Andrew Cort's Blog, page 9

Pythagoras

Pythagoras placed great value in mathematics, and his mathematical achievements were prompted by a discovery in the field of music. Working with a monochord (comparable to a guitar with one string), Pythagoras discovered that the note produced by plucking a string of a certain length could be ‘reproduced’ one octave higher by plucking a string exactly half as long, or one octave lower by plucking a string exactly twice as long. Continuing on, he discovered the beautiful symmetry of strings and vibrations: simple mathematical proportions that account for the pleasing harmonies we hear when the right notes of the musical scale are played together as chords. Pythagoras found that these harmonic proportions can be expressed quite simply as ratios of the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. Other ratios of string length produce irritating disharmony.

Thus Pythagoras discovered that ‘Number’ somehow underlies the phenomena and experience of music. Like other Greek philosophers of his era, he was looking for a fundamental ‘something’ that could unify and explain life, mind, and nature. But rather than a primary physical substance, he came up with a primary idea. All things, he concluded, in their essence, are ‘Number’. He found that the motions of the heavenly bodies follow regular patterns which are understandable and predictable in terms of the same numerical principles of harmony and proportion − and thus was born the ancient notion of ‘the harmony of the spheres’; he saw that the various surfaces of tangible objects can be viewed as examples and illustrations of the perfect figures of geometry; he saw that beauty and physical health are dependent upon a harmony of material elements, and he saw that psychological health was also to be achieved through temperance or moderation, again requiring a proper harmonious balance. The Pythagoreans would eventually conclude that the perfection of a soul requires the restoration of inner harmony, and that achieving this is not dissimilar to achieving the perfect attunement of a musical string.

For Pythagoras, then, as for Plato who followed him and for many ancient people, the domain of mathematics was sacred. It could also be practical of course, but this did not detract from its divine essential nature.

Of Both Heaven and Earth

The soul’s journey of initiation is not about transcending the material level of life, it’s about transforming it. The world is not ‘bad’, and in fact, the stories all tell us that the soul is of both Heaven and Earth and never completely abandons this side of the veil: something always remains to maintain the connection.

This is why Persephone tasted the pomegranate seed, just as our own soul tastes the enticing fruit of mortal life. Just as Persephone could not return to Olympus absolutely, but had to remain in the lower world for several months each year, so too does part of our soul have to remain behind in the realm of Becoming.

Similarly, in the Torah, something of this soul that Moses has been leading through ‘the wilderness’ will have to remain behind in the realm of Becoming.

The Reubenites and the Gadites owned cattle in very great numbers. Noting that the lands of Jazer and Gilead were a region suitable for cattle, the Gadites and Reubenites came to Moses, Eleazar the priest, and the chieftains of the community, and said…, “the land that the Lord has conquered for the community of Israel is cattle country, and your servants have cattle. It would be a favor to us,” they continued, “if this land were given to your servants as a holding; do not move us across the Jordan.”(Num.32.1-5)

The tribes of Reuben and Gad, aspects of the soul who love cattle and good earth, need to remain behind, to maintain the connection and provide support.

In the New Testament, Peter is the ‘rock’ upon which Christ will build his Church. Peter, the apostle of the physical realm (he is the one who continually seeks literal proof that he can see with his own eyes, and even his name means ‘rock’), is the part of the soul that must remain behind to maintain the connection with Divinity, to provide spiritual support here on earth. Like the Gadites and Reubenites, Peter must take care of the ‘flock’ on this side of the Jordan.

{I hope you begin to see how all these sacred stories, from all our traditions, are so wonderfully unified in their inner symbolic and spiritual meaning. To see more of this valuable truth which can help us all find real understanding, compassion, and peace with each other, please read my book, SYMBOLS, MEANING, AND THE SACRED QUEST: Spiritual Awakening in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Stories.)

Stoning Adulterers

Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” (John.8.2-5)

They were of course ‘testing’ him, hoping he would say something that blatantly violated the law so that they could pull him down. They were not speaking from a concern with the woman’s sin, the sin of polluting the soul with lower influences. They were speaking from a sense of superiority, and a desire to destroy the higher level of the soul that exposes them.

Jesus responded with a gesture that at first seems baffling: he bent down silently, “and wrote with his finger on the ground.” – in fact, he does this twice, which emphasizes how important the gesture is. What it means is that the Spirit comes down to earth (‘Jesus bent down’), and applies its Will (‘wrote with his finger’) to the material realm (‘the ground’). In other words, Christ is re-injecting the inner meaning of the law into the confused ‘ground’ of those who are only concerned with hypocritical morality and technical obedience.

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. (John.8.7-8)

“When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.”

Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John.8.10-11)

It only needs to be added that most biblical scholars agree that Jesus’ act of mercy was not out of keeping with the religious practice of the times. Other Rabbis would not have enforced the Leviticus code for stoning an adulteress. This had never been taken literally and had never been literally enforced. No Rabbi in Judea would have said “Go on, stone her.” Jesus was taking a stance well within his Jewish tradition. It is certainly long past time for Muslim political authorities (the Qur’an never endorses or even says anything at all on this subject) to take the same stance.

Is That Really It?

“After all the fire and storm of the historical process, the struggles between good and evil, progress and reaction, the long and difficult climb from barbarism and slavery up into the light of civilization and finally of free civil society, at last and at length we struggle up to the peak of the mountain to encounter the culmination of generations of human striving: Homer Simpson…. The world turns into a big mall, and we all go shopping: forever…. Were all the heroism of the past, all the suffering, all the passionate faith, the sacrifice, the religious and political contests, simply to build a shopper’s paradise?” -Walter Russell Mead, in God and Gold

America is not special because of its people. America is special because of its obligation.

The ideal of freedom that America stands for is not merely license to ‘do whatever one feels like’, and it is not merely the negative ‘freedom from’ being told what to do. Nor is it merely the freedom to get and spend and satisfy any and every mundane desire of the body. The freedom that most mattered to the founders, and that ought to matter most to all of us, is the freedom of the mind: a mind unconstrained by the religious, philosophical or political beliefs of others, the freedom to form one’s own ideas and beliefs, the freedom to pursue what is good, meaningful, and true, the freedom (to use Emerson’s words) to pursue “wisdom, and power, and beauty”.

The ideal of equality that America stands for is not synonymous with ‘sameness’, it is not a force for leveling everyone down to the lowest common denominator, nor is it merely the right of everyone to go shopping and obtain the same ‘stuff’. Equality means protecting and encouraging everyone’s chance to pursue what is best and highest in themselves, to find what brings them the most genuine happiness, to have every possibility for worldly achievement and inner achievement.

America was consciously designed as a place where ideals like freedom and equality could be pursued, where the quest for what Socrates called “the Good” would be encouraged. America was created as a place where all human beings could gather together and this pursuit would be protected. This, and only this, is what makes America special and unique. We are no different than any other people in any other time or in any other country – but no other nation has ever had this obligation to the human spirit.

Because we have often betrayed these ideals is not a reason to reject the ideals themselves, nor is it a reason to give up hope for the possibility of fulfilling these ideals in the future.

Unifying Science and Religion

[image error]A Guest Post from Philip Comella

(this is an excerpt from The Collapse of Materialism: Visions of Science, Dreams of God, by Philip Comella)

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All scientific theories originate in the mind. The challenge of science is to align a theory with what really happens out in the world. Thus, scientific theory attempts to correlate a mental picture, created in the mind, with an external world presumed to exist outside of the mind.

Trying to Prove More than they Have to



Material scientists break one of their own fundamental precepts when devising a theory: They seek to prove more than they have to. Occam’s razor judges scientific theories according to how much they explain rather than assume. The best scientific theory would therefore rely upon no assumptions but explain the world with what we can know. Such a theory may be said to be more conservative than other theories because it explains events without recourse to unprovable beliefs and assumptions. Thus, if we can explain the world without taking for granted the independent existence of matter, space, and natural laws, we will have found a better theory than the one on which science now relies.

Standing before us is an appearance of a natural, independent world. Nothing in this appearance alone tells us that this world actually does exist independently of the mind. Scientists, however, in the big bang and related theories attempt to explain how this hypothetical independent world created itself from nothing. Thus, they create a more difficult problem than actually confronts them. They imagine an independent, material universe, freeze this thought in their minds, and then try to come up with a theory explaining how this incredible, imagined mass appeared out of nowhere. It might be easier if scientists did not make the independent-universe assumption in the first place, as this would relieve them from the impossible task of explaining how a mindless, material world arose from nothing and organized itself to the limits of mathematical order.

As all theories begin in the mind, the first step in evaluating their truth is whether the theory speaks of a world standing apart from the mind, or whether the theory speaks only of a world that the mind created. Perhaps, before believing that a theory tells us about a world independent of the mind, we should first decide which type of world more likely exists: a dream or a self-created machine.

If the mind is limited to knowing itself and, in fact, dreams the world, then the testing of scientific theories must occur within a framework in which the unconscious mind first creates physical reality (from atoms to galaxies), and then the conscious mind theorizes about its makeup.

In this new framework, we adopt a much different standpoint than material science. Forces of nature join at the core of the mind, not in the fiery blast of the big bang. Harmony found in the external world is the harmony that the mind put there. Constants of nature, such as the speed of light or the gravitational force, can be explained as functions of the mind’s infinite need for regularity, not as mere coincidences resulting from the random shuffling of mindless particles or as a peculiar feature of one special universe out of an infinite number actually created.

The Real Dream does not naïvely separate the mind from the physical world when seeking to explain it. Rather, this new science first seeks to understand the degree to which unifying the thoughts, emotions, and goals of people can improve the physical world, including their bodies, because controlling internal states is how a dreamer controls one’s dream.

In a dream, we know we can explain the source of the physical world. Material scientists, in contrast, avoid questions about how this flowing, three-dimensional movement outside of us can possibly exist. They simply take an independent world for granted and then go about their theorizing.

Materialists, in fact, demand an independent world without stop-ping to wonder whether the mind of God has already answered this wish. But once separating the mind from its hypothetical independent world—or God from its creation—material science must pay the price: physical reality left to itself has no mind, no purpose, and no means to organize itself into the mathematical harmonies that constitute nature.

In cosmology, for example, material scientists attempt to explain how the entire universe, from the farthest galaxy to your closest friend, all arose from a big bang of matter, energy, and space-time—but no mind. Likewise, in the theory of evolution, scientists tell us how all life, and therefore the mind itself, sprang out of lifeless matter through a mindless process called natural selection. In the material science worldview, the mind, whether of God or humanity, plays no part in forming the physical world. The Real Dream worldview concludes exactly the opposite: The mind of God is the origin of both the material world and the scientific theories that seek to explain the world’s operation. Scientific theorizing thus becomes much simpler in the Real Dream.

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Philip Comella is a lawyer, visionary futurist, and host of the popular radio show Conversations Beyond Science and Religion, podcast at www.webtalkradio.net. His book, The Collapse of Materialism: Visions of Science, Dreams of God, is a culmination of decades of work committed to developing a new and credible scientific paradigm to unify the physical world of science with the metaphysics of religion. He lives with his wife and daughter in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

‘The Haters are Not America” — Robert Reich

“The real dividing line in America today isn’t between conservatives and liberals or between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between the haters and the big-hearted. The haters direct their venom not just at child refugees seeking asylum from the drug war we created, but also at gays who want to marry, African-Americans who want to vote and exercise their other rights of citizenship, women who seek abortions, or even women in general, Latinos who want their children to be taught in Spanish, immigrants in general, Muslims, Jews, government “bureaucrats,” the poor and needy, anyone who dares suggest a required background check before buying guns, people they call “liberals” or “socialists” or “communists,” even the President of the United States. The haters are enflamed by hate-mongers in the media who blame the nation’s troubles on “them.” The haters are loud and angry; they yell and wave their signs before the cameras. But the haters are not America. They are a small and vocal minority. Most Americans are generous and welcoming, decent and kind-hearted. We are the silent majority, who have been silent too long.” — Robert Reich

Peace in the Middle East

The supremacist thinking of Muslim extremists is grounded in culture, politics and nationalism – not in religion. Islam has been co-opted by politicians – technocrats serving as self-appointed arbiters of faith – who limit debate and interpretation rather than expanding it, and use their power to prop up their own political goals.

In Palestine, for example, Hamas and Hezbollah relentlessly preach to their subjects that the Middle East crisis is solely the fault of diabolical and subhuman Jews, who wish to take over the world and must therefore be annihilated.

They reject any offers of peace, because peace is not what they want. And land is not what they want. Previous offers of “land for peace”, previous offers of cease-fires, have brought no respite from attacks. Terrorist regimes always see peace overtures as weakness, and they prey on weakness.

But peace is what mothers and fathers and families want, it is what good decent people – of all Faiths, Traditions and Nationalities – who simply wish to live their lives and make a better life for their children, want.



I suspect the only way Peace in the Middle East will finally be achieved – and it will finally be achieved – is when people rise up and rid themselves of rulers and fanatics who cavalierly sacrifice them on an altar of their political egos and religious hatred, who proudly admit they would rather see their own people suffer for a hundred years, than live in peace and prosperity with their neighbors. From 2004 to 2008, 85% of al-Qaeda’s victims were Muslims! It doesn’t take the United States or the Israelis to carry out barbarity against innocent Muslim families.

Which is not to say that Israel or America have been completely innocent. It is now critical, and only just, that Israel listen far more compassionately to the viewpoint of Palestinians. After all, how would any of us respond if we were suddenly told by a group of outsiders that our homes were no longer ours, that the land where our families had lived for generations and where we had raised our children, would now be taken away; that the State where we live was henceforward the new homeland of the Native American peoples, and we had to take what we could carry and get out, in recompense for all the terror and slaughter of the past, just as the Nazis had terrorized and slaughtered European Jews? There might certainly be a kind of justice in this. But might this not cause years and years of rage, hatred, and violence?

And so, the two sides have to keep listening and negotiating, we have to keep trying. But the real path to peace is not through negotiations with these regimes, it is not through offering them land or money or yet another offer of truce.

The path to peace is through an unequivocal rejection of hatred and terror, by all decent people, regardless of their religious, cultural, or national traditions.

And I am hopeful, because sooner or later wisdom and decency always win out. There is much that has to be done to bring about peace. But it is important that each one of us remembers that the most important thing of all is that we become living examples of peace, justice, and love.

The End of the Kali Yuga

From “While the Gods Play” by Alain Daniélou:

“It is the lowest instincts that spur the men of the Kali Yuga on. They prefer to choose false ideas. They do not hesitate to persecute sages. Desire torments them. Slovenliness, illness, hunger, and fear spread. There will be severe droughts. The different regions of countries will be in conflict with each other. The sacred books are no longer respected. Men will be without morals, irritable and sectarian. In the age of Kali false doctrines and misleading writings spread…

Many will perish…. They will hunt down the priests and upholders of knowledge. Fetuses will be killed in the stomachs of their mothers and heroes will be assassinated. The Shudra will claim to behave like Brahmans and the priests like laborers. Thieves will become kings, and kings will be the thieves…. The earth will produce plenty in some places and too little in others. Rulers will confiscate property and use it badly. They will cease to protect the people. Base men who have gained a certain amount of learning (without having the virtues necessary for its use) will be esteemed as sages. Men who do not possess the virtues of warriors will become kings. Scholars will be in the service of mediocre, conceited, and malevolent men. Priests will degrade themselves by selling the sacraments. There will be many displaced persons, wandering from one country to another…

Predatory animals will be more violent…. Young girls will do trade in their virginity…. Shopkeepers will run dishonest businesses. They will be surrounded by pretentious, false philosophers. There will be many beggars and unemployed people. Everyone will use hard and vulgar language. No one will be able to trust anyone else. People will be envious… moralizing puritans characterize the period of the end of the Kali Yuga. … Wealth and harvests will decrease… Rapes will be frequent.

Many people will be treacherous, lustful, base, and foolhardy… Thieves will steal from thieves. People will become inactive, lethargic, and purposeless. Illness, rats, and noxious substances will plague them… Unqualified people will pass as experts in matters of morals and religion. People will massacre women, children, cows, and one another”

- ‘While the Gods Play’ by Alain Daniélou, Inner Traditions.

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The ‘Fish’ Symbol in Christianity: The Vesica Piscis

The fish has always been a symbol of Christ and his followers. Saint Augustine would write that Jesus was “a fish who lives in the midst of the waters,” and Tertullian would write, “So many fishes bred in the water, and saved by one great fish.” (Similarly, Joshua, whose name is the same as ‘Jesus’ and means ‘savior’, was the son of Nun – a Hebrew word that means ‘fish’).

The letters that spell the Greek word for ‘fish’, (pronounced ichthys) are also the initials for the phrase “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior”.

The word can still be found as an emblem in many examples of Christian art, where it is often written within a symbolic drawing of a fish known as the Vesica Piscis.

 

The Vesica Piscis is a geometrical symbol made from the interpenetration of two perfect circles, one representing the ‘Above’ and the other representing the ‘Below’. When the circles are drawn in a vertical alignment, their intersection, which has the basic form of a fish, is a symbol of Christ – a combination of human and divine. Taken internally, the figure symbolizes the Christ within, the human soul in the Threshold between Worlds – partly of the material world and partly of the divine.

 

On the other hand, when the circles are viewed in a horizontal alignment, their intersection can be seen as a vaginal symbol, representing the passageway into life. This symbol, surrounded by the crescents of the waxing and waning moon, now represents the Sacred Feminine, the Shechinah, the Divine Mother through whom the soul enters the material world – e.g., Mary. This form of the symbol can also be seen in various examples of religious art, including many depictions of the Madonna and Child surrounded by a vesica-shaped halo, and in constructions of sacred architecture, including the Gothic Cathedrals.

 

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For more on the symbolism of western religion, you may enjoy my book
SYMBOLS, MEANING, AND THE SACRED QUEST:
Spiritual Awakening in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Stories