchen cooking?



Oh, perhaps I should add that yesterday morning I was awakened
around 11am by a woman with a large black bag who walked in
rattling my keys which I had left in the door. She was a VON
nurse and thought she was entering next door where an adult
autistic lives with his elderly parents. She assumed I was the
patient and was standing beside the bed where I lay naked and
trembling as I asked as politely as possible 'Who the
are you? What do you want?'

Once her error in misreading the house numbers was established
she retreated with a sincere and professionally understated apology
leaving my keys on the bedside table.

Yes, this true, real-life story is probably more telling than the dream
and may have been the source of the more elaborately peopled fantasy,
but both real and fictional events leave me somewhat bemused at my
own vulnerability and lack of control over situations that unfold
faster than I can process them.

The symbol of the furniture-less bathroom, the casual air of so many
persons lounging about my normally 'empty' rooms and the sacrificial
goat are still reminding me of images I imagine might be approproate
to a house in rural Pakistan. Maybe I was just channeling Osama on
the anniversary of his death.


~jwf~

jwf

Ijust read your post.. and it relates to thoughts I had about some of the previous one that started to play with word-games of "The answer is that there is no answer" type.

So much 20th Philosophy got into the prosaic business of accepting that once words become merely prosaic, and a sentence or phrase no more than an assemblage of components, the limitations of mechanics rather than living reality are revealed.

Our languages are merely the tools that enable us to handle the interface. And there is a great truth behind the Ancient Egyptian worship of Ptah- the God of the lips and tongue. The Ptah creation myth is that at first all was chaos, and then each thing was shown to Ptah who gave it a name. Once it had a name and an indentity Creation made sense. And people could begin to see these elements relating to each other.

The image is relevant to the experience of the new born baby, which, having already had some sensory experience of a mild kind suddenly is exposed to an explosion of chaotic input. Soon enough the parents give him/her a name, gender and some sense of identity, which then becomes a point of reference- "You are not yourself today" etc.

It would also be appropriate to the emrgence of physical reality if the essence of all material reality is energy, that then created atoms etc.

By the way I liked the sketch.. Was it yours? I recognised a fellow fascination with sweeping lines..

During my uni days I developed the habit of producing abstract pictures which, when I put some on display in a student art exhibition, surprised some people because they had some of the qualities of art produced under the influence of drugs which makes it easier to just let things flow. So I usually just begin with a plain piece of paper and get a feel for the space in front of me, depending also on the colour which I have chosen, and I then just "go with the flow" creating a mix of dynamic lines and spaces. I then proceed to try to work out how to reconcile this with some pictorial references that would relate this dynamic to our language of imagery, symbolism and concept.

I did scan one last year and try to down-load it onto My Space but did not succeed.

Back then- in line with "Introspection" I did one or two portraits of friends showing them- not as they appear to us- but as interior landscapes.

As for your first piece- I was thinking of how I realised as a young child sleeping in a pitch-dark bedroom with imaginary or not the dead spirits of 55 million dead people able to come out at night in the collective mind when people's minds are free to roam, I learned to force myself out of bed to kneel in defiance - with that Dr. Faustus Lot's wife thing that it is often best not to look..

Seek and she shall find. We learn to see as we are taught by others or by experience, and there is many a time when I feel a presence- but to look for it already gives it some reality, and presents you with the question of the interface. What do you actually do when you come face to face with the totally unknown and strange that does not belong in the world to which you are trying to belong?

For if you are the one that looks at the other you immediately place yourself with some responsibility for then initiating the next step; and, if you do not know what the next step is, you have placed yourself at a disadvantage. So if by chance there are presences that are just content to be around me, I am content.

Cass

Christ! It's gone all hippie.

>>..then each thing was shown to Ptah who gave it a name.
Once it had a name and an indentity Creation made sense.
And people could begin to see these elements relating to
each other. <<

Funny how many creation myths include the naming of things.
Genesis has the same scene as Adam named the animals.
For the ancient Jews the name of god could not be spoken
or written. Even the mysterious and mystic dark arts include
references to the power of names. A demon can be defeated
if you know its name and speak it.

At a basic psychological level it sorta makes sense that in
having a 'Word' for a person or thing somehow allows the mind
to encircle and surround or ensnare the power of any thing.

Modern Science still relies on this Magic when it gives names
to theoretical concepts and unseen factors like phlogiston or
Big Bang or dark matter.

~jwf~

jwf

(a) One of the themes of "Before Philosophy" the book where I read about Ptah, is that Judaism very obviously reflects the fact that the Iraelites lived variously in the lands of both Mesopotamia and Egypt, and many of the Bibilcal stories resemble stories told in one or other of those two Civilizations.

(b) And in Islam the 99 names of Allah

(c) And the reluctance to use the name of the Prophet( PBUH) Peace Be Upon Him..

Actually I never got anywhere near it, but early Twentieth Century philosophy tended to abandon the language of words and use the language of pure mathematics...

Our daughter was just recalling yesterday how terrifying it was to have had me trying to teach her basic mathematics the summer holiday when she was ten, and was going to have to take entrance examinations the next January.

Primary School- as she recalls- taught her next to nothing- so she gives me some credit for the fact that she is now a very successful Actuary and perhaps has access to some Actuarial formuli that take account of unexpected altered states. After all her job is to make the best possible forward projections and therefore must expect the unexpected.

She provided us with one yesterday--- After several years of living in her present house in the Chilterns she has discovered an unexpected Alpine walk, which we did yesterday.

I wondered whether it was anywhere near the Rothschild lands.. I know that Prince Albert longed for North German reality and persuaded Victoria to explore the Highlands and buy Balmoral, where he could feel at home. It looked like someone had deliberately imported a stand of beautiful Alpine pines- fantastic for telegraph poles to line this hillside walk.I know that the Rothschilds introduced "fauna"- like the edible doormouse which is now established in that part of the world.. so why not 'flora'.

There is money in them there trees.

Cass

Hippie Yes it has a bit..Who cares?

I do hope some of the amateur psychologists will
take a crack at interpreting my dream as told in
the longish post #169 just above.

It is as honest and complete a report of a dream
as I have ever been able to construct and it still
haunts me.

Please feel free to analyse at length and even in
contempt if you will. I'm certain there is a key to
its overall meaning amid all the stock symbolism.

I am beginning to see the whole thing in all its
aspects as a 'fear of loss of control' fantasy.

Perhaps that's why I become more convinced that I
was channeling Osama bin Laden's last moments. The
women, the kids, the goat, the road, the strangers
outside who seemed to be in control of things.

Or was it just a fear of bed-wetting nightmare?
If so, why an Oriental hole in floor where the
toiler bowl should be?


~jwf~

And what of the small furry creature
with twin yellow racing stripes?

The fountain spurted upward as soon as
I opened my mouth and continued like a
garden hose for quite some time. The
water was clear and not urine yellow.

The dog was one of those smallish
English wire-hair terrier types.

The strange woman was sitting very
relaxed and comfortable with her legs
tucked up under her.

~jwf~

I never try to interpret other people's dreams.

The important thing is not what the dream would mean to a stranger, but what the dream means to you.

See, if I dreamt a toilet in my house had turned into a hole in the ground, like you, I would assume I was in the eastern Mediterranean. But I wouldn't be associating with Osama bin Laden. I would just be thinking I was back in Greece, where I used to live.

I suspect, though, that if you have a vivid dream, you're trying to tell yourself something. So it's a good idea to savour the dream and go over it in your mind. That way, you can find out what you wanted to know.

jwf

Having re-read your piece it seems to me a reassuring hymn that touches on just about all the elements of connectability that actualy do link you , in what would appear to be a fairly isolated home, into a world that is essentially reassuring.. All these connections actually exist and are capable of being activated in ways none of which are hostile and threatening, at the worst curious and interesting.

"Places that are not yet true"- but the places and their role/function are true.

If this has been a recent dream- it would appear to be a subconscious response to the "nest-building" impulse which is in all life at this time of year..

Our Druid friend sent us her usual present of poems at the significant moments of the year- this time it is Beltane, a time of the dynamic of opposites: and therefore in terms of homes feelings of contentment and "spring cleaning" or discontentment and the urge to use the energy of the "hour" to cut and run and find somewhere better.

Cass

Aha! I knew if I asked politely I'd get
some broader perspectives. I like the idea
of it being re-assuring because I did have
a sense that everything around me was getting
beyond my control. And I really like the idea
of seasonal change being involved. It's a
lot better than my latest notion that it's
all about bladders, testicles, anuses and
my prostate.

The guy straddling the chocolate goat is
either a fecal metaphor or a biker I used
to know. But it too feeds into the Near East
imagery of sacrifice and food.

Anyone else.


-jwf-

Yes I'm more or less with Dmitri here about analysing others dreams..it feels like treading on something intimate, because it will have connections to your own unconscious, which is a sensitive thing in people IMO..

In the right real world setting if we were all sitting together in a group we might venture onto your intimate terrain with some gentle humour and questioning

But all I can honestly say is that it seemed very sexual to me..that's all I can really offer.

(I wanted to give you something because you've been very helpful to me of late in a variety of areas