¨You who have defeated us say to yourselves that Babylon is fallen and its works have been overturned. I say to you still that man remains on trial, each man in his own dock. Each man is a little war.¨
The Fremen said of Muad´Dib that he was like Abu Zide whose frigate defied the Guild and rode one day there and back. ´There´ used in this way translates directlyom the Fremen mythology as the land of the ruh-spirit, the alam al-mithal where all limitations are removed.
The parallel between this and the Kwisatz Haderach is readily seen. The Kwisatz Haderach that the Sisterhood sought through its breeding program was interpreted as ¨The shortening of the way¨ or ¨The one who can be two places simultaneously.¨
But both of these interpretations can be shown to stem directly from the Commentaries: ¨When law and religious duty are one, your selfdom encloses the universe.¨
Of himself, Muad´Dib said: I am a net in the sea of time, free to sweep future and past. I am a moving membrane from whom no possibility can escape...
507
The Bene Gesserit program had as its target the breeding of a person they labeled ¨Kwisatz Haderach,¨ a term signifying ¨one who can be many places at once.¨ In simpler terms, what they sought was a human with mental powers permitting him to understand and use higher order dimensions.
They were breeding for a super-Mentat, a human computer with some of the prescient abilities found in Guild navigators.
508
-Dune
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Absolute Person 2
Personality is a level of deified reality and ranges from the mortal and midwayer level of the higher mind activation of worship and wisdom up through the morontial and spiritual to the attainment of finality of personality status. That is the evolutionary ascent of mortal - and kindred - creature personality, but there are numerous other orders of universe personalities.
Reality is subject to universal expansion, personality to infinite diversification, and both are capable of well-nigh unlimited Deity coordination and eternal stabilization. While the metamorphic range of nonpersonal reality is definitely limited, we know of no limitations to the progressive evolution of personality realities.
On attained experiential levels all personality orders or values are associable and even co-creational. Even God and man can coexist in a unified personality, as is so exquisitely demonstrated in the present status of Christ Michael - Son of Man and Son of God.
All subinfinite orders and phases of personality are associative attainables and are potentially co-creational. The prepersonal, the personal, and the superpersonal are all linked together by mutual potential of co-ordinate attainment, progressive achievement, and co-creational capacity. But never does the impersonal directly transmute to the personal. Personality is never spontaneous; it is the gift of the Paradise Father. Personality is superimposed upon energy and it is associated only with living energy systems; identity can be associated with non-living energy patterns.
The Universal Father is the secret of the reality of personality, the bestowal of personality, and the destiny of personality.
The Eternal Son is the ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY, the secret of spiritual energy, morontia spirits, and perfected spirits. The Conjoint Actor is the spirit-mind personality, the source of intelligence, reason, and the universal mind. But the Isle of Paradise is nonpersonal and extraspiritual, being the essence of the universal body, the source and center of physical matter, and the absolute master pattern of universal material reality.
The personality of mortal man is neither body, mind, nor spirit; neither is it the soul. Personality is the one changeless reality in an otherwise ever-changing creature experience; and it unifies all other associated factors of individuality. The personality is the unique bestowal which the Universal Father makes upon the living and associated energies of matter, mind, and spirit, and which survives with the survival of the morontial soul.
-Urantia, 8-9
Reality is subject to universal expansion, personality to infinite diversification, and both are capable of well-nigh unlimited Deity coordination and eternal stabilization. While the metamorphic range of nonpersonal reality is definitely limited, we know of no limitations to the progressive evolution of personality realities.
On attained experiential levels all personality orders or values are associable and even co-creational. Even God and man can coexist in a unified personality, as is so exquisitely demonstrated in the present status of Christ Michael - Son of Man and Son of God.
All subinfinite orders and phases of personality are associative attainables and are potentially co-creational. The prepersonal, the personal, and the superpersonal are all linked together by mutual potential of co-ordinate attainment, progressive achievement, and co-creational capacity. But never does the impersonal directly transmute to the personal. Personality is never spontaneous; it is the gift of the Paradise Father. Personality is superimposed upon energy and it is associated only with living energy systems; identity can be associated with non-living energy patterns.
The Universal Father is the secret of the reality of personality, the bestowal of personality, and the destiny of personality.
The Eternal Son is the ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY, the secret of spiritual energy, morontia spirits, and perfected spirits. The Conjoint Actor is the spirit-mind personality, the source of intelligence, reason, and the universal mind. But the Isle of Paradise is nonpersonal and extraspiritual, being the essence of the universal body, the source and center of physical matter, and the absolute master pattern of universal material reality.
The personality of mortal man is neither body, mind, nor spirit; neither is it the soul. Personality is the one changeless reality in an otherwise ever-changing creature experience; and it unifies all other associated factors of individuality. The personality is the unique bestowal which the Universal Father makes upon the living and associated energies of matter, mind, and spirit, and which survives with the survival of the morontial soul.
-Urantia, 8-9
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
10 gifts from Apollo
Consider these things...
1. First, what is my relation to men; we are made for one another; or, in another view, I was made to be set over them, as a ram over a flock or a bull over a herd. But examine the question from first principles: If all things are not mere atoms, it is nature which orders all things; if this is so, the inferior things exist for the sake of the superior, and these for the sake of one another.
2. Second, consider how men are at table, in bed, and so forth; and particularly, under what compulsions they are with respect to opinions; and as to their acts, consider with what pride they do what they do.
3. Third, that if men do rightly what they do, we ought not to be displeasedñ but if they do not right, it is plain that they do so involuntarily and in ignorance. For as every soul is unwillingly deprived of the truth, so also is it unwillingly deprived of the power of behaving to each man according to his deserts. Accordinly, men are pained when they are called unjust, ungrateful, and greedy, or charged with behaving wrongfully to their neighbors.
4. Fourth, consider that you also do many things wrong, that you are a man like others; and even if you abstain from certain faults, you still have the disposition to commit them, though either through cowardice, or concern for reputation, or some such mean motive, you refrain from wrongdoing.
5. Fifth, consider that you do not even know whether men are doing wrong or not, for many things are done with a certain reference to circumstances. In short, a man must learn a great deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment on another man´s acts.
6. Sixth, consider when you are vexed or grieved that man´s life is only a moment, and after a short time we all lie stretched in death.
7. Seventh, that it is not men´s acts which disturb us, for those acts have their foundation in men´s ruling principles, but it is our own opinions regarding them. Take away these opinions then, and resolve to dismiss your judgment about an act as if it were something grievous, and your anger is gone. How then shall you take away these opinions? By reflecting that no wrongful act of another brings shame on you; for since that which is shameful is alone bad, you must of necessity do all sorts of evil, become a robber and everything else.
8. Eighth, consider how much more pain is brought on us by the anger and vexation caused by such acts than by the acts themselves, at which we are angry and vexed.
9. Ninth, consider that benevolence is invincible if it be genuine, and not merely an affected smile and playing a part. For what will the most violent man do to you, if you continue to be of a benevolent disposition towards him and, as opportunity offers, gently admonish him and calmly correct his errors at the very time he is trying to do you harm, saying, "Not so, my child. We are constituted by nature for something else: I shall certainly not be injured, but you are injuring yourself, my child." And show him with gentle tact and by general principles that this is so, and that even bees do not as he does, nor any animals which are formed by nature to be gregarious. And do this neither with any double meaning, nor in the way of reproach, but affectionately and without rancor in your soul; and not as if you were lecturing him, or to show off before others, but quietly in his own ear, even if others are present.
Remember these nine rules, as if you had received them as a gift from the Muses, and begin at last to be a man so long as you live. But you must equally avoid flattering men and being vexed by them, for both are unsocial and lead to harm. And let this truth be present to you in the excitement of anger, that to be moved by passion is not manly, but that mildness and gentleness are more manly, just as they are more in conformity with human nature. And he who possesses these qualities possesses strength, nerves, and courage, and not the man who is subject to fits of passion and discontent. for in the same degree in which a man´s mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength; and as the sense of pain is a characteristic of weakness, so also is anger. For he who yields to pain and he who yields to anger are both wounded, and both submit.
10. But, if you will, receive also a tenth gift from Apollo, leader of the Muses, and it is this: That to expect bad men not to do wrong is madness, for he who expects this desires an impossibility. But to allow men to behave evilly to each other, and not to expect them to do you any wrong is irrational and tyrannical.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.18. 119-122
1. First, what is my relation to men; we are made for one another; or, in another view, I was made to be set over them, as a ram over a flock or a bull over a herd. But examine the question from first principles: If all things are not mere atoms, it is nature which orders all things; if this is so, the inferior things exist for the sake of the superior, and these for the sake of one another.
2. Second, consider how men are at table, in bed, and so forth; and particularly, under what compulsions they are with respect to opinions; and as to their acts, consider with what pride they do what they do.
3. Third, that if men do rightly what they do, we ought not to be displeasedñ but if they do not right, it is plain that they do so involuntarily and in ignorance. For as every soul is unwillingly deprived of the truth, so also is it unwillingly deprived of the power of behaving to each man according to his deserts. Accordinly, men are pained when they are called unjust, ungrateful, and greedy, or charged with behaving wrongfully to their neighbors.
4. Fourth, consider that you also do many things wrong, that you are a man like others; and even if you abstain from certain faults, you still have the disposition to commit them, though either through cowardice, or concern for reputation, or some such mean motive, you refrain from wrongdoing.
5. Fifth, consider that you do not even know whether men are doing wrong or not, for many things are done with a certain reference to circumstances. In short, a man must learn a great deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment on another man´s acts.
6. Sixth, consider when you are vexed or grieved that man´s life is only a moment, and after a short time we all lie stretched in death.
7. Seventh, that it is not men´s acts which disturb us, for those acts have their foundation in men´s ruling principles, but it is our own opinions regarding them. Take away these opinions then, and resolve to dismiss your judgment about an act as if it were something grievous, and your anger is gone. How then shall you take away these opinions? By reflecting that no wrongful act of another brings shame on you; for since that which is shameful is alone bad, you must of necessity do all sorts of evil, become a robber and everything else.
8. Eighth, consider how much more pain is brought on us by the anger and vexation caused by such acts than by the acts themselves, at which we are angry and vexed.
9. Ninth, consider that benevolence is invincible if it be genuine, and not merely an affected smile and playing a part. For what will the most violent man do to you, if you continue to be of a benevolent disposition towards him and, as opportunity offers, gently admonish him and calmly correct his errors at the very time he is trying to do you harm, saying, "Not so, my child. We are constituted by nature for something else: I shall certainly not be injured, but you are injuring yourself, my child." And show him with gentle tact and by general principles that this is so, and that even bees do not as he does, nor any animals which are formed by nature to be gregarious. And do this neither with any double meaning, nor in the way of reproach, but affectionately and without rancor in your soul; and not as if you were lecturing him, or to show off before others, but quietly in his own ear, even if others are present.
Remember these nine rules, as if you had received them as a gift from the Muses, and begin at last to be a man so long as you live. But you must equally avoid flattering men and being vexed by them, for both are unsocial and lead to harm. And let this truth be present to you in the excitement of anger, that to be moved by passion is not manly, but that mildness and gentleness are more manly, just as they are more in conformity with human nature. And he who possesses these qualities possesses strength, nerves, and courage, and not the man who is subject to fits of passion and discontent. for in the same degree in which a man´s mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength; and as the sense of pain is a characteristic of weakness, so also is anger. For he who yields to pain and he who yields to anger are both wounded, and both submit.
10. But, if you will, receive also a tenth gift from Apollo, leader of the Muses, and it is this: That to expect bad men not to do wrong is madness, for he who expects this desires an impossibility. But to allow men to behave evilly to each other, and not to expect them to do you any wrong is irrational and tyrannical.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.18. 119-122
Kwisatz Haderach 2
KWISATZ HADERACH - "Shortening of the Way." This is the label applied by the Bene Gesserit to the unknown for which they sought a genetic solution: a male Bene Gesserit whose organic mental powers would bridge space and time. (from "Terminology of the Imperium" - Dune)
---
"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach...well..." (3)
---
"...ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.
The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen. He nodded.
"We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."
He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all there is to it - pain?"
"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."
He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"
She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds observation."
"You know when people believe what they say," she said.
"I know it."
The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet."
"I prefer to stand." (10)
---
Paul felt himself coming more and more out of the shock of the test. He leveled a measuring stare at her, said: "You say maybe I'm the...Kwisatz Haderach. What's that, a human gom jabbar?"
"Paul," Jessica said. "You mustn't take that tone with - "
"I'll handle this, Jessica," the old woman said. "Now, lad, do you know about the Truthsayer drug?"
"You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood," he said. "My mother's told me."
"Have you ever seen truthtrance?"
He shook his head. "No."
"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory - in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past... but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts."
"Your Kwisatz Haderach?"
"Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug...so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died." (13)
---
"So I had a son!" Jessica flared. And she knew she was being goaded into this anger deliberately.
"You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides."
"It meant so much to him," Jessica pleaded.
"And you in your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach!"
Jessica lifted her chin. "I sensed the possibility." (22)
---
The old woman stared at Paul, then: "Young man, as a Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees this possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more."
She fell silent and Paul saw that she wanted him to speak. He waited her out.
Presently, she said: "As you will, then. You've depths in you, that I'll grant."
"May I go now?" he asked.
Don't you want to hear what the Reverend Mother can tell you about the Kwisatz Haderach?" Jessica asked.
"She said those who tried for it died."
"But I can help you with a few hints at why they failed," the Reverend Mother said.
She talks of hints, Paul thought. She doesn't really know any thing. And he said: "Hint then."
"And be damned to me?" she smiled wryly, a crisscross of wrinkles in the old face. "Very well: 'That which submits rules.' (27)
---
"Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." She held up four big knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. make that the science of your tradition!" (30).
---
"She asked me to tell her what it is to rule," Paul said. "And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do...She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel..."(31)
-Frank Herbert, Dune
---
"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach...well..." (3)
---
"...ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.
The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen. He nodded.
"We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."
He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all there is to it - pain?"
"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."
He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"
She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds observation."
"You know when people believe what they say," she said.
"I know it."
The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet."
"I prefer to stand." (10)
---
Paul felt himself coming more and more out of the shock of the test. He leveled a measuring stare at her, said: "You say maybe I'm the...Kwisatz Haderach. What's that, a human gom jabbar?"
"Paul," Jessica said. "You mustn't take that tone with - "
"I'll handle this, Jessica," the old woman said. "Now, lad, do you know about the Truthsayer drug?"
"You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood," he said. "My mother's told me."
"Have you ever seen truthtrance?"
He shook his head. "No."
"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory - in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past... but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts."
"Your Kwisatz Haderach?"
"Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug...so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died." (13)
---
"So I had a son!" Jessica flared. And she knew she was being goaded into this anger deliberately.
"You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides."
"It meant so much to him," Jessica pleaded.
"And you in your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach!"
Jessica lifted her chin. "I sensed the possibility." (22)
---
The old woman stared at Paul, then: "Young man, as a Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees this possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more."
She fell silent and Paul saw that she wanted him to speak. He waited her out.
Presently, she said: "As you will, then. You've depths in you, that I'll grant."
"May I go now?" he asked.
Don't you want to hear what the Reverend Mother can tell you about the Kwisatz Haderach?" Jessica asked.
"She said those who tried for it died."
"But I can help you with a few hints at why they failed," the Reverend Mother said.
She talks of hints, Paul thought. She doesn't really know any thing. And he said: "Hint then."
"And be damned to me?" she smiled wryly, a crisscross of wrinkles in the old face. "Very well: 'That which submits rules.' (27)
---
"Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." She held up four big knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. make that the science of your tradition!" (30).
---
"She asked me to tell her what it is to rule," Paul said. "And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do...She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel..."(31)
-Frank Herbert, Dune
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Channel 22 - Conclusion of USA network
OLD SOUTH SAVANNAH PARLOR - FUTURE
The Yankee businessmen are still arguing over the situation trying to determine a course of action.
TRUSTEE 2
What was his real name?
CEO
Michael Bayzer.
TRUSTEE 2
So, where did the name TRISTAN come from?
CEO
He had been calling himself that since he was in college.
It was an alter ego.
TRUSTEE 4
His vision of a superhero.
CEO
There is an account that he had been treated for
a concussion back in 1996 for jumping headlong
into a television set.
TRUSTEE 1
What?
TRUSTEE 2
Well, that would explain it.
CEO
His explanation, though, was that it was a metaphor of transcendence.
That diving through the television screen was symbolic of the discovery of a higher self.
An evolutionary Individuality that had miraculously reincarnated.
TRUSTEE 2
He believed he was the reincarnation of something?
CEO
Of somebody.
TRUSTEE 3
Who? Specifically.
CEO
The ancient knight known as TRISTAN.
TRUSTEE 1
What?
CEO
The Child of Sorrow.
He believed there was a thread that connected the chivalric code of the Middle Ages to the Southern Cause in 1861.
That somehow they were fighting for the same thing but that modern prejudice against the South was clouding the true perception of her vital role in defending the ideal of Western
Civilization.
In the end he became confused by the virtuality of the park into actually trying to fight the Civil War again using modern information technology.
He built a Cult of Personality around himself.
It is known that the employees on Island of the Old South had begun calling themselves the Rapscallions.
TRUSTEE 3
RAPSCALLIONS NEVER SAY DIE!
TRUSTEE 1
What?
CEO
I would venture to speculate that he was exploiting an ignorant population for some crazy plan of world revolution that would be effected through a seizure of the airwaves.
TRUSTEE 4
So he would send people down this roller coaster.
CEO
And they would never come back.
TRUSTEE 2
The police received word that the first wave of visitors to Island of the Old South were not returning from their vacations to Savannah.
They initiated investigations and that’s when
The disaster occurred.
TRUSTEE 3
THE DERAILED RIDE.
TRUSTEE 4
Where did they go?
The people that rode into LEVIATHAN.
CEO
Into the airwaves?
TRUSTEE 1
Impossible.
TRUSTEE 3
And the explosion?
CEO
The last ride.
He was closing the portal behind them.
TRUSTEE 3
But I am talking about the nature of the explosion.
Plastique? Dynamite? Nuclear?
CEO
Actually, it was a sonic boom.
But it appears to have involved some sort of interdimensional rupture opened by a hitherto forgotten audio frequency.
When turned down and analyzed it becomes apparent...
TRUSTEE 4
What was the furious sound?
CEO
A human voice, a logoidal amplification!
TRUSTEE 3
You’re kidding.
CEO
No.
---------
They take a momentary pause.
---------
TRUSTEE 2
THE REBEL YELL
CEO
He must be stopped.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
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