Let's talk metaphysics ...

Interesting views Jules! It is very perplexing to even start to visualize the size of the universe, our brains however programmed are not capable of thinking in such immense proportions, yet. Who knows what lies around the corner for mankind (I don't really dig the Homo-sapien references either)as we discover new ways of exploration and visualizing the universe, we may in time actually be able to conceive much greater things than we do today.

My cat disappeared on Thursday and hasn't shown himself since. I can attribute this to being hit by a car, being catnapped or even the coyotes catching him. I have also considered that he may have gone walkabout. My cat has spent most of his eight years in the same neighbourhood, moving to the island and having a forest behind my house has opened up a new world to him that until lately he was unable to conceive. Perhaps he, as humans do also, has found that his world is much bigger than anticipated and has gone to explore these new areas. When living in Vancouver, his world consisted of a few blocks where he prowled, now it could be many acres.

I guess what I'm getting at is that not unlike my cat, we are only able to conceive what we have already discovered, another reason I don't follow religion too 'religiously', there are too many unanswered questions. Once we are able to venture further into space and perhaps unite with another 'intelligent' life form, we will be able to get a better idea of the big picture.

Man thought the world was flat at one time, this was all they could comprehend because they had never circumnavigated the earth. Now it's an expensive holiday most of us can't afford, but we still know and believe that the world is round.

This therefore opens up the concept that the universe may be smaller than we anticipate, then again it may be much larger. We haven't even begun to explore the depths of our own oceans other than a few deep sea submersibles and a few photos. Yet there is an immense ocean of discovery on our own planet where new life forms are discovered all the time. Space? We have a lot to learn still and probably still will in another few thousand years.

Side note: I was watching some old footage of medieval times and the knights and battles that took place. These GIANT warriors were generally under five feet tall, fully grown men. My son is taller than me at 18, as are most of his friends (6'+). Kids today are taller than kids were 30 years ago. Does this mean perhaps we will eventually grow to the proportions of dinosaurs? Will dogs and cats become massive again? Will dinosaurs walk the earth once again, perhaps starting a new form of evolution as humans grow wings to suit a new habitat?

We have a problem with the very word "metaphysics": what does it mean? One book of Aristotle's encyclopaedia got the originally unofficial name "meta ta physika", i.e. "after the science", because it came after the book on natural science. The name was not completely crazy, because the book does indeed deal with things behind or beyond natural science. The intellectual discipline of metaphysics within philosophy analyzes the concepts we more or less assume in natural science, whereas logic analyzes how we manipulate concepts. In the natural sciences we consider many kinds of being or thing; in metaphysics we try to understand being or things in general.
In the 17th Century a set of poets wrote poetry now called "metaphysical"; among them were Marvell, Vaughn, Crasher; perhaps they were trying to say what the philosophers had not managed to say in prose, but I think the coincidence of names is more like plain concidence.
In the early 20th Century some philosophers started talking a lot of rubbish, even nonsense, and called it metaphysics to muddy the waters. And late in the same century a lot of quasimystical stuff got written by half-comprehending students of "oriental" thought, and this too somehow got classed as "metaphysics", regardless of the relevance to the original meaning.

Actually Oz, you remind me of the occasion when I was chastised by a girlfiend for using the words "Intelligent" and "Catholic" in the same sentence.

But seriously, my friend Tony was as surprised as anyone to discover the girls' interest in being taught the formal theory of logic. They apparently tuned into it very readily.

However my friend, being married and a stalwart Catholic did not take advantage of the situation in which he taught. Which reminds me:
The longest lasting live-in relationship of my life (2 years -- I'm bloody difficult to get on with) was with a high school student 20 years my junior. She attended East Hills High, and it was standard practice for the girls to drastically shorten their tunics, so that the poor male teachers had to face a roomful of knickered pussy all day. I daresay they (the teachers) frequently turned to face the blackboard, with an up-and-down motion being observed in their right arms.

Now a true story. When working on the Daily Mirror, one of the copy-takers (girls who type down stories phoned in by journalists) used to sit in a short skirt facing the News Editor. Eventually he could no longer cope with the overstimulation of his hormones, and asked the girl to dress more appropriately.

You and I have at least two things in common: we both love pussy and stirring. If I pay, will you undergo the appropriate operation so that we can REALLY cum together?

How much time have you got to think? Or how much thought can you give to time?

Assume good old Sol is 4 B years old, and an avarage man lives 72 years. Now say Sol?s span has been man?s, 72 years. Man has only lived one half second of Sol?s life so far. In the time it took to realize I misspelled average you would have been born, married, honeymooned in Las Vegas, gotten that great job, had kids, grandkids, completed your PHD, wrote your best selling autobiography and died. If we assume the universe is 12-15 B years old the US has only been here a half second. Christ died less then 10 seconds ago. Man has only recorded less then the last minute of time.

I just want to keep on posting, ya know!

Actually, sorry but I forgot you're in Australia not England, right? Australia's really fun too (probably my second fav. place)talk about cool women and great fun!

Perhapse I could meet som erandy Sheila and get her to fly me to England. It's not so bad when only there for a few weeks but the permanent move is REALLY expensive!

This is a pretty ancient form of yoga developed within Hinduism. It uses the natural bodily appetites, including (but not exlusively) the sexual urge.

How it works is that a couple bring themselves to the point of orgasm, but instead of ejaculating (with the man) and releasing fluids (with the woman) through concentration the energy aroused is sent up the spinal channel to the Crown Chakra, which is the direct contact point for humans with the universal consciousness.

That funny headgear which you will see on most images of the Buddha actually represents the Crown Chakra, or "many petalled lotus," signifying that the Buddha has achieved enlightenment and is in direct contact with the universal consciousness. The Holy Spirit would probably be the nearest analogy in Christianity.

Actually I suspect that the primary aim of encouraging chastity in Christianity is to contain this energy (Kundalini) so that it will lead to spiritual growth rather than be uselessly dissipated through orgasm.

Unfortunately in the Western world, the New Age movement has corrupted and degraded the true purpose of Tantric Yoga, and instead use it to produced heightened sexual experiences.

I am sure you know that in the Vatican there is a vast library of knowledge which is not available to the general public. In fact a Theosophical friend of mine (the woman who did the paintings) when accessing the Vatican library online, was blocked when she came to a certain area. Yes the Vatican has always had knowledge of these other teachings, but has chosen to keep them carefully guarded from the faithful brethren.

I have read also that Adolf Hitler engaged the services of some Tibetan Lamas in the hope of using this powerful subconscious energy to increase his own power over people. Hitler also believed in astrology, by the way, and used this to some unknown extent to decide on his military tactics.

If the universe is "everything", like I learned in school (a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away), and if the universe is expanding, as Carl Sagen (and others) have suggested, into what is it expanding? Is it expanding into "nothing"? But If the universe is something other than "everything", what is the space in which it resides called? And how far does that space go until it stops? Or is it expanding too? And into what? And on it goes....

I liked the scene at the very end of the movie, "Men in Black" (the first one, I think), where the camera scene zooms up above the buildings, continues up above New York city, above the United States, and it keeps going up and up and up until the earth gets smaller and smaller, up until it becomes only a speck that disappears; but the zoom keeps going and going zooming past the planets and the stars, and continues up, right out of the solar system, out of the galaxy, and out of "the universe" to finally show only a small marble that was tossed by a young boy playing on the sidewalk.

I live my life based on other people's shock value, I love it and can hit it almost every time.
Unfortunately, such comments and suggestions are not suitable for this public forum (even coming from me)so it will be hard to hit you for shock value. Two beers and I could make you throw up and turn red in the face though, that's my fav!

Have you read any commentaries written by Sankaracharya. He was a Hindu philosopher. Pretty good commentaries from him on metaphysics, Atma (soul) and the being.

happy reading...

"Metaphysics is the philosophy of that which is beyond thought. In this case philosophy stands for thinking, contemplating and intuiting the essence of reality."

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window. Or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work. When you go to Church. When you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

I am utterly SHOCKED to learn that you gain satisfaction from engaging in this devilish sport.

P.S. I hope you haven't shocked anyone to death.

There are 2 rules to life:

1.Life sucks, then you die.
2.When in doubt,refer to rule #1.

And the answer to life , the Universe and everthing is 42.

You realize of course there is good amount of tongue in cheek humor in that post(wink,wink ,nudge ,nudge).

There are chemical solutions to this kind of an attitude , but if everybody did them (and a lot of sysadmins do ), who would read Sartre ,Camus or even good old Bertrand Russell ? Not to wax too philosophical , but without dark there can be no light.

I happened to catch a thread on one of the Novell general discussion groups and the amount of anti drugs (anti-depressant ,anti-anxiety)I hear folks using is food for thought.

In reference to the metaphysical thing ,the Chinese have a saying "May you live in interesting times".

Interesting times and rapid changes were foretold in a book by Alvin Toffler called Future Shock. Check it out a chuckle or two.

I was always under the impression that one of the best and most loved classical works, Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto, was composed while he was under the influence of opium. However when I checked before submitting this posting, I read another version which said that this work was his first composition after being freed from a mental block through hypnotherapy.

Actually, referring back to any earlier discussion, when I get the inspiration to start composing a song, I reach for the chocky. Peppermint cream dark chocolate works the best, and I am likely to devour 150 to 200 grams of the stuff to stay at the necessary level of inspiration until I complete the composition.

I also know that nicotine is a brain stimulant, and in the days when I used to smoke (tobacco) whenever a trigger word like "God" came up in the conversation, I would instinctively reach for a cigarette.

Thanks Colin, I was not aware that this quaint little gem originated with Jung. However I am fully aware of the work of Carl Jung, and have read his autobiography and am familiar with most of his ideas.
There was a split between the former colleagues, Freud and Jung, because Freud refused to acknowledge the mystical side of the human experience. Unfornately, because, in my opinion, Jung was about 50 years ahead of his time, the majority of psychologists and psychiatrists followed Freud's ideas.

Incidentally, that prolific Theosophical author, Annie Besant, said that Eastern forms of spiritual development (e.g. certain schools of Yoga) were not appropriate for Westerners because of our different genetic background and makeup.

Pin 1 is at the other end of the connector that could be anything from pin 5 to pin 80 depending on what you are trying to connect at the time.

Sorry for the tounge in cheek answer but currently we are all standing around the water cooler so shop talk isn't on the menu.

to pin 1 which is near the power connector, or not.

It's too early for me to be funny. Some would say I am not funny anytime, but that's just my wife and family and friends and co-workers and stangers on the street. I get no respect. `:[

I agree gone are the days when people could be converted from one religion to another based on the sword. Ofcourse there is still lots of conversion going on in the third world countries.

I would like to say that we have reached some kind of saturation as far as religious conversions go. We should accept each other, compromise and lead our life. No point in trying to prove which culture/religion/philosophy is the better one.

After reading these last few posts I figured maybe I'd go on a crusade. If only I could think of something to Crusade about!

Perhapse I could write Oz's Media bible, how the media controls out thought processes and buying habits across different nations.

Matbe I could go on a crusade for converting non-smokers into smokers again, I HATE smoking outside the bars! (for those who don't know, we have a Provincial rule that yuo can't smoke in a bar, NO I'm NOT kidding, a bar and you can't smoke!!)

YAY crusade! I think I'll start this weekend.:-)
OM

I think the last major conversion by the sword was that of many people in the Kremlin Empire from whatever they believed before to nothing in particular now. What we might call a positive conversion by the sword occurred late in the 19th - or early in the 20th - Century in Afghanistan, when the people of Kafiristan (pagan land) were told to become Muslim or else, and their country was renamed Nuristan (light land). But violent attempts are being made in India to persuade Muslims and Christians to become Hindus, on the theory that that is their natural religion.
During the 2nd half of the 2nd Millennium a lot of people in many countries became Christian under the influence of imperial Europe, which did not however have such an effect in Dar ul Islam or the East Indies, apart from the Philippines. In the late 1960s I heard an experienced and learned Catholic missionary priest claiming that the next big wave of conversion to Christianity would be indirect, by the example of contemplatives, about whom the people would know but with whom they might have only limited intercourse. I understand from www.chartreux.org that the Pope has persuaded the Carthusians to start their next house in Korea, where there are enough Christians to provide vocations but still a majority of non-Christians, so maybe the Pope has bought that missionary priest's theory. The Cistercians and Camaldolese in California are having at best a slow effect on our post-Christian culture - but perhaps that is all one can expect.

Over the last few decades I have noted people moving away from mainstream Christianity in a number of ways:

1. Many have converted to Buddhism (because it is based on reason, and you are not required to accept anything "on faith.")
2. A very great number have joined the New Age Movement, partly because you can believe anything you like, but also because, as with Buddhism and Hinduism, belief in reincarnation is virtually mandatory.
3. Many more have tossed aside traditional Christian dogma, while retaining a general belief in God and in Jesus as an example to follow.
4. The most rapidly growing form of Christianity is of the "Charismatic" kind. This usually carries with it an extremely fundamentalist Christian doctrine.
5. A very significant proportion of Roman Catholics no longer feel obliged to follow Papal directives.

Why this drift away from traditional Christianity?
My guess would be that the deployment of atomic bombs on Japan, followed by the Nuclear Arms Race, and the acceleration of new technology have left people generally in a state of uncertainty about the future, or even tomorrow for that matter. So they are looking for something simple to believe in, or in many if not most cases, people have just given up altogether and have chosen the easy road of materialsim and instant gratification.

I think that what Alvin Toffler predicted back in the 60s in his book "Future Shock" has proven to be an acurate projection. People generally just can't adapt to change so rapidly. I have noticed that the younger generation (under 30 years of age) do not find this a problem, because it is the environment into which they were born. For older people, in so many cases it is just all too much, too quickly, and too soon.

And never complained and was always there wether needed or not. But being a Great Dane she had the idea that she owned all she surveyed and I didn't actually own her but she owned both every member of my family and everything that was in and around the house {you have to have had Great Danes to understand this.}

But from a therpy point of view she was perfect and never interupted you when you where complaining about the only time that she wasn't all that helpful was when she was in season and wanted to get a bit {then you never saw her as she was always after one of the dogs} but any other time she would have made the perfect theripist and better still never have told anyone what you told her.

I used to bred Great Danes so I have a fairly one sided view on them and their ways.

When these people took off on these they fought for 60 days for their Church and anything that they managed to plunder was given to the Church as spoils of war. They where not obliged to stay longer than 60 days however if they chose to they got half of everything that they managed to plunder. So these where not so much "religious wars" but a means of getting rich quick admittedly at some risk to ones self but rich none the less.

Now OZ I just don't see how you could start a cursade trying to get smoking back into bars where is the profit in this? Where do you get to Plunder Loot and Ravish Young Women without any reprisials from the police and the like because you are doing the Church's bidding so you have their protection?

Maybe I misunderstand your intentions but I don't think you'll get very far unless of course you manage to take down the anti smoking lobby perhaps you could introduce HIV into their airconditioning system so they all get infected and die out. Now that would be doing us all a favour.

Where a bit of TLC all of which she got anyway but she did love being the centre of attention, well except when there where puppies involved then after they had got to a certian age she wanted nothing to do with them.

I can remember her in labour trying to take off the dogs head when he came in for a look see as he actually liked puppies which is strange for a dog {as apposed to a bitch} she was very protective of them and I was the only one who could touch them untill they reached the age where they went exploring and generally became a nusiance.

Can you provide some links that talk about Christians converting to Buddhism?

I keep hearing that Islam is the fastest growing religions. Heard especially it is true in America.

Well humans created Religion....and I don't believe all Religions are great!!

My comments on cross-conversation were merely made on personal observation. However at: www.adherents.com
you will undoubtedly find what you are looking for.