An aura develops around the spectator's despised sihouette. the immobility or mobility of the spectators act on the shape of the surrounding aura, its shades and behaviour. Color fluxes can accelerate, propagate, slow down, and transform to gradually invade the picture. To many spectators, interactions such as energy exchanges produce a work in the darkness of an empty body of meaning.The aura (also referred to as the auric field, radiance, or the eighth chakra) is an electromagnetic field surrounding the human form. People with enhanced psychic ability are able to see the movement and varied colors of the aura. Kirlian photography is a technique that captures the light from the auras of humans and plant life. The aura is also commonly referred to as the eighth chakra. Auras are like magnets picking up vibrational energies that are floating around everywhere we go. It is important to cleanse your aura frequently to free it of foreign vibrations and negative energies. Auras (colors and light) envelope our physical bodies are enveloped by our auras (colors and light). Some people are able to see auras plain as the nose on your face. On occasion some people will get a glimpse of an aura around someone. These glimpses serve as a reminder that we are first and foremost spiritual beings. Our physical bodies are secondary to who we are.

To live on this planet not only is it fashionable to have a human cloak, being connected to a body is a necessity to having a human experience. That's the whole point of being here, to experience challenges and joys of being human in order to evolve spiritually. It can be even more surprising to see (or sense) energetic lights (orbs, beams, light flashes, or human shapes) without them being associated with a living person, animal, or plant. When this occurs you are likely encountering an angel, spirit guide, or ascended master. Angel intuitive, Eileen Anglin, says that she associates specific light colors with the archangels and in some instances Ascended Masters... blue for Archangel Michael and yellow for Archangel Gabriel. Here is a complete list of Eileen's color associations (note that these colors are personal for her and could, therefore, be different for others).The evolution of mankind is progressing more rapidly than any other time in recorded history. With a growing unrest, we look not to the future but to the teachings of the past to bring greater meaning to our human existence. When we dive deeply, we find the forgotten knowledge of the Mystery Schools: legends of people levitating, yogis living hundreds of years and even walking through walls. For each tradition, the teachings of the light body were those skills reserved for the highest initiates, forming the foundations of these god-like feats.Mystical traditions knew that everything is energy: billions of molecules each acting as their own cosmos. As nothing in this world is just physical, it’s this culmination of constantly moving energy creating matter. Knowing how to use form optimally was the work of the sages, and is now becoming the practices of the awakened collective.

The human energy field is made up of several layers. The terms etheric body, mental body, astral body and emotional body are all aspects of the light body. Beyond these densities are further ways to activate the higher functions of the light body.

 

In electrical impulses, energetic bodies beyond the physical can be detected. Aura photos, also known as Kirlian photography, can capture images of these bodies. Shamans and gifted healers regularly work within these fields.

 

MERKABA

 

This is an Egyptian term translated as: Mer (light) Ka (soul) Ba (body).

 

It’s known as the chariot of the soul and must be activated to achieve ascension.

 

Drunvalo Melchizedek has taught this knowledge extensively. Specific breathwork combined with visualization can activate the light body as sacred geometry around the physical body. Even with books and guided online meditations, attending a workshop is necessary to achieve these very precise steps accurately.

 

RAINBOW BODY

 

Once the light body is activated, more sincere practices in absolute love are necessary to elevate the light body to the rainbow body state.

 

The rainbow body is the result of maintaining a constant frequency of unconditional love.

 

Having healed every wound, purified every thought and released every judgment, the rainbow body will ignite. It’s an absolute unwavering of this vibration which allows us to achieve ascension.

 

Both Jesus and Buddha ascended in this form. In their perfection of the human, they became “gods” and showed others the way to accomplish this frequency. The teachings of both masters are instructions illuminating the path for others to follow.

 

ASCENSION AND THE LIGHT BODY

 

Once the MerKaBa is activated and our highest fields of the light body are achieved, we illuminate the rainbow body through our consistently loving thoughts and sustained ecstatic frequency. With this luminous vibration intact, we’re able to dissolve back into Source, creating any form we wish, thereby achieving immortality as it was promised.

 

Ascension is our graduation to full cosmic consciousness, the rainbow body is the highest graduation of the light body, and the MerKaBa must first be activated to hold these higher frequencies if we wish to ascend.

 

EXPERIENCING THE LIGHT BODY

 

“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

 

Roald Dahl

 

Have you ever been around someone who exuded sacred? Amma comes to my mind. As soon as you’re in their presence you feel peaceful, inspired and more fulfilled. Way beyond charisma, this is a direct experience of a highly activated light body.

 

Being near them is discernible in your own body. I recall being at a couple of events with teachers of such caliber and feeling light-headed, unable to focus on anything. The magnitude of their field influenced my vision, my mind and my spirit.

 

In the presence of such beings, we’re being activated ourselves, brought into greater spiritual alignment and being shown we too are capable of such mastery.

 

To activate a light body is not the work of gurus and masters, it’s a way of being intended for every living being who wishes to pursue it.

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LIGHT BODY

 

Beyond the supreme mastery of the physical form, the light body teachings are crucially important at this time for humanity. It’s in this concept we’re reminded we’re more than physical, more than what we think and what we do. We’re extraordinary manifestations of a universe so much bigger than our limited scope can comprehend.

 

BLESSING OF ITS SUPPRESSION

 

We can conceive how essential this knowledge is to the advancement of humanity and we can also assume why it’s been so hidden from us: to keep us from achieving ascension.

 

Backing off the powers-that-were blame game, I believe the fact that it’s been kept from us is a great boon. For in its suppression, it retained power. In its preservation, it gave humanity a chance to catch up.

 

Mass consciousness is clicking in dramatically now, grasping onto ancient teachings and seeking out transparency in all affairs. What once seemed complex is now being illustrated in memes and hashtags. A peek through any social media feed will illuminate a new trend toward reclaiming ancient wisdom. Humanity has evolved and it’s now that we’re able to achieve these teachings with finesse and mastery.

 

NECESSITY OF DISCERNMENT

 

The teachings of the Mystery Schools were shared with only a select few. Initiations would bring spiritual seekers through these gateways after many years of ritual to prepare the body, mind and spirit. While the light body teachings would have been present in every tradition, it may take many lifetimes to master. Now however, even a YouTube search will yield hundreds of techniques.

 

With such vast resources available, misinformation is rampant. The specifics of the techniques have likewise been muddied. I always seek a direct experience with my guides or turn to trusted teachers. Use your own intuition and discernment when seeking out such guidance. I find the integrity of teachers can vary greatly. I’m supremely vigilant in who I follow, and prefer the clear guidance of my own spirit allies and team of Ascended Masters to ensure the teachers' vibration matches mine.

 

HOW TO ACTIVATE THE LIGHT BODY

 

Your light body is a vehicle to assist you in experiencing your God state and it’s the most worthy gift you can give yourself. Don't beat yourself up: do your best, stay in your truth and heal missteps as they occur. Intention matched with frequency will be the surest path to ascension. Below, I share a few steps for activation:

 

RAISE YOUR VIBRATION

 

Vibration and purity of intention must be in place before undergoing the activations. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

 

PINEAL GLAND DECALCIFICATION

 

Decalcification of the pineal gland is mandatory for us to achieve higher states of awareness. Fluoride intentionally shuts down the pineal gland, supporting the suppression of its importance. Be conscious in your work to facilitate this healing.

 

FOOD

 

The food we eat carries cellular vibrations and memories. Do you know how was your meal gathered, treated and prepared? While a straight vegetarian diet may be the most optimal, small changes like non-GMO, organic and sustainably raised animal products will go a long way.

 

Additionally, bless your food. Ask that the vibration match you and serve you exactly where you are now.

 

MEDITATION/ PRAYER

 

Every breath is a prayer. Use your thoughts to connect to the universe and give gratitude for everything. Meditation will also bring us into the stillness within, where we can connect with the wisdom of our own hearts.

 

MUSIC & SOUND FREQUENCIES

 

Sound is the language of the cosmos. The right music, binaural beats, classical music or even heavy metal at the right moment can break up stagnant energy and alleviate any low-vibrational thoughts.

 

Tom Kenyon is rightfully heralded as a master of sound; listening to his auditory activations will be a fast track to your growth.

 

LAUGHTER

 

Korean shamans use laughter as their primary healing tool. Anytime we find ourselves in a lower state, depressed, irritated or angry, know your go-to to bring you into giggles. A YouTube video or funny joke will bring you back to higher frequencies.

 

NATURE

 

Time outdoors is the most fundamental ally to change your frequency. Commune with nature to remember the rhythm and timing of the the universe which is vastly different than our human drive for instant gratification.

 

THE SUN

 

The sun has been a boon of humanity in every world culture. Get yourself some Vitamin D to lift any funk and stimulate the pineal gland.

 

BE CLEAR

 

Dishonesty and addiction are detractors from this work. To be pure light in an active light body means holding purity in our thoughts, will and intention.

 

Be impeccable with your word and heal what clouds your mind, allowing more light to penetrate.

 

LIGHT BODY ACTIVATION MEDIATION

 

To prepare, find a comfortable seat without interruption. Breathing normally, direct your mind to "see" the visuals. No need for stress or strain, just give your imagination permission to create this for you.

 

Visualize yourself sitting inside a pyramid with the base resting on your hips and the tip pointing up toward the cosmos. Fill this pyramid with the color of lightning.

See the downward-pointing pyramid with the base at your heart and the tip resting in the earth. Fill this pyramid with the color of lightning and breathe normally for a few breaths.

When you can feel these two around you, exhale powerfully from your navel, sending out a sphere of golden light to encircle the octahedron.

Breathe deeply and allow yourself to experience this field around you.

When you can feel all three elements without strain, give them a spin clockwise: the pyramids first, then the sphere surrounding it. You may notice activation of a higher frequency, or a slight shift in physical sensations.

You’ve now activated the living light body and will notice a discernible difference in your body and mind.

 

The fuel of your light body is love.

 

Breathe with it, send it to others and direct that love into the internal spaces that need healing and affirmation. Send it to your emotions, your pain, your physical ailments and organs. This is the breath of life. It loves you and gives you the power to heal yourself.

 

Stay in this state for as long as you feel comfortable. Allow the MerKaBa to fade when you’re ready to return. This light body is available to support you anytime.

 

ECSTASY AS OUR BIRTHRIGHT

 

The truest vibration of the universe is ecstasy. Though it’s through pain that we experience separation from God, it’s in the triumphant return to him where we grow the most.

 

We’ve not only been taught that feeling good is bad, we’ve been taught to actively block joy. Through the media we watch, the food we eat, the medication we’re thrust, feeling depressed is force-fed to us, and not subliminally. Watch any big pharma commercial to hear blatantly stated, “You don't feel good and something is wrong with you.”

 

Maintaining the frequency necessary to achieve ascension is challenging. The light body can stay activated for long periods, getting us closer to ultimate enlightenment, but this final achievement of the rainbow body is intentionally difficult. The good news: there are documented cases in the ancient texts of at least 160,000 souls achieving this feat. If they were able to do it in their day, we are so much closer with the current incarnations of evolved souls on this planet.

 

www.gaia.com/article/what-is-a-light-body

Afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is the concept that an essential part of an individual's identity or the stream of consciousness continues to manifest after the death of the physical body. According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and may confer personal identity or, on the contrary, may not, as in Indian nirvana. Belief in an afterlife, which may be naturalistic or supernatural, is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.

 

In some views, this continued existence often takes place in a spiritual realm, and in other popular views, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or Otherworld. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics.

 

Some belief systems, such as those in the Abrahamic tradition, hold that the dead go to a specific plane of existence after death, as determined by God, or other divine judgment, based on their actions or beliefs during life. In contrast, in systems of reincarnation, such as those in the Indian religions, the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life, rather than through the decision of a different being.

 

Different metaphysical models

Theists generally believe some type of afterlife awaits people when they die. Members of some generally non-theistic religions tend to believe in an afterlife, but without reference to a deity. The Sadducees were an ancient Jewish sect that generally believed that there was a God but no afterlife.

 

Many religions, whether they believe in the soul's existence in another world like Christianity, Islam and many pagan belief systems, or in reincarnation like many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, believe that one's status in the afterlife is a reward or punishment for their conduct during life.

 

Reincarnation

 

Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical body or form after each biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration, and is a part of the Saṃsāra doctrine of cyclic existence. It is a central tenet of all major Indian religions, namely Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The idea of reincarnation is found in many ancient cultures, and a belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found as well in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Australia, East Asia, Siberia, and South America.

 

Although the majority of denominations within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, Alawites, the Druze, and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism, and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions have been the subject of recent scholarly research. Unity Church and its founder Charles Fillmore teach reincarnation.

 

Rosicrucians speak of a life review period occurring immediately after death and before entering the afterlife's planes of existence (before the silver cord is broken), followed by a judgment, more akin to a final review or end report over one's life.

 

Heaven and hell

 

Heaven, the heavens, seven heavens, pure lands, Tian, Jannah, Valhalla, or the Summerland, is a common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, jinn, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter heaven alive.

 

Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a paradise, in contrast to hell or the underworld or the "low places", and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.

 

In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka. There are seven positive regions the soul can go to after death and seven negative regions. After completing its stay in the respective region, the soul is subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (heaven, hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld.

 

Hell, in many religious and folkloric traditions, is a place of torment and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell as an eternal destination, while religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations. Typically, these traditions locate hell in another dimension or under the earth's surface and often include entrances to hell from the land of the living. Other afterlife destinations include purgatory and limbo.

 

Traditions that do not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward merely describe hell as an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place (for example, sheol or Hades) located under the surface of earth.

 

Ancient religions

 

The afterlife played an important role in Ancient Egyptian religion, and its belief system is one of the earliest known in recorded history. When the body died, parts of its soul known as ka (body double) and the ba (personality) would go to the Kingdom of the Dead. While the soul dwelt in the Fields of Aaru, Osiris demanded work as restitution for the protection he provided. Statues were placed in the tombs to serve as substitutes for the deceased.

 

Arriving at one's reward in afterlife was a demanding ordeal, requiring a sin-free heart and the ability to recite the spells, passwords and formulae of the Book of the Dead. In the Hall of Two Truths, the deceased's heart was weighed against the Shu feather of truth and justice taken from the headdress of the goddess Ma'at.[15] If the heart was lighter than the feather, they could pass on, but if it were heavier they would be devoured by the demon Ammit.

 

Egyptians also believed that being mummified and put in a sarcophagus (an ancient Egyptian "coffin" carved with complex symbols and designs, as well as pictures and hieroglyphs) was the only way to have an afterlife. Only if the corpse had been properly embalmed and entombed in a mastaba, could the dead live again in the Fields of Yalu and accompany the Sun on its daily ride. Due to the dangers the afterlife posed, the Book of the Dead was placed in the tomb with the body as well as food, jewellery, and 'curses'. They also used the "opening of the mouth".

 

Ancient Egyptian civilization was based on religion; their belief in the rebirth after death became the driving force behind their funeral practices. Death was simply a temporary interruption, rather than complete cessation, of life, and that eternal life could be ensured by means like piety to the gods, preservation of the physical form through mummification, and the provision of statuary and other funerary equipment. Each human consisted of the physical body, the ka, the ba, and the akh. The Name and Shadow were also living entities. To enjoy the afterlife, all these elements had to be sustained and protected from harm.

 

On March 30, 2010, a spokesman for the Egyptian Culture Ministry claimed it had unearthed a large red granite door in Luxor with inscriptions by User,[20] a powerful adviser to the 18th dynasty Queen Hatshepsut who ruled between 1479 BC and 1458 BC, the longest of any woman. It believes the false door is a 'door to the Afterlife'. According to the archaeologists, the door was reused in a structure in Roman Egypt.

 

Ancient Greek and Roman religions

 

The Greek god Hades is known in Greek mythology as the king of the underworld, a place where souls live after death.The Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, would take the dead soul of a person to the underworld (sometimes called Hades or the House of Hades). Hermes would leave the soul on the banks of the River Styx, the river between life and death.

 

Charon, also known as the ferry-man, would take the soul across the river to Hades, if the soul had gold: Upon burial, the family of the dead soul would put coins under the deceased's tongue. Once crossed, the soul would be judged by Aeacus, Rhadamanthus and King Minos. The soul would be sent to Elysium, Tartarus, Asphodel Fields, or the Fields of Punishment. The Elysian Fields were for the ones that lived pure lives. It consisted of green fields, valleys and mountains, everyone there was peaceful and contented, and the Sun always shone there. Tartarus was for the people that blasphemed against the gods, or were simply rebellious and consciously evil.

 

The Asphodel Fields were for a varied selection of human souls: Those whose sins equalled their goodness, were indecisive in their lives, or were not judged. The Fields of Punishment were for people that had sinned often, but not so much as to be deserving of Tartarus. In Tartarus, the soul would be punished by being burned in lava, or stretched on racks. Some heroes of Greek legend are allowed to visit the underworld. The Romans had a similar belief system about the afterlife, with Hades becoming known as Pluto. In the ancient Greek myth about the Labours of Heracles, the hero Heracles had to travel to the underworld to capture Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog, as one of his tasks.

 

In Dream of Scipio, Cicero describes what seems to be an out of body experience, of the soul traveling high above the Earth, looking down at the small planet, from far away.

 

In Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, the hero, Aeneas, travels to the underworld to see his father. By the River Styx, he sees the souls of those not given a proper burial, forced to wait by the river until someone buries them. While down there, along with the dead, he is shown the place where the wrongly convicted reside, the fields of sorrow where those who committed suicide and now regret it reside, including Aeneas' former lover, the warriors and shades, Tartarus (where the titans and powerful non-mortal enemies of the Olympians reside) where he can hear the groans of the imprisoned, the palace of Pluto, and the fields of Elysium where the descendants of the divine and bravest heroes reside. He sees the river of forgetfulness, Lethe, which the dead must drink to forget their life and begin anew. Lastly, his father shows him all of the future heroes of Rome who will live if Aeneas fulfills his destiny in founding the city.

 

Norse religion

 

The Poetic and Prose Eddas, the oldest sources for information on the Norse concept of the afterlife, vary in their description of the several realms that are described as falling under this topic. The most well-known are:

 

Valhalla: (lit. "Hall of the Slain" i.e. "the Chosen Ones") Half the warriors who die in battle join the god Odin who rules over a majestic hall called Valhalla in Asgard.

Fólkvangr: (lit. "Field of the Host") The other half join the goddess Freyja in a great meadow known as Fólkvangr.

Hel: (lit. "The Covered Hall") This abode is somewhat like Hades from Ancient Greek religion: there, something not unlike the Asphodel Meadows can be found, and people who have neither excelled in that which is good nor excelled in that which is bad can expect to go there after they die and be reunited with their loved ones.[citation needed]

Niflhel: (lit. "The Dark" or "Misty Hel") This realm is roughly analogous to Greek Tartarus. It is the deeper level beneath Hel, and those who break oaths and commit other vile things will be sent there to be among their kind to suffer harsh punishments.[citation needed]

Abrahamic religions[edit]

Judaism

She'ol

She'ol, in the Hebrew Bible, is a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from life and from God.need quotation to verify]

 

The inhabitants of Sheol are the "shades" (rephaim), entities without personality or strength.[28] Under some circumstances they are thought to be able to be contacted by the living, as the Witch of Endor contacts the shade of Samuel for Saul, but such practices are forbidden (Deuteronomy 18:10).

 

While the Hebrew Bible appears to describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BC–70 AD) a more diverse set of ideas developed. In some texts, Sheol is considered to be the home of both the righteous and the wicked, separated into respective compartments; in others, it was considered a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone.[30] When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria around 200 BC, the word "Hades" (the Greek underworld) was substituted for Sheol. This is reflected in the New Testament where Hades is both the underworld of the dead and the personification of the evil it represents.

 

World to Come

The Talmud offers a number of thoughts relating to the afterlife. After death, the soul is brought for judgment. Those who have led pristine lives enter immediately into the Olam Haba or world to come. Most do not enter the world to come immediately, but now experience a period of review of their earthly actions and they are made aware of what they have done wrong. Some view this period as being a "re-schooling", with the soul gaining wisdom as one's errors are reviewed. Others view this period to include spiritual discomfort for past wrongs. At the end of this period, not longer than one year, the soul then takes its place in the world to come. Although discomforts are made part of certain Jewish conceptions of the afterlife, the concept of "eternal damnation", so prevalent in other religions, is not a tenet of the Jewish afterlife. According to the Talmud, extinction of the soul is reserved for a far smaller group of malicious and evil leaders, either whose very evil deeds go way beyond norms, or who lead large groups of people to utmost evil.

 

Maimonides describes the Olam Haba in spiritual terms, relegating the prophesied physical resurrection to the status of a future miracle, unrelated to the afterlife or the Messianic era. According to Maimonides, an afterlife continues for the soul of every human being, a soul now separated from the body in which it was "housed" during its earthly existence.

 

The Zohar describes Gehenna not as a place of punishment for the wicked but as a place of spiritual purification for souls.

 

Reincarnation in Jewish tradition

Although there is no reference to reincarnation in the Talmud or any prior writings, according to rabbis such as Avraham Arieh Trugman, reincarnation is recognized as being part and parcel of Jewish tradition. Trugman explains that it is through oral tradition that the meanings of the Torah, its commandments and stories, are known and understood. The classic work of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, is quoted liberally in all Jewish learning; in the Zohar the idea of reincarnation is mentioned repeatedly. Trugman states that in the last five centuries the concept of reincarnation, which until then had been a much hidden tradition within Judaism, was given open exposure.

 

Shraga Simmons commented that within the Bible itself, the idea [of reincarnation] is intimated in Deut. 25:5-10, Deut. 33:6 and Isaiah 22:14, 65:6.

 

Yirmiyahu Ullman wrote that reincarnation is an "ancient, mainstream belief in Judaism". The Zohar makes frequent and lengthy references to reincarnation. Onkelos, a righteous convert and authoritative commentator of the same period, explained the verse, "Let Reuben live and not die ..." (Deuteronomy 33:6) to mean that Reuben should merit the World to Come directly, and not have to die again as a result of being reincarnated. Torah scholar, commentator and kabbalist, Nachmanides (Ramban 1195–1270), attributed Job's suffering to reincarnation, as hinted in Job's saying "God does all these things twice or three times with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit to ... the light of the living' (Job 33:29,30)."

 

Reincarnation, called gilgul, became popular in folk belief, and is found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Among a few kabbalists, it was posited that some human souls could end up being reincarnated into non-human bodies. These ideas were found in a number of Kabbalistic works from the 13th century, and also among many mystics in the late 16th century. Martin Buber's early collection of stories of the Baal Shem Tov's life includes several that refer to people reincarnating in successive lives.

 

Among well known (generally non-kabbalist or anti-kabbalist) rabbis who rejected the idea of reincarnation are Saadia Gaon, David Kimhi, Hasdai Crescas, Yedayah Bedershi (early 14th century), Joseph Albo, Abraham ibn Daud, the Rosh and Leon de Modena. Saadia Gaon, in Emunoth ve-Deoth (Hebrew: "beliefs and opinions") concludes Section VI with a refutation of the doctrine of metempsychosis (reincarnation). While rebutting reincarnation, Saadia Gaon further states that Jews who hold to reincarnation have adopted non-Jewish beliefs. By no means do all Jews today believe in reincarnation, but belief in reincarnation is not uncommon among many Jews, including Orthodox.

 

Other well-known rabbis who are reincarnationists include Yonassan Gershom, Abraham Isaac Kook, Talmud scholar Adin Steinsaltz, DovBer Pinson, David M. Wexelman, Zalman Schachter,[39] and many others. Reincarnation is cited by authoritative biblical commentators, including Ramban (Nachmanides), Menachem Recanti and Rabbenu Bachya.

 

Among the many volumes of Yitzchak Luria, most of which come down from the pen of his primary disciple, Chaim Vital, are insights explaining issues related to reincarnation. His Shaar HaGilgulim, "The Gates of Reincarnation", is a book devoted exclusively to the subject of reincarnation in Judaism.

 

Rabbi Naftali Silberberg of The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute notes that "Many ideas that originate in other religions and belief systems have been popularized in the media and are taken for granted by unassuming Jews."

 

Christianity

Main articles: Christian eschatology, Heaven in Christianity, Christian views on hell, and Intermediate state

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Mainstream Christianity professes belief in the Nicene Creed, and English versions of the Nicene Creed in current use include the phrase: "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." Although punishments are made part of certain Christian conceptions of the afterlife, the prevalent concept of "eternal damnation" is a tenet of the Christian afterlife.

 

When questioned by the Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead (in a context relating to who one's spouse would be if one had been married several times in life), Jesus said that marriage will be irrelevant after the resurrection as the resurrected will be like the angels in heaven.

 

Jesus also maintained that the time would come when the dead would hear the voice of the Son of God, and all who were in the tombs would come out, who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.

 

The Book of Enoch describes Sheol as divided into four compartments for four types of the dead: the faithful saints who await resurrection in Paradise, the merely virtuous who await their reward, the wicked who await punishment, and the wicked who have already been punished and will not be resurrected on Judgment Day. The Book of Enoch is considered apocryphal by most denominations of Christianity and all denominations of Judaism.

 

The book of 2 Maccabees gives a clear account of the dead awaiting a future resurrection and judgment, plus prayers and offerings for the dead to remove the burden of sin.

  

Domenico Beccafumi's Inferno: a Christian vision of hell

The author of Luke recounts the story of Lazarus and the rich man, which shows people in Hades awaiting the resurrection either in comfort or torment. The author of the Book of Revelation writes about God and the angels versus Satan and demons in an epic battle at the end of times when all souls are judged. There is mention of ghostly bodies of past prophets, and the transfiguration.

 

The non-canonical Acts of Paul and Thecla speak of the efficacy of prayer for the dead, so that they might be "translated to a state of happiness".

 

Hippolytus of Rome pictures the underworld (Hades) as a place where the righteous dead, awaiting in the bosom of Abraham their resurrection, rejoice at their future prospect, while the unrighteous are tormented at the sight of the "lake of unquenchable fire" into which they are destined to be cast.

 

Gregory of Nyssa discusses the long-before believed possibility of purification of souls after death.

 

Pope Gregory I repeats the concept, articulated over a century earlier by Gregory of Nyssa that the saved suffer purification after death, in connection with which he wrote of "purgatorial flames".

 

The noun "purgatorium" (Latin: place of cleansing is used for the first time to describe a state of painful purification of the saved after life. The same word in adjectival form (purgatorius -a -um, cleansing), which appears also in non-religious writing, was already used by Christians such as Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory I to refer to an after-death cleansing.

 

During the Age of Enlightenment, theologians and philosophers presented various philosophies and beliefs. A notable example is Emanuel Swedenborg who wrote some 18 theological works which describe in detail the nature of the afterlife according to his claimed spiritual experiences, the most famous of which is Heaven and Hell. His report of life there covers a wide range of topics, such as marriage in heaven (where all angels are married), children in heaven (where they are raised by angel parents), time and space in heaven (there are none), the after-death awakening process in the World of Spirits (a place halfway between Heaven and Hell and where people first wake up after death), the allowance of a free will choice between Heaven or Hell (as opposed to being sent to either one by God), the eternity of Hell (one could leave but would never want to), and that all angels or devils were once people on earth.

 

The Catholic Church

The "Spiritual Combat", a written work by Lorenzo Scupoli, states that four assaults are attempted by the “evil one” at the hour of death. The Catholic conception of the afterlife teaches that after the body dies, the soul is judged, the righteous and free of sin enter Heaven. However, those who die in unrepented mortal sin go to hell. In the 1990s, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defined hell not as punishment imposed on the sinner but rather as the sinner's self-exclusion from God. Unlike other Christian groups, the Catholic Church teaches that those who die in a state of grace, but still carry venial sin go to a place called Purgatory where they undergo purification to enter Heaven.

 

Limbo

Despite popular opinion, Limbo, which was elaborated upon by theologians beginning in the Middle Ages, was never recognized as a dogma of the Catholic Church, yet, at times, it has been a very popular theological theory within the Church. Limbo is a theory that unbaptized but innocent souls, such as those of infants, virtuous individuals who lived before Jesus Christ was born on earth, or those that die before baptism exist in neither Heaven or Hell proper. Therefore, these souls neither merit the beatific vision, nor are subjected to any punishment, because they are not guilty of any personal sin although they have not received baptism, so still bear original sin. So they are generally seen as existing in a state of natural, but not supernatural, happiness, until the end of time.

 

In other Christian denominations it has been described as an intermediate place or state of confinement in oblivion and neglect.

 

Purgatory

The notion of purgatory is associated particularly with the Catholic Church. In the Catholic Church, all those who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven or the final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. The tradition of the church, by reference to certain texts of scripture, speaks of a "cleansing fire" although it is not always called purgatory.

 

Anglicans of the Anglo-Catholic tradition generally also hold to the belief. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed in an intermediate state between death and the resurrection of the dead and in the possibility of "continuing to grow in holiness there", but Methodism does not officially affirm this belief and denies the possibility of helping by prayer any who may be in that state.

 

Orthodox Christianity

The Orthodox Church is intentionally reticent on the afterlife, as it acknowledges the mystery especially of things that have not yet occurred. Beyond the second coming of Jesus, bodily resurrection, and final judgment, all of which is affirmed in the Nicene Creed (325 CE), Orthodoxy does not teach much else in any definitive manner. Unlike Western forms of Christianity, however, Orthodoxy is traditionally non-dualist and does not teach that there are two separate literal locations of heaven and hell, but instead acknowledges that "the 'location' of one’s final destiny—heaven or hell—as being figurative." Instead, Orthodoxy teaches that the final judgment is simply one's uniform encounter with divine love and mercy, but this encounter is experienced multifariously depending on the extent to which one has been transformed, partaken of divinity, and is therefore compatible or incompatible with God. "The monadic, immutable, and ceaseless object of eschatological encounter is therefore the love and mercy of God, his glory which infuses the heavenly temple, and it is the subjective human reaction which engenders multiplicity or any division of experience."For instance, St. Isaac the Syrian observes that "those who are punished in Gehenna, are scourged by the scourge of love. ... The power of love works in two ways: it torments sinners . . . [as] bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability." In this sense, the divine action is always, immutably, and uniformly love and if one experiences this love negatively, the experience is then one of self-condemnation because of free will rather than condemnation by God. Orthodoxy therefore uses the description of Jesus' judgment in John 3:19-21 as their model: "19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." As a characteristically Orthodox understanding, then, Fr. Thomas Hopko writes, "[I]t is precisely the presence of God’s mercy and love which cause the torment of the wicked. God does not punish; he forgives. . . . In a word, God has mercy on all, whether all like it or not. If we like it, it is paradise; if we do not, it is hell. Every knee will bend before the Lord. Everything will be subject to Him. God in Christ will indeed be "all and in all," with boundless mercy and unconditional pardon. But not all will rejoice in God's gift of forgiveness, and that choice will be judgment, the self-inflicted source of their sorrow and pain."

 

Moreover, Orthodoxy includes a prevalent tradition of apokatastasis, or the restoration of all things in the end. This has been taught most notably by Origen, but also many other Church fathers and Saints, including Gregory of Nyssa. The Second Council of Constantinople (553 C.E.) affirmed the orthodoxy of Gregory of Nyssa while simultaneously condemning Origen's brand of universalism because it taught the restoration back to our pre-existent state, which Orthodoxy doesn't teach. It is also a teaching of such eminent Orthodox theologians as Olivier Clément, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, and Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev.[55] Although apokatastasis is not a dogma of the church but instead a theologoumena, it is no less a teaching of the Orthodox Church than its rejection. As Met. Kallistos Ware explains, "It is heretical to say that all must be saved, for this is to deny free will; but, it is legitimate to hope that all may be saved,"[56] as insisting on torment without end also denies free will.

 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints[edit]

Main articles: Plan of salvation (Latter Day Saints), Exaltation (Mormonism), and Degrees of glory

 

Plan of Salvation in LDS Religion

Joseph F. Smith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presents an elaborate vision of the afterlife. It is revealed as the scene of an extensive missionary effort by righteous spirits in paradise to redeem those still in darkness—a spirit prison or "hell" where the spirits of the dead remain until judgment. It is divided into two parts: Spirit Prison and Paradise. Together these are also known as the Spirit World (also Abraham's Bosom; see Luke 16:19-25). They believe that Christ visited spirit prison (1 Peter 3:18-20) and opened the gate for those who repent to cross over to Paradise. This is similar to the Harrowing of Hell doctrine of some mainstream Christian faiths.[citation needed] Both Spirit Prison and Paradise are temporary according to Latter-day Saint beliefs. After the resurrection, spirits are assigned "permanently" to three degrees of heavenly glory, determined by how they lived– Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial.(1 Cor 15:44-42; Doctrine and Covenants, Section 76) Sons of Perdition, or those who have known and seen God and deny it, will be sent to the realm of Satan, which is called Outer Darkness, where they shall live in misery and agony forever.[57]

 

The Celestial Kingdom is believed to be a place where we can live eternally with our families. Progression does not end once one has entered the Celestial Kingdom, but it extends eternally. According to "True to the Faith" (a handbook on doctrines in the LDS faith), "The celestial kingdom is the place prepared for those who have "received the testimony of Jesus" and been "made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood" (D&C 76:51, 69). To inherit this gift, we must receive the ordinances of salvation, keep the commandments, and repent of our sins."

 

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses occasionally use terms such as "afterlife"[59] to refer to any hope for the dead, but they understand Ecclesiastes 9:5 to preclude belief in an immortal soul.[60] Individuals judged by God to be wicked, such as in the Great Flood or at Armageddon, are given no hope of an afterlife. However, they believe that after Armageddon there will be a bodily resurrection of "both righteous and unrighteous" dead (but not the "wicked"). Survivors of Armageddon and those who are resurrected are then to gradually restore earth to a paradise.[61] After Armageddon, unrepentant sinners are punished with eternal death (non-existence).

 

Seventh-day Adventists

The Seventh-day Adventist Church, teaches that the first death, or death brought about by living on a planet with sinful conditions (sickness, old age, accident, etc.) is a sleep of the soul. Adventists believe that the body + the breath of God = a living soul. Like Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists use key phrases from the Bible, such as "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten." (Eccl. 9:5 KJV). Adventists also point to the fact that the wage of sin is death and God alone is immortal. Adventists believe God will grant eternal life to the redeemed who are resurrected at Jesus' second coming. Until then, all those who have died are "asleep". When Jesus the Christ, who is the Word and the Bread of Life, comes a second time, the righteous will be raised incorruptible and will be taken in the clouds to meet their Lord. The righteous will live in heaven for a thousand years (the millennium) where they will sit with God in judgment over the unredeemed and the fallen angels. During the time the redeemed are in heaven, the Earth will be devoid of human and animal inhabitation. Only the fallen angels will be left alive. The second resurrection is of the unrighteous, when Jesus brings the New Jerusalem down from heaven to relocate to Earth. Jesus will call to life all those who are unrighteous. Satan and his angels will convince the unrighteous to surround the city, but hell fire and brimstone will fall from heaven and consume them, thus cleansing Earth of all sin. The universe will be then free from sin forever. This is called the second death. On the new earth God will provide an eternal home for all the redeemed and a perfect environment for everlasting life, where Eden will be restored. The great controversy will be ended and sin will be no more. God will reign in perfect harmony forever. (Rom. 6:23; 1 Tim. 6:15, 16; Eccl. 9:5, 6; Ps. 146:3, 4; John 11:11-14; Col. 3:4; 1 Cor. 15:51-54; 1 Thess. 4:13-17; John 5:28, 29; Rev. 20:1-10; Rev. 20; 1 Cor. 6:2, 3; Jer. 4:23-26; Rev. 21:1-5; Mal. 4:1; Eze. 28:18, 19; 2 Peter 3:13; Isa. 35; 65:17-25; Matt. 5:5; Rev. 21:1-7; 22:1-5; 11:15.)[62][63]

 

Islam

 

An artists representation of "Muhammed's Paradise". A Persian miniature from The History of Mohammed, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

 

The Islamic prophet Idris is shown the afterlife places by an angel. In hell, the inmates are tormented by a demon.

Main articles: Islamic view of death, Barzakh, and Akhirah

The Islamic belief in the afterlife as stated in the Quran is descriptive. The Arabic word for Paradise is Jannah and Hell is Jahannam. Their level of comfort while in the grave (according to some commentators) depends wholly on their level of iman or faith in the one almighty creator or supreme being (God or Allah). In order for one to achieve proper, firm and healthy iman one must practice righteous deeds or else his level of iman chokes and shrinks and eventually can wither away if one does not practice Islam long enough, hence the depth of practicing Islam is good deeds. One may also acquire tasbih and recite the names of Allah in such manner as Subahann Allah or "Glory be to Allah" over and over again to acquire good deeds.

 

In the Quran, God gives warning about grievous punishment to those who do not believe in the afterlife (Akhirah),[64] and admonishes mankind that Hell is prepared for those who deny the meeting with him.

 

Islam teaches that the purpose of Man's entire creation is to worship Allah alone, which includes being kind to other human beings and life including bugs, and to trees, by not oppressing them. Islam teaches that the life we live on Earth is nothing but a test for us and to determine each individual's ultimate abode, be it punishment or Jannat in the afterlife, which is eternal and everlasting.

 

Jannah and Jahannam both have different levels. Jannah has eight gates and seven levels. The higher the level the better it is and the happier you are. Jahannam possess 7 deep terrible layers. The lower the layer the worse it is. Individuals will arrive at both everlasting homes during Judgment Day, which commences after the Angel Israfil blows the trumpet the second time. Islam teaches the continued existence of the soul and a transformed physical existence after death. Muslims believe there will be a day of judgment when all humans will be divided between the eternal destinations of Paradise and Hell.

 

In the 20th century, discussions about the afterlife address the interconnection between human action and divine judgment, the need for moral rectitude, and the eternal consequences of human action in this life and world.

 

A central doctrine of the Quran is the Last Day, on which the world will be destroyed and Allah will raise all people and jinn from the dead to be judged. The Last Day is also called the Day of Standing Up, Day of Separation, Day of Reckoning, Day of Awakening, Day of Judgment, The Encompassing Day or The Hour.

 

Until the Day of Judgment, deceased souls remain in their graves awaiting the resurrection. However, they begin to feel immediately a taste of their destiny to come. Those bound for hell will suffer in their graves, while those bound for heaven will be in peace until that time.

 

The resurrection that will take place on the Last Day is physical, and is explained by suggesting that God will re-create the decayed body (17💯 "Could they not see that God who created the heavens and the earth is able to create the like of them?").

 

On the Last Day, resurrected humans and jinn will be judged by Allah according to their deeds. One's eternal destination depends on balance of good to bad deeds in life. They are either granted admission to Paradise, where they will enjoy spiritual and physical pleasures forever, or condemned to Hell to suffer spiritual and physical torment for eternity. The day of judgment is described as passing over Hell on a narrow bridge (as thin as human hair and sharper than a razor) in order to enter Paradise. Those who fall, weighted by their bad deeds, will remain in Hell forever.

 

Ahmadiyya

Ahmadi Muslims believe that the afterlife is not material but of a spiritual nature. According to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of Ahmadiyya sect in Islam, the soul will give birth to another rarer entity and will resemble the life on this earth in the sense that this entity will bear a similar relationship to the soul as the soul bears relationship with the human existence on earth. On earth, if a person leads a righteous life and submits to the will of God, his or her tastes become attuned to enjoying spiritual pleasures as opposed to carnal desires. With this, an "embryonic soul" begins to take shape. Different tastes are said to be born which a person given to carnal passions finds no enjoyment. For example, sacrifice of one's own rights over that of others becomes enjoyable, or that forgiveness becomes second nature. In such a state a person finds contentment and peace at heart and at this stage, according to Ahmadiyya beliefs, it can be said that a soul within the soul has begun to take shape.

 

Sufi

The Sufi scholar Ibn 'Arabi defined Barzakh as the intermediate realm or "isthmus." It is between the world of corporeal bodies and the world of spirits, and is a means of contact between the two worlds. Without it, there would be no contact between the two and both would cease to exist. He described it as simple and luminous, like the world of spirits, but also able to take on many different forms just like the world of corporeal bodies can. In broader terms Barzakh, "is anything that separates two things". It has been called the dream world in which the dreamer is in both life and death.

 

Bahá'í Faith

The teachings of the Bahá'í Faith state that the nature of the afterlife is beyond the understanding of those living, just as an unborn fetus cannot understand the nature of the world outside of the womb. The Bahá'í writings state that the soul is immortal and after death it will continue to progress until it attains God's presence. In Bahá'í belief, souls in the afterlife will continue to retain their individuality and consciousness and will be able to recognize and communicate spiritually with other souls whom they have made deep profound friendships with, such as their spouses.

 

The Bahá'í scriptures also state there are distinctions between souls in the afterlife, and that souls will recognize the worth of their own deeds and understand the consequences of their actions. It is explained that those souls that have turned toward God will experience gladness, while those who have lived in error will become aware of the opportunities they have lost. Also, in the Baha'i view, souls will be able to recognize the accomplishments of the souls that have reached the same level as themselves, but not those that have achieved a rank higher than them.

 

South Asian religions

Hinduism

 

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The Upanishads describe reincarnation (punarjanma) (see also: samsara). The Bhagavad Gita, an important Hindu script, talks extensively about the afterlife. Here, Krishna says that just as a man discards his old clothes and wears new ones; similarly the soul discards the old body and takes on a new one. In Hinduism, the belief is that the body is nothing but a shell, the soul inside is immutable and indestructible and takes on different lives in a cycle of birth and death. The end of this cycle is called mukti (Sanskrit: मुक्ति) and staying finally with supreme God forever; is moksha (Sanskrit: मोक्ष) or salvation.

 

The Garuda Purana deals solely with what happens to a person after death. The God of Death Yama sends his representatives to collect the soul from a person's body whenever he is due for death and they take the soul to Yama. A record of each person's timings & deeds performed by him is kept in a ledger by Yama's assistant, Chitragupta.

 

According to the Garuda Purana, a soul after leaving the body travels through a very long and dark tunnel towards the South. This is why an oil lamp is lit and kept beside the head of the corpse, to light the dark tunnel and allow the soul to travel comfortably.

 

The soul, called atman leaves the body and reincarnates itself according to the deeds or karma performed by one in last birth. Rebirth would be in form of animals or other lower creatures if one performed bad karmas and in human form in a good family with joyous lifetime if the person was good in last birth. In between the two births a human is also required to either face punishments for bad karmas in "naraka" or hell or enjoy for the good karmas in swarga or heaven for good deeds. Whenever his or her punishments or rewards are over he or she is sent back to earth, also known as Mrutyulok or human world. A person stays with the God or ultimate power when he discharges only & only yajna karma (means work done for satisfaction of supreme lord only) in last birth and the same is called as moksha or nirvana, which is the ultimate goal of a self realised soul. Atma moves with Parmatma or the greatest soul. According to Bhagavad Gita an Atma or soul never dies, what dies is the body only made of five elements—Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Sky. Soul is believed to be indestructible. None of the five elements can harm or influence it. Hinduism through Garuda Purana also describes in detail various types of narkas or Hells where a person after death is punished for his bad karmas and dealt with accordingly.

 

Hindus also believe in karma. Karma is the accumulated sums of one's good or bad deeds. Satkarma means good deeds, vikarma means bad deeds. According to Hinduism the basic concept of karma is 'As you sow, you shall reap'. So, if a person has lived a good life, they will be rewarded in the afterlife. Similarly their sum of bad deeds will be mirrored in their next life. Good karma brings good rewards and bad karmas lead to bad results. There is no judgment here. People accumulate karma through their actions and even thoughts. In Bhagavad Gita when Arjuna hesitates to kill his kith and kin the lord reprimands him saying thus "Do you believe that you are the doer of the action. No. You are merely an instrument in MY hands. Do you believe that the people in front of you are living? Dear Arjuna, they are already dead. As a kshatriya (warrior) it is your duty to protect your people and land. If you fail to do your duty, then you are not adhering to dharmic principles."[This quote needs a citation]

 

Buddhism

 

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Buddhists maintain that rebirth takes place without an unchanging self or soul passing from one form to another.[70] The type of rebirth will be conditioned by the moral tone of the person's actions (kamma or karma). For example, if a person has committed harmful actions of body, speech and mind based on greed, hatred and delusion, rebirth in a lower realm, i.e. an animal, a hungry ghost or a hell realm, is to be expected. On the other hand, where a person has performed skillful actions based on generosity, loving-kindness (metta), compassion and wisdom, rebirth in a happy realm, i.e. human or one of the many heavenly realms, can be expected.

 

Yet the mechanism of rebirth with kamma is not deterministic. It depends on various levels of kamma. The most important moment that determines where a person is reborn into is the last thought moment. At that moment, heavy kamma would ripen if there were performed, if not then near death kamma, if not then habitual kamma, finally if none of the above happened, then residual kamma from previous actions can ripen. According to Theravada Buddhism, there are 31 realms of existence that one can be reborn into.

 

Pure Land Buddhism of Mahayana believes in a special place apart from the 31 planes of existence called Pure Land. It is believed that each Buddha has their own pure land, created out of their merits for the sake of sentient beings who recall them mindfully to be able to be reborn in their pure land and train to become a Buddha there. Thus the main practice of pure land Buddhism is to chant a Buddha's name.

 

In Tibetan Buddhism the Tibetan Book of the Dead explains the intermediate state of humans between death and reincarnation. The deceased will find the bright light of wisdom, which shows a straightforward path to move upward and leave the cycle of reincarnation. There are various reasons why the deceased do not follow that light. Some had no briefing about the intermediate state in the former life. Others only used to follow their basic instincts like animals. And some have fear, which results from foul deeds in the former life or from insistent haughtiness. In the intermediate state the awareness is very flexible, so it is important to be virtuous, adopt a positive attitude, and avoid negative ideas. Ideas which are rising from subconsciousness can cause extreme tempers and cowing visions. In this situation they have to understand, that these manifestations are just reflections of the inner thoughts. No one can really hurt them, because they have no more material body. The deceased get help from different Buddhas who show them the path to the bright light. The ones who do not follow the path after all will get hints for a better reincarnation. They have to release the things and beings on which or whom they still hang from the life before. It is recommended to choose a family where the parents trust in the Dharma and to reincarnate with the will to care for the welfare of all beings.

 

"Life is cosmic energy of the universe and after death it merges in universe again and as the time comes to find the suitable place for the entity died in the life condition it gets born. There are 10 life states of any life: Hell, hunger, anger, animality, rapture, humanity, learning, realization, bodhisatva and buddhahood. The life dies in which life condition it reborn in the same life condition."[This quote needs a citation]

 

Sikhism

 

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Sikhism may have a belief in the afterlife. They believe that the soul belongs to the spiritual universe which has its origins in God. However it's been a matter of great debate amongst the Sikhs about Sikhism's belief in afterlife. Many believe that Sikhism endorses the afterlife and the concept of reward and punishment as there are verses given in Guru Granth Sahib, but a large number of Sikhs believe otherwise and treat those verses as metaphorical or poetic.

 

Also it has been noted by many scholars that the Guru Granth Sahib includes poetic renditions from multiple saints and religious traditions like that of Kabir, Farid and Ramananda. The essential doctrine is to experience the divine through simple living, meditation and contemplation while being alive. Sikhism also has the belief of being in union with God while living. Accounts of afterlife are considered to be aimed at the popular prevailing views of the time so as to provide a referential framework without necessarily establishing a belief in the afterlife. Thus while it is also acknowledged that living the life of a householder is above the metaphysical truth, Sikhism can be considered agnostic to the question of an afterlife. Some scholars also interpret the mention of reincarnation to be naturalistic akin to the biogeochemical cycles.

 

But if one analyses the Sikh Scriptures carefully, one may find that on many occasions the afterlife and the existence of heaven and hell are mentioned in Guru Granth Sahib and in Dasam granth, so from that it can be concluded that Sikhism does believe in the existence of heaven and hell; however, heaven and hell are created to temporarily reward and punish, and one will then take birth again until one merges in God. According to the Sikh scriptures, the human form is the closet form to God and the best opportunity for a human being to attain salvation and merge back with God. Sikh Gurus said that nothing dies, nothing is born, everything is ever present, and it just changes forms. Like standing in front of a wardrobe, you pick up a dress and wear it and then you discard it. You wear another one. Thus, in the view of Sikhism, your soul is never born and never dies. Your soul is a part of God and hence lives forever.

 

Jainism

Jainism also believes in the after life. They believe that the soul takes on a body form based on previous karmas or actions performed by that soul through eternity. Jains believe the soul is eternal and that the freedom from the cycle of reincarnation is the means to attain eternal bliss.

 

Others

Traditional African religions

Traditional African religions are diverse in their beliefs in an afterlife. Hunter-gatherer societies such as the Hadza have no particular belief in an afterlife, and the death of an individual is a straightforward end to their existence. Ancestor cults are found throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, including cultures like the Yombe, Beng,Yoruba and Ewe, "[T]he belief that the dead come back into life and are reborn into their families is given concrete expression in the personal names that are given to children....What is reincarnated are some of the dominant characteristics of the ancestor and not his soul. For each soul remains distinct and each birth represents a new soul."The Yoruba, Dogon and LoDagoa have eschatological ideas similar to Abrahamic religions, "but in most African societies, there is a marked absence of such clear-cut notions of heaven and hell, although there are notions of God judging the soul after death." In some societies like the Mende, multiple beliefs coexist. The Mende believe that people die twice: once during the process of joining the secret society, and again during biological death after which they become ancestors. However, some Mende also believe that after people are created by God they live ten consecutive lives, each in progressively descending worlds. One cross-cultural theme is that the ancestors are part of the world of the living, interacting with it regularly.

 

Shinto

Further information: Shinto § Afterlife

It is common for families to participate in ceremonies for children at a shrine, yet have a Buddhist funeral at the time of death. In old Japanese legends, it is often claimed that the dead go to a place called yomi (黄泉), a gloomy underground realm with a river separating the living from the dead mentioned in the legend of Izanami and Izanagi. This yomi very closely resembles the Greek Hades; however, later myths include notions of resurrection and even Elysium-like descriptions such as in the legend of Okuninushi and Susanoo. Shinto tends to hold negative views on death and corpses as a source of pollution called kegare. However, death is also viewed as a path towards apotheosis in Shintoism as can be evidenced by how legendary individuals become enshrined after death. Perhaps the most famous would be Emperor Ojin who was enshrined as Hachiman the God of War after his death.

 

Unitarian Universalism

Some Unitarian Universalists believe in universalism: that all souls will ultimately be saved and that there are no torments of hell. Unitarian Universalists differ widely in their theology hence there is no exact same stance on the issue. Although Unitarians historically believed in a literal hell, and Universalists historically believed that everyone goes to heaven, modern Unitarian Universalists can be categorized into those believing in a heaven, reincarnation and oblivion. Most Unitarian Universalists believe that heaven and hell are symbolic places of consciousness and the faith is largely focused on the worldly life rather than any possible afterlife.

 

Spiritualism

According to Edgar Cayce, the afterlife consisted of nine realms equated with the nine planets of astrology. The first, symbolized by Saturn, was a level for the purification of the souls. The second, Mercury's realm, gives us the ability to consider problems as a whole. The third of the nine soul realms is ruled by Earth and is associated with the Earthly pleasures. The fourth realm is where we find out about love and is ruled by Venus. The fifth realm is where we meet our limitations and is ruled by Mars. The sixth realm is ruled by Neptune, and is where we begin to use our creative powers and free ourselves from the material world. The seventh realm is symbolized by Jupiter, which strengthens the soul's ability to depict situations, to analyze people and places, things, and conditions. The eighth afterlife realm is ruled by Uranus and develops psychic ability. The ninth afterlife realm is symbolized by Pluto, the astrological realm of the unconscious. This afterlife realm is a transient place where souls can choose to travel to other realms or other solar systems, it is the souls liberation into eternity, and is the realm that opens the doorway from our solar system into the cosmos.

 

Mainstream Spiritualists postulate a series of seven realms that are not unlike Edgar Cayce's nine realms ruled by the planets. As it evolves, the soul moves higher and higher until it reaches the ultimate realm of spiritual oneness. The first realm, equated with hell, is the place where troubled souls spend a long time before they are compelled to move up to the next level. The second realm, where most souls move directly, is thought of as an intermediate transition between the lower planes of life and hell and the higher perfect realms of the universe. The third level is for those who have worked with their karmic inheritance. The fourth level is that from which evolved souls teach and direct those on Earth. The fifth level is where the soul leaves human consciousness behind. At the sixth plane, the soul is finally aligned with the cosmic consciousness and has no sense of separateness or individuality. Finally, the seventh level, the goal of each soul, is where the soul transcends its own sense of "soulfulness" and reunites with the World Soul and the universe.

 

Wicca]

The Wiccan afterlife is most commonly described as The Summerland. Here, souls rest, recuperate from life, and reflect on the experiences they had during their lives. After a period of rest, the souls are reincarnated, and the memory of their previous lives is erased. Many Wiccans see The Summerland as a place to reflect on their life actions. It is not a place of reward, but rather the end of a life journey at an end point of incarnations.

 

Zoroastrianism

  

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Zoroastrianism states that the urvan, the disembodied spirit, lingers on earth for three days before departing downward to the kingdom of the dead that is ruled by Yima. For the three days that it rests on Earth, righteous souls sit at the head of their body, chanting the Ustavaiti Gathas with joy, while a wicked person sits at the feet of the corpse, wails and recites the Yasna. Zoroastrianism states that for the righteous souls, a beautiful maiden, which is the personification of the soul's good thoughts, words and deeds, appears. For a wicked person, a very old, ugly, naked hag appears. After three nights, the soul of the wicked is taken by the demon Vizaresa (Vīzarəša), to Chinvat bridge, and is made to go to darkness (hell).

 

Yima is believed to have been the first king on earth to rule, as well as the first man to die. Inside of Yima's realm, the spirits live a shadowy existence, and are dependent on their own descendants which are still living on Earth. Their descendants are to satisfy their hunger and clothe them, through rituals done on earth.

 

Rituals which are done on the first three days are vital and important, as they protect the soul from evil powers and give it strength to reach the underworld. After three days, the soul crosses Chinvat bridge which is the Final Judgment of the soul. Rashnu and Sraosha are present at the final judgment. The list is expanded sometimes, and include Vahman and Ormazd. Rashnu is the yazata who holds the scales of justice. If the good deeds of the person outweigh the bad, the soul is worthy of paradise. If the bad deeds outweigh the good, the bridge narrows down to the width of a blade-edge, and a horrid hag pulls the soul in her arms, and takes it down to hell with her.

 

Misvan Gatu is the "place of the mixed ones" where the souls lead a gray existence, lacking both joy and sorrow. A soul goes here if his/her good deeds and bad deeds are equal, and Rashnu's scale is equal.

 

Parapsychology

See also: Near-death studies and Near death experience

The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 with the express intention of investigating phenomena relating to Spiritualism and the afterlife. Its members continue to conduct scientific research on the paranormal to this day. Some of the earliest attempts to apply scientific methods to the study of phenomena relating to an afterlife were conducted by this organization. Its earliest members included noted scientists like William Crookes, and philosophers such as Henry Sidgwick and William James.

 

Parapsychological investigation of the afterlife includes the study of haunting, apparitions of the deceased, instrumental trans-communication, electronic voice phenomena, and mediumship.[87] But also the study of the near death experience. Scientists who have worked in this area include Raymond Moody, Susan Blackmore, Charles Tart, William James, Ian Stevenson, Michael Persinger, Pim van Lommel and Penny Sartori among others.

 

A study conducted in 1901 by physician Duncan MacDougall sought to measure the weight lost by a human when the soul "departed the body" upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material, tangible and thus measurable. Although MacDougall's results varied considerably from "21 grams", for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's mass. The title of the 2003 movie 21 Grams is a reference to MacDougall's findings. His results have never been reproduced, and are generally regarded either as meaningless or considered to have had little if any scientific merit.

 

Frank Tipler has argued that physics can explain immortality, though such arguments are not falsifiable and thus do not qualify, in Karl Popper's views, as science.

 

After 25 years of parapsychological research, Susan Blackmore came to the conclusion that there is no empirical evidence for an afterlife.

 

Philosophy

Modern philosophy

There is still the position, based on the philosophical question of personal identity, termed open individualism, and in some ways similar to the old belief of monopsychism, that concludes that individual existence is illusory, and our consciousness continues

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife

Can never be doubted

As only it can be

The one who doubts

 

F3 | 50mm

 

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Metaphysical quality

Subjective experience

Unpredictable condition

 

There shadows that leek in both through the metaphysical realms to us that live in the physical plane... we let them fester, grow and gain control of our minds, our thoughts to the point where we allow them to become the Owner of how we live our lives - we get comfortable, they become a familiar friend that tempts in to darkness and solitude...

 

This is an image that really speaks volumes to not only me but I can imagine a whole lot of you right now and the timing of me posting this and sharing this with the world is well planned (although this should have gone out a week before the chaos we are now in) 😅 in these times of uncertainty I can definitely relate that my anxious monsters are finding their familiar ground in my mind no matter how much I try to convince myself that things will be ok... and I know that’s not healthy as an option either

  

However what I can offer is a piece of well used Disney based advice to you - and that is to just be more dory and “just keep swimming” - times are very tough, we can become drained, scared, and fearful of our own futures - however by finding happiness and joy in each day that comes forward to you in this time will help to refocus How your thoughts are used and being used... like for me at the moment I’m very grateful for the fact that yesterday I got to fully focus some of my time and energy into starting the Witcher (late to the game as always) and I’m hoping this time will give me a chance to find ever new inspiration...

 

Please let me know what you are happy for today - it could be anything - big or small but drop me a comment or a message to let me know! ☺️ Also a massive thank you to @asperjosh_photography for collaborating with me on this and also on a topic that is close to both of our hearts!

Day Forty-eight, it's a Metaphysic Day. We went to the Auditorium Parco della Musica for a walk, again. This is a view of the public toilets.

 

365+1 Day of NEX-7 project

366nex.blogspot.com

 

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Gemaakt op 14 November 1989 met computerprogramma van CAVESOFT (H.D. Kuilman) in GW-Basic.

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plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/#MetTurComPhyDis

 

1.3 Metaphysical turn, comprehensive physics, Discourse

 

Upon arriving in the Netherlands, Descartes undertook work on two sorts of topics. In Summer, 1629, an impressive set of parhelia, or false suns, were observed near Rome. When Descartes heard of them, he set out to find an explanation. (He ultimately hypothesized that a large, solid ice-ring in the sky acts as a lens to form multiple images of the sun [6:355].) This work interrupted his investigations on another topic, which had engaged him for his first nine months in the Netherlands (1:44)—the topic of metaphysics, that is, the theory of the first principles of everything that there is. The metaphysical objects of investigation included the existence and nature of God and the soul (1:144, 182). However, these metaphysical investigations were not entirely divorced from problems such as the parhelia, for he claimed that through his investigations into God and the human self, he had been able “to discover the foundation of physics” (1:144). Subsequently, Descartes mentioned a little metaphysical treatise in Latin—presumably an early version of the Meditations—that he wrote upon first coming to the Netherlands (1:184, 350). And we know that Descartes later confided to Mersenne that the Meditations contained “all the principles of my physics” (3:233).

 

While working on the parhelia, Descartes conceived the idea for a very ambitious treatise. He wrote to Mersenne that he had decided not to explain “just one phenomenon” (the parhelia), but rather to compose a treatise in which he explained “all the phenomena of nature, that is to say, the whole of physics” (1:70). This work eventually became The World, which was to have had three parts: on light (a general treatise on visible, or material, nature), on man (a treatise of physiology), and on the soul. Only the first two survive (and perhaps only they were ever written), as the Treatise on Light and Treatise on Man. In these works, which Descartes decided to suppress upon learning of the condemnation of Galileo (1:270, 305), he offered a comprehensive vision of the universe as constituted from a bare form of matter having only length, breadth, and depth (three-dimensional volume) and carved up into particles with size and shape, which may be in motion or at rest, and which interact through laws of motion enforced by God (11:33–4). These works contained a description of the visible universe as a single physical system in which all its operations, from the formation of planets and the transmission of light from the sun, to the physiological processes of human and nonhuman animal bodies, can be explained through the mechanism of matter arranged into shapes and structures and moving according to three laws of motion. In fact, his explanations in the World and the subsequent Principles made little use of the three laws of motion in other than a qualitative manner. The laws sustained the notion that matter moves regularly (in a straight line) and that upon impact bits of matter alter their motions in regular ways—something that happens constantly in the full universe (the “plenum”) conceived by Descartes.

 

After suppressing his World, Descartes decided to put forward, anonymously, a limited sample of his new philosophy, in the Discourse with its attached essays. The Discourse recounted Descartes' own life journey, explaining how he had come to the position of doubting his previous knowledge and seeking to begin afresh. It offered some initial results of his metaphysical investigations, including mind–body dualism. It did not, however, engage in the deep skepticism of the later Meditations, nor did it claim to establish, metaphysically, that the essence of matter is extension. This last conclusion was presented merely as a hypothesis whose fruitfulness could be tested and proven by way of its results, as contained in the attached essays on Dioptrics and Meteorology. The latter subject area comprised “atmospheric” phenomena. In his Meteorology, Descartes described his general hypothesis about the nature of matter, before continuing on to provide accounts of vapors, salt, winds, clouds, snow, rain, hail, lightning, the rainbow, coronas, and parhelia.

 

Descartes wrote in the Meteorology that he was working from the following “supposition” or hypothesis: “that the water, earth, air, and all other such bodies that surround us are composed of many small parts of various shapes and sizes, which are never so properly disposed nor so exactly joined together that there do not remain many intervals around them; and that these intervals are not empty but are filled with that extremely subtle matter through the mediation of which, I have said above, the action of light is communicated” (6:233). He presented a corpuscularian basis for his physics, which denied the atoms-and-void theory of ancient atomism and affirmed that all bodies are composed from one type of matter, which is infinitely divisible (6:239). In the World, he had presented his non-atomistic corpuscularism, but without denying void space outright and without affirming infinite divisibility (11:12–20).

 

In the Meteorology, he also proclaimed that his natural philosophy had no need for the “substantial forms” and “real qualities” that other philosophers “imagine to be in bodies” (6:239). He had taken the same position in the World, where he said that in conceiving his new “world” (i.e., his conception of the universe), “I do not use the qualities called heat, cold, moistness, and dryness, as the Philosophers do” (11:25). Indeed, Descartes claimed that he could explain these qualities themselves through matter in motion (11:26), a claim that he repeated in the Meteorology (6:235–6). In effect, he was denying the then-dominant scholastic Aristotelian ontology, which explained all natural bodies as comprised of a “prime matter” informed by a “substantial form,” and which explained qualities such as hot and cold as really inhering in bodies in a way that is “similar” to the qualities of hot and cold as we experience them tactually.

 

Unlike Descartes' purely extended matter, which can exist on its own having only size and shape, many scholastic Aristotelians held that prime matter cannot exist on its own. To form a substance, or something that can exist by itself, prime matter must be “informed” by a substantial form (a form that renders something into a substance). The four Aristotelian elements, earth, air, fire, and water, had substantial forms that combined the basic qualities of hot, cold, wet, and dry: earth is cold and dry; air is hot and wet; fire is hot and dry; and water is cold and wet. These elements can themselves then serve as “matter” to higher substantial forms, such as the form of a mineral, or a magnet, or a living thing. Whether in the case of earth or of a living rabbit, the “form” of a thing directs its characteristic activity. For earth, that activity is to approach the center to the universe; water has the same tendency, but not as strongly. For this reason, Aristotelians explained, the planet earth has formed at the center, with water on its surface. A new rabbit is formed when a male rabbit contributes, through its seed-matter, the “form” of rabbithood to the seed-matter of the female rabbit. This form then organizes that matter into the shape of a rabbit, including organizing and directing the activity of its various organs and physiological processes. The newborn rabbit's behavior is then guided by its rabbit-specific “sensitive soul,” which is the name for the substantial form of the rabbit. Other properties of the rabbit, such as the whiteness of its fur, are explained by the “real quality” of white inhering in each strand of hair.

 

Although in the World and Meteorology Descartes avoided outright denial of substantial forms and real qualities, it is clear that he intended to deny them (1:324; 2:200; 3:420, 500, 648). Two considerations help explain his tentative language: first, when he wrote these works, he was not yet prepared to release his metaphysics, which would support his hypothesis about matter and so rule out substantial forms (1:563); and, second, he was sensitive to the prudential value of not directly attacking the scholastic Aristotelian position (3:298), since it was the accepted position in university education (3:577) and was strongly supported by orthodox theologians, both Catholic and Protestant (1:85–6; 3:349).

 

After publication of the Discourse in 1637, Descartes received in his correspondence queries and challenges to various of the doctrines, including his account of the sequence of phenomena during heart-beat and the circulation of the blood; his avoidance of substantial forms and real qualities; his argument for a distinction between mind and body; and his view that natural philosophical hypotheses could be “proven” through the effects that they explain (6:76). Descartes' correspondence from the second half of the 1630s repays close study, among other things for his discussions of hypothesis-confirmation in science, his replies to objections concerning his metaphysics, and his explanation that he had left the most radical skeptical arguments out of this work, since it was written in French for a wide audience (1:350, 561).

 

In 1635, Descartes fathered a daughter named Francine. Her mother was Descartes' housekeeper, Helena Jans. They lived with Descartes part of the time in the latter 1630s, and Descartes was arranging for them to join him when he learned of Francine's untimely death in September 1640. Descartes subsequently contributed a dowry for Helena's marriage in 1644 (Watson 2007, 188).

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In the course of the Third Meditation, Descartes constructs an argument for the existence of God that starts from the fact that he has an idea of an infinite being. The argument is intricate. It invokes the metaphysical principle that “there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause” (7:40). This principle is put forward as something that is “manifest by the natural light” (7:40), which itself is described as a cognitive power whose results are indubitable (7:38), like clear and distinct perception (7:144). Descartes then applies that principle not to the mere existence of the idea of God as a state of mind, but to the content of that idea. Descartes characterizes that content as infinite, and he then argues that a content that represents infinity requires an infinite being as its cause. He concludes, therefore, that an infinite being, or God, must exist. He then equates an infinite being with a perfect being and asks whether a perfect being could be a deceiver. He concludes: “It is clear enough from this that he cannot be a deceiver, since it is manifest by the natural light that all fraud and deception depend on some defect” (7:52).

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In the textbooks of Aristotelian physics of Descartes' day, it was common to divide physics into “general” and “special.” General physics pertained to the basic Aristotelian principles for analyzing natural substances: form, matter, privation, cause, place, time, motion. Special physics concerned actually existing natural entities, divided into inanimate and animate. Inanimate physics further divided into celestial and terrestrial, in accordance with the Aristotelian belief that the earth was at the center of the universe, and that the earth was of a different nature than the heavens (including the moon, and everything beyond it). Inanimate terrestrial physics first covered the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water), then the “mixed” bodies composed from them, including the various mineral kinds. Animate terrestrial physics concerned the various powers that Aristotelians ascribed to ensouled beings, where the soul is considered as a principle of life (possessing vital as well as mental or cognitive powers). In the simplest textbooks, the powers of the soul were divided into three groups: vegetative (including nutrition, growth, and reproduction), which pertained to both plants and animals; sensitive (including external senses, internal senses, appetite, and motion), which pertain to animals alone; and rational powers, pertaining to human beings alone. All the bodies in both inanimate and animate terrestrial physics were governed by a “form” or active principle, as described in Section 1.3.

 

Descartes' ambition was to provide replacements for all the main parts of Aristotelian physics. In his physics, there is only one matter and it has no active forms. Thus, he dissolved the boundary that had made the celestial and the terrestrial differ in kind. His one matter had only the properties of size, shape, position, and motion. The matter is infinitely divisible and it constitutes space; there is no void, hence no spatial container distinct from matter. The motions of matter are governed by three laws of motion, including a precursor to Newton's law of inertia (but without the notion of vector forces) and a law of impact. Descartes' matter possessed no “force” or active agency; the laws of motion were decreed by God and were sustained by his activity. Earth, air, fire, and water were simply four among many natural kinds, all distinguished simply by the characteristic sizes, shapes, positions, and motions of their parts.

 

Although Descartes nominally subscribed to the biblical story of creation, in his natural philosophy he presented the hypothesis that the universe began as a chaotic soup of particles in motion and that everything else was subsequently formed as a result of patterns that developed within this moving matter. Thus, he conceived that many suns formed, around which planets coalesced. On these planets, mountains and seas formed, as did metals, magnets, and atmospheric phenomena such as clouds and rain. The planets themselves are carried around the sun in their orbits by a fluid medium that rotates like a whirlpool or vortex. Objects fall to earth not because of any intrinsic “form” that directs them to the center of the universe, and also not because of a force of attraction or other downward-tending force. Rather, they are driven down by the whirling particles of the surrounding ether. Descartes insisted that all cases of apparent action at a distance, including magnetism, must be explained through the contact of particle on particle. He explained magnetism as the result of corkscrew-shaped particles that spew forth from the poles of the earth and flow from north to south or vice versa, causing magnetized needles to align with their flow (Princ. IV.133–83). To explain magnetic polarity, Descartes posited that the particles exiting from the south pole are threaded in one direction and those from the north are threaded oppositely (like the oppositely threaded spindles on bicycle pedals).

Two large Nana is Real pasteups that recently appeared on a wall in the Harajuku area of Tokyo. The top one I've seen around quite a bit "The angry girl always think she can do more than she can." But, this is the only version of the bottom sticker than I've seen so far in Harajuku. It says "Metaphysics Nana is Real" "Seoul" "Dimz" "10" and "Mint". If you know anymore about this art, feel free to add tags to the photo. Thanks.

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FIRE IN THE SKY is a 150 carat handcrafted red picture jasper pendant is created swirling and shaping antique brass toned copper wire by hand, adding red jasper chips and Swarovski crystals to enhance the natural beauty, shape and color of the stone. This large earthy stone displays beautiful shades of red resembling a firey sunset. The size and color of this pendant will make this your favorite piece of wearable art.

 

It measures 2 1/4" across and 2 1/2" top to tip including the bail.

 

The bail is designed to be large enough to accommodate your favorite chain or choker. A 19" adjustable brown cord is included.

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The following metaphysical healing properties have been collected from various sources. For more specific information please contact an experienced Crystal Therapist.

 

Picture Jasper's healing effects:

Picture jasper helps bring forward our hidden thoughts, fears and hopes so that we may face them and work on them. It is a stone of harmony and helps us in business pursuits. It helps bring courage and wisdom into risky situations. It helps neutralize and withdraw negativity from our lives. Jasper in general has been called the supreme nurturer, reminding us there is more that surrounds us than ourselves, protect from negativity, helping to ground us, balances yin yang and assists us during astral travel. Helps to align and cleanse our Chakra's and Aura. It helps to balance the physical, emotional and intellectual bodies with the etheric energies. It is said to have been worn by priests and kings and used in a ceremonial way in Native American traditions. This stone increases determination in all pursuits and aids quick thinking. It also reminds one to be honest with oneself and to help others.

reminds me of some Dechirico's paintings

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Castel del Monte (English: Castle of the Mount, Bari dialect: Castídde d'u Monte) is a 13th-century citadel and castle situated in Andria in the Apulia region of southeast Italy. It stands on a promontory, where it was constructed during the 1240s by the Emperor Frederick II, who had inherited the lands from his mother Constance of Sicily.

Because of its relatively small size, it was once considered to be no more than a "hunting lodge", but scholars now believe it originally had a curtain wall and did serve as a citadel. Frederick was responsible for the construction of many castles in Apulia, but Castel del Monte's geometric design was unique. The fortress is an octagonal prism with an octagonal tower at each corner. The towers were originally some 5 m higher than now, and they should perhaps include a third floor Both floors have eight rooms and an eight-sided courtyard occupies the castle's centre. Each of the main rooms have vaulted ceilings. Three of the corner towers contain staircases. The castle has two entrances, an unobtrusive service entrance and an ornate main entrance. Frederick's main entrance featured elements from classical design, and may have been influenced by Frederick's interest in Greco-Roman architecture.

The octagonal plan is unusual in castle design. Historians have debated the purpose of the building and it has been suggested that it was intended as a hunting lodge. Another theory is that the octagon is an intermediate symbol between a square (representing the earth) and a circle (representing the sky). Frederick II may have been inspired to build to this shape by either the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which he had seen during the Sixth Crusade, or by the Palace Chapel of Aachen Cathedral.

 

Brian Greene weaves a fugue of metaphysical harmony, jamming out a made-for-TV soliloquy for fundamental physics.

 

I caught the sparkle in his eye during his TED talk this year, now online.

 

“There are many universes (10^500), each with a different shape for the extra dimensions.”

 

“Our bubble is but one in a cosmic bubble bath of universes.”

 

But... but, isn’t this a bit, umm, irrelevant to the daily grind?

 

So I thought until I invested in a company that is taking advantage of this to transcend Moore’s Law. If we could engage parallel universes, perhaps we could outperform anything that could be built using just one. We could harness the refractive echoes of trillions of parallel universes entangled in a unified computation. I even named the U.S. investment vehicle for this Canadian company "Parallel Universes, Inc."

 

So far it seems to be working. Let’s pause on this sub point of Greene's logic with Oxford’s David Deutsch: “Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.” And the only way to explain their behavior invokes parallel universes. More on this later.

 

Some more Greene gems from the TED talk:

 

“The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. It says that if you examine any piece of matter ever more finely…you’d find little tiny vibrating filaments of energy, little tiny vibrating strings. And just like the strings on a violin that can vibrate in different patterns producing different musical notes, these little fundamental strings vibrate to produce different kinds of particles — electrons, quarks, neutrinos, photons — all other particles would unite into a single framework, and they would all arise from vibrating strings. It’s a compelling picture, a kind of cosmic symphony where all the richness that we see in the world around us emerges from the music that these little tiny strings can play.” (minute 7:00)

 

“Sometimes nature guards her secrets with the unbreakable grip of physical law. Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.” (closing words at minute 20:00)

 

Greene argues for the anthropic principle — why is our universe so finely tuned to support the possibility of matter and life? Perhaps because we as observers, by definition, are in the universe where the parameters make our form of life possible. But there are many others.

 

A derivative theory, Gardner’s Selfish Biocosm hypothesis extends evolution across successive universes. His premise is that the anthropic qualities of our universe (life and intelligence-friendly physics) derive from “an enormously lengthy cosmic replication cycle in which… our cosmos duplicates itself and propagates one or more "baby universes." The hypothesis suggests that the cosmos is "selfish" in the same metaphorical sense that evolutionary theorist and ultra-Darwinist Richard Dawkins proposed that genes are "selfish." …The cosmos is "selfishly" focused upon the overarching objective of achieving its own replication.”

 

Gardner concludes with a nested spiral of evolutionary recapitulation:

“An implication of the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis is that the emergence of life and ever more accomplished forms of intelligence is inextricably linked to the physical birth, evolution, and reproduction of the cosmos.”

 

Perhaps evolution is a conserved and resonant developmental homology at all scales of iteration.

ripeace

Oil on canvas; 81 x 54 cm.

 

Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian painter who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting. After studying art in Athens and Florence, de Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His early style was influenced by Arnold Böcklin’s and Max Klinger’s paintings, which juxtapose the fantastic with the commonplace. By 1910 de Chirico was living in Florence, where he began painting a unique series of landscapes that included The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910), in which the long, sinister, and illogical shadows cast by unseen objects onto empty city spaces contrast starkly with bright, clear light that is rendered in brooding green tonalities. Moving to Paris in 1911, de Chirico gained the admiration of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire with his ambiguously ominous scenes of deserted piazzas. In these works, such as The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913) and The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914), classical statues, dark arcades, and small, isolated figures are overpowered by their own shadows and by severe, oppressive architecture.

 

In 1915 de Chirico was conscripted into the Italian army and stationed at Ferrara, Italy. There, he was able to continue making art and practiced a modification of his earlier manner, marked by more compact groupings of incongruous objects. Diagnosed with a nervous condition, he was admitted into a military hospital, where he met Carlo Carrà in 1917; together the two artists developed the style they named Metaphysical painting. In de Chirico’s paintings of this period, such as the Grand Metaphysical Interior (1917) and The Seer (1915), the colors are brighter, and dressmakers’ mannequins, compasses, biscuits, and paintings on easels assume a mysterious significance within enigmatic landscapes or interiors.

 

The element of mystery in de Chirico’s paintings dwindled after 1919, when he became interested in the technical methods of the Italian classical tradition. He eventually began painting in a more realistic and academic style, and by the 1930s he had broken with his avant-garde colleagues and disclaimed his earlier works. De Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings exercised a profound influence on the painters of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s.

Oil on canvas; 61 x 50.2 cm.

 

Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian painter who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting. After studying art in Athens and Florence, de Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His early style was influenced by Arnold Böcklin’s and Max Klinger’s paintings, which juxtapose the fantastic with the commonplace. By 1910 de Chirico was living in Florence, where he began painting a unique series of landscapes that included The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910), in which the long, sinister, and illogical shadows cast by unseen objects onto empty city spaces contrast starkly with bright, clear light that is rendered in brooding green tonalities. Moving to Paris in 1911, de Chirico gained the admiration of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire with his ambiguously ominous scenes of deserted piazzas. In these works, such as The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913) and The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914), classical statues, dark arcades, and small, isolated figures are overpowered by their own shadows and by severe, oppressive architecture.

 

In 1915 de Chirico was conscripted into the Italian army and stationed at Ferrara, Italy. There, he was able to continue making art and practiced a modification of his earlier manner, marked by more compact groupings of incongruous objects. Diagnosed with a nervous condition, he was admitted into a military hospital, where he met Carlo Carrà in 1917; together the two artists developed the style they named Metaphysical painting. In de Chirico’s paintings of this period, such as the Grand Metaphysical Interior (1917) and The Seer (1915), the colors are brighter, and dressmakers’ mannequins, compasses, biscuits, and paintings on easels assume a mysterious significance within enigmatic landscapes or interiors.

 

The element of mystery in de Chirico’s paintings dwindled after 1919, when he became interested in the technical methods of the Italian classical tradition. He eventually began painting in a more realistic and academic style, and by the 1930s he had broken with his avant-garde colleagues and disclaimed his earlier works. De Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings exercised a profound influence on the painters of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s.

  

Oil on canvas; 52 x 70 cm.

 

Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian painter who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting. After studying art in Athens and Florence, de Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His early style was influenced by Arnold Böcklin’s and Max Klinger’s paintings, which juxtapose the fantastic with the commonplace. By 1910 de Chirico was living in Florence, where he began painting a unique series of landscapes that included The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910), in which the long, sinister, and illogical shadows cast by unseen objects onto empty city spaces contrast starkly with bright, clear light that is rendered in brooding green tonalities. Moving to Paris in 1911, de Chirico gained the admiration of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire with his ambiguously ominous scenes of deserted piazzas. In these works, such as The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913) and The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914), classical statues, dark arcades, and small, isolated figures are overpowered by their own shadows and by severe, oppressive architecture.

 

In 1915 de Chirico was conscripted into the Italian army and stationed at Ferrara, Italy. There, he was able to continue making art and practiced a modification of his earlier manner, marked by more compact groupings of incongruous objects. Diagnosed with a nervous condition, he was admitted into a military hospital, where he met Carlo Carrà in 1917; together the two artists developed the style they named Metaphysical painting. In de Chirico’s paintings of this period, such as the Grand Metaphysical Interior (1917) and The Seer (1915), the colors are brighter, and dressmakers’ mannequins, compasses, biscuits, and paintings on easels assume a mysterious significance within enigmatic landscapes or interiors.

 

The element of mystery in de Chirico’s paintings dwindled after 1919, when he became interested in the technical methods of the Italian classical tradition. He eventually began painting in a more realistic and academic style, and by the 1930s he had broken with his avant-garde colleagues and disclaimed his earlier works. De Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings exercised a profound influence on the painters of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s.

The famous and evil measurement problem in quantum mechanics... according to my camera.

Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming

in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,

I hog a whole house on Boston’s

“hardly passionate Marlborough Street,”

where even the man

scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans,

has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate,

and is a “young Republican.”

I have a nine months’ daughter,

young enough to be my granddaughter.

Like the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo infants’ wear.

 

These are the tranquillized Fifties,

and I am forty. Ought I to regret my seedtime?

I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,

and made my manic statement,

telling off the state and president, and then

sat waiting sentence in the bull pen

beside a Negro boy with curlicues

of marijuana in his hair.

 

Given a year,

I walked on the roof of the West Street Jail, a short

enclosure like my school soccer court,

and saw the Hudson River once a day

through sooty clothesline entanglements

and bleaching khaki tenements.

Strolling, I yammered metaphysics with Abramowitz,

a jaundice-yellow (“it’s really tan”)

and fly-weight pacifist,

so vegetarian,

he wore rope shoes and preferred fallen fruit.

He tried to convert Bioff and Brown,

the Hollywood pimps, to his diet.

Hairy, muscular, suburban,

wearing chocolate double-breasted suits,

they blew their tops and beat him black and blue.

 

I was so out of things, I’d never heard

of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“Are you a C.O.?” I asked a fellow jailbird.

“No,” he answered, “I’m a J.W.”

He taught me the “hospital tuck,”

and pointed out the T-shirted back

of Murder Incorporated’s Czar Lepke,

there piling towels on a rack,

or dawdling off to his little segregated cell full

of things forbidden the common man:

a portable radio, a dresser, two toy American

flags tied together with a ribbon of Easter palm.

Flabby, bald, lobotomized,

he drifted in a sheepish calm,

where no agonizing reappraisal

jarred his concentration on the electric chair—

hanging like an oasis in his air

of lost connections ....

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

Walt Whitman

 

Morning glory (also written as morning-glory[1]) is the common name for over 1,000 species of flowering plants in the family Convolvulaceae, whose current taxonomy and systematics are in flux. Morning glory species belong to many genera, some of which are:

Argyreia

Astripomoea

Calystegia

Convolvulus

Ipomoea

Lepistemon

Merremia

Operculina

Rivea

Stictocardia

 

Morning glory was first known in China for its medicinal uses, due to the laxative properties of its seeds.

Ancient Mesoamerican civilizations used the morning glory species Ipomoea alba to convert the latex from the Castilla elastica tree and also the guayule plant to produce bouncing rubber balls [2]. The sulfur in the morning glory's juice served to vulcanize the rubber, a process predating Charles Goodyear's discovery by at least 3,000 years.[3] Aztec priests in Mexico were also known to use the plant's hallucinogenic properties (see Rivea corymbosa).

For more information about my craft, please visit my profile page.

This 230 carat handcrafted Amethyst Crystal Cluster pendant is created swirling and shaping nontarnish sterling silver plate wire by hand to enhance the natural beauty and shape of the stone. This natural deep violet crystal quartz cluster has beautiful sparkle crystals throughout.

 

It measures 1 1/4" across and 3" top to tip including the bail.

 

The bail is designed to be large enough to accommodate your favorite chain, choker or cord. A 17" sterling silver plate chain is included.

All purchases are nicely packaged in a gift box.

 

The following metaphysical healing properties have been collected from various sources. For more specific information please contact an experienced Crystal Therapist.

 

Amethyst's healing effects:

Considered the Master Healing Stone. An extremely powerful and protective stone with a high spiritual vibration. It's one of the most spiritual stones, promoting love of the divine, selflessness, & spiritual wisdom. It activates the crown Chakra. It increases a sense of responsibility and self worth. Sleep with it and it facilitates out of body experiences and intuitive dreams. Amethyst aids in headaches, insomnia, alcohol recovery, blood, pain, stress ,tension, bruising, injuries, skin, respiratory, intestinal. It cleanses the aura. It balances and connects physical, mental & emotional bodies to the spiritual.

 

Oil on canvas; 95.9 x 70.5 cm.

 

Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian painter who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting. After studying art in Athens and Florence, de Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His early style was influenced by Arnold Böcklin’s and Max Klinger’s paintings, which juxtapose the fantastic with the commonplace. By 1910 de Chirico was living in Florence, where he began painting a unique series of landscapes that included The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910), in which the long, sinister, and illogical shadows cast by unseen objects onto empty city spaces contrast starkly with bright, clear light that is rendered in brooding green tonalities. Moving to Paris in 1911, de Chirico gained the admiration of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire with his ambiguously ominous scenes of deserted piazzas. In these works, such as The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913) and The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914), classical statues, dark arcades, and small, isolated figures are overpowered by their own shadows and by severe, oppressive architecture.

 

In 1915 de Chirico was conscripted into the Italian army and stationed at Ferrara, Italy. There, he was able to continue making art and practiced a modification of his earlier manner, marked by more compact groupings of incongruous objects. Diagnosed with a nervous condition, he was admitted into a military hospital, where he met Carlo Carrà in 1917; together the two artists developed the style they named Metaphysical painting. In de Chirico’s paintings of this period, such as the Grand Metaphysical Interior (1917) and The Seer (1915), the colors are brighter, and dressmakers’ mannequins, compasses, biscuits, and paintings on easels assume a mysterious significance within enigmatic landscapes or interiors.

 

The element of mystery in de Chirico’s paintings dwindled after 1919, when he became interested in the technical methods of the Italian classical tradition. He eventually began painting in a more realistic and academic style, and by the 1930s he had broken with his avant-garde colleagues and disclaimed his earlier works. De Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings exercised a profound influence on the painters of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s.

  

Oil on canvas; 73 x 59.1 cm.

 

Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian painter who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting. After studying art in Athens and Florence, de Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His early style was influenced by Arnold Böcklin’s and Max Klinger’s paintings, which juxtapose the fantastic with the commonplace. By 1910 de Chirico was living in Florence, where he began painting a unique series of landscapes that included The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910), in which the long, sinister, and illogical shadows cast by unseen objects onto empty city spaces contrast starkly with bright, clear light that is rendered in brooding green tonalities. Moving to Paris in 1911, de Chirico gained the admiration of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire with his ambiguously ominous scenes of deserted piazzas. In these works, such as The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913) and The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914), classical statues, dark arcades, and small, isolated figures are overpowered by their own shadows and by severe, oppressive architecture.

 

In 1915 de Chirico was conscripted into the Italian army and stationed at Ferrara, Italy. There, he was able to continue making art and practiced a modification of his earlier manner, marked by more compact groupings of incongruous objects. Diagnosed with a nervous condition, he was admitted into a military hospital, where he met Carlo Carrà in 1917; together the two artists developed the style they named Metaphysical painting. In de Chirico’s paintings of this period, such as the Grand Metaphysical Interior (1917) and The Seer (1915), the colors are brighter, and dressmakers’ mannequins, compasses, biscuits, and paintings on easels assume a mysterious significance within enigmatic landscapes or interiors.

 

The element of mystery in de Chirico’s paintings dwindled after 1919, when he became interested in the technical methods of the Italian classical tradition. He eventually began painting in a more realistic and academic style, and by the 1930s he had broken with his avant-garde colleagues and disclaimed his earlier works. De Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings exercised a profound influence on the painters of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s.

For more information about my craft, please visit my profile page.

SANDPIPER is a handcrafted lace coral pendant that I created swirling and shaping silver plate wire by hand, adding sea shells and fresh water pearls to enhance the natural beauty and shape of the coral piece. This delicate-looking pendant would look great with your tropical wardrobe.

 

It measures 1" across and 2 1/2" top to tip including the bail.

 

The bail is designed to be large enough to accommodate your favorite chain, choker or cord. A 17" silver plate chain is included.

All purchases are nicely packaged in a gift box.

 

The following metaphysical healing properties have been collected from various sources. For more specific information please contact an experienced Crystal Therapist.

 

Coral's healing properties are mostly associated with Women, young children and the elderly. For women it is said to increase fertility and regulate menstruation. For young children, it is recommended to ease teething and to prevent epilepsy. For the elderly, it is used as a cure for arthritis. Coral is considered a representative of the warm energy of the Sun, and the southern direction.

Coral can be used to reconnect with nature and its variety of wonders. Coral also attracts love and prosperity, particularly red coral which is a "stone" of passion. Creativity and optimism are also qualities that Coral brings out. Emotionally Coral brings inner peace, strength and understanding of purpose. Physically Coral is used for general healing, blood and circulatory system issues, kidney, bladder, epilepsy, bone and bone marrow, eye problems and the respiratory system.

 

Agnostics and other relativists contest the value of metaphysical certitude; in order to demonstrate the illusory character of the de jure certitude oftruth, they oppose to it the de facto certitude of error, as though the psychological phenomenon of false certitudes could prevent true certitudes from being what they are and from having all their effectiveness, and as though the very existence of false certitudes did not prove in its own way the existence of true ones.

 

The fact that an unbalanced person may possibly have misgivings about his condition does not oblige us to have them about our own, even if we find it impossible to prove to him that our certitude is well founded. It is absurd to demand absolute proofs of suprasensorial realities that one thinks one ought to question, while refusing in the name of reason to consider metaphysical arguments that are sufficient in themselves; for outside of these arguments the only proof of hidden realities that remains are these realities themselves.

 

One cannot ask the dawn to be the sun, or a shadow to be the tree that casts it; it is the very existence of our intelligence that proves the reality of the relationships of causality, those same relationships which allow us to admit the Invisible and by the same token oblige us to do so; if the world did not prove God, the human intelligence would be deprived of its sufficient reason.

 

First and foremost, leaving aside any question of intellectual intuition, we should infer Pure Being from the very fact of our existence; instead of starting with the idea that "I think, therefore, I am," one should say, "I am, therefore, Being is" (sum ergo est Esse, and not cogito ergo sum).

 

What counts in our eyes is most definitely not some more or less correct reasoning, but intrinsic certitude itself. Reasoning is able to convey this certitude after its fashion by describing it with a view to making its evidence manifest on the plane of discursive thought, thus furnishing a key to the actualization by others of this same certitude.

 

---

 

Frithjof Schuon

 

---

 

Quoted in: The Essential Frithjof Schuon (edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)

 

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Image: The upper section of the Jesse Tree window at Chartres Cathedral showing Jesus at the apex and Mary below him

 

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

'metaphysical supplement' On Black

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA24/228/115/23

 

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

Created for the WPC Week 134

 

Source thanks to Monkeywing:

www.flickr.com/photos/colinsite/

Taken just after a drenching shower, in upland old-growth forest near the northern bluff of the Galien River. Looking generally southward.

 

To see the amazing, physical-metaphysical process of photosynthesis at its most rampant, stand in a woodland like this just after a summer rain. Everything glows green. The air crackles with oxygen.

 

The most important chemical formula in the world is

 

6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2

 

(Forgive the lack of subscripts. Apparently Flickr does not permit the appropriate HTML coding for them.)

 

There are some ecosystems (at midocean vents, for instance) that don't rely on this formula, but we and most of the rest of life certainly do. To put its chemical symbols and numerals into plain English: plants and other organisms using this type of photosynthesis take basic chemical compounds—carbon dioxide and water—and somehow transform them, as we animals certainly can't, into both free oxygen and food in the form of sugar.

 

Note my emphasizing the word "somehow." It's easy to slap that equation up on a blackboard or projection screen and just say, "That, my friends, is how photosynthesis works!" But to actually disambiguate the chain of arcane and convoluted chemical reactions that must take place in sequence, like the workings of a Rube Goldberg machine, is no easy job for either teacher or student.

 

When presenting horticulturally oriented botany at the adult-education level, I was told to cite the equation, and stop there. But in the upper-level, botany-for biology-majors course I taught in college, we went all the way down the rabbit hole.

 

But the more I did the latter, the more convinced I became that something important was missing in the textbook explication of chlorophyll, chloroplasts, light reactions, the Calvin Cycle, carbon fixation, RuBisCo, electron donors, ATP, Crassulacean Acid and C4 metabolisms, and all the other processes and paraphernalia of photosynthesis.

 

I think I've had this unsettled feeling because the historical-geologist side of me knows that direct and indirect fossil evidence suggests something rather arresting. This hyper-complicated process originated not long after—and maybe just after—the Late Heavy Bombardment. This cataclysmic infall of asteroids and meteorites occurred between 4.1 and 3.8 Ga ago, in the late Hadean eon and Eoarchean era.

 

Despite that truly hellish assault on the Earth's surface, the fossil evidence alluded to above points to something almost unbelievable: an early form of photosynthesis existed by 3.5, and maybe even as far back as 3.8 Ga. How did something as mind-bendingly elaborate as that start so early in the evolution of life, when our planet was populated only with the simplest unicellular microorganisms?

 

And the kind of oxygen-liberating photosynthesis cited in the formula above, the kind we depend on, was also operating no later than 3.0 Ga ago.

 

In contrast, plants developed much, much, later. If you have a broad definition of what it is to be a plant, they're a little less than 1.0 Ga old; but if you just restrict them to those that have evolved on land, they're about half of that. And trees—the forerunners of those shown in this image—didn't evolve till the Upper Devonian, about 0.38 Ga (380 Ma) ago.

 

So, while advanced multicellular life was a slow starter, it seems that Planet Earth was blessed with a remarkably potent and complex chemical pathway, no less magical for being explicable, at a very early date in its development.

 

Of course, this all begs the question of why. I've thought about this endlessly, and am now quite sure I've figured it out. Just as the Titan Prometheus brought fire to humankind, it was the Roman goddess Flora, descending from some Eoarchean proto-Olympus, who bestowed this priceless gift of life on our little world. I hope that the next edition of botany textbooks will point that out.

 

To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, go to my Wonders of an Old-Growth Forest album.

 

"art's development should be dialectical and not metaphysical"

- robert smithson

This reminds me of one of my favourite metaphysical poems

 

MY Love is of a birth as rare

As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;

It was begotten by Despair,

Upon Impossibility.

 

Magnanimous Despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing,

Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,

But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

 

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended soul is fixed ;

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

 

For Fate with jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrannic power depose.

 

And therefore her decrees of steel

Us as the distant poles have placed,

(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),

Not by themselves to be embraced,

 

Unless the giddy heaven fall,

And earth some new convulsion tear.

And, us to join, the world should all

Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

 

As lines, so love's oblique, may well

Themselves in every angle greet :

But ours, so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

 

Therefore the love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars.

 

The definition of love, Andrew Marvell

Oil on canvas; 40 x 70 cm.

 

Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian painter who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting. After studying art in Athens and Florence, de Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His early style was influenced by Arnold Böcklin’s and Max Klinger’s paintings, which juxtapose the fantastic with the commonplace. By 1910 de Chirico was living in Florence, where he began painting a unique series of landscapes that included The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910), in which the long, sinister, and illogical shadows cast by unseen objects onto empty city spaces contrast starkly with bright, clear light that is rendered in brooding green tonalities. Moving to Paris in 1911, de Chirico gained the admiration of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire with his ambiguously ominous scenes of deserted piazzas. In these works, such as The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913) and The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914), classical statues, dark arcades, and small, isolated figures are overpowered by their own shadows and by severe, oppressive architecture.

 

In 1915 de Chirico was conscripted into the Italian army and stationed at Ferrara, Italy. There, he was able to continue making art and practiced a modification of his earlier manner, marked by more compact groupings of incongruous objects. Diagnosed with a nervous condition, he was admitted into a military hospital, where he met Carlo Carrà in 1917; together the two artists developed the style they named Metaphysical painting. In de Chirico’s paintings of this period, such as the Grand Metaphysical Interior (1917) and The Seer (1915), the colors are brighter, and dressmakers’ mannequins, compasses, biscuits, and paintings on easels assume a mysterious significance within enigmatic landscapes or interiors.

 

The element of mystery in de Chirico’s paintings dwindled after 1919, when he became interested in the technical methods of the Italian classical tradition. He eventually began painting in a more realistic and academic style, and by the 1930s he had broken with his avant-garde colleagues and disclaimed his earlier works. De Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings exercised a profound influence on the painters of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s.

Metafisico

Acrylic on Museum Board. One of a series of paintings that I did inspired by "Inner Chapters", the writings of Chuang Tsu. In one of the stories he describes the flight of a legendary giant bird, and how it is mocked and belittled by the smaller birds of the surrounding area as it soars away from the earth into the heavens. The story culminates with the line, "...This is the difference between Great and Small." I probably read this story in my high school years, and it has stayed with me ever since.

Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665) was a French physicist and judge, born in Lyon. In 1618, Monconys' parents sent him to a Jesuit boarding school in Salamanca, Spain, as a plague had broken out in Lyon. Monconys was deeply interested in metaphysics and mysticism, and studied the teachings of Pythagoras, Zoroastrism, and Greek and Arab alchemists. From a young age, he dreamed of travelling to India and China. However, he returned to Lyon after finishing his studies. At the age of thirty-four years old he was finally able to leave behind the safety of his library and the theoretical speculation of the laboratory, and become a tireless traveller in Europe and the East.

 

Monconys travelled to Portugal, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Istanbul and the Middle East with the son of the Duke of Luynes. Even in his very first journey to Portugal, it is obvious that in each city Monconys is very soon able to connect with mathematicians, clergymen, surgeons, engineers, chemists, physicians and princes, to visit their laboratories and to collect “secrets and experiences”.

 

After Portugal, Monconys travelled to Italy, and finally departed to the East, to study the ancient religions and denominations, and meet the gymnosophists. In 1647-48 he was in Egypt. Seeking the Zoroasters and followers of Hermes Trismegistus, he reached Mount Sinai. In Egypt, the 17th century European was lost in a labyrinth of small and winding streetlets, and discovered different cults and religions, the diversity of ethnicities and their customs: Turks, Kopts, Jews, Arabs, Mauritans, Maronites, Armenians, and Dervishes. He followed several superstitious suggestions and discovered marvellous books of astronomy in Hebrew, Persian and Arabic. Later on, after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he crossed Asia Minor and reached Istanbul, from where he planned to travel to Persia. For once more in his life however, the plague forced him to change his course; he left for Izmir, and returned to Lyon in 1649.

 

Fron 1663 to 1665 Monconys travelled incessantly between Paris, London, the Netherlands and Germany. He visited princes and philosophers, libraries and laboratories, and maintained frequent correspondence with several scientists. Finally, after consequent asthma attacks he passed away before his travel notes could be published.

 

His travel journal (1665-1666) was edited and published by his son and by his Jesuit friend J. Berchet. The journal is enriched by drawings which testify to the wide scope of Monconys' interests. Monconys collected a vast corpus of material which includes medical recipes, chemistry forms, material connected to the esoteric sciences, mathematical puzzles, questions of Algebra and Geometry, zoological observations, mechanical applications, descriptions of natural phenomena, chemistry experiments, various machines and devices, medical matters, the philosopher's stone, astronomical measurements, magnifying lenses, thermometres, hydraulic devices, drinks, hydrometres, microscopes, architectural constructions and even matters connected to hygiene or the preparation of liquors.

 

The third volume includes a hundred and sixty-five medical, chemical and physics experiments with their outcomes as well as a sonnet on the battle of Marathon. There are five detailed indexes for the classification of the material. At the same time, this three-volume work permits the construction of a list of names (more than two hundred and fifty) of scholars, physicians, alchemists, astrologists, mathematicians, empirical scientists and other researches. From Monconys' text and correspondence a highly interesting network emerges, as it is possible for specialists of all disciplines to reconstruct the contacts between scientists and scholars of Western Europe, for a period spanning more than a decade in the mid-17th century.

 

Monconys' work is written in a monotonous style, but nevertheless possesses a perennial charm, as it is a combination of a travel journal and a laboratory scientist's workbook. The drawings accompanying the text make up a corpus of material unique in travel literature.

 

Written by Ioli Vingopoulou

 

Fransız asıllı fizikçi ve yargıç Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665) (okunuş: Baltazar dö Monkoni) Lyon şehrinde doğar. Yaşadığı kentte 1618 yılında veba salgını baş gösterince, ailesi onu Salamanka şehrine bir Cizvit yatılı okuluna gönderir. Metafizik ve gizemcilik (mistisizm) için yoğun ilgi duyan Monconys, Pythagoras öğretilerini, Zerdüştlüğü, hatta Yunan ve Arap simyacıların eserlerini okur. Daha küçük yaştan beri Hindistan ve Çin'e kadar ulaşmayı düşlemesine karşın eğitimini tamamladıktan sonra Lyon'a geri döner ve nihayet 34 yaşındayken kütüphane güvenliğini ve teorik laboratuvar bilgilerini terkedip kararlı bir biçimde Avrupa ve Doğu'ya seyahat etmeye başlar.

 

Monconys, Luynes dükünün oğluyla birlikte Portekiz, İngiltere, Almanya, İtalya, Alçak Ülkeler (Hollanda), İstanbul ve Orta Doğu'ya seyahat eder. Daha ilk yolculuğundan (Portekiz'de) uğradığı her şehirde kısa zamanda matematikçi, rahip, cerrah, mühendis, kimyager, doktor ve prens gibi çeşit çeşit insanlarla bağ kurup laboratuvarlarını ziyaret ederek "sır ve tecrübeler" derler. Yazdığı metinde bu süreci izlemekteyiz. Portekiz'den sonra ilk kez olarak İtalya'ya gider ve nihayet çeşitli dogmaları, eski dinleri ve "gymnosophist"leri (çıplak bilgeler) incelemek üzere Doğu'ya doğru yola çıkar. 1647-48 yıllarında Mısır'da bulunmaktadır; Zerdüştçüler ve Hermes-Thot (Hermes Trismegistus) müritleriyle karşılaşmak için Sina dağına kadar ulaşır. Mısır'da 17. yüzyılın bu Batı Avrupalısı daracık sokakların oluşturduğu labirent içinde yitip, türk, kıptî, yahudî, arap, moritanyalı, maruni, ermeni, derviş gibi binbir çeşit dogma ve mezhep, milliyet ve kültürel adet keşfeder. Batıl inançlara uyar, ibranice farsça yada arapça dillerinde yazılmış şahane gökbilim kitapları keşfeder. Kutsal Yerlere hacılık ziyaretinin ardından Anadolu'yu boydan boya geçip İstanbul'a varır. Buradan İran'a gitmeyi planlar. Ancak veba salgını bir kez daha onu kaçmaya zorlar; İzmir'e geçip oradan 1649 yılında Lyon'a döner.

 

Monconys 1663'ten 1665'e kadar hiç ara vermeden Paris, Londra, Hollanda ve Almanya arasında mekik dokuyup prens ve filozoflarla konuşur, çeşitli kütüphane ve laboratuvarları ziyaret eder ve birçok bilim adamıyla yoğun bir mektuplaşma sürdürür. Ancak sonunda üstüste geçirdiği astım krizlerinden sonra seyahat notlarının kitap olarak basılmış halini göremeden ölür.

 

Sözkonusu yayın (1665-1666) Monconys'nin oğlu ve dostu Cizvit rahip J. Berchet tarafından hazırlanmıştır. Monconys'nin geniş bir ilgi alanına sahip oluşu günlüğünü tamamlayan desenlerle kanıtlanmaktadır. Derlemiş olduğu çeşitli ve zengin malzeme içinde: ilâç reçeteleri, kimyasal formüller, gizli ilimlerle ilgili malzeme, matematik bilmeceleri, cebir ve geometri problemleri, zoolojiye (hayvan bilimi) ilişkin gözlemler, mekanik uygulamalar, doğa fenomenleri betimlemeleri, kimyasal deneyler, makineler, tıp konuları, felsefe taşı, astronomi ölçümleri, büyüteçler, termometreler, su tesisatıyla ilgili cihazlar, içkiler, hidrometreler, mikroskoplar, mimarî yapılar, hijyen ve likör yapımı gibi konular var.

 

Kitabın üçüncü cildinde işlenen konular arasında 165 tane fizik kimya ve tıp deneyi ve sonuçları, ve Maraton muharebesi hakkında bir sone yer almaktadır. Bu içeriğin sınıflanması için kitaba beş tane ayrı çözümlemeli dizin eklenmiştir. Aynı zamanda, Monconys'nin üç ciltlik eserinden upuzun bir isimler katalogu da (250'den fazla isim) elde edilebilir. Bu isimler yazar ve düşünür, doktor, simyacı, astrolog, matematikçi, deneyci ve çeşitli uzman araştırmacılara aittir. Monconys'nin metninden ve mektuplaşmalarından, 17. yüzyıl ortalarında özellikle batı Avrupa'da, 20 yıldan fazla bir süre için, tüm bilim uzmanlarının yeniden birleştirebileceği son derece ilginç bir bilimler arası ilişki ağı ortaya çıkmaktadır.

 

Monconys'nin yazış uslubu tekdüze olmakla birlikte, bir laboratuvar araştırmacısının seyahat günlüğü ile gözlem defterini bir arada bulundurması açısından eşsiz bir cazibeye sahiptir. Metne eşlik eden desenler seyahat edebiyatı yayınlarında rastlanan ender türden bir malzeme oluşturmaktadır.

 

Yazan: İoli Vingopoulou