Whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede knowledge of anything else. There is never time to say our last word—the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remourse, submission, revolt. Many ancient scholars like Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras wanted to explain how the Universe works rather than justify why everything is for the best. The contrast of the physiological conditions of human behavior with the reasons the agent has for acting as he does because of the rational agents are of their very nature incorporeal. Rationality is somehow essentially supernatural and the bodily occurrences involved in rational behavior cannot be completely compassed in any scientific explanation. Justification and appraisal of actions is so totally different from the causal explanation of physiological events, questions and answers belonging to the one Universe of discourse cannot rival those belonging to the others. The word soul is etymologically related to such words in the Greek language as alive (literally, ensouled), and swooning or death (literally, abandonment by the soul). #RyanPhillippe 1 of 6
The eyes are admittedly material, yet that does not prevent us from using them for seeing material things, including other people’s eyes and even—in mirrors—our own. Death is a matter of the soul’s permanently leaving its body; the soul was thought of as a puff of air, an invisible vapor, that would be dispersed in the breeze. Thus, every little gust of wind causes a new deflection of light, and this produces the phenomenon, after passing through the highest layers in the atmosphere. In this connection we might therefore distinguish two sense of soul. In the first, to have a soul means to be alive; in the second soul is the word for a class of suppositious entities, corporeal but elusive. At first, they appear as curious plays of light, chiaroscuros, like the evanescent luminous dappling when the Sunlight passes over forest leaves. Souls are caused by a phenomenon analogous to stars twinkling at night. We are created from spirit. It is that spirit that will lead to our next destination. Those who hold the desire, those who remove the layers of illusion, those who compromise the image of what we are, will be able to stand the truth, merge with the light and continue. Those who do not will inevitably experience, in their frequency, the full, spectacular force of the Earth Changes. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 6
The soul Is not only to sense organs but also to that principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul—something which is radically different from anything corporeal. That is why it is so important for us to strive for balance of the spirit and the flesh. The soul is the principle of life. In this sense we do have souls, for to say that a creature possess a soul in this sense is just a misleadingly substantival way of describing it as alive. The flesh can only transmute in accordance with the spiritual fortitude we can hold within our consciousness. The season of the flesh is past. Become one with your spirit. Learn to be one with the Creator. The soul in this sense is equivalent to the term soul construed as a synonym for person (albeit for persons recognized to be incorporeal objects). The soul is as the principle of life and is the bearer of moral values. The soul is something that moves itself and that whatever moves itself must be ingenerable and incorruptible. God is the Unmoved Mover. Justice and equality are corresponding abstract ideas or forms. These ideas are eternal and incorporeal substances, intelligible to the intellect as material things are sensible to the sense. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 6
After all, you have heard of Universal Laws, and how the Bible says do on to others are you would have them do on to you because everything you put out there will come back to you. These Ideas of Universal Laws, justice, and equality are thought of as providing answers to both questions about criteria—What makes an X count as an X?—and to question of a more casual character—What is ultimately responsible for the existence of X’s? The soul is the principle of life, and this is equated, in terms of the theory of Ideas, with the Form of Life. Everything is frequency, it is a matter of harmonics. It is up to each one of us to accept and embrace the God within (the soul). No one will come to lift us from our own chosen dilemma. That is what we have created; only we can change the outcome. That is why it is so important to realize that humanity, collectively acting as individuals, each working with what is before us each day, can affect the outcome of our destiny as a whole. Life can never be overcome by Death. Thus, the conclusion is that the soul as the very Idea of Life is essentially deathless and eternal and, hence, the immortal part of us is not destroyed by death, for our souls will exist somewhere in another World. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 6
The Abstract Intellect (or any other putative Abstract Reality) is essentially eternal is really no reason for saying that anything at all actually goes on forever. In a way, it is correct to say that such things as necessary truth and the logical relations between abstract mathematical concepts are somehow timeless and eternal. Yet this is not a matter of the existence of anything imperishable, but rather, of its not making sense to ask temporal questions about the periods during which any of these trusts and these relations obtain. From eternity in this sense we can have nothing either to hope or to fear. The distinction between two senses of eternity is fundamental in discussing personal immortality. We are concerned only with a life that would live on forever; the eternity of mere abstraction is not to the point. In the light of this distinction we can better appreciate that the soul belongs to the same category as the abstract Ideas and, hence, that is the sort of thing that may be presumed immortal. The presumption that an incorporeal substance would be naturally incorruptible and souls, like everything else, are sustained by God and would be at once annihilated if he chooses to withdraw his support. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6
Because every sort of thing has its once congenital evil, because nothing can be destroyed by anything but its own congenital evil, because the congenital evil of the soul is wickedness, and because wickedness as such is never directly lethal to the wicked man, our souls must be immortal. Our intellects are both incorporeal and substances. Pure intellectual activity, abstract cognition, is something rather grand, almost divine, and occupations only for the highest sort of person. The soul, therefore, includes the intellect and is in no way truly itself an individual. And so it is truly a form beginning with, and ceasing to be with, the body; nor can it in any way operate or exist without the body. The principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul is both incorporeal and subsistent. It is likewise impossible for it to understand by means of a bodily organ; since the particular nature of the organ would prevent its knowing all bodies; compare the way in which liquid put into a glass vase seems to be of the same colour, not only when some particular colour is in the pupil of the eye, but when it is in the vase. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 6
I used my strongest vision to penetrate the reeking darkness to my life. He thinks I am the one whom he will presently see as a corpse, and he asks how to bury me. And though I have been saying at great length that after I drink the poison I shall no longer be with you, but shall go away to the joys of the blessed, he seems to think that was idle talk uttered to encourage you and myself. The essential general theory of motivation is there is a limited number of prime movers by whose conative force every train of though and every bodily activity is initiated and sustained. These prime movers were first described as instincts, and later were redefined and as propensities. The extent to which instinctive dispositions are modified both on the cognitive (receptive) side and on the conative (responsive) side, primary instincts are to be defined by reference to the central or affective components, the primary emotions. They are then organized into more complex motivating dispositions, the sentiments. A sentiment is conceived of as a system of instinctive disposition organized around an idea. Patriotism, for example, is a complex organization of instincts directed to promoting the welfare of a national group. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
The motivating force in man is organized in a three-tiered hierarchy. At the base are the primary instincts of propensities. At the second level are certain regulating and controlling principles, such as benevolence and cool self-love, and at the summit was the ultimate controlling principle, which is identified as conscience. Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He springs up like a flower and withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure. Do you fix your eyes on such a one? Will you bring him before you for judgment? Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one! Man’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set the limits he cannot exceed. So look away from him and let him alone, till he has put in his time like a hired man. If you only would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed! If only you would set a time and then remember me. We shed tears for our brother, and gave him our music and our tears while he was alive. If he was not wept for and given our music and flowers then, well, not there is no need, because he is no longer aware. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
If a man dies, will he live again? It is clear that the truth in questions is somehow connected with the imagination rather than with the ordinary cognitive powers of the mind. The first point is that the essence of doctrines of personal survival (or immortality)—and precisely this and this only is what gives them their great human interest—is that they should assert that after our deaths we shall continue to exist (forever). Only in this way can they provide the basis for unique expectations—that we shall, to put it as noncommittally as possible, have experiences after death, that death will not be our terminus but the beginning of a new journey. All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come. You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made. The human body is a corporeal element, there is also something else, different in kind—the incorporeal soul. For duration of a life the soul is somehow attached to—incorporated into or imprisoned in—its body. Although the soul is incorporeal, it is nevertheless a substance, something that could significantly be said to exist independently of anything else. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
He feels but the pain of his own body and mourns only for himself. The soul is not a harmony, for it would not even make sense to suggest that a harmony might survive or, for that matter, precede the elements of which it is a harmony. This is no more possible than that there could be a grin without a face to grin it. The point is that the soul must be the person or, at any rate, the real, true, or essential person. This, though it is sometimes neglected, is crucial. Unless it is established that I am my soul, the demonstrate my of the survival of my soul will not demonstrate my survival, and the news that my soul will last forever could provide me with no more justification for harboring these logically unique expectations than the rather less elevated assurance that my appendix is to be preserved eternally in a bottle. The second doctrine is, in its purest form, extremely simple and direct. It consists in urging the resurrection of the body or, more accurately, the reconstitution of the person. Whereas the first doctrine insists that I am the sort of thing that could perfectly well escape unharmed and unnoticed at death (if you can catch me and I do not get away); the second recognizes that to be truly a human person, I have to have the corporeal human form. It then relies on an act of sheer omnipotence to produce the immortal me. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
Does not man have hard service on Earth? Are not his days like those of a hired man? Like a slave longing for the evening shadows, or a hired man waiting eagerly for his wages, so I have been allotted months of futility, and nights of misery have been assigned to me. When I lie down I think how long before I get up? The night drags on, and I toss till dawn. Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you? For I will soon lie down in the dust; you will search for me, but I will be no more. The Shadow-man doctrine is the claim that a person is kind of a shadow man, sufficiently human and corporeal to overcome the problem of identification with the familiar flesh and blood person and at the same time sufficiently ethereal and elusive to have no difficult in escaping unnoticed from the ordinary Earthy body which is destined to be burned or buried. Some modern spiritualists also hold this view of the astral body, which detached itself at death to proceed on its journey to the Summerland. Perhaps the best way of conveying the idea to the modern reader unfamiliar with wither patristic or spiritualist literature is to refer to the many films in which a spirit is shown as a tenuous shadowy replica of a man that detaches itself from him at death and is thereafter visible to the entire audience, but only to favored characters in the film. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
The greatest advantage acquired in travelling and pursuing mankind in the original, is that of dispelling those shameful clouds that darken the faculties of the mind, preventing it from judging with candor and precision. Time—I see it not, I feel it not: it I but s shadowy name—a succession of breathings measures forth by night by the clank of a bell, by day by a shadow crossing a dialstone. Absence makes the heart grow found, but suddenly, I felt hot, and I was beginning to sweat. I adjusted my tie and tried to fan myself, but the sweat just kept rolling down my face. How could I be in the house of the Lord feeling like this, lusting after someone else’s mate while I sat next to my own? I felt my penis begin to expand and I had to fight hard to keep an erection at bay. “That was beautiful, was it not?” the bishop asked when the performance was done. The congregation responded in a chorus of “Amen.” I cherished the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical. By a toleration of what is detested we expose ourselves to the keenness of an adverse mind. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
The timidity natural to minds of quick and delicate perception increased evidences of trust and confidence in my efforts. “Now, I would like you to open your Bibles to Isaiah 41:11-16,” said the Deacon. “Brother, it is time.” I almost jumped out of my skin and out of the pew when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. When I glanced in the aisle, Deacon Miller was standing there next to me. “Huh? Time for what?” “It is time to take up the collection.” “Oh, yeah, I am sorry, Deacon. I will be right there. The deacon walked away and I turned to Christina. “I will be back.” Christina nodded approvingly. She was so proud that I was starting to make the moves to become a deacon of the church. I adjusted myself under my suit jacket and carried the Sunday program in front of my bulge. As I passed the collection basket along each row, the swelling in my pants went down, and I purposely avoided looking in the direction of the choir. The last thing I wanted was to be passing the collection plate and have someone spot the tent in my pants. I could just hear the whispers behind Christina’s back now. I closed my eyes and prayed. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
What sort of explanation or account could we hope to find, supposing it were to be definitely established that precognition does indeed occur? Presumably this would have to cover whatever other parapsychological phenomena were also found to be genuine. To provide such a theory would be enormously difficult, if not impossible. In any case, in the present confusing and apparently contradictory state of the evidence in this field, a state which should no doubt be attributed (at least in part) to the lack of any theory adequate to serve as even the most tentative of working hypotheses, it is impossible to say with confidence and precision just what are the phenomena is which we need to take account. In each case the reason for talking of precognition is not that any particular guess can, at some stage, be identified as precognitive but that, after the guesses have been checked against the targets, the proportion of hits in a series of guesses is found to be significantly above mean-chance expectations. #RyanPhillipe 3 of 5
With appropriate alterations the same thing seems to be true of all ostensible parapsychological phenomena. Guesses, even if they have been solid and on point in the past, does not mean the plot will work on every target. Suppose insider stage a crime and break laws in staging this crime, but the target never responds as expected so they cannot hold him because this one is an outlier, he does not fit the statistical averages. So then to cover up the insider commit a crime, they engage in outrageous behavior in hopes of getting the outlier to “go off” so they can prove that he was a threat in their precognition was right, but he does not react to their plans and they are running out of time to cover up the crimes they committed. Not only do the insider now face criminal charges, but they also face a financial liability for the harassment, abuse, and torture of their target. This is why precognition is not something used in law enforcement because humans have free will and you cannot convict someone of a crime they did not commit. It is usually argued that that whereas this perhaps has to be allowed in the case of quantitative experiments in card guessing, dice throwing, and so forth, it does not apply at all to what appear to be spontaneous cases of telepathy and clairvoyance, nor precognition. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
When you set someone up and target a person and try to predict how they will behave and have contingency plans to contain them to cover up your criminal behavior, that is entrapment and a criminal conspiracy, at the very least, and is surely wrong. However, suppose someone we find that someone who had no means of inferring that the Titanic might meet disaster nevertheless has a dream which is later to have corresponded in amazing detail with what actually happened on the night when that great ship went down. Still, our only warranty for describing his dream as precognitive lies precisely in that extraordinary degree of correspondence: any single item of correspondence might be dismissed as something which was bound to happen “by the law of averages,” and so no single item can be picked out as unequivocally precognitive. Much like my relationship with Christina, she has not been treating me right for several years, so it is not precognition that my heart would wonder, but more by the law of averages. This is no reason to ignore or to dismiss the evidence. However, it may very well prove to be a significant theoretical pointer. The task of reconstruction and interpretation is thus very different from and more precarious than that of interpreting a philosopher whose original writing are still available for study. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
To see Time’s full face, it is sometimes necessary to look through keyholes, the veteran having a trick of smiling peace to you on one cheek, and grimacing confusion on toe other, behind the curtain. Precognition is simply the Latin equivalent of foreknowledge. However, this has come to have a more specialized meaning as a semitechnical term for one of the phenomena or putative phenomena of parapsychology (psychical research). This articles touches on the wider issues of foreknowledge only insofar as they appear in a rather special form in the narrower context of parapsychology. Precognition is one of a group of terms that also includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and—more peripherally—psychokinesis (PK). Telepathy is thought of, initially at any rate, as consisting in the acquisition of information by one person from another without the use of any of the senses normally indispensable to communication. Clairvoyance, at the same initial stage, is conceived of as being generically identical with telepathy; the specific difference is that in the case of clairvoyance the information is supposed to be obtained not from another person but from an object. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8
Telepathy would be termed precognitive if the information so acquired was not doing to become available to the other person until later. Clairvoyance would be termed precognitive if the information so acquired was not, until later, even going to become available in things, as opposed to minds. It is thus possible to consider precognitive telepathy and precognitive clairvoyance as being two species of the genus precognition. Straight telepathy, straight clairvoyance, and both sorts of precognition are all supposed to be nonsensory and noninferential. Suppose someone has an intuition or a dream or a waking vision that is found to correspond to some actual later happening. Suppose that is seems out of the question either (1) to account for the correspondence as the result of successful inference, conscious or unconscious, from materials available to the subject at the time, or (2) to trace it back to some causal ancestor common to both the anticipation and the fulfillment, or (3) to say that the fulfillment was somehow the result of the anticipation, or (4) even to refuse to account for the correspondence in any way on the grounds that it was just a coincidence. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8
(The counterargument in this last case would be that some intuitions, dreams, visions, and so forth, are bound to prove veridical and that presumably this was just one of those striking cases that is—as the catch phrase has it “by the law of averages” bound to occur occasionally.) If such an intuition, or what have you, were to occur we would—provided that all four conditions seemed to be met—have at least a prima facie case of precognition. Psychokinesis means movement by the mind. The idea is that perhaps some people sometimes may be able, whether consciously or unconsciously, to move or otherwise affect things without pushing or pulling them, and indeed, with out in any way touching either the things in question or any other things involved in the process. The Vineyard House in El Dorado County, California was built by Robert and Louise Chalmers in 1878 and it is a seven-bed-room Victorian. Robert, who was an accomplished man and had once held a seat in the state legislature, began to go mad not long after. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8
Eventually Robert Chalmers’s mental deterioration became so severe that he would carry on whispered conversation with himself and lie in freshly dug graves to see if they would fit his body. It was at this point that Louise locked Robert in the cellar of their enormous house. People passing by the Chalmers’s house often reporting hearing terrible moans and screams emanating from the structures basement. Rumors suggested that Louise completely abandoned her husband, except to deliver his meals. Others claimed she treated him as humanely as she could under the circumstances, and she had a bad reputation with men, as her first husband committed suicide. Whichever the case might have been, Robert himself decided that is wife was trying to poison him. He stopped eating the food she brought him and starved himself to death. Thus meant that, just as her first husband had done, Louise Chalmers’s second husband took his own life. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 8
Although there is no concrete proof to support the conjecture, the events of the next few years make a decent case for Robert’s spirit having come back to haunt Louise. The vineyards stopped producing, depriving Louise of what had once been a substantial income. It soon because necessary for her to rent out some of the rooms in her palatial house. When that ploy did not bring in sufficient funds, Louise’s creditors began to assume control of her shrinking holdings. The cellar where Louise had held her suffering husband prisoner became a temporary jail for those about to be hanged. When the criminal’s time was up, a gallows was constructed on Louise’s front lawn. By the time she died in the early 1900s, Louise was financially and emotionally destitute. Her once beautiful house was run down—and badly haunted. For nearly 50 years, the property fell to a succession of owners. No one stayed too long. Usually, the sounds of Robert’s spirit rattling the chains in which Louise had him bound—or footfalls shuffling up and down the basement stairs—were enough to chase prospective innkeepers to another business venture. For a while, the house stood empty. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8
In 1956, the old place was reclaimed and converted to a restaurant and inn. The cellar that once held the tee-totaling Robert Chalmers became a bar. Revelers were often treated to sounds on invisible taffeta skirts rustling and labored breathing emanating from invisible sources. A bartender once watched in awe as wine glasses gently—and quite impossibly—slid across the bar. In 1975, a family named Herrera bought the Vineyard House in partnership with their friend David Van Buskirk. The new owners were confident that their experience in the hospitality industry would serve them well. The foursome put countless hours of work into the place. Gary Herrera spoke of painstakingly choosing colors and fabrics, ordering vibrant shades only to have his shipment arrive completely different shades than he had chosen. Puzzled and annoyed by the turn of events, Herrera had the shock of his life while leafing through a scrapbook that he had found in the house. It was from the Vineyard House’s early days and revealed that the colors and fabrics that has been mistakenly delivered matched the original décor. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8
The man, who had been a skeptic on the subject of the supernatural, immediately developed a new respect for force that he could not see of fully understand. Perhaps he or somebody else had consciously or unconsciously influenced psychokinetically the décor in order to increase the degree of correspondence between the guest. One consequence which has often been thought to follow from the existence of precognition is that, sensationally, the future must somehow be already here—or at any rate there. This is usually derived from a conceptions of precognition as a mode of perception of extrasensory perception. The Chalmers’s ghosts were not content to remain so subtle, however. When a young couple checked into the hotel, the man decided to turn out the lights in their room so he could play a trick on his partner. He then sat down on the bed and waited for her to come out of the bathroom. When he felt someone sit on the bed, he presumed that it was his partner and that his ruse had been effective. He turned on the bedside lamp. Unfortunately for the man’s nervous system, it was not his girlfriend who had joined him but a stern-looking, bearded man! The image soon faded, but the guest recognized the face from a photograph he has seen while checking in—Robert Chalmers’s apparition had clearly not approved of the young man’s attempt to tease the lady in his life. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8
Others were disturbed in the middle of the night by what they thought were partiers finally arriving back to their rooms. The guests were understandably annoyed at the inconsiderate behavior and opened their bedroom door to let the noisemakers know that after-hours revelry was not appreciated. Much to the guests’ surprise, three men dressed in Victorian styles stood near the top of the staircase. For a moment, the couple stared at the images in complete shock. As they did, the images stared back at the couple in equal, if not greater, astonishment before dissolving. Now that the house is once again a private residence, only time will tell whether the ghostly energy that permeated the building has dissipated for good. We habitually observe events before they occur. By valid inference from this misdescription it is concluded that the future must therefore really be present. Precognition—foreseeing arbitrary events in the future that could not by any stretch of the imagination be inferred from the present—that is something which is almost impossible for our minds to grasp. How can anyone see things which do not yet exists? Maybe time is not linear and sometimes bleeds together, maybe people from the past can see into the future and people in the present see into the past. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8
The rural dark fell down around me. I let go of the music. We are the mirror of awakeness and our own face in it. What is is the mystery that is infinitely aware and all that is in awareness. Extra-sensory perception (ESP) can be explained in terms of mind or mental forces. However, there do not seem to be sufficient grounds for inferring that the unknown entities or forces responsible for ESP are mental. There is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea. The reason for postulating a collective unconscious may be either to suggest that one person’s experience can directly influence those of another, because all experiences are really contents of one all-embracing Mind, or to suggest that one person’s experience can affect another’s indirectly, via modifications in substratum called common unconscious. Our nonseparate being is the Nothing that excludes nothing. When we are not separating ourselves from what we are by our thoughts of being separate, this bare nothingmess feels very intimate. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
The swamp seemed the most savage and devouring place, with no pastoral symmetry or harmony to it. Each person is at each moment potentially aware of all concurrent events and of all one’s past experiences and that to prevent one from being overwhelmed by useless knowledge the brain suppresses all information except that which is relevant to one’s present practical needs, which leads to normal memory and perception. It is a short step to equating with ESP the knowledge suppressed by the brain. It seems extravagant, however, to explain a few people’s sporadic exercise of ESP by supposing that potentially we are all almost omniscient. This seeing focuses like an automatic zoom lens, moving in deeper and deeper to the truth of the moment. Without denying nor refusing anything, it moves through the words, through the story, through the thoughts, through the feelings, through the energy body to the pure innocence of what we truly are. When a person exercises clairvoyance one’s mind is being influenced by or is influencing physical things outside one’s body in the same way as one’s mind normally interacts with one’s own brain. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
What thrived here was a ravenous and battling to the death, and would never find a safe haven for itself—a landscape eating itself alive. Dualism is taken for granted, but dualism involves notorious problems concerning mind-body interaction which the proposed account of clairvoyance does not seem to render more intelligible. Where was my lust? The blood tempest that sweeps into its vortex all desire to know, to absorb, to abide, to possess, to kill, to love? It was a drenching storm inside of me. However, I am so very strong. That is a given, is it not? And when you love another, you do not strive to hurt. Never. The trivial operations of the heart are burnt away in quietude. Burnt away in humility that I could feel this, know this, and contain it with my prudent soul. This potential to transcend the limitations of the human condition is certainly a most essential human capacity. The human realm is one of six domains that we know of and it happens to be the most fortunate real to be born in. The dualistic mind is prehumen, or subhuman because it opens up a larger expanse of being presence that is free from our ordinary, personal involvement in immediate existential situations. This path leads from the bondage of the conditioned mind to the liberation of true awareness. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
So let them shine over the vast pastureland to my right, over the distant clusters of evergreen trees, over the warmly lighted houses far behind me. ESP provides evidence for dualism. It already involves telepathy (true awareness) and our perceptual experiences are caused directly by volitions of the divine mind. The phenomena of clairvoyance would also have to be attributed to telepathy, with God as the agent, since material objects, when unobserved by human minds, consist, in ideas or archetypes of God’s mind. One can readily agree that the World as we experience it is better adapted to be a vale of soul-making than a hedonistic holiday camp. Yet there are difficulties about even the soul-making view. Some human suffering (the unmerited suffering of young children, for instance) cannot always be treated plausibly as developing moral fiber, or as realizing any other moral value. The natural environment can figure as the destroyer of moral personality as well as its preserver and nourisher. Fully inhabiting our humanness involves a willingness to open fully to the rawness of creaturely existence, and feel what it is like to be subject to hurt, limitation, conditioning, and death. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
Transcending our humanness means gaining access to the larger domain of pure being and limitless awareness that is not bound by conditioned existence at all. Centuries ago, I had been dumped for dead in the swamp by my fledglings; and I, a hideous and grasping thing, had survived in those stagnant, polluted waters, survived to come back and take my battered and shapeless revenge, sharpened to a fatal point by others. I do not care about that. I do not know how long I walked. I took my time. The night sounds were at once particular and at the same time a deep hum of the warm breeze, and the Moon was high, sometimes penetrating a break in the swamp that only revealed its jagged hateful chaos more harshly. Now and then I stopped. I looked at the scattered stars—so cunningly bright in the country night. And I hated them, as usual. What comfort was it to be lost in the endless Universe, a simpleton on a tiny speck of revolving dust, whose forefathers had read patters and meaning into these countless unknowable points of cold white fire, which only mocked us by their unchanging indifference? My soul was in the swamp tonight. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
