That is an interesting take on the subject. I am personally a universalist, meaning that I acknowledge that all traditions have something going for them in their own context, but I have my bias towards the Sermon on the Mount, Non-dualism, and Mysticism, and look at the world as a panentheist. I believe, going from what we know and have heard, that our lives are intended, even if we are often not happy with them, but that we should understand our life as a chance to learn about the so-called transcendentals, Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity.
My oldest sister is a Buddhist, and she firmly believes in rebirth. She once had a conversation with a fortune teller of sorts, although she is not known for being naive, and she said the experience was quite profound. The âmysticâ told her that she had been here before, several times, and other things that made much sense to her.
I thought about that a lot, and began to reach the conclusion that I certainly havenât been here before. Much of what people accept as normal, even down to the level of social interaction feels quite alien to me, and although I have reached an age where I can accept things and make sense out of them, I still donât feel like this is my âhome planetâ.
I used to have to pretend, almost all the time, just to âfit inâ, but luckily Iâve reached an age where I can be honest, first and foremost with myself, and now with others. Itâs very liberating, and removing all those layers of manipulation and deception simplifies life in ways that I really wish I had discovered sooner.
I always thought that most religions have a âsolid coreâ, consisting of God, the Prophets, and Godâs will - which effortlessly equates to the trancendentals you mentioned: Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity. The doctrine, hierarchy, and further laws that are built on top however, are man-made, and are subject to flaws just as man is.
Hereâs one of the first things I posted here:
Itâs truly what I believe, expressed in very simplistic (and perhaps meandering) terms.
Yes, Bob , you are right. , and as ambiguous my writing is I have yet to unify, the internal map that is an expression of the inner , prior impression, where that image, for better or for worse is etched into like a hard driven, literally a hard drive, thatâs contesting priority, where âpriority â does not necessarily mean a temporal but maybe a more significant allusion.
I was going to useâillusionâ instead of âallusionâ and such need to clarify, shows a concern, but a concern of indifference whether which interpretation is chosen. That post modern publishing has been reduced to the idea that anyone who needs to write, to publicly export and extract their internal dialogue, may be unable to clarify what non literal meaning should be attached to the content of what the need to export, since one can chat along with oneâsâ self only as a prelude to connect with what has come to be known as the âconstruction of realityâ
After a while it becomes manifest that all internal dialogue is really a back and forth process between the self and the other)s) illiteracy is not a lack of literal interpretation in my opinion, but a stage of backward dormancy where the internal dialogue is still at the stage where Narcisdus saw in the pool of water other then himself, he couldâve fathom the depth underneath .
Itâs an urge to unify by getting in touch with oneâs inner , hidden self, that, if not eventually realized might turn even evil, something staring back from a vat.
I could not really edit the above as I really would have liked to Bob, so instead this pasted question on your part underneath, tries to connect with it , albeit as an afterthought.
Bob:
I would interpret this as suggesting that there is something underlying the existence of the physical universe that we can see, and that God is âlocalâ in some way. I would translate this into my panentheism, which posits that the âentityâ that wills our universe into existence is also somehow spread throughout it. I would equate this entity with all sentient beings, as well as some experiencing agents that we do not perceive.
Our perception and our language are things we regularly trip over, which are fragile instruments through which we attempt to touch the fullness of reality. Both are limited and easily distorted; perception frames what we can register, while language tries to fix that fleeting experience in symbols. Because of this, we often turn to allegory, metaphor, and narrative as our vessels of meaning. These forms are the bridges we construct between what we sense and what we can say, carrying fragments of insight across the gap between the ineffable and the comprehensible.
Yet, the cultural climate shifts in cycles. There are times when mystery, ambiguity, and nuance are welcomed and when uncertainty itself feels sacred, and myth is understood as a language of truth beyond literal fact. And then there are times, like much of our present age, when everything must be categorized, verified, and reduced to data. Mystery is viewed as ignorance, and metaphor as a soft substitute for precision. In such phases, we forget that understanding is not merely the accumulation of proofs but a living relationship with what exceeds our grasp.
I often think of the hidden networks of fungi as an image for this relationship between human consciousness and what we call God. The mycelium spreads underground, unseen yet essential, weaving through the soil to connect trees into a vast forest mind. It nourishes life, recycles decay, and holds the ecosystem together in ways no single organism could comprehend from its own limited vantage point. Likewise, we might be expressions of a divine intelligence and a distributed consciousness through which life sustains, transforms, and speaks to itself. What we perceive as separate selves may be like the mushrooms that briefly surface: visible expressions of a vast, unseen continuity that is always at work beneath the surface of our awareness.
Perhaps the tension between our need to define and our need to wonder is itself part of that networkâs rhythmâits breathing in and out. In moments of openness, we are allowed to feel the pulse of that hidden web; in moments of rigidity, we forget, until the system humbly reminds us through collapse and renewal that we are not standing apart from it, but within it.
Thatâs interesting. I have probably been communicating for so long that I forgot that it begins as an inner dialogue that requires expression, and if the practice or the counterparts in a conversation are rare, then it can sour in us. We need people to âbounce offâ in conversation, especially when we are using a language that is not our mother-tongue, and I was very fortunate when coming to Germany in the 1970s, because there was a lot of receptivity and willingness to discuss until late into the night, lubricated by beer and humour.
Well thereâs a coincidence, I posted this recently (regarding decentralisation):
I also referred to mycelium, as far as Iâm aware a single organism exists somewhere (in the US?) which is the largest living organism on Earth, and is essentially immortal, as long as the forest it inhabits exists.
Your idea that we are a part of a distributed consciousness, likened to mycelium, is extremely interesting to me. Perhaps we are just the surface fruit, like mushrooms, and although temporary in that respect, the underlying network always remains.
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Hi Bob.
Great to see you back.
I started reading Discovering Magic there were times I started to become bored with its conservatism and then I got to âLiesâ.
This is where you come into your own. You portray the fear of having to face new situations with dread and panic and I had a chuckle at this.
I think I can see where this is leading.
My idol is Henry Miller, he gets down to the nitty gritty about himself and the reader finds themself laughing at times at his so called misfortunes. To be able to step outside of oneself and be brutally honest is a remarkable ability.
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Henry Miller: All right, Iâll tell you. June appeared like an Angel, and I offered her a foolâs faith. She was a taxi dancer. I paid my dime, she put her head on my shoulder, but then the lies began. She told me her mother was a gypsy and her father was a count. Later, I saw a film and realized she swiped her whole childhood right out of the film.
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AnaĂs Nin: And so?
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Henry Miller: So I married her.
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Henry Miller: Iâm not a portrait painter.
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June Miller: Iâll say youâre not. Look what youâve done to Anais. You make everything ugly! Beauty is a joke for you. Youâre so negative. Youâre a failure as a writer. Youâre not a man, youâre a child! You use women! You used me, you fucker!
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Henry Miller: AAAHHH!
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June Miller: You fucker!
DisenchantmentâŚâŚ next
It can be entertaining, but, it is somewhat amateurish.
You have to âlet goâ more often.
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It was my first attempt at a novel length story. Iâve written a lot since then.
I would like to read more.
Lawrence Durrellâs most famous trilogy is actually a quartet, The Alexandria Quartet, exploring love and identity in 1930s Alexandria, consisting of Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea.
Have your read this? I am certain you would like it and would probably relate to this style of writing rather than Henry Millerâs which is most likely a touch too crass for you (and others).
The Alexandria Quartet was published between 1957 and 1960, when I was five. So, as you can imagine, it is a while ago. The only thing that Iâve retained, I think, is his writing in the present tense and a mild sensuality that was quite exciting at the time.
I am not sure what you mean, you were five when you read it?
I read it about 10 years ago, I also read Pride and Prejudice 20 years ago, she wrote this in 1790âs when she was 21.
I have been reading about your childhood days and it is very interesting, your mother didnât seem to be suited to the lifestyle, maybe too sensitive, I got to part where you are back in England, does it continue from there?
No, I was twenty-eight or something around that. About a year after my son was born. The books (and others) fell foul of damp, and I cursed the flat we were living in. I had bought them second-hand.
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Hi guys. I always break in uninvited but after all! Read most of those, Miller the pornographer said of his trilogy became an artist late in life and said of his attempt to paint I think it was a sea scape that after retouching he didnât wait enough to dry the canvas and as a result created a signed up mess of colors which turned ever darker and not in a good way but a formless thing
I did hear him say on an interview just before he died, that he would have known how challenging writing was to become , he would rather have driven a busâŚ
On magic , there is a very deep magic which evolved out of the very thin difference between source and sorcery, profound as it is, itâs nothing to kid around withâŚ
I wouldnât say you were uninvited at all. I have Henry Millerâs The Colossus of Maroussi on my shelf in which he speaks of Lawrence Durrell writing from Corfu, so there is a connection to what we were speaking about there. Itâs easy to mess up a painting, I know, because I have done it several times and, being lazy, I took up photography. Perhaps that was Millerâs motivation.
Writing is not so bad but going back over it and editing is a pain in the butt, but Iâve driven buses and just about anything else driveable, and I wouldnât swap writing for monotone driving.
Magic here is really about enchantment, so my story could be titled Discovering Enchantment, but I decided on Magic in connection with Magic Mountain or Der Zauberberg. So I donât think we are going down into sorcery.
Yes, itâs an absolute agreement that I can relay here, except it was Goetheâs anti- idealism here which can stand for unwarranted optimism he objected to here, as barring a return to metaphysics.
I donât really know how intuition can bode here except with the breakdown of the bicameral mind, as a reaction. ; democratic reflection of how things should be.
I donât really know where I get this stuff, the source is so allusive with scanty and scattered resources, by then perhaps itâs verboten on many levels.
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Bob, reflecting on magic and sorcery, itâs Lawrence Durellâs wife in Tangier am alluding to, but could be completely flat wrong on that. In fact not even her, but his wifeâs live-in companion. Iâm so messed up, my memory nowadays, I canât help he wrote The Sheltering Sky, and the âEnglish Patient. The film was disappointing somewhat, but havenât read the book either, so it may be an unfair comparison. Will check that out , and be back if it does.May be reticent about return, well somewhat, if it doesnât check out.