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Metafisicittà - Metaphysicity by Gian Guido Zurli

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Modena

Polaroid Spectra System MB

Polaroid Image

'Roid Week 2011 Picture 2/2, Day Five.

Sunny noon by M. D.

“Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.” Fernando Pessoa by Felicia Violi

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After school I run to the gym to have my pilates'class, but then I went back home and after a pasta, I ate a portion of chocolate equal to the degree of my empty soul(almost 400 calories)...and it worked to make me feel better...I'll have a very light dinner tonight.

And TGIF!

Have a great week end you all out there.

Jean Delville - La Méduse 1893 by Gargantuan Sound

View large as this is fabulous! www.flickr.com/photos/gargantuansound/5744856772/sizes/l/...

Jean Delville's La Méduse (The Medusa) 1893 pencil, blue indian ink, colour wax based crayon, gold paint and lead pencil on yellow paper. Love this, the poppies & the "smoke" rising from them, the eyes, the plates in her hands and dripping substance & the snakes, oh yes!

A couple of quotes by Jean Delville translated from the original French:

Understood in its metaphysical sense, Beauty is one of the manifestations of the Absolute Being. Emanating from the harmonious rays of the Divine plan, it crosses the intellectual plane to shine once again across the natural plane, where it darkens into matter.

There exists somewhere, around us, without or within us, in the depths of the unseen world, spheres which are formed from the eternal images reflected in our intellects, and which the artist or poet pilfer from mystery by the magic power of their imagination that mysterious divine faculty which must be known in order to be in tune with the harmony of the world. - Wow

More info here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Delville

Official site: www.jeandelville.org/default.htm

above and below by Uqbar is back

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You see metaphysics by looking up, while at street level mundane details are too much of a distraction.

Photographically, I mean.

Milano, April 2007

Metaphysical span by bricolage 108

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Coffee Metaphysics by dou_ble_you

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Edward Hopper's spirit lives on at London's Clapham Junction.

Wicked Winter Web by Skyelyte

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Protected by Full Copyright: Please do not use this image without my written permission in anyway, doing so is a violation of federal law.

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Strutture/spiagge by Bizzor

Omaggio al maestro Luigi Ghirri

Metaphysical relations after Nietzsche by Nuno Vieira

finding myself: urban metaphysics chapter 1 by Michael Kistler

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Harajuku, Tokyo

October 2011

The message of Christ, like that of the Bible, is not a priori a teaching of metaphysical science; it is above all a message of salvation, but one that necessarily contains, under cover of an appropriate symbolism, metaphysics in its entirety. by Traditional Quotes and Symbols

Evidence and Mystery

God created the world out of nothing; this is the teaching of the Semitic theologies, and by it they answer the following difficulty: if God had made the world out of a preexisting substance, that substance must be either itself created, or else Divine. The creation is not God, it cannot therefore emanate from Him; there is an unbridgeable hiatus between God and the world, neither can become the other; the orders of magnitude or of reality, or of perfection, are incommensurable.

The main concern of this reasoning is not a disinterested perception of the nature of things, but the safeguarding of a simple and unalterable notion of God, while making allowance for a mentality that is more active than contemplative. The aim is therefore to provide, not a metaphysical statement that does not engage the will or does not appear to do so, but a key notion calculated to win over souls rooted in willing and acting rather than in knowing and contemplating; the metaphysical limitation is here a consequence of the priority accorded to what is effective for the governing and saving of souls. That being so, one is justified in saying that Semitic religious thought is by force of circumstances a kind of dynamic thought with moral overtones, and not a static thought in the style of the Greek or Hindu wisdom.

From the point of view of the latter, the idea of emanation, in place of creatio ex nihilo, in no way compromises either the transcendence or the immutability of God; between the world and God there is at once discontinuity and continuity, depending on whether our conception of the Universe is based on a scheme of concentric circles or on one of radii extending outward from the center to the periphery: according to the first mode of vision, which proceeds from the created to the Uncreated, there is no common measure between the contingent and the Absolute; according to the second mode of vision, which proceeds from the Principle to its manifestation, there is but one Real, which includes everything and excludes only nothingness, precisely because the latter has no reality whatsoever. The world is either a production drawn from the void and totally other than God, or else it is a manifestation "freely necessary" and "necessarily free" of Divinity or of Its Infinitude, liberty as well as necessity being Divine perfections.

As tor the contention that the creationist concept is superior to the so-called emanationist or pantheistic concepts because it is Biblical and Christ-given, and that the Platonic doctrine cannot be right because Plato cannot be superior either to Christ or the Bible, this has the fault of leaving on one side the real fundamentals of the problem.

First, what is rightly or wrongly called "emanationism" is not an invention of Plato, it can be found in the most diverse sacred texts; second, Christ, while being traditionally at one with the creationist thesis, nevertheless did not teach it explicitly and did not deny the apparently opposed thesis. The message of Christ, like that of the Bible, is not a priori a teaching of metaphysical science; it is above all a message of salvation, but one that necessarily contains, in an indirect way and under cover of an appropriate symbolism, metaphysics in its entirety. The opposition between the Divine Bible and human philosophy, or between Christ and Plato, therefore has no meaning so far as the metaphysical truths in question are concerned; that the Platonic perspective should go farther than the Biblical perspective brings no discredit on the Bible, which teaches what is useful or indispensable from the point of view of the moral or spiritual good of a particular humanity, nor does it confer any human superiority on the Platonists, who may be mere thinkers just as they may be saints, according to how much they assimilate of the Truth they proclaim.

For the Platonists it is perfectly logical that the world should be the necessary manifestation of God and that it should be without origin; if the monotheistic Semites believe in a creation out of nothing and in time, it is evidently not, as some have suggested, because they think that they have the right or the privilege of accepting a "supralogical" thesis that is humanly absurd; for the idea of creation appears to them on the contrary as being the only one that is reasonable and therefore the only one that is capable oflogical demonstration,as is proved precisely by tlfe method of argumentationused in theology.

Starting from the axiom that God created the worldout of nothing, the Semites reason thus, grosso modo: since God alone has Being, the world could not share it with Him; there had there fore to be a time when the world did not exist; it is God alone who could give it existence. On the religious plane, which so far as cosmology is concerned demands no more than the minimum necessary or useful for salvation, this idea of creation is fully sufficient, and the logical considerations which support it are perfectly plausible within the framework of their limitation; for they at least convey a key truth that allows a fuller understanding of the nature of God, as it is pleased to reveal itself in the monotheistic religions.

More than once we have had occasion to mention the following erroneous argument: if God creates the world in response to an inward necessity, as is affirmed by the Platonists, this must mean that He is obliged to create it, and that therefore He is not free; since this is impossible, the creation can only be a gratuitous act. One might as well say that if God is One, or if He is a Trinity, or if He is all-powerful, or if He is good, He must be obliged to be so, and His nature is thus the result of a constraint, quod absit.

It is always a case of the same incapacity to conceive of antinomic realities, and to understand that if liberty, the absence of constraint, is a perfection, necessity, the absence of arbitrariness, is another.

If, in opposition to the Pythagorean-Platonic perspective, the concept is put forward of an Absolute which is threefold in its very essence, therefore devoid of the degrees of reality that alone can explain the hypostatic polarizations - an Absolute which creates without metaphysical necessity and which in addition acts without cause or motive - and if at the same time the right is claimed to a sacred illogicality in the name of an exclusive "Christian supernaturalism'', then an explanation is due of what logic is and what human reason is; for if our intelligence, in its very structure, is foreign or even opposedto Divine Truth, what then is it, and why did God give it to us? Or to put it the other way round, what sort of Divine message is it that is opposed to the laws of an intelligence to which it is essentially addressed, and what does it signify that man was created "in the image of God"?

[According to Genesis "God created man in his own image" and "male and female created He them." Now according to one Father of the Church, the sexes are not made in the image of God; only the features that are identical in the two sexes resemble God, for the simple reason that God is neither man nor woman. This reasoning is fallacious because, although it is evident that God is not in Himself a duality, He necessarily comprises the principia! Duality in His Unity, exactly as He comprises the Trinity or the Quaternity; and how can one refuse to admit that the Holy Virgin has a prototype in God not only as regards her humanity but also as regards her femininity?]

And what motive could induce us to accept a message that was contrary, not to our earthly materialism or to ourpassion, but to the very substance of our spirit? For the "wisdom according to the flesh" of Saint Paul does not embrace every form of metaphysics that does not know the Gospels, nor is it logic as such, for the Apostle was logical; what it denotes is the reasonings whereby worldly men seek to prop up their passions and their pride, such as Sophism and Epicureanism and, in our days, the current philosophy of the world. "Wisdom according to the flesh" is also the gratuitous philosophy that does not lead us inwards and which contains no door opening on to spiritual realization; it is philosophy of the type of"art for art's sake” which commits one to nothing and is vain and pernicious for that very reason.

The incomprehension by theologians of Platonic and Oriental emanationism arises from the fact that monotheism puts in parenthesis the notion, essential metaphysically, of Divine Relativity or Maya; it is this parenthesis, or in practice this ignorance, which inhibits an understanding of the fact that there is no incompatability whatever between the "absolute Absolute", Beyond-Being, and the "relative Absolute", creative Being, and that this distinction is even crucial.

The Divine Maya, Relativity, is the necessary consequence of the very Infinitude of the Principle: it is because God is infinite that He comprises the dimension of relativity, and it is because He comprises that dimension that He manifests the world. To which it should be added: it is because the world is manifestation and not Principle that relativity, which at first was only determination, limitationand manifestation, gives rise to that particular modality constituting "evil". It is neither in the existence of evil things that evil lies nor in their existential properties nor in their faculties of sensation and of action, if it be a question of animate beings, nor even in the act insofar as it is the manifestation of a power; evil resides only in whatever is privative or negative with respect to good, and its function is to manifest in the world its aspect of separation from the Principle, and to play its part in an equilibrium and a rhythm necessitated by the economy of the created Universe.

In this way evil (wholly evil though it be when looked at in isolation) attaches itself to a good and is dissolved qua evil when one looks at it in its cosmic context and in its universal function.

Platonists feel no need whatever to try to fill the gap which might seem to exist between the pure Absolute and the determination and creative Absolute; it is precisely because they are aware of relativity in divinis and of the Divine cause of that relativity that they are emanationists.

In other words, the Hellenists, if they did not have a word to express it, nevertheless possessed in their own way the concept of Maya, and it is their doctrine of emanation that proves it.

Ashwini by Kathleen Jacobsen

Air Streams ... by Ph0tomas

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"The magic of photography is metaphysical." ~ Terence Donovan

m_2001160325 by Drucmova

the metaphysical converter -unfinished

singularity by Uqbar is back

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Exasperated perspective does not fit with the style of the metaphysical set, I think.

the downside of nihilism by John

8 12

the metaphysical rejection committee is meeting at noon.

I can't make it.

why not?

I don't believe in time.

what do you believe in?

ha! that's a good one.

Even the tiniest plant that blooms for a fortnight and then is seen no more is vaster in its metaphysical roots than the entire cosmos in its visible form: for these roots extend into eternity. And how much more does this apply to man! by Traditional Quotes and Symbols

Created beings come to birth in time: they enter the world, as it were, at some particular moment. Each creature, in its cosmic manifestation, is thus associated with its own spatio-temporal locus: it fits somewhere into the universal network of secondary causes. But yet it is not created by these causes, nor is its being confined to that spatio-temporal locus: for its roots extend beyond the cosmos into the timeless instant of the creative act. That is the veritable "beginning" to which Genesis alludes when it declares: „In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram”. It is "the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth, and every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth, and every herb in the ground before it grew." [To be sure, this "before" is not to be understood in the sense of temporal precedence: that would be to miss the entire point! The precedence in question is ontological, or causal, as one could also say.]

Let there be no doubt about it: the creature is more —incomparably more!— than its visible manifestation. It does not coincide with the phenomenon. Even the tiniest plant that blooms for a fortnight and then is seen no more is vaster in its metaphysical roots than the entire cosmos in its visible form: for these roots extend into eternity. And how much more does this apply to man! "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee." (Jer. 1:5).

Here then, in the scriptural and metaphysical teaching of the omnia simul, we have the definitive answer to evolutionism. With the adoption of an authentically metaphysical standpoint the seemingly interminable debate between the evolutionists and the so-called creationists has at last been put into perspective: it now becomes clear that both sides are in fact looking at only half the picture: the outer or phenomenal half, one could say, forgetting that things have also an inner dimension, an essential core which transcends the plane of the phenomenon.

From this truncated point of view, moreover, the riddle of origins becomes truly insoluble—for the simple reason that things ultimately derive, not from the phenomenal plane, but from the side of transcendence. Likewise, they grow and unfold their potential from inside out: the essential, in other words, has primacy over the phenomenal, whatever the empiricists might think. Metaphysics, therefore, is neither a luxury nor an idle speculation; it is there to complete the picture, and is needed if ever we are to make sense out of first origins or final ends. One might add that its neglect in modern times is both a symptom and cause of our contemporary intellectual predicament.

Getting back to the subject of evolution, no one doubts that living forms have emerged successively as evolutionists insist: this is an empirical fact, after all. Indeed, it is precisely what the fossil record does permit us to conclude.

What is objectionable in the evolutionist position, on the other hand, is that it oversteps what we actually know, first through the transformist hypothesis (for which there is no evidence at all), and secondly by maintaining that the process of speciation can be accounted for in terms of molecular accidents (an assumption which is not only unfounded but astronomically improbable to the point of absurdity).

The fact that these unpromising postulates have nonetheless commended themselves to countless individuals derives no doubt from the circumstance that in conjunction they seem to offer a rational means of approach to the mystery of life for minds closed to the metaphysical outlook. As one evolutionist has said: "It is better to think in terms of improbable events than not to think at all."

----

Wolfgang Smith: Teilhardism and the New Religion

Dualistic cosmology...Nondualism...the basic state, the sublime, buddhanature, original nature, spontaneous presence, the oneness of being, the ground of being by Hughes Songe

Dualism in cosmology is the moral, or spiritual belief that two fundamental concepts exist, which often oppose each other. It is an umbrella term that covers a diversity of views from various religions, including both traditional religions and scriptural religions.

Moral dualism is the belief of the great complement of, or conflict between, the benevolent and the malevolent. It simply implies that there are two moral opposites at work, independent of any interpretation of what might be "moral" and independent of how these may be represented. Moral opposites might, for example, exist in a worldview which has one god, more than one god, or none. By contrast, duotheism, bitheism or ditheism implies (at least) two gods. While bitheism implies harmony, ditheism implies rivalry and opposition, such as between good and evil, or light and dark, or summer and winter. For example, a ditheistic system could be one in which one god is a creator, and the other a destroyer. In theology, dualism can also refer to the relationship between the deity and creation or the deity and the universe (see theistic dualism). This form of dualism is a belief shared in certain traditions of Christianity and Hinduism.[1] Alternatively, in ontological dualism, the world is divided into two overarching categories. The opposition and combination of the universe's two basic principles of yin and yang is a large part of Chinese philosophy, and is an important feature of Taoism. It is also discussed in Confucianism.

Many myths and creation motifs with dualistic cosmologies have been described in ethnographic and anthropological literature. These motifs conceive the world as being created, organized, or influenced by two demiurges, culture heroes, or other mythological beings, who either compete with each other or have a complementary function in creating, arranging or influencing the world. There is a huge diversity of such cosmologies. In some cases, such as among the Chukchi, the beings collaborate rather than competing, and contribute to the creation in a coequal way. In many other instances the two beings are not of the same importance or power (sometimes, one of them is even characterized as gullible). Sometimes they can be contrasted as good versus evil.[2] They may be often believed to be twins or at least brothers.[3][4] Dualistic motifs in mythologies can be observed in all inhabited continents. Zolotaryov concludes that they cannot be explained by diffusion or borrowing, but are rather of convergent origin: they are related to a dualistic organization of society (moieties); in some cultures, this social organization may have ceased to exist, but mythology preserves the memory in more and more disguised ways.[5]

Moral dualism[edit]

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Moral dualism is the belief of the great complement or conflict between the benevolent and the malevolent. Like ditheism/bitheism (see below), moral dualism does not imply the absence of monist or monotheistic principles. Moral dualism simply implies that there are two moral opposites at work, independent of any interpretation of what might be "moral" and—unlike ditheism/bitheism—independent of how these may be represented.

For example, Mazdaism (Mazdean Zoroastrianism) is both dualistic and monotheistic (but not monist by definition) since in that philosophy God—the Creator—is purely good, and the antithesis—which is also uncreated–is an absolute one. Zurvanism (Zurvanite Zoroastrianism), Manichaeism, and Mandaeism are representative of dualistic and monist philosophies since each has a supreme and transcendental First Principle from which the two equal-but-opposite entities then emanate. This is also true for the lesser-known Christian gnostic religions, such as Bogomils, Catharism, and so on. More complex forms of monist dualism also exist, for instance in Hermeticism, where Nous "thought"—that is described to have created man—brings forth both good and evil, dependent on interpretation, whether it receives prompting from the God or from the Demon. Duality with pluralism is considered a logical fallacy.

History[edit]

Moral dualism began as a theological belief. Dualism was first seen implicitly in Egyptian religious beliefs by the contrast of the gods Set (disorder, death) and Osiris (order, life).[6] The first explicit conception of dualism came from the Ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism around the mid-fifth century BC. Zoroastrianism is a monotheistic religion that believes that Ahura Mazda is the eternal creator of all good things. Any violations of Ahura Mazda's order arise from druj, which is everything uncreated. From this comes a significant choice for humans to make. Either they fully participate in human life for Ahura Mazda or they do not and give druj power. Personal dualism is even more distinct in the beliefs of later religions.

The religious dualism of Christianity between good and evil is not a perfect dualism as God (good) will inevitably destroy Satan (evil). Early Christian dualism is largely based on Platonic Dualism (See: Neoplatonism and Christianity). There is also a personal dualism in Christianity with a soul-body distinction based on the idea of an immaterial Christian soul.[7]

Duotheism, bitheism, ditheism[edit]

When used with regards to multiple gods, dualism may refer to duotheism, bitheism, or ditheism. Although ditheism/bitheism imply moral dualism, they are not equivalent: ditheism/bitheism implies (at least) two gods, while moral dualism does not necessarily imply theism (theos = god) at all.

Both bitheism and ditheism imply a belief in two equally powerful gods with complementary or antonymous properties; however, while bitheism implies harmony, ditheism implies rivalry and opposition, such as between good and evil, bright and dark, or summer and winter. For example, a ditheistic system would be one in which one god is creative, the other is destructive (cf. theodicy). In the original conception of Zoroastrianism, for example, Ahura Mazda was the spirit of ultimate good, while Ahriman (Angra Mainyu) was the spirit of ultimate evil.

In a bitheistic system, by contrast, where the two deities are not in conflict or opposition, one could be male and the other female (cf. duotheism[clarification needed]). One well-known example of a bitheistic or duotheistic theology based on gender polarity is found in the neopagan religion of Wicca. In Wicca, dualism is represented in the belief of a god and a goddess as a dual partnership in ruling the universe. This is centered on the worship of a divine couple, the Moon Goddess and the Horned God, who are regarded as lovers. However, there is also a ditheistic theme within traditional Wicca, as the Horned God has dual aspects of bright and dark - relating to day/night, summer/winter - expressed as the Oak King and the Holly King, who in Wiccan myth and ritual are said to engage in battle twice a year for the hand of the Goddess, resulting in the changing seasons. (Within Wicca, bright and dark do not correspond to notions of "good" and "evil" but are aspects of the natural world, much like yin and yang in Taoism.)

Radical and mitigated dualism[edit]

Radical Dualism – or absolute Dualism which posits two co-equal divine forces.[8] Manichaeism conceives of two previously coexistent realms of light and darkness which become embroiled in conflict, owing to the chaotic actions of the latter. Subsequently, certain elements of the light became entrapped within darkness; the purpose of material creation is to enact the slow process of extraction of these individual elements, at the end of which the kingdom of light will prevail over darkness. Manicheanism likely inherits this dualistic mythology from Zoroastrianism, in which the eternal spirit Ahura Mazda is opposed by his antithesis, Angra Mainyu; the two are engaged in a cosmic struggle, the conclusion of which will likewise see Ahura Mazda triumphant. 'The Hymn of the Pearl' included the belief that the material world corresponds to some sort of malevolent intoxication brought about by the powers of darkness to keep elements of the light trapped inside it in a state of drunken distraction.

Mitigated Dualism – is where one of the two principles is in some way inferior to the other. Such classical Gnostic movements as the Sethians conceived of the material world as being created by a lesser divinity than the true God that was the object of their devotion. The spiritual world is conceived of as being radically different from the material world, co-extensive with the true God, and the true home of certain enlightened members of humanity; thus, these systems were expressive of a feeling of acute alienation within the world, and their resultant aim was to allow the soul to escape the constraints presented by the physical realm.[8]

However, bitheistic and ditheistic principles are not always so easily contrastable, for instance in a system where one god is the representative of summer and drought and the other of winter and rain/fertility (cf. the mythology of Persephone). Marcionism, an early Christian sect, held that the Old and New Testaments were the work of two opposing gods: both were First Principles, but of different religions.[9]

Theistic dualism[edit]

In theology, dualism can refer to the relationship between God and creation or God and the universe. This form of dualism is a belief shared in certain traditions of Christianity and Hinduism.[10][1]

In Christianity[edit]

The Cathars being expelled from Carcassonne in 1209. The Cathars were denounced as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church for their dualist beliefs.

The dualism between God and Creation has existed as a central belief in multiple historical sects and traditions of Christianity, including Marcionism, Catharism, Paulicianism, and other forms of Gnostic Christianity. Christian dualism refers to the belief that God and creation are distinct, but interrelated through an indivisible bond.[1] However, Gnosticism is a diverse, syncretistic religious movement consisting of various belief systems generally united in a belief in a distinction between a supreme, transcendent God and a blind, evil demiurge responsible for creating the material universe, thereby trapping the divine spark within matter.[11]

In sects like the Cathars and the Paulicians, this is a dualism between the material world, created by an evil god, and a moral god. Historians divide Christian dualism into absolute dualism, which held that the good and evil gods were equally powerful, and mitigated dualism, which held that material evil was subordinate to the spiritual good.[12] The belief, by Christian theologians who adhere to a libertarian or compatibilist view of free will, that free will separates humankind from God has also been characterized as a form of dualism.[1] The theologian Leroy Stephens Rouner compares the dualism of Christianity with the dualism that exists in Zoroastrianism and the Samkhya tradition of Hinduism. The theological use of the word dualism dates back to 1700, in a book that describes the dualism between good and evil.[1]

The tolerance of dualism ranges widely among the different Christian traditions. As a monotheistic religion, the conflict between dualism and monism has existed in Christianity since its inception.[13] The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia describes that, in the Catholic Church, "the dualistic hypothesis of an eternal world existing side by side with God was of course rejected" by the thirteenth century, but mind–body dualism was not.[14] The problem of evil is difficult to reconcile with absolute monism, and has prompted some Christian sects to veer towards dualism. Gnostic forms of Christianity were more dualistic, and some Gnostic traditions posited that the Devil was separate from God as an independent deity.[13] The Christian dualists of the Byzantine Empire, the Paulicians, were seen as Manichean heretics by Byzantine theologians. This tradition of Christian dualism, founded by Constantine-Silvanus, argued that the universe was created through evil and separate from a moral God.[15]

The Cathars, a Christian sect in southern France, believed that there was a dualism between two gods, one representing good and the other representing evil. Whether or not the Cathari possessed direct historical influence from ancient Gnosticism is a matter of dispute, as the basic conceptions of Gnostic cosmology are to be found in Cathar beliefs (most distinctly in their notion of a lesser creator god), though unlike the second century Gnostics, they did not apparently place any special relevance upon knowledge (gnosis) as an effective salvific force. In any case, the Roman Catholic Church denounced the Cathars as heretics, and sought to crush the movement in the 13th century. The Albigensian Crusade was initiated by Pope Innocent III in 1208 to remove the Cathars from Languedoc in France, where they were known as Albigesians. The Inquisition, which began in 1233 under Pope Gregory IX, also targeted the Cathars.[16]

In Hinduism[edit]

The Dvaita Vedanta school of Indian philosophy espouses a dualism between God and the universe by theorizing the existence of two separate realities. The first and the more important reality is that of Shiva or Shakti or Vishnu or Brahman. Shiva or Shakti or Vishnu is the supreme Self, God, the absolute truth of the universe, the independent reality. The second reality is that of dependent but equally real universe that exists with its own separate essence. Everything that is composed of the second reality, such as individual soul (Jiva), matter, etc. exist with their own separate reality. The distinguishing factor of this philosophy as opposed to Advaita Vedanta (monistic conclusion of Vedas) is that God takes on a personal role and is seen as a real eternal entity that governs and controls the universe.[17][better source needed] Because the existence of individuals is grounded in the divine, they are depicted as reflections, images or even shadows of the divine, but never in any way identical with the divine. Salvation therefore is described as the realization that all finite reality is essentially dependent on the Supreme.[18]

Ontological dualism[edit]

The yin and yang symbolizes the duality in nature and all things in the Taoist religion.

Alternatively, dualism can mean the tendency of humans to perceive and understand the world as being divided into two overarching categories. In this sense, it is dualistic when one perceives a tree as a thing separate from everything surrounding it. This form of ontological dualism exists in Taoism and Confucianism, beliefs that divide the universe into the complementary oppositions of yin and yang.[19] In traditions such as classical Hinduism (Samkhya, Yoga, Vaisheshika and the later Vedanta schools, which accepted the theory of Gunas), Zen Buddhism or Islamic Sufism, a key to enlightenment is "transcending" this sort of dualistic thinking, without merely substituting dualism with monism or pluralism.

In Chinese philosophy[edit]

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The opposition and combination of the universe's two basic principles of yin and yang is a large part of Chinese philosophy, and is an important feature of Taoism, both as a philosophy and as a religion, although the concept developed much earlier. Some argue that yin and yang were originally an earth and sky god, respectively.[20] As one of the oldest principles in Chinese philosophy, yin and yang are also discussed in Confucianism, but to a lesser extent.

Some of the common associations with yang and yin, respectively, are: male and female, light and dark, active and passive, motion and stillness. Some scholars believe that the two ideas may have originally referred to two opposite sides of a mountain, facing towards and away from the sun.[20] The yin and yang symbol in actuality has very little to do with Western dualism; instead it represents the philosophy of balance, where two opposites co-exist in harmony and are able to transmute into each other. In the yin-yang symbol there is a dot of yin in yang and a dot of yang in yin. In Taoism, this symbolizes the inter-connectedness of the opposite forces as different aspects of Tao, the First Principle. Contrast is needed to create a distinguishable reality, without which we would experience nothingness. Therefore, the independent principles of yin and yang are actually dependent on one another for each other's distinguishable existence.

The complementary dualistic concept seen in yin and yang represent the reciprocal interaction throughout nature, related to a feedback loop, where opposing forces do not exchange in opposition but instead exchange reciprocally to promote stabilization similar to homeostasis. An underlying principle in Taoism states that within every independent entity lies a part of its opposite. Within sickness lies health and vice versa. This is because all opposites are manifestations of the single Tao, and are therefore not independent from one another, but rather a variation of the same unifying force throughout all of nature.

In traditional religions[edit]

Samoyed peoples[edit]

In a Nenets myth, Num and Nga collaborate and compete with each other, creating land,[21] there are also other myths about competing-collaborating demiurges.[22]

Comparative studies of Kets and neighboring peoples[edit]

Among others, also dualistic myths were investigated in researches which tried to compare the mythologies of Siberian peoples and settle the problem of their origins. Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov compared the mythology of Ket people with those of speakers of Uralic languages, assuming in the studies, that there are modelling semiotic systems in the compared mythologies; and they have also made typological comparisons.[23][24] Among others, from possibly Uralic mythological analogies, those of Ob-Ugric peoples[25] and Samoyedic peoples[26] are mentioned. Some other discussed analogies (similar folklore motifs, and purely typological considerations, certain binary pairs in symbolics) may be related to dualistic organization of society—some of such dualistic features can be found at these compared peoples.[27] It must be admitted that, for Kets, neither dualistic organization of society[28] nor cosmological dualism[29] has been researched thoroughly: if such features existed at all, they have either weakened or remained largely undiscovered;[28] although there are some reports on division into two exogamous patrilinear moieties,[30] folklore on conflicts of mythological figures, and also on cooperation of two beings in creating the land:[29] the diving of the water fowl.[31] If we include dualistic cosmologies meant in broad sense, not restricted to certain concrete motifs, then we find that they are much more widespread, they exist not only among some Siberian peoples, but there are examples in each inhabited continent.[32]

Chukchi[edit]

A Chukchi myth and its variations report the creation of the world; in some variations, it is achieved by the collaboration of several beings (birds, collaborating in a coequal way; or the creator and the raven, collaborating in a coequal way; or the creator alone, using the birds only as assistants).[33][34]

Fuegians[edit]

See also: Bhedabheda

Vishishtadvaita Vedanta is another main school of Vedanta and teaches the nonduality of the qualified whole, in which Brahman alone exists, but is characterized by multiplicity. It can be described as "qualified monism," or "qualified non-dualism," or "attributive monism."

According to this school, the world is real, yet underlying all the differences is an all-embracing unity, of which all "things" are an "attribute." Ramanuja, the main proponent of Vishishtadvaita philosophy contends that the Prasthana Traya ("The three courses") – namely the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutras – are to be interpreted in a way that shows this unity in diversity, for any other way would violate their consistency.

Vedanta Desika defines Vishishtadvaita using the statement: Asesha Chit-Achit Prakaaram Brahmaikameva Tatvam – "Brahman, as qualified by the sentient and insentient modes (or attributes), is the only reality."

Neo-Vedanta[edit]

Main articles: Neo-Vedanta, Swami Vivekananda, and Ramakrishna Mission

Neo-Vedanta, also called "neo-Hinduism"[93] is a modern interpretation of Hinduism which developed in response to western colonialism and orientalism, and aims to present Hinduism as a "homogenized ideal of Hinduism"[94] with Advaita Vedanta as its central doctrine.[95]

Neo-Vedanta, as represented by Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan, is indebted to Advaita vedanta, but also reflects Advaya-philosophy. A main influence on neo-Advaita was Ramakrishna, himself a bhakta and tantrika, and the guru of Vivekananda. According to Michael Taft, Ramakrishna reconciled the dualism of formlessness and form.[96] Ramakrishna regarded the Supreme Being to be both Personal and Impersonal, active and inactive:

When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive – neither creating nor preserving nor destroying – I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active – creating, preserving and destroying – I call Him Sakti or Maya or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. It is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one.[97]

Radhakrishnan acknowledged the reality and diversity of the world of experience, which he saw as grounded in and supported by the absolute or Brahman.[web 4][note 8] According to Anil Sooklal, Vivekananda's neo-Advaita "reconciles Dvaita or dualism and Advaita or non-dualism":[99]

The Neo-Vedanta is also Advaitic inasmuch as it holds that Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, is one without a second, ekamevadvitiyam. But as distinguished from the traditional Advaita of Sankara, it is a synthetic Vedanta which reconciles Dvaita or dualism and Advaita or non-dualism and also other theories of reality. In this sense it may also be called concrete monism in so far as it holds that Brahman is both qualified, saguna, and qualityless, nirguna.[99]

Radhakrishnan also reinterpreted Shankara's notion of maya. According to Radhakrishnan, maya is not a strict absolute idealism, but "a subjective misperception of the world as ultimately real."[web 4] According to Sarma, standing in the tradition of Nisargadatta Maharaj, Advaitavāda means "spiritual non-dualism or absolutism",[100] in which opposites are manifestations of the Absolute, which itself is immanent and transcendent:[101]

All opposites like being and non-being, life and death, good and evil, light and darkness, gods and men, soul and nature are viewed as manifestations of the Absolute which is immanent in the universe and yet transcends it.[102]

Kashmir Shaivism[edit]

Main articles: Shaivism and Kashmir Shaivism

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Advaita is also a central concept in various schools of Shaivism, such as Kashmir Shaivism[42] and Shiva Advaita.

Kashmir Shaivism is a school of Śaivism, described by Abhinavagupta[note 9] as "paradvaita", meaning "the supreme and absolute non-dualism".[web 5] It is categorized by various scholars as monistic[103] idealism (absolute idealism, theistic monism,[104] realistic idealism,[105] transcendental physicalism or concrete monism[105]).

Kashmir Saivism is based on a strong monistic interpretation of the Bhairava Tantras and its subcategory the Kaula Tantras, which were tantras written by the Kapalikas.[106] There was additionally a revelation of the Siva Sutras to Vasugupta.[106] Kashmir Saivism claimed to supersede the dualistic Shaiva Siddhanta.[107] Somananda, the first theologian of monistic Saivism, was the teacher of Utpaladeva, who was the grand-teacher of Abhinavagupta, who in turn was the teacher of Ksemaraja.[106][108]

The philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism can be seen in contrast to Shankara's Advaita.[109] Advaita Vedanta holds that Brahman is inactive (niṣkriya) and the phenomenal world is an illusion (māyā). In Kashmir Shavisim, all things are a manifestation of the Universal Consciousness, Chit or Brahman.[110][111] Kashmir Shavisim sees the phenomenal world (Śakti) as real: it exists, and has its being in Consciousness (Chit).[112]

Kashmir Shaivism was influenced by, and took over doctrines from, several orthodox and heterodox Indian religious and philosophical traditions.[113] These include Vedanta, Samkhya, Patanjali Yoga and Nyayas, and various Buddhist schools, including Yogacara and Madhyamika,[113] but also Tantra and the Nath-tradition.[114]

Contemporary vernacular Advaita[edit]

Advaita is also part of other Indian traditions, which are less strongly, or not all, organised in monastic and institutional organisations. Although often called "Advaita Vedanta," these traditions have their origins in vernacular movements and "householder" traditions, and have close ties to the Nath, Nayanars and Sant Mat traditions.

Ramana Maharshi[edit]

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) explained his insight using Shaiva Siddhanta, Advaita Vedanta and Yoga teachings.

Main article: Ramana Maharshi

Ramana Maharshi (30 December 1879 – 14 April 1950) is widely acknowledged as one of the outstanding Indian gurus of modern times.[115] Ramana's teachings are often interpreted as Advaita Vedanta, though Ramana Maharshi never "received diksha (initiation) from any recognised authority".[web 6] Ramana himself did not call his insights advaita:

D. Does Sri Bhagavan advocate advaita?

M. Dvaita and advaita are relative terms. They are based on the sense of duality. The Self is as it is. There is neither dvaita nor advaita. "I Am that I Am."[note 10] Simple Being is the Self.[117]

Neo-Advaita[edit]

Main article: Neo-Advaita

Neo-Advaita is a New Religious Movement based on a modern, western interpretation of Advaita Vedanta, especially the teachings of Ramana Maharshi.[118] According to Arthur Versluis, neo-Advaita is part of a larger religious current which he calls immediatism,[119][web 9] "the assertion of immediate spiritual illumination without much if any preparatory practice within a particular religious tradition."[web 9] Neo-Advaita is criticized for this immediatism and its lack of preparatory practices.[120][note 11][122][note 12] Notable neo-advaita teachers are H. W. L. Poonja[123][118] and his students Gangaji,[124] Andrew Cohen,[note 13], and Eckhart Tolle.[118]

According to a modern western spiritual teacher of nonduality, Jeff Foster, nonduality is:

the essential oneness (wholeness, completeness, unity) of life, a wholeness which exists here and now, prior to any apparent separation [...] despite the compelling appearance of separation and diversity there is only one universal essence, one reality. Oneness is all there is – and we are included.[126]

Natha Sampradaya and Inchegeri Sampradaya[edit]

Main articles: Nath, Sahaja, and Inchegeri Sampradaya

The Natha Sampradaya, with Nath yogis such as Gorakhnath, introduced Sahaja, the concept of a spontaneous spirituality. Sahaja means "spontaneous, natural, simple, or easy".[web 13] According to Ken Wilber, this state reflects nonduality.[127]

Buddhism[edit]

There are different Buddhist views which resonate with the concepts and experiences of non-duality or "not two" (advaya). The Buddha does not use the term advaya in the earliest Buddhist texts, but it does appear in some of the Mahayana sutras, such as the Vimalakīrti.[128] While the Buddha taught unified states of mental focus (samadhi) and meditative absorption (dhyana) which were commonly taught in Upanishadic thought, he also rejected the metaphysical doctrines of the Upanishads, particularly ideas which are often associated with Hindu nonduality, such as the doctrine that "this cosmos is the self" and "everything is a Oneness" (cf. SN 12.48 and MN 22).[129][130] Because of this, Buddhist views of nonduality are particularly different than Hindu conceptions, which tend towards idealistic monism.

In Indian Buddhism[edit]

The layman Vimalakīrti Debates Manjusri, Dunhuang Mogao Caves

According to Kameshwar Nath Mishra, one connotation of advaya in Indic Sanskrit Buddhist texts is that it refers to the middle way between two opposite extremes (such as eternalism and annihilationism), and thus it is "not two".[131]

One of these Sanskrit Mahayana sutras, the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra contains a chapter on the "Dharma gate of non-duality" (advaya dharma dvara pravesa) which is said to be entered once one understands how numerous pairs of opposite extremes are to be rejected as forms of grasping. These extremes which must be avoided in order to understand ultimate reality are described by various characters in the text, and include: Birth and extinction, 'I' and 'Mine', Perception and non-perception, defilement and purity, good and not-good, created and uncreated, worldly and unworldly, samsara and nirvana, enlightenment and ignorance, form and emptiness and so on.[132] The final character to attempt to describe ultimate reality is the bodhisattva Manjushri, who states:

It is in all beings wordless, speechless, shows no signs, is not possible of cognizance, and is above all questioning and answering.[133]

Vimalakīrti responds to this statement by maintaining completely silent, therefore expressing that the nature of ultimate reality is ineffable (anabhilāpyatva) and inconceivable (acintyatā), beyond verbal designation (prapañca) or thought constructs (vikalpa).[133] The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, a text associated with Yogācāra Buddhism, also uses the term "advaya" extensively.[134]

In the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy of Madhyamaka, the two truths or ways of understanding reality, are said to be advaya (not two). As explained by the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna, there is a non-dual relationship, that is, there is no absolute separation, between conventional and ultimate truth, as well as between samsara and nirvana.[135][136] The concept of nonduality is also important in the other major Indian Mahayana tradition, the Yogacara school, where it is seen as the absence of duality between the perceiving subject (or "grasper") and the object (or "grasped"). It is also seen as an explanation of emptiness and as an explanation of the content of the awakened mind which sees through the illusion of subject-object duality. However, it is important to note that in this conception of non-dualism, there are still a multiplicity of individual mind streams (citta santana) and thus Yogacara does not teach an idealistic monism.[137]

These basic ideas have continued to influence Mahayana Buddhist doctrinal interpretations of Buddhist traditions such as Dzogchen, Mahamudra, Zen, Huayan and Tiantai as well as concepts such as Buddha-nature, luminous mind, Indra's net, rigpa and shentong.

Madhyamaka[edit]

Main articles: Madhyamika, Shunyata, and Two truths doctrine

Nagarjuna (right), Aryadeva (middle) and the Tenth Karmapa (left).

Madhyamaka, also known as Śūnyavāda (the emptiness teaching), refers primarily to a Mahāyāna Buddhist school of philosophy [138] founded by Nāgārjuna. In Madhyamaka, Advaya refers to the fact that the two truths are not separate or different.,[139] as well as the non-dual relationship of saṃsāra (the round of rebirth and suffering) and nirvāṇa (cessation of suffering, liberation).[42] According to Murti, in Madhyamaka, "Advaya" is an epistemological theory, unlike the metaphysical view of Hindu Advaita.[54] Madhyamaka advaya is closely related to the classical Buddhist understanding that all things are impermanent (anicca) and devoid of "self" (anatta) or "essenceless" (niḥsvabhāvavā),[140][141][142] and that this emptiness does not constitute an "absolute" reality in itself.[note 14].

In Madhyamaka, the two "truths" (satya) refer to conventional (saṃvṛti) and ultimate (paramārtha) truth.[143] The ultimate truth is "emptiness", or non-existence of inherently existing "things",[144] and the "emptiness of emptiness": emptiness does not in itself constitute an absolute reality. Conventionally, "things" exist, but ultimately, they are "empty" of any existence on their own, as described in Nagarjuna's magnum opus, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK):

The Buddha's teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths: a truth of worldly convention and an ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha's profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.[note 15]

As Jay Garfield notes, for Nagarjuna, to understand the two truths as totally different from each other is to reify and confuse the purpose of this doctrine, since it would either destroy conventional realities such as the Buddha's teachings and the empirical reality of the world (making Madhyamaka a form of nihilism) or deny the dependent origination of phenomena (by positing eternal essences). Thus the non-dual doctrine of the middle way lies beyond these two extremes.[146]

"Emptiness" is a consequence of pratītyasamutpāda (dependent arising),[147] the teaching that no dharma ("thing", "phenomena") has an existence of its own, but always comes into existence in dependence on other dharmas. According to Madhyamaka all phenomena are empty of "substance" or "essence" (Sanskrit: svabhāva) because they are dependently co-arisen. Likewise it is because they are dependently co-arisen that they have no intrinsic, independent reality of their own. Madhyamaka also rejects the existence of absolute realities or beings such as Brahman or Self.[148] In the highest sense, "ultimate reality" is not an ontological Absolute reality that lies beneath an unreal world, nor is it the non-duality of a personal self (atman) and an absolute Self (cf. Purusha). Instead, it is the knowledge which is based on a deconstruction of such reifications and Conceptual proliferations.[149] It also means that there is no "transcendental ground," and that "ultimate reality" has no existence of its own, but is the negation of such a transcendental reality, and the impossibility of any statement on such an ultimately existing transcendental reality: it is no more than a fabrication of the mind.[web 14][note 16] Susan Kahn further explains:

Ultimate truth does not point to a transcendent reality, but to the transcendence of deception. It is critical to emphasize that the ultimate truth of emptiness is a negational truth. In looking for inherently existent phenomena it is revealed that it cannot be found. This absence is not findable because it is not an entity, just as a room without an elephant in it does not contain an elephantless substance. Even conventionally, elephantlessness does not exist. Ultimate truth or emptiness does not point to an essence or nature, however subtle, that everything is made of.[web 15]

However, according to Nagarjuna, even the very schema of ultimate and conventional, samsara and nirvana, is not a final reality, and he thus famously deconstructs even these teachings as being empty and not different from each other in the MMK where he writes:[41]

The limit (koti) of nirvāṇa is that of saṃsāra

The subtlest difference is not found between the two.

According to Nancy McCagney, what this refers to is that the two truths depend on each other; without emptiness, conventional reality cannot work, and vice versa. It does not mean that samsara and nirvana are the same, or that they are one single thing, as in Advaita Vedanta, but rather that they are both empty, open, without limits, and merely exist for the conventional purpose of teaching the Buddha Dharma.[41] Referring to this verse, Jay Garfield writes that:

to distinguish between samsara and nirvana would be to suppose that each had a nature and that they were different natures. But each is empty, and so there can be no inherent difference. Moreover, since nirvana is by definition the cessation of delusion and of grasping and, hence, of the reification of self and other and of confusing imputed phenomena for inherently real phenomena, it is by definition the recognition of the ultimate nature of things. But if, as Nagarjuna argued in Chapter XXIV, this is simply to see conventional things as empty, not to see some separate emptiness behind them, then nirvana must be ontologically grounded in the conventional. To be in samsara is to see things as they appear to deluded consciousness and to interact with them accordingly. To be in nirvana, then, is to see those things as they are - as merely empty, dependent, impermanent, and nonsubstantial, not to be somewhere else, seeing something else.[150]

It is important to note however that the actual Sanskrit term "advaya" does not appear in the MMK, and only appears in one single work by Nagarjuna, the Bodhicittavivarana.[151]

The later Madhyamikas, states Yuichi Kajiyama, developed the Advaya definition as a means to Nirvikalpa-Samadhi by suggesting that "things arise neither from their own selves nor from other things, and that when subject and object are unreal, the mind, being not different, cannot be true either; thereby one must abandon attachment to cognition of nonduality as well, and understand the lack of intrinsic nature of everything". Thus, the Buddhist nondualism or Advaya concept became a means to realizing absolute emptiness.[152]

Yogācāra tradition[edit]

Asaṅga (fl. 4th century C.E.), a Mahayana scholar who wrote numerous works which discuss the Yogacara view and practice.

Main article: Yogacara

In the Mahayana tradition of Yogācāra (Skt; "yoga practice"), adyava (Tibetan: gnyis med) refers to overcoming the conceptual and perceptual dichotomies of cognizer and cognized, or subject and object.[42][153][154][155] The concept of adyava in Yogācāra is an epistemological stance on the nature of experience and knowledge, as well as a phenomenological exposition of yogic cognitive transformation. Early Buddhism schools such as Sarvastivada and Sautrāntika, that thrived through the early centuries of the common era, postulated a dualism (dvaya) between the mental activity of grasping (grāhaka, "cognition", "subjectivity") and that which is grasped (grāhya, "cognitum", intentional object).[156][152][156][157] Yogacara postulates that this dualistic relationship is a false illusion or superimposition (samaropa).[152]

Yogācāra also taught the doctrine which held that only mental cognitions really exist (vijñapti-mātra),[158][note 17] instead of the mind-body dualism of other Indian Buddhist schools.[152][156][158] This is another sense in which reality can be said to be non-dual, because it is "consciousness-only".[159] There are several interpretations of this main theory, which has been widely translated as representation-only, ideation-only, impressions-only and perception-only.[160][158][161][162] Some scholars see it as a kind of subjective or epistemic Idealism (similar to Kant's theory) while others argue that it is closer to a kind of phenomenology or representationalism. According to Mark Siderits the main idea of this doctrine is that we are only ever aware of mental images or impressions which manifest themselves as external objects, but "there is actually no such thing outside the mind."[163] For Alex Wayman, this doctrine means that "the mind has only a report or representation of what the sense organ had sensed."[161] Jay Garfield and Paul Williams both see the doctrine as a kind of Idealism in which only mentality exists.[164][165]

However, it is important to note that even the idealistic interpretation of Yogācāra is not an absolute monistic idealism like Advaita Vedanta or Hegelianism, since in Yogācāra, even consciousness "enjoys no transcendent status" and is just a conventional reality.[166] Indeed, according to Jonathan Gold, for Yogācāra, the ultimate truth is not consciousness, but an ineffable and inconceivable "thusness" or "thatness" (tathatā).[153] Also, Yogācāra affirms the existence of individual mindstreams, and thus Kochumuttom also calls it a realistic pluralism.[82]

The Yogācārins defined three basic modes by which we perceive our world. These are referred to in Yogācāra as the three natures (trisvabhāva) of experience. They are:[167][168]

Parikalpita (literally, "fully conceptualized"): "imaginary nature", wherein things are incorrectly comprehended based on conceptual and linguistic construction, attachment and the subject object duality. It is thus equivalent to samsara.

Paratantra (literally, "other dependent"): "dependent nature", by which the dependently originated nature of things, their causal relatedness or flow of conditionality. It is the basis which gets erroneously conceptualized,

Pariniṣpanna (literally, "fully accomplished"): "absolute nature", through which one comprehends things as they are in themselves, that is, empty of subject-object and thus is a type of non-dual cognition. This experience of "thatness" (tathatā) is uninfluenced by any conceptualization at all.

To move from the duality of the Parikalpita to the non-dual consciousness of the Pariniṣpanna, Yogācāra teaches that there must be a transformation of consciousness, which is called the "revolution of the basis" (āśraya-parāvṛtti). According to Dan Lusthaus, this transformation which characterizes awakening is a "radical psycho-cognitive change" and a removal of false "interpretive projections" on reality (such as ideas of a self, external objects, etc).[169]

The Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra, a Yogācāra text, also associates this transformation with the concept of non-abiding nirvana and the non-duality of samsara and nirvana. Regarding this state of Buddhahood, it states:

Its operation is nondual (advaya vrtti) because of its abiding neither in samsara nor in nirvana (samsaranirvana-apratisthitatvat), through its being both conditioned and unconditioned (samskrta-asamskrtatvena).[170]

This refers to the Yogācāra teaching that even though a Buddha has entered nirvana, they do no "abide" in some quiescent state separate from the world but continue to give rise to extensive activity on behalf of others.[170] This is also called the non-duality between the compounded (samskrta, referring to samsaric existence) and the uncompounded (asamskrta, referring to nirvana). It is also described as a "not turning back" from both samsara and nirvana.[171]

For the later thinker Dignaga, non-dual knowledge or advayajñāna is also a synonym for prajñaparamita (transcendent wisdom) which liberates one from samsara.[172]

Other Indian traditions[edit]

Buddha nature or tathagata-garbha (literally "Buddha womb") is that which allows sentient beings to become Buddhas.[173] Various Mahayana texts such as the Tathāgatagarbha sūtras focus on this idea and over time it became a very influential doctrine in Indian Buddhism, as well in East Asian and Tibetan Buddhism. The Buddha nature teachings may be regarded as a form of nondualism. According to Sally B King, all beings are said to be or possess tathagata-garbha, which is nondual Thusness or Dharmakaya. This reality, states King, transcends the "duality of self and not-self", the "duality of form and emptiness" and the "two poles of being and non being".[174]

There various interpretations and views on Buddha nature and the concept became very influential in India, China and Tibet, where it also became a source of much debate. In later Indian Yogācāra, a new sub-school developed which adopted the doctrine of tathagata-garbha into the Yogācāra system.[166] The influence of this hybrid school can be seen in texts like the Lankavatara Sutra and the Ratnagotravibhaga. This synthesis of Yogācāra tathagata-garbha became very influential in later Buddhist traditions, such as Indian Vajrayana, Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism.[175][166] Yet another development in late Indian Buddhism was the synthesis of Madhymaka and Yogacara philosophies into a single system, by figures such as Śāntarakṣita (8th century). Buddhist Tantra, also known as Vajrayana, Mantrayana or Esoteric Buddhism, drew upon all these previous Indian Buddhist ideas and nondual philosophies to develop innovative new traditions of Buddhist practice and new religious texts called the Buddhist tantras (from the 6th century onwards).[176] Tantric Buddhism was influential in China and is the main form of Buddhism in the Himalayan regions, especially Tibetan Buddhism.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism

metaphysical sea #5 by Alessandro Signore

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... a metaphysical talk in, number two

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The Rebel..." In the inborn impulse to rebel, on the other hand, we can deduce values that enable us to determine that murder and oppression are illegitimate and conclude with "hope for a new creation." by Hughes Songe

It is out of this understanding of rebellion as salvation for all that the most courageous acts of solidarity are born. One is reminded of Simone Weil, whom Camus lauded as “the only great spirit of our times” and who, as she lay dying of tuberculosis, defied her doctors’ orders by refusing to eat more than the rations her compatriots in Nazi-occupied France were given. Invoking such heroes, Camus writes:

This insane generosity is the generosity of rebellion, which unhesitatingly gives the strength of its love and without a moment’s delay refuses injustice. Its merit lies in making no calculations, distributing everything it possesses to life and to living men. It is thus that it is prodigal in its gifts to men to come. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. […] Rebellion proves in this way that it is the very movement of life and that it cannot be denied without renouncing life. Its purest outburst, on each occasion, gives birth to existence. Thus it is love and fecundity or it is nothing at all. At the end of this tunnel of darkness, however, there is inevitably a light, which we already divine and for which we only have to fight to ensure its coming. All of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism. But few of us know it. In a sentiment of especial poignancy today, as Europe struggles to welcome the world’s refugees and displaced families so ungenerously referred to as a “crisis,” Camus adds:

In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die… With this joy, through long struggle, we shall remake the soul of our time, and a Europe which will exclude nothing.

The Rebel is a magnificent and acutely timely read in its totality. Complement it with Susan Sontag on courage and resistance and Nietzsche on what it really means to be a free spirit, then revisit Camus on strength of character, happiness, unhappiness, and our self-imposed prisons, the art of awareness, and the touching letter of gratitude he sent to his childhood teacher shortly after winning the Nobel Prize.

Building on Nietzsche’s ideas about the fine line between constructive and destructive rebellion — ideas Camus sees as “born of abundance and fullness of spirit” — he summarizes this orientation of mind: One must accept the unacceptable and hold to the untenable… From absolute despair will spring infinite joy, from blind servitude, unbounded freedom. To be free is, precisely, to abolish ends. The innocence of the ceaseless change of things, as soon as one consents to it, represents the maximum liberty. The free mind willingly accepts what is necessary. Nietzsche’s most profound concept is that the necessity of phenomena, if it is absolute, without rifts, does not imply any kind of restraint. Total acceptance of total necessity is his paradoxical definition of freedom. The question “free of what?” is thus replaced by “free for what?” Liberty coincides with heroism. It is the asceticism of the great man, “the bow bent to the breaking-point.” In a passage of remarkable resonance today, when we are confronting a wave of violence so strangely divorced from everything the past has taught us — those countless bloody lessons in the perennial fact that violence is always without victors — Camus considers the only adequate role of history:

History … is only an opportunity that must be rendered fruitful by a vigilant rebellion. “Obsession with the harvest and indifference to history,” writes René Char admirably, “are the two extremities of my bow.” If the duration of history is not synonymous with the duration of the harvest, then history, in effect, is no more than a fleeting and cruel shadow in which man has no more part. He who dedicates himself to this history dedicates himself to nothing and, in his turn, is nothing. But he who dedicates himself to the duration of his life, to the house he builds, to the dignity of mankind, dedicates himself to the earth and reaps from it the harvest that sows its seed and sustains the world again and again. More than half a century before Rebecca Solnit’s electrifying case for the vital difference between blind optimism and hope as an act of rebellion, Camus writes: The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue. No possible form of wisdom today can claim to give more. Rebellion indefatigably confronts evil, from which it can only derive a new impetus. Man can master in himself everything that should be mastered. He should rectify in creation everything that can be rectified. And after he has done so, children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort man can only propose to diminish arithmetically the sufferings of the world. But the injustice and the suffering of the world will remain and, no matter how limited they are, they will not cease to be an outrage. Dimitri Karamazov’s cry of “Why?” will continue to resound; art and rebellion will die only with the last man.

[…]

Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live: in fact, for the humiliated. The most pure form of the movement of rebellion is thus crowned with the heart-rending cry of Karamazov: if all are not saved, what good is the salvation of one only?

Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? And yet true rebellion, Camus argues, is an act motivated by concerned with the common good rather than by self-interest: The affirmation implicit in every act of rebellion is extended to something that transcends the individual in so far as it withdraws him from his supposed solitude and provides him with a reason to act. […] An act of rebellion is not, essentially, an egoistic act. Of course, it can have egoistic motives… The rebel … demands respect for himself, of course, but only in so far as he identifies himself with a natural community. […] When he rebels, a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point of view human solidarity is metaphysical. With an eye to the osmotic relationship between construction and destruction, Camus adds: Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended. While this essay is a particularly spirited expression of his lifelong mission to defeat nihilism, Camus uses the writings of Nietzsche — who proclaimed himself “the first perfect nihilist of Europe” — as a springboard for exploring the constructive potentiality of rebellion. He writes: Because his mind was free, Nietzsche knew that freedom of the mind is not a comfort, but an achievement to which one aspires and at long last obtains after an exhausting struggle. He knew that in wanting to consider oneself above the law, there is a great risk of finding oneself beneath the law. That is why he understood that only the mind found its real emancipation in the acceptance of new obligations. The essence of his discovery consists in saying that if the eternal law is not freedom, the absence of law is still less so.

[…]

The sum total of every possibility does not amount to liberty… Chaos is also a form of servitude. Freedom exists only in a world where what is possible is defined at the same time as what is not possible. Without law there is no freedom.

Despair, like the absurd, has opinions and desires about everything in general and nothing in particular. Silence expresses this attitude very well. But from the moment that the rebel finds his voice — even though he says nothing but “no” — he begins to desire and to judge… Not every value entails rebellion, but every act of rebellion tacitly invokes a value… Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden, dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can identify himself, even if only for a moment.

“You say you want a revolution,” the Beatles sang in 1968 as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was erecting the pillars of nonviolence on the other side of the Atlantic, “Well, you know / We all want to change the world… But when you talk about destruction / Don’t you know that you can count me out… If you want money for people with minds that hate / All I can tell you is brother you have to wait.”

Perhaps such is the curse of our species: Only in violent times do we remember, in our bones and our sinews, that hate is not a weapon of rebellion but of cowardice; that no true revolution is achieved through destruction and nihilism; that the only way to change the world is through constructive and life-affirming action. No one has made this point more persuasively and elegantly than Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) in his sublime and sublimely timely 1951 book The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (public library).The Rebel (French: L'Homme révolté) is a 1951 book-length essay by Albert Camus, which treats both the metaphysical and the historical development of rebellion and revolution in societies, especially Western Europe. Camus relates writers and artists as diverse as Epicurus and Lucretius, Marquis de Sade, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Stirner, André Breton, and others in an integrated, historical portrait of man in revolt. Examining both rebellion and revolt, which may be seen as the same phenomenon in personal and social frames, Camus examines several 'countercultural' figures and movements from the history of Western thought and art, noting the importance of each in the overall development of revolutionary thought and philosophy. This work has received ongoing interest, influencing modern philosophers and authors such as Paul Berman and others.

Fred Rosen has examined the influence of ideas of Simone Weil on Camus' thinking in The Rebel. George F Selfer has analysed parallels between Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche in philosophical aesthestics

One of Camus' primary arguments in The Rebel concerns the motivation for rebellion and revolution. While the two acts - which can be interpreted from Camus' writing as states of being - are radically different in most respects, they both stem from a basic human rejection of normative justice. If human beings become disenchanted with contemporary applications of justice, Camus suggests that they rebel. This rebellion, then, is the product of a basic contradiction between the human mind's unceasing quest for clarification and the apparently meaningless nature of the world. Described by Camus as "absurd," this latter perception must be examined with what Camus terms "lucidity." Camus concludes that the absurd sensibility contradicts itself because when it claims to believe in nothing, it believes in its own protest and the value of the protester's life. Therefore, this sensibility is logically a "point of departure" that irresistibly "exceeds itself." In the inborn impulse to rebel, on the other hand, we can deduce values that enable us to determine that murder and oppression are illegitimate and conclude with "hope for a new creation."

Another prominent theme in The Rebel, which is tied to the notion of incipient rebellion, is the inevitable failure of attempts at human perfection. Through an examination of various titular revolutions, and in particular the French Revolution, Camus argues that most revolutions involved a fundamental denial of both history and transcendental values. Such revolutionaries aimed to kill God. In the French Revolution, for instance, this was achieved through the execution of Louis XVI and subsequent eradication of the divine right of kings. The subsequent rise of utopian and materialist idealism sought "the end of history." Because this end is unattainable, according to Camus, terror ensued as the revolutionaries attempted to coerce results. This culminated in the "temporary" enslaving of people in the name of their future liberation. Notably, Camus' reliance on non-secular sentiment does not involve a defense of religion; indeed, the replacement of divinely-justified morality with pragmatism simply represents Camus' apotheosis of transcendental, moral values.

A third is that of crime, as Camus discusses how rebels who get carried away lose touch with the original basis of their rebellion and offer various defenses of crime through various historical epochs.

At the end of the book, Camus espouses the possible moral superiority of the ethics and political plan of syndicalism. He grounds this politics in a wider "midday thought" which opposes love of this life, and an unrelativisable normative commitment to fellow human beings, against ideological promises of the other world, end of history, or triumph of an alleged master race.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_(book)

ALGES METAPHYSICAL GARDEN SCULPTURE by Honevo Bi Hemispheric

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ALGES DRAGON TREE & METHAPHYSICAL GARDEN SCULPTURE

Honevo Photo

www.honevo.com

Trans-Dimensional Travel by Kathleen Jacobsen

There is but one true normality: the normality of the centre. by Traditional Quotes and Symbols

Existential planes are not given conditions but levels of intensity of metaphysical seeing (sanskrit vidya).

The wisdom of non-differentiation is superior to the wisdom of differentiation, but it could not be achieved without the wisdom of differentiation. Therefore the wisdom of differentiation should precede the wisdom of non-differentiation.

5. How can it be imagined about the one who is unable to surmount his own education and the effects of his family, schooling and mass communication that he can surmount that which will arise as ontic bondage on his spiritual way?

6. To eliminate his defective judgements of value man should attend to a process of radical autocorrection in the course of which every earlier view should be rejected, and then that which stands the test of the new view should be reaccepted.

9. Not only a view but a way of looking; not only a view of the world but a way of looking at the world; not only a Weltanschauung (world view) but world contemplation; not only structure and frame but a living process…

32. Spiritual and theistic Weltanschauungs should be markedly different from materialistic and atheistic ones in each aspect of life: in eating, sleeping, walking but first of all in their views.

39. There is but one true normality: the normality of the centre.

40. If the knowledge related to the centre is lacking, then in fact the knowledge related to the periphery is lacking as well.

52. Beyond a certain level there can not be external or internal any more. There is no external or internal - for in relation to the limit of consciousness everything is inside and in relation to the centre of consciousness everything is outside.

53. Existential planes are not given conditions but levels of intensity of metaphysical seeing (sanskrit vidya).

56. The wisdom of non-differentiation is superior to the wisdom of differentiation, but it could not be achieved without the wisdom of differentiation. Therefore the wisdom of differentiation should precede the wisdom of non-differentiation.

57. Things can only be united if they have previously been separated.

62. Earth can essentially be in touch with Heaven (the Motionless Mover) only where it is not in motion - i. e. at the poles.

64. In the cosmos the spirit manifests itself as light. When Christ says that »I am the light of the cosmos«, it means that He is the light of the cosmos which is beyond the cosmos - that is to say, He is the spirit of the cosmos but this spirit is beyond the cosmos.

65. The material world is essentially a spiritual world. What does »spiritual« mean? Does that mean that it is more subtle than material? It also means that but the main point is something else. The world is spiritual if the fact that it is in the consciousness becomes evident.

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Metaphysical aphorisms by András László

www.tradicio.org/english/solumipsum.htm

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Painting by Giovanni di Paolo

Between Dimensions by Neta Loid

Daniel Brunovský, Rudolph´s Garden, 2007, acrylic on canvas by DeBeer

Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum is a Slovak-Dutch museum of post-war visual art situated on the Danube river outside Bratislava, established in 2000

painter Daniel Brunovský (1959 Bratislava)

from the text of the art historian about Daniel Brunovský: Melancholy (intellectual contemplation), nostalgia (consolation with verified values) and metaphysics (what is hidden behind the deceptive face of visible reality) remain the key terms. Maybe alchemy too.

Metaphysics 3 by NerDee79

oxymoronsl.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/metaphysics/

Moonstruck Souls by Darren Hester

MoonStruck Souls is a metaphysical / spiritual boutique specializing in soulful healing, energy work, and spiritual tools. They carry hundreds of crystals, jewelry and handmade items. They also support local and small businesses by putting their creations in store.

The people gather near the giant becomes immobile; surrounds it, admiring its metamorphosis by Hughes Songe

Le peuple se pressa près du géant, devenu immobile ; il l’entoura, admirant sa métamorphose

The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret Marx's inquiry in this section focuses on the nature of the commodity, apart from its basic use-value. In other words, why does the commodity appear to have an exchange-value as if it was an intrinsecal characteristic of the commodity instead of a measurement of the homogenous human labor spent to do the commodity? Marx explains that this sort of fetishism, which attributes to a thing a characteristic when it is actually a social product, originates in the fact that under a commodity based society the social labour, the social relations between producers and their mutual interdependence, solely manifest in the market, in the process of exchange. Therefore, the value of the commodity is determined independently from private producers so it seems that it is the market which determines the value apparently based on a characteristic of the commodity; it seems as if there are relations between commodities instead of relations between producers.

Marx also explains that due to the historical circumstances of capitalist society, the values of commodities are usually studied by political economists in their most advanced form: money. These economists see the value of the commodity as something metaphysically autonomous from the social labor that is the actual determinant of value. Marx calls this fetishism—the process whereby the society that originally generated an idea eventually, through the distance of time, forgets that the idea is actually a social and therefore all-too-human product. This society will no longer look beneath the veneer of the idea (in this case the value of commodities) as it currently exists. The society will simply take the idea as a natural and/or God-given inevitability that they are powerless to alter it.

Marx compares this fetishism to the manufacturing of religious belief: people initially create a deity to fulfill whatever desire or need they have in present circumstances, but then these products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own and enter into a relations both with each other and with the human race.[14] Similarly, commodities only enter into relation with each other through exchange, which is a purely social phenomenon. Before that, they are simply useful items, but not commodities. Value itself cannot come from use-value because there is no way to compare the usefulness of an item; there are simply too many potential functions.

Once in exchange, commodities' values are determined by the amount of socially useful labor-time put into them, because labor can be generalized. For example, it takes longer to mine diamonds than it does to dig quartz, so diamonds are worth more. Fetishism within capitalism occurs once labor has been socially divided and centrally coordinated, and the worker no longer owns the means of production. They no longer have access to the knowledge of how much labor went into a product, because they no longer control its distribution. The only obvious determinant of value remaining to the mass of people is the value that was assigned in the past. Thus, the value of a commodity seems to arise from a mystical property inherent to it, rather than from labor-time, the actual determinant of value.

In the introduction to her collection of essays on ethical philosophy, The Virtue of Selfishness (VOS), Rand writes that the "exact meaning" of selfishness is "concern with one's own interests" (VOS, p. vii). In that work, Rand argue

a virtue is an action by which one secures and protects one's rational values—ultimately, one's life and happiness. Since a concern with one's own interests is a character trait that, when translated into action, enables one to achieve and guard one's own well-being, it follows that selfishness is a virtue. One must manifest a serious concern for one's own interests if one is to lead a healthy, purposeful, fulfilling life.

Untitled by Maya

Visit this location at Echoes, Metaphysics of frequencies in Second Life

colossal order *EXPLORED* (11th feb 2011, #252) by Francesco Taddeo

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Palermo's Post Building, designed by Angiolo Mazzoni, early twenties

What constitutes the miracle of man is not subject to change, for, in the image of God, there can be neither decrease nor increase. And that man is this image follows from the simple fact that he possesses the concept of the Absolute. by Traditional Quotes and Symbols

Pure "dogmatism" and mere "speculation", many may say. This in fact is the problem: a metaphysical exposition appears as a purely mental phenomenon, when one does not know that its origin is not a mental elaboration or an attitude of soul, but a vision which is completely independent of opinions, conclusions and creeds, and which is realized in the pure Intellect - through the "Eye of the Heart".

A metaphysical exposition is not true because it is logical (in its form it could also not be so), but it is in itself logical, that is to say, well-founded and consequential, because it is true. The thoughtprocess of metaphysics is not an artificial support for an opinion that has to be proved, it is simply description that has been adapted to the rules of human thinking; its proofs are aids, not ends in themselves.

St. Thomas Aquinas said that it was impossible to prove the Divine Being, not because it was unclear, but, on the contrary, because of its "excess of clarity". Nothing is more foolish than the question as to whether the supra-sensory can be proved: for, on the one hand, one can prove everything to the one who is spiritually gifted, and, on the other, the one who is not so gifted is blind to the best of proofs.

Thought is not there in order to exhaust reality in words (if it could do this, it would itself be reality, a self-contradictory supposition), but its role can only consist in providing keys to Reality; but the key is not Reality, nor can it wish to be so, but it is a way to it for those that can and will tread that way; and in the way there is already something of the end, just as in the effect there is something of the cause.

That modern thought, still wrongly called "philosophical", distances itself more and more from a logic which is deemed to be "scholastic", and more and more seeks to be "psychologically" and even "biologically" determined, does not escape our notice, but this cannot in any way prevent us from thinking or being in the manner that the theomorphic nature of man, and hence the sufficient reason of the human state, demand.

One speaks much today of the "man of our time" and one claims for him the right to determine the truth of this "time", as if man were a "time", and as if truth were not valid for man as such; what in man is mutable does not belong to man as such; what constitutes the miracle of "man" is not subject to change, for, in the image of God, there can be neither decrease nor increase. And that man is this image follows from the simple fact that he possesses the concept of the Absolute. In this one primordial concept lies the whole essence of man and therefore also his whole vocation.

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Frithjof Schuon: Sophia Perennis

Metaphysic Dreams by D L Ennis

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In my dreams I am transported to a mythical realism and time that can only exist in the imagination…

metaphysics: leopard chair and zebra chair by francesco

Pandorina by Kathleen Jacobsen

Taoist metaphysics by Diney Pau

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Taoist metaphysics takes the supposition of yin/yang beyond just cosmology. It is not only the so-called “natural world” that is subject to the fluctuations of yin/yang; everything is subject to them. Everything exists within, upon, and is imbued by the same Tao.

ai/gimp

1 Yellow Intensity by Robert Cowlishaw (Mertonian)

“Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that binds us to the divine.”

-The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics by Michael Martin, Adrian Pabst

The sophiological intuition, as we have seen now in Fludd as well as the Romantics and Steiner, demands that we question this commitment to Enlightenment science and philosophies. It also compels us to reconfigure our understanding of the roles of art and faith in the striving for a worldview that encompasses—and affirms—the living, breathing dynamic between natural and supernatural realities.

The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics by Michael Martin, Adrian Pabst

For someone who penetrates the interior essence of Life, the enigmatic content of Christianity is suddenly illuminated in a light of such intensity that anyone perceiving it in this light finds himself profoundly unsettled.

-The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics by Michael Martin, Adrian Pabst

If I try to think of the old days, mightier thoughts intervene. Peace is fled together with heart and love. I must go seek them. I would like to tell you whither, but I do not know. Thither where the Mother of All Things lives, the Veiled Virgin. My desire is aflame for Her. Farewell.

-The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics by Michael Martin, Adrian Pabst

Flight Attendents by Kathleen Jacobsen

Inner glasses by lcn.cozzi

Choice by Kathleen Jacobsen

orthogonal by Uqbar is back

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Mirrors Open Portals to Other Dimensions; A Being Walked..The book of Enoch: Fallen Angels taught Men to make Mirrors by Hughes Songe

One blessing of having a website like this one, with such extraordinary information, is that we get to talk on the phone with some very interesting people, many of whom have had really unusual and paranormal things happen to them. That’s often what brings them to this site. This is one reason why we are able to believe all the weird stuff we write about, and have a much better understanding of it, than isolated individuals can. These are generally not crazy people. They are intelligent, well spoken, from an enormous variety of backgrounds and trainings. Many are, or were, professionals in the business world. A number of them have connections to very famous people. Many of the people who have talked with us felt that they were going mad with the strange things happening to them, and no one around them believing in such stuff, and therefore it was a great relief to them to find us and learn that similar extremely strange happenings have happened to thousands of other people. While each case is unique, it is amazing how many people who we have talked with often have two or more of the following characteristics:

Metaphysical abilities, even if they had only a glimpse of what was possible, from a few experiences.

Interesting bloodlines, often including a famous or aristocratic person in their background. Close family member in the military, often the father, and usually not something simple like a soldier, but often a high-ranking officer and/or member of intelligence.Close experiences with interesting locations, such as Area 51 or other military bases. Part of childhood spent in Germany, or time spent in other countries with Alchemic connections, such as Scotland or Egypt (the only two countries ever to wear kilts), that seemed out of character with the family. Plus it is very common for them to also have, due to programming –Extreme money difficulties, even though they were well educated and had no apparent cause for this. Terrible relationship problems, usually on their own, even if they were good looking, nice, professional people from reasonably happy families.A few days ago, I was talking with a very nice man who has some interesting abilities, and he had a most interesting story to tell. He had a very bad childhood. He realized later on that he had been groomed his whole life for a particular position. He was good looking, studying to be an actor in the USA, and dating a daughter of a very powerful member of organized crime. A relative at another college had his photo on her dresser, and his soon-to-be girlfriend saw the photo and said – “I’m going to marry that man.” Presumably, the demons were speaking to her, as you will see. That girl changed colleges to pursue him. Later on when they were dating she asked him if he would like to have a spirit guide. He agreed, and not much later after that she went to join her witches’ coven that was meeting for Halloween. The man was in his bedroom that Halloween night, when out of a full length mirror, an adult-sized being stepped out. The being was wearing a long, black cloak and a Quaker hat. He had glowing red eyes. He floated along the floor, three inches above the ground. No feet could be seen. Yet he was present in a total physical, 3-dimensional form. The man whom I am talking about was fully awake. This was no dream. The being asked the man if he would like to join them. The being was meant to be the man’s spirit guide for life. In return, the man would receive all of the material things that he could ever wish for – fame as a movie star, immense riches, the girl for his wife, everything that he had been programmed to desire. The being was not there to sell the man on the benefits, he was just stating what the deal was. The being assumed that everything had been prearranged by the girlfriend, that this was a done deal. However, I guess the girlfriend had not sufficiently done her homework, because the man looked at the being, and could clearly tell that this being was evil, and not with God. He chose instead to serve God, and refused the being, even if that meant material hardship to himself. When he did that, the being reached to grab his heart. To protect himself, the man closed his eyes and meditated. He saw himself surrounded by Maharishi (he had done Transcendental Meditation – we don’t recommend that, but include this information as part of the story) and Christ’s light which was warm and golden. The being was not able to get through to him. So the being returned to the mirror. The man was told later by his girlfriend that the being appeared at the coven that night, and hit the leader of the coven in the chest. The leader of the coven died, but was taken to hospital, and was revived later in the hospital (I guess that was a near-death experience). However, the coven leader was very sick for years later on. Note about spirit guides: We do not recommend you have any spirit guides. Years before I met Michael and became a Christian, I occasionaly talked to two spirit guides I had. Eventually, however, I realized that they weren’t too smart, and that I did not need them. God and my higher self provided all the information I needed. I therefore asked them to leave (which they did). You have the Holy Spirit in your heart, and do not need to go anywhere else for guidance.

The being with the Quaker hat used the mirror as a portal. A portal is an unseen vortex that connects two places through time and space, and even dimensions or other realities or timelines. I absolutely believe the story of the being coming out of the mirror and talking with the man. I was thinking about that story when Michael sent me a video of a psychic investigator, a woman who can see energies in and around people. In the first video she says that cell phones open up portals to other dimensions. We had already much reason to believe that, having seen the effect they have on people, and how super addicted people are to their phones, particularly smart phones. I have also seen posts on a forum where people were discussing how within the last few years people have become extremely rude, lazy and self-centered at work, and that this started almost exactly the same time that the smart phones were introduced.

HOW I STOPPED MY SCREAMING NIGHTMARES

It was watching the above video, and thinking of the story of the being who walked out of the mirror that a major realization hit me: The appalling nightmares that I had been having for the past three years, all started when we moved into a house that had mirrors on a closet in the bedroom! And the second house we moved into, the one we were in at time of writing, also has a mirror within line of sight of the bedroom. I was having the most terrible nightmares you can possibly imagine for the past three years. They were so bad I would wake up screaming so loudly that my throat was sore for a while afterwards. They were so bad and so unique that I feel that they were not just a nightmare – something was trying to kill me. The first time this happened was around 2011. I had virtually never had nightmares my whole life, except for some in my childhood of monsters taking me and my siblings (these no doubt came from the fact that we had to walk quite a long way on our own to and from elementary school, and I was scared to, after being told that people try to pick up and murder children, and my mother refused to take us in the car. Plus being abducted once as a child probably contributed to them as well). Nearly all of these nightmares were similar. They lasted much less than a second, about as fast as a gun shot, thus giving me no time to respond. I am sure these nightmares were meant to kill me. There was a blast of energy, so powerful, that I was convinced it had killed me and everyone around me, and there was nothing but blackness and despair and the most awful feeling of total hopelessness you can possibly imagine. When I woke up screaming, I was surprised to find that I was alive.

The first time it happened I immediately remembered the story that if people die in a dream, they die in real life (Ref: Movie Dreamscape with Dennis Quaid). The screaming was so bad my throat hurt for a while afterwards. These nightmares reminded me of the stories I have heard of totally healthy people going to bed and never waking up again. In some cases in China, the person’s hair was been found to turn white. I have had maybe 30 or 40 of these dreams, averaging around one a month. We continually prayed and muscle tested to find out how these attacks were getting through. There is always a reason for something like this happening. The curse causeless shall not come. Proverbs 26:2. Unfortunately, the body can only say “yes” or “no” when muscle testing, and we weren’t able to find anything to do. I had prayed off everything to do with family lines, past life sins and other related subjects. We had done everything possible to get all cursed objects out of the house. We had no ‘welcome’ mat inviting demons in. We also have a mezuzah stuck on every door leading to outside, plus the bedroom door. (A mesuzah is a small container which contains quotes from the bible). But still the nightmares continued, so something was still letting the demons in. And then, shortly after talking with the man on the phone and seeing the above videos, it hit me! The nightmares started when we moved into a house with mirrors covering the closet in the master bedroom. The mirrors were an open portal to other dimensions! I knew from feng shui that one should not have mirrors in the bedroom, because it causes restless energy. I realize now that mirrors do more than just increase the energy in a room. They let in evil spirits. We were renting, and because the mirrors were on folding doors of the closet, I could not work out how to cover them, and did not realize at the time how important it was that I do so. Then, a year later, when we moved into another house, the one we were in at time of writing, I hoped that the nightmares would stop. They did not. This time while there were no mirrors in the bedroom, the idiots who designed the house did not put a door between the bedroom and the bathroom, just an open arch. Since we were renting, there wasn’t much I thought I could do. Part of the large vanity mirror looked almost directly into the bedroom, and I ignored the part of my mind that told me it was important to do something about it. Once I realized that the bathroom mirror was letting something in that was causing my nightmares, I had two choices – cover up the mirror, or put bible verses on it, similar to the way the mezuzahs protect doorways. We know that words have more power than we know of, since, for example, aliens use them as part of their technology,and even CERN, the large hadron collider, that’s 17 miles (27 Km) long, seems to use words as part of whatever strange things it is used for. See the sanskrit words that are on CERN, pictured below. Some people have even suggested that the purpose of CERN is to create black holes that will let in evil beings from other dimensions. All we know for sure is that it is very strange to put a statue of Shiva the destroyer out the front of a supposedly scientific research station, and that these sanskrit words in CERN likely do not have a good purpose: In addition to the power of words, we know that there are legal laws that Lucifer and his gang have to follow. For example, when Bill Schnoebelen was a vampire, he could not go into anyone’s house until they invited him in. For example, if he and his wife visited someone for a party, they would stand around and talk on the front doorstep, until the host would say something like, “What are we all standing around here for? Come on in.” So I chose to print out the following, and tape this on every mirror in the house. Even hand mirrors have this now in super tiny, font size 4; In the name of Jesus’ Christ, may we, this house, our finances and possessions be protected from all spirits who do not serve God the Creator and Jesus Christ. Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Corinthians1, 10:31 He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 6:47 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3:5 He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying “This is my body which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me”. Luke 22:19

It works! Normally in the 9 months that has gone, I would have had over many dozens of horrific nightmares. I have had not one of the really, really bad ones. In the few weeks after I posted on the mirror, I did have a few minor nightmares, but we found a cursed object (some comic pictures) that had been accidentally left in the bedroom, and removed them. Since doing that, I have been nightmare free! We are also waking up with more energy. Around the time that the nightmares started, I started feeling old sometimes, for the first time in my life. This seemed strange because we have a very healthy diet and lifestyle. It seemed that I could have this feeling of weariness, even when I had plenty of sleep, and no sleep debt. That feeling has not been with me since I put the quotes on the mirrors. Sometimes I feel almost 30 again (I’m 54).

REMOVE ALL PICTURES, BOOKS, MAGAZINES, TOYS FROM YOUR BEDROOM It’s now been 15 months with no nightmares, except for last night. Last night was a shocker; I was completely ‘dead’, hit by lightning, blackness and devastation everywhere etc, and screaming for a long time, with a very hoarse voice. I realized that the demons got in through a glyph; that is, a special kind of picture. I learned from a woman who made the mistake of being involved with journeying, that glyphs are portals to other dimensions. The glyph was something in a copy of the Robb Report magazine, that I had foolishly left in the bedroom. This happened again one other time later when a catalog was accidentally left in the bedroom. Get anything with a picture or logo out of your bedroom; all magazines, catalogs, books, toys and pictures, especially anything that is connected with corporations. More evidence that mirrors are portals to other dimensions, and allow evil spirits into the room, or maybe even into the whole house: 1) According to Japanese Legend, If you reflect two mirrors into each other at midnight a demon pops out.

2) In Animal Planet’s The Haunted, some haunted houses are caused by demons who can’t get back into the mirror. They believe that mirrors are possibly portals for spirits and that some spirits were invoked by mirrors. Once the spirits were called through by the use of the mirrors, who ever did it, just walked away and did not send them back through the mirror portal. So the spirits were trapped. They also found that some of the mirrors had been covered and some had actually been painted black preventing them from going back through.

3) Chinese cover up mirrors to stop bad things coming out.

“I lived in China for two years working in the fashion industry…I used to visit many factories, etc, and could never work out why all the mirrors always had covers over them. Because I needed to actually use the mirrors lol, I’d have to constantly take the covers from them. I finally asked … ‘why do you guys always cover the mirrors?… they were not very good at answering this question… I kept up my questioning, and the only answer I got that made any sense was…. “bad things come out”… I guess they meant demons…”

4) Alice in Wonderland.

The Illuminati, who make full use of black magick, seem to have an obsession with this book, which is chock full of imagery to do with mind control and perverted predations on children (See some creepy photos of Lewis Carroll and 10-year-old Alice here if you wish).

Alice’s MK-Ultra/abuse probably started with her Oxford University Vice-Chancellor father Henry Liddell, who was also the Dean of Christ Church and he probably allowed her to be used by people like the Reverend Robinson Duckworth (was a chaplain/member of the Order of St. John, with its Maltese style cross always used by the powers that be) who rowed the boat [this nursery rhyme was probably sung in their “entertaining” of the girls: “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.” (more dissociation ((don’t worry about the abuse, just keep rowing ((keep following the white rabbit, keep following the yellow brick road etc etc))… it’s all just a dream anyway, in MK-Ultra this is partly how dissociation is used; dreams, fantasy and reality are confused)), nursery rhymes/fairy tales are all full of it)].

After Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking-Glass in which Alice enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror. Here is a quote about that:

“Members of the bloodlines intentionally insert Illuminati symbols in popular movies and other media in order to bring what Fritz Springmeier calls the “Externalisation of the Hierarchy”…

Walt Disney was commissioned by the Illuminati to produce films such as Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland for mind control purposes. Disney movies are the main films used in mind control but other films such as Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Star Trek and even The Holy Bible are used in Monarch Mind-Control Programming.”

Demons love mirrors, and many occultists believe mirrors are a way in which to see into the spirit world. Many mirrors are used in movies and cartoons in order to see into the spirit world. Walt Disney is infamous for portraying mirrors in this way.”

For more information on this, and to see some creepy pictures, see this article.

5) Astral projection practitioners get stuck in mirrors.

Posted on a forum:

“If you are astral projecting, have an out-of-body-experience and you move through a mirror you get trapped in a parallel plane. Very hard to get out of, most get out when the natural body awakens and you are sucked back.”

“I’ve heard of more than one astral projector getting stuck in a mirror.”

6) Bloody Mary ‘game’ and folklore

Do not let children or anyone play this game! Chanting “Bloody Mary” is said to conjure up a demon from a mirror, so much so that it is a well known ‘game’. Explain to children how bad this is. The best way to do that is to watch the Interview with an Ex-Vampire interview (warning, there are references to doing horrible things with children).

Also be very sure to burn all ouija boards. Many people have been cursed after playing this game.

7) The superstition that breaking a mirror brings seven years’ bad luck.

Maybe this is a warning from the demons to not do it?

8) Jews cover up mirrors after death.

Maybe in the old days, before vaccines prevented people from having spiritual eyes, people knew that mirrors could trap the spirit in the mirror, after the spirit left the body, as the astral projectors get stuck?

9) Demons seen in mirrors.

Comment on a forum:

“Many years ago I knew an antiques dealer, he had a mirror that he sold, the people that bought the mirror, returned it to him. The reason for this return, was that they didn’t like seeing other people in the mirror, people that weren’t there!”

10) Full length mirrors are too cheap.

Recently when we were looking for a full length mirror, we were rather surprised at how cheap they were. You can buy a really nice wooden one for just $50, and simple ones for just $8.

Since the evil ones own the printing presses and don’t care about money, just serving evil spirits, subverting people and getting access to children, we think it not unlikely that some mirror-making companies are owned by the reptilians and/or Illuminati, and they are deliberately making them available at a cheap price, to encourage more people to put full length mirrors in bedrooms, so that beings with long, black capes and Quaker hats and red, glowing eyes can come into the room.

11) They are building more and more houses and condominiums with NO door between the bedroom and bathroom, ensuring that there is no barrier between a large mirror and the bed. Even luxury condominiums worth hundreds of thousands of dollars do this!

12) The book of Enoch: Fallen Angels taught Men to make Mirrors

“Moreover Azazyel, taught men to make swords, knives, shields, breastplates, the fabrication of mirrors, and the workmanship of bracelets and ornaments, the use of paint, the beautifying of the eyebrows, the use of stones of every valuable and select kind, and all sorts of dyes, so that the world became altered.”

Chapter 8. 1. (Azazyel is Lucifer’s aide-de-camp General).

Final Comment

It makes sense that the bigger the mirror, the bigger the demon that can walk out of it. I imagine it would have been hard or maybe impossible for the being who appeared to the man on Halloween night, to have walked out through a small face mirror. The thought of aristocracy comes to mind, and all the giant mirrors they have all over their houses. These are the people who need our prayers the most as they are so often controlled by the forces of evil, and helping them to free themselves from demonic control is crucial to freeing ourselves and creating Heaven on Earth. For example, read the true story of the statue that came to life in the grounds of an aristocrat’s mansion.

Please remove all mirrors from your bedroom, if you can, and put some bible verses on all mirrors that you keep, and see what difference it makes to your happiness and wellbeing.

Please tell your friends and family about this. Imagine the huge difference it will make to the world when creepy beings and demons cannot get into people’s houses so easily!

Success Stories from Other People Who Put the Bible Quotes on their Mirror:

“BEFORE THE PRINTOUT:

Since moving, especially, to the new house which has floor to ceiling mirrors in the built in wardrobe beside the bed in the master bedroom. I would awake with my vital signs racing…. heart palpitating, perspiring to the point of feeling feverish, mind racing. I would cry out and wake as if from the worst of dreams. Disturbed to the point of distraction, I would not be able to sleep for some time, resorting to getting up and reading for hours or listening to radio programs. Very tiring and disconcerting to be flooded with enough adrenalin tovirtually stop my heart!

AFTER the PRINTOUT:

The next night I woke early, but to be fair, I was still jet lagged. The night after there was a complete night of restful sleep. The third was restful and blissfully uneventful as well. I am continuing to sleep through the night, despite the constant worries and

challenges of the present time. The night before last was not quite as restful, but there was no violent prelude to my waking. I believe the scripture on the glass speaks for itself.”

3) The following happened before this lady read this article:

“I had one mirror in my bathroom and strangely it cracked and fell at a time when I was doing very deep negative energy / entity clearings. Something told me not to replace it just yet.Ever since I sleep better too. “

4) From a Dutch lady who has had a lot of unique experiences: “There is a small change in energy.. normal people would not feel it.. but I do. When i felt it the most was when I was putting the text on the mirrors. If I came close to a mirror..something seemed to push me. Or try to push me away. But it was very weak. And as i walked through the house looking for mirrors.. I could feel eyes watching me. Following me. But that is gone now.Also, my fiance slept better then normal after I did this.”

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