10/31/2010

Natural events

Ice haloes over Finland - photo

This photo was taken on Saturday, October 30, 2010, over Kittilä, Finland, by photographer Sauli Kosk. I found it posted on SpaceWeather.com.

"Yesterday in Kittilä, Finland, photographer Sauli Koski witnessed a brief but unforgettable display when the rising sun shone through a morning cloud of wintery ice crystals. Fortunately he had his camera. "These were the best ice halos I have ever seen," says Koski. 'They were there for only about 10 minutes and then gone. What a delight!'

" 'It was a gem of a halo display,' agrees atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. 'Koski saw at least 13 different arcs. Some, including two types of Parry arc, are rare. Three more arcs, the helic, Parry supralateral arc, and Moilanen arc are exceedingly rare.' "

In religious iconography, represented in nearly every culture that produced religious art, a 'halo' is a ring of light that surrounds a person to represent their sacred or holy status. Our friend Rob Robb says that he 'sees' people as glowing colors. In his many books starting with The Teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda describes the sorcerer's view of people as like luminescent egg-shapes. Western iconography tended to depict halos as rings or disks around the head. Eastern art usually had the glowing light around the entire body, and sometimes represented by the image of flames.

The physics of solar atmospheric halos, as shown in Kosk's fine photograph above, involves sunlight shining through clouds of ice crystals suspended in air.  The fire of the sun filtered through ice prisms.

Fire and ice.

Fire and ice was a metaphor mentioned in the ACIM urtext,

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible."
The reference is to a poem by Robert Frost and I wrote about it here a few years ago.

-oOo-

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
on Scribd.com

10/21/2010

Childhood's End


Childhood's End (1953) is a science fiction novel by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, dealing with the role of Mind in the cosmos and the plausible implications of that role for the evolution of the human race.

Childhood's End explores humanity's transformation and integration with an interstellar Overmind. It also touches upon such matters as cruelty to animals, man's inability to live in a utopian society, and the apocalyptic concept of The Last Man on Earth. The humans' arms race is brought to a halt by the sudden appearance of mysterious spaceships above all the Earth's great cities. After a week of silence and increasing tension, the aliens, who become known as the Overlords, announce by world-wide broadcast that they have benign intentions and desire to help humanity. As enforcers of peace, they bring salvation and life. They also bring the death of some dreams, as humanity is no longer completely independent and may not pursue certain scientific goals, such as space exploration. Some sixty years after the Overlords revealed themselves to humanity, human children begin displaying telepathic and telekinetic abilities and as a result, become estranged from their parents.

The Overloards then reveal the true purpose of why they came to Earth. They are in service to the Overmind, a cosmic mind amalgamated from ancient galactic civilizations, freed from the limitations of ordinary matter. The Overlords are not themselves capable of joining the Overmind, but the Overmind has charged them with the duty of fostering humanity's transition to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind. The Overloards expresses an envy of humanity; thier race is trapped as they are. They are not now capable of joining the Overmind, though he hopes they will eventually learn how to do so.

The Overloards announce that the children with psychic powers will be segregated from the rest of humanity on a continent of their own, and only these children will merge with the Overmind. No more children are born; the narration subtly hints that most of the parents commit suicide, while their children evolve towards merging with the Overmind. Some Overlords remain on Earth, studying the evolved children. It also is revealed here that the Overlords have met and conditioned other races for the Overmind, and that humanity is the fifth race whose apotheosis they have witnessed.

When the evolved children have grown strong enough to mentally alter the Moon's rotation and effect other planetary adjustments, it becomes too dangerous to remain and the Overlords prepare to leave. They offer Rodricks the opportunity of leaving with them, but he chooses to remain as witness to Earth's dissolution. Mankind's offspring have evolved to a higher existence, requiring neither a body nor a place, and thus ends mankind's childhood. Rodricks reports, via radio, a great burning column of energy/matter ascending from Earth bearing indescribable colours and patterns. As he watches the Earth's gravity begins to decrease, the atmosphere starts escaping to space and material objects seem to dissolve around him. He reports no fear but a sense of accomplishment and completion, and then a blinding flash of light as the Earth evaporates.

from Wikipedia

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. 
1 Corinthians 13:9-13

Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or a scissors, even though they may well harm themselves if you do not. The speed-up has placed you in the same position.
— A Course in Miracles - Original Edition

10/20/2010

Die Before You Die - Sufi Thought

Introduction to the Sufi Path

by Peter Lamborn Wilson
from hermetic.com

Of all the strands of thought, tradition, and belief that make up the Islamic universe, Sufism in its doctrinal aspect stands out as the most intact, the most purely Islamic: the central strand. Opponents of Sufism often charge it with having originated outside Islam, but a close study of the various schools of philosophy and theology, and a comparison with "primordial" Islam as revealed in the Koran and hadith (authentic sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), will vindicate the Sufis' claim of centrality, of strict adherence to the original purity of the Revelation.

In the context of the history of thought, in fact, Sufism - always insisting on a return to the sources of the Tradition - can be seen to have functioned at times as a positive and healthy reaction to the overly rational activity of the philosophers and theologians. For the Sufis, the road to spiritual knowledge to Certainty - could never be confined to the process of rational or purely intellectual activity, without sapiential knowledge (zawq, "taste") and the direct, immediate experience of the Heart. Truth, they believed, can be sought and found only with one's entire being; nor were they satisfied merely to know this Truth. They insisted on a total identification with it: a "passing away" of the knower in the Known, of subject in the Object of knowledge. Thus, when the fourth/tenth century Sufi Hallaj proclaimed "I am the Truth" (and was martyred for it by the exoteric authorities), he was not violating the "First Pillar" of Islam, the belief in Unity (tawhid), but simply stating the truth from the mouth of the Truth. So the Sufis believe.

This insistence of total involvement in "mystical" realisation, and on a participative understanding of religious doctrine, sharply distinguished Sufism from other Islamic schools of thought. In fact, considering themselves the true core of Islam, Sufis appeared as outsiders not only to the philosophers and theologians, but even to "ordinary" Muslims. Their peculiarity, their distinctness, manifested itself in every aspect of their lives: their daily activities, their worship, social relations, and even style or means of expression. Like mystics in all Traditions, they tended to remake language and form for their own purposes, and as in all Traditional civilisations, the potency and directness of their expression tended to flow out and permeate other areas not directly related to mysticism in the narrow sense: literature, the arts and crafts, etc.


Leaving This World Behind

Buddha founded his Path on the human fact of suffering. Islam gives the basic situation in which we find ourselves a slightly different interpretation: man in his ordinary state of consciousness is literally asleep ("and when he dies he wakes," as Mohammad said). He lives in a dream, whether of enjoyment or suffering - a phenomenal, illusory existence. Only his lower self is awake, his "carnal soul." Whether he feels so or not, he is miserable. But potentially the situation can be changed, for ultimately man is not identical with his lower self. (The Prince of Balkh, Ibrahim Adham, lost in the desert while hunting, chased a magic stag, which turned on him and asked, "Were you born for this?") Man's authentic existence is in the Divine; he has a higher Self, which is true; he can attain felicity, even before death ("Die before you die," said the Prophet). The call comes: to flight, migration, a journey beyond the limitations of world and self.

Awakening

Imprisoned in the cage of the world (the world in its negative, "worldly" sense, not in the positive sense of the world-as-icon or Divine Manifestation), man is exiled and forgetful of his true home. To keep his part of the Covenant, to be faithful to his promise, he must set out on the Path from sleep to awakening. It is only the blessed few for whom this Path lasts no longer than a single step, although in theory all that is needed is to "turn around" or "inside out" and be what one is. For most seekers the Path is long; one Sufi speaks of "a thousand and one" different stages. "Everything perishes save His Face"; the first step on the Path is to begin to contemplate the futility of the world of dust, the world in which one's lower self is doomed. The seeker must renounce it all, including his own self, and seek that which is Everlasting. He must travel from things to Nothing, from existence to Nonexistence.

How does one get lost on purpose? Our present state is one of forgetfulness toward the Divine - the true Self - and remembrance of worldly affairs and the lower self. The cure for this is a reversal: remembrance of the true Self, the Divine within, and forgetfulness toward everything else.

In Sufism the basic technique for this is invocation or "remembrance" (zekr) of the Divine Name, which is mysteriously identical with the Divine Being. Through this discipline the fragments of our directionless minds are regathered, our outward impulse turned inward and concentrated. This is the act of a lover who thinks of nothing but his beloved.