Beauty is not something that the mind can conceive, it is something that the mind can receive. The experience of beauty, therefore, might be said to be the only time the mind can "relax", i.e., not create its own opinions, forms, ideas, conditions, etc., but rather to be a receptacle of that which is higher than it.
Life works by receiving into itself that which is greater than itself (illumination works the very same way). For example, the body must be receptive to emotions (action), the emotions to mind (discipline), and the mind to God (illumination).
The universe, creation, is a hierarchical, a cascading, phenomenon.
Thoughts are forms -- energy-forms -- that affect self and surroundings. Thought is a higher form of energy than emotion. Neither thoughts nor emotions, however, are divine realities but, along with the physical body, are part of the trifold mundane sphere.
The notion of "discipline" bears witness that the rational nature must subdue the irrational nature. It is not enough to love but to love wisely.
Is the mind a means or an end? Is it a tool of understanding reality, or is it the arbiter of reality?
Mind cannot be annihilated (as per the Eastern doctrine of mind-annihilation), it can only be directed.
For the mind to be illuminated, it must cease to create anything for itself -- only then can it surrender to that which is greater than itself. I don't see another way than through suffering for this to take place -- suffering being, therefore, the only apparent path to illumination.
Desire, emotion, cannot appreciate meaning -- only mind can appreciate meaning. Desire is consciousness locked in generation. Desire must be overcome, and that is, apparently, the role of suffering.
The mind is by its nature a conditioner, a limiter, or a delimiter. The mind cannot create freedom. The mind cannot conceive (i.e., give birth to) freedom. The mind is nothing more than a maker of conditions.
Symbols are impenetrable to the undiscerning.
That which is divine is that which is not subject to generation.
Freedom is not a condition. Freedom is not something, therefore, that anybody can give to you, it. Freedom is a conditionless condition.
The absence of conditions is not void, but fullness (and death is life and life is death). I imagine that this is the major confusion of existence and therefore the major impediment to growth and evolution. The prisoners of Shawshank prison (see an earlier blog entry below) were conditioned or "institutionalized" by their captivity (physical form), and the character "Red" and others were literally afraid of being liberated. That is the problem of existence and the cause of reincarnation.
It is not annihilation of the mind which is important, but the opening up of the mind to that which is greater than it. The same is true of the body -- when the body is no longer open to that which is greater than it (immediately, prana and the conditions of prana), the body dies.
There are only two motions of mind, away from its source and towards its source.
Realization is a coming out of form rather than an attachment to form.
Man does not make himself a god, man realizes his own godliness.
In a universe of meaning, all suffering, pain, and misery are a means to an end.
Karma is not a negative law. It is a beneficent law, without karma there is no chance of salvation.
All motion (inertial motion) is illusion. The same is true of space as we experience it -- that is, as intervals between objects. This space does not actually exist in reality. In reality all things exist in the same place, the only intervals being those of quality, not quantity. Quantity, diversity, is pure illusion. I suspect that numbers are, in fact, not quantities, even though we use them to tabulate quantities -- numbers are, rather, qualities, i.e. the number one representing an entirely different quality than the number two, and the number three representing a separate quality altogether, and so on. I have not completely worked out this notion in my head but it does, I believe, represent a significant step in my understanding of number. Number systems, like the binary system, the decimal system, the hexadecimal system, the duodecimal system, the sexagesimal system, represent different qualities of tabulation -- testifying to the fact that numbers are not quantitative, but qualitative phenomena. Numbers we seem, therefore, to "abuse" by using them to count, and tabulate, i.e., to create one-to-one correspondences between numbers and objects. But numbers are not objects! Numbers are not things! They must, therefore, intrinsically be qualities. Numbers first arose from cosmological differentiation -- which, as I just pointed out, was qualitative and not quantitative.
All my life I felt as though I was waiting to be born. "Did you ever feel like your life was building towards something, Marlon?" asked Truman. All my life I have been waiting patiently for that something. A birthing process is not a conscious endeavor -- it is an unfolding of consciousness.
Happiness that is not permanent is not happiness but a latent form of sadness. It is sleeping sadness.
I wrote these "random writings" as a way to make further sense of the writings of Manly P Hall on pagan metaphysics (Lectures on Ancient Philosophy). His "Lectures" and his "Secrets Teachings" together constitute what I might term a do-it-yourself illumination kit, if such could be imagined. In any case, my understanding has not quite approached illumination. I wish to add something that I continue to have difficulty working out in my head, and that I don't believe Manly P Hall fully explained or explored.
Hall's "Lectures" contains a chapter on symbolism and his "Secret Teachings" he referred to as "Symbolical Philosophy" -- both of these facts signifying the importance he placed on understanding symbols in the process of education and illumination. Reading symbols, understanding symbols, is the key to illumination. But, the word symbol must include all phenomenal/objective experience. When you open your eyes or direct your vision anywhere, you are seeing naught but symbols pointing to higher realities -- and to not see those symbols as symbols is to be trapped in mundane reality. Similarly for all events in your life.
Perhaps more importantly, a proper understanding of symbols gives rise to the realization that only meaning -- and not meaninglessness -- exists in the universe. This is quite different from the education modern man receives whose tenet is that there is no meaning apart from phenomena (the sensory/objective world that science limits itself to), and that phenomena have no intrinsic meaning. This tenet (just like the Darwinian theory that we arose from apes) is the exact opposite of the truth!
The mind is a conditioner, and therefore, it does not necessarily want to see meaning (which is higher than itself) in things but rather to impose its own structures and conditions (opinions) on things. That is where the mind trades in its eternal life for cyclical death (reincarnation).
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