Assorted Theme

16/12/2023

16/12/2023

For this reason the various "child"-fates may be regarded as illustrating the kind of psychic events that occur in the entelechy or genesis of the "self." The "miraculous birth" tries to depict the way in which this genesis is experienced. Since it is a psychic genesis, everything must happen non-empirically, e.g., by means of a virgin birth, or by miraculous conception, or by birth from unnatural organs. The motifs of "insignificance," exposure, abandonment, danger, etc. try to show how precarious is the psychic possibility of wholeness, that is, the enormous difficulties to be met with in attaining this "highest good." They also signify the powerlessness and helplessness of the life-urge which subjects every growing thing to the law of maximum self-fulfillment, while at the same time the environmental influences place all sorts of insuperable obstacles in the way of individuation. More especially the threat to one's inmost self from dragons and serpents points to the danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive psyche, the unconscious. The lower vertebrates have from earliest times been favorite symbols of the collective psychic substratum, which is localized anatomically in the subcortical centers, the cerebellum and the spinal cord. These organs constitute the snake.28 Snake-dreams usually occur, therefore, when the conscious mind is deviating from its instinctual basis.
Carl G Jung (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious)

16/12/2023

It emphasizes the interconnectedness of virtues and their effects.

16/12/2023

Ideas are not truth; and truth is something that must be experienced directly, from moment to moment. It is not an experience which you want - which is then merely sensation. Only when one can go beyond the bundle of ideas - which is the ‘me’, which is the mind, which has a partial or complete continuity - only when one can go beyond that, when thought is completely silent, is there a state of experiencing. Then one shall know what truth is.
J Krishnamurti (The First and Last Freedom)

16/12/2023

"Not at all," said Wynand, "I was merely an outside circumstance. The cause was in him. If lightning strikes a rotten tree and it collapses, it's not the fault of the lightning." "But what do you call a healthy tree?" "They don't exist, Alvah," said Wynand cheerfully, "they don't exist.
Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

15/12/2023

It conveys a sense of respect for the natural world and its ability to both create and control the forces within it.

15/12/2023

Huitzilopochtli

Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of the Sun, war, and human sacrifice, is believed to have been the smallest son of Tonacatecutli and Tonacacihuatl, who were instructed to bring order to the world, creating the Sun, Earth, fire, and the first humans.

Another story entails that the Huitzilopochtli, a mythical Aztec deity, was born to Coatlicue, a woman who was pregnant with a feather. Her 400 siblings believed she had killed her. However, Huitzilopochtli emerged from the womb, beheading her sister and becoming the Moon. He chased his brothers, who fled, scattering them all over the sky. In Aztec mythology, the Sun chases the Moon and stars, and it was crucial to provide tribute to the Sun to prevent destruction. The Aztecs waged constant warfare against the communities surrounding their capital city, Tenochtiatlan, to fuel their light-bearing deity. This military cosmology is rooted in the creation of the world by the gods of Teotihuacan and the man-god Quetzalcoatl. (Image Source: Getty Images)

15/12/2023

It suggests that the mark of a truly noble person is their ability to form meaningful connections with a wide range of people, rather than confining themselves to a narrow and exclusive circle.

15/12/2023

The Lost River (Saraswati river)

For over a century, historians and scientists have been searching for the "mythical" Saraswati river in India, believed to have flowed from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea. The river is first mentioned in the Rig Veda. However, researchers have not been able to identify the river's route or match it with existing or formerly existing river systems. In Post-Vedic times, Saraswati is also mentioned as a powerful river that brings floods. Hindu mythology suggests that the existence of the Saraswati river goes beyond the physical realm into the metaphysical world. Attempts to locate the lost Saraswati river have been made by interpreting information from the Vedas. The river's name changes to Indus, known as Sindhu to Indian ancestors.

The Saraswati river was initially believed to be part of the Ghaggar-Hakra river system, flowing through north-western India and Pakistan. However, recent research suggests that the Sutlej river diverted its course around 10,000-8,000 years ago, turning the system into a rain-fed river. The Harappan civilization emerged on the Ghaggar-Hakra river system 5,000 years ago, and the Harappan civilization ended 4000 years ago. Some scholars also identify the Saraswati river with the Helmand river in Afghanistan. The Ghaggar-Hakra system's connection to Saraswati has gained significance in the 21st century, with scholars suggesting an earlier date for the Rig Veda and renaming the Indus Valley civilization as 'Sindu Sarasvati' or 'Indus Sarasvati'. The Archaeological Survey of India has conducted excavations at various sites since 2003. (Image Source: Wikipedia)

14/12/2023

But if we reject this unseemly variété of man “as he is,” it is impossible for him to attain integration, to become a self. 34 And that amounts to spiritual death. Life that just happens in and for itself is not real life; it is real only when it is known. Only a unified personality can experience life, not that personality which is split up into partial aspects, that bundle of odds and ends which also calls itself “man.” Carl Jung (Psychology and Alchemy)

14/12/2023

It conveys a sense of wisdom and insight, and consider for the significance of harmony, endurance, illumination, fortune, and power in their own lives.

14/12/2023

I think it was Lessing who once said, "There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose." An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. Even we psychiatrists expect the reactions of a man to an abnormal situation, such as being committed to an asylum, to be abnormal in proportion to the degree of his normality. The reaction of a man to his admission to a concentration camp also represents an abnormal state of mind, but judged objectively it is a normal and, as will be shown later, typical reaction to the given circumstances.
Viktor E Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)

14/12/2023

This suggests that one should strive to live in harmony with the natural world, accepting and embracing the natural order of things.

13/12/2023

But there is a far deeper kind of dependence which one must understand before one can be free: the dependence on another for one's happiness. Do you know what it means to depend on somebody for your happiness? It is not the mere physical dependence on another which is so binding, but the inward, psychological dependence from which you derive so-called happiness; for when you depend on somebody in that way, you become a slave.
Jiddu Krishnamurti (Think on These Things)

13/12/2023

The word "shatter" suggests a complete breaking down of barriers and boundaries, allowing for total immersion in the dance.

13/12/2023

Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every “is” implies an “ought.” Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction. Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism)

12/12/2023

For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them that excrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body.

12/12/2023

Idea of powerful forces, whether they be physical or metaphorical, having the capacity to sweep away and transform elements in their path.

12/12/2023

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL (Men’s Search for Meaning)

12/12/2023

Most men, though, are erotically blinded—they commit the unpardonable mistake of confusing Eros with s*x. A man thinks he possesses a woman if he has her s*xually. He never possesses her less, for to a woman the Eros-relationship is the real and decisive one. For her, marriage is a relationship with s*x thrown in as an accompaniment. Since s*x is a formidable thing on account of its consequences, it is useful to have it in a safe place. But when it is less of a danger it also becomes less relevant, and then the question of relationship moves into the foreground.

12/12/2023

Japanese Mythology on Origins of Day and Night

According to the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan), the god Izanagi-no-Mikoto and the goddess Izanami-no-Mikoto were the parents of three siblings. The three gods were Susanoo, the god of storms and the master of the seas, Tsukiyomi, the god of the moon and the ruler of the night, and Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun and the ruler of heaven.
Amaterasu gave Tsukiyomi the order to visit the food goddess Uke-Mochi on Earth one day. Uke-Mochi spat rice, fish, and other animals onto the Earth to greet Tsukiyomi. Then, Uke-Mochi served Tsukiyomi dishes at a banquet using the same technique.

Not surprisingly, Tsukiyomi killed Uke-Mochi because he was so disturbed and appalled by the deed. Tsukiyomi told Amaterasu what had transpired during his visit after he had gone back to heaven. Because of her brother's deeds, Amaterasu was so angry that she vowed never to see or speak to him again. As a result, the Moon permanently hides from the Sun when it sets.

11/12/2023

It conveys a sense of admiration for those who can achieve such a profound level of teaching and benefit without relying on conventional means.

11/12/2023

It carries a sense of wisdom and insight, urging the audience to consider the emotional and psychological factors that may contribute to acts of cruelty.

11/12/2023

The mind must experience, that is inevitable. It must respond to everything - to the river, to the diseased animal, to the dead body being carried away to be burnt, to the poor villagers carrying their burdens along the road, to the tortures and miseries of life - otherwise it is already dead; but it must be capable of responding without being held by the experience. It is tradition, the accumulation of experience, the ashes of memory, that make the mind old. The mind that dies every day to the memories of yesterday, to all the joys and sorrows of the past - such a mind is fresh, innocent, it has no age; and without that innocence, whether you are ten or sixty, you will not find God.

11/12/2023

"No. I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not."

10/12/2023

It encourages the reader to question societal norms and conventional notions of sanity, while also highlighting the paradoxical nature of human behavior.

10/12/2023

James George Frazer (1854-1941, Scotland) was one of the first modern scholars to seriously study mythology and compare the religions of different cultures. His most important work was The Golden Bough (1890) in which he claimed that societies pass through three stages: primitive magic, magic replaced by religion, religion replaced by science.

10/12/2023

It serves as a reminder to exercise caution and self-awareness in the face of these temptations, and to strive for balance and moderation in one's actions and desires.

10/12/2023

Researchers David Luna from Baruch College and Torsten Ringberg and Laura A. Peracchio from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found significant changes in self-perception or "frame-shifting" in people who are bicultural and speak two languages.

09/12/2023

It implies that delving into the unconscious mind can bring about a shift in perspective, allowing individuals to transcend the limitations of their present circumstances and connect with a deeper, more solitary aspect of themselves.

09/12/2023

And he answered, saying: You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
Khalil Gibran (The Prophet)

09/12/2023

THE WOLF AND THE CRANE

A Wolf had been gorging on an animal he had killed, when suddenly a small bone in the meat stuck in his throat and he could not swallow it. He soon felt terrible pain in his throat, and ran up and down groaning and groaning and seeking for something to relieve the pain. He tried to induce every one he met to remove the bone. "I would give anything," said he, "if you would take it out." At last the Crane agreed to try, and told the Wolf to Neon his side and open his jaws as wide as he could. Then the Crane put its long neck down the Wolf's throat, and with its beak loosened the bone, till at last it got it out. "Will you kindly give me the reward you promised?" said the Crane. The Wolf grinned and showed his teeth and said: "Be content. You have put your head inside a Wolf's mouth and taken it out again in safety; that ought to be reward enough for you." Gratitude and greed go not together
(Aesop's Fables)

09/12/2023

With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the ant- heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to their perseverance and good sense. But man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky *Notes from the Underground)

09/12/2023

One that is free from the constraints of attachment and allows for a more profound connection with the world around us.

08/12/2023

Such a mind is not a result, is not an end product of a practice, of meditation, of control. It comes into being through no form of discipline or compulsion or sublimation, without any effort of the ‘me’, of thought; it comes into being when I understand the whole process of thinking - when I can see a fact without any distraction. In that state of tranquillity of a mind that is really still there is love. And it is love alone that can solve all our human problems.
Jiddu Krishnamurti (The First and Last Freedom)