On Wed, 28 May 2003, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >when uncertainty becomes unbearable, faith provides solace.
> Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [wrote:] >>Selma, I think you've put the matter very well. It reminds me of Thomas >>Merton's concept that, to understand God, we must depend on both reason >>and faith. In understanding who and what we are, we must let >>rational thought take us as far as we can possibly go with it. With >>each passing day or year, or with each scientific breakthrough, we will >>know a little more, but we will then increasingly recognize that what we >>cannot know is much larger, perhaps infinitely larger since there may be >>no boundaries, than what we can know. That is where reason ends and >>faith must take over. >>Selma <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Singer [wrote:] >>>Hi Natalia, >>> >>>I am familiar with The Course in Miracles; I have the book and its >>>companion and did a little work with it some years ago; as you say, >>>there are many paths to the same end. >>> >>>I am not comfortable however, with the idea that there is no objective >>>reality, although I doubt that my idea of objective reality is exactly >>>like that of those who believe that's all there is. I regard the subjective reality of Berkeley as possessing equal validity as the objective reality of western science, and I think the true nature of reality embraces them both in a synthesis beyond the apparent paradox our limited understanding perceives, analogous to the synthesis of wave and particle, or other such complements which abound in physics. The world of subject and object is a result of a symmetry breaking event analogous to that which brought the multiplicity of fundamental forces into being. Furthermore, I applaud uncertainty, and hold that the position of agnosticism is the first step in understanding. You can't learn til you assume the position that you don't know. I see no value in abandoning that position in favour of faith. Rather, I promote the concept of active introspection, to replace agnosis with gnosis by direct experience. As far as the "mind", there are problems with the precision of terms, and much is lost in translation from the philosophies of other cultures. The concept of "no mind" in Buddhism is not an endorsement of an objective reality of a western nature, rather a rejection of the arcane profusion of mental "worlds" in some other eastern philosophies. However, from the simple western perspective, one can say, to illuminate the nature of mind, that either you have one, or there is no "you", rather "you" are one of the filler bodies, extras added to the world to bulk out the crowd scenes, golems which have no experiences and no subjective existence, ie no one home. This is a useful distinction to introspect on, to explore the nature of the bare essence of being, which is where one can apply one's attention to pry open the secrets of the true nature of reality. -Pete V _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
