Its a mystical variant of Jewish manure. On the serious- Kabbala derives from some word I can't find but when transalted from the Hebrew means 'tradition'. Its an oral one dating back to the Talmud and passed down generation to generation among the Jews, finally written down in a book in Mideival times, the name of which is the secod word in your thread title- Zohar. Its not the only one - there are many transcripts that have circulated since midieval times clandestinely (many you'll find in the Apocrypha), and its not surprising. This phenomena is common with the exclusive, secretive and lowly which is in essence the nature of of the sly, vindictive Jew. Its become a noxious fad in Hollywood, symbolized with a red bracelet that has passed around the industry like an std. We find it on Brittany. Her sister. And Demi Moore. And so many others that flirt with the spiritual. *Edit* If you'd like a good read in this (even if corny and pedantic), take up anything by Umberto Eco.
Thanks Gendanken, jewish manure, I like it! It's just been quite interesting, I've had some experiences that I've included in a thread in the Eastern philosophy section called "can anybody help?" These experiences have changed my own life philosophy and this Kaballah stuff is very similar in a few of it's major points. But then you look at the top of the kaballah site page and it says "checkout" and "shopping cart". kiss it. Anyway, It'd be good to know what you think of my thread in the other section.
Kush meer in tuchis, shikse. I've got an ass-dollar for you in there somewhere (so you don't think I'm cheap). Anyway, Kabbalah is concerned with experiencing God directly, and since such subtle realizations are not easily transferrable, it has an air of secretiveness about it. It is something like the Jewish Zen.
Bigal: New Agers have certainly done their share in commercializing the cryptic- so kiss it, indeed. Steer away from the isms and ologies always, though- every philosophy is adept in mimicking some life experience and just like a rat you'll scurry up to nibble on it and *slurp*..its ensnared you with Kaballa, Buddhism, or Zen. Right Goatboy? Y come mi mierda, estupido. I've got hepatitis C in there so you don't think I'm flirting.
I've got a Zohar encyclopedia around here somewhere. The kaballah is symbolized by the Tree of Life. It is a method of meditation and astral voyages. I think there are 10 spheres involved, we're on the lowest and god is the highest. Through meditation, one might progress through the spheres and eventually reach the oneness of god. I could probably dig up the encyclopedia and go into more detail if you're interested. I'm sure you could find it all online though.
Hillarious- all the mystical religions bleeting the same things: sphere of one-ness, the unattainable, the transcdental and uspeakable. The En Sof and the arrhenton- Oh speak to me thou Oriental Nothingness! "The mystical explanations", says Nietzsche "aren't even superficial."
Archetypes inherent in mythological structures, perhaps? Most religions don't seem that imaginative, they just rehash the myths that came before. We can probably thank that original monkey-man (or woman) that came up with the idea to begin with. I don't believe in the Kaballah, by the way. I am interested by these mystical studies, but have never succussfully entered anything close to a trance. Let alone astral travel... I think that studying the symbolism inhabiting religious structures we might gain a better understanding of the forces at work inside our brain.
Invert: I think this as well- which is why temporal epileptics are so fascinating. Those that suffer this condition (and no, this is not a hoax or thumb bullshit. I think you know that) tend to become pedantic, egocentric and argumentative- not only this but obsessed with religion. There is so much in that head of ours that its the easiest thing to confuse the felling of 'self' with 'spiritual'. And this to me is the catalyst for all religions. Maybe I'm boring you. Not imaginative at all, true, but ironically its this very trait that makes it all the more fascinating. That cultures oceans apart have dreamt the same monsters and demons and dichotomies on Earth.....that's fascinating. The Egyptians piecing together a pyramid with a swath of land seperating him from the Asians building their pagodas. And both seperated by oceans from the Aztec bulding his pyramids and temples. It almost seems that either the 'original monkey-man' still sleeps in each of us or someone has been walking around this earth for eons teaching all the cultures the same things.
Not at all. I haven't done any direct research on epileptics, but it certainly fits. How better to describe the rapture of religious fanatics when they begin to speak in tongues? I've spoken about his in another thread, but I'll repeat it in here. It's equally off-topic as the other most likely. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I have only been unconscious once in my life. (As in not sleeping, but passed out. Out cold.) I was only out for a few seconds. And I clearly remember what was happening right before the "faint". But, during that time, I became completely seperated from where I was. It was like I was coming out of a dream. A black dream. I heard a voice saying, "It's going to be ok." And I was annoyed because, no shit everything's going to be ok. Now shut up and let me sleep. Then, the blackness began to evaporate just the tiniest bit. I saw a silhouette of my girlfriend's head. (Mostly her hair. She had big hair.) There was black all around her head, and black inside her head. It was only the edges of her features that shone with light. At that time, there was a spiritual "awakening" within me. I didn't feel the urge to get on my knees and worship or anything, it was far more subtle than that. But, somehow this experience had tapped into those spiritual links within the mind. The experience passed quickly, and I got up and had to go to the hospital to get stitches... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! But, I'll always remember that silhouette and that strange spiritual "drift" that I felt. I wonder how much of these can be explained by cross-travel. It is a possiblity that ancient cultures crossed the oceans occasionally. If even by accident. But, the pyramids of the Maya (did Aztecs build them too? Yeah, I guess they performed their blood rituals on one didn't they?) and the Egyptians are quite different in their use. The Egyptians built large structures of stone with a minimal use of the space inside for housing their dead pharoahs. The Maya viewed theirs as a ladder to heaven (A tree of Life, one might say. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!). A way to get closer to the gods. And also, the Maya structures were built upon older structures in a russian doll kind of way. A lot of the other myths can be explained by being carried by the original emmigration from africa. The people spread out carrying a version of the original myth that was reshaped a bit along the way, depending upon local circumstances. Still, I feel that there is a certain symbology at work deep within the mind. Who knows when it was laid down. Was it laid down by the original creators of religion or was it already there and merely utilized by these creators? The original monkey-man was undoubtably imbued with instincts to a far greater degree than we feel them today. Is it possible that for all our advancement those instincts and symbology merely await a return to simpler times, when they will once more be of use?
Invert: Neither have I but a wannabe knows things, like, really. No better-also to consider is the chemical matrix of the human brain. All those feelings of rapture and closeness one feels in conjucition with God or Allah is, as I've said in the thumb hoax, quite simply a chemical soup. Sex soup. Love soup. Religion soup. All share the same premise- the agitation of instict. Its only in the distortion of human abstract- found only in this curious devise we call language (even symbolism, its precursor. The Cro-magnum and his silent ancestors were religious)- that these primal emotions become spiritual. "Spirit" and the gods we use to describe it are only displacements or misplacements with language to blame for it. Five bucks says that 'spiritual awakening' you felt could easily be felt as 'connection with something higher' in Self, or a bond with something...wholesome. ? . Tell me I'm right. Cross travel or no- it pales to the realiziation that its a global pheomena. Tribes (the Fore were 'disovered' only recently), all on their own, having never seen an outsider so to speak have devoured themselves with religion. Whether or not each civilazation used like things for unlike reasons means little when you find an Aztec (yes, they built them as well as the Inca) has spiritualized his architecuture like all the Empires before him. Even if we consider the Bering Strait, and the crossing of Old with New- how do we know people weren't already living there? Scholars can barely agree when the transmigration occured, even the deductive methods are whack: based on cultural, cranial and genetic similiarities using a method mired in bloody assumptions. And what do they say? One camp says 12, 000 years ago another 30, 0000. Yet another says 40,000 while another says five: In 1986 an apparent multidisciplinary consensus was reached on the chronology and the number of Siberian migrations entering the New World. In an article by Joseph Greenberg, Christy Turner, and Stephen Zegura it appeared that the genetic, dental and linguistic evidence were reconciled in favor of three separate migrations and the initial Paleoindian occupation was posited to have occurred at least 12,000 years ago. Subsequent synthetic work relying on traditional genetic data have supported either the three-migration model or a four-migration pattern. In contrast, studies of maternally-inherited mtDNA have presented a variety of competing scenarios ranging from one to six separate waves of Asian migrants starting as long ago as 30,000 BP. Furthermore, there are different proposals for which "source" populations in Asia gave rise to New World populations: Viral distribution data implicate Mongolia/Manchuria and/or extreme southeastern Siberia as the ancestral homeland of the Amerinds; whereas, mtDNA data point to Mongolia, North China, Tibet, and/or Korea as the candidate source regions in Asia. One of our research goals is to compare Y chromosome data from New World populations with those from Siberian and Asian populations to test these varied hypotheses. Source: http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/html/peopling_siberia.html The Dervishes (a muslim sect) attain a spiritual high by twirling around and around like so many idiots. Add to this the stimulation- by science- of brain centers that patients describe as 'spiritual' and its easier to see this phenomena is biological- not transcultural. The misplacing of control from Self to Object- as the human does with its tokens and simulacra- I doubt is a result from things taught by "outsiders".
Sounds good to me. One could also say "the subdual of the self." When engaged in these activities, the thought processes change from actively thinking to merely being, allowing the body to act of it's own accord. It's hard to describe. The feeling doesn't translate into words quite right, which indicates to me that it is a function of our non-speaking right brain, or perhaps even the reptilian brain beneath it all. It was something like that though. I've read an article within the past year about a site on the Kamchatka peninsula that is similar genetically and culturally to a site somewhere in the US. I don't recall the specifics. I'll have to see if I can dig up the article (I seem to have bad luck finding "articles" when I want them...), but I think the gist of it was that these sites shouldn't have coexisted at the same time. The Kamchatka site should have migrated and eventually reached the american site. But they existed at the same time. But, yes, the migrations of man is a matter that is far from settled. The islanders have travelled quite far on their travels. Amazing what they could do with a crudely built out-rigger canoe and a map made of sticks. I have a pet theory that it is the brain's self-defense mechanism. It kicks in when you're being torn apart by a pack of hyena's or starving to death or pass out from lack of oxygen. It is also seen in dreams when one is removed from the self. The connections to your identity become frayed and torn, and you distance yourself from the cause of pain and frustration. Very handy function for religions to utilize. Have you seen any of the descriptions of the g-lock phenomenon? These are people who pass out from excessive g-forces. They experience all kinds of strange effects, light at the end of the tunnel and the like. One even claims that he saw himself being led down the hallway and questioned by the researchers from a vantage several feet behind and above himself. Spooky shit. It shows how malleable our consciousness is. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with this. I feel that our "self's" job is to rationalize what our bodies are doing at any given time and to take credit for it. It's only a small leap from rationalizing control of self to control of objects. I've found myself talking about this "self" concept quite a bit the past few days. The hidden beings that lurk within us and possibly have greater influence over our actions than "we" do. Strange how all these varying concepts and discussions invariably lead back to the one thing. Then again, it's not really so strange, perhaps it's to be expected.
Right so- the holistic emotional part of our brain (mostly right) is responsible for the holy colors we paint matter with. Left and right hemispheres function like a coloring book- the left side draws a sterile picutre of the Virgin Mary weeping at Golgotha (the outline), and the right jumps in to color it in with the warmth of emotion. Then you're no help to me. This says nothing. Sound like adrenalin. But, you've brought up a wonderful point. Here, to illustrate the fragile hold we self-conscious ones have on this concept of 'self' that seems to us so concrete and undeniable that its led us to conceptualize 'soul' to deify it: Get a human hand, the kind they sell during Halloween. Place it on a table with you sitting in front of it. With your hand beneath the table, place it in the exact position as the dismembered hand on the table making sure that you don't see your own hand. Now, get your girlfriend to stroke the dismebmered hand in same way *simultaneously* that she strokes your hand. Her strokes should exactly mirror each other- on dummy hand and yours. All of this should be in sync in order to work. Given a few seconds your brain will shift in its perception and register the mummy hand on the table as yours. This, too me, among other experiments and illnesses where the brain divorces itself from its body (as in hemiplegics and stroke victims) tells me that "body image" in addition to this idea of SELF is only an illusion. How easily the brain can discard "self' illustrates a basic principle I've built into my own pet theory- that the mechanisms of perception are mostly used for the extracting of stastical guesses from the world to create a mold- or a sanity- that is temporarily useful. (I think therefore I am..therefore, my guess is that "I" is real) In my theory, there is no "I" and the explanation is far from mystical bullshit. Its sceintific. Ever heard the theory for why near death experiences are all alike? Light at end of tunnel, people at the end, yadda ya badda bing? Each of us have one thing in common- birth. The memory of which is embedded in dark memory until the brain begins dying and regressing......all the way back to that first memory of us going through the vaginal wall (dark tunnel) and seeing people at the end (the doctor with the light on his face). Simple- the human with his language and his fears filled the world with spirits. And finding one day he could no longer control them, he sought to propitiate them with his trinkets in a thing we call 'magic'. From this magic, we find years later scientist doing the same thing- controlling gods with their trinkets. None of this comes from the teaching of outsiders is what I'm saying, it comes from the misplacement of control and the desperate attempts to seize power again. And so with the religious we find superstitions and simulacra. And with the scientists we find science.
Quite so, even more so, it has been show that in a great deal of what we "see" is actually constructed in the mind. The mind concentrates on the edges of things and "digitizes" the rest. It's a trait of our pattern-finding roots. I don't recall the specifics, but I'm sure the gist of it was correct. I've still to look for it. I hate poring through my old magazines trying to find the particular article I'm looking for. If I was smart I'd make a reference file on my computer. Also, a product of endorphins and other chemicals in the soup. Have you heard of glial cells? I wonder if they play a part in this. I'd be surprised if they didn't. I've noticed this phenomena in other ways as well. For instance, I'm extremely near-sighted. My glasses change the shape of everything I see. It is compacted and a smaller version of itself. Yet, somehow I manage to reach for the glass and not the space where it only appears to me where the glass is. The brain adjusts. Also, there is the phantom limb experience of amputees. Another interesting experiment is to cross your index and middle fingers. Close your eyes and stroke your nose with the v formed by the cross. You should feel two noses. It's a function of how the brain has evolved to process nerve signals from certain areas of the body. I also feel this way, we are a composite of many different networks that work in unison. The "I" is merely the part that speaks and takes credit. I've mentioned this in other threads and the notion of responsibility has raised it's head. Even though one cannot truly lay claim to those areas of the brain that are hidden, one must accept the responsibility for their actions. In this sense there is an "I". This is interesting and most likely lends itself to the phenomena, but I also feel that much of it is a side effect of exactly how the brain functions. For instance, when being born we don't actually see a tunnel with a light at the end. We aren't born eyes first. We are born skull first. Perhaps the pineal gland is more active in newborns? The soft spot in the skull allowing light to trickle down to our third eye? Interesting notion. I wonder also what a test-tube baby would experience. Of course, at the present stage, I believe that even test-tube babies are born from a mother not from the test-tube. No getting around the birth canal yet. Ahh, I get you. Way to stay on topic. Good work. Yes, the metaphor works for scientists in how fiercely they hold to their convictions. Hence, the thumb thread... Such a subtle creature you can be for all your blatantness. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Invert Nexus: AHA! You see? The wonders of magic. I've been dribbling and dribbing the same shit on these forums and it seems its only you that gets it- concernig this reference you made of the brain being a guesstimator, I've often said (time and fucking time again to have it fall on blind eyes and deaf ears) that the "real" world, without this function of the brain making statistical guesses by filling things in, may actually look like Wonka's room at the end of the movie. Everything in half. Holy fucking mother- I'm dong it right now. Uncanny...... Yup. This theory, first proposed by some Slav doctor too insignifacnt to remember, fails to account for the large population of us born by C-section as well. And not everyone experiences these near death phenomena the same way. Some claim a visit to hell....which I feel is in store for me one sweet day. Poor devil. Call me a creature again and you're toast, Wonderbread.
I learned this from another of those infamous articles. I'll try to dredge this one up as well for you. Oh, and I have been accused a time or two for having "Gendankenish" ideas. Specifically regarding the reptilian brain. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Doh! Forgot about c-sections. This is true. I know a couple of people who have been clinically dead. They experienced nothing whatsoever. Just the endless dark. Staunch atheists because of this fact. Another interesting phenomena about near-death experiences is a strange alteration of the magnetic field of a person (or something similar). I have made it a point to ask everyone who has been dead if they can wear a watch. Invariably the answer is no. The watch will weird out on them. CD player's tend to fizzle after a while as well. My friend got around this by buying a 100 cd changer so he never has to touch it. What's wrong with being a creature? Hmmm, I just noticed the creat part of it for the first time. Is it derived from creation? That adds a twist to it. n. 1. Anything created; anything not self-existent; especially, any being created with life; an animal; a man. Yup, guess so. See what I mean about getting useful information from tangential sources? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I shall now refrain from the use of the word creature, although even without god we are still created from our parents.
Still looking, but I have found an interesting article on seeing the obvious. Here's a link. http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/djs_lab/ Check out the Scientific American link and look at some of the videos. Good stuff in there.
Ok, I found the article on perception that I was referring to earlier. It was in the Scientific American Mind Special Edition. Here's link to a web site discussing the phenomona: http://neuro.physik.uni-bremen.de/~vernier/vernier_english/vindex.html. It deals with how we seperately process seperate aspects of the same "image." It uses a series of vernier lines to illustrate the effect. First, a vernier is shown with an offset for 30 ms, then a larger number of verniers are shown with no offset for 300 ms. Supposedly, when the number of lines in the second image is small, the offset of the original vernier is inherited by the second image. When a larger number of lines is shown, there is a shine through effect, where the lines appear with no offset, but on in the center has the offset. Supposedly, you're not supposed to be able to see two images, just one. But, in the examples on the site, I can clearly see two images and so the effect is nil. I wonder if there is a problem with having the original image shown at the proper duration or if I am just unusually perceptive... Anyway, there is another example where instead of having a large number of lines in the second image, they have a large number of lines, but the middle is delimited from the rest of the lines by a space. In this instance, the inheritance effect is supposed to kick in again. This is supposed to illustrate how the mind starts at the edges and fills in the rest based upon what information the edges give. But, the examples on the web site don't seem to work for me, so... The site also proposes a neuronal functioning to explain the effect. I have also found an interesting article on disgust and humour. It seems that if you look at an image with a smile on your face it seems funny, but if you look at the same image with a grimace of disgust on your face, then the picture looks disgusting. Interesting... Another interesting article on disgust that I found linked disgust to the insula within the brain. The insula is the center of taste. Stimulating the insula during brain surgery causes nausea and a foul taste in the mouth. They give an example of a man who had his insula damaged by a stroke, after this, he would eat soup stirred with a flyswatter. No disgust whatsoever. It goes on to relate disgust to disease prevention. Here's an interesting quote from the article: "Lower castes and kissing in public aroused disgust in India, whereas the British were particularly repulsed by dead sparrows and cruelty to horses; politicians and dog saliva revolted the Dutch, while airport travelers named everything from "wet people" to being eaten alive by insects." Strange creatures we humans are. But, there was a common thread in all these various disgust patterns. "Every region considered feces disgusting, while vomit, sweat, spittle, blood, pus, and sexual fluids inspired nearly universal loathing, closely followed by body parts and animals such as pigs, rats, maggots, lice, and fleas." I have found a few other interesting articles, but I think they would be better related in another thread (Not that these are entirely on topic.) So, to attempt to bring this in line with the kaballah and Zohar... Disgust patterns are inherited from an ancient past which we hold in common (but are added to by local mores). They are archetypal patterns within our minds. They are caused by specific functions within the brain. Myths are likely an effect of the same function. The base myth that spread with the migration of man and diverged here and there but maintained the core of the religious ideal. The spiritual feeling we discussed before also has been linked to specific areas of the brain. The kaballah deals in archetypal symbols in much the same way as the Tarot (I think that the kaballah and the tarot are actually linked in intrinsic ways). These are symbols which strike chords in key areas of the brain and stimulate specific modes of thought. I have never achieved such a state through conscious volition. Only a vague glimmering through my unconsciousness experience related earlier. But, there are those who have an affinity for this mode of thought and use these tools to achieve it. Others fast, self-flagellate, commit vows of silence, handle snakes, the list is endless for the methods by which these key areas of the brain are stimulated by conscious volition. And others find themselves spiritually awakened by purely physical effects, strokes and the like... (The effect in the Cell was interesting. I wonder if that is a real disorder they were describing.) And schizophrenia damages the portions of the brain that connects the parallel circuitry of pattern recognition. I find it likely that the early religious experiences were from individuals who had damaged brains (possibly one individual) and were bombarded with this spiritual effect so greatly that they convinced the healthy indiividuals around them of the surety of gods and spirits. Dreams and hallucinagenic plants also likely added their voice to the chorus as well, along with numerous other psychological stimuli. Obviously, the fact that this religious ideal has spread so far and wide speaks that it had some survival benefit over those who did not have the ideals. I would think that art, religion, and imagination are intrinsically linked in some fashion. I hope that my thoughts are not too rambling here and that sense can be made from them.
Invert: Godamnit Invert, stop being so courteous. This place reserved for further commmentary. Back soon.
Sorry, I can't help myself. I guess it's part of my nature. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I put that there mainly because of the addition of disgust into the conversation. It's kind of a leap between what we were talking about. But, I felt it was vaguely connected through the strange functions within the brain and the cross-cultural norms of disgust. I apologize for apologizing... Doh! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! (It's a vicious cycle... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!)
