Offline IMBrother Anthony's Blog Full Post View | List View
Thoughts and other stuff that can't be classified as thought.
- 20060129 - Update on the message board
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Thanks to all of you who posted on my message board, there was some really great conversation over there. However, I've found another message board that had already done what I was trying to do. You can view it here:
http://www.palmtreegarden.org/forum/index.php
Please take a look at it, and feel welcome to post something there. The people are friendly, but fond of debate. It's exactly what I was looking for.
Anthony
Sunday January 29, 2006 - 01:04pm (EST) Permanent Link | 1 Comment - 20060116 - Message board created
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So I've created a message board. Please come and post on it. I will leave it as a trial run for a while, and if people like it, and it's reasonably well used, we'll keep it. Here is the address:
http://firstthought.proboards85.com/index.cgi
It's up to us to make this something usefull. Think of it as a tool to help us on our own spiritual paths. So post something already!
Anthony
Monday January 16, 2006 - 07:32pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - 20061011 - Anybody out there?
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Hi,
I was thinking about the stuff I've been writing lately, and I've decided that I really don't like the setup here on 360. First of all, I don't know when somebody has posted a reply to a comment I make on somebody elses blog. That's what really gets me. I read a lot of blogs, and I post on quite a few, so it's hard to keep track of 37 (yay!) friends and what they have to say. There's got to be an easier way. Does anybody know of anything better? Maybe a message board?
That said, I am online a lot on Yahoo! Messenger, but very few people actually talk to me. That's why I gave up on AIM. It seemed like everybody just turned their away message on and left it on all day. I was guilty of that as well, and I will try not to do that on Yahoo. So please, if you see me online, say hello. And if you'd like to comment on something I've said in a blog entry via IM, I will copy the conversation into the blog (with your permission) so that the development of the ideas is documented.
I guess what I'm saying is, I would really like to talk to you guys, but the blog comments section is an awkward place to do it. So IM me.
I'm working on some thoughts now regarding the accessability of salvation through different religious traditions, which I think is pretty interesting, but more research is required. Another topic that will be easier to come up with without much research is another philosophising regarding reality manipulation through thought, and the neccessity of insanity to achieve gnosis in that system. Intrigued? I am. I can't wait to put it down in writing.
Wednesday January 11, 2006 - 02:12pm (EST) Permanent Link | 10 Comments - 20060105 - What is gnosis like?
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I've been thinking about what the experience of gnosis would be like. This is my attempt to document my thoughts before I get to that point in my life and see if I was right looking back. I read recently that you can't experience the divine until you've lived half your life. If that's the case, then we should all have a pretty darn good idea of when we're going to die. I suppose you can't believe everything you read.
My first thought on this subject is that no matter what I believe to be the case now, I know that I must, by definition, be wrong. I know that I can't understand the divine by using my brain, thoughts, synapses, or electrical impulses; in other words, using my physical being to try to discover the nature of the divine is flawed from the get-go. So here I go anyway! I like the mental gymnastics involved, regardless of the accuracy.
The pleroma (or the divine, or God, or whatever linguistics you assign to that indescribable thing) is without time or place, agreed? So the experience of same would be without those definitions as well. Since I don't think I could begin to describe with words the two aspects simultaneously (timelessness and placelessness), I will take them one at a time.
What is timelessness, with the benefit of using place as a reference? Roll a pencil across your desk. Now try to picture that pencil rolling without time involved. It would appear in all of the points that it rolled though simultaneously. It would be a streak of yellow. It would be a continuum of pencil that occupied all of the spaces that the pencil occupied while it was moving, movement being a function of the combined forces of space and time. Now extrapolate that out to include all matter. From the Big Bang until the “end of time”, what would physical existence look like if you saw it without the lens of time? I can’t know for sure of course, since I can’t get a perspective on the immense space that is included in this example. I imagine, however, that it would just be a blob of light.
What is spacelessness, with the benefit of using time as a reference? This one is a little tougher. To me, time without space is consciousness. You have time available to form thoughts (such as the First Thought) but no physical objects to do anything with.
Let’s get a little quantum here, refer to my previous post if I talk about something that I don’t explain. Quantum theory dictates that reality only exists when it comes in contact with other reality. For example, if there is a rock in space, and it is traveling outward towards the edge of reality (the edge of the universe, if you will), the rock will reach the edge of reality, and by its presence there, more reality will come into existence and the rock will continue outward and create more reality as it goes.
Using the ideas expressed in my creation myth in my previous post, this would be described as such: Thought-Crystal, upon its genesis, was instantly everywhere. Time and space are functions of Physics, so Thought-Crystal doesn’t contain those aspects until it becomes Physics. In the Jungian-gnostic system as described in the Seven Sermons to the Dead, Thought-Crystal would be above Abraxas but below the pleroma, and Abraxas is analogous to Physics. The rock and the universe (reality) in the above example are aspects of Physics, but beyond them Thought-Crystal continues on into infinity. The rock traveling beyond reality is an example of Physics using Thought-Crystal (perhaps the Prima Materia of alchemy?) to create more complex forms. These complex forms are, in a sense, more real than Thought-Crystal, since Thought-Crystal by itself is uniform.
As I’m thinking about this I think I changed my mind. I thought about deleting the last two paragraphs and changing direction from that point, but perhaps you, like me, are interested in the process and you might like to see how this is a dynamic idea for me. It was that last sentence that got to me. More real? It seems to be the logical extension of that line of thinking, but I don’t buy the idea that something is more real than something else. Reality has a certain definition and it is not a sliding scale. I also realize I’ve gone way off topic here. I’ll get back around to the point at hand shortly, but I feel that this is important too.
What if First Thought, upon its genesis and subsequent crystallization, became space, by itself, but uniform and featureless? There would necessarily need to be an intervening event to create the more complex forms that we understand to be physical reality. This event would be Physics. This seems wrong to me too…
Let’s back up. First Thought became self-aware. Consciousness by itself is spacelessness. Therefore, time was the first to exist. Which makes sense, because you can’t say that something was first to do anything without the use of time as a reference. It follows, then, that Thought-Crystal is spacetime. So it seems I had it almost right in my creation myth. First Thought created time, and then, in creating form for itself to become Thought-Crystal, created space. Time and space are both aspects of Thought-Crystal. Reality was created in waves. The first wave to move out from the First Thought was Thought-Crystal, followed closely by Physics. Thought-Crystal is the Prima Materia of reality, and Physics, the First Law, expanded upon the form created by First Thought for itself. Thought-Crystal is the most basic form of matter, and Physics put Thought-Crystal together in complex forms that define the physical world we experience. Is that a fair assumption?
With that said, I should get back to the point. What can we expect when we experience the pleroma? I imagine you would cease to exist within the confines of Physics and, indeed, no longer be part of Thought-Crystal either. That is to say, you would cease to take up any space or time. It is important to note that this condition is viewed by those who continue to exist within reality, if they were to view such a thing, as a temporary condition. This event would take place in an infinitesimally small moment and existence would cease to exist for the person having the experience. So the question needs to be asked: How would you know that this happened?
One could argue that this is potentially happening to us at every fraction of every moment at every point in space. Since it is the belief of many quantum physicists that there are infinite possibilities existing simultaneously, what if every moment and every choice we make creates another reality in which you achieve gnosis? Now I realize I’m going off into uncharted waters here, but bear with me…
What if achieving gnosis constituted the end of your physical existence? You would release the spark of divinity back into the pleroma and your physicality would cease to be. Since we don’t experience people just blipping out of existence on a regular basis, one would imagine that this isn’t the case. However, if we understand reality as a continuum of coexisting possible realities then this isn’t so far fetched. What if the achieving of gnosis for a single person not only ended his or her own reality, but the entire reality “path” that that person had been existing on up to that point? That is what that diagram at the top is about. Each branch on the tree diagram represents a choice that can be made. Every choice that leads to gnosis ends right there, while the others continue until gnosis is achieved. It would tend to indicate that gnosis is a more common result than we imagine on this reality path.
Of course, as I stated at the beginning, this explanation has to be wrong, since by the simple act of stating it makes it false. But I had fun, and I hope you did too. I could go on, but if you made it this far then I’m sure you’re glad that I haven’t.
Do any of you have anything to add?
Thursday January 5, 2006 - 06:31pm (EST) Permanent Link | 3 Comments - 20051229 - Genesis Exegesis - Personal Creation Myth
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As promised I will share with you now my creation myth, entitled "The Crystallization of the First Thought." Originally I had thought of my creation mythos in two separate stories, which I believed were mutually exclusive; two different myths to explain the same thing - the nature of the creation of physical reality. The first was about the Crystallization, the second was about the Thought. As I came to understand them, however, I understood them to be two parts of the same story. They are united in a coherent whole thought. It is interesting to note that, as I’ve stated in a previous post, it is a flawed premise from the start to try to define these kinds on subjects. They are by their nature non-physical, non-language, and non-existent. So the myth takes some liberties with language that I feel are necessary and even appropriate given the subject matter. I will comment further on it at the end.
The Crystallization of the First Thought
A quantum-gnostic creation myth for your consideration by Anthony Philippos
In the place beyond place and the time beyond time was the pleroma, and the pleroma was as one without end.
Thought became aware of itself, and in that instant, thought itself became form. Thought was part of the pleroma beyond place and time, but in becoming self-aware Thought created time as well as its own form. The first form of Thought was infinitely small, but as it came to be, it began to crystallize the pleroma around it, and Thought-Crystal grew exponentially as more of the pleroma was crystallized within it. Since the pleroma is without place or time, Thought-Crystal will always grow in this way. The basic form of Thought-Crystal is the smallest particle of physical matter. As Thought-Crystal reflected on itself during this growth, it created itself in its own image. That image was Physics, the First Law. As Thought-Crystal grew and became more complex, the First Law grew with it. Physics, the creator, began to define itself as the atoms of matter, which grew and combined to become the gasses, which combusted to become the stars and coalesced to become the planets. Physics saw what it created in its own image and found it to be good. Physics continued to expand itself, using Thought-Crystal which also continued to grow, into the complex life-forms of the planets.
[END]
I wrote this myth several times before I settled on this short and simple version of my myth. Fiction is not my strong suit, so you will undoubtedly get more out of the commentary here than from reading the myth. I would love for somebody with a poetic inclination to take a stab at expressing this view of creation in a more poetic form. In this myth I have endeavored to include all of the elements of my world view to solve, for me anyway, the problem of “Where did we come from?” Speaking for myself only, I have done this.
I will talk about some of the elements of the myth and try to explain my thinking. First, the pleroma. It is beyond comprehension to physical beings. Therefore, not much can be said regarding it in this context. What I really wanted to get across in that first sentence is that pleroma is the basic unit of matter and energy. Without pleroma Thought could not exist.
At its heart, this myth is a statement of a single creator in two states: Thought-Crystal, which is the pleroma in the form of matter, and Physics, which is the pleroma in the form of energy. Current scientific understanding purports that matter and energy are both the same thing, but in different states. However, one state without the other will not give us what we experience as existence. Quantum physics (small “p” physics, the scientific discipline) believes that there is one basic unit that is the source of all matter and energy, the one thing that, in different states, makes up protons, electrons, and neutrons. This substance is what I refer to as Thought-Crystal.
Thought began, and the pleroma crystallized to become Thought-Crystal. Therefore, all of existence is actually a crystallized form of the pleroma. It is the pleroma as it would be if it were made physical.
A word about thought and reality: It has been proposed by some in the quantum physics community that human thought affects our reality and that there is no difference between thought and reality. In other words, you can’t have one without the other. The idea of quantum superposition, that the same object can occupy several places at once, or several realities at once, gets to this idea. Reality and thought are the same thing, but two different potentialities of a single thing. Perhaps I’m stretching the science here a little bit, or maybe I’m not. I'm certainly not doing the science any justice here, you should look into that on your own since I would do a poor job of explaining it.
One thing that should be said about science, however, is that up until this point in our linear history of what we call reality, science has been wrong about virtually everything that it has stated to be fact. The planet Earth was said to be flat, then it was said to be spherical, now it is understood to be basically spherical, but flattened slightly. The view of the shape of our planet I’m sure will change again before the century is out. Maybe future science will find it to be an inverted sphere, with the entire “universe” inside it, and we walk on the interior walls of the sphere. It could happen! So don’t take any of this as fact. Fact is a fickle partner. I believe that we can only know what we experience, which is a very gnostic view of things.
Physics, then, is energy, the active part of the creation, and the giver of the First Law. Gnostics would name the demiurge Physics in my system, and Thought-Crystal would be a sort of Abraxas, to use Jung’s “Seven Sermons” as a reference. We have named that Law (or set of laws, depending on how you look at it) after its creator. Thought-Crystal determines the rules, Physics puts them into practice. In other words, the Law is based on the form of Thought-Crystal. If Thought-Crystal had taken a slightly different form as it became self-aware, perhaps gravity would not exist. That is the ultimate contribution of Thought, the choices that Thought made in that first instant of time, to choose a form that would become the basis for all reality. Physics, with its polarities and its distinctions, is the god that we must overcome to return to the pleroma.
In writing this myth and commenting upon it, I have used exclusively the macrocosmic symbolism. However, having written it down (finally) and committed it to form, it is now available to me on other levels. I understand that it is to be experienced microcosmically before any practical use can come of it. Like the alchemical axiom “as above, so below” I will now take on the task of experiencing my own self-creation as Thought. One early form of the myth of Thought, before it came to be united with the myth of Crystallization, was the idea that I was part of the pleroma, I became self-aware, I crystallized the pleroma, and it was my thought that created Physics and its Law, and by extension, all of reality. I thought seriously for a time that perhaps this was a literal truth. I suppose we all at some point in our lives have wondered if perhaps this world is not real and we were just imagining the whole thing. That’s why we’re gnostics, right?
In conclusion, this being the culmination of several years of internal exploration and wondering, I would very much like to hear a lot of comments and thoughts about it. As I see it, we’re all in this universe together, and if we all have a part in the creation of our myths then they are more likely to be the truth. I invite and welcome all questions and comments!
Some credit needs to be given to Michael (Michael), who turned me on to a movie called “What the Bleep Do We Know?” (What the Bleep). I was aware of most of the basic science in the film, but its proposed applications surprised me. It led directly to the keystone of my myth, which was lacking before I saw the film. The idea that thought affects reality gave me the opportunity to take two stories that seemed to me to be unrelated but both true, and tie them together in a way that was compatible to my worldview.
Brother Anthony Philippos
Thursday December 29, 2005 - 02:20pm (EST) Permanent Link | 4 Comments
