"People represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions."
E.M.Cioran
Scholars and researchers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, whose basic endeavor toward debunking the atrocities of religion I have always applauded, are slowly beginning to lead a new mutant-legion. The question is in what are they going to be transformed.
These top researchers were worried by the universal folly of religions always spreading like a mind disease through mankind history. I understand that their worry -which I duly share- is completely rational and quite legal.
But little by little I am discovering awful signs of -let me be a little "Dawkinsnian" myself- "memetic contamination".
Many letters at Richard Dawkins' site begins with a "I am an atheist" or something like that. Not only at his site. It sounds like a new "declaration of faith". Sorry, but the resemblances with " I am a baptist" or "I am a presbyterian" or "I am an adventist" or "I am a Jew" or "I am a muslim" or...etcetera...seem loud and clear to me.
Call me a paranoic. And I will answer that most of the times, if paranoids are not completely right, at least they thrive well for survival.
I don't like the tendency of this thread. It sounds too much like a new religion.
Besides, if you look at the faces of several self-called atheists or agnostics speaking at TV shows or videos, there is a kind of slow but sure mimicry with the religious fanatics faces...and minds.
I am worried. Very worried indeed.
My growing feeling is that we are stepping out of the saucepan to fall into the barbecue.
There is a lot more in Memetics that we may even begin to dream about.
We are inmersed into a memes-soup and contagion is always imminent.
Passion?
Yes.
But not so much that it degenerates into fanatism.
Religious bigots are not so far away and alien to ourselves as we may think.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Be Careful: in order not to transform yourselves into that same "horror" that you denounce
04 September, 2007
Nisargadatta Video (2 of 2)
There is nothing misterious -neither mistyfying-about a man like Nisargadatta. He is just an ultimate example of Self-Inquiry.
The results, by the way, are very far away from the "Hollywodian" cliche of an Indian Teacher or Guru.
Very simple, very unpretentious, and little to be gained in terms of wordly "powers" or goods, quite on the contrary. Paraphrasing U.G.Krishnamurti (not to be confused with the better known Jiddhu Krishnamurti) we may say that if one does not want to loose everything that a man may have in the world, it is better to stay away from this INQUIRY.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Nisargadatta Video (1 of 2)
Nisargadatta and Ranjit are both from the lineage of Siddharameshwar.
They represent Advaita Vedanta in its ultimate form.
Nisargadatta has been "accused" of being an “atheist” which is of course a preposterous assumption, as Nisargadatta endeavor is a very practical one, based completely in Rational Inquiry, as such, it has nothing to do with something in which reason will sink without remedy, as it happens with the subject of God.
Nisargadatta has been also known as a Gnani, that is, one that follows the path of Knowledge , as it is understood in Vedanta, Self-knowledge.The Gnani inquiries in search of “true identity”, if something like that exists at all, a fact that each one must discovered by oneself.
In this sense, Gnanis are truly Scientists of the Mind.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
"A simple man, Nisargadatta Maharaj, was a householder and petty shopkeeper in Bombay where he lived, and died in 1981 at the age of 84. He had not been educated formally, but came to be respected and loved for his insights into the crux of human pain and the extraordinary usidity of his direct discourse. Hundreds of diverse seekers traveled the globe and sought him out in his unpretentious home to hear him. To all of them he gave hope that "beyond the real experience is not the mind, but the self, the light in which everything appears...the awareness in which everything happens."
By the people at http://www.vedanta.com
Around Darwin's beliefs
"I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."
Charles Darwin
So much has been written about Darwin, that people are overwhelmed by the amount and content of all those statements, enough to discourage them to go to Darwin's own copious works. And the fact is, that beyond Darwin's opinions or conclusions on the very evolutionist issues that have made him famous, he was a philosophical mind of the very first order.
An incredible observer, subtle, precise,witty, and despite everything written against him by men that lack this virtue, he was an extremely humble and sober thinker.
He knew quite well the limits that many men, both from the religious as from the scientific field, completely seem to ignore, namely, that God and the Origins of the universe are matters just beyond our understanding.
I will go one step further, these things lie even far beyond all the possible streching of our imagination.
I will give a simple example:
Suppose that a microbe situated on a tiny spot of the skin in your ankle tries to make a composition of what you are.
Of course, someone may say that my comparison is preposterous due to the fact that the microbe is supposedly a sort of mindless entity, at least completely un-rational. But on behalf of the microbe I could say that in comparison, knowing what we know -which is only a glimpse- of the size of the universe-, the microbe has a big advantage over us, the scale is far smaller than between God and us.
Why are both scientists and religious men so eager to give their verdict on this most absurd matter?
Because of Fear. Unbearable Fear.
Pascal wrote: "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me"
In the original French the phrase sounds even more depicting of that sense of horror that overcomes this little creature that we are when confronted with such vastness.
The need for some kind of certainty in the midst of the unfathomable, has always been an incentive for producing theories.
We must not forget, though, that such measures are nothing but placebos. Sort of intelectual barbirutates or moral benzodiazepines to diminish the excruciating "angst" that overwhelms the thinking animal confronting such a "Beast".
Darwin, as many many thinking men -my most humble truly yours one of them- could not possibly accept that an All-Benevolent God could possibly be behind so much pain, anguishes and catastrophes as we have down here. Such a though must certainly be simply abhorrent for any rational creature. Although priests of every faith are an exception. Or perhaps they simply do not enter into the first proposition.
My own predicament is rather awful. As I cannot rationally accept that a Good God could be behind all this, if there is a God after all behind this, he could only be my worst enemy. In the very best of the possible agreements, mutual love would be definitely out of the question.
To soothe my very own and very intense "fear and tremble", I am on the side of the old Gnostics, who believed that this whole manifestation was the work of the evil Demiurge, and that the Good, All Loving God rests away from all this pestilence.
May we all thrust and rest in His Profound Love and Peace which most certainly CANNOT be from this world.
PS: Yes, I know, if we accept this gnostic proposal we must confront the fact that the GOOD GOD that has nothing to do with all this is not "almighty" as an alien force is operating beyond his realm...Well, I began this disquisition quoting Darwin on the impossibilities of our mind to grasp such things. "THIS", which the ancients depicted as "Mysterium tremens".
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Jardines de Prometeo,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
at 10.10 AM September 4, 2007
