2.2 ASSUMPTIONS IN THIS WORK
" It may me that our
role on this planet is not to worship God,
but to create him"....Arthur C Clarke
The following assumptions have been made in this work , and these
form the basis of the structure of concepts underlying these interlinked
articles, the central concept of this structure is Personal Validity:
"It is
wise of a physician to renounce all premature assumptions.
This does not mean that he should throw out all assumptions
overboard ; but that he should regard them in any given case
as hypothetical".....C. G. Jung
BEING AND PURPOSE
Two very central assumptions have been made in this work :
1.) All beings are unique, distinct and different.
2.)The purpose of one's existence is to discover, develop, explore, define and/or
expand this uniqueness of one's being to its potential limits.
KNOWLEDGE
"The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination, but theThe Assumption that Knowledge is derived from and is a composite
from three distinct sources :
1. Through sensory systems of sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.
2. Created, or synthesised from nothing.
3. Through Non-sensory modes of perceiving - source unknown.
SELF
The Self is defined in this work as a living being having a finite existence,
in space and time, from the moment of birth, ( before which that 'Self'
did not exist ), till the moment of death, after which the 'Self' ceases
to exist, and after which a 'Self" is no longer defined. Thus a 'Self', in this
work is considered as a mortal being in its existence, but whose totality
or essence, if realised and expressed in form or actions, is
immortal, that is, transcends death.
Thus the experience of an individual living being, defined here as Self, is
a constituent of current reality, and the essence or totality of a
being is a constituent of ultimate reality.
The Self is important whereas Self-importance is not.
THE BRAIN
The Neurophysical Brain of
a human being has potential for intelligence and creativity
whose diversity and limits, we as the human race are nowhere close to realisation.
CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPIRIT
Every living being has consciousness or awareness that has a primary component
to it at the time of birth and which has a continuity after death, herein termed as
the Supra-Conscious (whether it has ultimate or eternal continuity is an open
question here) The living beings of a particular world are connected together
through this supra-conscious.
In other words, the thread of the Supra-conscious runs through every life form in a
world, in an instantaneous non-physical connection, that can be called the web of life.
The essential animating element of the supra-conscious, that contains in it all the real
and aesthetic knowledge of the entire world is called here as the SPIRIT.
Life in any world is created and sustained by this Spirit. Once the Spirit's animating
capacity is exhausted, the world comes to an end although the aesthetic essence
remains to restart a new cycle.
" I sometimes think
the gods have united human beings by some mysterious
principle, like the according notes of music. Or is it as Plato has supposed,
that souls originally one have been divided, and each seeks the half it lost."
..........Lydia Maria Child
BEING & SPIRIT
Pure Being and Spirit are the same.
NATURE
"The study of
Nature is intercourse with the Highest Mind. You should
never trifle with Nature".......Louis Agassiz
Nature will reveal only
those secrets that one has earned the right or the need
to know.
The rest will remain hidden.
"There is a pleasure
in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar :
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.".......Lord Byron
MEANING and PURPOSE
"Fortunately,
in her kindness and patience, Nature has never put the fatal
questions as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people.
And where no one asks, no one needs to answer"........Jung
Meaning and purpose are
inseparable. It is only when acts are driven by conscious
purpose that they become meaningful.
"If I had one wish
for my children, it would be that each of them would reach
for goals that have meaning for them as individuals.".......Lillian Carter
LIFE and NON-LIFE
" Life has
its own hidden forces which you can only discover by
living "...Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
The end all of life is to
create more than what is destroyed. That is what distinguishes
a human and a machine ( non-life). A machine can never create more than it destroys.
It can never have more than 100% efficiency, only less than that, and at best 100%.
An average animal has 100 % efficiency.
In this age and time, an average human being has less than 100% efficiency,
because an average human being destroys more than what he creates.
The dividing line between creativity and destructivity is a very thin blurred line,
that
gets more and more thinner and blurred with the development of religions,
science and especially - technology.
" Programming
today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger
and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and
better idiots. So far the universe is winning." ........Rich Cook
SOCIETY and CULTURE
"Culture is only true
when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets
this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable
element of culture".............Theodor
W. Adorno
The most crucially
important beliefs, are the beliefs one projects onto others,
because society is shaped by commonly held or shared beliefs. These shared
beliefs are what define and direct a society and culture.
The most open society is one which encourages its members to not only develop
or create their own ideas and beliefs, but also to question or put these beliefs to
rigorous test in current reality, especially those that are held for a long time.
MORAL OF THE STORY
" The
strategist's method....challenge the prevailing assumptions with a single
question: Why? and to put the same question relentlessly to those responsible
for the current way of doing things until they are sick of it. ..........Kenichi
Ohmae"
In the age of reason, the highest ethical activity is to create a scenario wherein a
continuous challenging
intellectual stimulus provokes sufficient number of people
to turn the tide from destruction towards regeneration of the Human Spirit.
This can only happen when intelligence is used to develop a language - a
communication technology that cuts across cultures in order to educate
people to have the highest value for the environment and
nature's balance.
"Everything's got
a moral, if only you can find it."
....Lewis Carroll
The bottom line for a moral existence is to give more to this world than
to take from it : to create more than what is destroyed.
What I spent, is gone;
what I kept, I lost;
but what I gave away will be mine forever.......Ethel Percy Andrus
Now with these assumptions as basis, the next article examines the very
tricky and paradoxical aspect of life : Unity and Duality. To find the right
step in this minefield of contentions and controversy is indeed tough.
Next Page 06 : 2.3 The Duality in Nature