Merkabah

[Skarekrow]

Five Types of Empaths

[video=youtube;AR_99dffvJk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=AR_99dffvJk[/video]

Empaths are highly sensitive, finely keyed instruments whenever it comes to emotions.
They experience every little thing, oftentimes to an extreme, and are less apt to intellectualize emotions.
Intuition is the filter through which they experience the world. Empaths are by nature giving, spiritually keyed, and great listeners.
If you want heart and soul, empaths have got it.
Through thick and thin, they’re there for you personally, top notch nurturers.

For more information please visit: http://being-an-empath.com​

 

[Skarekrow]

[MENTION=10759]BrokenDaniel[/MENTION]

Here are a couple good ones!

Terence McKenna - The World Could Be Anything (Lecture)

[video=youtube;rAMvHj48JtM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rAMvHj48JtM[/video]

“Half the time you think your thinking you’re actually listening.” - Terence McKenna
​

Terence McKenna ~ Dreaming Awake at the End of Time

[video=youtube;KboPUQ0xCDs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=KboPUQ0xCDs[/video]

Here's another from the great bard, recorded in San Francisco on December 13, 1998.
I know many of the videos I have/am going to upload are widely available, I hope that mine will be a little better in terms of audio/video quality, assuming the YouTube encoder treats them well.

Some things may get re-uploaded later on with different parameters if they are not up to par, for now my focus is mainly to get everything up since I had to pull them from my site due to bandwidth usage.

Eventually it will all be embedded in an organized fashion on www.nndmt.com (domain will be back up on the 19th)

"Join Terence McKenna, author, explorer and philosopher for a think along deconstruction of the deepening worldwide weirdness. With his characteristic hope and humor, McKenna examined time and its mysteries, the nature of language, the techniques of ecstasy, high technology and virtual cyberspace, the role of hallucinogenic plants in shamanism and the evolution of human cultures, and the foundations of post-modern spirituality. The lecture and discussion was didactic, syncretic, challenging, eclectic, eidetic and irreverent intellectual adventure."​

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Skarekrow]

‘THE KEY TO IMMORTAL CONSCIOUSNESS’:
THE 82 COMMANDMENTS OF ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY

​

We’ve posted here before Captain Beefheart’s 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing, but this list of the eighty-two “commandments” of the great film director Alejandro Jodorowsky makes that look like a fortune cookie.

In the book The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the author describes meeting Reyna d’Assia, daughter of the influential spiritual teacher George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, who was quite prominent in the early part of the 20th century and died in 1949, when Jodorowsky was 20 years old. (It is interesting to note that Wikipedia does not list Reyna d’Assia as one of Gurdjieff’s “known natural children,” of whichWikipedia lists seven.)

Among Gurdjieff’s fans were such DM faves as Robert Fripp, Kate Bush, Keith Jarrett, and Timothy Leary.
Collin Cleary’s account of this section of the book is well worth reading.

He calls this chapter, “Work on the Essence,” the “highpoint” of the book, saying that it simultaneously “comes quite close in many places to being pornographic” and “is also probably the best brief account—and critique—of the ideas of Gurdjieff that I have ever come across.”

Based on what I read of this chapter, Jodorowsky’s writing (and possibly Reyna d’Assia’s way of speaking) sounds a lot like the dialogue in a Jodorowsky movie.
Jodorowsky and Reyna d’Assia met in Mexico City after a screening of El Topo, at which, for some reason, Jodorowsky was wearing the outfit of the mole character he plays in the movie.

They went back to her hotel, where they had sex, with Jodorowsky still wearing the black leather cowboy outfit.

​

According to Cleary, Reyna “never stops talking.” In one torrent of verbiage she discloses her father’s maxims of life.

Here is the exchange that leads up to her list:

Jodorowsky: Reyna, you are telling me fairy tales! Such goals are 100% utopian—and even if they were true, what is the first step on this path?

Reyna d’Assia: Whoever wishes to attain the supreme goal must first change his habits, conquer laziness, and become a morally sound human being.
To be strong in the great things, we must also be strong in the small ones.

Jodorowsky: How?

Reyna d’Assia: We have been badly educated.
We live in a world of competition in which honesty is synonymous with naïveté.

We must first develop good habits.
Some of them may seem simple, but they are very difficult to realize.

Believing them to be obvious, we fail to see that they are the key to immortal consciousness.
Now I shall offer you a dictation of the commandments that my blessed father taught me….

​

Then comes her list of commandments.
In the way of natural speech, it is (of course) not set up like a list—in fact, it looks like this.

The whole thing takes up the better part of three pages.

In what follows we have formatted it so that it is easier to read.

1. Ground your attention on yourself.
Be conscious at every moment of what you are thinking, sensing, feeling, desiring, and doing.

2. Always finish what you have begun.

3. Whatever you are doing, do it as well as possible.

4. Do not become attached to anything that can destroy you in the course of time.

5. Develop your generosity ‒ but secretly.

6. Treat everyone as if he or she was a close relative.

7. Organize what you have disorganized.

8. Learn to receive and give thanks for every gift.

9. Stop defining yourself.

10. Do not lie or steal, for you lie to yourself and steal from yourself.

11. Help your neighbor, but do not make him dependent.

12. Do not encourage others to imitate you.

13. Make work plans and accomplish them.

14. Do not take up too much space.

15. Make no useless movements or sounds.

16. If you lack faith, pretend to have it.

17. Do not allow yourself to be impressed by strong personalities.

18. Do not regard anyone or anything as your possession.

19. Share fairly.

20. Do not seduce.

21. Sleep and eat only as much as necessary.

22. Do not speak of your personal problems.

23. Do not express judgment or criticism when you are ignorant of most of the factors involved.

24. Do not establish useless friendships.

25. Do not follow fashions.

26. Do not sell yourself.

27. Respect contracts you have signed.

28. Be on time.

29. Never envy the luck or success of anyone.

30. Say no more than necessary.

31. Do not think of the profits your work will engender.

32. Never threaten anyone.

33. Keep your promises.

34. In any discussion, put yourself in the other person’s place.

35. Admit that someone else may be superior to you.

36. Do not eliminate, but transmute.

37. Conquer your fears, for each of them represents a camouflaged desire.

38. Help others to help themselves.

39. Conquer your aversions and come closer to those who inspire rejection in you.

40. Do not react to what others say about you, whether praise or blame.

41. Transform your pride into dignity.

42. Transform your anger into creativity.

43. Transform your greed into respect for beauty.

44. Transform your envy into admiration for the values of the other.

45. Transform your hate into charity.

46. Neither praise nor insult yourself.

47. Regard what does not belong to you as if it did belong to you.

48. Do not complain.

49. Develop your imagination.

50. Never give orders to gain the satisfaction of being obeyed.

51. Pay for services performed for you.

52. Do not proselytize your work or ideas.

53. Do not try to make others feel for you emotions such as pity, admiration, sympathy, or complicity.

54. Do not try to distinguish yourself by your appearance.

55. Never contradict; instead, be silent.

56. Do not contract debts; acquire and pay immediately.

57. If you offend someone, ask his or her pardon;
if you have offended a person publicly, apologize publicly.

58. When you realize you have said something that is mistaken, do not persist in error through pride; instead, immediately retract it.

59. Never defend your old ideas simply because you are the one who expressed them.

60. Do not keep useless objects.

61. Do not adorn yourself with exotic ideas.

62. Do not have your photograph taken with famous people.

63. Justify yourself to no one, and keep your own counsel.

64. Never define yourself by what you possess.

65. Never speak of yourself without considering that you might change.

66. Accept that nothing belongs to you.

67. When someone asks your opinion about something or someone, speak only of his or her qualities.

68. When you become ill, regard your illness as your teacher, not as something to be hated.

69. Look directly, and do not hide yourself.

70. Do not forget your dead, but accord them a limited place and do not allow them to invade your life.

71. Wherever you live, always find a space that you devote to the sacred.

72. When you perform a service, make your effort inconspicuous.

73. If you decide to work to help others, do it with pleasure.

74. If you are hesitating between doing and not doing, take the risk of doing.

75. Do not try to be everything to your spouse;
accept that there are things that you cannot give him or her but which others can.

76. When someone is speaking to an interested audience, do not contradict that person and steal his or her audience.

77. Live on money you have earned.

78. Never brag about amorous adventures.

79. Never glorify your weaknesses.

80. Never visit someone only to pass the time.

81. Obtain things in order to share them.

82. If you are meditating and a devil appears, make the devil meditate too.


​

 

[Skarekrow]

Finding Meaning In A Meaningless World

This is the first in an occasional series on “deep science,” an attempted antidote to the prevailing “absent-minded science” I’ve written about in my book, Eco, Ego, Eros.
Science has defined the modern era in many ways and is truly the reigning knowledge paradigm in the modern era, even if it’s not always acknowledged.

The key features of modernity–specialization and technology–were made possible primarily by the remarkable development of scientific techniques and knowledge over the last 400 years, since the time of Galileo and Kepler.

But while science has brought us the modern world, in a very real and direct way, it has also brought us to a point where man’s perennial search for meaning is imperiled.
This is the case because today’s scientific worldview seems to deny the importance of many inquiries that humans have perennially found important, including questions about our place in the universe, the nature of consciousness, and questions about God, purpose, and many other deep topics.

And where it doesn’t deny the importance of such questions the answers it provides are increasingly dissatisfying and, frankly, depressing.

Scientific Materialism

Science is the basis for “scientific materialism,” the worldview shared by most of today’s scientists and philosophers.
Scientific materialism holds, essentially, that the universe is nothing but matter and energy in motion; humans evolved through random processes, as did all life; and human minds emerged at some point in our species’ development as our nervous system became sufficiently complex.

Much of this is surely correct, but there are a number of problems with this worldview.
For example, scientific materialism is unable to explain coherently when and why mind/subjectivity emerged.

How far down the evolutionary ladder does mind extend?
When did mind first appear in the universe?

We shouldn’t expect science to be able to provide firm and specific answers to these questions because such answers are probably impossible to produce.
But we should expect the intellectual architecture of our modern world to provide at least an outline of coherent answers to such questions.

Thomas Nagel’s recent book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, makes a very similar point.

Is Today’s Science An “Absent-Minded Science?”

I’ve argued that today’s science is an “absent-minded science” because of this failure to adequately explain the role of mind in nature.
The prevailing theory of “emergence” argues that mind simply appears with the development of sufficient biological complexity but no one today can provide a good answer as to when and why mind emerged when it did.

These major questions remain unanswered within the materialist paradigm and its philosophy of “emergentism.”
This inability to explain the most primary feature of reality for each of us — our own minds — seriously undermines the intellectual edifice of modernity.

Perhaps even more importantly, scientific materialism is, for most of us, an ill-suited foundation for our search for higher meaning in our lives.
As human beings, we have an innate need for a life-affirming mythos.

By mythos I don’t mean fantasy; rather, I mean we need a subtextual narrative that supports our sense of self and our place in the world.
The more accurate this narrative is, in terms of its congruence with events in the external world, the better it works.

Scientific materialism falls short in providing such a mythos because it denies the reality of much that seems most real to us.
We have, with today’s scientific materialism, seen the pendulum swing too far.

The Copernican Revolution, which correctly shifted the center of our solar system to the sun away from our planet, has now gone too far in suggesting that there isn’t really anything special about us or our place in the universe.

We are the product of random chance on a small backwater planet in a very boringly normal arm of a very normal spiral galaxy, so the conventional view holds.
Independent of the grasping of ego, we can see that this worldview doesn’t provide much space for personal or higher meaning.

A key challenge of our time is to reconcile the truths and methods of modern science with this need for personal meaning.
Scientific materialism’s mythos was summed up well by the Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg:

“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

​

If this is the case, why don’t we all just commit suicide?
Well, we don’t because each of us has a personal mythos, despite the claims of today’s materialism, that justifies the space we occupy and the air we breathe.

We Are In Need Of A More Life-Affirming Worldview Than Scientific Materialism Can Provide

We are, it seems, in need of a more life-affirming worldview than today’s scientific materialism can provide.
This new series of essays will flesh out my thoughts on
1) how science can and should change to become more scientific, but also
2) how a new type of science can act as the foundation for a new mythos to better sustain our psyches.

This is what I mean by “deep science.”
A new deep science will be more scientific than today’s surface-oriented endeavour because it recognizes the internal aspects behind the world of surfaces that is the primary focus of today’s science.

Deep science is also more holistic than today’s overly narrow science because it can help us more comprehensively describe the universe and its amazing contents, and allow us to create coherent and useful theories about these contents.

Ken Wilber’s Deep Science

Ken Wilber coined the phrase “deep science” in his insightful book The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion.
Wilber’s suggestions in this area are a great basis for additional inquiry.

I will use Wilber’s framework as the basis for my own discussion in these essays, but will expand and amend upon his original outline.
The key point of Wilber’s deep science is that all scientific and spiritual inquiries — which are united methodologically in his deep science, at least in an overarching manner — consist of three strands:

1) an injunctive method, which is a set of how-to instructions specific to the field at issue;
2) data gathering, in terms of direct experience, through use of the injunctive method at issue;
3) community confirmation or negation of the data gathered.

Wilber states in The Marriage of Sense and Soul:

The three strands of deep science [what I’ll call the “triple braid” from here on out] separate the valid from the bogus … helping us to separate not only true propositions from false propositions, but also authentic self-expression from lying, beauty from degradation, and moral aspirations from deceit and deception.

​

Future columns will explore some applications of the triple braid of deep science and will also flesh out how Wilber’s approach might be a useful and fair reconciliation of scientific and religious ways of viewing the world.

If we are to find a way out of the existential trap of scientific materialism, we need not reject science; rather, we should look deeper into scientific method and reexamine its foundations.

This approach will have two major benefits:
1) we gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the physical world;
2) as a nice side benefit, we also find a worldview that is more conducive to the long-standing need for finding personal meaning in our lives.

​

 

[Skarekrow]

Second part.
Enjoy.

Building A Foundation For An Integrated Approach To Science & Spirituality

Religion teaches men how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. — Galileo (1616)

​

​

Doctor Eben Alexander went to heaven and came back.
And he wants to tell you about it.

Alexander’s best-selling book, Proof of Heaven, describes the doctor’s experiences during a hospital stay, during which time he was almost entirely unconscious.
Alexander had magnificent visions of a beautiful world that he assumed was heaven, with angel-like beings and a ride on the back of something like a huge butterfly.

Alexander states: “A story — a true story — can heal as much as medicine can.”
The problem is that Alexander’s story, or at least his interpretation of it, isn’t true.

A key part of his story is that he claims he was temporarily brain-dead during his entire time in the hospital, a condition induced by a bad case of meningitis, a bacterial infection of the lining around the brain.

Alexander claims that his experiences during temporary brain death constitute proof that consciousness survives the body.
This is his key point in his book.

Esquire magazine ran a detailed article by Luke Dittrich on Alexander and his book.
The article included a dialogue with Alexander and his associates, including the doctor who treated him for meningitis in the hospital.

Alexander’s doctor states that Alexander was in a chemically-induced coma during almost his entire stay in the hospital — a coma induced by the doctor because Alexander couldn’t be physically restrained, in order to even assess his vital signs, without drugs.

So Alexander wasn’t brain dead, even temporarily.
Rather, he was in a chemically-induced coma.

These are major issues with Alexander’s story and they undermine his trustworthiness pretty seriously.
The Esquire article includes a number of other anecdotes showing Alexander’s tendency toward “audacious reinvention.”

My point in bringing up this story is that for all we know, despite our healthy skepticism about audacious claims, Alexander could have been in heaven and consciousness could survive the body’s death.

So even though I find both of these possibilities very unlikely, I can’t completely rule them out.
When a person makes these kinds of assertions, which contradict the current scientific worldview so significantly, reliability and honesty are very important.

We also need some means for corroboration, rather than simply accepting such assertions on faith.
Rather than simply denying the validity of claims like Alexander’s, as many “hard-nosed” types would, we should be able to establish a reliable first-person science that relies on third-person corroboration.

This is, among other things, what deep science is about.
Again, since this is a key point: deep science will not simply throw out first-person testimonials and evidence as hopelessly subjective.

Rather, it will seek ways to build a reliable first-person science in addition to the conventional third-person science.

How Do We Build A Reliable First-Person Science?

Many thinkers have offered means for reconciling science and religion.
Ian Barbour’s book, When Science Meets Religion, offers many examples and also a taxonomy of different approaches to reconciliation.

Stephen Jay Gould, the late Harvard paleontologist and science popularizer, offered one solution that relied on giving religion to religion and science to science.
He called this solution “Non-Overlapping Magisteria,” or NOMA.

Under Gould’s NOMA approach, religion and science each constitute their own magisterium, a large realm of human activity.
These magisteria don’t overlap, so each enjoys its own tools and techniques for assessing truth claims.

I think we can do better than to simply posit a fractured culture and psyche, domains that find it hard to even communicate with each other, let alone respect each other, as Gould does.

What follows is my attempt to sketch a better solution.
Counter-intuitively, it is possible to demonstrate how science and spirituality are substantially overlapping human activities.

I start with the essential Cartesian insight: the only thing we know with certainty is the reality of our own experience.
Descartes stated “I think, therefore I am.” (cogito ergo sum in the Latin).

This actually goes a bit too far.
Rather, what we know directly, the only thing we know directly, is that there is experience here now — by “experience” I mean literally anything happening in our consciousness.

Our existence as human beings is in fact defined solely by our experience in each moment.
Our experience is synonymous with our being because there is nothing more in each moment than the contents of our consciousness.

Everything else separate from our direct experience is inferred from the contents of our consciousness.

There Is Experience Here Now

It seems, then, that a more careful statement of Descartes’ “cogito” is “there is experience here now.”
This seems to be all we know with certainty.

We may argue that a second key feature that we know directly and with certainty is the flow of time, which is how we can describe the succession of experiential moments that occurs in each of us, now, now, now.

A third candidate for direct certainty is the feeling of free will, of being active agents in our own lives, but that’s a topic for a later column.
We can, with these insights, conceive of our universe of experience as a single domain rather than a fractured domain of different “magisteria.”

In practical terms, this simply means that everything we know about the universe is actually “in our heads,” that is, in our single domain of experience.
Note that I wrote that everything we “know” is in our heads — not that there is nothing outside of our heads.

There is very likely a real world independent of our experience of it, but we also know, particularly with many insights from modern psychology and neuroscience, that what we think of as the “real world” is entirely fabricated in our heads.

That is, we don’t know reality directly.
External reality is mediated by our rather limited senses and a movie of the world is created for each of us by the impressive movie-making equipment we call our body and brain.

Life As A Movie

This single domain of our experience is non-spatial.
Instead, our experience is given to us, all at once, in each moment on the virtual “movie screen” of our inner awareness.

It is only as we process this experience through our evolutionarily-constructed minds, that a world of three spatial dimensions and one time dimension is constructed.
What we think of as the world out there is only known indirectly through this constructed world.

We can, however, test the validity of our constructed world in various ways and this is what science is all about.
Again, we infer, based on our ongoing experience, the independent reality of the world that is presented to us.

But we can never know with certainty that the “real world” out there does contain three dimensions of space and one of time, as it seems to, based on our common experience.
Conceiving of our entire existence as a single domain of experience is very helpful in thinking about the union of science and spirituality.

A commonly held position in this perennial debate is that science is the process by which we try to figure out how the world works, using the scientific method of hypothesis, experimentation and refinement.

Spirituality, it is thought, is a different endeavor that tries to explore topics such as the soul, God, morality and meaning.
Science is descriptive and religion is prescriptive, it is thought.But if we start with the realization that our entire existence, for each of us, is a single and unified domain of experience in each moment, then we realize also that science and spirituality are just different ways of examining that same single domain of experience.

Science, in this formulation, attempts to determine the regularities of the real world that we infer is “out there.”
But that world “out there” is just, for each of us, one part (albeit a large part) of the single domain of our experience, which also includes the world “in here,” our thoughts and feelings.

Through inter-subjective confirmation — a fancy way of saying “by communicating with other people” — of facets of our individual experience, we construct together a mutually agreed world “out there.”

This is what we call reality.
Let me sum up my points so far in order to avoid confusion.

1. All we know with certainty is the existence of our experience in each moment.
2. Literally everything other than our experience in each moment is inferred, including the entire external world.
3. Even though we cannot know the external world directly, we can make many reasonable inferences about its nature
4. Because science and spirituality are attempting to probe the nature of our universe and ourselves, and because both theworld “out there” and our own inner worlds are for each of us a single and unified domain of experience, we can see that science and spirituality are part of the same set of inquiries.

 

[Skarekrow]

Aaaand part 3!

What Can We Really Know About The External World?

Science has been a very powerful tool for our collective co-creation of the external world.
There is, however, obviously no complete consensus on the nature of the external world and our relationship to it as human beings, and we can rest assured that there never will be.

That’s a good thing.
Science isn’t about absolute truth, and nor is the “deep science” I’m fleshing out in this series of essays.

Rather, science (deep or conventional) is an asymptotic process of discovery that hopefully gets ever closer to truth over time.
That process is surely not linear, however, and we’ve seen with the history of science many mis-steps and culdesacs.

We’ll never actually know how close we are to truth because we’ll never know the extent of what we don’t know, the extent to which we are on a local peak when there is in fact a much larger peak off in the distance that we can’t even see from our local peak.

This gives me comfort because I like the promise of eternal mystery, of eternal discovery and eternal creation of new solutions for old conundrums.
In addition to the tools of modern science, spiritual techniques can be helpful tools in plumbing the depths of our single domain of experience.

Spiritual pursuits, under this formulation, constitute those activities that examine the parts of our single domain of experience that we spatialize as being “in here” (that is, in our heads) as opposed to “out there” in the external world.

(See Part II for more on the “single domain of experience” that is all each of us knows about the world directly).

As we saw in Part II, however, there is no firm line between “in here” and “out there” because all of our experience is given to us in the same field of experience and we add spatial coordinates after the fact.

Space Is Inferred From Our Experience

Continuing our examination of what we know and how we know it, let’s look deeper into how we turn the raw data of our senses into an entire world.
This is part of my attempt to build a firm foundation for individual and collective knowledge in the spirit of Descartes, Kant, Buddha and many other philosophers.

When we think about it, we realize that there is no space inherent in our domain of experience.
Space is inferred.

What I mean by this is that our mapping of the contents of our experience is itself a process of inferring space, based on the simple fact that all contents of our experience are innately not close or far, they simply arise in our experience without any built-in spatial coordinates.

Experience itself is inherently dimensionless: it’s just there all at once.
My experience of what I generally think of as, let’s say, pain from a headache, which seems very much “in here,” is no closer spatially in my field of experience, than my sensory experience of my computer screen in front of me, or of my experience of the moon or stars on a starry night.

All of these experiences seem to be presented to me, the center of experience, as a unified set of experiences in each moment.
This set of experiences changes in each moment, and this constitutes the stream of consciousness.

But there is no innate spatial difference between my experience of my headache and my experience of a starry night.
Space is inferred through our ongoing process of creating a model of the world in our own heads in each moment.

Just as the external world is inferred from our sensory experience, so is the reality of our bodies inferred.
I don’t disagree with common sense that we very likely do have bodies.

But this likelihood is entirely inferred.
Again, the only thing we know with certainty is the existence of our own experience in each moment to moment to moment.

We could be brains in a vat, connected to sophisticated virtual reality displays.
Are we really brains in a vat?

This is unlikely, but we can’t rule it out as a possibility.
And deep science is all about being careful and methodical in what we think we know about ourselves and the world.

I do not agree, however, with the Idealist (Western or Eastern) suggestion that “reality is all in our heads.”
All we know of reality is, by definition, in our heads (or at least localized in our heads), but reality itself is very likely not all in our heads.

Science is all about using the evidence of our senses, and the enhanced evidence made possible by various scientific instruments, to probe the details of the inferred world outside of each of us as individuals.

My reason for stressing this point is that we need, in crafting a robust deep science, to be extremely careful in our approach to knowledge.
We need to follow Descartes’ lead on this key point but be even more careful than he was.

Only through such careful construction of the foundations of our knowledge can we have confidence in our inferred conclusions.

Figure 1 attempts to illustrate some of my points here visually.

Figure 1. The single domain of experience and various sub-aspects of experience.


​

We may revise this diagram to show the more conventional view of reality as proceeding from our mental realm out beyond the confines of our body into the universe more broadly, with space inferred from our direct sensory experience.

Figure 2. Space is inferred as our experience is arranged into a three-dimensional world.



​

Figure 1 attempts to show how different experiences arise in the single domain of experience: they just pop up here and there and we have no idea why or how.
Figure 2 shows how our minds organize the various experiences that arise into a world divided, most fundamentally, into the world “out there” and the world “in here” (that is, in our heads).

This division has a lot to commend it because it sure seems like there is an important boundary between our heads and various senses and the world that seems to exist inside those windows to the world.

However, the careful first-person approach I’ve outlined here shows that there is no innate division between our individual experiences, in terms of outside and inside.
It’s all “inside” in terms of the fundamental experience that makes up our consciousness.

Our experiences, once they arise, are then automatically assigned the spatial coordinates of either “in here” or “out there” by the evolved ability of our mind to create a model of the world that has helped us to survive over the eons of our species’ evolution.

This spatialization is largely a subconscious process.

“Substantially-overlapping Magisteria”

We’re now back full circle to the idea that a Deep Science can provide an integration of the traditional concerns of science and religion.
So rather than ceding to science everything that was traditionally covered by religion and spirituality, and then denying the validity of those very topics essential to religion and spirituality — an approach that constitutes the materialist’s preferred “integration” of science and spirit — the Deep Scientist recognizes the validity of the traditional inquiries native to religion and the importance of spiritual inquiries into the nature of our own minds.

The answers to the various spiritual and religious inquires will be different than traditional religions provide, to be sure, but the inquiries themselves remain valid under this new framing.

The Deep Scientist recognizes the need for, and the validity of, asking ultimate questions about meaning.
The Deep Scientist also recognizes the need to be rigorous and he/she agrees with a preference for falsifiability, the traditional modern criterion of gold standard science.

The Deep Scientist thus recognizes that religion, science and philosophy are “substantially overlapping magisteria” that can fairly be thought of as different framings of a single underlying line of questions: who are we, what is the nature of the external world, and how do we fit within it?

Gould’s NOMA (discussed in my last column) becomes SOMA: Substantially-Overlapping Magisteria.

What About Alexander’s Visions Of Heaven?

In closing, let’s look back at Eben Alexander’s relaxation of the truth with respect to his coma and his experiences of a heaven-like reality, raised in my last column.
Deep Science and today’s science agree with the need to corroborate his claims with evidence such as, for example, the testimony of his doctor who kept him in a medically-induced coma.

Where Deep Science differs is that it won’t automatically dismiss the kinds of claims that Alexander makes, as many scientific types would today.
There could be a heaven and there could be souls — even if both claims seem to be highly unlikely given what we know about the physical world and our own minds.

As with all claims, however, the Deep Scientist will take the appropriate evidence in hand in order to assess such claims, viewing the reported experiences as an unusual but interesting part of the single domain of experience for one person.

Deep Science will consider this first-person evidence in the context of everything else that we know about the universe, including other first-person testimony and our current understanding of the laws of nature (better described as “habits of nature,” but that’s a topic for a future essay).

The Deep Scientist truly interested in the validity of near-death experiences will interview and catalog these experiences where they are claimed and will, using the hard-nose of empirical inquiry, attempt to come to conclusions about what is really going on.

“What is really going on” could, conceivably, be actual near-death experiences.
We can be open to these possibilities without being so open that our brains fall out of our heads.

The key is to remain open to new evidence and new interpretations while still being rigorous in our reasoning.

 

[Skarekrow]

Dalai Lama

"Change in ourselves and in the world in which we live may not take place in a hurry: it will take time.
But if we don't make an effort nothing will happen at all.
Change will not take place because of decisions taken by governments or the UN.
Real change will take place when individuals transform themselves guided by the values that lie at the core of all human ethical systems, scientific findings, and common sense."
​

 

[Skarekrow]

On Giving
Kahlil Gibran

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?
And what is fear of need but need itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have--and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;
And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.
And is there aught you would withhold?
All you have shall some day be given;
Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?
And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers... and you are all receivers... assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the freehearted earth for mother, and God for father.


​

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Tin Man]

Those deep science essays were quite interesting. I agree with a lot of what the author says, science brushes off so much instead of investigating and proving it false or true. In one sense I understand that. If you accept even the most wildly nonsensical stories as plausible, you'll never have the time to understand the greater mysteries. But there's become a sense of self-sanctification in scientists and I think it's made them lazy. I suppose that's probably because we're in a period where science is at it's most popular.

As for neo-Darwinism or social Darwinism, that's just bullshit. It's created by a bunch of morons who've more than likely never read Darwin's work. They completely misinterpret "survival of the fittest" as "survival of the strongest or most powerful." When "fittest" is all about adaptability. It's why so many impressive and cunning species have died off. They may have been the more powerful than their competitors or even smarter and faster, but weren't able to adapt to a change in climate or dwindling resources.

 

[Skarekrow]

Those deep science essays were quite interesting. I agree with a lot of what the author says, science brushes off so much instead of investigating and proving it false or true. In one sense I understand that. If you accept even the most wildly nonsensical stories as plausible, you'll never have the time to understand the greater mysteries. But there's become a sense of self-sanctification in scientists and I think it's made them lazy. I suppose that's probably because we're in a period where science is at it's most popular.
As for neo-Darwinism or social Darwinism, that's just bullshit. It's created by a bunch of morons who've more than likely never read Darwin's work. They completely misinterpret "survival of the fittest" as "survival of the strongest or most powerful." When "fittest" is all about adaptability. It's why so many impressive and cunning species have died off. They may have been the more powerful than their competitors or even smarter and faster, but weren't able to adapt to a change in climate or dwindling resources.

Glad you enjoyed them!
This is IMO why a lot of things that get writen off as a "hallucination", or they lump everything under the sun under the term "paranormal" and then write it all off together instead of following true scientific inquiry or exploration.
It's like - We can't prove ghosts exist so therefore PSI is also bullshit.
Its a very UNscientific way off approaching our reality.
What is also interesting about Darwin, is he spoke far more about how species cooperated and functioned as a group than he did about survival of the fittest.

 

[Skarekrow]

So here I sit...every six weeks I come to the IV Infusion Clinic...it is always a meditation in humility.
It actually puts me through a huge range of emotions.
Part of me feels like a total asshole for always being stuck in my own head...my own BS issues.
Part of me feels really heartbroken for some of the other people who come here...many come here for their chemotherapy treatments...and I have been around it enough and also get external feelings that tell mea good portion of them won't make it to the end of the year - So how dare I even bitch about my back pain.
I see a lot of fear in people's eyes here...some are younger than me.

So that is my meditation for the day...to reaffirm my place in world and the grand scheme of things...to appreciate all that is in my life - without creating false or fearful stipulations in my mind.
We are here so briefly...I had a dream once that gave me perspective on the impermanence that is life.
The only way to explain it is we exist in this life in what amounts to the blink of an eye overall.
Too often we are caught up in the menial nonsense of it all.

 

[Skarekrow]

[MENTION=2578]Kgal[/MENTION] @Solongo @sprinkles

Baba Jaga, the Black Shaman

In Slavic and some Balkan folklore, there are many stories of Baba Yaga, the fearsome one, the one so powerful she see’s the hideousness in others, and this makes it far too intense to look upon her.

And she has a nature to match this power, which is closest to mother earth.
She is also known to devours Demons with her iron teeth as a Black Shaman and the shadows of others.

You see, Religion reversed everything she was, she was one who hunted demons, but religion made her the demon.
Now people just accept the fairytale, but those of us who know and remember, we never bought the lies, and we dedicate this story of Baba Yaga as the same story of the Dark Goddess, the Black Shaman, the Black Madonna.

Fiana Sidhe explains:
“Baba Yaga is a very misunderstood Goddess. She is not just the stereotypical wicked witch. She often appears as a frightening old hag, but can also appear as a beautiful woman who bestows gifts. She is wild and untamed but also can be kind and generous. Even in Her haggard form, Baba Yaga has many gifts to share. Baba Yaga is the powerful female elder who guards The Waters of Life and Death. She is the White Lady of Death and Rebirth, and is also known as The Ancient Goddess of Old Bones."

Bone Mother destroy us,
then resurrect us, even as the
earth from which we have our being
is born and resurrected each year.
Collects our whitened bones, pour
the Water of Life and Death upon us
and whisper your magic songs.
Thus, having died, we my return.

The old bones are symbolic of the things we cling to, but must finally let lie.
When we experience a death, darkness, depression, or spiritual emptiness in our lives, we journey to Baba Yaga’s hut, where She washes new life into us.

She collects our bones and pours the waters on them, while She sings and chants and causes us to be reborn.
She destroys and then She resurrects.

Baba Yaga symbolizes the death of ignorance.
She forces us to see our true, darkest selves, then She grants us a deep wisdom that we can attain by accepting the dark shadows within ourselves.

We can only receive help from Baba Yaga by learning humility.
Her gifts can destroy or enlighten us.”

​

In some stories she sleeps stretched out on her ancient brick oven, which she also uses to cook her meals, including demon people that she catches.
She does not seem to bother with those who caste judgment upon her.

Her modes of travel is of course dream travel, astral travel, and never leaving a trail behind her, she sweeps away all traces of her path, that was the only thing a broom was every used for.

It is also rumored that she can fly through the air in the same manner not even in dreams but as a divine one.

She lives in a cottage or hut in the forest to be close to mother earth who she has direct contact with in a lineage over 2 million years old of a tradition that humans forgot and turned away from.

The legends of the spinning around as it moves through the forest or standing with its back towards a visitor and when approached, is really that the magical powers of Baba Yaga is so strong that it awakens the nature around her and opens portals.

She has an incantation:
“Hut, hut, turn your back to the forest and your front to me”.

It spins around with blood-curdling wild screeches and creaking’s and eventually comes to a stop to face the visitor, where it will lower itself down on its chicken legs and throw open its door.

Its windows are sometimes described as its “eyes”.
In some stories she has two older sisters, who are also called Baba Yaga, just to confuse you, which is just the triple godess of old, (her stage as maiden, mother and now wise grandmother shaman) so don’t let that fool you either.

Nobody speaks of Baba Yaga’s maiden stage, they speak of some maiden named Vasilissa the Beautiful, well lets let the truth be known now, that was Baba Yaga in her maiden stage, she was quite beautiful when she was young.

In her mother stage, the middle stage of her life, she had all her shamanic intiaitons during the entire 3 decades to prepare her for her final stage of Grandmother Shaman.

Although she is mostly portrayed as terrifying as a shaman, she can also shape shift into the role of a helper and wise woman and looks quite loving.
Like all forces of nature, she to is often wild and untamed, and because of this she can also be kind.

Her freedom comes not from duty, nor men but from mother earth, and man has portraid her as witch, and ugly out of issues of control, projecting the ugliness of control onto her.
In reality, baba is the true sense of a balanced woman, as healer she expresses love to community, and as a powerful woman in both the mystical and shamanic realms she has ascended to celestial and elemental in her process.

She sometimes gives advice and her gifts to heroes and heroines with only pure hearts.
The hero or heroine of the stories are often the crone’s (crown or wise elder) domain searching for wisdom, knowledge and truth.

There’s also an incantation to be said to Baba Yaga, the hero must say:
“Hey you old woman, first you satisfy my hunger then you satisfy my thirst then let me wash myself in your banya (sauna) then let me sleep in and then you ask me anything”.

Usually Baba does as the hero pleads her.
She is the Guardian Spirit and Gatekeeper of the Fountain of the Waters of Life and of Death.

Baba Yaga rules over the elements and her realm is the Forests of all the Slavic lands including Russia.
Her faithful servants are the White Horsemen, the Red Horseman and the Black Horseman which are the also the Colors of the Alkonost Bird Tribes including the Firebird (Phoenix).

​

When Vasilisa the Beautiful asks her who these mysterious horsemen are she replies: “My White Dawn (Spirit or Birth); my Red Sun (Menses Blood or Life); and my Dark Midnight (Death and Rebirth)”

Among those who honor her, in her divine dark goddess or shamanic form, whom she calls “her soul friends” and whom she is reluctant to discuss with visitors are the three bodiless pairs of hands, which appear out of thin air to do her bidding.

In older teachings, Baba Yaga is the Primeval One or the Primordial Arch-Goddess, Goddess of wisdom and death, the oldest wisdom on mother earth and the oldest teachings who belong to the grandmothers or (bone mother).

Thus that is how she in the very end became Baba Jaga, the ugly one, and lost was her respectful Black Shaman and Bird Tribe leadership in Natures Culture (which is now returning as religions begins to die in their seasons of death or the great shift its called today).

​

Pre-History

As more and more burials are revealed on earth, finding burials of prehistory shamans seems to be showing up lately, and you will find many of them are women, although archeologists tend to down play their roles as powerful leaders, powerful spiritual leaders and powerful shamans, we learn the other sources from scholarly woman, female shamans and powerful mystic women.

​

As the scientists believe, “The interment rituals and the method used to construct and seal the grave suggest this burials of an ancient shamans are ones who are also leaders. One of the earliest known graves from the archaeological record is the elder or old woman in question who was buried with ten large stones placed on parts of her body meant to keep it in a certain position, indicating her status was the highest within the community of the Middle Eastern Natufian Tribe."

​

“The burial of this woman is unlike any burial found in the Natufian Tribe or the preceding Paleolithic periods.
We argue that this burial is consistent with expectations for a female shaman’s grave,” shared the specialists.

Along with her body, a series of items was placed in the grave, such as whole tortoise shells, as well as body parts from a leopard, an eagle, two martens.
Tortoises, cow tails, eagle wings, and fur-bearing animals continue to play important symbolic and shamanistic roles in the spiritual arena of human cultures worldwide today and it seems that woman was the greater number of shamans around the world.

It seems that the woman in the Natufian burial was perceived as being in a close relationship with these animal spirits.

​

Baba brings wisdom and death (just like the wild nature does) and through death, comes rebirth.
Behind her story is the figure of the primeval pre-pagan shamans of death and rebirth, whose harvest holds the promise of winter survival and new growth in Spring.

The “old woman” of Slav inhabitants of Eastern Europe.
Baba passed into Slavic folk legends by Religion who hated woman having spiritual and healing powers, and then began to call her a witch (meaning evil) to destroy elder women and grandmothers wisdom of the Moon Cultures.

Kochamy Baba Jaga, We Love Baba Jaga, волимо Баба Јага, Baba Jaga milujeme, Biz baba Jaga seviyorum)
​

​

“Baba Jaga’s Tale’s are before time, before religion, even before dinosaurs.
Her rivers are the harvest, the deepest rest (sometimes called death), thankfulness and cycles.

Her symbols are corn sheaf’s, wreaths of wheat, corn, rye and wild flowers.
This Lithuanian/Russian/Polish Goddess of death and regeneration is typically represented as woman and her power.

The world does not like powerful bossy grandmothers and women, and thus like most dark goddesses she was judged harshly, seen without wisdom and immortality.
But they were wrong, like nature, always returning, she too has returned, only when the world needs her most.

She is the Alkonost, and the Phatasmagorical and she is women who are not afraid of the shadow yet live a sacred life.
As both young and old, she reawakens in us an awareness of a time when time never existed, but nature and her ever-moving wheel of life and seasons, signify as women, our centered power of truth and an ally of natures magic.

I know first hand this life, it is treacherous, full of judgments by others, a dark night of the soul for lifetimes, a sorrow and grief that comes from the inner world, not an outer one. Yet when her initiations are completed, she and this life’s fate is self affirming, entering the dimensions of mother earth and the old grandmothers of the caves and forests throughout all no-time – have witnessed all births of souls over and over.

She is the ultimate destroyer of dark souls and the judge of humans who sell their souls.
Baba Jaga knows her clan as those who can shape shift into Thunderbirds and Firebirds.

The average souls know her like the owl or wasp, as a warning to stay away from divinity that does not sell its soul for anything.
Following her traditions won’t make you well liked by any human but without her, karma can never be repaid from any lifetime.

Those who do not honor her power this lifetime, will the next.
Thank you baba jaga, we Slavic honor your dignity and kindness and your warrior skills all at the appropriate moment.

Dea Phoebe says:
“So, while she is certainly a dark Goddess, a death Goddess, and may even seem ‘wicked’ in ways, Baba Yaga is hardly the villain of her stories and she is not a nice or a civilized Goddess like many who try to fit every goddess into Venus clothing.

In the story of Valalisa the Wise, triple Goddess imagery repeats throughout – in Valalisa and her doll’s white, red, and black clothing, (colors traditionally associated with the Maiden, Mother, and Crone,) in the repetition of threes throughout the story (three colors, three enemies in the stepfamily, three riders, three tasks, three questions, three pairs of hands) and in Valalisa, (the maiden beginning her journey), her mother (who has given Valalisa gifts to guide her), and of course, in Baba Yaga as the crone."

As a denizen of the deep forest, Baba Yaga is the wild aspect of the psyche, what Estés calls [in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves] the Wild Hag or the Wild Woman —not the gentle grandmother that bakes you cookies and tells you stories, but the stern grandmother that might just smack your rear with a spoon and tell you to smarten up!

She is not pretty to look at, and she represents the deepest mysteries of death.
No wonder she has a reputation!

SYMBOLISM
Colors: White, red, and black
Astrological Sign: Scorpio
Goddesses: Slavic Goddess Marzanna is (Baba Jaga) other cultures are Hecate, Hel, Kali Ma
Goddess Aspect: Elder, Grandmother
Festival Date: January 20
Herbs/Flowers: Patchouli, sandalwood, geranium
Moon Phase: Waning & Dark Moon
Other Names: Baba, Boba, Baba Den, Jezi Baba
Sacred Animals: Alkonost, Big & Small Cats, Deer, Alkonost, Raven, Firebird
Season: Autumn and Winter
​

The 1970s were a great time for creepy films and Baba Yaga is a prime example of this style.
Baba Yaga is a component of many ancient Slavic folk tales, but I’m not sure that she was ever depicted quite the same way that illustrator Guido Crepax and director Corrado Farina shaped their story.

This sexy, stylish entry into the ’70s art-cinema oeuvre, Valentina (Isabella de Funes) is a popular fashion photographer who works as much as possible in all strata of society.
In her journey and mingling she comes across an older woman named Baba Yaga (Carroll Baker of How the West Was Won/Baby Doll), who takes a shine to her in a more than friendly way.

Valentina says her pleasantries and moves along, thinking nothing of this encounter.
Soon enough, Baba Yaga visits Valentina’s studio to drop off a doll for “protection” and to check out the place and it’s inhabitant. Valentina’s life starts to get crazy, and it all stems from Baba Yaga’s visit and strange manner.

Will she escape?
What exactly is going on?
Why are there Nazis?
All answers in due time.

Baba Yaga, the film attacks about a dozen major fetishes of ’70s European art film directors all in the span of about ninety minutes.
We get sex, violence, fascism, revolution, hippies, revolutionaries, women’s liberation, and S&M all in that time frame.

Much of the run time is devoted to Valentina’s decline into what she believes to be madness, but is, in reality, a spell cast by Baba Yaga.
I won’t divulge any specific plot points, but suffice it to say that Yaga’s interest in Valentina is more than friendly.

 

[Skarekrow]

[MENTION=5667]Jacobi[/MENTION]​

 

[Skarekrow]

The Common Origin of Religions and Theology


​

The Brotherhood of Man

We are all siblings; a brotherhood of humanity.
This is verified biologically of course, but perhaps more importantly for our understanding of one other, the brotherhood of man is verifiable in our belief systems, in our spiritual ideas that are upriver from the rest of our thinking, and our creation stories from which stems our very concept of existence.

Many of the foundational stories and principles of religions can be boiled down to their mutual essence, which inarguably reveal their common origins.
And although many people frequently get caught up with the difference of the feather rather than the similarity of the bird, so to speak, the common origins of religions and their central tenets is proof that — despite varying ‘faiths’ — we are more alike than we are different.

The Matrix of Four

In today’s world, we have learned to use polarized, dualistic thinking – the opposition of two competing ideas, left and right, black and white.
The very inquiry into the origins of human nature is typically posed through such a limited mindset: “Is it nature or nurture?”

But what if the truth was somewhere in the middle?
Or somewhere else entirely?

In reality, to consider any information or situation comprehensively — including our belief systems and our origins — questions must be posed in four ways, not just two.

“Is it one or the other, or neither or both?”
Applying this Matrix of Four – the duality of polarity – to our thinking elevates individual consciousness to find alternatives, grey areas and potentials.

And in the case of intimate theosophical understandings of our nature, it enables us to find commonality instead of divisiveness, bringing us ever closer to our collective truth.

Four is recognized as symbol for completion.
This symbolism is illustrated in the four seasons, derived from the two solstices and two equinoxes of our orbit, and is represented in the four forms of arithmetic.

Beyond that there are four aspects of self; the mental, physical, spiritual and the natural.
These fundamental universal absolutes are alone powerful enough to be the sources of the Matrix of Four and its symbolism.

​

Navajo Creation Story — the Fourth World Correspondingly the Matrix of Four, the philosophy of the duality of polarity, is presented in the beginning of practically every creation story, whether the Popol Vuh or Genesis.

Nearly all creation stories start with the polarity of Heaven and Earth followed by the polarity of male and female.
In this respect the Matrix of Four is the basis of most all creation stories as well as being depicted in every cross that so many religions share.

Creation Stories and the Foundations of Belief

Islam, Judaism and Christianity all share a common creation story, from Genesis, the first story in The Bible.
The polarities of Heaven and Earth are immediately described followed by the polarity of male and female.

Then the first four characters are described.
These first four characters set the tone for the rest of the story.

The first two characters are God and Adam, the masculine.
The next character is Eve, the feminine (as opposed to the masculine), and the fourth character is the serpent, the deceiver (as opposed to the creator).

These four biblical archetypes at the basis of the bible, which form the basis of 3 major world religions, are more influential than we can reckon at this point. Beside illustrating the common origin of these religions, they also illustrate and conceptualize our archetypal thinking and being – the duality of polarity.

The matrix of four begins the Biblical creation story, is illustrated in the first four characters, and depicted in the cross – the definitive symbol of Christianity – but there are other biblical connections too.

There are four gospels in the Bible; that of Mathew, John, Luke and Mark.
The Hebrew word for God is a four letter word, YHWH (Yahweh), known as the tetragrammaton.

The four letters are said to be symbolic of the four worlds of the Kabala; emanation, creation, formation, action.
The Matrix of Four is also represented by the common saying in Kabala, “The wicked obey the law through fear; the wise keep the law through knowledge”, based on the polarities of wickedness and wisdom, fear and knowledge.

Four is also central to the Hebrew celebration of Passover, in the four questions, four cups of wine and four expressions of redemption.

​

Four is also embedded into the ancient philosophies and creation stories of many Native American peoples, perhaps none so well-known as the Hopi, Navajo and Zuni peoples of the Southwest.

Their stories celebrate four symbolically and philosophically in the symbol of the four-quartered cross within a circle, as well as other similar designs.
Perhaps most significantly the Hopi believe we are living in the fourth world.

Hopi tradition states the first world was Endless Space, the second was Dark Midnight, the third was the Age of Animals and the fourth is the World Complete. Four migrations were written upon four sacred tablets which man was supposed to undertake once in this fourth world – to separate into smaller tribes and began to migrate in four different directions, settling in new lands.

Thousands of miles away and centuries before the establishment of the Hopi and Navajo, the Mayan creation story – the Popol Vuh – told of four gods and four first men.

The four Vedas (Sanskrit for “knowledge”) are the foundational scriptures in Hindu theology: the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda. Each Veda has been subclassified into four major text types: the Aranyakas (rituals and ceremonies), the Brahmanas (commentaries), and the Upanishads (meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge) and the Samhitas (mantras and benedictions).

In turn, the Samhitas for example are grouped into four categories: the Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda, Yajur-Veda, and Atharva-Veda.

The Cross Symbolism in Theology

One could go on about the number of occurrences of four in the Old and New Testaments, but its representation in the cross symbol adopted by Christianity, Judaism and Islam, its presence in the creation story, and its basis in the four worlds of the Kabala are alone reflective of its major significance.

Clear examples of the cross are used in many theologies, not just Christianity and Islam.
The universality of the cross in Hindu, Taoist, Native American, Egyptian, Celtic and Judeo-Christian theology and symbolism illustrates its archetypal noteworthiness and hints at the commonality among human spirituality and theology.

Jesus, Moses and dozens of other figures from the Old Testament also appear in the Quran, the central scripture of Islam, which literally translates as “the recitation”.

The Quran describes the polarities of believers and unbelievers as well as peacemakers and mischief-makers.
These four characterizations are frequently noted in the Quran and arguably form the basis of its characterization model.

​

An elaborate variation of the cross, the swastika, was used throughout the world for thousands of years before the Nazis adopted it.
It was used by American Indians from Saskatchewan to Central America.

The Kuna people of Panama believe the swastika shape represents the octopus that created the world in all four directions.
The Swastika was used by the ancient Greeks to represent movement in art as early as the eighth century BC.

The Hindus used it for thousands of years and it is still a holy symbol among Hindus, in Buddhism and Jainism.
Jain temples and texts must contain a swastika and it is essential to begin Jain ceremonies.

The Sanskrit word swastika means auspicious object and it is often displayed with four dots at the four angled arms.
The swastika is representative of totality.

And like all crosses it is also representative the matrix of four – the duality of polarity.
The Ancient Egyptian cross is the Ankh.

It is one of the oldest and most distinguished crosses.
The top section is not a line, but an oval.

The mysterious symbol is said to represent eternal life.
The ankh has four parts, two matching lines, one longer line and a wholly distinct fourth part, the oval.

Hieroglyphs show Egyptian gods carrying one or a pair of ankhs and various sarcophaguses depict buried royalty holding ankhs.
The ankh symbol was later adopted by Coptic Christians.

The Matrix of Four Expressed in Ideology

Nearly every form of theology and ancient philosophy points to the Matrix of Four, and its potentiation, whether subtly or not so subtly.
This potentiation results from the duality of polarity – the contrast of the divine with the demonic, and our elemental physicality with our elaborate spirituality.

Like Adam and Eve, we choose. According to the Bible, God gave Adam and Eve the gift of moral agency – the freedom of choice – Eden and expulsion.
This idea is visible in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as nearly all other theology, with varying interpretations.

​

The Four Wise Monkeys: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, fear no evilSimilarly, the archetype of the four wise monkeys — the epitome of archetypal thinking — has its roots in Chinese philosophy and can be traced back to at least the 8th century.

In Japan, it is interpreted as akin to the Golden Rule, the code of morality and ethics that essentially states “treat others as you would like to be treated”: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil and, as a result, fear no evil.

Further indicating their shared origin, a version of the Golden Rule is at the foundation of each major religion around the world, reflecting a common understanding our choice in duality.

“From a deeper point of view Yamantaka (The Slayer of Death from Buddhist legend) represents the dual nature of man, who shares his physical nature, his instincts, drives, and passions with the animals, and his spiritual nature with the divine forces of the universe.

As a physical being he is mortal, as a spiritual being he is immortal. If his intellect is combined with his animal nature, demonic forces are born, while the intellect guided by his spiritual nature produces divine qualities.”

~ from The Way of The White Clouds, by Lama Anagarika Govinda.


​

December 25, Crucifiction, Wise Men and The Virgin Mother

Notably, there are also numerous other details common to the central stories of major religions.
For example,

• Jesus was born in a manger on December 25 to a virgin, Mary, and an earthly father, Joseph the shepherd. His birth was marked by a star and was attended by Wise Men bearing gifts. He had 12 disciples, walked on water, and was crucified and subsequently resurrected, an event which is celebrated at the Vernal Equinox (Easter).
• Chrishna of India was born on December 25, 3228 BC, his mother was a virgin, Maia (similar to Mary).
• Mithra of Persia, the Roman pagans god of light, was born on December 25, before 1500 BC. His birth was witnessed by Shepherds that brought gifts to honor him.
• Horus of Egypt was born on December 25, before 2500 BC. His mother, Isis, gave birth to him in a swamp. He had 12 disciples, walked on water, and was crucified and resurrected.
• Buddha of India was born on December 25, 563 BC, his mother’s name was Maya (again, similar to Mary) and she was also a virgin. His birth was announced by a star, and he was visited by Wise Men who declared that they had seen Signs of his birth.
• Beddou was a god of Japan, China, and Ceylon born on December 25, 1027 BC. Born of royal blood, his mother was also a virgin.
• Quetzalcoatl, a god of ancient Mesoamerica was born of a virgin on December 25 around 900 BC. He fasted forty days, and was crucified.
• Hercules, son of the god Zeus, was born to an earthly mother on December 25 around 500 BC. He was raised by an earthly father, and died by crucifiction (albeit voluntary).
• Attis of Phrygia was born on December 25 around 1200 BC, again, to a virgin mother. He was a shepherd who rose from the dead at the Vernal Equinox (Easter).
• Osiris of Egypt was born on December 25, before 2500 BC, to a virgin (Isis-Meri, also similar to Mary) in a cave. His birth was announced by a star and was attended by three wise men. His Earthly father was “Seb”, which translates to “Joseph.” Osiris walked on water, was betrayed by Typhon, was crucified, and was resurrected 3 days later – which is celebrated at the Vernal Equinox.

​

The stories of Jesus and Horus when one considers how much commonality there is between religious scriptures, their theological foundations and their central characters, it becomes clear that each is born of the same origin; this becomes particularly apparent when one considers similarities between the teachings of Buddha and Jesus, for example.

So in serious consideration of these common scriptures, it becomes clear that the benefit to be found in their teachings is not in their literal interpretation but the metaphorical or allegorical.

The Matrix of Four: The Deeper Interpretation of Theology

There are countless instances of theological correlations with the philosophy of the Matrix of Four, and they all suggest ways to utilize this metaphilosophy in navigating the duality and polarity of our world.

Although some people believe there can be no interpretation of holy books at all – that there is only one truth (usually their own) – the fact is that all religious and philosophical texts might be interpreted differently by different people, depending on their level of conscious awareness.

A critical divergence in their interpretation is firstly between the literal and the allegorical, and secondly, whether the story is reflective of internal spirituality or external physicality.

For instance, as noted Islamic tradition refers to four characterizations in the external world – believers and unbelievers, peacemakers and mischief-makers – however some hold it is possible that this is, at least in part, reflective of the illustration of our internal state of consciousness, our thinking as well as the resulting external being.

Of course this interpretation idea and the divergence of literal and allegorical interpretations of theology may be considered blasphemous to some and quelled instead of rewarded.

​

Evolutionary Tree of Mythology and Religion​

According to The Zohar, a Kabalistic text first publicly known in the 13th century, there are four ways to interpret theology which lead to ascension.
Ascension is said to be like shedding the cocoon of unconscious ignorance and developing the butterfly of consciousness.

Again, this concept is based on the duality of polarity, as ascension of both the self and the collective consciousness begins with breaking — or not — the patterns which unknowingly cause unhappiness.

In Judaism, the theological interpretive formula (which reflects the Matrix of Four) is called the four PaRDeS.
The capitalized letters represent the four aspects of this formula, translated from Hebrew (in such translations vowels are ignored).

Each type of PaRDeS examines the meaning of a text; the Peshat means the literal or contextual meaning of the text, Remez is the allegorical meaning, Derash includes the metaphorical or comparative meaning, and Sodrepresents the hidden meaning.

Legend has it understanding this formation of four is a final step on the path to ascension.
Notably, the combination of the letters PRDS is similar toparadise, where ascension through consideration of the four aspects is said to lead.

The first two are obvious, while the comparative and hidden levels of interpretation are more subtle and require more to decipher.
And while the more complex modes of awareness are often left unconsidered by many people, still constrained to the left/right mode of thinking, awareness of the four PaRDeS of interpretation and the Matrix of Four as a mode of thinking, is a valuable tool not just in understanding theological presentation but also in understanding our society.

When extrapolated as a lens to view society, the Four PaRDeS can be applied firstly by our surface understanding; our individual senses.
The secondary more elaborate layer of understanding our society arrives in the teachings of others; the third is a combination of collective learning and our own experience used comparatively; the fourth is the intuitive approach, where one cannot explain exactly how one reaches an answer but the answer is nonetheless a useful and truthful one.

Understanding and striving toward these interpretive modes of thinking can enhance both our intuitive and critical understanding of our collective and individual nature.

We have the potential to be either materialistically driven or spiritually driven, and we can be either war-makers or peace-makers.



When we understand not just the common origins but the common philosophies at the core of religious theology, we have the opportunity to rise above the societal and political influences that promote dualistic black/white thinking and division between religious beliefs.

By applying deeper modes of thinking – the PaRDeS, or the Matrix of Four – we can uncover the hidden context behind religious scriptures and, by understanding their commonality, can decisively choose to be peacemakers – rather than focusing on their literal interpretation of religious scriptures and fighting over the “one true faith”.

Indeed, understanding the metaphorical and intuitive/hidden meanings of these scriptures allows us to realize the true brotherhood of man.
Let’s reintegrate our human cultural beauty and collective consciousness instead of separating each other by our belief systems as a justification for waging war on our brothers and sisters.

 

[Tin Man]

[MENTION=5667]Jacobi[/MENTION]​

Sacrificing goats to satan is great and all, but I prefer a different tactic.

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Tin Man]

That's actually not true. While Cesare Borgia may look somewhat similar to the common depiction of Jesus Christ, that image has been around well before Cesare was born. It actually dates back to the 6th century.

Jesus' image has been changed and updated throughout the centuries. So while he wasn't modeled after Cesare Borgia, it's also very unlikely he looked anything like the way he's depicted today.

And I only know this because of your post and this Wikipedia entry.

 

[Skarekrow]

That's actually not true. While Cesare Borgia may look somewhat similar to the common depiction of Jesus Christ, that image has been around well before Cesare was born. It actually dates back to the 6th century.

Jesus' image has been changed and updated throughout the centuries. So while he wasn't modeled after Cesare Borgia, it's also very unlikely he looked anything like the way he's depicted today.

And I only know this because of your post and this Wikipedia entry.

Thanks for the correction.
Duly noted.
He probably looked like every other dude in Palestine at the time…certainly not the Romanesque cheek-bones and pale European skin.
But yet…millions of people think of that type image of Jesus when then think of him.
Which just goes along with my main contention with organized religion in general - the lack of critical thinking and the promotion of just trusting everything, every doubt, on faith.
To me that’s just to be willfully ignorant…especially if you have this brain created by the God you believe in that has the ability to solve very complex and intangible problems…but we are not supposed to use that…just trust blindly…not in yourself, trust in the leaders of the church and the church.
That’s the bone I have to pick…otherwise…I don’t really care.