Good to see you online Neil.. I was begining to wonder if I was going to have to send out a rescue party due to all the flooding in England. Allan
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Allan H <[email protected]> wrote: > I think people do dream about a perfect world.. I agree with you bill > that people do not take death seriously and life after death is nothing > more than a big joke.. If they took it seriously there would not be the > greed problem there is today.. > > Though I don't particularly believe in hell per-say I do believe in the > great mandala and each person is creating their own heaven or hell based on > how they respond to this world and the trials put forth.. Thanks to this > group I had my beliefs evolve to the point that they are making more > sense.. I think we as we live in this world are dual being operating both > in the spiritual and physical world.. that has evolved to that we our > souls are spiritual beings operating with in the human body vehicle trying > to improve our social status (for lack of a better description) on the > great mandala. > As spiritual beings we do already know the rules to the game.. > Allan > > > On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 7:17 AM, William L Houts <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> >> I wonder if humans do dream of uncorrupted worlds, in general. You'd >> think that would be universal, and it does seem to be borne out by Western >> mythologies, with some exceptions. For instance, the Greeks had Olympus, >> but except for Heracles no one got to go there; everyone else went to >> Hades, which was gloomy and boring if you were lucky enough to land there >> in general population, and terrifying if the gods put you in Tartarus. And >> the Romans didn't seem to place faith in any sort of afterlife at all, >> which is one of the main reasons whyChristianity sold like hotcakes. >> Eastern religions such as Buddhism had various hells and heavens, but they >> were sort of besides the point: your karma is / was supposed to boil down >> to nothing and liberate you from the Wheel of Rebirth, which was supposed >> to put you in Nirvana, which was less a Heaven than it was a Nowhere. And >> Taoism doesn't have much to say about heavenly afterworlds; its whole >> point is to make this world more just and balanced and leaves heavens to >> the individual to figure out. >> >> But as to your question of whether humans long for uncorrupted worlds, I >> think that besides the Abrahamic religions noone takes them very seriously. >> And I think they've got a point: I mean, if you're taking your present >> existence at all seriously, then just what is an afterlife supposed to be >> about? Are we supposed to be eating bonbons all day and living in some >> version of American luxury? I'd like to believe in Heaven --which for me >> looks like a kind of liberal college town, with libraries and funky old >> cinema houses-- but all of that seems kind of empty if there's no gravitas, >> no seriousness. Without death, without a final marker which howls at us, >> Do what you must do NOW and die knowing that you've used your life >> well--without that, I think heaven would become kind of slouchy and boring, >> or worse. Unless, of course, what's waiting for us on the other side is >> something superrational but beautiful, like being absorbed into the >> godhead, if such there be. >> >> So in answer to your question, I think we do dream of uncorrupt worlds, >> but if we examine them too closely, they tend to be bustable soap bubbles. >> And maybe I lack imagination, but I wonder, how could it be any other way? >> Frankly, I'd like to be told how. I sound sensible about all of this if a >> little pessimistic, but in reality I'm a scared ex-Catholic who is >> terrified of death and wants to solve the Big Question before they're >> performing Last Rites on his sorry ass. >> >> >> --Bill >> >> >> >> >> >> On 9/27/2012 7:20 PM, rigsy03 wrote: >> >>> I wonder where you put the mythological and religious other-worldlies- >>> from gods to guardian angels, etc.? Or the construct of Dante's >>> "Divine Comedy", for instance. Do humans long for uncorrupted worlds? >>> >>> On Sep 27, 6:23 pm, William L Houts <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> I'm with the pragmatists on the question of intelligent alien species. >>>> Many scientists who speculate on this sort of thing --though there >>>> really aren't that many of them-- say that such species wouldn't >>>> resemble anything so comforting as a humanoid physiology, but I think >>>> they're partly mistaken. Surely there would be surprises in the way >>>> nature cooks up life on other planets with radically different >>>> chemistries than our dear old Mama Earth. But I think there's reason to >>>> suppose that many alien species would resemble us. After all, any >>>> species we might imagine has to cope with gravity as it evolves. So >>>> they're much more likely to evolve some form of locomotion which >>>> involves two, four or six pedal extremities (as Fats Waller calls them) >>>> rather than three or five: even-numbered legs are less wobbly and more >>>> amenable to balanced movement which consumes fewer calories. . Also, >>>> sense organs like eyes and ears are likely to be located in or close to >>>> a head, as there is survival value in having sense organs located close >>>> to a brain, or whatever such species might use for brains. Finally, >>>> everyone in the cosmos requires energy to get going, so they're either >>>> going to evolve photosynthesis and take their energy directly from their >>>> sun or suns, or they're going to take their sunbeams indirectly by >>>> consuming something lower in the food chain. I'm sure there are lots of >>>> evolution pathways I'm leaving out, seeing as I'm a curious poet rather >>>> than a serious scientist type of guy, but I think these notions are, as >>>> Allan named other ideas of mine, sensible provisos. >>>> >>>> PS. I left out centipedes and millipedes with their scores of legs, but >>>> I think y'all's get what I'm saying here. >>>> >>>> --Bill >>>> >>>> On 9/27/2012 3:57 PM, archytas wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> I haven't seen any UFOs and tend not to be much interested in people >>>>> who claim to have - at least without Bill's sensible provisos. The >>>>> speed of thought as a brain process is slower than light-speed - but >>>>> then I'm basically a tropical fish realist. I'd have a bet that no >>>>> one in this group would really have much of a definition of light- >>>>> speed and the Ricel curvature tensor, Euler Langrangian and the rest >>>>> of Einstein's field equations. I mean no offence and don't do much of >>>>> this science myself. >>>>> If you point out to a physicist that the people from the future who >>>>> have invented the time machine are in extraordinarily short supply in >>>>> our present he may come up with some mathematical guff on the shape of >>>>> the universe that explains this or makes time travel only possible to >>>>> the future. I have seen demons - plodding back to camp after a week's >>>>> endurance exercise with no food for two days I was visually convinced >>>>> the sentries were vampires but still asked them where the Naffi was. >>>>> My guess is that we travel through space as primitive life-forms with >>>>> evolution built-in and waiting to unfold. We may thus have come from >>>>> a much more advanced civilisation than ours bound by the speed of >>>>> light, capable of the biological engineering but not space-flight much >>>>> more advanced than our own. Calculations give 28 years as the time to >>>>> reach the edge of the known universe - but this is the time inside the >>>>> ship accelerating to near light speed fairly slowly. Space is not >>>>> friction free and it's doubtful we or our instruments could take the >>>>> radiation of light-speed flight. >>>>> I rather hope there are some nice, genuinely civilised aliens thinking >>>>> of coming here. In my speculation, intelligent life tends to worry >>>>> about food chains led by apes as these have been notoriously war-like. >>>>> I'm into bees and ants rather than UFOs at the moment. Bees use >>>>> 'pharma' to combat fungal infections. Ants take slaves - killing the >>>>> adults of another species and taking the larvae. These slaves then >>>>> raise the slaver brood. Interestingly, the ant slaves rebel and kill >>>>> the pupae of their masters - an act that does not favour the >>>>> individuals a they will die, but does seem to be altruistic in favour >>>>> of other colonies of the enslaved species. I mention this to suggest >>>>> science is not a human invention, just something in evolution we are >>>>> expanding. >>>>> UFOs remind me of religion generally - people seem to bond around >>>>> ludic claims about golden salamanders and what cannot be proved. I >>>>> guess we will find life or past life-sign on Mars. Salvation may come >>>>> from a mother-ship, but my own feeling is that our inability to >>>>> develop science as we could is a more important thought experiment. >>>>> In respect of this problem I recommend 'Bad Pharma' by Ben >>>>> Goldacre, He finds a �600 billion industry in which more money is >>>>> >>>>> spent on marketing than on research and development, where the results >>>>> of clinical trials of new drugs are massaged, and in which regulators >>>>> fail to regulate. Papers supposedly by respected academics are >>>>> ghostwritten by drug companies, and patients' pressure groups are >>>>> covertly sponsored by pill manufacturers. >>>>> I can't for the life of me work out why we aren't directing our >>>>> collective towards tapping into the asteroid belt and beyond instead >>>>> of ADMASS. >>>>> On 24 Sep, 20:15, William L Houts <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> I'm placing my bet on thoughtspeed. It's a great concept and it's a >>>>>> great word. How could I do any better than that? >>>>>> --Bill >>>>>> On 9/24/2012 7:17 AM, Don Johnson wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> I agree with Allan the distance challenge is daunting. In an endless >>>>>>> universe there's also no doubt in my mind there are other inhabitable >>>>>>> planets out there but very unlikely any "aliens" will be visiting us. >>>>>>> But there is hope.... >>>>>>> http://www.npl.washington.edu/**av/altvw81.html<http://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw81.html> >>>>>>> It's fun to speculate. The ball is in your court. >>>>>>> dj >>>>>>> On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 4:51 PM, William L Houts <[email protected]> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I've been around for a while now, so I thought I'd put in a topic >>>>>>>> for >>>>>>>> discussion. I'm very interested in the UFO phenomenon and wonder >>>>>>>> what the >>>>>>>> singing minds here have to say about it. As for me, I don't have a >>>>>>>> dog in >>>>>>>> this fight --I tend to think that there's something to them, >>>>>>>> something very >>>>>>>> unusual, but I'm not at all certain that they're even piloted. >>>>>>>> Jacques >>>>>>>> Valee, one of the more interesting theorists on the subject, says >>>>>>>> that >>>>>>>> they're something like external dreams. Well, he doesn't say that >>>>>>>> exactly, >>>>>>>> but that's how I interpret him. Carl Jung, who was also very >>>>>>>> interested in >>>>>>>> the topic, says something very similar. >>>>>>>> I have an experience to relate, too. About fifteen or sixteen >>>>>>>> years ago, I >>>>>>>> was flying down to Las Vegas on Southwest. Looking out of my >>>>>>>> window I saw, >>>>>>>> perhaps 20,000 feet below us, a disc-shaped object. It was >>>>>>>> featureless and, >>>>>>>> in the bright sun and from this angle, almost perfectly white. It >>>>>>>> wasn't >>>>>>>> particularly fast and other than the fact that it was round, it >>>>>>>> wasn't all >>>>>>>> that interesting. I told my three travel mates, and they all >>>>>>>> basically >>>>>>>> called me a liar. (I was very interested in occult topics in those >>>>>>>> days, so >>>>>>>> my judgment was highly suspect.) I'm not convinced that it wasn't >>>>>>>> something >>>>>>>> like a military test craft or something like that, but it was a UFO >>>>>>>> both in >>>>>>>> the high woo woo sense and in the sense that it was an unfamiliar >>>>>>>> flying >>>>>>>> object. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. >>>>>>>> Tennis, anyone? >>>>>>>> --Bill >>>>>>>> -- "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead and boy are my arms >>>>>>>> tired." >>>>>>>> -- >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> -- >>>>>> "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead >>>>>> and boy are my arms tired." >>>>>> >>>>> -- >>>> "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead >>>> and boy are my arms tired."- Hide quoted text - >>>> >>>> - Show quoted text - >>>> >>> >> >> -- >> "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead >> and boy are my arms tired." >> >> -- >> >> >> >> > > > -- > ( > ) > |_D Allan > > Life is for moral, ethical and truthful living. > > > I am a Natural Airgunner - > > Full of Hot Air & Ready To Expel It Quickly. > > > > > -- ( ) |_D Allan Life is for moral, ethical and truthful living. I am a Natural Airgunner - Full of Hot Air & Ready To Expel It Quickly. --
