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The Gnomes Of Uncertainty
The Gnomes of Uncertainty
Aphorisms on Limits and Knowledge
Philosophy of Michael Andrews
Speculations on Science, Logic, Paradox, Neo-Gnostic
Exploration, Psychotropics, Art, Physics, Shamanism, Art, Cultural and Political
Evolution, Economics, Religion, Human Survival and Evolution, Love, Empathy,
Ethics, Law, Healing and the Pursuit of the Human Portential in the Third
Millennium.
A mind and its universe are one.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-083336
Copyright © 1996 Michael Andrews
ISBN 0-941017-49-4
5.5x8.5, perfect bound with Black & White cover.
218 pages.
$25.00
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
PREFACE: REGARDING VOCABULARY
PARADOX LOST
1: GNOSIS
1.1 THE BINARY DISTINCTION
1.2 KNOWLEDGE & LOGICAL SPACE
2: PARADOX LOST
2.1 THE LOSS OF CERTAINTY
2.2 AGNOSIS
2.3 THE PLACEBO OF FINAL EXPLANATIONS
3: PARADIGM SHIFTS
3.1 CURRENT SCIENTIFIC THEORIES AND PARADIGMS
3.2 SCIENCE IN MILLENNIUM THREE
3.3 CRITICISMS OF REDUCTIONISM
3.4 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MIND
3.5 COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND POSITIVE FEEDBACK
3.6 CONSENSUAL SOLIPSISM
ELEUSIS NOW
4: THE HUMAN POTENTIAL
4.1 THREE MODALITIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
4.2 FOUR POTENTIALS OF HUMAN DESTINY
4.3 THREE PRAGMATIC SOLUTIONS
5: CULTURE DEFINED
5.1 CULTURE AS INFORMATION
5.2 CULTURE AS A COMPLEX SYSTEM:
COMPLEXITY & ORDER OUT OF DISORDER
6: TWO MODALITIES OF THE HISTORY OF SAPIENS CULTURE
6.1 HISTORY AS PERIODIC CULTURAL COLLAPSE
6.1.1 THE COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CULTURE AS THE RESULT OF TWO
SEPARATE BIFURCATIONS
6.1.1.1 THE FIRST BIFURCATION: ZOROASTER'S SPAWN, THE SUPPRESSION
OF SHAMANISM AND THE INDIVIDUAL
6.1.1.2 THE SECOND BIFURCATION
6.1.1.2.4 ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY
6.1.1.2.13 THE FALL OF ATHENS AND THE SUPPRESSION OF DEMOCRACY
6.1.1.2.3 THE STATE OF PHILOSOPHY
6.1.2 THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY
6.1.3 CULTURAL EVOLUTION & MATURATION
6.1.4 NECESSARY ARMAGEDDON
6.2 HISTORY AS THE EVOLUTION OF MEDIA
6.2.7 THE INTERNET
7: THE COLLAPSE OF SAPIENS CULTURE AND LETHAL MYTHOLOGIES
7.1 PRIMARY MYTHS
7.2 THE LEAST MEMBER
7.3 DYSFUNCTIONAL CULTURAL SYSTEMS
7.4 DEMOCRACY
7.5 DEMOCRACY AND LAW
7.6 PREDATION, COMPLEXITY AND ECONOMIC MODELS
7.7 POPULATION
7.8 THE CULTURAL ZOO & THE SUPPRESSION OF DISSENT
7.9 WAR
7.10 ART
NEO-GNOSTICISM
8: GNOSIS: THE PSYCHOTROPIC EVENT
8.1 LOTOPHAGI
8.2 GNOSTICISM DEFINED
8.3 DIRECT EXPERIENCE
8.4 PRAXIS
8.5 THE DREAM STATE
8.6 RELATIVE REALITIES
9 THE SHAMANIC JOURNEY, THE HERO'S QUEST
AND THE GNOSTIC ODYSSEY QUEST
9.1 ALTERNATE REALITIES
9.2 THE TRICK OF IT
9.3 THE HERO'S QUEST
9.4 THE SHAMANIC JOURNEY
9.5 GNOSTIC ODYSSEYS
10 PSYCHOTROPIC SUBSTANCES
10.1 BY MODALITY
10.2 SYNTHETICS
10.3 PLANTS
10.7 PSYCHOTROPIC SUBSTANCES AS LANGUAGES
10.5 PREPARATION
10.6 MYTHS, SET AND SETTING
10.7 THE PSYCHOTROPIC EXPERIENCE
10.8 THE REFUTATION OF THE REFUTATION OF ALL HERESIES
11: SHAMANIC MODELS
11.1 TAKIWASI
11.2 RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS
12: GNOSTIC ODYSSEYS
12.1 PERSONAL HISTORY
13: NEO-GNOSTICISM & CULTURAL ENGINEERING IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
13.1 NEO-GNOSTICISM
13.2 RELIGIOUS MATURATION AND THE GNOSTIC RENAISSANCE
13.3 THE NECESSITY OF CULTURAL COLLAPSE
13.4 CULTURAL ENGINEERING
13.5 THE MATURE CULTURE
13.6 ANARCHOSOLIPSISM & COOPERATIVE SURVIVAL
13.7 THE WITHERING OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
13.8 THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT
13.9 HUMANMATURATION<\A>
13.10 BEYOND ETHICS
13.11 LOVE
13.12 A HUMANIST MANIFESTO
13.13 ELEUSIS NOW
13.14 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF LUCK
13.15 METEMPSYCHOSIS
13.16 AGAINST KARMA
13.17 GOD'S RAPE OF THE SOUL
13.18 PROGRAMMING THE UNIVERSE
13.19 A THEORY OF EXPECTATIONS
13.20 THE LAW OF LAWS
13.21 GNOSIS
13.22 THE TAO OF ART
13.23 PSYCHOTROPICS AS EVOLUTIONARY CATALYSTS
13.24 THE EXPLORATION AND PRACTICE OF DEATH
13.25 THE HUMAN SOUL
13.26 ATARAXIA
14: MYTHS, INITIATIONS & VISIONS
14.1 PRIMARY MYTHS & MATURATION
14.2 CULTURE & INITIATION
14.3 THE MALE MYTHS
14.4 THE FEMALE MYTHS
14.5 MYTHOLOGICAL ENGINEERING AND IMPOTENCE
14.6 LAW & INITIATION
14.7 INITIATION TECHNOLOGIES
14.8 PERSONAL VISION
15: HOMO SOPHIA
16: GNOSTIC PRAXIS
16.1 BELIEF & THE PROGRAMMABLE UNIVERSE
16.2 METAPHYSICS, ONTOLOGY & EPISTEMOLOGY
16.3 WHAT WE DO
16.4 THE FIRST BELIEF AND THE RAZOR OF CHOICE
16.5 EMPATHY
16.6 VIRTUAL IMMORTALITY
17: APEIRON
17.1 NON-DUALISM
17.2 THE ONE, THE FLUX AND THE PLAY OF NOUS
18: ATARAXIA
18.1 AGNOSIS
18.2 BEYOND UNCERTAINTY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GLOSSARY
FOREWORD
Like the great collections of Gnomae of the past this book makes no pretense
at convincing hostile minds. It is devoid of argument, persuasion or verbose
explanations. In addition, the reader is expected to be familiar with Bell's
Theorem, the anthropic principle, Godel's Theorem and the like. At the very
least the reader is assumed to be capable of learning about these and other
fundamentally important ideas of our time. It is not within the scope of
this book to describe or explain such well-known ideas.
THE GNOMES is a collection of aphorisms aimed at those who do not require
radical conversions of their mental landscape. As such, there is no reference
to other thinkers. For those who still retain functioning minds and wish
to exercise their thinking further a bibliography is provided.
The danger with gnomes and aphorisms is that they are likely to be viewed
either as unsubstantiated opinions, or as oracular pronouncements regarding
absolute truth. The Gnomes of Uncertainty is neither. It is a collection
of terse statements substantiated by years of intellectual reasoning regarding
relative truth, the necessity of belief and absolute uncertainty.
I write because I have no voice. I expect that very shortly life will be
through with me and I will be through with life. So this book is both written
and offered in exasperation, frustration and with indifference. I have no
time or resources to indulge prejudices, ignorance, or fundamentalism of
any stripe, and I really do not care who I offend. Furthermore, I do not
expect that anyone will be particularly interested in what I have to say.
So be it.
Homo sapiens sapiens rarely pays much attention to its thinkers. The human
race has driven out Lao Tzu, crucified Jesus, excommunicated Galileo, executed
Valentinus and Simon Magus, lynched Hypatia, drowned Hippasus, ignored Heraclitus,
ostracized Anaxagoras, murdered Archimedes, drove Frege to despair and Cantor
to insanity, starved Mozart, urinated on van Gogh, assassinated Gandhi and
King, burned books, destroyed libraries and obliterated entire cultures.
So much for sapiens.
GNOMES is not meant to bloat those book shelves already dedicated to the
complete idiot's guide for the symptomatic relief of metaphysical angst.
It is offered solely in the hope that it may in some small way contribute
to the survival and evolution of intelligent life. At least it will not
contribute to its demise. GNOMES is intended to contribute to the establishment
of some form of Gnostic Institute, both on and off the Internet.
A Gnostic Institute is, of course, an oxymoron. But GNOMES is my way of
saying "insemination" to the culture, contributing to the meme
pool, riding through the gate and vanishing in the wilderness.
Heraclitus wrote his Gnomes and offered a single copy in the temple of Artemis,
then went into the mountains to die. Samkara wrote a book revealing life's
most fundamental secrets and most absolute truths. He threw it in the lake
to spare the feelings of a friend. Lao Tzu wrote a hasty treatise for the
keeper of the gate, then disappeared forever into the mountain wilderness.
Wittgenstein wrote his Tractatus claiming that nothing is revealed. In his
lifetime, he never saw fit to publish another book.
Therefore, reductionists, materialists, proponents of economic predation,
militarists, sport fans, lawyers, those who are mentally impaired by religious
fanaticisms, jingoists, racists, politicians, academics, fascists both political
and spiritual, the rich and the powerful should most definitely read no
further. I simply do not have time to pander to the intellectually dysfunctional.
I suggest that you watch a television game show or go to a basketball game
instead.
Homo sapiens sapiens is a dinosaur mere generations away from oblivion.
To them I say, rest in peace.
This book is respectfully dedicated to those who have ears, to those who
have learned how to think, to homo sophia and to the evolution of the species.
GNOMES is a philosophy book in the old style, a comprehensive world view
with the express purpose of allowing the culture to better serve the human
species and to return self-empowerment to the individual along with the
potential to face life and death with a modicum of equanimity and liberation.
The reason that any philosophical viewpoint must encompass all philosophical
territory is because the numerous arenas of discussion are complexly interrelated.
There simply is no convenient, linear way to organize complex systems and
so any discussion of one atomic proposition or topic must, at least by implication,
discuss every other topic and proposition. It is simply not possible to
consider the state vector collapse of quantum mechanics without considering
predatory economics. It is not possible to talk about love without also
speaking of Godel's theorem. The collapse of Western culture is complexly
interlinked to Bell's theorem and the immortality of the human soul has
much to do with binary arithmetic.
GNOMES is a shamelessly metaphysical book in an age when the culture has
been deprived of the right to free, intelligent speculation and when academic
philosophy has escaped its responsibility by fleeing into the morass of
technical irrelevance. The prohibition against metaphysical speculation
has been lifted, of necessity, by science itself. Indeed, due to recent
discoveries, science has to some degree become metaphysical. This book takes
the philosophical middle ground by arguing for human values and the human
spirit based on the foundations of rational thinking and the most current
scientific thought. It speculates on the survival of the species, the evolution
of the culture, the development of science, the transformation of religion,
the return of Gnosticism and the use of psychotropic substances in the third
millennium.
GNOMES is also concerned with two other fundamental issues; the survival
and evolution of the human species and the survival and evolution of the
human individual. The relationship between human cultures, human individuals,
science and philosophy encompasses a wide spectrum of human conditions,
activities and speculations. Although it is impossible to treat these issues
separately, they can be roughly divided into philosophical inquiry, cultural
engineering and gnostic exploration.
This book represents a view of a reality which is already quite complex
enough. This natural contrariness of things and the sheer complexity of
the issues prohibits a simple exposition.
The GNOMES represent, in effect, my conclusions, not the explanation of
how such conclusions were derived. For example there are some of Roger Penrose's
conclusions that I agree with and others that I do not. In order to explain
the difference between our viewpoints it would require a much larger book,
or books, written in an expository manner.
If time permits I intend to write three other books that are more conventional
in terms of explanation and argument; PARADOX LOST will focus on science
and philosophy inquiry, ELEUSIS NOW will be concerned with cultural engineering
and the evolution of Homo Sophia, NEO-GNOSTICISM will consider shamanistic
practices, gnostic exploration and the evolution of the individual.
Everything that I can say that results from a lifetime of thought costs
no more than one thin book.
My suspicion is that the cover price is about all that most sapiens readers
are able to invest in any case. Despite the growing illiteracy, the decline
of critical thinking and astounding intellectual poverty I will halfheartedly
submit GNOMES to a few publishers. If it gets published then perhaps I will
earn the time and resources to complete the other books. If it does not
get published then I will give it away free on the Internet and spend the
time I have remaining amassing dust and watching the horizon.
In any case, if there is a fundamental message to this book it is that talk
is cheap. If it turns out that I do not have the time or resources remaining
to complete these books, then I wish you good luck.
I deeply wish that the human species survives and evolves. If not, it is
probably not a matter of tremendous importance. I wish you love. I wish
you peace. I wish you joy. And for what it is worth, I wish you understanding.
In every way that matters, you are on your own.
PREFACE
REGARDING VOCABULARY
THE GNOMES OF UNCERTAINTY is a book of aphorisms.
A Gnome is a pithy saying that expresses a general truth or fundamental
principle; an aphorism; from the Greek, gnome, intelligence, and gignoskein,
to know.
Aphorism is from the Greek aphorismos, from aphorizein, apo (off, or far
away) and horizein (to limit, from horos, meaning boundary), meaning to
mark off by boundaries, to set aside, cast out, a delimitation: a short,
pithy statement: a terse statement of a truth; a brief statement of principle:
an adage, maxim.
To be terse is to be effectively concise.
Gnomic was first applied to a group of Greek poets who flourished in the
6th Century, B.C.; Theognis, Solon, Phocylides, and Simonides of Anorgos.
Heraclitus' work, On Nature, was a collection of gnomae written in an oracular
manner as is Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Gnomes came to mean any poetry which deals in a sententious fashion with
questions of ethics. A gnomic poem is short, pithy and aphoristic.
So, Gnosis came to mean an intuitive apprehension of spiritual truths.
Sententious is to be terse and energetic in expression; abounding in aphorisms.
A horizon is the apparent intersection of the earth and the sky as seen
by an observer. Or, it is the range of an individual's experience, observation,
interests or knowledge.
To know is to set limits, to make boundaries around the world, to draw horizons.
To say what we know is to make an aphorism. An aphorism in the form of a
poem is a Gnome.
The horizon of our knowledge implies a universe beyond our experience in
exactly the same way that the picture frame implies a universe beyond the
picture.
The world that we experience is bounded by what we know. The world we would
like to create is beyond that horizon.
That is the business of the eidos, to leap over horizons.
A Gnome is also a member of a fabled race of dwarflike creatures who live
underground and guard hordes of treasure.
The eidos is a gnome.
The treasure is the leap.
I have elected to make some use of Greek philosophical terms.
The reason is that these terms are relatively unused and therefore are not
burdened with excessive intellectual baggage. Being neutral they do not
predispose the reader to any previously held prejudices or concepts.
It is often not our thinking or ideas that are confusing. It is more often
a different choice of metaphors, vocabulary and analogies that brings us
a bit of enlightenment. The use of Greek terminology permits us to twist
old analogies and create new metaphors.
A glossary of terms is included.
fragments
from
THE GNOMES OF UNCERTAINTY
1.0.1 A universe comes into being when a distinction is drawn.
1.0.2 A mind and its universe are one.
1.0.3 We do not know how we know. We do not know our
purpose. We do not know where we are going. We do
not know who we are. We are on an odyssey to meet
our selves.
1.2.2 All knowledge as binary systems are based on the law
of the excluded middle, that is a statement is
either true or false.
This turns out to be useful, especially to science
and technology because it makes the universe
knowable, deterministic and predictable. Science is
based on the idea of causality which in turn yields
scientific laws, or rules of behavior that the
universe follows in a consistent manner.
It is what makes life and survival possible.
1.2.3 This system of causality, determinism,
predictability and the excluded middle can be called logical space.
Logical space is everything we know and everything
we can know and it is where life evolves, sentience
contemplates, lovers love and the stars explode away from the cosmic womb. Logical space is analogous to
what science describes as local reality.
1.2.4.2 The second is paradoxical space and is, in
principle, unknowable and non-dual, uncertain,
unpredictable, random, chaotic and non-local;
fundamental reality.
Let it be called Apeiron, or the
Boundless, which means non-dual or without
logical distinction. It is a continuum meaning
that it is an undifferentiated whole without
constituent parts.
It may be associated with Parmenides' One,
Heraclitus' Logos, Anaxagoras' Nous, Lao Tzu's
Tao, Samkara's Non-duality and the entire
universe of quantum potentia.
2: All knowledge, language and certainty are bounded by the
limit of paradox.
2.0.1 The foundations of reality are in paradoxical space
and are in principle unknowable.
2.1.23.6 Sentience is the paradoxical boundary that
defines a self.
2.1.23.7 A self is bounded by the paradox of its own
sentience.
3.2.16.2.3 No culture rises higher than its least
member.
6.1.2.4 Sapiens culture is doomed to some form of
collapse.
6.1.2.5 Culture is a system that is no longer
controlled by human beings.
Sapiens culture is its own entity.
Humans have abdicated responsibility for
their own fate.
That leaves relatively few members of the
species that can be considered intelligent.
6.2.2 Intelligence evolves toward sentience and sentience
evolves toward autogenesis; self definition, self
design, self generation and self determination.
7.5 It goes unnoticed that it is a conflict of interests to
allow lawyers to create the law.
7.5.2 Law is created by the powerful to control the weak.
Both law and ethical codes are means of force.
Law is, in principle, anti-democratic.
7.5.3 In a perfect human culture anarchism would reign,
since no person would consider harming another.
7.5.4 Empathy is superior to law.
7.5.5 Morality cannot be legislated.
7.5.6 The legal prohibition of drugs is merely another
method for the elite to plunder the helpless, an act
of narco-terrorism directed by the government
against its own citizens.
7.6.4 The degree to which a culture is stabilized by top
down legalization is the degree to which the culture
is in peril of collapse.
7.6.5 The imminence of apocalypse may be judged by the
ratio of lawyers per capita.
7.6.9 Wealth and resources are not infinite.
7.6.10 Free markets and illusions of infinite
resources form the basis of the ultimate pyramid
scheme.
7.6.11 Economic perdition and legalized theft from the
body politic always forces wealth up the pyramid.
7.6.12 Debt is always passed down.
7.6.13 There is no final debtor.
7.6.13.4.3 The irony is that anti-abortion fanatics
who espouse the rights of the unborn are
more than willing to not only ignore the
rights of the children of other nations,
but are perfectly happy to remove the
economic rights of the future generations
of the unborn.
7.6.13.6.1 Secrecy, or the possession of and access
to information, has always been the tool
of a predatory elite.
7.6.14.39 Free market predation is the best example of a
cultural system gone insane.
7.6.14.39.1 Cultural insanity is defined as a system
created by humans that works only to
fulfill its own needs and agendas, and no
longer works to achieve human needs and
purposes.
7.6.14.39.2 Free market predation is essentially an
artificial life form, something on the
order of a cultural virus, that is out of
human control.
7.6.14.39.3 As a parasitic, trans-cultural life form
its primary goal is self perpetuation.
Even if this means the destruction of its
human host.
7.6.14.39.4 It has already replicated itself globally
and has destroyed all alternative cultural
systems and values that have acted in the
past as cultural immunogens.
7.6.14.39.5 Cultural necrosis is system wide.
7.6.14.39.6 Cultural death is immanent.
7.6.23 Currency is the medium of plunder.
7.9.4
Sports are culturally analogous to war and predatory
economics.
7.9.4.1 All are based on competition and
competition is based on domination.
7.9.4.2 Sport is fun competition.
7.9.4.3 War is lethal competition.
7.9.4.4 Sport is the domination of culture.
7.9.4.5 War is the domination of death.
7.10 Art is the conduit of value, the media of the psyche, the
cultural barometer, the yoga of empathy, the healer of
wounds, the ultimate free speech, the savior from
madness, the data bank of the human condition, the
conquest of apathy, the balm of hope, a compass for the
lost, the keeper of love, the promise of joy and the
revelation of epiphany.
Jesus may have died for somebody's sins, but Mozart
justified our existence.
Newton may have revealed the cosmic clockworks, but
van Gogh painted the landscape of our spirits.
Descartes suggested we have minds, but William Blake
gave us our selves.
7.10.1.9 You cannot read the same poem twice.
7.10.1.14 The poet is the practitioner of a dead art. A
dead art is one in which the only audience is
its practitioners. Even so poetry remains the
last and only true art left in a free market
culture, all others being reduced to artistic
commodities.
7.10.1.29 Poetry is the yoga of empathy.
7.10.2 No market, free or otherwise, has the right or
the means to value art.
7.10.2.0 In a free market the only good artist is a dead
artist.
7.10.2.43 In a free market it is not possible, at the
deepest level, to create art at all. It is only
possible to create an artistic commodity.
7.10.3.12 At some point all art and intellectual property
should revert to ownership by the culture.
10.8.3.4.18 If the species chooses stasis over quest
and evolution, then the species is doomed.
10.8.3.4.18.1 Life is evolution, death is
static.
10.8.3.4.18.2 The human adventure is here,
down in the flux, the panta rhei, the
change, the process and the
evolution.
10.8.3.4.18.3 Drugs have evolved by nature and
by design. Some are good and some are
bad.
10.8.3.4.18.4 That's what humans have come
equipped with brains for. There is
risk.
10.8.3.4.18.5 It is, after all, the hero's
quest.
13.9.4 The male sex has been manipulated into the
services of the elite by replacing traditional
initiation systems with war. The primary myth that a
boy can only become a man by killing another boy
trying to become a man has nearly brought us to the
brink of annihilation.
13.9.5 The female primary myth that only by spawning can a girl become a woman has had even more
catastrophic impact on the humanity. Overpopulation
remains one of the prime motivations for war.
13.9.6 The girls make them, the boys kill them. It is
free market equilibrium in practice.
13.11.2 It is the genius of love to leap that horizon of
unknowing and embrace another mind. It is love to
acknowledge freedom.
13.11.3.2 Romance is the female analog of pornography.
13.11.8 Love is the single greatest act of a sentient being.
13.12.10 Sentience is the only sacred being in any universe.
13.12.11 A living child has greater rights than the unborn.
13.12.12 40,000 children died today of starvation or
malnutrition.
13.12.13 As long as a single child starves anywhere on the
planet, no one has the right produce another child.
13.25 The soul may be a human artifact.
16.1 One free lunch is the problem with every explanation of
final or ultimate causes.
16.1.1 In principle it can be no other way. Knowledge
cannot transcend paradox. Science will never reach
Time Zero. No faith will yield the truth.
16.1.3 The explanation of the existence of the
universe and sentient observers always reduces to
either an infinite regress or to some version of a
prime mover.
16.1.4 All final explanations are myths and are based
on belief.
16.1.21 Ultimate and final explanations are unprovable,
undecidable and unverifiable.
16.1.22 Ultimate knowledge is fundamentally unknowable.
16.1.23 The only clear path remaining to sentient beings is
a virtual certainty based on belief.
16.1.24 There are two forms of belief.
16.1.25 For the purposes of this discussion faith is defined
as second-hand beliefs accepted on some authority
such as culture, parents or priests and without
recourse to experience, investigation or
intelligence.
In a deep sense faith is an abdication of spirit and
intellect. It is a failure of nerve and leads to a certain type of spiritual and intellectual death.
16.1.26 Belief is defined as the acceptance of some
explanation or myth based on the intellect,
experience and investigation and in spite of knowing
that the explanation is in principle unprovable.
16.1.27 Belief, then, involves choice.
16.3.10 Reality is a game for two or more players.
16.4.11 Between two undecidable explanations always choose
the belief that makes you stronger.
16.4.14 Absolute certainty is sentient death.
16.5.4 Sentient beings make one another real by
agreement.
16.5.5 To make one another real is an act of empathy.
By empathy one sentient person regards another as
real as his own self. It is an act of maturity, a
gift. The recipient is made real. When two real
selves agree that they are each as real as the other
it validates their internal models.
16.5.14 To make one another real is an act of grace.
16.5.21.3 Love alone redeems us. The lover, the empathic
person always derives the greatest good, the
reality of self in the sudden and awesome
illumination that the primal terror holds no
threat; we are not alone in spite of the fact
that we have no certainty.
16.5.22 It is the act of empathy to leap the horizon of
uncertainty again and again. Love is our talent.
Empathy is our act of grace.
17.1.22 There are always attempts to describe the experience
of the Apeiron but the description falls into
language and metaphor and collapses into knowledge,
meaning and uncertainty and says nothing true about
the experience.
17.1.24 And we fall into Wittgenstein's silence.
17.2.36 Parmenides was right. Reality is the One
17.2.37 And Heraclitus was also right. Reality is unknown to
us.
17.2.38 Anaxagoras saw the unifying principle. For us, the
only reality is Nous. Nous is more than simply mind
as distinct from an external reality, but Mind as a
process at play in reality.
17.2.39 A Mind and its Reality are one.
17.2.40 The primary process of Nous is to impose order on
chaos.
17.2.62 There is no end of horizons, no end of universes, no
end of process, in the same way that there is no end
to the detail of fractals in the Mandelbrot set.
17.2.63 Let us enjoy our illusions.
17.2.64 Let us play in our realities.
18.1.10 Every universe is yours. Choose your beliefs with
care. Love without restraint.
18.1.11 In the end give thanks to your pain.
18.1.12 Every potential belongs to you. Even the ultimate
release is within your grasp.
18.1.13 You make the choices.
18.1.14 You make it real.
18.2 Our one great praxis is to laugh at ourselves.
18.2.1 If you think you have learned something, if you
believe that you know something, if you suspect that
you have understood what is written here, then you
know nothing, understand nothing and have learned
nonsense.
18.2.2 Make no dogmas. Trust no dogma. Do not believe
this sentence.
18.2.3 Trust laughter. Trust love.
18.2.4 Compassion alone protects us from destruction.
Human empathy permits us to laugh at gods.
18.2.11 It is the function of minds to leap horizons again
and again.
18.2.17 With a magnificent leap beyond the boundary, we make
one another real by an act of empathy. In spite of
the lack of absolute knowledge we choose to believe
in love. Together we create this magnificent world
from chaos and isolation. And so, the death of even
the least of us, diminishes each and every one us.
18.2.18 There are two things we are compelled to explain:
death and meaningless pain.
18.2.19 In our agony at finding no certain explanation we
answer simply that love alone redeems us.
18.2.20 By the grace of mutual consent we make one another
real. In that sense we bear witness to and confirm
one another's lives. And somehow, in all this chaos
of life and death, we love.
18.2.21 When a human dies the world is not merely altered by
the absence of one person among billions. Rather,
because the belief of a single person sustains the
entire world, the whole world dies. In that sense,
when a single human dies, we all die.
18.2.22 There can never be incontrovertible proof either for
or against the survival of death. The human species
and the human individual is empowered by choosing to
believe that the mind is capable of survival beyond
death. This choice is based on the simple belief
that the Apeiron would not so conspire as to allow
the creation of something so magnificent as the
mind, only to consign it to the trash bin of
oblivion.
18.2.23 In the final analysis, we choose the ultimate
belief; that there is a state beyond knowledge and
uncertainty. From time to time we have given this
state names and have attempted to describe it. We
have called it Brahman, The Tao, The Great
Mysterious, Apeiron, Nous, the less offensive and
more abstract descriptions of god, and even the
consciousness continuum.
18.2.24 But as soon as we give it a name or description, it
collapses into knowledge, is bounded by paradox, and
sinks into uncertainty. And still we choose to
believe that by leaping that horizon again and again
we may somehow leap into the unknowable, into the
ecstasy.
18.2.25 And from time to time we do.
18.2.26 And of that ecstasy, we can only remain silent.
Copyright 1996 Michael Andrews and A Waking World
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