a new understanding of today, time and space.

let us work with an example…

let us say, for argument sake, that my wife died…
(and I really, really, really hope not)
but let us say she dies…

I would be suffering, no doubt about it,
I have been with my wife for 27 years and married
for 23 years… I would be in a great deal of pain
and naturally so… but that suffering, that pain
isn’t what defines me or will it define my relationship
with my wife… wifes die and husbands die and children die
and parents die and those wifes and husbands and children
and parents suffer and grow old have diseases…
it is the way of life… I can rail against what is or
I can deny or I can simply accept the fact that birth,
disease, old age and death are the price of life…

but with my wife I can hold onto all the wonderful moments
we had and the quiet moments in which we express our love
without saying a word and the occasional fight…

it is all part of this matter we call life… and suffering
and old age and disease and death is a part of life…

I can do no other then to accept the fact… because
I can’t change birth or disease or old age or death,
anymore then I can stop the sun from moving or the stars
from revolving…….

I can simply accept these matter as matters I cannot control
and work with the matters I can control…

I can control this moment, the here and now… I have the day off,
I can watch TV or I can read or I can write here on ILP or I can eat
lunch… this moment… this here and now, I can control…
and I can see this moment for what it is, a moment in which
I can learn something… I can see this moment as a beautiful moment,
no different then sitting on the beach and watching the sun set
or high in the mountains looking down on some meadow……

we create the context of each moment and it can be beautiful or
evil or wrong or boring…….

all you have to do to see each moment is to distance yourself
from your life and take each moment separately… escape from
the flow of life and understand those moments apart from the natural
flow of our lives…….

we see life as one constant flow from birth to death but life is
really a series of moments that connect us from birth to death…
each moment is a separate moment and in our minds we connect
those moments together to create a story about our lives,
life is a series of still photo’s in which we turn into a movie
in our heads…stop the flow of the movie in your head and
separate out one moment and be with that moment, right now……

I will take a moment with my wife… we are sitting on the couch
and she is watching some real housewives of someplace show and
I am reading… we don’t say anything to each other, but I look up
and she is looking at me and we smile at each other, I say hi and she
says hi…… and we have that moment of love and it is enough…
we have no need for grand dramatic emotionalism or big
pronouncements of love for each other… hi was enough…….

and yes, yes I may suffer in the past and in the future, but it
doesn’t matter because I got a hi from my wife……
and that is of more value then any suffering I might get
before or after……….and it is a moment I can hold onto for the
rest of my life… that moment can be the focal point of my life,
not any suffering or any grand wonderous moment that may come
in the future……… sometimes hi is enough to carry us over a lifetime…
regardless of any possible suffering of birth, disease, old age and death…

a simple hi…

Kropotkin

This sounds interesting.
When taken to the max, what benefites are there for this idea?

when taken to max, he’d probably ask something like ‘where did you get this stuff… out of a fortune cookie?’

oh you mean taken to the maximum, like the limit. okay i thought you meant stirner, max.

Or at least Count St. Germain

the Count of St. Germain,
One of the most enigmatic and controversial personalities of the eighteenth century. His birth date and the date of his death, as well as his true name cannot be established with any certainty. According to a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Neuchatel on 27th September 1911 (translated in Anthroposophical Quarterly, winter, 1960), the name does not only refer to one personality, but to others too. In the true bearer of this name lives the individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz. See also lecture 5 given on 4th November 1904, which is included in this volume and the notes thereto.

my Atlantis lectures …
This refers to lectures given in January 1904, of which, however, there are no notes.

To find our bearings,
The notes of Vegelahn express this in the following way: ‘To find our bearings, we must get a little insight into two currents of the present day which are hidden in the souls of men of the fifth Root Race and are often in conflict with one another. The one current is best represented in the Indian and South European confessions and also in the outlook on life of the Jewish peoples and the Babylonians — and the other is contained in the confessions and outlook of the Persians, westward of Persia to the regions of the Teutons.’

Of these two currents …outlook on life of the peoples of the Southern Zone … basic tendency of the Northern peoples.
See: The East in the Light of the West, fifth lecture, Munich, 27th August 1909.

Devas.
The Indian name for the gods of Devachan, the heavenly world.

Asuras,
Indian — Suras = gods (from Asu = breath) became non-gods = A-suras. In the old Oriental religions and also later by Rudolf Steiner used as the name for satanic beings. In connection with this lecture, however, it is used in the sense of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, (‘On the Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its various aspects’) p.500. ‘Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil spirits and lower gods, who are eternally at war with the great deities — are the gods of the Secret Wisdom. In the oldest portions of the Rig Veda, they are the spiritual and the divine, the term Asura being used for the Supreme Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the Zoroastrians. There was a time when the gods Indra, Angi, and Varuna themselves belonged to the Asuras.’ Only in Atlantean times, at the transition from Lemuria to Atlantis, were these originally high gods transformed into non-gods.

In the notes of a hitherto unpublished lecture by Rudolf Steiner, given in Berlin, 17th October 1904, the following is said: ‘If we wish to understand the point of view of spiritual evolution we must be clear about an important event of the Atlantean epoch. Those beings which had originally been spiritual, now appeared as revolutionaries striving for independence. Suras now became Asuras. Until this time they had taken no part in evolution. They are those powers which, just as in our day, represent the intellectual and spiritual side of human nature. This side of Lucifer’s nature is that which also stood for Christianity during the first centuries. There are two documents referring to that, one is in the Vatican and a copy of it is in the possession of the most thoroughly initiated Christian of the western world: The Count of St. Germain.’

We learn particulars about it …
It is to be noted that the text of the paragraph beginning with these words is defective. See in this respect Blavatsky’s TheSecret Doctrine, Book 2, ‘The History of the Fourth Race,’ also lecture by Dr. Steiner, Dornach, 18th January 1920 (not yet translated) [Yes it is!], in which the date of the cessation of physical incarnation is given as 6th. Millenium, A.D.

‘The Sons of God saw the daughters of men’ …
Genesis 6, 1–2. See also Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, Part 2, ‘On the Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its various aspects.’ In the story of Noah from The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine it says of this event: ‘… this time men began to multiply on the earth, and the children of God, that is to say, of Seth … saw the daughters of men, that is to say, of Cain, and were overcome by concupiscence and took them to their wives.’

the saga of Prometheus.
This is also linked by Rudolf Steiner to Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2.

‘In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.’
Genesis 3:16.

‘dying and becoming’ … ‘gloomy guest’

‘Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und werde!
Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.

Concluding verse of a poem by Goethe calledSelige Sehnsucht (‘Holy Longing’).

‘And there are three that bear witness in earth,’
First Epistle of John, v. 7. Rudolf Steiner had already explained this passage from the Epistle in detail in his lecture on 29th April 1904. According to that, the present-day materialistic concepts of blood and water must not be applied here. When it is said: ‘There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.’

This means in theosophical terminology: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, the three higher principles. And when it is said later on: ‘And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood,’ it means the three lower principles, the three soul attributes. The astral body, as well as the blood, (not our physical blood), are the lowest parts of the soul. Jewish esotericism believes that movement of the blood is caused by the astral body and that is correct. All influences which do not directly pass through the soul, but still have an effect on the body are called the ‘blood’ in Jewish esoteric teaching. It is the active principle, the motivator. We call only the red liquid which flows through the body ‘blood.’ By water is signified ‘Kama’ in every occult language — feelings, emotions, passions, etc: ‘And now I shall tell you why this is called water. You must get acquainted with the concept that humanity today has grown accustomed to visualising everything in a much more materialistic way than he did formerly. If you picture to yourself an old cabbalist, he did not regard water as just a flowing element, but as an image and he arrived at that in the following way. He said to himself; the water is inhabited by those animals which we reckon as the most primitive. Animals evolved originally out of the liquid element: sea animals, jellyfish, amphibians. These then came out of the water onto the land. It was only out of water that emotions and feelings came about … We distinguish the lower part of the soul, which stirs the blood and makes it pulsate and causes pleasure and dislike and all such other painful experiences. And that he calls water because from water is derived that element of soul. And then we have the thinking part of the soul which is Spirit.’

hidden manuscripts …
See note 6.

the great masters … the founders of our spiritual movement — not our society.’ …
Rudolf Steiner expressed himself in a similar way on the 2nd January 1905, in a letter to a Member who was about to be accepted into the Esoteric School: ‘You know that behind the whole theosophical movement there are highly evolved beings whom we call “Masters” or “Mahatmas”. These sublime beings have already completed the path which the rest of humanity still has to tread. They are now active as the great “Teachers of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Human Perception”. They are already engaged in work on higher planes to which the rest of mankind will evolve during the course of the next periods of development (so-called “Rounds”). They do their work on the physical plane through their “messengers”, the first of whom was H.P. Blavatsky — I mean the first as regards the theosophical movement. The Masters never found an outer Organisation of society, nor would they administer one. The Theosophical Society was formed by its founder Members. (H.P. Blavatsky, Olcott and others) in order to promote the work of the Masters on the physical plane, but these Masters themselves have never exerted any influence on the Society as such. It is in its whole character and leadership purely and simply the work of men living on the earth.’ See in this context also lecture 16, given on 22nd October 1905 (contained in this volume).

Lecture 2, Berlin, 10th June 1904

Source for the text.
Shorthand notes by Franz Seiler and Walter Vegelahn and short notes in longhand by Marie Steiner von Sivers.

I mentioned already …
At the end of his lecture given on 27th May 1904 with the words: ‘Next time I shall deal with one of the most important legends, which is one you have often heard, but whose inner meaning is so profound that there is hardly anything to match it: the legend of Cain and Abel.’

an allegory for very profound mysteries
See in this connection: Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, ‘The Divine Hermaphrodite.’ p.124, but also Rudolf Steiner’s later cycle:The Effects of Occult Development Upon the Sheaths of Man, ten lectures given in the Hague, 20th–29th March 1913 (London and New York, 1945).

Enoch,
Apocryphal Book of the Old Testament.

Take the first sentence from the fifth chapter of Genesis:
This is a free rendering by Rudolf Steiner of the words of the Old Testament. Instead of ‘male and female created he them,’ Rudolf Steiner substituted: ‘male-female created he him,’ with subsequent corrections of ‘them,’ ‘their,’ etc., into ‘him,’ ‘his,’ etc. On later occasions, Rudolf Steiner often stressed the fact that this first creation of man was a male-female creation. Compare also:Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, eighth lecture and Genesis, Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation, eleventh lecture.

Abel is the same as ‘pneuma’ in Greek,
See in this connection Rudolf Steiner’s The Gospel of St. Matthew, lecture 5.

The brain became male,
This passage appears to have been imperfectly preserved. One can compare it with passages from lectures 17, 18, 19 and 20, given on 23rd October 1905, and 2nd January 1906, in the present volume.

It was a sin when ‘The Sons of God’ …
See note 15 of the previous lecture.

From this union resulted a race of men…
Genesis 6, 4. ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the Sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown.’

It is called ‘Rakshasas’ in occult language …
According to H.P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, there are many explanations for this race of the Rakshasas in Oriental esoteric philosophy. See, for instance: The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, p. 288, where it speaks of ‘Rakshasas’ (giant demons) and Daityas (Titans).

A German translation of C.G. Harrison’s The Transcendental Universe, which was among the books in Rudolf Steiner’s library, may have been used by him in preparing this lecture. In the fifth lecture of the above it speaks of: ‘These semi-human creatures, the progeny of the fallen angels, are known in the Hindu Scriptures as the “Asuras” and are sometimes called “Rakshasas” or demons.’ This makes it plain that, in lecture 2 held on 10th June 1904, Rudolf Steiner conferred a different meaning on the term ‘Asuras’ to the one he had in mind when he lectured on 23rd May 1904 (lecture 1).

It is not for nothing that the Bible expresses it thus:
An account of Christ’s entry into Hell can be read in the Apocryphal Book of ‘The Acts of Pilate.’

The Rakshasa beings were brought thereby into a state of paralysis and lethargy.
This passage appears in the notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers in the following form: ‘The Rakshasas were brought into a state of paralysis because they were being opposed from two sides: by the old Chela, who was deeply connected with the physical plane and by a purely spiritual being, the Christ. Their power was thus paralysed from two sides. Something cosmic was effected. This tension, this bottled-up energy, had to be prevented from becoming effective energy. That is the Christ principle in action against the Antichrist.’

C.G. Harrison has the following to say on this subject in the aforementioned book: ‘The Asuras are igneous, or dynamic, in their nature, and their power for evil was terrific. It was destroyed for ever by the advent of Jesus Christ, and they are now, as St. Jude puts it, “reserved in everlasting chains until the judgment of the great day.” (St. Jude evidently derived his knowledge of the subject from the “Book of Enoch”.) Stated in scientific terms, they are held in check, unable to move backwards or forwards, between the earth and the Eighth Sphere at the point of latency, where the attraction of both is equal on all planes, until the “great day” or axidal coincidence, when they will be drawn irresistibly into the vortex of the latter. This text in St. Jude has been unfortunately misunderstood, and supposed to apply to Lucifer and the first fall of the angels; hence the Miltonic and medieval myths.’

Nostradamus,
Actually Michel de Notre Dame (1503–1566). French astronomer and medical doctor. Famous on account of his Prophesies, written in French verse.

Marie-Antoinette
1755–1793: daughter of the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa; became Queen of France in 1774 and ended her life on the scaffold, not heeding the warning of the Count of St. Germain.

You know that Jesus Christ remained on the earth for ten years after his death.
Rudolf Steiner assumed that his audience was familiar with the work of the English theosophist, G.R.S. Mead Pistis Sophia, A Gnostic Gospel, London, 1896, which begins with the words: ‘It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years speaking with his disciples …’

Pistis Sophia
The title of a work assumed to be the same as The Apocalypse of Sophia, composed by Velentius, the most learned doctor of the Gnosis who lived for thirty years in Egypt in the latter half of the second century.

The only MS of thePistis Sophia known to exist is the Askew manuscript, bought by the British Museum from the heirs of Dr. Askew at the end of the eighteenth century.

Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism.
Published in 1883. See also, The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century and its Relation to Modern Culture.

‘Nifelheim’ or ‘Ymir the Giant’
Refer to notes for lecture 3 given on 30th September 1904, (included in this volume) and also the first and thirty-first lectures inFoundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.

because it was the intention to involve man thoroughly in Kama-Manas
See twenty-third lecture inFoundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.

Lecture 3, Berlin, 30th September 1904

Voltaire, the 18th Century philosopher, described Saint-Germain as “a man who never dies, and who knows everything.” … The only thing that accounts for his death though is a local record that states Count de Saint-Germain deceased, February 27, 1784.

The Count is NOT fiction, he was a true historical figure. … Saint-Germain may have been the son of Hungarian Prince Ferenc Rakoczi, …

K: all you have to do to see each moment is to distance yourself
from your life and take each moment separately… escape from
the flow of life and understand those moments apart from the natural
flow of our lives…

Dan: This sounds interesting.
When taken to the max, what benefites are there for this idea?

K: think of life, your life as a movie…it flows and continues
along regardless of what happens in your life…the movie
still continues… and we see ourselves as being in a movie,
with the continuity of a movie… days pass into days and months
flow into months and the seasons pass into seasons and years
pass into years…our lives have a flow to it that goes from day
to month to years to decades… looking back on my life…
the years have flown from one to another to another…

I can pick out individual days and moments and events, but
for the most part, every day has quietly flown from one day
to the next without any interruption or break in it…

and we call that life…

let us take one moment, the movie of life is flowing right now…
let us take a moment and turn that movie into a still shot…

when we act in our movie, it it usually without any thought
or understanding of why we are acting that way…….

we just react, instinctively… someone moves toward us and we
react in some fashion… no thought involved, just reaction, instincts,

and when their is a fast moving situation where our lives might be threaten,
this is a good thing, sometimes we need instincts to take over and protect
us… but how often is that? I would suggest we react instinctively far too often,
instead of pausing, thinking about it situation as it occurs………

every single situation is a reflective moment waiting to happen if
we resist the temptation to react instinctively to every situation…

take every moment out of time, take every situation out of time and pause,
think about it, reflect upon that moment… what value can I use in this
situation?

I will give you a situation in which I handled rather badly just yesterday…

my wife and I went to Costco yesterday, I was involved in my own thinking
about what we were going to get, I wasn’t thinking about the situation,
I was just in my own head thinking… I went to get a cart, the cart I found
actually was two carts connected together, so I pushed the carts and then held
the one cart which dislodged the second cart, because I was in my own head
and not being aware of the situation, I saw a women with a child reaching for the second cart,
the one not in my hand… I simply let go of the first cart and grabbed the second cart,
basically out of this woman’s hand and I simply started to walk toward the front of Costco…
my wife was aghast, I heard about my “rudeness” to this poor women all the
way through Costco and all the way home……. being put on the defensive, I
attempted to justify my “rudeness” but there was no defense for this action of mine…

if I had stopped and thought about it, even for a second, I would have given up
that cart, which had no significance for me, to the woman………and I would have
taken the second cart or even the third because this cart was in front of
hundreds of carts… I was involved in my movie so much, I didn’t take the time
to isolate the moment and think about what I was doing…….

I could have just given up the cart, it wasn’t that big of a deal, it wouldn’t have
cost me anything, anything at all to give up the cart except maybe 2 seconds…
I was rude to another human being for not wanting to wait 2 seconds…

really, Kropotkin… what happened was nothing, it doesn’t matter in the overall scheme
of things… the women probably didn’t even remember it 1 minute after it happened…

but that is not the point… that “rudeness” really is the overall scheme of things,
this movie we play in our head is really just individual seconds, individual moments
that we turn into a movie in our heads…all of life is just individual moments,
individual seconds…life is just a series of snap shots which we turn into a movie
like when you take a series of pictures and then by flipping them, you turn it
into a movie……….

we need to focus on those individual snap shots, the individual moments which
is really our life, not the movie, but the individual moments and then we
need to become aware of every single moment, become aware of every single
snap shot……….we need to slow it down and become aware of the moments
of our lives………

if you think of your life, what is it you really do? we spend our days in
mindless travel to and from places and we spend hours waiting in various
lines and we spend time waiting for meals and TV shows and movies to start
and we spend a whole lot of time being bored……. most of your life is spent
in pointless actions…….

the idea of the Kantian question, “What am I to do?” is really about
giving meaning and purpose to our actions… most of our lives is
dull and boring crap… to ask oneself, “What am I to do?” is to
try to give your life some meaning and some purpose… it is to take
individual moments and create value within that moment…by
that moment, the most important moment in your life…

but Kropotkin, we humans, we have millions of moment, how can we
take one moment and give it the special notice you claim each moment
deserves? By thinking about each moment as being special, each moment deserves
our awareness and this is what I am talking about…… becoming aware of
every single moment as an individual moment……

isolate every single moment and make it the only moment in time,
no past… no future… just this moment, this second can exist for you…

no other minute or moment exists for you… right here, right now is
all we have and all we will ever have…….

isolate every single moment and make it your own…

become aware of every single moment and not the movie,
where we are past, present and future…

just that moment…the right here and the right now…
become aware of every single moment…

Kropotkin

ahaha how ingenious.

K: I have read this three times and I must admit, I have no idea what you
are talking about or its relevance to anything, anything at all………
I am sure the fault is mine, but I just can’t made any sense of this…

Kropotkin

as we look at the modern world…
we see an addiction… we have addictions to
money/wealth, we have addictions to drugs and booze
and sex and we have addictions to the material world…
books… my addiction…and to cars and to TV’s and couches
and houses…and an addiction to experiences……

the trick is to escape our addictions, because a addiction,
any addiction leads to suffering… trying to get the high from
that addiction is the root cause of suffering… the desire to get things
is suffering… that is why the Buddha and others like him, try to
point out that desire is the cause of suffering… but suffering
has other parts to it, birth, disease, old age and death…
and their is nothing we can do about those… we cannot stop
disease or old age or death and we certainly didn’t ask to be born…

the Buddha believes that by no longer being reincarnated ends suffering
but that assumes that life itself isn’t good and life is good… if
we understand certain things about it…… it is possible to think
life is good when watching the sun set on the beach or viewing
a meadow from a mountain top…… beauty itself can be rewarding…
both viewing it and creating it… but it isn’t hard to become addicted
to the desire of beauty… and the problem lies in not forming desires

but even desire can be good… I desire wisdom and I have spent my
life in search of wisdom…I have sacrificed a lot in my search for
wisdom…….can the search for, the desire for wisdom be bad?

desire isn’t a bad thing as long as it doesn’t turn into an addiction…

it really comes down to everything in moderation… do you control
your desires or do they control you? If I am willing to hurt another person to
gain my desire, then the desire controls me…

here we can use values to judge our behavior…….

instead of desire as a means to gain things, we use values…

when deciding upon a course of action, I use values to
base my actions upon… I don’t desire something but I
use a value like justice to base my actions upon…….

so I engage with the concept of justice which is equality, to
find what my actions ought to be…

“What should I do”? and we use justice as one criteria to engage
with that question……

but we must first become aware of our actions and the reasons behind
why we act as we act………and it all begins with awareness of our actions…
or as Socrates said, “Know thyself”…… there isn’t a whole lot of
difference between the understanding of people in western philosophy
and eastern philosophy… quite often the only difference is the terminology
each side uses…

do you want to be free? begin by becoming aware of your addictions,
your desires for something…then tread the path of moderation…
a goal is good to have, even trying to become the Buddha is a goal,
but understand why the goal you have chosen is the goal for you…
awareness is the focal point of everything you ought to be doing…….

Kropotkin

Note that I almost never ask “what is reality?” and for the
simple reason that I don’t think the nature of reality really
matters… we exist and matter and energy and time and space
exists… that is reality…… we can work with idea’s like
matter/energy and time/space because they are the reality
that is……… everything in the universe is matter/energy…
time/space…when I doubt, use the simplest explanation to
understand something…reality is and the only thing
we need to do is to react to that understanding of matter/energy
and time/space…

Kropotkin

I can hear someone objecting to what I am saying because
they might think,

“Your thoughts have nothing to do with me or my life.
I am in control of my life”

and I question anyone who believes that they have “control” over
their lives……. for control is the one thing that human beings
don’t have over their life… we live in a connected, global world
where actions in one part of the world affect other parts of the world
and by doing so, affect us in ways we cannot even understand……

so how would we gain control over our lives?

and the interesting question lies in this, do we really need
to control our lives? it is thought that human beings by desiring
things, suffer from that desire because desiring, whatever it is we
desire and we can’t get, causes suffering…… but the fact is we desire
things all the time and because we are not in control, we quite often
don’t get what we desire… I have wanted a Porsche 911 for years,
but I will never be able to afford it… I desire and my desire won’t
be fulfilled, but do I suffer from that? No, I understand reality…
that kind of desire can be of the “it be nice if it happened but”
and we humans live with this sort of desire all the time…and by
understanding our desire, we can control it… or perhaps,
my desire is to date a supermodel… well that ain’t going to happen,
I desire and I know it isn’t going to happen…so am I suffering from this
desire? no, I haven’t lost a second of sleep over this desire,
“it would be nice if it happened but”…………we can control our lives
by having honest expectations of the things we desire… when I was young,
I wanted to be a baseball player and I played baseball for years…
I desired but came to realize I wasn’t good enough… I came to an
honest understanding of reality… and to this day, 40 years later, I wish
I had been good enough, but “it would have been nice but”

we can avoid suffering from our desires if we are honest about
reality and the possibility of achieving those desires……

I would like to be rich, but that option is pretty much off the table,
I don’t suffer because I am honest about the possibility of being rich…

and in that honesty about reality, we have control over our lives…
if we are aware of and honest about our chance of achieving our desires,
then we can be in control, at least about that part of our lives.

but what is required in this honesty is the willingness to accept
the truth about who we are and what is possible…….

and perhaps that is what the real meaning of control,
to accept the truth about who we are and what is possible for us…

Kropotkin

finished two long ugly days, one more to go,
meanwhile I was at work thinking……

what about the people who don’t give a shit about
the Buddha or morality or bettering oneself?

what about Joe blow in Kansas? what does he care about
the stuff we are talking about here…….it doesn’t pay the bills,
it doesn’t give a thrill like watching TV or action movies or
playing video games…Joe Blow has
no idea what we are talking about and he doesn’t care…

what about those billions of people? what we are concerned about
the 99 percent of the human race just doesn’t care about…

I can rant about values and ism’s and justice or the metaphysical
or the questions of existence until I am blue in the face and it won’t change
a dam thing… as long we we have the NBA finals going on and american
football is coming soon and the latest video game like ace combat 7 is available
to play… why would people give a shit about the questions that I feel are
fundamental, the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…

I would have better luck talking to a wall then trying to convince people
that these questions of existence have any value…

how to get people to look past the most basic level of existence that
people are living at right now? Most people are living as animals with couches,
with no interest in any question that might interfere with dinner…

I have notice something about California which is the remarkable
way people here are so into their own mind and their own
issues that they don’t even notice anyone else……….

People here live in their own minds so much, the outside world
counts for very little… how do we get people to look out again?
how do we get people to see that there is a world out here?
people are so self-involved that to notice the questions of existence
would require a massive change in people’s viewpoint…

IQ45 is just another example of someone who is so self-involved that
he thinks everyone on planet earth is simply staff for him………
and plenty of people here in California is the same way……

how to break that tunnel vision?

questions without answers… as usual…

Kropotkin

I wonder why people won’t look at their life or wonder or doubt
about those questions of existence that I have mentioned…
why won’t people ask themselves about what it means to be human?

fear, ignorance, or perhaps it simply has never occurred to them…

from a society standpoint, it cannot allow large number of people
to engage in those questions of existence because that takes away
people from doing the task that society needs done…
and in the short term that might be true, but in the long
run, I believe an examination of our values, of the questions
of existence, would be beneficial to society…

recall our analogy of before Zen where the mountains were solid, calm,
peaceful, and the sea was flat and motionless and the river ran quietly
in its bank and then during Zen, the mountains dances and quiver and the
sea was violent and the waves danced high in the air and the river overflowed
it banks…… and after Zen, when the mountains were once again solid
and calm and the sea was calm and motionless and the river once again
returned to its riverbank………

if people were to examine their lives in regard to the existential questions
of existence, they would be thrown into the state of being upset and confused
and out of control…….but that is a small price to pay for the understanding that
would come out of an detailed examination of our lives…

I have gone from detailing the conditions of our existence to
to listing why, why we should examine our lives in terms of
the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…indeed, ask
yourself, why should I engage in these questions that will only
throw me into chaos?

Isn’t understanding the value of our lives worth a little chaos?
isn’t find the meaning of our lives worth some chaos?

the road is hard and paved with difficult rocks to walk along,
but that is the point… the path to understanding is hard
and it is painful and it is difficult to bear……….

but look around you… I look around me and I see people
already in confusion and in pain and in doubt… the rise in drug use
and the lost feeling people have is a result of our failure to examine
those questions of existence………

the dogmatic attachment people have to their ism’s and ideologies
stems from their being at loss and alienated from society…
we hold those ism’s and ideologies tight because we have no other
foundations to hold on to…… if we can give people something other
to believe in besides dogmatic and destructive ideologies, they can
begin to set their feet along another path…… the path to values
and wisdom………

our society is at war with each other because we haven’t
really begun to question the basic values of our society which
are crying out to be questioned and doubted……

it isn’t our society at war, but the phony values that cannot
lead us to a better life that are at war……. to find ourselves,
to correct society, we must find the values which best represent
who we really are… both individually and collectively…

the values we currently hold no longer fit who we are… that
is the reason for our discomfort and alienation we feel…
we hold “American” values which no longer fit our circumstances
at this time… we must revise, revisit our values, personally
and collectively to understand “what we are to do?” and
“what should our values be?” and “what we should spend our energy on?”

we are not even in position to be able to ask about those existential questions
because we are so lost in regards to what is really important in our lives…

the nihilism that dominates our lives is blindly us to our real possibilities,
our real choices…it isn’t in the pursuit of our happiness which we have
equated to be the search for money/profits that should be the goal of life…

no, we must engage in the questions of existence to find our meaning, our purpose…

and why are we so afraid to engage in those questions?

we have become paralyzed with fear to the point, of not being able to
confront the questions of “what are we really to do?”…

we have to overcome and that is one of the basic understanding of life…
we begin with knowing ourselves, know thyself, and then we
reevaluate our values and in doing so, we can overcome who we are right now…

the process is always the same… and the beginning point is always the same…

we must become aware…awareness is always the beginning point…

so start there… become aware…

and be truly the ubermensch….for who among the crowd
actually tries to begin the process of becoming who they are?
begin that process by becoming aware…

Kropotkin

I suspect that part of the resistance to awareness comes
from human nature… human beings live with a lot of
denial and downright refusal to begin the quest for
self examination for fear (there is that word again)
of fear of what we might learn if we engage in honest
self-appraisal or self evaluation…people hold certain
“fixed” ideas about themselves and their world…
usually these “fixed” ideas are the result of
the childhood indoctrinations…let us talk about
one or two childhood indoctrinations…
god and the greatness of America……

when we take children to church, even if we don’t say another
word, that experience of going to church, is indoctrination…
any attempt, any attempt to explain to children the universe by
a metaphysical answer, be it god or a higher power, is
indoctrination, simple as that…….

and as for the indoctrination of the greatness of America,
we get that from the media and parents and the official
method of indoctrination which is schooling, education in our
grade schools and middle and high school.

it takes years if ever can we overcome our educational
learning, our official indoctrination from society, about society…

and all this indoctrination feeds us some of our self held notions
that we are fearful of examining… America’s greatness is taken
as gospel, an indoctrination that we don’t examine for fear that
we might be wrong…….

and the problem with this is simple, people hold their self value,
their self worth is tied up in these unexamined notions we have
from our childhood indoctrinations… are self worth is tied
up in the safety of this idea of a god from whom we can be
saved or absolved from our sins and heaven provides us with
comfort and a salve to our souls about any actions we might take…
we can lose the guilt about our actions if we can be forgiven
from god and be allowed into heaven…

to challenge this notion means we might be held accountable
for our actions instead of being given salvation from our actions…

to have a god who can save us, gives us some comfort, it takes
the worry away about being held accountable, personally accountable
for our actions… we simply have to clap our hands and tinker bell will fly
and if we simply accept jesus as our savior, we are saved… a get
out of jail free card as it were. Why worry about any accountability
if we can simply pray it away?

It is easy to have god because you no longer need to take accountability
for your actions… there is no need to become aware of our actions, for
no matter what we do, we can be saved, given salvation for any actions taken.
Say ten hail Marys and your good to go.

self examination isn’t necessary when you have a “get out of hell free card”

other acts of denial is our assumptions is about who we are…
most people assume that they are good honest people without
actually any examination to the validity of this assumption……

another assumption that is taken without any examination of its
truthfulness is the greatness of America…it is assumed that
America is great and it is exceptional…… but no facts are ever
really examined because it is assumed that greatness is
about money/wealth/profits…… we are the richest country
in the world and that automatically makes us great,
the greatest country on earth… but does an high GDP,
Gross domestic product, really reflect “greatness”?

our “greatness” is based upon an assumption about the GDP…

our “greatness” is based upon a childhood indoctrination
and our own personal self esteem is somewhat predicated upon
the greatness of America… if we think America is great, then
we can hold our heads high in the reflected glory of the greatness
of America.

but what if we are wrong about the greatness of America…
what else might we be wrong about our thinking about
who and what we are………

we keep our self worth by our measurement of the things we
hold dear… and what if the things we hold dear, aren’t very
valuable at all? what does that do to our self esteem?

personally, I have been lucky in sports and in my work jobs in that
the teams I was on were always pretty good, in baseball, in track
and in cross-country…… and in the companies I have worked
for were mostly the much better companies in their field…
I worked for a large bookstore chain when it was the king of the hill
and I could hold my head high because of this… my self esteem,
my self worth was tied into the fact that this company was the
king of the hill in the bookstore industry…today, that same company
is poised to go belly up… (although I haven’t worked there in over
20 years)

our self esteem is tied up in the teams we hold dear and the places
we work at and the country we are born in… and this means
to keep our high self esteem, our high self worth, we don’t
engage in any kind of self examination because what we might
find will damage or hurt our self worth, our self esteem…….

we fear what we might find if we engage in honest self examination…
we fear we might not find we are as kind or loving or as smart as we
thought of ourselves as being…

so we are not only fighting the childhood indoctrinations but
we are fighting our self esteem, our self worth when
we engage in any kind of personal self evaluation about who we are……

people have an unrealistic understanding of who they are and what
is possible for them because of our self esteem being tied into
our childhood indoctrinations and our self worth being tied to such
items as god, country and our workplace………

how are you going to escape your childhood indoctrinations,
how are you going to find your self esteem when it is not tied
into god or country or your workplace?

reevaluate what you take pride in and ask yourself,
does my self esteem, my self worth depend on
the value I place on others, be that god, country,
or workplace?

we cannot begin to think of ourselves as being honest
until we can be honest with ourselves………

so what are you in denial about yourself?

Kropotkin

reading from the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy as I often do,
I came across this from the entry about Confucius:

……Confucius finds himself in an age in which values are out of joint.
Actions and behavior no longer correspond to the labels originally
attached to them. “Rulers do not rule and subject do not serve”
he observes………

is this not an accurate description of our age… an age in which
values are out of joint!.. we see people proclaim themselves
Pro-life but that disappears once the baby is born and the real business
of being pro-life actually begins… we live in an age where people
call themselves Christians and yet actively ignore everything Jesus says
in the bible…… while ascribing to the bible every single prejudice
and childhood indoctrination they have which the bible doesn’t even
speak about… so the bible isn’t anti-homosexual but the individual is
and so they attribute to the bible their prejudice and the bible is quite clear
about loving thy neighbor… regardless if the neighbor is brown or black or
yellow or white… to build a wall to keep out immigrants is
directly against one of the key messages of Jesus………and yet these
people insist on their being a Christian………

our words and our actions are not, not in synch and this failure has
caused much of our alienation, our disconnect with society, our separation
from the society…….

this disconnect cannot be solved by building a border wall or banning abortion…

this disconnect lies at the very heart of our “modern” experience and might
be considered the very model of the “modern” experience…….

we cannot heal ourselves until we connect our actions and our words…
if we say we are kind, we must be kind, if we say we are smart, then
we must be smart………this disconnect is just like IQ45 saying his
is a “stable Genius”… and he isn’t either one… stable or a genius…

so are your words and your actions connected?
are your words and your actions, one and the same?

that is why it is important to understand philosophy as we
study it, is different then the ancient method of philosophy which
is to have philosophy as a way of life… it isn’t something that we can
study and then forget because it is “academic” instead of involving
us in our real life…….

we take philosophy and hold it over here and we take our actions,
our morals, our beliefs and hold them over there… and may the two
never meet… we study philosophy instead of treating philosophy
as a way of life and that is why we have, in part, our alienation
and disconnection and separation from society and ourselves………

you want to heal yourself?

connect your words with your actions…

be who you say you are……

Kropotkin

I wonder why we have periods of great philosophers?

for example, we have a time period where some of the greatest thinkers
of the world existed within a one hundred year period…
and why? what was happening that force/allowed all these thinkers
to engage in their thought at roughly the same time…

Confucius: 551 bc- 479 bc
Socrates: 469 bc-399 bc
Buddha: 560 bc-479 bc alternative dates for the Buddha is 480 bc to 405 bc
Heraclitus: 535 bc-475 bc
Pythagoras: 552 bc -496 bc
Sun Tzu: 544 bc- 496 bc
Mozi: 470 bc-391 bc

and before this you have Zoraster roughly from 1500 bc to 1000 bc
and Loazi around 600 bc…

so why? why do we have this explosion of thought all over the globe?

why do we have so many thinkers and philosophers and theologians
from this time period?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin: I wonder why we have periods of great philosophers?

for example, we have a time period where some of the greatest thinkers
of the world existed within a one hundred year period…
and why? what was happening that force/allowed all these thinkers
to engage in their thought at roughly the same time…

Confucius: 551 bc- 479 bc
Socrates: 469 bc-399 bc
Buddha: 560 bc-479 bc alternative dates for the Buddha is 480 bc to 405 bc
Heraclitus: 535 bc-475 bc
Pythagoras: 552 bc -496 bc
Sun Tzu: 544 bc- 496 bc
Mozi: 470 bc-391 bc

and before this you have Zoraster roughly from 1500 bc to 1000 bc
and Loazi around 600 bc…

so why? why do we have this explosion of thought all over the globe?

why do we have so many thinkers and philosophers and theologians
from this time period?

K: the above post has gotten me to think about why this explosion of
thought occured at this point in time…One possible reason might
be because the old way of doing things, the old vision no longer fit
the reality on the ground… they were trying to use an old map
for new terrain and that is a recipe for disaster…the old answers of
the gods of the land, sea, and air and sun no longer fit the terrain,
the reality of the times and so people began to search for new answers,
for a new map of reality. Or to think about this slightly differently,
if the old answers were working, then people wouldn’t have bothered to
search for new answers… only when the ism’s and ideologies are failing,
do people begin to search for new ism’s, new ideologies.

Before the listed philosophers were born, the historical context was a different
thing… for example, we know that in Greece for example, there was a long lasting
civilization of which the Greeks cities fighting in the Trojan war were part of…
but within a couple of hundreds years after the Trojan war, Greece was invaded
by Nomads from the North and these people, as yet unknown people, pretty much
destroyed the home grown civilizations of Greece and for a period of roughly
400 years, during a mini Dark ages when Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey…
civilization was dark in Greece…the light of civilization began to creep into
Greece beginning around 600 BC and was in full bloom by 450 BC………

and the same happened to India… there was a well established civilization
in the Indus valley which was destroyed by invading tribes… there was a period
of Dark ages and then slowly, India began a climb back to civilization and this
was documented by the rise of thinkers and philosophers beginning around 600 BC
and went to the Buddha who lived roughly during the same time frame
as Socrates… and I don’t believe that is a coincidence… I believe that the
destruction of the home grown civilizations in Greece and India, force people to
reevaluate and rethink their basic values and beliefs…but this reevaluation
had to wait for civilization to recover to some point where the state was stable
enough to allow such a reevaluation…….this is part of the relationship between
individual and the state… the individual cannot begin their quest to an reevaluation
until the state has stabilized enough to allow such an reevaluation…

You cannot get a Socrates or a Hobbes or a Hume or a Kant until
the state and society are stable enough to allow such thought to occur…

In the Dark ages, the number of great thinkers were few and far in between because
the state and society wasn’t stable enough to allow the freedom to engage in such
thinking…………

so one of the criteria of a Buddha or a Socrates is a stable state/society…
that much is evident… the second thing that must happen is
some sort of overturning of the longstanding ism’s and ideologies
of the past… this overturning can be an invasion or a war or a plague
or some other natural disaster that forces people to reevaluate their
thinking………….

let us look at America right now… we aren’t quite at the point of
an reevaluation because things are relatively good and stable…

but once the forces of darkness that IQ45 represent win the day, that
disaster will force people to reevaluate, rethink the entire ism’s and ideologies
of the day… soon, soon I believe that there will be some rebirth of thinkers
and philosophers in America… because such as rebirth can only come after
“the flight of Minerva” as Hegel called it…….

however even today, people are beginning to question the economic system
that is America… that capitalism is the greatest economic system on earth
is under debate today is a very good sign…….

we are still lacking in thinkers and philosophers who are prepared to
begin the reevaluation, the rethinking of what it means to be an American
and what it means to be a human being……….a thinker/philosopher who
will take the Kantian/Kropotkin questions seriously and reevaluate
the basic questions of existence that, as of right now, are not being
addressed because the system and its ideologies are still functioning
and stable…… once the system begins to develop the problems and issues
of that system, the reevaluation will begin… and we begin to see this
in America with the income inequality being just the beginning of
our decline… does that mean the decline of America is inevitable?
no, not at all. It just means we are beginning to see the cracks in the
wall and we need to address those cracks before they spilt open
the society/state………

Problems like income inequality and overpopulation and pollution
and global warming are visible signs that the current system is
in failure… problems like these problems don’t occur if the system
is working and working correctly… the myriad of issues and problems
of the modern day is a warning, a sign of system failure and we must correct
the system before it crashes down on our heads………failure to address
the system failure before they crash means that we will crash the
entire world because of the interconnection of the world…
one part failing can cause entire system wide failure…
such as a lung or heart failure can crash the entire human system…
whereas if the arm has issues, the human system will most likely be able to
survive… and the U.S is a key part of the entire world wide system
and so if we fail, we take down everybody… that is the nature of the
modern world…….so we must address our problems/issues in a serious
manner and not be a clown like IQ45 who is making a bad situation, worse…

so what you gonna do? are you simply wait and hope the system works
itself out or, or are you going to be active and attempt to
understand and change the system in such a way to avoid a system collapse……

“what am I to do?”…………

Kropotkin

what is true of large scale system, where problems like
global warming and income inequality are a sign of system failure…
are true in a small scale system like the human being…

if you are feel disconnected, alienated, disjointed, separated
from yourself, society or the world… you too are suffering from
some sort of system failure…

the solution, as always, begins with awareness… becoming aware of
being alienated or disconnected from yourself or your society is the first
step of finding a solution…and a possible solution might come from
an honest appraisal of yourself and with the help of the Kantian/Kropotkin
questions of existence………maybe you have answered the question,
“What am I to do?” with the wrong answer and you are doing something
that doesn’t represent your values or your understanding of the world……

It is possible that you answered the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence
with the wrong answers and this has lead you to becoming disconnected or
alienated or separated from yourself or your society/state?

if your values are values of love and peace, then the answer to the question,
“What am I to do?” may not becoming a butcher or a policeman or a soldier…
the answer to your question “what am I to do” means you must do something
that in in line with your values… or you must act within some job or career
with values that are in line with that job… I am not in line in regards to
my values and my job, I think the capitalistic system destroys people,
their values, their soul and yet, I am on the front lines of the capitalism
system hence my great unhappiness with my job… the job and my values
are in disconnect……… and that, perhaps, is the source of the alienation
and disconnect and the separation we feel from ourselves and our society/state…

if my values are values of peace and love and hope, then being in a martial
society like ours, my values are disconnected from the society values…

I am alienated from society because we hold two different and distinct values
which are not compatible… America values and want wars and violence,
and anyone who wants peace and love is in disconnect from that America……

look at IQ45… he is chomping at the bits to get us into a conflict, a war,
with almost anybody who will fight… and he represents a large faction in
America which includes the military-industrial complex which wants
wars to make money… recall if you can, we are still engaged in the longest
war in America’s history in Iraq and Afghanistan… a war you never hear about
but you pay for in taxes… it is those wars that are killing the American economy,
not the so called “entitlement state”………

peace is much, much cheaper, but the military/industrial complex
doesn’t make money in peacetime…….

the very amount we spend on defense and the military becomes
part of our system failure… we spend too much on defense and
not enough on making people’s life better by funding education,
heath services, mental facilities, parks, and the infrastructure……

moderation in the budget is just as essential as moderation in
behavior or drinking or any other activity……

so how are you going about with an understanding of your system?
how do you understand the system in which you live in?

how do you understand system failure in regards to your life?

Kropotkin

How much time do you have?

K: in the course of this thread I have become aware of the fact that
I have no answers, only questions, and when I offer up a question such
as “how do you understand system failure in regards to your life”
the question isn’t for my benefit, because all I have are questions…
so my question is offered up for you…to get you to question your
basic principles, to question your beliefs, to question your ism’s,
prejudice, superstitions, myths and habits…

you should be in the Zen moment where the mountains are shaking
and dancing and moble, where the sea is alive and the waves are the
the only thing one can see and the river has overflowed its river bank…

and once you have resolved your Zen moment, the mountains will return
to be solid and stable and the sea will be calm and peaceful
and the river will return to it banks…

growth, any mental, psychology, emotional growth comes from
the Zen moments that have shaken our world…

that is why one, anyone cannot be afraid of reaching a state that
challenges our intellect, our emotions, our psychological being and
our physical state…the battle is not out there, but inside of you…

that is my problem with most people, they won’t challenge themselves
or attempt anything outside of their comfort zone… for by reaching
beyond our comfort zone is how we become who we are…the path
to wisdom comes after a long road and most people refuse to
walk that road from fear, or perhaps laziness or perhaps they
just lack the understanding what the cost is by refusing to
challenge oneself…better safe then sorry is the path to conformity
and boredom… most people live their lives in quiet despair because
they haven’t challenged themselves or attempted the impossible……

most people would rather achieve a small win rather then risk a
big loss and I think it should be the opposite, risk a big loss
rather then achieve a small win…I would rather be Icarus
then achieve a small win…yes, yes you might fail and so what?
what is the problem with failure? you learn far more with failure then
you do with success…every great person has failed, from the Buddha
to Gandhi to MLK to Jesus, the difference between them and you, is
the fact they learned from their failure………in fact, a rather interesting
book could come from seeing how each of these people learned from
their failure and then rose to greatness…

all I offer is questions, nothing more……

Kropotkin

the basic assumption of religions is that there is some
other reality. Metaphysics is predicated on the fact that there
is some other realty which we must try to return to…Buddhism
and Christianity and Islam and Hinduism and Judaism, all promote
some idea of some other reality in which we live in the lessor
version of reality and heaven or we must reach the state of the permanent
reality, that is the goal…

and yet, at no point has anyone shown us that another state of reality exists…

metaphysics, the reality beyond our temporary, impermanent, transient reality

that there is something beyond this basic reality has never been proven, so
why do we spend so much trying to reach something that doesn’t exist?

what would happen if we just accepted that this reality, this here and now,
is all there is?

to do so would mean that we must take this moment, this here and now,
and infuse it with meaning…… what if this moment, this here and now is
all there is? What a gift…… we can see this moment as the only possible
reality and thus we can give this moment the attention it deserves.
every single moment is the only moment that exists…why waste it with
such frivolous things as addictions to material goods like cars and houses
and TV sets or waste it with a fruitless pursuit of happiness…
searching happiness leads one to pursue a fantasy or a ghost…

the pursuit of such things that might, might lead us to happiness like
fame, wealth, position, power is a pursuit of fool’s gold… it looks promising
but once found, is found to be worthless because it far more transient and
temporary then our bodies…… how many have had fame, wealth, position
and power and they were later left high and dried when the fame, wealth,
position and power was gone……. who can recall the names of the famous
and powerful and wealthy of the 1950’s? Howard Hughes and what of him
for example? He died alone but wealthy… and what of him now?
How did his wealth or power or position help him gain wisdom or happiness?

He died alone and all his wealth and power didn’t prevent him from dying…
he suffered and all that wealth and power didn’t prevent that suffering…
He had diseases and all that wealth and power didn’t prevent his diseases…
he grew old and all his wealth and power didn’t prevent his growing old…

he pursued wealth and power and fame and what did it get him?
a man forgotten………and all his wealth didn’t get him an once of calm or
peace or wisdom or understanding……………

his life was an exercise in the temporary, transient nature of human existence…

he last years were spent as a germophobe and living in isolation in various
hotels he owned… and he was an addict to codeine………

we can find hundreds of examples, perhaps not so dramatic, but
as examples of how the pursuit of wealth and power and fame
are simply addictions and we try to avoid addictions because what
happens if you are an addict? you try to get your fix no matter what
the circumstances… the addiction control you, you don’t control it…
and the pursuit of wealth and power and fame are addictions, nothing more…

so let us return to the moment, this moment, this here…
it is all we have… so what are you going to do in this moment?

why not take this moment and give it the intensity and sanctity that
we give to religion and to god…… simply replace what we feel and think
about god and his love and replace it with an appreciation of the moment…
the here and now should take the place of the hereafter and heaven……
for to spend your life in pursuit of the perfection of the soul is good,
just not in pursuit of something that doesn’t exists, heaven…
the pursuit of finding your higher soul is a good thing,
but don’t expect or even want the saving of your soul…

becoming a better human being who answers to the higher
levels of being human is enough reward… the pursuit of heaven
is simple a waste of time because there is no evidence for heaven…….

become aware of the here and now and that reward will be enough…

Kropotkin