Re: OT: reality (wasRe: Atlantean)

In a message dated 2004:01:10 05:43:33 PM, axiem@FASTMAIL.FM writes:

>Multiple people percieve the same object. In fact, one person will often
>percieve the same object as other people.
    Would you perceive a black phallic object the same way a Hindu would?

    Dangerously loaded generalization _there_ that we all perceive things
alike - one that Christophe might have something(s) to say about - being that he
is quite scientific and has on a number of times pointed out how language
itself creates a cultural bias becuz it creates a "cultural mindset" _and_ many
types of "individual mindsets"  Would you perceive a black phallic object the
same way a Hindu would?

In a message dated 2004:01:10 06:50:15 PM, fiziwig@YAHOO.COM writes:

>Assuming that there is such a thing as "50 other
>people."  Since your perception of the existence of 50
>other people exists in your mind it could well be an
>illusion.
    ... and even within an individual, there is no clear-cut logical
consistency in neural responses to stimuli as both the individual perception and the
brain is continually changing, adapting, learning, effected by diet, stresses,
health - mental and otherwise, etc.. We are just not the same people we were
just yesterday...

In a message dated 2004:01:10 06:50:15 PM, fiziwig@YAHOO.COM writes:

>What if you awoke for this dream you call reality and
>discovered that it was inded a dream and that the 50
>other people you were dreaming of have no objective
>reality?
    Paraphrasing heavily, ChuangTzu once said: I had a dream that I was a
butterfly or I am a butterfly dreaming I am human dreaming I am a butterfly?

In a message dated 2004:01:10 06:52:50 PM, John Cowan writes:

> [....] truths are invariably tentative, subject to revision.
>"A fact", said Stephen Jay Gould, "is a hypothesis from which it would
>be perverse to withhold provisional assent."  That's the best we get.
    IMHO John comes up with the best final word on this hoary ol'
philosophical bonmot.
    Certain occultists are fond of pointing to this paradox with the saying:
Nothing is true. Everthing is Permitted. As Above, So Below...

>I believe firmly in the idea of empiricism.
    How quaint! I thought empiricism - on its own without any necessary
tempering of its supposedly infallible universal "logic"- died a verrrry horrid
messy death in World War One...and was dug up in WW2 by necrofiles to be only
reburied again in the '60's...

    Being a very open-minded, curious Taoist, I  myself much prefer an ever
re-actiing,  mutant mix o' pragmaticism, situationalism and idealism (as in "By
Any Means Necessary, Possible and Imaginable") with a streakin' dash of naked
spirituality and the usual Trickster bag and sleeves full o' mischief and
creativity ;)

-|-|--|---|-----|--------|-------------|
    Hanuman Zhang, heeding the Call(ing) to Divine Chaos & Creation

_NADA BRAHMA_ < Sanskrit >  "sound = Godhead"

"You breathe redemption, motive, power, You're elemental, super-collider
yeah tenn0!, You are air and earth, fire and ocean, You are Word, You are
tenn0 tenn0!" - mortal "tenn0"

_LILA_  < Sanskrit >
    1. the universe is what happens when God wants to play - Divine Play -
the play of the Divine in its Cosmic Dance, whimsy -  like a child playing alone
God the Cosmic Dancer - whose routine is all creatures and all worlds - the
Cosmos flows - a world from the tireless unending resistless stream of God's
energy that _is_ Lila
    2. joyous exercise of spontaneity involved in the art of creation this is
also Lila

"A constellation is basially a conical chunk of stars with the apex at Earth

with an arbitrary space angle." - Andreas Johansson

    "...divine chaos ...rumors of chaos have been known to enhance the
...vision.... for the godhead manifests no more of its reality than the limited
grammar of each person's imagination and conceptual system can handle. A second
advantage is suggested by William James in _Varieties of Religious Experience_.
James affirms the possibilty of many gods, mostly because he takes seriously
his multiverse theory of personal monads, each one of us experiencing a
unique... revelation. An orderly monistic and monotheistic system, he fears, might
succumb to a craving for logical coherence, and trim away some of the mystery,
rich indeterminancy, and tragic ambiguity in a complete numinous experience.
For some temperaments, the ambivalent gentleness and savagery of fate can be
imagined effectively in a godhead split into personified attributes, sometimes
at war, sometimes in shifting alliance." - Vernon Ruland, _Eight Sacred
Horizons: The Religious Imagination East and West_

"We bow to the _satvika_ Shiva
    Whose _angika_ is the body
        Whose _vachika_ is the entire language
Whose _aharya_ is the moon and the stars"

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