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Jan. 14th, 2004 08:47 pmSomeone posted this in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
abstractthought:
I have been thinking about how the best way to live is, if it is better not to care and just to get on with it, or if it is better to consider morality, or if the people who are ignorant really have it the best.
I thought to myself, The best way to live is to consider mortality, not morality. ( Read more... )
abstractthought:I have been thinking about how the best way to live is, if it is better not to care and just to get on with it, or if it is better to consider morality, or if the people who are ignorant really have it the best.
I thought to myself, The best way to live is to consider mortality, not morality. ( Read more... )
more Stevens quotes (from Adagia)
Aug. 11th, 2003 06:46 pmWisdom asks nothing more.
A poem is a meteor.
Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
Poetry is not personal.
The earth is not a building but a body.
The poet must come at least as the miraculous beast and, at his best, as the miraculous man.
Life cannot be based on a thesis, since, by nature, it is based on instinct. A thesis, however, is usually present and living is the struggle between thesis and instinct.
Weather is a sense of nature. Poetry is a sense.
There are two opposites: the poetry of rhetoric and the poetry of experience.
The bare image and the image as a symbol are the contrast: the image without meaning and the image as meaning. When the image is used to suggest something else, it is secondary. Poetry, as an imaginative thing, consists of more than lies on the surface.
One has a sensibility range beyond which nothing really exists for one. And in each this is different.
In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
The individual partakes of the whole. Except in extraordinary cases he never adds to it.
What we see in the mind is as real to us as what we see with the eye.
The mind is the most powerful thing in the world.
There is nothing in life except what one thinks of it.
( More! )
A poem is a meteor.
Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
Poetry is not personal.
The earth is not a building but a body.
The poet must come at least as the miraculous beast and, at his best, as the miraculous man.
Life cannot be based on a thesis, since, by nature, it is based on instinct. A thesis, however, is usually present and living is the struggle between thesis and instinct.
Weather is a sense of nature. Poetry is a sense.
There are two opposites: the poetry of rhetoric and the poetry of experience.
The bare image and the image as a symbol are the contrast: the image without meaning and the image as meaning. When the image is used to suggest something else, it is secondary. Poetry, as an imaginative thing, consists of more than lies on the surface.
One has a sensibility range beyond which nothing really exists for one. And in each this is different.
In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
The individual partakes of the whole. Except in extraordinary cases he never adds to it.
What we see in the mind is as real to us as what we see with the eye.
The mind is the most powerful thing in the world.
There is nothing in life except what one thinks of it.
( More! )
so says the language-oriented chick
Jul. 21st, 2003 07:53 pmWhat does math tell us?
That even the imaginary exists. (Not only does it exist, but might also help explain parameters of physical reality.)
That even the imaginary exists. (Not only does it exist, but might also help explain parameters of physical reality.)
Okay, I played Test the Nation: What's Your IQ? at home.
My score (raw): 46
I failed the last test: I didn't memorize the last bank of data to later analyze my score. So I'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what this actually means in IQ terms.
( My Answers )
That test was FUN! I mean, loads and loads of fun. Heaps and heaps.
Here were their trivia bits:
The human brain calculates information at 100 trillion calculations per second.
The human brain puts out 25 watts of power, the amount in an average light bulb.
( So, here were my adjacent thoughts all throughout this process of test-taking )
My score (raw): 46
I failed the last test: I didn't memorize the last bank of data to later analyze my score. So I'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what this actually means in IQ terms.
( My Answers )
That test was FUN! I mean, loads and loads of fun. Heaps and heaps.
Here were their trivia bits:
The human brain calculates information at 100 trillion calculations per second.
The human brain puts out 25 watts of power, the amount in an average light bulb.
( So, here were my adjacent thoughts all throughout this process of test-taking )
Just Back...
Dec. 21st, 2001 11:34 pm... from a week's vacation in Michigan, with my family--the "holiday" trip. It was good to be with them again.
I got to spend significant time with my year-old niece Aja. She is truly a bundle of joyous energy. She is naturally equipped with Kung-Fu grip. When she grabs onto your shirt, you will spend minutes prying her fingers from you. She wants to get into everything. She's a very determined soul--if she wants something, she'll put her entire body action towards it. She's a wonderful girl, and I love her to death. It will be so interesting to see what kind of personality she will have.
For twenty-three more minutes, it's still the solstice. Happy Yule, all.
For the occasion, I wish I had some hot cider. But I do not. I'll have to make due with hot tea (and fresh banana-walnut bread).
While at home, I had the opportunity to make it through much of Julian Jayne's Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I can't say I agree with every part of the author's hypothesis, but I find the greater part of his ideas entirely fascinating, ideas I can easily fit into my own cosmology. A short example of part of its argument:
Oh, and more interesting to me than probably anyone else...
I spent several hours this week scribbling snippets of this book into my personal journal. Some of it, I want to be able to easily refer to it.
The drive back from Michigan was long, and now I am tired. My crisply cool pillows sound really good right now.
I got to spend significant time with my year-old niece Aja. She is truly a bundle of joyous energy. She is naturally equipped with Kung-Fu grip. When she grabs onto your shirt, you will spend minutes prying her fingers from you. She wants to get into everything. She's a very determined soul--if she wants something, she'll put her entire body action towards it. She's a wonderful girl, and I love her to death. It will be so interesting to see what kind of personality she will have.
For twenty-three more minutes, it's still the solstice. Happy Yule, all.
For the occasion, I wish I had some hot cider. But I do not. I'll have to make due with hot tea (and fresh banana-walnut bread).
While at home, I had the opportunity to make it through much of Julian Jayne's Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I can't say I agree with every part of the author's hypothesis, but I find the greater part of his ideas entirely fascinating, ideas I can easily fit into my own cosmology. A short example of part of its argument:
Subjective conscious mind is an analog [defined as "an experientially generated model"] of what is called the real world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision (p. 55).
Oh, and more interesting to me than probably anyone else...
Even such an unmetaphorical-sounding word as the verb 'to be' was generated from a metaphor. It comes from the Sanskrit bhu, 'to grow, or make grow,' while the English forms 'am' and 'is' have evolved from the same root as the Sanskrit asmi, 'to breathe'" (p. 51).
I spent several hours this week scribbling snippets of this book into my personal journal. Some of it, I want to be able to easily refer to it.
The drive back from Michigan was long, and now I am tired. My crisply cool pillows sound really good right now.
Spiritual Journal, 12/13/01
Dec. 13th, 2001 09:11 pmfrom The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976 (just twenty five short years ago):
p. 228: "In the classical bicameral mind, that is, before its weakening by writing about 2500 B.C., I suggest that there was no hesitancy in the hallucinated voice and no occasion for prayer." [emphasis mine]
p. 229: "Prayers as the central important act of divine worship only become prominent after the gods are no longer speaking to man 'face to face' (as Deuteronomy 34:10 expresses it). What was new in the time of Tukulti [from Mesopotamia] becomes everyday during the first millenium B.C., all, I suggest, as a result of the breakdown of the bicameral mind."
p. 230: "The very exaltation of the god, and indeed the very idea of divine worship, is in contrast to the more matter-of-fact everyday relationship of god and man a thousand years earlier."
p. 269: "Noos, deriving from noeo = to see, is perception itself. And in coming to it we are in a much more powerful region in our intellectual travels." [That is, as in nous, the noetic.]
p. 269: "It is interesting to note parenthetically that there is no hypostasis for hearing as there is for sight. Even today, we do not hear with the mind's ear as we see with the mind's eye. Nor do we refer to intelligent minds as loud, in the same way we say they are bright. This is probably because hearing was the very essence of the bicameral mind, and as such has those differences from vision which I discussed [earlier]. The coming of consciousness can in a certain vague sense be construed as a shift from an auditory mind to a visual mind."
p. 289: "In all the intervening [Greek] writers we have been looking through the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., psyche is never the ghost-soul, but always has its original meaning of life or livingness."
p. 291: "The word soma had meant corpse or deadness, the opposite of psyche as livingness. So now, as psyche becomes soul, so soma remains as its opposite, becoming body. And dualism, the supposed separation of soul and body, has begun."
p. 228: "In the classical bicameral mind, that is, before its weakening by writing about 2500 B.C., I suggest that there was no hesitancy in the hallucinated voice and no occasion for prayer." [emphasis mine]
p. 229: "Prayers as the central important act of divine worship only become prominent after the gods are no longer speaking to man 'face to face' (as Deuteronomy 34:10 expresses it). What was new in the time of Tukulti [from Mesopotamia] becomes everyday during the first millenium B.C., all, I suggest, as a result of the breakdown of the bicameral mind."
p. 230: "The very exaltation of the god, and indeed the very idea of divine worship, is in contrast to the more matter-of-fact everyday relationship of god and man a thousand years earlier."
p. 269: "Noos, deriving from noeo = to see, is perception itself. And in coming to it we are in a much more powerful region in our intellectual travels." [That is, as in nous, the noetic.]
p. 269: "It is interesting to note parenthetically that there is no hypostasis for hearing as there is for sight. Even today, we do not hear with the mind's ear as we see with the mind's eye. Nor do we refer to intelligent minds as loud, in the same way we say they are bright. This is probably because hearing was the very essence of the bicameral mind, and as such has those differences from vision which I discussed [earlier]. The coming of consciousness can in a certain vague sense be construed as a shift from an auditory mind to a visual mind."
p. 289: "In all the intervening [Greek] writers we have been looking through the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., psyche is never the ghost-soul, but always has its original meaning of life or livingness."
p. 291: "The word soma had meant corpse or deadness, the opposite of psyche as livingness. So now, as psyche becomes soul, so soma remains as its opposite, becoming body. And dualism, the supposed separation of soul and body, has begun."
The Future of Religion
Nov. 5th, 2001 10:12 pmIn contact with the flux of cosmic consciousness all religions known and named to-day will be melted down. The human soul will be revolutionized. Religion will absolutely dominate the race. It will not depend on tradition. It will not be believed and disbelieved. It will not be a part of life, belonging to certain hours, times, occasions. It will not be in sacred books nor in the mouths of priests. It will not dwell in churches and meetings and forms and days. Its life will not be in prayers, hymns nor discourses. It will not depend on special revelations, on the words of gods who came down to teach, nor on any bible or bibles. It will have no mission to save men from their sins or to secure them entrance to heaven. It will not teach a future immortality nor future glories, for immortality and all glory will exist in the here and now. The evidence of immortality will live in every heart as sight in every eye. Doubt of God and of eternal life will be as impossible as it is now doubt of existence; the evidence of each will be the same. Religion will govern every minute of every day of all life. Churches, priests, forms, creeds, prayers, all agents, all intermediaries between the individual man and God will be permanently replaced by direct unmistakable intercourse. Sin will no longer exist nor will salvation be desired. Men will not worry about death or a future, about the kingdom of heaven, about what may come with and after the cessation of the life of the present body. Each soul will feel and know itself to be immortal, will feel and know that the entire universe with all its good and with all its beauty is for it and belongs to it forever. The world peopled by men possessing cosmic consciousness will be as far removed from the world of to-day as this is from the world as it was before the advent of self consciousness.
--Richard Maurice Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness (1901), p. 5.
--Richard Maurice Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness (1901), p. 5.
What is ego? Ego is a hierarchy that says, "No one is like me." It can feed on humbleness--"Nobody is like me, I am the most humble man."
Don't be in a hurry to drop it, just watch it. The more you watch, the more capable you will become. Suddenly one day, you simply see that it has dropped. And when it drops by itself, only then does it drop. There is no other way. Prematurely you cannot drop it.
It drops just like a dead leaf.
The tree is not doing anything--just a breeze, a situation, and the dead leaf simply drops. The tree is not even aware that the dead leaf has dropped. It makes no noise, it makes no claim--nothing.
The dead leaf simply drops and shatters on the ground, just like that.
When you are mature through understanding, awareness, and you have felt totally that the ego is the cause of all your misery, simply one day you see the dead leaf dropping.
It settles to the ground, dies of its own accord. You have not done anything, so you cannot claim you have dropped it. You see that it has simply disappeared, and then the real center arises.
And that real center is the soul, the self, the god, the truth, or whatsoever you want to call it.
It is nameless, so all names are good.
You can give it any name of your own liking.
--from Beyond the Frontier of the Mind
Don't be in a hurry to drop it, just watch it. The more you watch, the more capable you will become. Suddenly one day, you simply see that it has dropped. And when it drops by itself, only then does it drop. There is no other way. Prematurely you cannot drop it.
It drops just like a dead leaf.
The tree is not doing anything--just a breeze, a situation, and the dead leaf simply drops. The tree is not even aware that the dead leaf has dropped. It makes no noise, it makes no claim--nothing.
The dead leaf simply drops and shatters on the ground, just like that.
When you are mature through understanding, awareness, and you have felt totally that the ego is the cause of all your misery, simply one day you see the dead leaf dropping.
It settles to the ground, dies of its own accord. You have not done anything, so you cannot claim you have dropped it. You see that it has simply disappeared, and then the real center arises.
And that real center is the soul, the self, the god, the truth, or whatsoever you want to call it.
It is nameless, so all names are good.
You can give it any name of your own liking.
--from Beyond the Frontier of the Mind
