Consciousness, projection, myth and science

What needs do mythology and religion serve in today's world and in ancient times? Here we discuss the relationship between mythology, religion and science from mythological, religious and philosophical viewpoints.

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Andreas
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Post by Andreas »

Rimbaud - First, of all, I hear ya. No doubt, Freud should be read. And also I agree with a lot of what you say.
none moreso than his ideas on history and civilization stemming from a neurosis, and civilization is the result of becoming sicker and more aggressive.
Yes, and myths are the cure. :P
“To live is enough.” ― Shunryu Suzuki

Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius
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Post by Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius »

A newer version, just basically a re-written version of the first post is available on my blog, and that was sent in and hopefully published in January.

http://followingtheherospath.blogspot.com/

In the future, although I may take a little longer than I thought, I will post about why I think my argument (or a modified argument) is the strongest in maintaining a relationship between nature, projection and the need for myths

----

Also, soon I will be interviewing noted mythologist and cultural theorist John David Ebert on his new book "Dead Celebrities and Living Icons"

Information about him is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_David_Ebert

And his youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/johndavidebert

And lastly his website: http://www.cinemadiscourse.com/

:D
http://followingtheherospath.blogspot.com/

"And courage not to submit or yield, and what else is not to overcome?" - Satan, Paradise Lost

lancimouspitt
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Post by lancimouspitt »

I'm coming into this very late in the game but I read over a bit of it and find it interesting but then again anything brought up on this website is. My vocabularly is not as great as all those who have contributed before me but i'll make this sound as spiffy as I can.
Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius, what you propose in your first post reminds me what is summed up pretty well in "The God Part of the Brain." Just as by instinct bee's create hives so to do humans create myths that help to cope with the horrors and awe inspiring mysteries of the world.

I find all the coming idea's of science pretty breathtaking to say the least and i'm interested with all the talk you make of transhumans and such. Yet I do have a problem with what science is proposing here and I apologize if someone has made this point before me and I missed it. If science where to ever figure out a way to nullify death for a very long period of time can this really be looked at as an achievement over death? It seems like to me that science is always about braving those things we don't understand and the greatest mystery of them all is the grand exit we will eventually have to make. The proposed idea of making a stalemate of death seems as if it's just cramming the large 1200 pound elephant in the room into the closet with part of the trunk and tusk sticking out just to stay around in our minds. Is this really an achievement over death or is it just attempting to hide from it?

I would think the scientist that wants to brave the ultimate of waters would want to make that leap just to see if their was something waiting over on another shore. I hear people in the scientific community say it's just a dreamless sleep,yet if this is really so why do we humans make such a fuss over it? I would think (maybe i'm alone in this) achievement over death is facing it and coming to terms to embrace that great mystery and acknowledge it even if we find it a little scary.
Just a few ideas I had swimming around in my brain.

Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius
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Post by Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius »

lancimouspitt wrote: Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius, what you propose in your first post reminds me what is summed up pretty well in "The God Part of the Brain." Just as by instinct bee's create hives so to do humans create myths that help to cope with the horrors and awe inspiring mysteries of the world.

I find all the coming idea's of science pretty breathtaking to say the least and i'm interested with all the talk you make of transhumans and such. Yet I do have a problem with what science is proposing here and I apologize if someone has made this point before me and I missed it. If science where to ever figure out a way to nullify death for a very long period of time can this really be looked at as an achievement over death? It seems like to me that science is always about braving those things we don't understand and the greatest mystery of them all is the grand exit we will eventually have to make. The proposed idea of making a stalemate of death seems as if it's just cramming the large 1200 pound elephant in the room into the closet with part of the trunk and tusk sticking out just to stay around in our minds. Is this really an achievement over death or is it just attempting to hide from it?

I would think the scientist that wants to brave the ultimate of waters would want to make that leap just to see if their was something waiting over on another shore. I hear people in the scientific community say it's just a dreamless sleep,yet if this is really so why do we humans make such a fuss over it? I would think (maybe i'm alone in this) achievement over death is facing it and coming to terms to embrace that great mystery and acknowledge it even if we find it a little scary.
.
I've never thought of that before Lancimouspitt - but that sure is a fascinating idea! :D

I 100% agree that "cheating" death through Science - which I don't think possible anyways, but suppose it was - would not be mastery over death. I like how you see death as something that has to be looked in the face, accepted and yielded to.

Great idea Lancimouspitt

----

On a related note, philosopher John Gray has recently brought out http://www.amazon.co.uk/Immortalization ... 387&sr=8-1 - which talks about science's movement - especially transhumanism - to escape death.

He's obviously been on this website and been influenced by my post :twisted:
http://followingtheherospath.blogspot.com/

"And courage not to submit or yield, and what else is not to overcome?" - Satan, Paradise Lost

Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius
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Post by Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius »

John Gray:
'Science is like religion, an effort at transcendence that ends by accepting a world that is beyond understanding. All our enquiries come to rest in groundless facts. Just like faith, reason must at last submit; the final end of science is a revelation of the absurd.' (P 227)
http://followingtheherospath.blogspot.com/

"And courage not to submit or yield, and what else is not to overcome?" - Satan, Paradise Lost

captsunshine
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Post by captsunshine »

Fascinating topic!! With Prolific ramifications. ThanK you
! TUGORT
With most of the discussion being above board -Im just settling down and lapping it all up
:)
One question -
Can we treat 'consciousness' in an Objective sense- for eg Consciousness does this or Consciousness feels that!
Isn that the realm of the Ego -or are both the same?
Sorry for posing such trivial questions.Hope you would all indulge a less knowledgable soul that's me
8)
Non-violence ... requires greater heroism than of brave soldiers ... The world does not accept today the idea of loving the enemy. Even in Christian Europe the principle of non-violence is ridiculed ... Christians do not understand the message of Jesus. It is necessary to deliver it over again in the way we can understand ...

- Gandhi - speech -1925

Cindy B.
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Post by Cindy B. »

captsunshine wrote: One question -
Can we treat 'consciousness' in an Objective sense- for eg Consciousness does this or Consciousness feels that!
Isn that the realm of the Ego -or are both the same?
Sorry for posing such trivial questions. Hope you would all indulge a less knowledgable soul that's me 8)
On a board such as this, capt., such questions are never trivial. :) Yet unless terms such as "consciousness" and "ego" are defined for the sake of discussion, folks inevitably end up talking at cross purposes given each's personal conceptualization of such terms.

So, if you'd like, please share your definitions of "consciousness" and "ego" so the rest of us can understand where you're coming from...well, it would help me, anyway.

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

captsunshine
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Post by captsunshine »

Hmmm Now. Let me think...
Consciousness is a process- its secondary to a' state of being '-
Now the big question is whether Consciousness predicates sensory perception or is it just the sum total of it -
Is the Ego a product of Consciousness or is Consciousness filtered by a primary entity that is Ego?
Ego is essentially an a awareness of the World as distinct from a discerned self.
the discerned self being a product of knowledge processed from sensory input.
If the Consciousness is larger than the Ego then it has to extend beyond. entities and their fields of influence.
Is that possible ?
Or is th Ego just the mask of the unmanifest but evident part of our being, that we call Consciousness

Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

Hello all,
Great topic for my confused
mind :-)

lancimouspitt
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Post by lancimouspitt »

Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius wrote:
lancimouspitt wrote: Tlon, Ugbar, OrbisTertius, what you propose in your first post reminds me what is summed up pretty well in "The God Part of the Brain." Just as by instinct bee's create hives so to do humans create myths that help to cope with the horrors and awe inspiring mysteries of the world.

I find all the coming idea's of science pretty breathtaking to say the least and i'm interested with all the talk you make of transhumans and such. Yet I do have a problem with what science is proposing here and I apologize if someone has made this point before me and I missed it. If science where to ever figure out a way to nullify death for a very long period of time can this really be looked at as an achievement over death? It seems like to me that science is always about braving those things we don't understand and the greatest mystery of them all is the grand exit we will eventually have to make. The proposed idea of making a stalemate of death seems as if it's just cramming the large 1200 pound elephant in the room into the closet with part of the trunk and tusk sticking out just to stay around in our minds. Is this really an achievement over death or is it just attempting to hide from it?

I would think the scientist that wants to brave the ultimate of waters would want to make that leap just to see if their was something waiting over on another shore. I hear people in the scientific community say it's just a dreamless sleep,yet if this is really so why do we humans make such a fuss over it? I would think (maybe i'm alone in this) achievement over death is facing it and coming to terms to embrace that great mystery and acknowledge it even if we find it a little scary.
.
I've never thought of that before Lancimouspitt - but that sure is a fascinating idea! :D

I 100% agree that "cheating" death through Science - which I don't think possible anyways, but suppose it was - would not be mastery over death. I like how you see death as something that has to be looked in the face, accepted and yielded to.

Great idea Lancimouspitt

----

On a related note, philosopher John Gray has recently brought out http://www.amazon.co.uk/Immortalization ... 387&sr=8-1 - which talks about science's movement - especially transhumanism - to escape death.

He's obviously been on this website and been influenced by my post :twisted:
I have to most definently check out John Gray. That sounds right up my alley! :)

Another thing I thought of on my ride home from work is, well lets just say we did find a way to pro-long life for a very long period of time. What kind of mythology,if any would suit a world in such as state?
For some reason Tolkien kept popping up in my mind. Just like the Elves would humanity with its new mastery of death succomb to the weariness of the world and voluntarily make an exit?
If this was the case than it would seem to somewhat prove that death isn't just a part of life after all but a necessity of our essential nature.

boringguy
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Post by boringguy »

death isn't just a part of life after all but a necessity of our essential nature. -- lance
:) an interesting thought for sure. Kind of like, it would be hard to look cool being in kindergarden at age 50. I'm pretty sure in some ways kindergarden would have long since lost it's appeal by that point.


bg
_________
be amused, be amusing

jufa
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Post by jufa »

The physical universe, the world, the earth, and mankind appear to be because man's human senses are an illusion, as the images man's imagination takes in and process according to his human mind and personal interpretations. What makes the illusion appear to be real is the individuality of being, and ones conscious awareness of the projected images the mind presents as thought forms of subjective sense conditions, situations, and circumstances.

Conscious awareness is distinct in every being. It is what makes the individual personally visualize, perceive, hear, touch, taste, smell, think, and conceive words, pictures, images, and thoughts different. This distinct difference of conscious awareness in individuals represents each persons direction of travel taken to reach the cross-road of regression, or progression, which becomes the sprouted seed of life demonstrated by the stony ground or furtile soil grown from. The seed of life which sprouted "first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear" containing the design, principle, and patterns of man's thinking. Consciousness of the law of the Spirit of Being, which makes mankind individually perceive consciously. This individual perception is the unique distinction, in all men, which allows them to see only from their human minds, which has presented to them that which could not be grasped in Its complete form because of man's beliefs in conditions of opposites.

Ancient myth, beliefs, doctrines, and by-laws of human living applied yesterday, and interpreted to be comprehensible characteristic of man's supposed superior intellect today falls under the vernacular of hearsay and personal interpretations. We are told we must accept these hearsay visions and faith interpretations of others, but not the truth which our personal experiences have exposed to us. Not until we have caught the vision of Reality, and faith has became an actual demonstrated event of the moment of the moment of the moment in our individual lives, faith "in the substance of things hoped for," are nothing more than empty vessels. As long as we continue to live our lives as followers of The Word and not doers, we will continue to believe in the seed of good and evil; the principle of good and evil, the pattern of good and evil; the lord of good and evil, and the god of good and evil. And it is this belief and following which will continue to be displayed, in us, the life of the knowledge of good and evil.

We do not serve the living God. We are whore-mongers of words, pictures, images, and thoughts. We are the lost sheep of the true Consciousness of our beings. Lost sheep because we do not comprehend "The Lord hath said that he would dwell in the thick darkness" (1 Ki:8,12). In our lack of knowledge we no longer adhere to the requirement to "take heed to thyself lest thou make a covenant in the midst of thee, thou shalt worship no other god; for the Lord, Whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God."

In losing our way, we began believing in matter which does not bring the flavor of harmony to our conscience, nor a vision beyond the human veil of symbols and parable our ancestors instilled into our conscious awareness. So we began worshipping the gods of time, space, distance and matter, and these gods incorporate, within themselves, the entire fabric of the illusion of humanism.

This is my humble in-look :idea:
Never give power to anything a person believe is their source of strength - jufa
http://theillusionofgod.yuku.com

Bhagavan Das
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Excerpts from documentaries and interviews:

Post by Bhagavan Das »

Excerpts from documentaries and interviews:
- Discrepancy with his own faith Catholicism over literal interpretation of religion, based on Catholicism, Buddhism, Freud, Jung, Hinduism and overall mythology; personal gurus as he calls them Tomas Man, James Joyce, in visual arts Paul Klee and Picasso
Serendipity –, searching for random intuitive lock; is in surrealism; in literature elements of it are in randomness of James Joyce; in music its randomness of Jazz;

- Critical moment in his life when he was given book “Life of Buddha” and concluded that “Jesus and Buddha are equivalent mythological figures” (documentary about Campbell’s life)
- “Myths are designed to put souls in accord with our body… myths are there to except nature’s way not hold on to it”, “form is secondary, message is what is important”
“Dante in his Devine Comedy unfolded a vision of the universe that perfectly satisfied both the approved religious and the accepted scientific notions of his time. When Satan had been flung out of haven for his pride and disobedience, he was supposed to have fallen like a flaming comet and, when he struck the earth, to have plowed right through to its center. The prodigious crater that he opened thereupon become the fiery pit of Hell; and the great mass of displayed earth pushed forth at the opposite pole because the Mountain of Purgatory, which is represented by Dante as lifting heavenward exactly at the South Pole. In his view, the entire southern hemisphere was of water, with this mighty mountain lighting out of it, on whose summit was the Earthly Paradise, from the center of which the four blessed rivers flowed of which Holy Scripture tells.”
“Comparative cultural studies have now demonstrated beyond question that similar mythic tales are to be found in every quarter of the earth. When Cortes and his Catholic Spaniards arrived in Aztec Mexico, they immediately recognized in the local religion so many parallels to their own True Faith that they were hard put to explain the fact. There were towering pyramidal temples, representing, stage by stage, like Dante’s Mountain of Purgatory, degrees of elevation of the spirit. There were thirteen heavens, each with its appropriate gods or angels; nine hells, of suffering souls. There was a High God above all, who was beyond all human thought and imaging. There was even an incarnate Savior, associated with a serpent, born of a virgin, who had died and was resurrected, one of whose symbols was a cross. The padres, to explain all this, invented two myths of their own. The first was that Saint Thomas, the Apostle to the Indies, had probably reached America and here preached the Gospel; but, the seashores being so far removed from the influence of Rome, the doctrine had deteriorated, so that what they were seeing around them was simply a hideously degenerate form of their own revelation. And the second explanation, then, was that the devil was here deliberately throwing up parodies of the Christian faith, to frustrate the mission.”
“Modern scholarship, systematically compared the myths and rites of mankind, has found just about everywhere legends of virgins giving birth to heroes who die and are resurrected. India is chock-full of such tales, and its towering temples, very like the Aztec ones, represent again our many-storied cosmic mountain, bearing Paradise on its summit and with horrible hells beneath. The Buddhists and the Jains have similar ideas. And looking backward into the pre-Christian past, we discover in Egypt the mythology of the slain and resurrected Osiris; in Mesopotamia, Tammuz; in Syria, Adonis; and in Greece, Dionysus: all of which furnished models to the early Christians for their representations of Christ.”
…Now the people of all great civilizations everywhere have been prone to interpret their own symbolic figures literally…However, today such claims can no longer be taken seriously by anyone with even a kindergarten education. And in this there is serious danger…”
“The Impact of Science on Myth” – Joseph Campbell 1961
Overall conclusion is that this is what religion was meant to be on a first place. If indeed Earth continental portion of it was flat as a large comet hitting Earth, Continental Earth would appear to be flat, so there is potentiality that it was so.
“This was infinitely old notion going back to Bronze ages… and is an image authorized in Bible”- Campbell. It’s possible to suspect that Great Flood was caused same way by a comet. If Moon was made by collision with a comet and Ice Age was caused by comet there is no reason to why it wouldn’t be case with Continental Earth and Great Flood. Metaphor of Eve made out of Adams rib, can be interpreted as evolutionary lower forms of life reproduce by splitting, and it might have been possible to conclude by observation by a naked eye.
Dogmatizing language, expression, by rigorous grammar has negative aspect to it with retarding natural development of language, grammar is just man made established set of rules to standardize language. Similar is with religion, dogmatizing is killing a soul of it, that what it’s all about.
Communication was more on symbolic level then today, finding correlative phenomena in nature was used to describe certain events, internal and external, therefor everything is in metaphors. Religion then was originally intended to be non-literal metaphoric and metaphysical. Communication was not just rich in symbols and metaphors, it was primarily symbols and metaphors as for exp. among Native Indians. Over time language is losing on its symbolic,
Metaphoric elements and is becoming more rationalized. Demethaphorisation of language is parallel with, and consequence of detachment from nature. As artistic movement later on it was Naturalism and its resentment toward industrialization. Detachment from nature is correlative to Despiritualization of language and life itself. Then Nietzsche is coming with theatrical, melodramatic, “God is dead, we killed him”. Civilization as we know it is consequence of religions filtering right from wrong, direction vs. failure, and that way forming and expending consciousness. Mind sat of today is formed by religion. Religion was predominantly standard, then it started to be treated as “supporting crutch” and “opium of the masses”. Neither of those two ideologies sustained test of time. Today there is aftershock that atheistic societies are empirically unsustainable, out of where are coming conclusions like “religion is important social fiber”. Post-Communistic world lives in a shock what went wrong and where from here. Then there is ground to suspect, is there something to atheism that is mentally, spiritually and socially deranging or purposeless, detached or/and empty, stumbling, despiritualizing, blocking. Germany for example today after all turmoil is led by Christian democrats.

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