Principia, Existential Thoughts

(selections from J20071218)

No complete entities, other than all.

• ‘all’ – a word for comprehensive unity. 
• whether unity IS outside the head AS it ‘is’ inside the head may be questioned, but it seems a healthy idea.
• Having a word for “the whole” does not make it an “accurate” idea.

I, as Manu, am not a complete entity, if an “entity” is understood as something separate from its surroundings.

This is similar to saying that “separation” is a relative term. 

I remember the first time I wrote on paper that I was not Manu anymore.  A budding consciousness of identity and lack of identity.  I am far older than Manu, although age may not be an unquestionably appropriate category, since I have also never been born.

“Ego-1” is “Manu”.  “Ego-1” may often most easily be identified with a person’s given name, birth name, the name a person is typically called by friends, family, acquaintances; it is a persona.

It is important that we grow out of Ego-1 as we grow up.  First Ego is a fine way of primary education, but it is incomplete.  We gain orientation and familiarity with our bodies, our families, clans, social circles, communities, cities, states, countries, world, etc., in continuously expanding circles.  We eventually are to realize that our “individuality” is, from some perspectives, an illusion – even if a fine one, a helpful one, a necessary part of a process, and not always or completely an illusion. 

The word “individual” is from Middle Latin “indīviduālis,” equivalent to Latin “indīvidu(us)”, meaning “indivisible.”  As we should know, we really ARE divisible, conventionally speaking.  We are not really “individuals.”

It is fine and well for someone to identify with first ego and say, “I am separate from you, from my environment.”  But eventually, it is important to learn that we are also NOT separate.

Here are some perspectives concerning you, ego-1, the conventional ego:

• You are temporary.  i.e. Ego-1 is temporary.
• You, as primary ego, will most likely die – that is to say, cease to exist in a way that retains your current distinguishing persona, traits, qualities, characteristics.
• Even apart from dying, you are constantly changing.  In many ways, you are not the same you from one second/hour/day/year/decade/century to the next. 
• You are a complex structure, consisting of many parts.  In some real sense, you are not one, but many.
• Most of the time, your heart beats, your lungs breath, your blood circulates, your digestive system operates, and your cells function without conscious effort or guidance, so often without consciousness period.  Your consciousness (primary) is a mere part of the largely automated system that is your body, which itself is part of a larger system.
• Body facts to illustrate the constantly changing nature of bodily ‘self’:
• A 70 kg body would have approximately 7x1027 atoms - that is, 7 followed by 27 zeros. Of this, almost 2/3 is hydrogen, 1/4 is oxygen, and about 1/10 is carbon. These three atoms add up to 99% of the total.[1]
• In a study published in the Annual Report for Smithsonian Institution in 1953, scientists found that 98 percent of our atoms are replaced each year.[2]
• A typical human body is estimated to contain approximately 100 trillion cells.  So many of these cells are constantly being replaced.  Consider the following:[3]
• The average age of all the cells in an adult's body may turn out to be as young as 7 to 10 years.
• Cells from the muscles of the ribs, taken from people in their late 30's, have an average age of 15.1 years.
• The average age of cells in the main body of the gut is 15.9 years.
• The cells lining the stomach last only five days.
• Red blood cells, after traveling nearly 1,000 miles through the circulatory system, last only 120 days or so on average.
• The epidermis, or surface layer of the skin, is recycled every two weeks or so.
• An adult human liver probably has a turnover time of 300 to 500 days.
• The entire human skeleton is thought to be replaced every 10 years or so in adults.
• The heart as a whole is generating new cells, but no one had measured the turnover rate of the heart's muscle cells by the time of this article.
• Brain cells were under debate at the time of the article.  Some areas do generate new cells.  Cells from the visual cortex, however, seem to be as old as the person.
• About the only pieces of the body that last a lifetime, on present evidence, seem to be the neurons of the cerebral cortex, the inner lens cells of the eye and perhaps the muscle cells of the heart.
• Aging may occur because (a.) the DNA accumulates mutations and its information is gradually degraded, (b.) the DNA of the mitochondria lack the repair mechanisms available for the chromosomes, and/or (c.) the stem cells that are the source of new cells in each tissue eventually grow feeble with age.[4]
• “People behave their birth age, not the physical age of their cells, [because] a few of the body's cell types endure from birth to death without renewal, and this special minority includes some or all of the cells of the cerebral cortex.”[5]
• If you were without other humans, a.) you probably would not survive long, and b.) you probably would not reproduce.  You are not independent in any absolute or long-term sense.
• You cannot live apart from air, water, food.  You are constantly in flux.  You are constantly exchanging material substance with your environment.  Thus, you are not separate from your environment, but you are part of it, and it is part of you.  Identity expands now. 
• As much as you are your body, you are air, water, earth, chemicals, atoms, etc.
• As much as you are mind, you are your body and your environment.  Your mind is not separate either.
• Your consciousness itself, you did not choose, conventionally speaking.  Nor do you ultimately control it, conventionally speaking.  You are driven by desires for life, food, sex, pleasure, rest, love, et cetera.  You may say that you choose whether or not to pursue certain desires, but the desires themselves spring up within you beyond your choice or control.  No matter what you ever do, you are serving your chemistry, which is part of the universe’s chemistry.
• Abstractly: What is in your mind is what is outside of it.
• What is in your mind is what you see, hear, smell, taste, feel. 
• And what do you see, hear, smell, taste, feel?  Your environment, self. 
• Your character is a ‘creation’ of your environment.
• Nothing is “your own.”[6]  Your body-mind-character self is a complex deriving from your parents and your environment.  i.e. You are an evolving morph of your parents and your environment in combination. 
• If I am this sentence, I am inside you, part of you, or more simply … you.

You cannot wall yourself off from the This of which you are part.[7] 

While you cannot escape yourself, you are also elusive, slippery, ephemeral.  You are an oxymoron, a sharp dull.

What to learn?  Two things, or three:

1. You do not exist.
1. “It cut itself into smaller and smaller pieces, until it found that nothing was really there at all”
2. You are everything, in the broadest possible sense.
3. You do, of  course exist, and You are simply you.

And all are true, even if from different perspectives and definitions.

And I think all are critically important.

Ramifications:

• We are all in This together.
• We are not ultimately separable from one another.
• The true best interest of the temporary “individual” is the best interest of the whole, atemporal/omni-temporal.
• You have a part to play in everyone’s well-being, and everyone has a part to play in yours.

What am I saying?

Get beyond ego-1 and finder a greater self to serve.

Stretch.

- - - - -   - - - - -   - - - - -  

So are there two levels of consciousness? 

One - conventional,

One - that which is inherent in All?

The universe as a plant:  we are flowers of consciousness.

Nature sometimes seams to me to be all in a dream-like state, sometimes trying to wake up.  Nature seems to have forms of dementia, schizophrenia (in the etymological sense of the word – split mind). 

Her consciousness is split into so many pieces; each of our neural systems is part of it. 

Scattered, split. 

Is She awake, asleep? 

 - - - - -  

All the religions are attempts.  Let them offer windows, but not tie back.  Windows, not fetters.

As I said long ago, “words are not themselves the things to which the words refer,” but signs, symbols, indications.  All words are Game.  They are “true” only in that they are part of Truth.  Truth is only “comprehended” in part.  By necessity.  Truth as a whole is not an object to be grasped, but is the only subject, something we must be.  – and something we are, all the time, all together, in every way, without beginning, without end.

I liked it when the Old Boy said, “He who knows doesn’t say, and he who says doesn’t know.”

- - - - -

[1] Statistics from http://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_04.html .

[2] From http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11893583 .

[3] “Your Body Is Younger Than You Think.”  New York Times.  August 2, 2005.

[4] ibid.

[5] ibid.

[6] Except everything.

[7] Some people like to call This ‘God.’  Other people do not.  Either is fine.  Both are names for the metanomenal, in a sense.  If one adopts the “God” term, one should just be aware of the distinctions between this God and its lesser mythological/religious manifestations, which are mere personalities.

Existential Questions

God is pan-sexual

"Transgendered Sea Anemone Denounced As 'Abomination' By Clergy"

"Same-Sex Behavior Found in Nearly All Animals"

"Confirmed: God is slightly gay. "

Moral Hypocrisy? -- Politics, Religion, Statistics

• Republican states spouting off about "defending" marriage from gays account for 8 of 10 states with the highest divorce rates.  [http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0123.pdf ]
  

• Republican states opposing sex education and birth control account for 8 of 10 states with the highest rates of teenage pregnancy.  [http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf ]
  

• And "subscriptions to online pornography sites were 'more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality' and in states where 'more people agree that ‘I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage.’ ' "

Haidt identifies five fundamental moral values shared to a greater or lesser degree by different societies and individuals: 

1. Care/Harm for others, protecting them from harm.
   
2. Fairness, Justice, treating others equally.
3. In-group Loyalty to your group, family, nation.
   
4. Respect/Authority -- Respect for tradition and legitimate authority.
   
5. Purity, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions.

Haidt's Conclusion:  Americans who call themselves liberals tend to value Care and Fairness higher than In-group Loyalty, Respect-for-Authority, and Purity.  Americans claiming to be conservative put relatively less emphasis on Care and Fairness, and they put more emphasis on Ingroup Loyalty, Respect for Authority, and Purity.  BOTH groups give Care the highest over-all weighting, but conservatives value Fairness the lowest, whereas liberals value Purity the lowest.

Biblical Cosmology and Its Problems

3-tiered Cosmos:

1. the heavens above,
2. the flat earth below (a flat circle/disk or a flat square, although this changed with time),
3. sheol/ hades/ hell/ tartarus beneath the earth.

Heaven IS the sky in the Bible:

• where god lives;
• where the angels live;
• where the sun and moon move around;
• where the stars are;
• where rain, thunder, and lightning come from;
• where there are storehouses of hail, snow, and wind;
• where the clouds are;
• where birds fly.

The Firmament:

• Genesis 1:14-17:  “And God [Elohiym] said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth": and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: the stars also.

• The firmament has windows that El/Yahweh opens to let rain come down (Gen 7:11, 8:2). 

• Job 28:32 speaks of “the storehouses of the snow” and “the storehouses of the hail” in shamayim.

• Ezekiel 1:22:  “Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked like a firmament, sparkling like ice, and awesome.”

Shamayim/Ouranos/Sky/Heaven and Yahweh/El/God are above the earth:

• Job 9:8, “...who by himself spread out the heavens [shamayim]...”

• Job 22:12, 14:  "Is not God [Eloah] in the heights of heaven [shamayim]?  And see how lofty are the highest stars!  . . .  he goes about in the vaulted heavens.'   (n.b. El/Eloah/Yahweh (god) is in the sky.)

• Psalm 19:1, “The heavens [shamayim] tell out the glory of God [El], the vault of heaven [raqiya] reveals his handiwork.”

• “In them [shamayim], a tent is fixed for the sun, who comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, rejoicing like a strong man to run his race. His rising is at one end of the heavens, his circuit touches their farthest ends; and nothing is hidden from his heat (Psalm 19:4-6).”  (n.b.  The sun moves in the heavens in circuit over the stationary earth.  Geocentric model.) 

• Psalm 102:25, “...the heavens [shamayim] were thy handiwork.”

• Isaiah 40:22:  “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.”  This ancient Jewish writer pictured God sitting on a throne (like a human king) way up in the sky, so high that humans look like grasshoppers.

• Isaiah 45:12, El says “I, with my own hands, stretched out the heavens [shamayim] and caused all their host to shine...”

• Isaiah 48:13, “...with my right hand I formed the expanse of the sky [shamayim] ...”

• “You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God [El]; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.  I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High God [Elyown]." (Isaiah 14:13-14).

• Ezekiel 1:22-26; Ezekiel 10:1. Above the vault is a throne of sapphire (or lapis lazuli). Seated on the throne is “a form in human likeness,” which is radiant and “like the appearance of the glory of the Lord.”  Ezekiel saw a vision of God sitting enthroned on the vault of heaven.

• Joshua 10:13.  “So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself . . . The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.”  This fits the ancient view that the sun and moon both move in the vault of heaven, while the earth is stationary.

• Stars can fall from the sky to earth according to Daniel 8:10, Matthew 24:29, Mark 13:25, Revelation 6:13, Revelation 8:10, Revelation 9:1 and Revelation 12:4 (It is sometimes claimed that these "falling stars" are meteors, but such is a lame attempt at apologetics; the writers of these tales were ignorant and made no distinction; the swipe of a dragon's tail dislodges "one-third of all the stars in the sky" in Revelation 12:4.  ).

• Isaiah 34:4:  “All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the fig tree.
• Daniel 8:10:  “It grew until it reached the host of the heavens, and it threw some of the starry host down to the earth and trampled on them.”
• Mark 13:25:  “the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”
• Matthew 24:29:  "Immediately after the distress of those days 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’”
• Revelation 6:13-16:  “...the stars in the sky [ouranos] fell to the earth, like figs shaken down by a gale; the sky [ouranos] vanished, as a scroll is rolled up...they called out to the mountains and the crags, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One who sits on the throne...”

• Shamayim has windows which God can open to let the waters above fall to the surface as rain (Genesis 7:11, Genesis 8:2, Isaiah 24:18-19, Jeremiah 51:15-16, and Malachi 3:10).

• Job 28:32 speaks of “the storehouses of the snow” and “the storehouses of the hail” in shamayim.  And Jeremiah 51:16: “He brings up the mist from the ends of the earth, he opens rifts for the rain and brings the wind out of his storehouses.”  Ignorant ancient people, such as the writer of this book of the Bible, believed that there were storehouses of snow, rain, and wind up in the sky where God lived.

• Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:4-7:  "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens [shamayim], so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."  . . .  But the LORD [Yahweh] came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.  The LORD [Yahweh] said, . . . “Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

• Exodus 19:11:  “be ready by the third day, because on that day the LORD [Yahweh] will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.

• Exodus 19:20:  “The LORD [Yahweh] came down to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain.”

• Numbers 11:17:  “I will come down and speak with you”

• Numbers 11:25:  “Then the LORD [Yahweh] came down in the cloud and spoke with him.”

• Joshua 10:11:  “The LORD [Yahweh] hurled large hailstones down on them from the heavens [shamayim]”

• 2 Kings 1:12:  “Then the fire of God [Elohiym] fell from heaven [shamayim] and consumed him and his fifty men.”

• Luke 10:18:  He [Jesus] replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven [ouranos].”

• In Acts, Jesus is depicted as rising into the sky until a cloud hid him from view (Acts 1:9-11).
  

• This is comparable to other ancient people's beliefs about gods descending from the sky where they live, or heroic god-men ascending to heaven at or after their deaths. 
  

• Example:  Romulus:  According to Roman histories written before Christianity developed, Romulus, the first king of Rome, son of God/Mars by the virgin Rhea Sylvia, ascended into heaven from a mountain when a cloud hid him from view.  Some sources said there was an eclipse of the sun at the same time.  Romulus subsequently appeared to a Roman senator and sent him with a message for his people explaining what happened and prophesying the future greatness of Rome.  Romulus was then known as the God Quirinus, and he received prayers on behalf of the city.  The story can be found in Livy (1st century BCE), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st century BCE), and Plutarch's biography of Romulus (c. 100 CE), and it is mentioned by Cicero (1st century BCE) and Ennius (239 - c. 169 BCE). 
  

• Example:  Heracles:  According to ancient Greeks, Heracles / Hercules was son of God / Zeus by Alcmene.  Heracles went to Hades and back, and he brought at least one mortal back from death, Alcestis.  Heracles was tortured by a poisonous cloak and died painfully on a pyre, but he rose ino heaven to live forever as divine.  Greeks believed he was real.

• Many Romans believed that Julius Caesar ascended to heaven and became divine after his death.  Augustus Caesar, his adopted heir, thus called himself "son of a God" and printed this on his coins.

• The early Christian movement was compelled to invent a story at least as miraculous as these earlier stories.  How else could it trump the other superstitions of the day?
  

• The NT gospels do not even show agreement about events surrounding Jesus' alleged resurrection and ascension:  http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/ResurrectionDiscrep.html.
  

• Revelation 1:7:  "Look he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him..."  (flat earth and imminent eschatology).

The earth is stationary:

• 1 Chronicles 16:30: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable.”

• Psalm 93:1: “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm ...”

• Psalm 96:10: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ...”

• Psalm 104:5: “Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken.”

• Isaiah 45:18: “...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast...”

• The following speak of earth's foundations:  2 Samuel 22:16, Job 38:4, Psalm 18:15, Proverbs 8:29, Isaiah 24:18, etc.

The earth is flat or a hill, not a sphere:

• Daniel 4:10-11.  The king “saw a tree of great height at the center of the earth...reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.”  In the writer’s imagination, the earth is flat, so an extremely tall tree would be visible to “the earth's farthest bounds,” but this is impossible on a spherical earth.

• Matthew 4:8: “Once again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.”  Obviously, this would be possible only if the earth were flat.  Either the inventor of the story thought the earth was flat, or this was meant to be a symbolic parable and not a real event in a historical biography, or both.  Some say the sight was "spiritual," but if so, why would the "high mountain" be necessary?
  

• Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him...” 
  

• Jeremiah 51:16: “He brings up the mist from the ends of the earth.”

Hell is below the earth:

• Mt 11:23: "You will go down to Hades." (also Lk 10:15)

• Mt 12:40: "For as Jonah was 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of the sea creature, so the son of man will be 3 days and 3 nights in the heart of the earth."

• 1Pt 3:18-20: "He was put to death in the body but made alive by the spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago..."

• Php 2:10: "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth"

• Eph 4:9-10: "What does 'he ascended' mean except that he also descended to the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the very one who ascended far above all the heavens in order to fill all things."

• 2Pt 2:4: "God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but sent them to Tartarus, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgement." (Tartarus is the lowest region of the underworld in Greek mythology.)

• Rev 5:3: "no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth"

• Rev 5:13: "every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea"

Commentary:

• that hell was under the ground,

• that the earth was stationary,

• that God or the Gods or their angelic servants made the sun and moon move across the sky above the stationary earth,

• that God or the Gods had emotions, senses, and personalities, just as humans do,

• that God or the Gods lived up in the sky [although many had come to believe the more abstract and somewhat contradictory belief that God was everywhere, making it necessary to explain away older  references to a God who was not omnipresent (cf. Gen 11:4-7)].