On This Day In The History Of British Queens, 4th October

"The Poisoned Apple", a study by Wanda Gag for an 1938 edition of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

“Happiness is part of who we are. Joy is the feeling.” #love #selflove #feelgood #happiness

“The Bad Luck Gang" 

 artist: kAt Philbin

Glad I'm not American.

it hasn’t even been a week since trump got in office and he’s already making orders to fuck with people’s reproductive rights, advance the construction of oil pipelines on native american land, and repeal healthcare from millions of people so literally fuck anyone who says “just give him a chance”!!, because chances aren’t given to assholes who won’t hesitate when it comes to putting people’s lives in jeopardy 

Transcript of my lecture given at The Queen City Philosophical Society on 1/31/13

This is a copy of my lecture. It’s not word for word of what was discussed because the meetings tend to be in a discussion format, but this is what I used to lecture with and initiate discussion. Another thing to remember is that this forum is open to the public and not limited to active Masons, therefore the content is not exclusively Masonic. Also, due to my concerns of getting too abstract and not making sense to all persons present, I tried to keep it simple. Please feel free to contact me and discuss with me as you please.

- What is the most basic question of philosophy? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This is certainly the most basic question because it deals with paradox, and ultimately deals with how we describe God. And as the modern spiritual teacher Deepok Chopra says, “The measure of your enlightenment is your level of comfort with paradoxes.”

The question of the chicken and the egg is a trick question. Everything you see around you everyday was at first an idea. The clothes you are wearing, the chair you are sitting in. And as an idea only can it exist eternally. For once it is created and exists in the material world, it must perish. That is the nature of the material world.

So what does this paradox have to do with how we describe God? When asked what God is, the only thing we can do is describe his attributes. The outward manifestations.

“Substance” means: “that which underlies all outward manifestations; the essence; the essential reality; the thing in itself,” etc. “Substantial” means: “actually existing; being the essential element; being real,” etc. “Reality” means: “the state of being real; true, enduring; valid; fixed; permanent; actual,” etc. Under and behind all outward appearances or manifestations, there must always be a Substantial Reality. This is the Law. Man considering the Universe, of which he is a unit, sees nothing but change in matter, forces, and mental states. He sees that nothing really IS, but that everything is becoming and changing. Nothing stands still, everything is being born, growing, dying, the very instant a thing reaches its height, it begins to decline, the law of rhythm is in constant operation, there is no reality, enduring quality, fixity, or substantiality in anything. Nothing is permanent but Change. All things are evolving from other things, and resolving into other things. There is a constant action and reaction; inflow and outflow; building up and tearing down; creation and destruction; birth, growth and death. Nothing endures but Change. “And if he be a thinking man, he realizes that all of these changing things must be but outward appearances or manifestations of some Underlying Power — some Substantial Reality.” Modern science has shown us that Matter is more of a mystery than ever, and has decided to call it energy with something causing a differentiation in its manifestations. Marcus Antonious says “The nature of the universe delights not in anything so much as to alter all things, and present them under another form. this is her conceit to play one game and begin another. Matter is placed before her like a piece of wax and she shapes it to all forms and figures. Now she makes a bird, then out of a bird a beast, now a flower then a frog, and she is pleased with her own magical performances as men are with their fancies.” This is very similar to the Hindu worldview that describes the material world as clay which is always changing its shape. The number one law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. One of my favorite quotes is from Carl Sagan, when he is leaning up against a tree, and says something like “Me and this tree here, we are made of the same stuff.”

When we look in Genesis it says that light was created twice. Genesis 1:3 “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” Genesis 1:14 “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years”

All was in balance in Paradise, and this initial ‘agitation’, as I like to call it caused the differentiation between light and darkness, but was still an effect itself. Its also interesting to note that this ‘agitation’ is described as spoken word, implying vibration. “Light — the first mentioned in Genesis, is termed by the kabalists, Sephira, or the Divine Intelligence, the mother of all the Sephiroth, while the Concealed Wisdom is the father. Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life, says the evangelist. Both are electricity — the life-principle, the anima mundi, pervading the universe, the electric vivifier of all things. Light is the great Protean magician, and under the Divine Will of the architect, its multifarious, omnipotent waves gave birth to every form as well as to every living being. From its swelling, electric bosom, springs matter and spirit. Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena; it vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from its primordial point gradually emerged into existence the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies. It was at the ray of this First mother, one in three, that God, according to Plato, “lighted a fire, which we now call the sun,”** and, which is not the cause of either light or heat, but merely the focus, or, as we might say, the lens, by which the rays of the primordial light become materialized, are concentrated upon our solar system, and produce all the correlations of forces.”

Modern science is trying to figure out how matter created life. Ancient philosophy inculcates the doctrine that life created matter. The unknowable first cause is ultimately unknowable. But we can speculate on the effect of this cause, because we are a product of this cause. We can reflect on our place in this world. The modern convention is that the creation of the visible universe is the beginning of all existence, when logically it can only be an effect, not a cause.

Plato describes this universe with the allegory of the cave. In his work ‘The Republic’ the Greek philosopher uses the analogy to illustrate “our nature in its education and want of education.” In Plato’s fictional dialogue, Socrates begins by describing a scenario in which what people take to be real would in fact be an illusion. He asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood: not only are their legs (but not arms) held in place, but their necks are also fixed, so they are compelled to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which people walk carrying things on their heads “including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials”. The prisoners cannot see the raised walkway or the people walking, but they watch the shadows cast by the men, not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the noise produced from the walkway. Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds created by the shadows, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever, whoever could best guess which shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world, and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners. The Allegory may be related to Plato’s ‘Theory of Forms’, according to which the “Forms” (or “Ideas”), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. Only knowledge of the Forms constitutes real knowledge. This ‘Theory of Forms’ is in turn reminiscent of the theories propagated by Carl Jung, in which he coined the terms ‘Archetypes’ and ‘collective unconscious’.

Start to think about this world, not as a concrete, static, and linear existence, but as a dynamic, ever changing, pliable and cyclic existence. When we do this, our definition for God can, paradoxically, become very simple. He is The All. The human reason, whose reports we must accept so long as we think at all, informs us as follows regarding THE ALL:

1.) THE ALL must be ALL that REALLY IS. There can be nothing existing outside of THE ALL, else THE ALL would not be THE ALL.

2.)THE ALL must be INFINITE, for there is nothing else to define, confine, bound, limit or restrict THE ALL. It must be Infinite in Time, or ETERNAL, — it must have always continuously existed, for there is nothing else to have ever created it, and something can never evolve from nothing, and if it had ever “not been,” even for a moment, it would not “be” now, — it must continuously exist forever, for there is nothing to destroy it, and it can never “not-be,” even for a moment, because something can never become nothing. It must be Infinite in Space — it must be Everywhere, for there is no place outside of THE ALL — it cannot be otherwise than continuous in Space, without break, cessation, separation, or interruption, for there is nothing to break, separate, or interrupt its continuity, and nothing with which to “fill in the gaps.” It must be Infinite in Power, or Absolute, for there is nothing to limit, restrict, restrain, confine, disturb or condition it — it is subject to no other Power, for there is no other Power.

3.)THE ALL must be IMMUTABLE, or not subject to change in its real nature, for there is nothing to work changes upon it; nothing into which it could change, nor from which it could have changed. It cannot be added to nor subtracted from; increased nor diminished; nor become greater or lesser in any respect whatsoever. It must have always been, and must always remain, just what it is now — THE ALL — there has never been, is not now, and never will be, anything else into which it can change. “Matter forms the physical foundation for all forms. Is God merely Matter? No. Matter cannot manifest Life or Mind, and as Life and Mind are manifested in the Universe, The All cannot be Matter, for nothing rises higher than its own source. Then is God mere Energy or Force? Not Energy or Force as the materialists use the terms, for their energy and force are blind, mechanical things, devoid of Life or Mind. Life and Mind can never evolve from blind Energy or Force. God cannot be mere Energy or Force, for, if it were, then there would be no such things as Life and Mind in existence, and we know better than that, for we are Alive and using Mind to consider this very question, and so are those who claim that Energy or Force is Everything.”

The All is mind, and Mind is absolutely necessary for the manifestion of observable life, just as Matter is necessary, for it is the manifold in which The All can perceive action and reaction. Like previously said, the fact that we are alive, and able to ponder questions like these are enough proof that another world exists. And exist it does, even though it is hidden within this one.

Here is one of my favorite quotes: Blavatsky - “The infinite and uncreated spirit that we usually call GOD, a substance of the highest virtue and excellency, produced everything else by emanative causality. God thus is the primary substance, the rest, the secondary; if the former created matter with a power of moving itself, he, the primary substance, is still the cause of that motion as well as of the matter, and yet we rightly say that it is matter which moves itself. “We may define this kind of spirit we speak of to be a substance indiscernible, that can move itself, that can penetrate, contract, and dilate itself, and can also penetrate, move, and alter matter,”

Blavatsky - “The highest “head” contains the Trinity in Chaos, out of which springs the manifested trinity. En-Soph, the unrevealed forever, who is boundless and unconditioned, cannot create, and therefore it seems to us a great error to attribute to him a “creative thought,” as is commonly done by the interpreters. In every cosmogony this supreme Essence is passive; is boundless, infinite, and unconditioned, it can have no thought nor idea. It acts not as the result of volition, but in obedience to its own nature, and according to the fatality of the law of which it is itself the embodiment. Thus, with the Hebrew kabalists, En-Soph is non-existent , for it is incomprehensible to our finite intellects, and therefore cannot exist to our minds.”

En-soph can literally be translated to the ‘no-thing.’ Now, this is not, from my point of view, Atheistic. For the oldest philosophical and religious doctrines describe the Universe by creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). But, there are misconceptions about the word ‘nothing’. First, we must establish what ‘nothing’ is. Everything in existence, at some point is formless, it is no-thing. existing only in Spirit. “the primitive substance is eternal and unchangeable. Its highest revelation is the pure, luminous ether, the boundless infinite space, not a void resulting from the absence of forms, but, on the contrary, the foundation of all forms, and anterior to them. But the very presence of forms denotes it to be the creation of Maya, and all her works are as nothing before the uncreated being, SPIRIT, in whose profound and sacred repose all motion must cease forever.” Spirit is nothing, for it cannot be said to exist. The Buddhist doctrine of annihilation illustrates beautifully: “Annihilation means, with the Buddhistical philosophy, only a dispersion of matter, in whatever form or semblance of form it may be; for everything that bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner or later perish, i.e., change that shape; therefore, as something temporary, though seeming to be permanent, it is but an illusion, Maya; for, as eternity has neither beginning nor end, the more or less prolonged duration of some particular form passes, as it were, like an instantaneous flash of lightning. Before we have the time to realize that we have seen it, it is gone and passed away for ever; hence, even our astral bodies, pure ether, are but illusions of matter, so long as they retain their terrestrial outline. The latter changes, says the Buddhist, according to the merits or demerits of the person during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis. When the spiritual entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, then only it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable Nirvana. He exists in spirit, in nothing; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely annihilated, and thus will die no more, for spirit alone is no Maya, but the only REALITY in an illusionary universe of ever-passing forms.” In the Zohar, En-Soph is ‘the One, and the infinite Unity.’ But as I said, it is also called the ‘no-thing’. And this my friends is the ultimate paradox. God is everything and nothing at the same time. Everything is nothing with a twist.

Works citied: - The Kybalion - The Bible - Wikipedia - Isis Unveiled by H.P. Blavatsky

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