Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Arising_uk
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

Post by Arising_uk »

Nick_A wrote:Why did Socrates die as he did? Crito gave many reasons why it was foolish to do so. Can you provide a reasonable explanation why Socrates voluntarily died? ...
He was old by Greek standards, a veteran hoplite and knew a good exit line.
Why did Jesus voluntarily die even though Peter objected? ...
He didn't, the Romans arrested him and then he whined big time to his 'God' whilst dying.
Why did Simone refuse to eat more than the rations the soldiers were receiving speeding up her death from TB? ...
By all accounts she had an eating disorder long before then and it was what she thought the French citizens were eating not the soldiers as if she'd eaten what they were eating she'd probably have survived.
Either they were all nuts or you are missing something. I'll put my money on Jesus, Socrates, and Simone.
You're not supposed to put your money on them you're supposed to emulate them and I see scant evidence of that from you.

I understand dying for a cause, I don't think Weil did anything useful in dying the death she did.
Belinda
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Arising_uk wrote:
He was old by Greek standards, a veteran hoplite and knew a good exit line.
" We owe a cock to Aesclapius ". That was bravely said, I guess to spare the feelings of his friends , as death from hemlock poisoning is unpleasant.

As for Jesus, whichever version of his life is the correct one, he defied the Romans all through his teaching life(even if he was no more significant than a wandering holy man), he surely was not so stupid that he did not know that. Socrates did not keep his head below the parapet either.
Nick_A
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." - Albert Einstein

Simone Weil wrote:
Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
If she is right it is obvious why only a few can become capable of acquiring a cosmic perspective. Our slavery to imagination and to the shadows on the wall in Plato’s cave prevent it.

Simone Weil believed without humanity recovering its ability to maintain conscious attention and emotional detachment we cannot free ourselves from imagination that preserves the same level of consciousness. It is obvious that the Great Beast prefers living by imagination so only a few striving to become more than just a reactive atom of the Great Beast will make the necessary efforts to acquire the ability for conscious attention necessary for the quality of consciousness that enables a human cosmic perspective. You may believe it elitist to write this but if it is true do you really prefer a politically correct feel good lie?
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Arising_uk
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Belinda wrote:" We owe a cock to Aesclapius ". That was bravely said, I guess to spare the feelings of his friends , as death from hemlock poisoning is unpleasant. ...
Worse than a dory in the guts? They really weren't a bunch of wussies you know.
As for Jesus, whichever version of his life is the correct one, he defied the Romans all through his teaching life(even if he was no more significant than a wandering holy man), he surely was not so stupid that he did not know that. ...
Render to Caesar? He didn't defy the Romans at all.
Socrates did not keep his head below the parapet either.
Eh!? He was a Hoplite.
Belinda
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Arising_uk wrote:
Render to Caesar? He didn't defy the Romans at all.
I did actually think of this one and it gave me pause. I dedided, from my sparse knowledge, that this was not from Jesus but a later edition. The Jesus Seminar would know.
Socrates did not keep his head below the parapet either.
Eh!? He was a Hoplite.
I meant that he did seem to be defying the gods , and so misled the young people of Athens. There were establishments in the days of Jesus and of Socrates. Jesus and Socrates were both rebels.

However, for the sake of prudence, which is compatible with rebellion:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-A2 ... ar&f=false
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Arising_uk
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Belinda wrote:I meant that he did seem to be defying the gods , and so misled the young people of Athens. There were establishments in the days of Jesus and of Socrates. Jesus and Socrates were both rebels. ...
Sure but Jesus wasn't really a rebel to the Romans but the Jews as the Romans just thought him yet another Jewish religious loon but had to try him given what the Jews were claiming. Socrates was apparently a gadfly to the Greek authorities not least because he was against the type of Athenian democracy that had arisen and personally I agree that the 'gods' part was just a pretext.
Belinda
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Arising_uk wrote:
Sure but Jesus wasn't really a rebel to the Romans but the Jews as the Romans just thought him yet another Jewish religious loon but had to try him given what the Jews were claiming.
Isn't it likely that your version has been sanitised by Rome and subsequent Christians so that the Roman authority was not culpable? Spin was ever so. The Romans are known to have crucified many many people, and I remember reading somewhere that Pilate was so brutally inefficient that the central command removed him from Palestine.
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Arising_uk
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Belinda wrote:Isn't it likely that your version has been sanitised by Rome and subsequent Christians so that the Roman authority was not culpable? Spin was ever so. ...
You saying the Bible spin?
The Romans are known to have crucified many many people, and I remember reading somewhere that Pilate was so brutally inefficient that the central command removed him from Palestine. ...
For sure and that's the point, he was just another crucifixion and at that time Israel was full of 'messiahs' and what-not who the Romans couldn't give two tosses about but in this case the charge was treason but it was one the Jews raised. As to Pilate being removed, I doubt it as they only served a max of three years anyway and I'd be amazed that the Romans worried about brutality as a tool for governance.
Belinda
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Arising_uk wrote: Wed Nov 01, 2017 2:22 pm
Belinda wrote:Isn't it likely that your version has been sanitised by Rome and subsequent Christians so that the Roman authority was not culpable? Spin was ever so. ...
You saying the Bible spin?
The Romans are known to have crucified many many people, and I remember reading somewhere that Pilate was so brutally inefficient that the central command removed him from Palestine. ...
For sure and that's the point, he was just another crucifixion and at that time Israel was full of 'messiahs' and what-not who the Romans couldn't give two tosses about but in this case the charge was treason but it was one the Jews raised. As to Pilate being removed, I doubt it as they only served a max of three years anyway and I'd be amazed that the Romans worried about brutality as a tool for governance.

I think that the Romans were very clever at governing their colonies so that they would prefer colonised Romans to oppressed rebels. Many if not most of the 'Romans' in Britain for instance were not sort of Italians but colonials. It must surely cost a lot less in manpower and money to colonise without brutality, even where slaves are concerned.

Gosh yes, a lot of The Bible is spin. Why would it not be?
Nick_A
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Socrates said in preparation to die: "Crito, we owe a cock to Asciepius. Do pay it. Don't forget."

Being that Asciepius is a god of healing and resurrection and Socrates is an awakening influence, the rooster (the classic symbol of awakening) must be passed on so as to receive what Socrates did. It always is but it is plain that only a small minority appreciate it for what it is, The Great Beast is incapable of awakening so struggles against the awakening influence. Those like Arising and Belinda join the world and insist on secularizing Jesus and Socrates. Yet the cosmic man is only possible from awakening to the conscious spiritual potential for human being.

Is there anyone lurking with a reason for offering hope for conscious societal evolution? I cannot find it. It sounds elitist but only a few will have the need, the will and the quality of emotion and heart to become themselves.
Simone Weil and Thomas Merton were born in France 6 years apart - 1909 and 1915 respectively. Weil died shortly after Merton entered the Abbey of Gethsemani. It is unclear whether Weil knew of Merton, but Merton records being asked to review a biography of Weil (Simone Weil: A Fellowship in Love, Jacques Chabaud, 1964) and was challenged and inspired by her writing. “Her non-conformism and mysticism are essential elements in our time and without her contribution we remain not human.”
The need, will and quality of attention necessary to become human is gradually being lost to the attractions of technology. Cave man will remain as is. The potential for the cosmic man will remain only for a relative few.
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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"Create a community which develops the highest of man's qualities based on conscience. You must warn people not to make their in­tellect their god. The intellect knows methods but it seldom knows values, and they come from feeling. If one doesn't play a part in the creative whole, he is not worth being called human. He has betrayed his true purpose." Albert Einstein, in Einstein and the Poet – In Search of the Cosmic Man by William Hermanns (Branden Press, 1983, p. 135.)
Conscience would be a normal attribute for cosmic man. We see how far we are from opening to the experience of objective conscience. Man made morality, indoctrination, and worldly attachments close the mind to experience conscience and the natural attraction to objective values. It has become habitual for society to live in imagination and denial governed by prestige as the motivating force.

From Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace:
The Great Beast [society, the collective] is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.

It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence, my fellow man as an end, since he is my fellow. Nor can I take a material thing, because matter is still less capable of having finality conferred upon it than human beings are.

Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective.
We are not the cosmic man so the Great Beast replaces the transcendent source as the source of human meaning and purpose. The Great Beast replaces the impulse to experience conscience with the ever changing beliefs of the Beast. Cave Man lives by the influence of the Beast while cosmic man lives by objective conscience normal for evolved human being. It is obvious how closed the Beast is to conscience and how thoroughly it has been replaced by secular indoctrination in whatever form. Such is the human condition and I don't see how our species can survive it.
Dubious
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Sorry for the long delay but events intervened!
”seeds” wrote:As just one simple example of what I am getting at, “visible light” (i.e., that which illuminates the three-dimensional structures of the universe) would have absolutely no reason or purpose for existing in a context where there is nothing conscious (alive) to see anything.
This is the core area where we vehemently disagree. You project purpose as humanly denoted where I think of the Universe simply as being...no extra "humanisms" imposed.

What is the purpose of billions of planets existing just in our galaxy which are totally devoid of life, literally dead planets...a number that can be further multiplied by billions of galaxies! It’s beyond paradox to derive purpose here even if some planets host a consciousness no greater than that of a sardine. Must the Universe really be so huge and full of nothing to know itself!
”seeds” wrote:In fact, according to certain interpretations of quantum theory, without the existence of consciousness to transform the waving, informationally-based (noumenal) underpinning of the universe into the phenomenal features that consciousness itself calls “reality”...

...then the entire universe would exist as a superpositionally entangled amalgam of potentialities (the “universal wavefunction”) that has no reality as we understand reality to be.

In other words, minus the existence of life and consciousness, the universe would be a sightless, textureless, soundless, tasteless, odorless “field of information”….

If it is even remotely possible that such is the case, then don't you think that your insistence that the value of consciousness is “inflated” and “exceeding its mandate,” could be a bit off the mark?
Consciousness is inflated by its own desperate efforts to give itself meaning and using every available method for doing so. The “value of consciousness” is truly beyond estimate while remaining limited nonetheless. Superimposing any interpretation of Quantum Theory does not negate this fact.
”seeds” wrote:Also, what I infer from your response is that you don’t seem to have given much thought to what quantum theory is implying (at least to the astute metaphysician) in how reality seems to be composed of a “mind-like” substance.

And I suggest that it is “mind-like” because the informationally-based essence from which the fabric of reality is woven (again, the noumenal underpinning of the universe) is apparently capable of being arranged in such a way that practically any (objective) phenomenal structure “imaginable” can be created from it...
...beyond its current definition? Beyond what’s already been created, what already exists? Beyond the science which attempts to explain it?

Logically, it would seem to me, the “noumenal underpinning of the universe” had to preexist its creation. What you seem to be saying is that the universe (or its apparent reality) can be re-morphed as informationally-based variables whose conditions are amenable to consciousness.
”seeds” wrote:In which case, if it is indeed a possibility that all of reality is “mind-like” in nature (think Berkeley), then it would seem that consciousness (the overlord and manipulator of mind-stuff) would be critical to the system.
I’m not negating that Reality can be qualified by certain interpretations as “mind-like” because in some ways consciousness has already proven itself capable of doing exactly that. As such, it still remains qualified by limits imposed by the system however extensive that may be. Only figuratively can it be said that the universe caused the creation of consciousness to reflect upon itself but even then it can only be to whatever limit consciousness itself is limited to.
”seeds” wrote:The point is that there are a lot of different pieces of the puzzle to consider before you dismiss certain concepts that seem ludicrous to you.
Whereas I agree with the intent of your statement, some concepts really are ludicrous! Many of these constellate around the subject of consciousness, its degree and ability to spread itself across the universe.

Bereft of any overt reason for existing the mind hallucinates one for itself in a universe which offers none. Or put another way if the universe, prima facie, has no purpose consciousness must crown itself To Be its purpose. We used to have gods to approve that conviction. Now we have Quantum Theory instead!
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Arising_uk
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Nick_A wrote:Socrates said in preparation to die: "Crito, we owe a cock to Asciepius. Do pay it. Don't forget."

Being that Asciepius is a god of healing and resurrection and Socrates is an awakening influence, the rooster (the classic symbol of awakening) must be passed on so as to receive what Socrates did. ...
Or how about given that the actual sacrifice of a cock to this demi-god when cured from an illness was the custom at the time and Socrates was demonstrating that he was being cured of life and did not fear death?
It always is but it is plain that only a small minority appreciate it for what it is, The Great Beast is incapable of awakening so struggles against the awakening influence. ...
What's always plain is how some manage to turn everything to reflect their dogma.
Those like Arising and Belinda join the world and insist on secularizing Jesus and Socrates. ...
Are you claiming Socrates as a 'god' now?
Yet the cosmic man is only possible from awakening to the conscious spiritual potential for human being. ...
But you say that it won't be possible for most human being to do this even if they do become aware of the potential?
Is there anyone lurking with a reason for offering hope for conscious societal evolution? ...
Yes, me. And to start just start with teaching people techniques on how to think with what they've got, basically what Plato proposed with some modern extras.
I cannot find it. ...
That's because you don't bother looking as you're already set with your indoctrinated dogma.
It sounds elitist but only a few will have the need, the will and the quality of emotion and heart to become themselves. ...
There you go.
The need, will and quality of attention necessary to become human is gradually being lost to the attractions of technology. Cave man will remain as is. The potential for the cosmic man will remain only for a relative few. ...
Still no idea what you are describing with this 'becoming human' and 'cosmic man'? What will they be like? What will they be doing? Can a women be one?
Nick_A
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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A_uk
The need, will and quality of attention necessary to become human is gradually being lost to the attractions of technology. Cave man will remain as is. The potential for the cosmic man will remain only for a relative few. ...

Still no idea what you are describing with this 'becoming human' and 'cosmic man'? What will they be like? What will they be doing? Can a women be one?
You refuse square one which is why you are closed to what is meant by "awakening." Socrates wasn't a god. He just appreciated what he was. You are unwilling to make efforts to "know thyself" so as to experience what you are. Can you be open to how Nietzsche describes the human condition. Could you ever be open to "experience cosmically"?
“Main thought! The individual himself is a fallacy. Everything which happens in us is in itself something else which we do not know. ‘The individual’ is merely a sum of conscious feelings and judgments and misconceptions, a belief, a piece of the true life system or many pieces thought together and spun together, a ‘unity’, that doesn’t hold together. We are buds on a single tree—what do we know about what can become of us from the interests of the tree! But we have a consciousness as though we would and should be everything, a phantasy of ‘I’ and all ‘not I.’ Stop feeling oneself as this phantastic ego! Learn gradually to discard the supposed individual! Discover the fallacies of the ego! Recognize egoism asfallacy! The opposite is not to be understood as altruism! This would be love of other supposed individuals! No! Get beyond ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’! Experience cosmically!”
― Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe
Nietzsche describes how we are nothing. The question becomes if nothing can become something through the process of conscious evolution and become a part of something truly valuable: conscious humanity beginning with the cosmic man?

If it is any consolation, Plato taught that the concept of Philosopher Kings should include Philosopher Queens. Why not? The cosmic perspective is not limited by sex.
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Arising_uk
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Re: Einstein and the Cosmic Man

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Nick_A wrote:...
You refuse square one which is why you are closed to what is meant by "awakening." Socrates wasn't a god. He just appreciated what he was. You are unwilling to make efforts to "know thyself" so as to experience what you are. Can you be open to how Nietzsche describes the human condition. ...
With not a blink in sight.
Could you ever be open to "experience cosmically"?
You first.
Nietzsche describes how we are nothing. ...
No he doesn't, he says the ego is a fantasy so abandon it. Just be and under him this is to be Will.
The question becomes if nothing can become something through the process of conscious evolution and become a part of something truly valuable: conscious humanity beginning with the cosmic man?
If it is any consolation, Plato taught that the concept of Philosopher Kings should include Philosopher Queens. Why not? The cosmic perspective is not limited by sex.
At least he gave a clear educational path to his PKs and Qs and none of it involves any of the guff you don't talk about.
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