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nyarlathotep's shoe horn

17:14 / 10.01.06

inspired by thread in Head Shop...

i have a few theories (or at least, examples of cultural/historical/intellectual rifts/changes/burned bridges):

the fall from balance of 0 and 1.
(we start counting at 1, not 0, which presupposes a lot, since all creation myths fictionalise the jump from 0 to 1)
this can be seen as a shift to an overabundance of Yang with the de-emphasis of yin (to give taoist equivalence to binary notions)

the use of the plow (13 000 years ago or so) in regulating our food supplies, the subsequent stores, and them being locked up.

the shifting from Egocentrism to anthropocentrism to geocentrism to heliocentrism... and christian insistence that the Sun is the Father.

What do the Rebel Angels represent?

the great Flood? (100 000 years ago-ish).

any thoughts?

--not jack

18:09 / 10.01.06

To me The Fall represents the movement of human consciousness from the undifferentiated animal state of self-preservation to the state of self-awareness. At some point we suddenly made the distinction between self and other and began to erect boundaries between the two.

The Myth of Eden can be seen to reflect this notion. Eat of the Tree of (self)Knowledge and you no longer get to play in the idyllic Garden of egolessness.

18:32 / 10.01.06

There may also be a fallacy about the "Fall" being a bad thing. Going from an eternal existence with no conception of sex, death, or time, to one where the broad spectrum of human experience is now available, can be seen as a necessary step.

Begging the question; do we try to get back up, if we Fall? Or is there somewhere to go, beyond falling down? Can we regain the buddha-conciousness, without losing the sublime existence we currently have?

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

18:36 / 10.01.06

not to mention the whole cutting of one's umbilical cord.

animals have knowledge of self-other (assuming other people do).

have they fallen with us?

--not jack

Earlier than I thought

20:48 / 10.01.06

I was doing some meditative excersises a few months ago and had the strangest impression of a shadowy figure warning me that I was about to face my own Fall. I decided that this was a good thing; he asked if I could fall "back to where I came from". I told him I didn't know and he wandered off. I share this only out of interest, limited though this may be.

Maybe it was a Mark E Smith thing. Someone had to say it.

22:26 / 10.01.06

animals have knowledge of self-other (assuming other people do).

I'm not sure that they do in the same sense that we do. As someone who adores animals and spends as much time as I can with them, and also as someone who has a reasonable background in neuroscience, my impression is that animals, as a generalisation, exist in a sort of timeless present responding to stimuli and instinct without reflecting on their response. It seems to me that the ego accretes around the hard-wired instincts of the animal self, abstracting simple fight-flight responses into the psychic constructs that characterize the average human psyche. In this context, gods and demons were early constructs of these embryonic psychological structures, just beginning to speak within our heads. Julian Jaynes talks about this alot, that the early whisperings of the complex self may have been regarded as discarnate entities. As we evolved our inner voice(s) became more integrated and solid, further dividing us from the exterior world.

We could probably safely say that the self-reflecting mind is much more burdened with thought and worry than the simple animal. In this respect, the Fall from Eden was the fall from innocence.

In fact, I'd say that our apprehension of time is the thing that really separates humans from the rest of the kingdom. Somehow we manage to thread moments together into an ever receding filmstrip that can then be recalled and reflected upon.

22:27 / 10.01.06

oops, meant to remove that last paragraph

22:31 / 10.01.06

"And why do we fall, Bruce? So that we can learn how to get up again."

Thought it was appropriate.

22:33 / 10.01.06

do we try to get back up, if we Fall? Or is there somewhere to go, beyond falling down?
Possibly, but a return cannot simply be a reenactment of the pre-fall state. One has already, as it were, skinned one's knee, and experienced the pain therein.

On a very simple level, this can be a matter of
innocence -> disillusionment -> wisdom,
but never
innocence -> disillusionment -> innocence.

The difficulty with this kind of understanding is that it is impossible to know *adequately* of impending wisdom while still in the fallen state. If I am in the fallen state, I might recognize that there is something beyond this state, but the only way to really understand what that something is is to enter into it. So a transcendent perspective of the process sees a tidy progression, but the perspective in which actual people exist sees only that which has already been experienced. It may hope for, or even trust in the something that lies ahead, but it cannot know that something.

03:02 / 11.01.06

It may hope for, or even trust in the something that lies ahead, but it cannot know that something.

But that which follows (if anything) is reliant on the experience of the fall to give it meaning. While there is no guarantee that the fall will be transcended, it cannot be transcended if it is not embraced. Also without the fall the innocence that preceeded it is equally meaningless. I feel there is something in the quality of being forced to deal with the real and its complexity that causes growth. The 'impending wisdom' is within the fall, not beyond it.

Twig the Wonder Kid

11:18 / 11.01.06

I remember reading a review in one of the broadsheets in the latter half of last year of a book centred on this topic - the fall of man and it's interpretations in both the modern and ancient world.

"The Fall" proves to be a very hard thing to google. Anybody know what the book was?

Unconditional Love

14:27 / 11.01.06

The rebel angels represent intelligence, they are the teachers of the various arts and sciences to mankind, as man disobeyed god so to did they, as eve was tempted by the serpent, so were the serpents tempted by eve.

The grigori are the spheres and paths of the tree incarnate in malkuth, angelic intelligences fallen into an earthly state, they serve the one who passes as god of the earth, but who is not the god of creation/evolution.

Imo.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

14:41 / 12.01.06

the Fall may represent a point of no return.

once you learn some things, you can't go back to innocence/ignorance.

it's what growing up is all about.

--not jack

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

18:24 / 19.01.06

Digital Hermes: Begging the question; do we try to get back up, if we Fall? Or is there somewhere to go, beyond falling down? Can we regain the buddha-conciousness, without losing the sublime existence we currently have?

Well, if you fall and you don't get up, you have only achieved a change in your current state ... to be stuck in another state. The Fall is the first step, but the second step is Getting Up Again; you don't achive ... I don't know, transformative awareness until you decide to stand up and change how you're walking. Although, maybe I'm stretching the metaphor too far.

Odd, off-handed comment Quantum makes about whether Saul's "Road to Damascus" moment was enlightment or not, over on the Temple Forum Thread in the Conversation. "Did he trip?" The Fall can be the simple accident that leads to enlightenment - an accident suggests lack of control, and in that moment without control, a change can occur.