List,: I recently came upon this quotation by the 13th century Persian poet and Sufi, Rumi:
"Consciousness sleeps in minerals, dreams in plants, wakes up in animals, and becomes self aware in humans" - Jalal al-Din Rumi This immediately made me think of Peirce's theory that consciousness is ubiquitous and, in a sense, Rumi's sentence seems to flesh out that idea a bit, albeit in a poetic sense. Rumi develops the above thought a bit further in a poem in his masterpiece, Masnavi. Here's a few lines of it: I died to the mineral state and became a plant, I died to the vegetal state and reached animality, I died to the animal state and became a man, Then what should I fear? I have never become less from dying. At the next charge forward I will die to human nature, So that I may lift up my head and wings and soar among the angels, We post-moderns might think more of 'evolution' than of 'dying'. Of course, Rumi is a poet and a Muslim mystic. However, he also wrote: What am I to do, my friends, if I do not know? I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Muslim nor Hindu. What am I to do? What can I do? While essentially a poet, musician, and ritual dancer, it seems to me that in some of his metaphysical writings that one sees something of a proto-scientific mind-set at work as well. Any thoughts? Best, Gary R
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