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Everything posted by Michael Sternbach
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spiritual vs non-spiritual partner?
Michael Sternbach replied to Shad282's topic in General Discussion
The partner is reflecting a part of yourself which you are not fully aware of. What Jung called the anima and animus, respectively. The bliss we experience when we are in love is due to this completion we have found again - at least temporarily. Of course, there is generally some illusion involved, because what we are seeing is in part not the partner the way she/he really is, but just ourselves, projected on them. Once we start finding this out, the relationship usually gets difficult, but it can still be a great learning tool that helps us to experience ourselves and get closer to our wholeness. And that is what I am talking about - the inner marriage, the mysterium conjunctionis, by which we become whole again. Platon talked about this in his Symposium. It's common knowledge in Alchemy and Tantra.- 54 replies
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Oh, it's all just gas.
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spiritual vs non-spiritual partner?
Michael Sternbach replied to Shad282's topic in General Discussion
Relationships are a great means of achieving that oneness, by integration of that missing part of yours that the other reflects. Be careful not to cut too many corners. Or you won't even know what you are missing.- 54 replies
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http://i67.tinypic.com/148otpe.jpg
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On the one hand, space is a perception. Our most direct experience of space concerns the space taken up by our own body. Interestingly, in German there is a word for the body as a subjective perception ("Leib") as opposed to the body as an object ("Körper"). "Objective space" is the subject (pun not entirely unintended) of physics. Traditonally, it was filled with an intangible substance called aether. Nowadays, the aether is actually still in vogue, the scientists just renamed it and call it vacuum energy now. What if the aether (quantum vacuum, what have you) is not in space, but identically is space? Ponder on the difference. Could space be something like an all-pervasive gas? And just to blow your mind a little more yet, it could be that there is space within space, or, in other words, that space has multiple layers.
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Whooa, Karl... Now you started a thread on space not to bring Junko's thread OT (), just to continue talking about it here anyway! Looks like this topic needs a LOT of space! LOLOL
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spiritual vs non-spiritual partner?
Michael Sternbach replied to Shad282's topic in General Discussion
My partner is Junko, also a member of this forum. We do share certain interests, including spiritual ones. When I met her one evening 28 years ago in that disco, I happened to have a book on Tarot with me which I had bought a couple of hours before. I showed it to her, she liked it, and the rest is history. I consider it's very important for a long term relationship that your partner at least has an openness to your interests, especially if they tie in with how you look at life. You wouldn't have been happy in the long run with any of those girls who rejected your views; it's good that you found out early. The people we attract tend to reflect ourselves; if it frequently happens that you meet girls who turn away from you or feel provoked because of your beliefs, consider if you yourself are somehow not at peace with them. You could facilitate attracting the right type by attending some kind spiritual seminars or classes.- 54 replies
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There is in fact the idea that if there were no objects, there would be no space.
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Zen - worthless practice due to a dramatic misunderstanding?
Michael Sternbach replied to Wells's topic in General Discussion
I'm pretty sure the reason was just insufficient practice. -
It is said that, when the Spanish first arrived at the Bahamas, the natives couldn't see their ships showing up on the horizons, because they had no concept of them. When I looked at something undefinable from a certain distance and with poor lighting, it took a few seconds until my mind concluded that it must be a horse (taking into account the place where it was standing), only then were my eyes able to see it as such. This unspectacular event made it clear to me how much my perception depends on my mental images. Only a small part of the information our senses receive actually reaches the brain. Most gets filtered out as irrelevant. So, what we don't have a concept of, generally we can't perceive.
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Right. Even though Newtonian gravity is close enough an approximation for most purposes, we know now that General Relativity yields even more accurate calculations. But that may not be the final word on the matter. Maybe we just don't understand the laws of gravity on the very large scale yet. For that matter, we don't really understand the nature of gravity yet.
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Okay, Karl, you asked for this (on another thread). What strikes me regarding the Objectivists that I have met so far is that the one thing they are not being objective about is themselves. They are naive regarding their abilities to perceive the reality of things. Any "objective" reality out-there is of little consequence as long as it's not being perceived. The Subjectivist is aware of the relativity of all perspectives, hesitant to make absolute statements, and may, paradoxically, find themselves more in line with the complexity of reality as it is. For instance, in chemistry, there are about three different models of the atom in use. It hasn't been possible so far to blend the respective characteristics of these into a single model, so the chemists pragmatically apply whichever best describes a particular situation. The occasional reconciliation of seemingly contradictory, yet equally valid perspectives is tantamount to a quantum leap in consciousness. Will it lead to THE truth? No, it will only close a chapter and open up another in the open ended search for knowledge. This is is an ongoing process that lasts as long as consciousness evolves, with perceived reality ever mirroring the stage that it has reached so far.
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Thanks for the invitation.I will see what I can do. Yes, my previous post probably reflects my Subjectivist perspective. I should add that the mystery of DM and DE will ideally lead us beyond the "matrix" that our perception makes us believe to be the whole of reality.
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That's why I said "unknown" rather than "new." But mind you, a deaf person suddenly able to hear may very well feel like they are discovering a whole new world. We could now go into a conversation about the relationship between reality and our perception of it, but that may take things a little far - even for this thread.
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Of course it is natural for science to come up with working hypotheses, even if they are on the level of the old phlogistone theory. The more honest physicists will admit that this is about as far as they have come with their concepts of DM and DE. IMO, solving these riddles adequately might require physics to really step out of the box it has constrained itself to. Agreed. Looking at many an advanced physics books, one can hardly avoid the impression that math is being overrated at the expense of imaginability - as if reducing it all to a bunch of formulas would really answer the questions. I'd be careful with "cannot ever be proven" here. This postulate's half life period may turn out not to exceed a couple of years or decades. Right, that's tricky. This would support the theory of panspermia though. Something we haven't talked about much on this thread so far. That's right what I mean by my comment above. That's actually quite an extension of what I said. But interesting. Stacking up ideas is sometimes the best way to go. And science is an open ended project. So far, whenever scientists thought they are close to something like a Theory Of Everything, trying to answer the last few remaining questions opened up a whole unknown Universe. Yeah, fantastic. I just hope that no contributor would vandalize this thread by editing out their posts later. Coming across such threads is a pain for later readers. It really spoils all the fun.
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Believe it or not: Japan is also in the Universe.
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Physicists talk about "Dark Matter" to gloss over the fact that what is in the dark is the grey matter between their ears.
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Hmm... Could it be that she meant this? Hold on a minute, she is next to me, I'll ask her...
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Yes, that's a possibility. Actually, it seems to be the only one that explains how a space can be finite, yet boundless. It explains a couple of other things as well. This reminds me of a funny story. When astronomers first observed another galaxy (Andromeda) - around 1930, I believe - they thought it might be just a mirror image of our own galaxy whose light has circumvented the Universe. Today, of course we know that there are not only other galaxies, but even clusters and super clusters of such. But the concept of a Universe turned back on itself is still viable. Since time is often considered the fourth dimension, I tried to make clear that I am talking about four spatial dimensions here. Extra dimensions are quite popular in contemporary physics, even though they are often considered to exist only on sub-quantum scales, which I don't agree to. Anyway, it is a good question how time ties in with them.
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That sounds somehow interesting. I think there should be some kind of interplay between the infinite expansion and infinite contraction of space-time in CCC for another Universe to emerge, but I haven't figured out yet how.
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I got a good chuckle out of this. And I imagine, so will MH. MH is a typical Pisces in some ways. Their way of looking at things is often a little diffuse. But that's consistent with Lao Tzu who must have been a Pisces too. And yes, it enables them to get on with folks from quite varied mind sets. After all, isn't there some truth in almost every perspective?
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This could actually be said to be the gist of Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology - condensed by you into a Singularity. There is also Fred Hoyle's Steady State Universe, but it's not in vogue. This only holds true if the Universe is indeed a closed system. In truth, it might be exchanging energy with a multidimensional structure which it is part of. There is nothing supernatural, I agree. But Materialism is only taking in account a tinypart of nature. Penrose's CCC is the only theory that reconciles the eternally expanding Universe with the cyclically reborn one. I talked about it already a number of times on this forum. In a nutshell, it says that, after most matter in the Universe has been swallowed by Black Holes, and even the BHs have evaporated and turned into energy (along with the matter that was left floating around), space-time both expands infinitely and contracts to zero - hence a new Singularity is formed. This cycle repeats itself without beginning and end. Incorrect in terms of the traditional Big Bang: There wasn't even energy prior to it. Correct in terms of CCC: The former Universe had all turned into undifferentiated energy. Which led to the birth of a new Universe.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_frog