Philosophy Class Date Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - 08:08 AM PST Topic Experiences I have enrolled(through the encouragement of my fellow thugs) in a philosophy class that was entitled "Ego, Unconscious, and the Search for the Soul." In this class are four psychology majors, two political science majors, and three liberal arts majors, along with me and a computer sciences major. In the course we were to discuss the philosophical theories of Jung, Campbell, and Muir. The class is nearly over now, and I leave it feeling like less of a human being. "Eternity shining through the windows of time." In casual discussion between the students and professor you can discover that this is not a philosophy class, but it just has been billed as one: the true focus is on the psyche and the spirituality of the individual. Parapsychology. Trying to teach the whole of the mind to eleven misguided souls. We are all individuals already searching: this group, as I look around the class daily, is the same kind of focus group that L. Ron Hubbard looked for when founding Scientology. As it turns out, our idea of eternity and the thoughtless set of nebulous attributes we foolishly ascribe the name of god to resembles all too much what the Scientologists believe. "Dreams are the private Mythology." This is the difficulty with parapsychology. No language has the words for the ideas we are trying to express. No language has the words. We talk about dreams and thoughts and imagination and emotions and the infinity of feelings that have preceeded words and existed in the forever; we all have personal definitions, however, and no one knows another person's absolute definition. In the dreams we discuss our words are just words; actions, undefined, that happen. The vagueries of language function as a funnel of thought, trying to categorize and segment a thing that is seamless and flowing as a river, constancy and permenancy. We talk about dreams and no one can speak, no one can think, we can all only dream, and know that everyone else does as well. "Eternity loves the Forms of Time." We talk about symbols. Animals, the moon and sun, all the things that have deeper spirituality. It is during these times that I become depressed, the mortal forms speaking up, saying that the things are just things. I want to cry; they are the forms of god; translucent objects that reflect the light of Infinity and Eternity; the Buddha, Metreiya, blinks of the eyes of the Brahma, with eyelid poised to close again on another perfect moment. This is the hard time; when words must be destroyed, when thoughts and ideas and the preconceptions of reality and the logical mind must come apart, literal interpretations falling away, as stones on a collapsing bridge, and I must avoid the instinct of hopping to the firm ground, for it is the fall which I must see. Symbols are the channels by which we could possibly see the center, the collective unconscious, regenerator and lover, dream and reality, and all the dualities that make our world the most beautiful place it can be. I believed it before, that, as the Buddha said, "I am both the sailor, lonely, powerless, and girl who has been raped, devoid now of my gift of love, distraught:" but now I truly understand. Now I truly see the beauty of it; immortality in the cyclical forms of regeneration of the species, though I do not know if I can now participate in it. Now that I can see the circle, how can I be expected to return to it? "Life is the Light Upon on the Waves of Eternity." I cry now. But my tears run the length of my face, salty trails left along the edge of my smile. This is the thought; I have found the one word which brings peace, but I cannot speak it. Divine irony in the form of the idea of enlightenment. I realize now what it has been; the literal, the firm bridge of symbology and mythology that we create to reach the center, our heroic quest upon that bridge, and too often our literacy and logical minds pave that road so firm it does not dissolving into the center. We pass over it, bridge becoming wall. I see in Jesus the Buddha, and in Buddha Muhammad, and in Muhammad the dreams of a thousand years. In Adam and Lilith are the Father and Mother of the Maori, torn apart and weeping tears of pain. This is our reality. A brief glimmer of moonlight upon the water; beauty in the play of darkness and light against the constantly shifting surface. This is the blink of the eye of the Brahma; only one in the 360 divine years, before the lotus shrivels and Vishnu wakes from his dream, riding the celestial serpent across the celestial sea of the universe. All our lives are the beauty, intertwined roots of a great tree, as Yggdrasil, and the wood burns and chips as the black dragon of night tears at them, and the burnt wood regrows, still beautiful. "Dualities." I look to the skies and know that beyond our galaxy is the universe of billions of galaxies. Constantly growing, expanding, new forms coming into existence in the forms of gas and dust spread out over billion miles of cold vacuum. Superheated, the gas expands, giving shape and color and light, the dust melting away or cooling and coagulating into rock or plasma. I know that I look into the eyes of my lover and see all this. There is an ancient Buddhist legend of the web of diamonds. A million crystals, perfectly cut, are sewn together in a silken web. If you look into one of the crystals, it was said, you could see all other crystals in the web. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=687