a tumblr of Soma

"When we try to examine the mirror in itself we eventually detect nothing but the things reflected by..."

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:55:40 -0400

“When we try to examine the mirror in itself we eventually detect nothing but the things reflected by it. When we wish to grasp the things reflected, we touch nothing but the mirror. This is the general history of knowledge.”

- Nietzsche (via metaconscious)

(via silent-musings)

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:50:40 -0400

(via silent-musings)

"It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without..."

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:43:18 -0400

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

- Charles Bukowski, Factotum, Black Sparrow Press, 1975 (via commondense) (via yourwonderingmind)
Word.

(via silent-musings) Mystifying.

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:40:49 -0400

(via silent-musings)

Mystifying.

alchemism: Which of the Watchers are you?

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:11:13 -0400

alchemism:

Which of the Watchers are you?

Photo

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:48:42 -0400

As Above, So Below: The Denial of Death

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:07:25 -0400

As Above, So Below: The Denial of Death:

Whatever we deny in our conscious minds will possess us. Not to face the ways we all traffic in death is to cling to innocence—which is, essentially, an Ego-oriented position—and deny Soul. And it is also to be the unconscious and unwitting agent of what we deny. We are often possessed by death…

the origins of Positive thought

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:35:27 -0400

the origins of Positive thought:

One of the most fruitless questions that can be asked of religions is whether or not they are “true”. For the sake of argument and the flow of this article, let us simply assume from the start that they aren’t true in the supernatural sense. For a certain kind of atheist, this is the end of the story; but for those of a more ethnographic bent, it is clearly only a beginning. If we made up our gods to serve psychological needs, a study of these deities will tell us a crucial amount about what we require to preserve our sanity and balance, and will raise intriguing questions about how we are fulfilling the needs to which religions once catered.

(via silent-musings)

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:16:27 -0400

(via silent-musings)

Faith and Belief

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:43:36 -0400

Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is the systematic taking of unanalyzed words much too seriously. Paul’s words, Mohammed’s words, Marx’s words, Hitler’s words—-people take them too seriously, and what happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history—-sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church’s inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being. “Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.”

-Raja of Pala (in Aldous Huxley’s Island)

Cave 7. Yungang, Shanxi, China via metaconscious ∞

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:34:43 -0400

Cave 7. Yungang, Shanxi, China

via metaconscious ∞

Now we know the question.

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:13:55 -0400

Now we know the question.

Attar's Seven Valleys of Love in the Manteq aṭ-Ṭayr

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:34:09 -0400

The birds of the world set forth in search of their king, Simurgh.

Their quest takes them through seven valleys in the first of which a hundred difficulties assail them. They undergo many trials as they try to free themselves of what is precious to them and change their state.

Once successful and filled with longing, they ask for wine to dull the effects of dogma, belief, and unbelief on their lives. In the second valley, the birds give up reason for love and, with a thousand hearts to sacrifice, continue their quest for discovering the Simurgh. The third valley confounds the birds, especially when they discover that their worldly knowledge has become completely useless and their understanding has become ambivalent. There are different ways of crossing this Valley, and all birds do not fly alike. Understanding can be arrived at variously—some have found the Mihrab, others the idol.

The fourth valley is introduced as the valley of detachment, i.e., detachment from desire to possess and the wish to discover. The birds begin to feel that they have become part of a universe that is detached from their physical recognizable reality. In their new world, the planets are as minute as sparks of dust and elephants are not distinguishable from ants.

It is not until they enter the fifth valley that they realize that unity and multiplicity are the same. And as they have become entities in a vacuum with no sense of eternity. More importantly, they realize that God is beyond unity, multiplicity, and eternity.

Stepping into the sixth valley, the birds become astonished at the beauty of the Beloved. Experiencing extreme sadness and dejection, they feel that they know nothing, understand nothing. They are not even aware of themselves. Only thirty birds reach the abode of the Simurgh. But there is no Simurgh anywhere to see. Simurgh’s chamberlain keeps them waiting for Simurgh long enough for the birds to figure out that they themselves are the si (thirty) murgh (bird).

The seventh valley is the valley of deprivation, forgetfulness, dumbness, deafness, and death. The present and future lives of the thirty successful birds become shadows chased by the celestial Sun. And themselves, lost in the Sea of His existence, are the Simurgh.

the Manteq aṭ-Ṭayr by Attar

The Valley of Quest
The Valley of Love
The Valley of Understanding
The Valley of Independence and Detachment
The Valley of Unity
The Valley of Astonishment and Bewilderment
The Valley of Deprivation and Death

Like a scene out of a sequel to The Fifth Element - in the form...

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:15:06 -0400

Like a scene out of a sequel to The Fifth Element - in the form of a spherical painting.

Alchemia

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 06:22:30 -0400

Alchemia:

A puzzle-game, light and surreal.

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy; I awoke and saw that life was service; I acted and beheld..."

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:49:05 -0400

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy; I awoke and saw that life was service; I acted and beheld service was joy.”

- anonymous Bengali poet (via besaged)

"I can understand your aversion to the use of the term ‘religion’ to describe an emotional and..."

Thu, 27 May 2010 05:28:48 -0400

“I can understand your aversion to the use of the term ‘religion’ to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza… I have found no better expression than “religious” for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.”

- Albert Einstein (via tidesofmind)

"A fully functioning human ought to be able to be aware of his or her reality tunnel, and able to..."

Wed, 26 May 2010 17:25:00 -0400

“

A fully functioning human ought to be able to be aware of his or her reality tunnel, and able to keep it flexible enough to accommodate, and to some degree empathize with, different reality tunnels, different “game rules”, different cultures….

Constructivist thinking is the exercise of metacognition to become aware of our reality tunnels or labyrinths and the elements that “program” them. Constructivist thinking should, ideally, decrease the chance that we will confuse our map of the world with the actual world. This is currently expressed in many Eastern consciousness-exploration techniques.

”

- Robert Anton Wilson

Anthropology of Magic

Mon, 17 May 2010 19:14:00 -0400

“…she offers the proposal that magic is an aspect of human consciousness – in particular, magical consciousness:

…a mythopoetic, expanded aspect of awareness that can potentially be experienced by everyone; it is expressed in myriad varying situations and contexts, and it informs both the shaping of cosmological realities and individual behavior as well as social structures … Thus magical consciousness is an aspect of mind that occurs in a multiplicity of ways in varying individuals and cultural contexts, and through time.

The first chapter opens with an “imagined dialogue” between the English anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard and the French philosopher Lucien Levy-Bruhl – highlighting the importance of participation as a feature of “mystical mentality” – shifting the focus from magic as an instantiation of “primitive thought” towards it being an alternative ideational system of thought – a “frame of mind” present in all societies.

(excerpted from a review of Susan Greenwood’s The Anthropology of Magic)

Photo

Fri, 07 May 2010 15:43:53 -0400