the eye of Nova's mind

9:19 p.m.

To know and to believe are two different things.

I live this life, knowing that it is a fiction.* But I am in this life nonetheless. I believe all of the things around me. I believe I exist. Do I know I exist? I don't know. But I believe I do, because my sense organs tell me I do! Because I have a cognitive process, because I can interpret the world. Because I have a consciousness. (So does consciousness believe itself into being?)



* I'm referencing Wallace Stevens' quote: "The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly." from Adagia.

Faith, Divined

Confess to Steven Reiss how important eating, exercise and vengeance are to you, and he can divine the role religion plays in your life.

Reiss, an Ohio State University professor of psychology and psychiatry, said these and 13 other "sensitivity points" -- a set of values held to different degrees by nearly everybody -- can predict not only whether a person is likely to be religious but also what form that belief may take.

He describes his theory in the June issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, which publishes peer-reviewed research.

( Read more... )

I believe there is something behind the veil. Does that make me crazy?

( confessions )

When asked by a young lawyer what was necessary to obtain eternal life, Jesus had replied, "Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. Do this and you will have eternal life."

(I was reading "Was Jesus a Taoist?" Fairly interesting; I generally agree with the viewpoint [though not with all of the views].)

Really, though. I do the first all the time, and I'm slowly learning to do the second. If I can do this, I can have eternal life? I'll strike that bargain.

"Jesus said to him [Thomas]: 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" -- John 14: 6 (NWT)

"Observe, O my son, the commandment of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother. Tie them upon your heart constantly; bind them upon your throat. When you walk about, it will lead you; when you lie down, it will stand guard over you; and when you have waked up, it itself will make you its concern. For the commandment is a lamp, and a light the law is, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life." -- Proverbs 6: 20-23 (NWT), emphasis added

The similarities between these passages are too great to ignore. This is particularly true when one considers that the Proverbs passage is one of six chapters whose theme is wisdom, which for most people is synonymous with truth.

This is something I mentioned to F on the phone after I'd seen The Matrix Reloaded:

"Is love the genesis of choice?"

I think that's the ultimate question distilled from the movie. And it's a worthy question. Can love trump the mechanisms of fate? In my mystical experience, I would have to say yes. While I can never know for certain, I feel that the soul trumps death because of its love, its yearning, for God.

I was poking through a Gnosticism archive and came across the following. (I'd almost expect this to have been written by a radical feminist, but most radical feminists are not male.)

--

The Gnostic Christians who authored the Nag Hammadi scriptures did not read Genesis as history with a moral, but as a myth with a meaning. To them, Adam and Eve were not actual historical figures, but representatives of two intrapsychic principles within every human being. Adam was the dramatic embodiment of psyche, or soul, while Eve stood for the pneuma, or spirit. Soul, to the Gnostics, meant the embodiment of the emotional and thinking functions of the personality, while spirit represented the human capacity for spiritual consciousness. The former was the lesser self (the ego of depth psychology), the latter the transcendental function, or the "higher self," as it is sometimes known. Obviously, Eve, then, is by nature superior to Adam, rather than his inferior as implied by orthodoxy.

Nowhere is Eve's superiority and numinous power more evident than in her role as Adam's awakener. Adam is in a deep sleep, from which Eve's liberating call arouses him. While the orthodox version has Eve physically emerge from Adam's body, the Gnostic rendering has the spiritual principle known as Eve emerging from the unconscious depths of the somnolent Adam. Before she thus emerges into liberating consciousness, Eve calls forth to the sleeping Adam in the following manner, as stated by the Gnostic Apocryphon of John:

I entered into the midst of the dungeon which is the prison of the body. And I spoke thus: "He who hears, let him arise from the deep sleep." And then he (Adam) wept and shed tears. After he wiped away his bitter tears he spoke, asking: "Who is it that calls my name, and whence has this hope come unto me, while I am in the chains of this prison?" And I spoke thus: "I am the Pronoia of the pure light; I am the thought of the undefiled spirit. . . . Arise and remember . . . and follow your root, which is I . . . and beware of the deep sleep."

http://www.webcom.com/~gnosis/genesis.html

The more I delve into scientific, rational explanations for the beginning of the universe, our own solar system, and the genesis and evolution of life, the more I observe my spirituality becoming earth-centered.

It's strange; my paganism wasn't nature-based before the last six months.

Two years ago, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within would not have made much an impression on me, aside from its excellent graphics. And even the first time I watched it, I made little note of its script; I saw it as an allegory. Now, I think of the idea of the spirit of Gaia, and some of it doesn't seem so off the wall to me anymore. (Though I think "spirit" is a misleading term.)

Jesus is dead.

I hate to break this to some people, but the truth must be told. The man died. He is no more. His body is so much dust in the desert.

I am a Christian. However, I am not the type to believe in a third-party God. (I consider myself to be a Christian mystic.) The Judeo-Christian God is just a flawed as any human being. I do not believe in a transcendent God; I believe that the universe is transcendent in itself.

I do not believe in reincarnation, because that seems like a bright idea proposed by leading thinkers several thousand years ago who had no idea of what the human body was composed of. Those people had no idea what entropy means, or metabolism, or simple brain processes. It was a best guess at the time.

The "soul" (I don't believe in such things) is not imprisoned in one's flesh. The spirit is a marriage of flesh and consciousness. At the same time, I believe that consciousness itself is predicated--necessarily--upon pre-existing form. The cell had to exist before it could fashion an awareness of itself.

Death is an end in awareness. I firmly believe that when we die, that's it. The fight against entropy is over, and our component parts degrade into earth. Religions that fight this natural order of things are misguided, in my opinion. Christianity, coupled with general Western philosophy, encourages the thought that we have divine dominion over the natural earth, and this dominion extends into the belief that we can escape death. (This leads to a devaluation of the aged in our communities and a perverse predilection on youthfulness and suppleness.)

It never ceases to startle me that there are people who honestly believe that deceased people are simply "sleeping in the earth," until Judgment Day. Those people, like Jesus, are dead. There is no second awakening for them.

However, being a believer in mysticism, I do believe that people can reach such an awakening while alive, through contemplation, wisdom, and self-knowledge. It's similar to "being saved" or "being reborn" in Christian terminology, but in my own experience it was much more immediate and long-lasting than being saved was.

*shrug* To answer the question, "What is death?" one must first find an answer to the question, "What is life?" Years ago, I came to the conclusion that life is. It just simply is. Similarly, death simply is. They are part of the same process, and we would be wise to reconcile ourselves to that process and live accordingly. (For me, that means not engaging in wishful thinking, like Judgment Day or reincarnation, things of which we have no evidence and which go against all forms of sense, common or otherwise.)