--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@...> wrote: > Of course it's "anthropomorphism". I take it that the unstated premise of > people who write on this blog is that the universe expresses a providential > design and a providential execution. The existence of individual beings > inside a metaphysical context of perfect meaningfulness. > > It is of course quite possible there is no such intrinsic purposefulness > built into the universe. For the sake of argument I am assuming the > ontological truth of this unproven assumption. > > If you start without this a priori given, then there is nothing to say about > Amma but: This is BS--because I and you are cosmic accidents. And Amma > cannot, because of this, represent ANY kind of coherent philosophy that has > some intrinsic relationship to reality.
By saying that a premise is unstated, you cannot be sure that is the premise behind posters' statements. It is not my premise that the universe expresses a providential design. But by stating that anthropomorphism is the premise you made these posts under, I cannot take issue with that. And they are very interesting posts. I think metaphysics *is* meaningless, that metaphysics is a poetical way of expressing inexpressible experience, just not in any way factual; but that meaning is derived nonetheless because we manufacture it in our minds; even if the universe is totally deterministic, this process occurs. When this creative intelligence of meaning (because this is what makes the world seem as it is - this is creation) is added in our experience and we become bamboozled by it, this is what I would call falling from the manufactured metaphysical idea of grace. The only way to create a coherent philosophy that has some relation to reality is with facts (science). And yet this leaves us only with what a meta-physician would call the material world; we can only have ideas about particulars of a world fragmented by ideas, beliefs, and try to match up those ideas with the particular experiences using observation and logic. When we get to the whole of experience, we are at a loss for words, there is no way to experience it or talk about it factually, so we revert to poetry as it were, metaphysics. But because there are no facts, there is no proof. There is only the experience, which is private. To talk about it we need to create a web of surrogate facts - fictions - and hope that somehow it will click in the mind of another, that they will get the experience without falling under the spell of the story thus created. Meditation is a tool that hopefully will eventually allow the experience of seeing through the mirage of metaphysical story telling, and to see the relationship of the ideas in our heads to the pieces of the universe that we think of as facts, or *real events*, that is, material happenings, and also the relationship of those ideas we attach to experiences that seem to transcend these material happenings. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > Dear Denise Evans, > > > > > > If Amma were a good thing, the universe would, unequivocally, > > > be determined to demonstrate this. > > > > I have no dog in the Amma fight, but I'm wondering what > > evidence *you* have that "determination" in this sense > > is a quality of the universe. Sounds like anthropomorphism > > to me.
