Category Archives: philosophy

A community of living and dead

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In this old anime, a Japanese housewife places the picture of her deceased son so that he can watch baseball on TV. This is a somewhat crude and literal way to include the dead in the community of the living, but I think most of us can at least somewhat understand how she feels. There are more subtle ways to transcend time and mortality, though.

Already in the short foreword to Meditations on the Tarot, the author tries to take us into a world that may be unfamiliar to most. He greats us as an unknown friend “from beyond the grave”. That is not to say that he wrote this book after his death, but he arranged for it to be published years after his passing, and anonymously. I understand this decision: On this path, you continue to grow and change throughout your life. If you knew some of his earlier works, it would color your impression of this one, which was specifically designed to stand on its own.

When I say the book stands on its own, this does not mean he makes no reference to those who have inspired him. He does, but for a very specific purpose: The quotes are “evocations”, to bring these great spirits of the past to be present in the room with the reader, so to speak. This requires some explanation.

We must not understand this in a crude spiritism sense, where the ghosts of the dead masters are floating around like transparent shapes looking for a medium who can see them and convey their thoughts. Far from it. We are not talking about the astral bodies, but a far deeper layer of the person. But also, I would say that these great spirits are not moving forward in time to speak to us. Rather, they speak to us from where they lived. They speak to us across time, because they were greater than time, they extended beyond time, and so does a tiny part of us. That part is how we can feel connected to them despite them having long passed from this world. There is a part in us that is not limited to this world and to this time. And it is this part we seek to develop by means of such tools as Meditation.

Unknown Friend explains that what we call Tradition is not a doctrine or theory, but a community of people – some still alive but most having lived in the past – who each is a link in the chain of Tradition.

This is not unique to this book. In Eastern Orthodoxy, it is generally understood that those who lived in the past and even those who shall live in the future are part of the Church. They are included in the communal prayers, and are also assumed to include us in their prayers when they lived or are going to live. We are the Church members of the future for those who lived in the past, and the Church members of the past for those who have yet to live.

Nor is this unique to Christianity. In China, there has for thousands of years been a quest for immortality. In its crude, exterior form this is simply an attempt to prolong the life of the body, but there is a deeper, esoteric understanding of the Immortals as spirits who transcend time. The “teacher” in the proverb “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear” is understood to mean the immortals.

And this is exactly what happens here in the west with a book such as Meditations on the Tarot. If you are not ready, even if you should somehow happen to find the book, the evocations will not work. The timeless high spirits of the past will not inspire you, and quite likely the whole thing will seem either absurd, boring or outright creepy.

This is how it is with esoteric knowledge: The secret hides itself in plain sight. It is not necessary to speak in riddles to not be understood: That is automatic. It is necessary to speak in riddles to be understood, because we are speaking of that which cannot be seen, cannot be heard, and most importantly, cannot be put in the wallet. The people who will even be interested are few.  But perhaps there are enough that I have not written all this completely in vain.  Even if one historian in the future stumbles upon it and feels a twinge of familiarity, I shall be content.

After all, letters to an Unknown Friend is what I have done since 1998, long before I had heard of this book. ^_^

 

Hermetic tradition, huh?

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4300 years ago is the oldest estimate I have seen, and the oldest known sources are more like 2100 years old; but even then they claim to be part of a much older tradition, so who knows when and where it started.

It would seem that I am become part of the Hermetic tradition, and presumably so is the Pope. I am sure Hermes would enjoy that; perhaps I should write him a letter…

Back when I started reading the blog “One Cosmos”, one of the recommended books (and oft quoted) was Meditations on the Tarot, by a now deceased Catholic philosopher who prefers to be known only as “your unknown friend”. Although his real name is known (and a little famous), it is customary to not mention it. Despite the mention of Tarot, the book is unabashedly Christian, with a vaguely Catholic slant (at least if you know it). It does however draw on a multitude of sources also outside of Christianity.

I bought the book, a hefty tome, unfortunately not available in Kindle form yet.  Truth to tell, I did not get far into it. At the time, it was a rather heavy read. This was at the early years (if not months) of my interest in books of timeless wisdom, and I had little training in reading such things and little understanding of this way of thinking. Some five years have passed since then, I think.

The book was pulled out again on the same blog recently, and I also brought out my own copy.  That’s when I actually noticed the subtitle: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. 

I was about to write something like “I have written at great length about Hermes Trismegistus”, then decided to link to it, then my search function only showed a couple drive-by mentions. Have I really not gone into detail about this mysterious person, who supposedly lived in ancient Greece or perhaps Egypt? He is known mainly from Egypt after it was conquered by Alexander the Great, and evidently the Egyptian god Thoth was identified with the Greek Hermes. This combined god was called Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the three times greatest. Perhaps that was their way to say “awesome”?

In any case, Hermes supposedly wrote a large number of books containing the wisdom of the universe, but only a tiny portion of these writings are still extant. And this has been the case for a long time. From these somewhat cryptic sources we have people drawing very different conclusions. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, for instance, is more similar to witchcraft than to Christianity. But this book is not.

If you are in doubt, it may be worth noticing that the current Pope is photographed with Meditations on the Tarot on his table. Of course that is not proof, he may have been surveying it for heresies. But he spent his adult life in the same intellectual circle as Hans Urs von Balthasar, who wrote a foreword (now afterword) to the book, and who was nominated as Cardinal by the earlier Pope but died before he could take office.

So Hermeticism seems to have, in fact, once again entered mainstream Christianity. (It made several appearances in the early church, in apologetic writings – that doesn’t mean the church fathers apologized, rather they wrote books to defend the faith. The word has changed meaning since, I guess. But back then, Hermes was considered more respectable than Jesus in some parts of the civilized world.)

Anyway, it seems their paths are meeting again, as it were. I am sure this would amuse members of the Japanese new religion Happy Science, who believe that Hermes and Jesus were friends since before the age of the dinosaurs. But Jesus hasn’t said anything about that to me, so don’t quote me on it. Anyway, I doubt the happy sect members have time to read my blog, given they now have over 700 books to read by the reincarnation of Hermes. And I still haven’t read through Meditations on the Tarot.

 

 

Perfectly imperfect world

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I still suck at kanji, so I have no idea whether the painted words are in any way related to the romaji and the corresponding English text. I hope they are decent, at least they are pretty. Anyway, my destination lies beyond, and for good reason.

The llama touched on this recently, so perhaps I should describe it in more detail.

I know I have written in great detail about this before, after listening to the voice in my heart. But I have probably not uploaded it, because I am not really a person fit to teach. I am a guy who gets up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats, plays computer games or reads or writes or watches a cartoon, and goes to bed. Oh, and walks an hour usually. But the sacrifices I have made for the Truth are so few and so small as to be negligible. That is why one should not take on faith anything I say about more important things.  Try it against your own conscience, and/or learn from the great guiding lights of the past.

But I think this is self-evident, that Earth is not Heaven, and world is not God. Or rather, Earth is not fully Heaven, at best a pale reflection. And our world is not God in the fullness of perfection and completeness, the Sum of All Good etc.

I am not simply talking about a specific religion here, although I have one. Rather, I think all of us have some idea of perfection, some idea of completeness, some idea of the Highest Good. Since some things are more worth than others, there must be something of the highest worth. Since some things are more real than others, there must be a supreme reality. The ancient form of the pyramid represents the great chain of being, with the One at the top, from which all flows and to which all leads. The Great Pyramid was supposedly in its heyday covered in white stone, but its peak plated in gold.

Now, we must understand that this world is not a direct manifestation of the Supreme Being, of the Perfect and Unlimited. Rather, there is a distance between the two. This world follows laws of nature, but there also seems to be much randomness. And so also with the hearts of men. Though we have principles, it is hard to hold onto them in the face of temptation. Others also have this struggle, so we should meet them with understanding when they try to do their best but sometimes fail.

The natural world itself seems to contain this measure of randomness. Things happen for a reason, but only in light of the transcendent (that which goes beyond). If seen with the eyes of plain matter, there is a lot of randomness. Why do bad things happen to good people? More importantly, why do good people happen to do bad things? Why these fluctuation, in matter and in human will? Why the imperfections, the failures?

I say it is because the world is not God or even Heaven, and is not meant to be so. God – or the Uncreated Light, or the Tao – has granted us space so that we could exercise our free will. If it were not so, we would not be here to talk about it.

Think of a brightly shining light bulb. In the night, it shines brightly. But if we could somehow place this glowing bulb inside the sun, it would actually there be a darker, colder place than its surroundings. It would also very quickly cease to exist.

In the same way, even the most luminous among us – the wisest, the purest, the most worthy – would become an impurity if God were to manifest fully in this world, if God were to take direct control in an obvious way. And because “God is light and there is no darkness in him” (to use a phrase from the New Testament) we would not even be able to exist in such a situation.

We live in this imperfect world because it is the only place fit for imperfect people like us. “God alone is great and perfect.”

However, unlike the rest of nature, man (and this includes woman, of course) can change. It is not easy. You cannot simply sit up one day and decide: “From now on I will not give in to temptation. From now on I will do the right thing every time as far as I can see.” Well, actually you can, perhaps even should. But you cannot carry it through. As a man you simply don’t have that kind of backbone. You are subject to imperfection, to fluctuations, you become tired in your morality much as you become tired in your mind and tired in your body. Certainly I do not wish to hold you back if you want to live a perfect life. Go for it! But don’t kill yourself when you crash.

Gradually – at a snail’s pace for most of us, and that is being generous – we can change. There is what religious people call “grace”, a kind of invisible flow of opportunity (or more poetically “helping hand”) from above. It is not always equally palpable, equally possible to sense and identify. But at some point there should be a small crack in the cosmic eggshell that surrounds us, and that’s how the light gets in. At some point we should be able to find a small stream of grace and follow it, sensing somehow when we begin to get too far away from it, or when it is closer at hand.

Various religions have techniques for finding and making use of such opportunities of grace. If you mistrust them all, I suppose you can try to make it on your own, but I recommend you learn the basics at least from those who have trod this path before you.

The idea is that we can get closer to Heaven while here on Earth. That we can become less random, less an object tossed around by fate and more a living being with its own destiny.  Our destiny lies beyond this world and its randomness. When the world is random toward us, we need not respond to it randomly, but the compass needle of our mind can come to point more and more in the direction of Heaven.

But won’t that lead us to becoming engulfed by God and cease to exist? Not in this yuga (lifetime of the universe) it won’t. Such complete unification is the point at the tip of the pyramid. It is certainly not something we need to worry about. If the time comes for all to become One, we will be fully prepared for it and even eager for it. Not until then. Divine Love does not force itself upon the unwilling soul. You can get to know this by experience.

 

 

75% control?

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“You can sit there and reflect on what you did!” That sounds like a good idea, but you may sometimes find that it was actually mind parasites (complexes) that influenced you to do it. That is not exactly an excuse – life can be reclaimed from those. But first we have to throw the light of awareness on them.

Recently I was walking and outlining an entry in my head about religion vs mind parasites. By a strange coincidence, this week’s broadcast of Happy Science on Air featured an answer by Ryuoho Okawa about destiny and the degree to which one is in control of one’s own life. Okawa answered that one controls about half of one’s life through the choices one makes. A quarter is decided before we are born. And the fourth quarter is decided by spiritual influences, good or bad. So by religious training the part of your life that you can control goes up from 50 to 75%.

That is what Ryuho Okawa says. But he also occasionally says that he is God and comes from Venus, so you may want to call a couple more witnesses before making your final decision.

I think even 50% is actually very rare in typical humans. I mean, I suppose technically you can make that many decisions if you are wide awake while living your life. And there are a number of secular philosophers who just may have lived that way even without religion as we usually think of it. So I suppose the potential exists. And it could be argued that to not choose is also a choice, although I wonder how accurate that is if people don’t even KNOW that they have a choice.

Making people aware that they have a choice, that reality is not as small and bland as it sometimes looks, is one of my major aspirations in life. But I wonder if I should be more selective about it. A number of my friends did wake up a bit and began to think for themselves. They went on to think wrongly and went astray, as in causing suffering for themselves and others. But I guess at least they were not bored. Still, I sometimes wonder if this restriction on seeing the freedom, this “sleep”, may have been put upon people for their own protection.

And yet, to me this is important. Personal growth, as I see it, is the growth of the conscious, reflecting self at the cost of the mind parasites or rote habits. By habits I don’t only mean outward actions, but habits of thought and even habits of seeing the world in a particular manner.  These are usually programmed into us early in life by family, friends, teachers and the wider culture.

This does not mean that everything we learn is wrong, of course! But in a manner of speaking it does not really become ours until we consciously observe it and reflect on it. A good habit may also exist for many years and we have not really made it a part of ourselves because we don’t see what we are doing.

But often the things we do and think and see are not a conscious expression of ourselves, but the doings of free agents of the mindscape, mind parasites or (if we are lucky) symbiotes, and snippets of brain software that runs on its own, somewhat like the Android programs that don’t close down properly and drain the batteries of your smartphone unless you have Juice Defender installed. They may have been useful at some point in the past but keep running in the background without us being aware of them. Most Windows machines also tend to run gradually slower as all kinds of junk builds up, mostly harmless (although the occasional virus or worm may also be there) but not useful, and not really wanted. We just don’t notice it. So it is no miracle that the brain has the same problem, and probably more so, since some of this junk has built up for generations! “That’s the way we do it around here.”

So sometimes we wake up and find that we live in a corner of our own brain, while most of it is dedicated to things we don’t exactly hate (although that may also happen) but just don’t recognize as us.

Whether we – the person – actually exists? That is a deeper question that I don’t think we should try to answer until we have a thorough understanding of how the rest of our mindscape looks, from a long time of direct observation. I will just briefly mention it: The body may look from outside as if it is mostly “one piece”, but inside it is actually made up of many different organs, and these again are often made of smaller structures, which again are made of tissues of myriad cells. And even the cells again are made up of smaller parts and so on. So does that mean the body does not exist?  That is clearly wrong too, if you mean that there is nothing there. It does not disappear and is not reduced by our knowing. Seen from one perspective the body remains, but seen in another way we see many other things also in its place. It is no surprise if the psyche is similar.

It may seem like a horrible idea to expand the conscious “I”, if we want to get rid of it later. But consider the alternative: Letting the brain fall prey to the mind parasites for as long as we “live” – I cannot even fully use the word live, in the sense of living a human life, if we are run by mind parasites most of the time in most of the ways. So dismantling these is a priority. But then we also have to dismantle our pride and our sense of being the greatest and most important thing in the universe. These things can happen in parallel. But until there is some room in the chaotic mindscape for clarity, we cannot really begin to see ourselves.

I constantly see people who have very little control of themselves, although they may think so. The parasites are in charge. And one of these people has been me. It surely still is, in the many areas where I have still not reflected on myself in an objective way.

 

Heaven and Hell are other people?

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Those who like to see other people smile should fit right into Heaven, and people will pray to meet them again.

The French playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote a screenplay called No Exit where the most famous phrase is “Hell is other people”.  (In fact, I keep thinking that it is the name of the play.) This phrase has become probably his most famous, and even the most famous in existentialist philosophy. Sartre said the phrase was misunderstood, that it did not mean that other people were always hell. And indeed, there are people who claim that other people are Heaven. In fact, solitary confinement is considered cruel and unusual exactly because to most, the absence of other people is Hell.

Without the feedback from other people, most of us would begin to unravel or dissolve. I am not sure whether that would happen to me, but I assume so. I cannot remember ever having felt lonely when alone, but I am human, so probably at some point it would happen.

Today’s point, however, is from a lecture (Beyond This World) by Master Ryuho Okawa, founder of the Japanese sect Happy Science. It is broadcast in this weeks “Happy Science on Air”. Here Mr Okawa formulates a quick test on who is bound for Heaven and who is bound for Hell:  Those who think other people exist for their benefit, are headed for Hell. Those who believe that they exist for other people, are headed for Heaven.

I have, years ago, sketched out an imaginary scenario in which those who want to rule over others are deported, all of them, to a parallel Earth similar to ours, and left alone together. By necessity, their world would develop into a hell, because they would no longer have helpful people to exploit, only each other. Conversely you could take those who want to serve others, and put them together on a parallel Earth, and it would begin to develop into a Heaven. This is the exact same thinking.

Actually, I suppose I did not need to drag Okawa into this, but I liked his concise way of contrasting these two attitudes. Just because he thinks he is a god does not mean he is wrong about everything, you know. Although it is generally not an endearing trait in people.

Even those of us who are allowed to commune with a Presence not of this world,  were once babies and needed the love of a (m)other, not just to survive physically, but to become human. Even baby Jesus needed a Mary! A baby is fully human in potential, but to become an actual human it must “download” humanity from someone who has it: Language, obviously, but also gestures and habits and likes and dislikes and many other traits. Over time the individual child develops its own traits, but it takes years of mostly downloading from parents, siblings, teachers and friends. Only gradually do we become able to take control of this complex being that is our mind, and for some it never quite happens. Life continues to happen to them, rather than them happening to life and to the world.

We all have a great deal of other people inside us, and it is much harder for someone who had a poisonous childhood to commune with the Heavenly world. Growing up in hate or scorn fills a child with dangerous mind parasites which takes a lot to get rid of. The inner light must be very bright for such a person to banish his or her mind parasites and begin to glow with a bright light from within.  Even neglect is enough for most people to experience many years, if not a lifetime, of darkness.

So Heaven is other people in that sense, and Hell also.

But for those who eventually have an encounter with the Truth, or the Light, there is a new dimension. Now comes the opportunity to look at ourselves and think: Do I live for the benefit of others, or do I live to harvest from them? Am I a predator who sees other people as “food” – not literally, I hope, but you know what I mean: Other people should praise me, other people should help me, other people should be there for me, it is other people’s fault that I am not happy, that I am not rich, that I don’t do my job to the best of my ability. If only they…

But people who love to see others smile are sure to fit right into Heaven if they come that way. The various religions have different ideas of how to get to Heaven, but it is disturbingly few who ask themselves: “If I come to the gates of Heaven, do I fit in there? Will Heaven still be heavenly if I am around?”

I am reasonably optimistic: Even if I am a very solitary person, I don’t have any enemies anymore (that I know of), and I cannot think of anyone I would rather not see happy. But my ability to actually initiate happiness where there is none, that needs work. Lots and lots of work. I mean, happiness in other people. If I am alone, happiness is not hard to come by. But for most people, it is! If they are alone, happiness is hard to come by. And I am not confident in my ability to change that simply by my presence.  Then again, I don’t claim to be a god. Just a superhuman like you. ^_^

In any case, the ability of self-reflection is also a responsibility. Only we who have this ability can possibly make the choice to initiate happiness, to summon it where it was not. Only we can choose whether to be Heaven or Hell to other people.

 

Working on happiness

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“My only wish is for her to be happy!” That is usually a good starting point – if it is serious, and not an excuse for doing dumb things. Some practice and self-reflection may be needed to get it right.

From time to time I wish there was some way to transfer happiness. It is not that I particularly want to be less happy, but there are people I consider friends (or nearly so) who occasionally seem quite unhappy. I don’t mean the kind of happiness you can transfer with a smile or a few cheerful words. That would not be enough in these cases. People who are chronically bored, or angry for reasons they either don’t quite know or think they can do nothing about, or who just find life meaningless and humans disappointing.

There are many conditions that fall under the umbrella of “unhappiness”. And there are many of them I can do little about. In the past, I would buy small things to my student friends:  Books, CDs, DVDs, perhaps clothes or stuff for the house. I hoped this would cheer them up, and I guess for a while it did. But now they earn more than I do, many of them, but they are still not happy. What can I do about it now?

The fact is, happiness is one of those things you can’t just transfer, it is like strength or health. If you are strong and someone else is weak, you can give them a helping hand, but you cannot give them your actual strength. At best you can teach them exercises that will make them strong, but chances are they already knew that but for various reasons never did them, or did not benefit as much from them as you.  (And of course, a lot of people give up if they don’t become as strong as you within a month or two.)

The same goes for health:  If you want to make others healthy, you have to encourage them to do their own healthy living. And even then it is not a sure thing. A few people may be born with weak health, and for some of the rest it may already be too late. But it is still the best we can do, set an example with our own healthy living. If any.

(On that note, I am back to quick walking an hour or more most days again, including this weekend. If a legendary lazy person like me can do it – and I call on my three brothers as witness to my extraordinary laziness – then it is hard to imagine who can not, unless they already have one foot in the grave and the other is amputated. Anyway, walking is not only good for your body but also for your psyche. It reduces stress and gives you time to defragment your brain.)

But basically, happiness is one of those things that work like that. You have to build up your own, because you cannot just take it from another. And that is a fact: You cannot take happiness from another. Obviously you cannot steal it, any happiness you gain from putting others down is sure to fly away faster than a bird on the window sill. But you cannot even receive it. Rumor has it that many people in America think their spouse will make them happy. I am sure there are joys to be had in marriage, but the deep happiness is not something that comes from another. Even if you think so, you are not looking closely enough. Other people may be part of a greater framework that supports your happiness, but the happiness itself must come from within. That is the nature of happiness. It is not something that is done to you.

So in the end, we both have to work on our happiness. There is no way around that.

But would you that, if you could? There are those who feel they should not be happy. Perhaps they have been told so in the past. Or perhaps they have been happy, but then something horrible happened, and they associate the sudden fall into tragedy with the happiness they had before. “If you are never happy, you can never lose your happiness.” And that is true enough, but it is hopeless truth. If you are always sick, you cannot lose your health, but it is better to be healthy even half the time than none of the time, right? It is like that with happiness too.

Unless you are very extraordinary, you will not be able to experience unbroken happiness for the rest of your life. There will be events that lend a tinge of sadness to your life for a while. You will not be ecstatically upbeat, at least, even if you generally wake up grateful each day. But even for an ordinary person, happiness can be built up, and start to take hold, take over more and more of your life. This is definitely the truth. A level of happiness that seemed extraordinary when you were young, may become the norm when you are 50. That is worth a bit of self-reflection and taking responsibility, don’t you think?

 

I WILL INFLUENCE YOU ALL!!!

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Well, that is one way of doing it – acquiring enough feminine charm to influence whole countries! I don’t think I will try that. How about my masculine “I know what I’m talking about” style? It works sometimes…

With the recent bombing and shooting episode here in Norway (for large values of “here” – Oslo is hours away), there is some soul-searching going on. Did we say or do something that might have inspired this guy, or made him feel that he was not alone in thinking as he did?

In my case, no. I was and am critical of the current immigration policy, but it is not a big deal to me, and my perspective is radically different from his. Also I don’t have many readers in Norway.

But I have my own worries, like the chance that people may go clinically insane if they read me too much. I break up the deep stuff with lots of fluff, and always have done. I make sure (I hope) to not come across as a guru. And I hold back, always hold back. But there is still the uncertainty whether what I say will help or harm.

***

Anyway! If we did not believe we could influence others, we would not share our thoughts at all, would we? I mean, perhaps some would just to vent, to let out steam. But for the most part, I am sure we actually WISH to influence others, whether online or offline.  But if we succeed in doing so, does that not mean that we are responsible to the same degree? If we greatly influence people, we are responsible to a great degree. With great power comes great responsibility. But even if we have only a small influence, we do have some small responsibility, don’t we?

I aired this on Google+ today, and an old friend immediately pointed out that each person is responsible for himself. Which is also true! How can they both be true? I shall show you, if you have just a little patience.

The key is that we are not gods (or even angels). We do not know everything. We don’t have time to reflect even on everything we know. And we are not even aware of many of the things we could have reflected on.

For example, most of us have never actually seen bacteria in a microscope, or only once or twice in school. We take on faith that they are responsible for a wide range of diseases. We have heard this from people we respect and trust, who for the most part also don’t actually know, but have heard it from others, and so on for some while backward. Generally antibiotics seem to help sometimes, so there is probably something to it. And if we have lived a while and have read widely, we know from a very large number of unrelated sources that bacteria are indeed the culprits of many diseases. It seems impossible that so many researchers for so long could be wrong about this.

Now, in my opinion there is no reasonable doubt that bacteria are indeed the cause of a number of  diseases. But especially early in my life this was entirely a matter of faith. I had not the extensive experience and knowledge base to decide this for myself. So if my teenage self had the choice between taking his antibiotics or not, his responsibility for the result was almost purely formal, not real.  Formally I was my own man when I was 18, but in practice I had to rely on others whom I trusted.

In America, unlike Norway, it is quite common to prescribe antibiotics for viral diseases. Antibiotics have no effect on them, but people feel better knowing that they have done something, the doctors get a happy customer (not sure if they also get a small cut of the sale?), and you never know, perhaps some harmful bacteria could use the opportunity to invade while you were sick anyway. Unfortunately, we now have multiresistant bacteria, thanks to this practice, and they kill some people and disfigure others.  Who is responsible?

On a related note, what with it being Friday night and all: Scientists Discover First Gonorrhea Strain Resistant to All Available Antibiotics. Just saying.

***

Again, we do not know everything or even very much, each of us. So we have to rely on others. This means that we make a decision to let someone else make the decision, at most. Usually not even that: We just act automatically. This is pretty much the default human condition. Over time, some people start expanding their control over their life, but it is a slow and erratic thing even if you aim for it. For the most part, we just have to make do with culture.

Another example! Chairs. If you live in the English-speaking world, you probably think highly of chairs. A house without chairs is definitely lacking something essential. You probably spend a good deal of your day in chairs, perhaps even most of it.

Chairs kill.  We only found out fairly recently. And we still sit in them. I sit in one right now writing this.  Who is responsible? Well, I am, now. The few times I think about it.  (Actually, I do habitually get up and stretch out to make the blood flow again. But probably not enough.) For hundreds of years, we and our ancestors have considered chairs a good thing, and I suppose they are, in great moderation. But whoever originally influenced us to use these, we will never know. And they probably had no idea that anything ill could possibly come of it.

We can only do the best we can. Often we don’t even do that. The thing is, we are mostly just drifting with the current, even the more advanced among us. That is how it is. But what little we can do, we will do. And if we make mistakes, we do not make them on purpose, at least not to hurt others. Hopefully over time we – and everyone – will know better, find better solutions, understand more and create more happiness for ourselves and others. Right now, we just have to start where we stand. The first step always starts from where you stand now. Or that is what I believe right now. ^_^

 

Foot and rain. Oh, and souls.

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Half a minute’s walk from home. Not quite Manhattan.

Another slice of life in the three-dimensional world of Earth! Well, mostly.

On Thursday and Friday after work I walked for half an hour. Saturday morning I took a walk for 45 minutes and another half hour in the afternoon. I could barely notice any pain in my foot even after that. So it seems my foot is almost fully restored. It seems to have been healing at almost supernatural speed from the day I decided to give in and move to this place rather than keep looking for a house. Hmm, that’s an awful lot of coincidence, seeing how it began to hurt only a few hours before I heard that I would have to leave Riverview. The “before” of the previous sentence implies that it is not something my subconscious could do without divine intervention, or at least telepathy. It is still kind of suspicious.

The last part of a long walk is the only time I stay warm lately. Well, except under my duvet. This has probably more to do with the weather than the location. It is around 16 degrees C / 61 F outside, and no sources of heat inside except me, my quad-core computer, my fridge and occasionally the stove or washing machine. Not a lot to heat a family apartment. Those on the second floor probably get a small boost of heat from below, as hot air rises to the ceiling. Given how rare rainy days are here on the south coast, I am not eager to swap with them.

The funny part is that in my home office, the electronic thermometer shows 22 degrees C, which is only about one degree less than when I was wearing boxers and still feeling hot back in Riverview.  (No pictures of that, for some reason.)

***

I guess the topic today is that the body and the soul are highly intertwined, like the spaghetti and the past sauce. Or, to use a more correct but less amusing symbol, like the metal of a coin and the pattern engraved on it.

New research has shown that the placebo effect – the ability of fake medicine to heal – works to some degree even if you know it is placebo. So if your doctor gives you calcium pills to reduce your pain, and tells you that they are actually not supposed to work except for your belief in them, they will still work to some degree. If he does not tell you, they will work better. If the doctor also thinks the pills are genuine painkillers, they will work even better again. I suspect this may be ramped up even more if a whole nation thinks a form of medication works, even if the laws of nature do not explain it.

The other day I had the amusement of meeting someone on Google+ who claimed that his mind did not exist. What was called mind, he insisted, was simply a function of the brain. In my brain, this was translated into the following:
“My computer does not need software! It comes with Windows built-in!”
“Bah, my Mac does not even need Windows! I just turn it on and it works!”

I’ve been working with software since I was a teenager, back in the 70es, and I think this may have influenced my view of the mind. The reality is probably a little different again. But I believe it is the closest metaphor we have right now, and also closer than any metaphor our ancestors ever had. When an atheist goes so far as to deny software, you know that their (un)belief is truly important to them. Whether it can also heal their foot, I do not know.

 

A lamentation or three

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Toward the Light…

Today I finally got around to installing Wimp, the extremely legal music streaming service from Norway, on a Linux computer. I had it on my smartphone, but the interface is like an old aunt’s attic where just one look makes you decide to search for something later, if at all. The PC interface is better, mainly by virtue of having more space for the clutter.

And then I found that my only playlist on Wimp was now empty. All music by Knut Avenstroup Haugen was gone, without a trace and without a goodbye.

Knut Avenstroup Haugen is a Norwegian composer, in fact he lived for a while in Kristiansand, the city where I work. He is of the classical (non-crazy) school, making actual music rather than the sound of factory machines or kitchen utensils. And he made the sound track for the online game Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. The game is too evil for me to play in this late stretch of my life, although it certainly showcased the power of the personal computer for gaming. Some of the songs however are in a class of their own. Or at least they are to me.  Three of the songs from the Cimmeria part of the game are lamentations, similar to the classical lamentations once popular in church music, but more direct, more raw, closer to the barbarian dirge which they represent in the game.

Now I probably differ from every one of my readers in my love for a good lamentation. There are few things that can so certainly perk me up if I feel a bit below the top. In all fairness, I used to be immune to sadness for many years and even now rarely feels its touch, even after having recovered it through the mystery of meditation. So this may work entirely opposite in people given to depression. In fact, I suspect it would. But for me, a good lamentation fills me with the joy of beauty. And these are my favorites: ‘Ere The World Crumbles‘, Ascending Cimmeria, and especially Memories of Cimmeria.

They were gone, just like that. Now that is lamentable. I notice that they are also gone from one of the two parent companies of Wimp.no, Platekompaniet. So there seems to be some disagreement, perhaps, between the composer (or the artists, or the publisher) and this particular music chain.

The thought struck me, of course, that maybe Haugen had converted to the One True Faith and retracted all his worldly music. This is the kind of thinking that is never really far from my mind, I guess. Although I have yet to retract all of my worldly entries from my journal.

But the fact that I am right now playing his music on the Swedish competitor, Spotify, kind of goes against the conversion theory.  So I have sent a mail to Wimp and asked for an explanation. Being that they are Norwegian (and labor is extremely expensive in Norway compared to the less successful nations, such as yours) I don’t really expect an answer. Consequently, I don’t really expect to continue to subscribe to Wimp beyond the last month I have already paid for.

***

Now, a few more words about lamentations. As I said, they may be a bit unnerving for the depressed, and I certainly don’t recommend them for the suicidal, for the precise reason that I love them:  To me, the essential beauty of the lamentation is that it lifts the soul toward Heaven. This was presumably why the genre was originally conceived. The primordial dirge may have been just the senseless keening of the bereaved, but it probably evolved even at the dawn of history – if not before – into a religious function.

After all, by the faith of the earlier ages, at the time of death the soul was evicted from the body, but rarely had much idea of what to do next, nor was it usually motivated to move on. People tended to die young, and often senselessly or brutally, in the midst of their attachment to the material world. Their immaterial part, the soul or spirit or shade or whatever people thought it was, therefore was thought to hang around for at least a while after their demise.

This is where the advanced dirge / early lamentation comes in. As the confused and frustrated soul attends its own wake, probably trying in vain to communicate with its family, the ceremonial singers (and instrument players, if available) begins performing this hair-raisingly beautiful song. The soul is touched by its beauty, and lifted on the power of the music and the implicit prayer, it begins to forget the trivial attachments of the world and rise toward the Light. This, then, is the function of the lamentation: To lift the spirits of all who participate, accompanying the soul of the deceased for a ways on its journey toward the blessed afterlife, whatever that might be in that particular culture.

Or perhaps that’s just me. I am not exactly your average human, I guess even when it comes to music…

 

“Delighting in your company”

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Delighting in your company. Sometimes it comes naturally, sometimes less so to us mortals.

I was out doing my daily walk (one hour today, 630 calories) when I listened to evergreens and the voice in my heart coming together in a peculiar confluence.

“And I have loved you for so long, delighting in your company.” -Greensleeves.

“When He prepared the heavens, I was there … and my delights were with the sons of men.” -The Wisdom, in Proverbs 8.

I have had many definitions of love through the year I have written my online journal, some of them more cynical than others. “Delighting in your company” is certainly one of the better.

And such is the nature of the love that the Divine Wisdom has for mankind, and that the Presence in my heart has for me. As it assures me, it has loved me for so long – from the very beginning –  delighting in my company. That is actually an awesome thing to feel, that effortless love. A love that feels no uncertainty, no need to be reciprocated, only – at most – to be accepted. And even if not, it remains undiminished.

The other side of the coin is of course to be like that. That is not something one can just decide and there it is. Neither is it something one can work on or strive toward in a businesslike way. At least I don’t think so. I think of it as … attuning? Aligning? Tuning in to that same frequency with which we are loved. And also memories of the past, for those who have that, but not a simple replay of circumstances. Drawing out the core, love itself.

When I say we cannot achieve this love by work, I must add that of course there are times when we need to act in a loving, compassionate way even if we don’t feel like it at the moment. If not, there are times when even a mother would throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have read about various young mothers feeling guilty because they don’t feel that super awesome love for their baby that they thought they would, and that society expects. But that feeling is intermittent – it comes and goes – and must be gathered as memorable moments who show up from time to time, to be added to what you will remember later. It is the same way with other forms of love. Sometimes you feel it, sometimes you act it, not necessarily at the same time. But it builds over time.

Well, I’m not really an expert on such things. The Presence in my heart is. Hopefully I will become more like that.