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Original post: Mmothra

Cadged from http://www.temple.edu/isllc/newfolk/medicine.html

Cultural Diversity, Alternative Medicine, and Folk Medicine


by David J. Hufford, Ph.D. Department of Humanities, Penn State College of Medicine (Hershey Medical Center),[indent]This essay first appeared in Perspectives from the Humanities, a bi-monthly, in-house publication of the Humanities Department at the Penn State College of Medicine and, in a modified version, in the ethics column of the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. [/indent]Throughout its history the ethnic and cultural diversity of the U.S. population has grown constantly. During much of that time established American groups assumed that newcomers would be assimilated into existing cultural patterns; this was the "mel ting pot." Now, late in the 20th Century, this assimilation model has been recognized as neither a good description of what has happened nor a plausible prediction of what can happen as our population continues to diversify rapidly. The li nguistic, religious and other cultural patterns of American society are now more varied than ever, and medicine, like other institutions, works to develop appropriate methods for a pluralistic society. The physician entering practice in the year 2000 wil l face both a patient population and a set of professional values that require skills for negotiating cultural difference.


In an essay entitled "Culture and Clinical Care" in JAMA (March 2, 1994), pediatrician Lee Pachter discussed the clinical importance of cultural differences in beliefs about health and disease, using the folk medical beliefs of Latinos to illustrate the point. More recently the 3rd edition of Mosby's Guide to Physical Examination devotes an entire chapter to cultural awareness, emphasizing cultural values and beliefs and their impact on health behavior and, therefore, on care. The Mosby's chapter provides a chart of cultural characteristics, including a column of health and diet practices, for Americans from ten different ethnic groups including Chinese Americans, African-Americans, Mexican Americans and Native Americans. The health practices listed range from the use of herbs and dietary manipulations to acupuncture or acupressure to spiritual practices invoking supernatural intervention.

The importance of such information, as Pachter pointed out, is that people with medically unconventional beliefs may still present in medical clinics for care. In fact, not only is it the case that in "culturally pluralistic settings, people go to ` doctors' for `medical' illness and to `folk healers' for folk illnesses," but also patients sometimes use medical doctors and folk practitioners simultaneously.





Because these cultural differences have medically significant impacts on patient behavior, there have been efforts to identify those patients within various cultural groups most likely to have strong convictions about "ethnocultural health beliefs an d behaviors." Pachter characterizes those patients by six characteristics; those who [indent]

1. are recent immigrants to the mainland United States,
2. who live in ethnic enclaves,
3. who prefer to use their native tongue,
4. who were educated in their country of origin,
5. who migrate back and forth to the country of origin, and
6. who are in constant contact with older individuals who maintain a high degree of ethnic identity.

(p. 130)
[/indent]Pachter says that these people may be considered less acculturated.


Such publications provide a good start in raising the awareness of health professionals about the cultural dimensions of care. But even though recent writing on this subject has been done in a sensitive and sophisticated fashion, it consistently omi ts one of the largest--probably the largest--group of American patients possessing cultural health beliefs and practices that are medically unconventional. These are American-born, English-speaking, middle class people with college educations. Ev ery good study of medically unconventional health beliefs and practices in the past twenty-five years has shown that this group possess and acts on a great variety of health beliefs and practices--including many borrowed from the cultural groups cited in Mosby, Pachter and other publications on cultural diversity.

The best quantitative study to date was published in 1993 in The New England Journal of Medicine by David Eisenberg, M.D., and colleagues at Harvard. Their large national survey found that 34% of those surveyed used alternative medicine, and those with more education and higher income were most likely to use it. The Harvard study simply confirmed earlier work, including a 1986 Harris poll done for Health and Human Services. There may be some regional differences, but studies in central Penn sylvania have shown the same phenomenon.

Now it is true that middle class American English speakers fit rather well with Pachter's criteria. They do tend to live in "ethnic enclaves," they "prefer their native tongue," they were "educated in their country of origin," and they do have conta ct with "older individuals who maintain a high degree of ethnic identity." But this is clearly not what Pachter had in mind. These patients are not recent immigrants, and they do not have to "migrate frequently to their country of origin." They are mos t definitely not "less acculturated." And yet they share with "recently arrived groups" the simultaneous use of conventional medicine and a whole host of other treatments ranging from self care to healers operating outside medicine. Interestingly, there is even some recent evidence that newly immigrated groups share the tendency for the more acculturated members to be the most likely to use their culture's "folk medicines." For example, a study published in 1990 found (to the authors' surprise!) that t hose most likely to utilize traditional Korean health practitioners such as acupuncturists and herbalists were "the most educated and assimilated Korean immigrants."

How can we account for this apparent paradox? Perhaps the first step is to account for the very fact that it seems paradoxical. One hundred years ago health care in America was provided by a welter of competing "medical sects." It would not have b een news to anyone that patients in the American "mainstream" frequently utilized a great variety of "alternative practitioners." In 1910 when Abraham Flexner published his famous report which revolutionized medical education, part of his purpose was to bring an end to the popularity of folk and alternative health practices in favor of scientifically grounded medicine.

By establishing consistent standards for the scientific and clinical education of physicians, Flexner expected that homeopathy, chiropractic, osteopathy, Christian Science--in short systems competing with regular or "allopathic" medicine-- would disa ppear. With good education and science, medicine would come to include everything that research showed to be effective. What was not shown to be effective would wither and die. There would not be different kinds of medicine (apart from legitimate medic al specialties). There would just be good, rationally founded medicine.

The regulatory developments that followed did have substantial success in suppressing competition to regular medicine, but although the competing practices were rendered considerably less visible for several decades, they did not disappear. In fact they flourish now. They are represented by the Office of Alternative Medicine at NIH. They are increasingly being covered by insurers. And studies such as those by Eisenberg show that they command a very substantial share of the health care market.

For sixty or seventy years after the Flexner Report, alternative medicine, generally called "folk medicine" or "unorthodox medicine," sometimes "marginal medicine," was studied by several disciplines, and the particular interests and approaches of ea ch have had an impact on current images. Anthropologists have traditionally studied non-Western cultures, including their medical systems. In recent years they have increasingly turned their attention to the United States, but their selection of populati ons for study continues to be influenced by their discipline's history. They have therefore tended to focus on new immigrant groups, Native Americans and others isolated from the cultural mainstream by political, ethnic, linguistic or geographical barrie rs; that is, those who-- as Pachter suggested--are relatively unacculturated to modern, North American culture.

Sociology has generally given less attention to folk medicine. In recent times, however, medical sociologists have shown an increasing awareness that "self-treatment, folk medicine, and home remedies...[are] far and away the major source of health c are in the United States," (Wolinsky 1980, 291). Within sociology the interest in class differences and the importance of the concept of "deviance" has resulted in an image of alternative health practices similar to that produced in anthropology; that is , an image that emphasizes its difference and the distance from scientific medicine.

Finally, the success with which historians of medicine have traced elements of folk medicine back through the millennia has combined with the other trends in health systems research to depict folk or alternative medicine as vestigial. Even Erwin Ack erknecht, a medical historian who cautioned against "medical historians...[being] obsessed with the evolutionary idea," characterized folk medicine as "10% primitive medicine, 50% Galenism and 40% misunderstood modern technology" (1971:7-8).

These academic ideas have created an impression that North American mainstream culture is monolithic and relatively homogeneous, and that education has directly led to a consensus that the bio-medical health care system is the only proper authority o n health. At the same time North American ethnic sub-cultures have come to be viewed as archaic and deviant, at least to the extent that their health beliefs do not reflect and accept modern medical views. But, not only do well educated, native English- speaking Americans--those assumed to be most "acculturated"--have their own array of alternative health practices, they also make use of the practices of other cultures around the world and of immigrant groups! Acupuncture and moxibustion from China, Ayu rveda from India, shamanism from South America, herbs from all over the world, are as influential with middle class Americans today as the classic western European alternative systems such as homeopathy, chiropractic and the health food movement.

What does all this mean? First of all, we should not be too surprised that a cultural circumstance that is ancient and ubiquitous has not changed in just seventy or eighty years. All cultures have diverse health resources ranging from self care and home first aid through a variety of kinds of healer specialists. And those societies that have had substantial cross-cultural contact have always borrowed and assimilated the health beliefs and practices of those with whom they came in contact. America n society is no different in this regard.



Having said that eighty years is not enough time for a single, unified health culture to develop raises the question of how long is long enough. Different observers will have different views of this. I would guess that it will never happen. Diversity in healing, as in other areas of culture, from art to politics to religion to science, can be either good or bad in the particular instance: there is bad politics and there is bad science, and the world is not better for that. However, the wor ld is better for the circumstances that make bad politics and bad science, bad art or bad religion possible--free speech, tolerance, the right to be wrong--all the things that John Stuart Mill cited in his classic argument for the value of free spe ech. In medicine we might want to imagine that we are different, because we have free inquiry within the institutions of medical science, and outside those institutions there is no basis for real knowledge. That was the turn-of-the-last-century vi ew of progressives like Flexner. But the history of folk and alternative medicine does not bear out that idea. The high fiber diet and reduced animal fat intake were urged by people whom regular medicine called charlatans and quacks, from the mid-ninete enth century until they became conventional health recommendations less than twenty years ago. Acupuncture was used as an illustration of medical irrationality before Nixon's China trip and James Reston's fortuitous appendicitis brought it to the United States. From the impact of the LaLeche League on the advisability of breast-feeding to current studies of botanical medicines such as ginger, echinacea and ginkgo biloba, folk and alternative medicines have continuously influenced medical r esearch and practice.

And these influences have originated outside conventional medicine. It seems unlikely that western neurology would have created acupuncture. The number of plants in the world and the possible health applications makes it very unlikely that even a p rodigious effort such as the National Cancer Institute's plant screening program would eventually find all useful botanicals for a single disease. Therefore, the experience of millions of individuals in hundreds of different herbal traditions offers a we alth of leads toward plant medicines. And on and on. From religious healing traditions and the research they have inspired on the health effects of meditation (such as Herbert Benson's research at Harvard) to the growing number of studies comparing the spinal manipulation of chiropractors to other interventions for back pain, ideas from outside conventional medicine continue to suggest new investigations and applications. The greater the diversity of theories and observations, the greater the variety o f ideas available for empirical testing.

So, what about the perspective of the new physician in the year 2000? That doctor must recognize cultural diversity--including diverse health beliefs and practices--as characterizing the entire patient population. It is something that new imm igrants have in common with those already here--and something to which they add. It is something that does not fade away in the process of assimilation--rather it becomes more complex. Chinese immigrants have given acupuncture to thousands of Ame ricans just as Indians have been giving Yoga to Americans for generations. At the same time that the United States exports modern bio-medicine around the world, as well as chiropractic and other distinctively American alternatives, it imports and reconfi gures the health practices of cultures all over the globe. And this growing cultural complexity is neither inherently good nor bad. But it is a fact of life, and it does hold the potential for great benefits.



References



Ackerknecht, Erwin H. Medicine and Ethnology: Selected Essays. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971.

Eisenberg, David M., et al. "Unconventional Medicine in the United States." The New England Journal of Medicine 328 #4 (Jan. 28, 1993):246-252.

Miller, Jung Kim. "Use of Traditional Korean Health Care by Korean Immigrants to the United States." Sociology and Social Research 75 #1 (Oct. 1990):38.

Pachter, Lee M. "Culture and Clinical Care." JAMA 271 #9 (March 2 1994):127-131.

Seidel, Henry M., et al. Mosby's Guide to Physical Examination. 3rd ed. St. Louis: Mosby, 1995. Chapter 2, "Cultural Awareness."

Wolinsky. 1980. "Alternative Healers and Popular Medicine." In his The Sociology of Health, pp. 291-302. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1980.

Original post: Mmothra

From http://www.antiqillum.com/glor/mundus.htm, Antiquities of the Illuminatiâ?¢
Grey Lodge Occult Reviewâ?¢


[QUOTE]MundusImaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal

byHenriCorbin (http://www.antiqillum.com/glor/mundus.htm)



In offering the two Latin words mundus imaginalis as the title of this discussion, I intend to treat a precise order of reality corresponding to a precise mode of perception, because Latin terminology gives the advantage of providing us with a technical and fixed point of reference, to which we can compare the various more-or-less irresolute equivalents that our modern Western languages suggest to us.

I will make an immediate admission. The choice of these two words was imposed upon me some time ago, because it was impossible for me, in what I had to translate or say, to be satisfied with the word imaginary. This is by no means a criticism addressed to those of us for whom the use of the language constrains recourse to this word, since we are trying together to reevaluate it in a positive sense. Regardless of our efforts, though, we cannot prevent the term imaginary, in current usage that is not deliberate, from being equivalent to signifying unreal, something that is and remains outside of being and existence-in brief, something utopian. I was absolutely obliged to find another term because, for many years, I have been by vocation and profession an interpreter of Arabic and Persian texts, the purposes of which I would certainly have betrayed if I had been entirely and simply content-even with every possible precaution-with the term imaginary. I was absolutely obliged to find another term if I did not want to mislead the Western reader that it is a matter of uprooting long-established habits of thought, in order to awaken him to an order of things, the sense of which it is the mission of our colloquia at the "Society of Symbolism" to rouse.

In other words, if we usually speak of the imaginary as the unreal, the utopian, this must contain the symptom of something. In contrast to this something, we may examine briefly together the order of reality that I designate as mundus imaginalis, and what our theosophers in Islam designate as the "eighth climate"; we will then examine the organ that perceives this reality, namely, the imaginative consciousness, the cognitive Imagination; and finally, we will present several examples, among many others, of course, that suggest to us the topography of these interworlds, as they have been seen by those who actually have been there.

1. "NA-KOJA-ABAD" OR THE "EIGHTH CLIMATE" I have just mentioned the word utopian. It is a strange thing, or a decisive example, that our authors use a term in Persian that seems to be its linguistic calque: Na-kojd-Abad, the "land of No-where." This, however, is something entirely different from a utopia.

Let us take the very beautiful tales-simultaneously visionary tales and tales of spiritual initiation-composed in Persian by Sohravardi, the young shaykh who, in the twelfth century, was the "reviver of the theosophy of ancientPersia" in Islamic Iran. Each time, the visionary finds himself, at the beginning of the tale, in the presence of a supernatural figure of great beauty, whom the visionary asks who he is and from where he comes. These tales essentially illustrate the experience of the gnostic, lived as the personal history of the Stranger, the captive who aspires to return home.

At the beginning of the tale that Sohravardi entitles "The Crimson Archangel,"1 the captive, who has just escaped the surveillance of his jailers, that is, has temporarily left the world of sensory experience, finds himself in the desert in the presence of a being whom he asks, since he sees in him all the charms of adolescence, "0 Youth! where do you come from?" He receives this reply: "What? I am the first-born of the children of the Creator [in gnostic terms, the Protoktistos, the First-Created] and you call me a youth?" There, in this origin, is the mystery of the crimson color that clothes his appearance: that of a being of pure Light whose splendor the sensory world reduces to the crimson of twilight. "I come from beyond themountainofQaf... It is there that you were yourself at the beginning, and it is there that you will return when you are finally rid of your bonds."

ThemountainofQafis the cosmic mountain constituted from summit to summit, valley to valley, by the celestial Spheres that are enclosed one inside the other. What, then, is the road that leads out of it? How long is it? "No matter how long you walk," he is told, "it is at the point of departure that you arrive there again," like the point of the compass returning to the same place. Does this involve simply leaving oneself in order to attain oneself) Not exactly. Between the two, a great event will have changed everything; the self that is found there is the one that is beyond themountainofQafa superior self, a self "in the second person." It will have been necessary, like Khezr (or Khadir, the mysterious prophet, the eternal wanderer,Elijahor one like him) to bathe in the Spring of Life. "He who has found the meaning of True Reality has arrived at that Spring. When he emerges from the Spring, he has achieved the Aptitude that makes him like a balm, a drop of which you distill in the hollow of your hand by holding it facing the sun, and which then passes through to the back of your hand. If you are Khezr, you also may pass without difficulty through themountainofQaf.

Two other mystical tales give a name to that "beyond themountainofQafand it is this name itself that marks the transformation from cosmic mountain to psychocosmic mountain, that is, the transition of the physical cosmos to what constitutes the first level of the spiritual universe. In the tale entitled "The Rustling of Gabriel's Wings," the figure again appears who, in the works ofAvicenna, is named Hayy ibn Yaqzan ("the Living, son of the Watchman") and who, just now, was designated as the Crimson Archangel. The question that must be asked is asked, and the reply is this: "I come from Na-koja-Abad."2 Finally, in the tale entitled "Vade Mecum of the Faithful in Love" (Mu'nis al-'oshshaq) which places on stage a cosmogonic triad whose dramatis personae are, respectively, Beauty, Love, and Sadness, Sadness appears to Ya'qab weeping for Joseph in the land of Canaan. To the question, "What horizon did you penetrate to come here?," the same reply is given: "I come from Na-koja-Abad

Na-koja-Abadis a strange term. It does not occur in any Persian dictionary, and it was coined, as far as I know, by Sohravardi himself, from the resources of the purest Persian language. Literally, as I mentioned a moment ago, it signifies the city, the country or land (abad) of No-where (Na-koja) That is why we are here in the presence of a term that, at first sight, may appear to us as the exact equivalent of the term ou-topia, which, for its part, does not occur in the classical Greek dictionaries, and was coined by Thomas More as an abstract noun to designate the absence of any localization, of any given situs in a space that is discoverable and verifiable by the experience of our senses. Etymologically and literally, it would perhaps be exact to translate Na-koja-Abad by outopia, utopia, and yet with regard to the concept, the intention, and the true meaning, I believe that we would be guilty of mistranslation. It seems to me, therefore, that it is of fundamental importance to try, at least, to determine why this would be a mistranslation.

It is even a matter of indispensable precision, if we want to understand the meaning and the real implication of manifold information concerning the topographies explored in the visionary state, the state intermediate between waking and sleep-information that, for example, among the spiritual individuals of Shi'ite Islam, concerns the "land of the hidden Imam'' A matter of precision that, in making us attentive to a differential affecting an entire region of the soul, and thus an entire spiritual culture, would lead us to ask: what conditions make possible that which we ordinarily call a utopia, and consequently the type of utopian man? How and why does it make its appearance? I wonder, in fact, whether the equivalent would be found anywhere in Islamic thought in its traditional form. I do not believe, for example, that when Farabi, in the tenth century, describes the "PerfectCity," or when the Andalusian philosopherIbn Bajja(Avempace), in the twelfth century, takes up the same theme in his "Regime of the Solitary"3 -I do not believe that either one of them contemplated what we call today a social or political utopia. To understand them in this way would be, I am afraid, to withdraw them from their own presuppositions and perspectives, in order to impose our own, our own dimensions; above all, I am afraid that it would be certain to entail resigning ourselves to confusing theSpiritualCitywith an imaginary City.

The word Na-koja-Abad does not designate something like unextended being, in the dimensionless state. The Persian word abad certainly signifies a city, a cultivated and peopled land, thus something extended. What Sohravardi means by being "beyond themountainofQafis that he himself, and with him the entire theosophical tradition ofIran, represents the composite of the mystical cities of Jabalqa, Jabarsa, and Hurqalya. Topographically, he states precisely that this region begins "on the convex surface" of the Ninth Sphere, the Sphere of Spheres, or the Sphere that includes the whole of the cosmos. This means that it begins at the exact moment when one leaves the supreme Sphere, which defines all possible orientation in our world (or on this side of the world), the "Sphere" to which the celestial cardinal points refer. It is evident that once this boundary is crossed, the question "where?" (ubi, koja) loses its meaning, at least the meaning in which it is asked in the space of our sensory experience. Thus the name Na-koja-Abad: a place outside of place, a "place" that is not contained in a place, in a topos, that permits a response, with a gesture of the hand, to the question "where?" But when we say, "To depart from the where," what does this mean?

It surely cannot relate to a change of local position,4 a physical transfer from one place to another place, as though it involved places contained in a single homogeneous space. As is suggested, at the end of Sohravardi's tale, by the symbol of the drop of balm exposed in the hollow of the hand to the sun, it is a matter of entering, passing into the interior and, in passing into the interior, of finding oneself, paradoxically, outside, or, in the language of our authors, "on the convex surface" of the Ninth Sphere--in other words, "beyond the mountain of Qaf The relationship involved is essentially that of the external, the visible, the exoteric ( Arabic, zahir), and the internal, the invisible, the esoteric (Arabic, batin), or the natural world and the spiritual world. To depart from the where, the category of ubi, is to leave the external or natural appearances that enclose the hidden internal realities, as the almond is hidden beneath the shell. This step is made in order for the Stranger, the gnostic, to return home-or at least to lead to that return.

But an odd thing happens: once this transition is accomplished, it turns out that henceforth this reality, previously internal and hidden, is revealed to be enveloping, surrounding, containing what was first of all external and visible, since by means of interiorization, one has departed from that external reality. Henceforth, it is spiritual reality that envelops, surrounds, contains the reality called material. That is why spiritual reality is not "in the where." It is the "where" that is in it. Or, rather, it is itself the "where" of all things; it is, therefore, not itself in a place, it does not fall under the question "where?"-the category ubi referring to a place in sensory space. Its place (its abad) in relation to this is Na-koja (No-where), because its ubi in relation to what is in sensory space is an ubique (everywhere). When we have understood this, we have perhaps understood what is essential to follow the topography of visionary experiences, to distinguish their meaning (that is, the signification and the direction simultaneously) and also to distinguish something fundamental, namely, what differentiates the visionary perceptions of our spiritual individuals (Sohravardi and many others) with regard to everything that our modern vocabulary subsumes under the pejorative sense of creations, imaginings, even utopian madness.

But what we must begin to destroy, to the extent that we are able to do so, even at the cost of a struggle resumed every day, is what may be called the "agnostic reflex" in Western man, because he has consented to the divorce between thought and being. How many recent theories tacitly originate in this reflex, thanks to which we hope to escape the other reality before which certain experiences and certain evidence place us-and to escape it, in the case where we secretly submit to its attraction, by giving it all sorts of ingenious explanations, except one: the one that would permit it truly to mean for us, by its existence, what it is! For it to mean that to us, we must, at all events, have available a cosmology of such a kind that the most astounding information of modern science regarding the physical universe remains inferior to it. For, insofar as it is a matter of that sort of information, we remain bound to what is "on this side of the mountain of Qaf What distinguishes the traditional cosmology of the theosophers in Islam, for example, is that its structurewhere the worlds and interworlds "beyond the mountain of Qaf that is, beyond the physical universes, are arranged in levels intelligible only for an existence in which the act of being is in accordance with its presence in those worlds, for reciprocally, it is in accordance with this act of being that these worlds are present to it.5 What dimension, then, must this act of being have in order to be, or to become in the course of its future rebirths, the place of those worlds that are outside the place of our natural space? And, first of all, what are those worlds?

I can only refer here to a few texts. A larger number will be found translated and grouped in the book that I have entitled Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth.6 In his "Book of Conversations," Sohravardi writes: "When you learn in the treatises of the ancient Sages that there exists a world provided with dimensions and extension, other than the pleroma of Intelligences [that is, a world below that of the pure archangelic Intelligences], and other than the world governed by the Souls of the Spheres [that is, a world which, while having dimension and extension, is other than the world of sensory phenomena, and superior to it, including the sidereal universe, the planets and the "fixed stars"], a world where there are cities whose number it is impossible to count, cities among which our Prophet himself named Jabalqa and Jabarsa, do not hasten to call it a lie, for pilgrims of the spirit may contemplate that world, and they find there everything that is the object of their desire."7

These few lines refer us to a schema on which all of our mystical theosophers agree, a schema that articulates three universes or, rather, three categories of universe. There is our physical sensory world, which includes both our earthly world (governed by human souls) and the sidereal universe (governed by the Souls of the Spheres); this is the sensory world, the world of phenomena (molk). There is the suprasensory world of the Soul or Angel-Souls, the Malakut, in which there are the mystical cities that we have just named, and which begins "on the convex surface of the Ninth Sphere." There is the universe of pure archangelic Intelligences. To these three universes correspond three organs of knowledge: the senses, the imagination, and the intellect, a triad to which corresponds the triad of anthropology: body, soul, spirit-a triad that regulates the triple growth of man, extending from this world to the resurrections in the other worlds.

We observe immediately that we are no longer reduced to the dilemma of thought and extension, to the schema of a cosmology and a gnoseology limited to the empirical world and the world of abstract understanding. Between the two is placed an intermediate world, which our authors designate as 'alam al-mithal, the world of the Image, mundus imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty of perception belonging to it, a faculty that is a cognitive function, a noetic value, as fully real as the faculties of sensory perception or intellectual intuition. This faculty is the imaginative power, the one we must avoid confusing with the imagination that modern man identifies with "fantasy" and that, according to him, produces only the "imaginary." Here we are, then, simultaneously at the heart of our research and of our problem of terminology.

What is that intermediate universe? It is the one we mentioned a little while ago as being called the "eighth climate."8 For all of our thinkers, in fact, the world of extension perceptible to the senses includes the seven climates of their traditional geography. But there is still another climate, represented by that world which, however, possesses extension and dimensions, forms and colors, without their being perceptible to the senses, as they are when they are properties of physical bodies. No, these dimensions, shapes, and colors are the proper object of imaginative perception or the "psycho- spiritual senses"; and that world, fully objective and real, where everything existing in the sensory world has its analogue, but not perceptible by the senses, is the world that is designated as the eighth climate. The term is sufficiently eloquent by itself, since it signifies a climate outside of climates, a place outside of place, outside of where (Na-koja-Abad!).

The technical term that designates it in Arabic, 'alam a mithal, can perhaps also be translated by mundus archetypus, ambiguity is avoided. For it is the same word that serves in Arabic to designate the Platonic Ideas (interpreted by Sohravardi terms of Zoroastrian angelology). However, when the term refers to Platonic Ideas, it is almost always accompanied by this precise qualification: mothol (plural of mithal) aflatuniya nuraniya, the "Platonic archetypes of light." When the term refers to the world of the eighth climate, it designates technically, on one hand, the Archetype-Images of individual and singular things; in this case, it relates to the eastern region of the eighth climate, the city ofJabalqa, where these images subsist preexistent to and ordered before the sensory world. But on the other hand, the term also relates to the western region, the city of Jabarsa, as being the world or interworld in which are found the Spirits after their presence in the natural terrestrial world and as a world in which subsist the forms of all works accomplished, the forms of our thoughts and our desires, of our presentiments and our behavior.9 It is this composition that constitutes 'alam al-mithal, the mundus imaginalis.

Technically, again, our thinkers designate it as the world of "Images in suspense" (mothol mo'allaqa). Sohravardi! and his school mean by this a mode of being proper to the realities of that intermediate world, which we designate as Imaginalia.10 The precise nature of this ontological status results from vision any spiritual experiences, on which Sohravardi asks that we rely fully, exactly as we rely in astronomy on the observations ofHipparchusorPtolemy. It should be acknowledged that forms and shapes in the mundus imaginalis do not subsist in the same manner as empirical realities in the physical world; otherwise anyone could perceive them. It should also be noted that the) cannot subsist in the pure intelligible world, since they have extension and dimension, an "immaterial" materiality, certainly, in relation to that of the sensory world, but, in fact, their own "corporeality" and spatiality (one might think here of the expression used by Henry More, a Cambridge Platonist, spissitudo spiritualis, an expression that has its exact equivalent in the work of Sadra Shirazi, a Persian Platonist). For the same reason, that they could have only our thought as a substratum would be excluded, as it would, at the same time, that they might be unreal, nothing; otherwise, we could not discern them, classify them into hierarchies, or make judgments about them. The existence of this intermediate world, mundus imaginalis, thus appears metaphysically necessary; the cognitive function of the Imagination is ordered to it; it is a world whose ontological level is above the world of the senses and below the pure intelligible world; it is more immaterial than the former and less immaterial than the latter.11 There has always been something of major importance in this for all our mystical theosophers. Upon it depends, for them, both the validity of visionary accounts that perceive and relate "events in Heaven" and the validity of dreams, symbolic rituals, the reality of places formed by intense meditation, the reality of inspired imaginative visions, cosmogonies and theogonies, and thus, in the first place, the truth of the spiritual sense perceived in the imaginative data of prophetic revelations.12

In short, that world is the world of "subtle bodies," the idea of which proves indispensable if one wishes to describe a link between the pure spirit and the material body. It is this which relates to the designation of their mode of being as "in suspense," that is, a mode of being such that the Image or Form, since it is itself its own "matter," is independent of any substratum in which it would be immanent in the manner of an accident.13 This means that it would not subsist as the color black, for example, subsists by means of the black object in which it is immanent, The comparison to which our authors regularly have recourse is the mode of appearance and subsistence of Images "in suspense" in a mirror. The material substance of the mirror, metal or mineral, is not the substance of the image, a substance whose image would be an accident. It is simply the "place of its appearance." This led to a general theory of epiphanic places and forms (mazhar, plural mazahir) so characteristic of Sohravardi's Eastern Theosophy.

The active Imagination is the preeminent mirror, the epiphanic place of the Images of the archetypal world; that is why the theory of the mundus imaginalis is bound up with a theory of imaginative knowledge and imaginative function--a function truly central and mediatory, because of the median and mediatory position of the mundus imaginalis. It is a function that permits all the universes to symbolize with one another (or exist in symbolic relationship with one another) and that leads us to represent to ourselves, experimentally, that the same substantial realities assume forms corresponding respectively to each universe (for example, Jabalqa and Jabarsa correspond in the subtle world to the Elements of the physical world, while Hurqalya corresponds there to the Sky). It is the cognitive function of the Imagination that permits the establishment of a rigorous analogical knowledge, escaping the dilemma of current rationalism, which leaves only a choice between the two terms of banal dualism: either "matter" or "spirit," a dilemma that the "socialization" of consciousness resolves by substituting a choice that is no less fatal: either "history" or "myth."

This is the sort of dilemma that has never defeated those familiar with the "eighth climate," the realm of "subtle bodies," of "spiritual bodies," threshold of the Malakut or world of the Soul. We understand that when they say that the world of Hurqalya begins "on the convex surface of the supreme Sphere," they wish to signify symbolically that this world is at the boundary where there is an inversion of the relation of interiority expressed by the preposition in or within, "in the interior of." Spiritual bodies or spiritual entities are no longer in a world, not even in their world, in the way that a material body is in its place, or is contained in another body. It is their world that is in them. That is why the Theology attributed to Aristotle, the Arabic version of the last three Enneads of Plotinus, which Avicenna annotated and which all of our thinkers read and meditated upon, explains that each spiritual entity is "in the totality of the sphere of its Heaven"; each subsists, certainly, independently of the other, but all are simultaneous and each is within every other one. It would be completely false to picture that other world as an undifferentiated, informal heaven. There is multiplicity, of course, but the relations of spiritual space differ from the relations of space understood under the starry Heaven, as much as the fact of being in a body differs from the fact of being "in the totality of its Heaven." That is why it can be said that "behind this world there is a Sky, an Earth, an ocean, animals, plants, and celestial men; but every being there is celestial; the spiritual entities there correspond to the human beings there, but no earthly thing is there."

The most exact formulation of all this, in the theosophical tradition of the West, is found perhaps inSwedenborg. One cannot but be struck by the concordance or convergence of the statements by the great Swedish visionary with those of Sohravardi, Ibn 'Arabi, orSadraShirazi.Swedenborgexplains that "all things in heaven appear, just as in the world, to be in place and in space, and yet the angels have no notion or idea of place or space." This is because "all changes of place in the spiritual world are effected by changes of state in the interiors, which means that change of place is nothing else than change of state.... Those are near each other who are in like states, and those are at a distance who are in unlike states; and spaces in heaven are simply the external conditions corresponding to the internal states. For the same reason the heavens are distinct from each other. . . . When anyone goes from one place to another . . . he arrives more quickly when he eagerly desires it, and less quickly when he does not, the way itself being lengthened and shortened in accordance with the desire.... This I have often seen to my surprise. All this again makes clear how distances, and consequently spaces, are wholly in accord with states of the interiors of angels; and this being so, no notion or idea of space can enter their thought, although there are spaces with them equally as in the world."14

Such a description is eminently appropriate to Na-koja-Abad and its mysterious Cities. In short, it follows that there is a spiritual place and a corporeal place. The transfer of one to the other is absolutely not effected according to the laws of our homogeneous physical space. In relation to the corporeal place, the spiritual place is a No-where, and for the one who reaches Na-koja-Abad everything occurs inversely to the evident facts of ordinary consciousness, which remains orientated to the interior of our space. For henceforth it is the where, the place, that resides in the soul; it is the corporeal substance that resides in the spiritual substance; it is the soul that encloses and bears the body. This is why it is not possible to say where the spiritual place is situated; it is not situated, it is, rather, that which situates, it is situative. Its ubi is an ubique. Certainly, there may be topographical correspondences between the sensory world and the mundus imaginalis, one symbolizing with the other. However, there is no passage from one to the other without a breach. Many accounts show us this. One sets out; at a given moment, there is a break with the geographical coordinates that can be located on our maps. But the "traveler" is not conscious of the precise moment; he does not realize it, with disquiet or wonder, until later. If he were aware of it, he could change his path at will, or he could indicate it to others. But he can only describe where he was; he cannot show the way to anyone.

II. THE SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION



We will touch here on the decisive point for which all that precedes has prepared us, namely, the organ that permits penetration into the mundus imaginalis, the migration to the "eighth climate." What is the organ by means of which that migration occurs-the migration that is the return ab extra ad intra (from the exterior to the interior), the topographical inversion (the intussusception)? It is neither the senses nor the faculties of the physical organism, nor is it the pure intellect, but it is that intermediate power whose function appears as the preeminent mediator: the active Imagination. Let us be very clear when we speak of this. It is the organ that permits the transmutation of internal spiritual states into external states, into vision-events symbolizing with those internal states. It is by means of this transmutation that all progression in spiritual space is accomplished, or, rather, this transmutation is itself what spatializes that space, what causes space, proximity, distance, and remoteness to be there.

A first postulate is that this Imagination is a pure spiritual faculty, independent of the physical organism, and consequently is able to subsist after the disappearance of the latter.SadraShirazi, among others, has expressed himself repeatedly on this point with particular forcefulness.15 He says that just as the soul is independent of the physical material body in receiving intelligible things in act, according to its intellective power, the soul is equally independent with regard to its imaginative power and its imaginative operations. In addition, when it is separated from this world, since it continues to have its active Imagination at its service, it can perceive by itself, by its own essence and by that faculty, concrete things whose existence, as it is actualized in its knowledge and in its imagination, constitutes eo ipso the very form of concrete existence of those things (in other words: consciousness and its object are here ontologically inseparable). All these powers are gathered and concentrated in a single faculty, which is the active Imagination. Because it has stopped dispersing itself at the various thresholds that are the five senses of the physical body, and has stopped being solicited by the concerns of the physical body, which is prey to the vicissitudes of the external world, the imaginative perception can finally show its essential superiority over sensory perception.

"All the faculties of the soul," writesSadraShirazi, "have become as though a single faculty, which is the power to configure and typify (taswir and tamthil); its imagination has itself become like a sensory perception of the suprasensory: its imaginative sight is itself like its sensory sight. Similarly, its senses of hearing, smell, taste, and touch-all these imaginative senses-are themselves like sensory faculties, but regulated to the suprasensory. For although externally the sensory faculties are five in number, each having its organ localized in the body, internally, in fact, all of them constitute a single synaisthesis (hiss moshtarik)." The Imagination being therefore like the currus subtilis (in Greek okhema, vehicle, or [inProclus, Iamblichus, etc.] spiritual body) of the soul, there is an entire physiology of the "subtle body" and thus of the "resurrection body," whichSadraShirazidiscusses in these contexts. That is why he reproaches evenAvicennafor having identified these acts of posthumous imaginative perception with what happens in this life during sleep, for here, and during sleep, the imaginative power is disturbed by the organic operations that occur in the physical body. Much is required for it to enjoy its maximum of perfection and activity, freedom and purity. Otherwise, sleep would be simply an awakening in the other world. This is not the case, as is alluded to in this remark attributed sometimes to the Prophet and sometimes to the First Imam of theShi'ites: "Humans sleep. It is when they die that they awake."

A second postulate, evidence for which compels recognition, is that the spiritual Imagination is a cognitive power, an organ of true knowledge. Imaginative perception and imaginative consciousness have their own noetic (cognitive) function and value, in relation to the world that is theirs-the world, we have said, which is the 'alam al-mithal, mundus imaginalis, the world of the mystical cities such as Hurqalya, where time becomes reversible and where space is a function of desire, because it is only the external aspect of an internal state.

The Imagination is thus firmly balanced between two other cognitive functions: its own world symbolizes with the world to which the two other functions (sensory knowledge and intellective knowledge) respectively correspond. There is accordingly something like a control that keeps the Imagination from wanderings and profligacy, and that permits it to assume its full function: to cause the occurrence, for example, of the events that are related by the visionary tales of Sohravardi and all those of the same kind, because every approach to the eighth climate is made by the imaginative path. It may be said that this is the reason for the extraordinary gravity of mystical epic poems written in Persian (from 'Attar tojamiand to Nur 'Ali1-Shah), which constantly amplify the same archetypes in new symbols. In order for the Imagination to wander and become profligate, for it to cease fulfilling its function, which is to perceive or generate symbols leading to the internal sense, it is necessary for the mundus imaginalis--the proper domain of the Malakut, the world of the Soul-to disappear. Perhaps it is necessary, in the West, to date the beginning of this decadence at the time when Averroism rejected Avicennian cosmology, with its intermediate angelic hierarchy of the Animae or Angeli caelestes. These Angeli caelestes (a hierarchy below that of the Angeli intellectuales) had the privilege of imaginative power in its pure state. Once the universe of these Souls disappeared, it was the imaginative function as such that was unbalanced and devalued. It is easy to understand, then, the advice given later byParacelsus, warning against any confusion of theImaginatiovera, as the alchemists said, with fantasy, "that cornerstone of the mad."16

This is the reason that we can no longer avoid the problem of terminology. How is it that we do not have in French [or in English] a common and perfectly satisfying term to express the idea of the 'alam al-mithal? I have proposed the Latin mundus imaginalis for it, because we are obliged to avoid any confusion between what is here the object of imaginative or imaginant perception and what we ordinarily call the imaginary. This is so, because the current attitude is to oppose the real to the imaginary as though to the unreal, the utopian, as it is to confuse symbol with allegory, to confuse the exegesis of the spiritual sense with an allegorical interpretation. Now, every allegorical interpretation is harmless; the allegory is a sheathing, or, rather, a disguising, of something that is already known or knowable otherwise, while the appearance of an Image having the quality of a symbol is a primary phenomenon (Urphanomen), unconditional and irreducible, the appearance of something that cannot manifest itself otherwise to the world where we are.

Neither the tales of Sohravardi, nor the tales which in the Shi'ite tradition tell us of reaching the "land of the Hidden Imam," are imaginary, unreal, or allegorical, precisely because the eighth climate or the "land of No-where" is not what we commonly call a utopia. It is certainly a world that remains beyond the empirical verification of our sciences. Otherwise, anyone could find access to it and evidence for it. It is a suprasensory world, insofar as it is not perceptible except by the imaginative perception, and insofar as the events that occur in it cannot be experienced except by the imaginative or imaginant consciousness. Let us be certain that we understand, here again, that this is not a matter simply of what the language of our time calls an imagination, but of a vision that isImaginatiovera. And it is to thisImaginatioverathat we must attribute a noetic or plenary cognitive value. If we are no longer capable of speaking about the imagination except as "fantasy," if we cannot utilize it or tolerate it except as such, it is perhaps because we have forgotten the norms and the rules and the "axial ordination" that are responsible for the cognitive function of the imaginative power (the function that I have sometimes designated as imaginatory).

For the world into which our witnesses have penetrated-we will meet two or three of those witnesses in the final section of this study-is a perfectly real world, more evident even and more coherent, in its own reality, than the real empirical world perceived by the senses. Its witnesses were afterward perfectly conscious that they had been "elsewhere"; they are not schizorphrenics. It is a matter of a world that is hidden in the act itself of sensory perception, and one that we must find under the apparent objective certainty of that kind of perception. That is why we positively cannot qualify it as imaginary, in the current sense in which the word is taken to mean unreal, nonexistent. Just as the Latin word origo has given us the derivative "original," I believe that the word imago can give us, along with imaginary, and by regular derivation, the term imaginal. We will thus have the imaginal world be intermediate between the sensory world and the intelligible world. When we encounter the Arabic term jism mithali to designate the "subtle body" that penetrates into the "eighth climate," or the "resurrection body," we will be able to translate it literally as imaginal body, but certainly not as imaginary body. Perhaps, then, we will have less difficulty in placing the figures who belong neither to "myth" nor to "history," and perhaps we will have a sort of password to the path to the "lost continent."

In order to embolden us on this path, we have to ask ourselves what constitutes our real, the real for us, so that if we leave it, would we have more than the imaginary, utopia? And what is the real for our traditional Eastern thinkers, so that they may have access to the "eighth climate," to Na-koja-Abad, by leaving the sensory place without leaving the real, or, rather, by having access precisely to the real? This presupposes a scale of being with many more degrees than ours. For let us make no mistake. It is not enough to concede that our predecessors, in the West, had a conception of the Imagination that was too rationalistic and too intellectualized. If we do not have available a cosmology whose schema can include, as does the one that belongs to our traditional philosophers, the plurality of universes in ascensional order, our Imagination will remain unbalanced, its recurrent conjunctions with the will to power will be an endless source of horrors. We will be continually searching for a new discipline of the Imagination, and we will have great difficulty in finding it as long as we persist in seeing in it only a certain way of keeping our distance with regard to what we call the real, and in order to exert an influence on that real. Now, that real appears to us as arbitrarily limited, as soon as we compare it to the real that our traditional theosophers have glimpsed, and that limitation degrades the reality itself. In addition, it is always the word fantasy that appears as an excuse: literary fantasy, for example, or preferably, in the taste and style of the day, social fantasy.

But it is impossible to avoid wondering whether the mundus imaginalis, in the proper meaning of the term, would of necessity be lost and leave room only for the imaginary if something like a secularization of the imaginal into the imaginary were not required for the fantastic, the horrible, the monstrous, the macabre, the miserable, and the absurd to triumph. On the other hand, the art and imagination of Islamic culture in its traditional form are characterized by the hieratic and the serious, by gravity, stylization, and meaning. Neither our utopias, nor our science fiction, nor the sinister "omega point"-nothing of that kind succeeds in leaving this world or attaining Na-koja-Abad. Those who have known the "eighth climate" have not invented utopias, nor is the ultimate thought ofShi'isma social or political fantasy, but it is an eschatology, because it is an expectation which is, as such, a real Presence here and now in another world, and a testimony to that other world.

111. TOPOGRAPHIES OF THE "EIGHTH CLIMATE"



We ought here to examine the extensive theory of the witnesses to that other world. We ought to question all those mystics who, in Islam, repeated the visionary experience of the heavenly assumption of the Prophet Muhammad (the mi'raj), which offers more than one feature in common with the account, preserved in an old gnostic book, of the celestial visions of the prophet Isaiah. There, the activity of imaginative perception truly assumes the aspect of a hierognosis, a higher sacral knowledge. But in order to complete our discussion, I will limit myself to describing several features typical of accounts taken from Shi'ite literature, because the world into which it will allow us to penetrate seems, at first sight, still to be our world, while in fact the events take place in the eighth climate-not in the imaginary, but in the imaginal world, that is, the world whose coordinates cannot be plotted on our maps, and where the Twelfth Imam, the "Hidden Imam," lives a mysterious life surrounded by his companions, who are veiled under the same incognito as the Imam. One of the most typical of these accounts is the tale of a voyage to "theGreenIslandsituated in theWhite Sea."

It is impossible to describe here, even in broad terms, what constitutes the essence of Shi'ite Islam in relation to what is appropriately called Sunni orthodoxy. It is necessary, however, that we should have, at least allusively present in mind, the theme that dominates the horizon of the mystical theosophy of Shi'ism, namely, the "eternal prophetic Reality" (Haqiqat mohammadiya) that is designated as "Muhammadan Logos" or "Muhammadan Light" and is composed of fourteen entities of light: the Prophet, his daughter Fatima, and the twelve Imams. This is the pleroma of the "Fourteen Pure Ones," by means of whose countenance the mystery of an eternal theophany is accomplished from world to world.Shi'ismhas thus given Islamic prophetology its metaphysical foundation at the same time that it has given it lmamology as the absolutely necessary complement. This means that the sense of the Divine Revelations is not limited to the letter, to the exoteric that is the cortex and containant, and that was enunciated by the Prophet; the true sense is the hidden internal, the esoteric, what is symbolized by the cortex, and which it is incumbent upon the Imams to reveal to their followers. That is whyShi'itetheosophy eminently possesses the sense of symbols.

Moreover, the closed group or dynasty of the twelve Imams is not a political dynasty in earthly competition with other political dynasties; it projects over them, in a way, as the dynasty of the guardians of the Grail, in our Western traditions, projects over the official hierarchy of the Church. The ephemeral earthly appearance of the twelve Imams concluded with the twelfth, who, as a young child (in A.H. 260/A.D. 873) went into occultation from this world, but whose parousia the Prophet himself announced, the Manifestation at the end of our Aion, when he would reveal the hidden meaning of all Divine Revelations and fill the earth with justice and peace, as it will have been filled until then with violence and tyranny. Present simultaneously in the past and the future, the Twelfth Imam, the Hidden Imam, has been for ten centuries the history itself of Shi'ite consciousness, a history over which, of course, historical criticism loses its rights, for its events, although real, nevertheless do not have the reality of events in our climates, but they have the reality of those in the "eighth climate," events of the soul which are visions. His occultation occurred at two different times: the minor occultation (260/873) and the major occultation (330/942).17 Since then, the Hidden Imam is in the position of those who were removed from the visible world without crossing the threshold of death: Enoch,Elijah, andChristhimself, according to the teaching of the Qur'an. He is the Imam "hidden from the senses, but present in the heart of his followers," in the words of the consecrated formula, for he remains the mystical pole [qotb] of this world, the pole of poles, without whose existence the human world could not continue to exist. There is an entireShi'iteliterature about those to whom the Imam has manifested himself, or who have approached him but without seeing him, during the period of the Great Occultation.

Of course, an understanding of these accounts postulates certain premises that our preceding analyses permit us to accept. The first point is that the Imam lives in a mysterious place that is by no means among those that empirical geography can verify; it cannot be situated on our maps. This place "outside of place" nonetheless has its own topography. The second point is that life is not limited to the conditions of our visible material world with its biological laws that we know. There are events in the life of the Hidden Imam-even descriptions of his five sons, who are the governors of mysterious cities. The third point is that in his last letter to his last visible representative, the Imam warned against the imposture of people who would pretend to quote him, to have seen him, in order to lay claim to a public or political role in his name. But the Imam never excluded the fact that he would manifest himself to aid someone in material or moral distress-a lost traveler, for example, or a believer who is in despair.

These manifestations, however, never occur except at the initiative of the Imam; and if he appears most often in the guise of a young man of supernatural beauty, almost always, subject to exception, the person granted the privilege of this vision is only conscious afterward, later, of whom he has seen. A strict incognito covers these manifestations; that is why the religious event here can never be socialized. The same incognito covers the Imam's companions, that elite of elites composed of young people in his service. They form an esoteric hierarchy of a strictly limited number, which remains permanent by means of substitution from generation to generation. This mystical order of knights, which surrounds the Hidden Imam, is subject to an incognito as strict as that of the knights of the Grail, inasmuch as they do not lead anyone to themselves. But someone who has been led there will have penetrated for a moment into the eighth climate; for a moment he will have been "in the totality of the Heaven of his soul."

That was indeed the experience of a young Iranian shaykh, 'Aliibn FazelMazandarani, toward the end of our thirteenth century, an experience recorded in the Account of strange and marvelous things that he contemplated and saw with his own eyes on the GreenIslandsituated in theWhite Sea. I can only give a broad outline of this account here, without going into the details that guarantee the means and authenticity of its transmission.18 The narrator himself gives a long recital of the years and circumstances of his life preceding the event; we are dealing with a scholarly and spiritual personality who has both feet on the ground. He tells us how he emigrated, how inDamascushe followed the teaching of an Andalusian shaykh, and how he became attached to this shaykh; and when the latter left forEgypt, he together with a few other disciples accompanied him. FromCairohe followed him toAndalusia, where the shaykh had suddenly been called by a letter from his dying father. Our narrator had scarcely arrived inAndalusiawhen he contracted a fever that lasted for three days. Once recovered, he went into the village and saw a strange group of men who had come from a region near the land of the Berbers, not far from the "peninsula of theShi'ites." He is told that the journey takes twenty-five days, with a large desert to cross. He decides to join the group. Up to this point, we are still more or less on the geographical map.

But it is no longer at all certain that we are still on it when our traveler reaches the peninsula of theShi'ites, a peninsula surrounded by four walls with high massive towers; the outside wall borders the coast of the sea. He asks to be taken to the principal mosque. There, for the first time, he hears, during the muezzin's call to prayer, resounding from the minaret of the mosque, theShl'iteinvocation asking that "Joyshould hasten," that is, the joy of the future Appearance of the Imam, who is now hidden. In order to understand his emotion and his tears, it is necessary to think of the heinous persecutions, over the course of many centuries and over vast portions of theterritoryofIslam, that reduced theShi'ites, the followers of the holy Imams, to a state of secrecy. Recognition amongShi'itesis effected here again in the observation, in a typical manner, of the customs of the "discipline of the arcanum."

Our pilgrim takes up residence among his own, but he notices in the course of his walks that there is no sown field in the area. Where do the inhabitants obtain their food? He learns that food comes to them from "theGreenIslandsituated in theWhite Sea," which is one of the islands belonging to the sons of the Hidden Imam. Twice a year, a flotilla of seven ships brings it to them. That year the first voyage had already taken place; it would be necessary to wait four months until the next voyage.The account describes the pilgrim passing his days, overwhelmed by the kindness of the inhabitants, but in an anguish of expectation, walking tirelessly along the beach, always watching the high sea, toward the west, for the arrival of the ships. We might be tempted to believe that we are on the African coast of theAtlanticand that theGreenIslandbelongs, perhaps, to the Canaries or the "Fortunate Isles." The details that follow will suffice to undeceive us. Other traditions place theGreenIslandelsewhere-in theCaspian Sea, for example-as though to indi- cate to us that it has no coordinates in the geography of this world.

Finally, as if according to the law of the "eighth climate" ar- dent desire has shortened space, the seven ships arrive somewhat in advance and make their entry into the port. From the largest of the ships descends a shaykh of noble and commanding appearance,with a handsome face and magnificent clothes. A conversation begins,and our pilgrim realizes with astonishment that the shaykh already knows everything about him, his name and his origin. The shaykh is his Companion, and he tells him that he has come to find him: together they will leave for theGreenIsland. This episode bears a characteristic feature of the gnostic'sfeeling everywhere and always: he is an exile, separated from his own people, whom he barely remembers, and he has still less an idea of the way that will take him back to them. One day, though, a message arrives from them, as in the "Song of thePearl" in the Acts of Thomas, as in the "Tale of Western Exile" by Sohravardi. Here, there is something better than a message: it is one of the companions of the Imam in person. Our narrator exclaims movingly: "Upon hearing these words, I was overwhelmed with happiness. Someone remembered me, my name was known to them!" Was his exile at an end? From now on, he is entirely certain that the itinerary cannot be transferred onto our maps.

The crossing lasts sixteen days, after which the ship enters an area where the waters of the sea are completely white; theGreenIslandis outlined on the horizon. Our pilgrim learns from his Companion that theWhite Seaforms an uncrossable zone of protection around the island; no ship manned by the enemies of the Imam and his people can venture there without the waves engulfing it. Our travelers land on theGreenIsland. There is a city at the edge of the sea; seven walls with high towers protect the precincts (this is the preeminent symbolic plan). There are luxuriant vegetation and abundant streams. The buildings are constructed from diaphanous marble. All the inhabitants have beautiful and young faces, and they wear magnificent clothes. Our Iranian shaykh feels his heart fill with joy, and from this point on, throughout the entire second part, his account will take on the rhythm and the meaning of an initiation account, in which we can distinguish three phases. There is an initial series of conversations with a noble personage who is none other than a grandson of the Twelfth Imam (the son of one of his five sons), and who g

Original post: Mmothra

Cadged from http://www.antiqillum.com/glor/glor_006/smartstupid.htm

Just Because Youâ??re Smart, Doesnâ??t Mean Youâ??re Not Stupid
By Neal Pollock

[indent] 1. Levels of Consciousness: rational, irrational, non-rational
a. personal unconscious or subconscious (Freud/Jung)
b. collective unconscious (Jung)
c. conscious mind--a new development

2. The Johari window:
a. what you know you know
b. what you know you donâ??t know
c. what you donâ??t know you know
d. what you donâ??t know you donâ??t know

3. Basic character set in childhood (mostly unconscious)
a. lots of trial and error
b. learn from examples (how parents act)
c. conscience is a non-rational process

B. People like to believe they are in control (i.e. conscious)

1. simple observation belies this belief
2. belief differs from knowledge; few study epistemology
3. people ascribe expertise to college degrees and job titles
a. most scientists have never studied the Philosophy of Science
b. understanding a specialty does not imply understanding per se

C. Our society supports a belief in causation--a bottoms-up approach--past drives the present

1. Jung developed synchronicity--meaningful coincidence
2. Jung spoke of a top-down approach, a teleological approach
a. the desired goal, for instance, drives the present from the future
3. when planning a journey you need both the start point and the end point
a. as the Mad Hatter told Alice, if you donâ??t know where youâ??re going, any road will take you there.
4. inductive vs. deductive reasoning; Yin vs. Yang; the play of opposites

D. Knowledge (relationships & symbols) vs. Convention (definitions & signs)

1. VA Standards of Learning in History for instance--memorization
2. mostly we are taught conventions, not knowledge
3. understanding comes through knowledge, not convention
4. knowledge can be experiential vs. intellectual
5. convention is only intellectual, surface oriented
6. people filter/color/screen percepts -- e.g. via Myers-Briggs preferences

E. Individuals are not constant, they are dynamic

1. bi-directional communications are dyadic, interactive
2. roles: â??where you stand depends on where you sit.â?Â

Original post: Mmothra

A personal note: I love this book! Highly recommended!


Markus Mmothra



Excerpt from:
THE LUCIFER PRINCIPLE
A SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION
INTO THE FORCES OF HISTORY
By Howard Bloom Copyright 2000

[indent] [/indent]

Original post: Mmothra

Links to a number of well-written articles, courtesy of Mary Kurus (http://www.mkprojects.com/index.htm):

A Meditation With Nature: A Special Way To Bring in the New Year
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Emotions â?? How To Understand, Identify and Release Your Emotions (New Dec. 2002)
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Cleansing Negative Energies From Your Gems, Crystals, Jewelry and Pendulums
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Clearing Negative Energies with Choming Spray Concentrates and Special Energy Clearings
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
12 Steps To Higher Vibrational Health: Getting Younger and Living Longer
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
A Beginners Guide To Energy Terminology: Energy Fields and Energy Symbols
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
A Gem Essence To Help Retrieve Past Life Information: The Lingham Gem Essence
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
All About Food Sensitivities - and Healing with Flower Essences, Tree Essences and Gem Essences
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Auras, Chakras and Energy Fields: Cleansing and Activating Your Energy Systems
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Checklists For Health
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Creating an Altar And Worshipping at Your Altar
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Detoxification with Choming Essences
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Digestive Food Sensitivities
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Eliminating Candida with Flower Essences, Tree Essences and Gem Essences
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Eliminating Parasites with Flower Essences, Tree Essences, Grass Essences and Gem and Crystal Essences
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Guide to Healthy Eating and Living
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Healing Depression: with Flower Essences, Gem Essences, Tree Essences and Grass Essences
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Making Herbal Teas from Red Clover, Stinging Nettle or the Burdock Herb
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Health
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Psychic Attacks and Protecting Yourself
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
The Five Tibetan Rites: Exercises for Healing, Rejuvenation, and Longevity
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Vibrational Assessment
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
What is Vibrational Healing
"http://www.mkprojects.com/tl_freearticles.htm"
Cleanses for the Liver and Gallbladder for Enhanced Vitality

Original post: Mmothra

http://www.abardoncompanion.com/HiddenNow.html

PENETRATING THE HIDDEN NOW: Time and Perception

© 1997


Humans have a three-layered consciousness: A surface-consciousness, a sub-consciousness and a core-consciousness. What I call the mechanisms of perception are simply the normal operations of this three-part consciousness as it processes the objective-perceptions of the core-consciousness and raises them through sub-conscious layers of subjectification till they reach the totally subjective perceptions of the surface-consciousness.

From birth onward we are taught to live exclusively within our surface-consciousness. We are taught to disregard our sub-consciousness, or at best, to let it out only under very controlled circumstances. We are taught to distance ourselves from our core-consciousness, making of it an enthroned deity instead of an integral part of every self.

One consequence of this is that it places us out-of-focus in relation to objective-reality. It removes us from the objective reality perceived by our core-consciousness, and re-focuses us upon the surface-consciousness' totally subjective response to that objective core. In other words, it focuses us upon a subjective response to objective reality, not upon the objective reality itself. And believe me, there is a big difference between the objective reality and our subjective response to it.

Our surface-consciousness naturally treats the subjective-reality presented to it by the sub-consciousness, as an objective thing. The reason for this is that in relation to the surface-consciousness, the sub-consciousness is seen as a separate object (instead of as the integral part of the self). The objectification of the sub-consciousness by the surface-consciousness is a learned response, one that is considered "normal" in most cultures.

To understand this, let's trace a perception as it rises from our core-consciousness and passes through the sub-conscious layers of subjectification.

Three people stand before a tree. One is a very young child who has never encountered a tree before; one is an environmental activist; and one is logger. All three stand before the same objective tree and all three experience the same objective perception with their core-consciousness.

The objective tree is an utterly unique individual, distinguished from other trees by an infinite number of variations. Even though it is similar to other trees, it is not exactly the same as any other tree. But, it does not exist, objectively, as a separate thing; instead, it exists in context with and is an integral part of, the overall objective universe.

On the one hand, the objective tree is constantly changing. It is subtly different in each and every moment of its existence. And on the other hand, there is continuity to the tree and the changes it manifests do not exceed the bounds of its tree-ness. Despite it countless changes, it still remains a tree from one moment to the next.

Our core-consciousness perceives all of these details about the objective tree, and more. The core-consciousness is an objective thing and like the tree, it exists in context with the overall objective universe. As an integral participant in the objective universe it possesses a special intimacy with other objective things, such as our tree. In other words, the core-consciousness perceives all of the infinite number of details inherent in the objective tree, simultaneously and instantaneously. Thus our core-consciousness doesn't interpret the objective tree, it knows it.

The human brain cannot process the infinite number of details known by the core-consciousness all at once. Instead it must divide the infinity into small, bite-sized chunks and process those chunks sequentially.

This process of sequentialization requires interpretation. The division of an infinity entails a series of binary decisions as components are sorted by alikeness and difference, importance and lack of importance, etc.

This is accomplished by the sub-consciousness. While the perceptions of the core-consciousness are instantaneous, the sub-conscious processing of the core-perception takes time. Granted, it may take only micro-seconds for our brains to accomplish the task, but each one of those micro-seconds distance us from the objective reality. In the time it takes our sub-consciousness to process the core-perception, the entire objective universe has gone through an infinite number of changes.

The sub-consciousness produces a snap-shot of a single moment, simplifying the infinitude of details and synthesizing them into a controlled number of familiar symbols. In the case of our young child, her sub-consciousness will have very few, if any, memories to associate with the objective tree, so it will seem an unfamiliar thing. Her response would likely be one of awe and wonderment, and she would naturally want to touch it and explore it and thus develop the memories that will later spawn the formation of personally familiar symbols.

Our environmental activist however will already have a rich storehouse of tree-related memories. Perhaps the objective tree will remind her of a pleasant childhood experience where she climbed and explored a tree. Perhaps it will remind her of the Latin name for the tree and what she learned of botany, followed by thoughts about the destruction of habitat caused by the logging industry. Countless other memories will associate themselves with the core-perception, resulting in a subjectified, totally static image of the tree. Prominent will be what she feels about the tree, what the tree means to her personally. The objective details which individualize the objective tree itself and make it an utterly unique thing, recede to the background as they are replaced by subjective details.

Not only are there micro-seconds separating the objective reality from the subjective product, but there is also the factor of change separating them. The objective tree as perceived by the core-consciousness is ceaselessly changing and in each moment of its existence it encompasses a newly infinite number of details. The subjectified perception produced by the sub-consciousness however, is a static image, possessing only a small number of the objective tree's infinitude of details. It is a stop-action snapshot of a moment in objective-time which has already passed.

There is also a difference in context between the two. The context of the objective tree is the overall objective universe. It is changed in precise synchrony with the rest of the objective universe and its context is infinite. The subjective tree however, has a finite context -- the person perceiving. The subjective tree is contextualized more to the person doing the subjectifying than it is to the objective tree itself. As a static thing, the subjective image has been undeniably removed from the ever-changing objective context. Thus a single objective tree will mean different things to different people, resulting in any number of alternate subjective images.

As our environmental activist's personal subjective image of the objective tree solidifies in her sub-consciousness, her surface-consciousness detects it. To the surface consciousness, the static image presented by the sub-consciousness is an objective thing. The surface-consciousness further reduces the snap-shot and treats it as a single detail among many. Depending upon the flavor and intensity of the subjective response to the objective tree, the surface-consciousness will decide whether or not to act in some way. Its actions will be entirely in context with the subjective reality.

For our environmental activist, her subjective response to the objective tree may lead her surface-consciousness to express love for the tree and a willingness to protect the tree and the ecosystem, etc. But for our logger, the difference in the memories he associates during the subjectification of the objective tree, may lead his surface-consciousness to different actions. The logger will see a challenge for his skills and will busily calculate the estimated board-feet of the tree into dollars and cents.

Each of these individuals began with the exact same objective tree, created different subjective interpretations of it, and then acted in different ways. Nonetheless, even though we each live and breathe within unique subjective realities of our own making, we still manage to function together. This is due to the fact that the human surface-consciousness is the slave of culture. Our cultures teach us a basic set of assumptions which allow us enough areas of agreement for our subjective realities to sufficiently overlap. When three people stand before a tree, they agree that it is a tree, setting aside the vast differences between each of their ultimate perceptions.

The familial and cultural programming we receive acts as a template around which we arrange our experiences. In order to communicate with each other, we must first agree upon a set of shared symbols. Even though the subjective perceptions of the young child, the environmental activist and the logger differ radically from each other, they will ultimately set their differences aside enough to each agree, based solely upon what is shared in their perceptions, that this is a tree. So, when the logger says tree, he means both the shared cultural agreement or definition of tree, plus his own personal storehouse of interpretations and experiences of tree. In communication, the personal aspects of tree become subservient to and rotate around, the shared symbol. When the environmental activist says tree, she also means both the shared, generic symbol, plus her our subjective interpretation. Between the logger and the activist, the differences in their subjective responses are factored out by their agreeing upon the shared symbol.

Communication requires a shifting away from the personal and a re-focusing upon the shared. In other words, our surface-consciousness de-personalizes our subjective perceptions and translates them into objective symbols. It objectifies the sub-consciously subjectified perceptions of the core, objective reality, removing itself still further from the essential objective reality. The surface-consciousness therefore, resides in a shared subjective reality, one that lags behind the objective reality in terms of time, meaning and content.

There is no denying that even though it is a subjective reality, it has its impact upon the core objective reality. When the logger makes the subjective decision to cut down the subjective tree, it is the objective tree that suffers the consequences.

In other words, the subjective reality is also a part of the objective reality. They penetrate each other and effect each other, and there is no separating them. Without the objective reality, the subjective reality would not exist. Conversely, without the subjective reality, the objective reality would be a different objective reality.

Now we are all familiar with this shared subjective reality. It is the human world of cars, houses, having jobs, saving for the future, wars, starvation and excess, etc. We each know exactly what this shared reality feels and looks like. The question then is what does the objective reality feel and look like? What are the implications of shifting the attention away from the subjective surface and re-focusing it upon the objective core? What sort of life would that produce?

The answers to these questions surround us in the form of the other beings who share the world with us. All we need do is look.

By way of example I will compare four subjects: a human being (myself), a domesticated dog, a wild or feral dog, and a single blade of grass. The human consciousness, as I've already stated, consists of a highly structured surface-consciousness, a vast sub-consciousness, and a core-consciousness. The focus of a human's normal waking consciousness is almost exclusively upon the surface awareness and the shared subjective reality.

The blade of grass however, has only a singular core-consciousness and does not have a sub- nor a surface-consciousness. It is focused exclusively upon the objective reality.

Whereas the feral dog, possesses a dual consciousness composed of an integrated sub- and core-consciousness. The feral dog integrates the objective reality with its subjective response and there is no resulting displacement of focus. In other words, it instinctively exists in sync with the objective reality.

Now the domesticated dog is another matter. It has been given a subjective focus due to its participation in human culture. When we domesticate a creature, we train it to develop a surface-consciousness patterned upon our own and thereby enable it to take part in our shared subjective reality. Compared to a human, a domesticated dog has a much less complex and more simply structured, almost primitive surface-consciousness. Compared to our feral dog, our domesticated dog has a shifted focus of attention. It is to a certain extent, forcibly turned away from its integrated sub- and core-consciousness, and re-focused upon its rudimentary and essentially artificial, surface-consciousness. Nonetheless, instinct and the functions of its sub-consciousness remain the strongest forces in the domesticated dog.

The domestic dog straddles the gap between the human's shared subjective reality and the objective reality, but lives primarily in the objective. Similarly, the human straddles the two realities, but it lives primarily in the subjective. The feral dog and the blade of grass on the other hand, do not straddle this gap at all for they exist exclusively within the objective reality.

In the objective reality of the blade of grass, there is no time as we know it. The blade of grass remembers no past nor does it speculate upon its future. It does not act or do. Instead, it simply exists. It does not perceive that the sun is shining upon it and therefore decide to grow; instead, it grows in perfect synchrony with the immediate demands of sunlight. For the blade of grass, there is no sequence of finite moments, there is only the infinity of the immediate moment.

The objective immediate moment is similar to the subjective present-moment, but they are not exactly the same thing. The objective immediate-moment is both singular and infinite, while the subjective present-moment is a finite thing contextualized to the poles of past- and future-moments. Whereas the objective immediate-moment contains infinite change within the bounds of continuity, the subjective present-moment encompasses only the continuity, and , by necessity, disregards the infinitude of change.

The subjective experience of time is sequential, but the objective time is a non-sequential now. Essentially, the sequential passage of time is an illusion. It is a human construct produced by our highly sequentialized surface-consciousness. We can demonstrate this by considering the subjective present-moment.

Question: What differentiates the present-moment from past- and future-moments?

Answer: The experience of now-ness. Only in the present-moment do I feel the immediacy of things. It is only in the present-moment that I can reach out my hand and touch physical objects. But once the present-moment has been experienced, it loses its now-ness and becomes a memory. I can no longer go back and re-experience it with the same quality of now-ness with which I originally experienced it. I can't physically touch the objects of a past-moment. And likewise, I can't touch the objects of a future-moment until I reach that moment and turn it into a present-moment. It is our experience of now-ness that converts future into present into past, etc.

Question: What is the temporal duration of a/the present-moment?

Answer: There are three answers to this, one subjective and two objective. The subjective answer is that our surface-consciousness experiences a present-moment of varying duration. When our surface-consciousness is paying close attention to the present-moment, it seems to be quite brief and very full. Conversely, when our attention is focused upon the past (memory) or future, the boundaries of the present-moment can seem nearly endless.

To a great extent, this is a product of the stop-action snapshot habits of our sub-consciousness. We naturally treat the present-moment as a static thing and then we connect our snapshots together in a string, like a motion picture with its 24 frames per second. We assume it has a beginning, middle and end, and we think of it as possessing a quantity of duration, only because that is how our consciousness processes the objective perceptions of our core-consciousness. In effect, we take periodic samples of the objective universe, convert them into static images, string them together, and then play them like a motion picture. This gives us the illusion of motion and of duration.

Please take careful note of what I've just said, for it points out one of the most important cultural agreements of our shared subjective reality: that time is a sequential series of finite present-moments.

Objectively however, this is not the case. Upon close examination, the present-moment turns out to have a temporal duration of absolute zero. A simple exercise is to set a clock in front of you, preferably one with a sweeping second hand. Now consider all of the changes going on right now inside your body and outside. Consider all the atoms bouncing around and all of the planets speeding through the sky. The number of changes is literally infinite, no?

Now notice the passage of the clock's second hand and try to feel how long the present-moment lasts. How many present-moments fit into a single second? The answer is: an infinite number. In other words, a single present-moment has a temporal duration that is infinitely finite -- absolute zero. The subjective present moment is a static snapshot of a thing, but in the objective reality, there is no stasis, no duration of time in which change stops and things remain the same. Objectively, the static present-moment doesn't exist.

This brings us to the objective immediate-moment. The immediate-moment is composed of three factors: change, continuity and now-ness. These factors exist simultaneously and without sequence.

Objectively, the past is a function of memory and, in and of itself, has no physical existence. The only thing that truly exists, is what is right now. But what-was and what-will-be do not have objective physical existence. They did and they will have existence respectively, but they do not have existence right now. What is, right now, is the only thing that has physical existence. But what is, right now, is in a ceaseless state of flux. What is, right now, has already changed into what is, right now.

In the universe that exists, right now, there is both continuity and change. The continuity arises from the fact that change effects only what is and this is what makes things appear similar despite the infinite number of changes happening continuously. It's as if the force of change weaves itself among threads of continuity, ceaselessly creating and re-creating the fabric of time/space. But that fabric exists only in the immediate-moment, only right now.

The quality of now-ness which defines the subjective present-moment is also what defines the immediate-moment. With the present-moment, that now-ness is finite, arrayed sequentially, and contextualized to past and future. With the immediate-moment however, that now-ness is infinite and eternal. Objectively, it is all that exists, all that ever has been or will be. The now-ness of the objective immediate-moment is unbroken and non-sequential.

We exist in an eternal bubble of now-ness that, while it has a subjective duration of absolute zero, is objectively infinite. The ideas that we either pass through time or that time passes around us, are both illusions produced by the mechanisms of our consciousness. Neither is true in an objective sense.

Consider again, our blade of grass. The blade exists only in the immediate-moment. It has no memory, so it does not reference its existence to a past, nor is it capable of imagining a future. It does not do in the human sense (doing requires cognizance of a past and a future), instead it simply exists. It is changed in absolute synchrony with the forces impacting it. At no moment is it a static thing for each of its moments encompasses an infinite number of changes. For our blade of grass, there is no passage of time, there is only an unending change-filled now.

Our feral dog on the other hand does have the capacity (albeit limited) for memory and for individual action. But because the dog's sub-consciousness and core-consciousness are so integrated, it too is changed in exact synchrony with the forces impacting it. The feral dog, lacking a surface-consciousness, retains its focus upon, and direct participation in, the objective reality. When the feral dog is hungry, it seeks food, when tired, it sleeps. The feral dog likewise has no experience of the passage of time, for it too exists in an unending change-filled now.

Our domestic dog however, peeks out from its natural objective perspective and into the human's shared subjective reality. While it feels the same influences as the feral dog, it has learned to place them in a human context. For example, our domestic dog may experience hunger, but since it knows that its usual feeding time is near, it will not bother to hunt down a meal. Instead, it will wait near its food bowl and postpone the sating of its immediate hunger. Yet always the domestic dog struggles internally between obeying the human culture and obeying its own instinct. And while it may have a dim perception of the passage of time, to the dog this passage will mean something entirely different than what it means to a human.

In a sense, the domesticated dog represents a functional integration of the surface-consciousness with the sub- and core-consciousness, especially when compared to the human dis-integration of consciousness in which the focus is shifted almost exclusively to the surface-consciousness and away from the sub- and core-consciousness.

Of course, in my effort to explain I have had to simplify and generalize. The more particular truth of the matter though, is that individual humans vary greatly in their degree of dis-integration. Some individuals are in fact highly integrated and are capable of referencing their reality to the objective core instead of the shared subjective reality. Conversely, some individuals are almost totally dis-integrated and are not cognizant of anything other than the shared subjective reality experienced by the surface-consciousness.

Likewise, some cultures are more integrated with the objective reality than others. For example the culture of an indigenous tribal group of hunter-gatherers produces a surface-consciousness more readily integrated with the sub- and core-consciousness. The resulting shared subjective reality is closely in sync with the objective reality. Contrast this with the culture of a modern American city. The urban culture produces a surface-consciousness that is referenced entirely to the shared subjective reality. This dis-integration results in a shared reality that is not only out of sync with the objective reality, but one which is inimical to and damaging to, the objective reality.
[/quote]

Original post: spiritalk

Cosmic Dance of Energies

From: Sir James Jean's book:
Mysterious Universe
...foresaw that science was headed
toward a belief in 'a non-mechanical reality'
...that the universe begins to look more like a
'great thought' than a 'great machine'
That a growing number of scientists are moving
to the view that the whole universe is
'a cosmic dance of energy'


In the view of 'a cosmic dance of energy' life can be viewed from our 5 senses.....sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch......to manifest in a material world.

We see with the eyes and acknowledge our surroundings. Imagine a tiny baby coming into this world.....what are the first sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches?

The room is so bright after a coddled and protected atmosphere of floating through the first nine months of existence in darkness. The noise of all all these strange people, busy doing their jobs and fussing over the person on the table with whom you have had this connection.

What is that funny smell? It sure doesn't smell like anything I am used to in my previous existence, and the tastes! Most of all, the audacity of that person who hit me and made me cry!

Crying, what is that? I get an awful lot of attention when I make this sound. I will use that to communicate. How quickly we learn to use all those senses and how they manifest in harmony to produce our existence!

Using these senses allows us to get all manner of attention and things from our people who care. We soon learn to communicate in their language too! That is how all those warm and endearing feelings manifest in our lives. Now we learn the emotions....love, anger, care, fear, etc.

But, isn't life more than a series of emotion and senses? What is directing all these senses and emotions to produce manifestations in my life? There is another strong energy of life....Thought energy.

As human entities we have left the infantile stage and must learn to accept life in all its many energies. Thought energy is one of the most misunderstood manifestations in our lives. We think and we can produce, but instead we give random thought patterns energy and direction, then we wonder what happened in our lives!

The importance of learning this aspect of our physiology can not be under estimated. We are a thought producing vehicle and these thoughts manifest results (the natural law is called: Cause and effect....for every cause (thought) put in place there is a result or effect. Chaotic thinking can produce chaotic results...hence the unfocused and diverse life energies we are witnessing in today's world.

Humanity is due to wake up and begin to produce effects of peace and harmony on a global scale. We have the knowledge regarding life energies and Thought energies in particular, now is the time to learn to exercise these energies for peaceful purposes. Now is the time to direct our lives instead of letting them drift to the least common denominator of disharmony.

We have learned to heal and spiritualize our lives with Thought energies; now it is time to take this to all aspects of life's happenings and direct our thought power to produce this peace and harmony. Lift our consciousness, take charge of our own thinking, make it a conscious effort to raise up to spirituality and others will join with this thought energy and produce higher awareness for all.

Judy Merrill

Original post: spiritalk

What Easter Means to me:

On this beautiful Easter morning, the weather in my part of the world is cold, blustery and it snowed this past week several days. Just a smattering and it was blown away.

But it is beautiful all the same. We live where we do because we like the changing seasons. They bring renewal with every day.

Easter is new beginnings. We are so looking to see to the flowers bloom and the plants restore the greenery. We need nature to reflect our own soul as we bloom in our new approach to life and living.

We are nature. We sow seeds (thoughts) that are nurtured, watered, fertilized and blossom into our life as our opportunities and challenges. The more seeds we sow, the more potential this life can manifest.

As we renew in Spring, we also reflect on a time of quiet to prepare. The Spring will give the energy for the renewal of thoughts of growth and prosperity.

Easter (Spring) brings the warmth of the sun after a cold winter. It changes our hearts from being silent to thoughts of growth and love.

There are many traditions of Easter and its history. The important aspect is always that it is renewal. It is a renewal of our efforts to find and seek happiness and change in ourselves.

Deep within the human heart is the need to renew and refresh itself on a regular basis. It is the urge to growth and potential alive and well within the human heart. Easter gives us the OK to seek this happiness and live in love with one another yet another season.

Judy Merrill

Original post: Dufangoer

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Original post: lasersguru

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