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Toward_the_Future

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1.05_-_The_Activation_of_Human_Energy

3.04_-_LUNA

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problem

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problem of death

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1:Man in fact is petty: the problem of death is a human problem. A cow doesn’t think about death. A cow isn’t petty ~ Eug ne Ionesco,

2:I think of so many people who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death. ~ Emil M Cioran,

3:On the folk religion level, the problem of death often has less to do with what happens to the person who has died than with the pain and meaninglessness that death brings for the living. How can the living deal with the devastation caused by the death of a loved one? ~ Paul G Hiebert,

4:Today, in this atmosphere, the very word and idea of asceticism is probably incomprehensible to a very large number of Christian people. Anyone talking about fasting and chastity and voluntary restriction of our individual desires is sure to meet with condescension or mockery. This does not, of course, prevent people from having their “metaphysical convictions” and believing in a “supreme being” or in the “sweet Jesus” who had a wonderful ethical teaching. The question is, however, what is the use of “metaphysical convictions” when they do not go any way towards providing a real answer — as opposed to one that is idealistic and abstract — to the problem of death, the scandal of the dissolution of the body in the earth. This real answer is to be found only in the knowledge granted by asceticism, in the effort to resist death in our own bodies, and by the dynamic triumph over the deadening of man. And not just in any kind of asceticism, but in that which consists in conformity to the example of Christ, who willingly accepted death so as to destroy death — “trampling down death by death.” Every voluntary mortification of the egocentricity which is “contrary to nature” is a dynamic destruction of death and a triumph for the life of the person. ~ Christos Yannaras,

5:Best of all, of course, religion solves the problem of death, which no living individuals can solve, no matter how they would support us. Religion, then, gives the possibility of heroic victory in freedom and solves the problem of human dignity at it highest level. The two ontological motives of the human condition are both met: the need to surrender oneself in full to the the rest of nature, to become a part of it by laying down one's whole existence to some higher meaning; and the need to expand oneself as an individual heroic personality. Finally, religion alone gives hope, because it holds open the dimension of the unknown and the unknowable, the fantastic mystery of creation that the human mind cannot even begin to approach, the possibility of a multidimensionality of spheres of existence, of heavens and possible embodiments that make a mockery of earthly logic-and in doing so, it relieves the absurdity of earthly life, all the impossible limitations and frustrations of living matter. In religious terms, to "see God" is to die, because the creature is too small and finite to be able to bear the higher meanings of creation. Religion takes one's very creatureliness, one's insignificance, and makes it a condition of hope. Full transcendence of the human condition means limitless possibility unimaginable to us. ~ Ernest Becker,

   1 Science
   1 Psychology
   1 Occultism
   1 Christianity

1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   serious problem of death, not of the individual but on the   planetary scale - a death which, if we seriously anticipate it,

3.04 - LUNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology   Belinus, as Ruska is probably right in conjecturing, is the same as Apollonius of Tyana,225 to whom some of the sermons in the Turba are attributed. In Sermo 32, Bonellus discusses the problem of death and transformation, likewise touched on in our text. The other sermons of Bonellus have nothing to do with our text, however, nor does the motif of resurrection, on account of its ubiquity, signify much, so that the Dicta in all probability have no connection with the Turba. A more likely source for the Dicta would be the (Harranite?) treatise of Artefius, Clavis maioris sapientiae:226 Our master, the philosopher Belenius, said, Set your light in a vessel of clear glass, and observe that all the wisdom of this world revolves round the following three . . .227 And again: But one day my master, the philosopher Bolemus, called me and said, Eh! my son, I hope that thou art a man of spiritual understanding and canst attain to the highest degree of wisdom.228 Then follows an explanation about how two contrary natures, active and passive, arose from the first simple substance. In the beginning God said without uttering a word, Let there be such a creature, and thereupon the simple (simplex) was there. Then God created nature or the prima materia, the first passive or receptive [principle], in which everything was present in principle and in potency. In order to end this state of suspension God created the causa agens, like to the circle of heaven, which he resolved to call Light. But this Light received a certain sphere, the first creature, within its hollowness. The properties of this sphere were heat and motion. It was evidently the sun, whereas the cold and passive principle would correspond to the moon.229   [165] It seems to me not unlikely that the Dicta Belini are connected with this passage from Artefius rather than with the Turba, since they have nothing to do with the sermons of Apollonius. They may therefore represent a tradition independent of the Turba, and this is the more likely since Artefius seems to have been a very ancient author of Arabic provenance.230 He shares the doctrine of the simplex with the Liber quartorum,231 which too is probably of Harranite origin. I mention his theory of the creation here despite the fact that it has no parallels in the Dicta. It seemed to me worth noting because of its inner connection with the Apophasis megale of Simon Magus. The Dicta are not concerned with the original separation of the natures but rather with the synthesis which bears much the same relation to the sublimation of the human mind (exaltatio intellectus) as the procedures of the Liber quartorum.232