Adventures in Existence

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We found the remains of his house in Galena. It was scheduled for demolition because it was a run-down eye-sore.

“Where are the treasures?”

“I’m sure we’re standing on them.”

“That’s the only place it would be safe.”

“Let us go inside and root them out.”

“And then donate it to the world’s knowledge.”

“For sure, but we’ll spread it around so it doesn’t get lost again.”

Our hearts skipped a beat when we saw it.

“There’s a scroll wrapped in bronze on his desk.”

“It looks as if it might fall apart if we even took it out.”

“Which is why it is back in its tube.”

We explored the basement with a flashlight.

There was nothing apparent, just a furnace, much empty space, and a coal bin room, which we looked into, finding it musty, with a few inches of coal, a rolled up rug, and a lot of cobwebs everywhere.

We stood dejected, then went out to dinner, hoping it would recharge our brains, and returned later.

[austintorn@aol.com]

…

“Even the coal is crushed and useless.”

“But for some whole coals on the sides of the bin.”

“The rug has coal dust on it.”

“Because it was laid over the coals for some reason.”

“And whatever was rolled over it had crushed the coals in the center.”

“Let us examine the wall at the end of the coal bin.”

After some pressing and pushing the wall folded down and a light went on, revealing a seemingly endless room. An old sculpture of a black cat greeted them.

And there it all was.

“This is much larger than we can handle ourselves.”

…

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"We've catalogued 40 different sculptures," Lily the archeologist explained, "representing the finest work of the early bronze age beginning in 3,000 B.C. and ending in the transcendental style of the Byzanum era of the early fourth century. Except for a few stains from water seepage through the limestone, which can be removed by chemicals, the marble and bronze figures are in a remarkable state of preservation."

The President walked speechless through the long passage, stopping every so often to gaze in admiration at the magnificent classic sculpture, some of it five thousand years old. He was overwhelmed at the sheer numbers of it. Every age, every dynasty and empire was represented with the best its artists turned out.

"I'm actually seeing and touching the Alexandria museum collection," he said in reverence.

"Here is the golden casket of Alexander the Great," she announced in a hushed tone.

The President felt as if he was about to meet God. He slowly approached the golden resting place of one of the greatest leaders the world had ever known and peered through the crystal windows.

The Macedonians had laid their king out in his ceremonial armor. His cuirass and helmet were pure gold. The Persian silk that once made up his tunic was mostly gone, rotted away after nearly twenty-four centuries. All that was left of the great subject of romantic legend were his bones.

"Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, all stood and gazed at his remains," lectured Lily.

Each took his Turn, hardly able to conceive what lay beneath their eyes.

Then Lily led them into the great storage gallery.

Nearly thirty people were hard at work. Several were examining the contents of the wooden crates stacked in the gallery's center.

Paintings, stained and soiled, but restorable, along with delicate objects carved from ivory and marble or cast from gold, silver or bronze were catalogued and repacked in new cases for transport to a secure building complex in Maryland for restoration and preservation.

Most of the archaeologists, translators and preservation experts were gently handling the bronze cylindrical tubes that held the thousands of ancient books, translating the copper tags and recording descriptions of the contents. The containers and their delicate scrolls were also carefully packed for shipment to Maryland for study and research.

"Here it is." Lily gestured around the chamber proudly. "So far we've found the complete books of Homer, much of the lost teachings by the great Greek philosophers, early Hebrew writings, manuscripts and historical data showing new insight on Christianity. Maps illustrating previously unknown tombs of ancient kings, the locations of the lost trading centers, including Tarshish and Sheba, and geological charts of mines and oil deposits long forgotten. Enormous gaps in ancient chronological events will be filled. The history of the Phoenicians, Mycenaeans, Etruscans, and civilizations that were only rumored to exist, they're all here and accounted for in vivid detail. If restorable, the paintings will give us a true Picture of what the immortals of the ancient world looked like."

For a moment the President had nothing to say. He was numbed. He couldn't begin to digest the immensity of the astonishing accumulation.

As art, it was priceless. As knowledge, its value was incalculable.

The End

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Endless Stars

A recent estimate suggests that there are 300 sextillion stars, but that is just around the portion of our universe that we can know, and surely there may be more, including those of other arenas beyond our one cosmos. Why so many? Surely there was no thinking decider to account for them all, for thinking cannot be fundamental.

The Earth’s day-star had set, the dusk through the gloaming into twilight putting it to rest. Even if one had never seen the night sky, one could infer the existence of many distant suns shining far away as stars in the black velvet. They shine each second with the power of a thousand atomic bombs yet endure for tens of billions of years.

There was no moon and we were well away from the Chicago city lights and so we could see thousands of the glittering jewels of various colors. If these gems had been diamonds on our carpet, we would have been rich. Arcturus was orange, Betelgeuse red, and Sirius blue, with a green companion. We could also deduce the planets of those solar systems. Such can things be foretold from existence itself.

A misty wide and white highway crossing the night sky was our own Milky Way galaxy, seen edge on, and we could also see the Andromeda galaxy, through our binoculars. It was no great shakes to intuit many more such conglomerations. It turns out that in every dark patch sky no larger than a grain of sand that there are over 10,000 galaxies. The universe is surely much larger than it needs to be, or perhaps is is a necessity.

If this universe is here at this time in this place as from an inflating bang, then surely there could be more, somewheres, making for the extrapolation of an endless Cosmos of cosmotic arenas. There is really much more out there than there needed to be.

So it is that we surmise, reason, interpret, gather, understand, presume, and assume that there are countless numbers of stars and planets out there, as well as endless numbers of separated universes. What the heck is going on? Why so many? They re perhaps even near infinite, whatever that means. Why is it so overdone?

Well, infinite largeness is so vast because the infinitesimal is so small, but that’s not the direct reason, but more like a reason to a reason, which is that Totality would not be as such if it were limited in extent—and from that line of thought we also know that it cannot be limited by duration. Eternity must ever accord with infinity.

Yet, there is nothing and nowhere for this everything to have come from, so now we understand that nothing and everything must unite and also complete the package begun by the figuring in of infinity and eternity. It is the ultimate reckoning. Everything happens everywhere forever, of nothing, near to it by the quantum fluctuations that existence demands, for a lack of anything is impossible, making something not an option at all.

[Drifter]

Noetic Gnosis: Cosmic Consciousness

by Beatrix Murrell

From: murrell@netcom.com (Beatrix Murrell)
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 1995 15:44:55 GMT
Subject: Noetic Gnosis: Cosmic Consciousness
Used with permission of the author

So often we read or consider "gnosis" in religious terms, but I think today more of us are pondering gnosis within the context of "cosmic consciousness." I would like to articulate a little on this particular phenomenon of gnosis.

R.M. Bucke wrote a treatise in 1902 entitled COSCMIC CONSCIOUSNESS. His premise is that during the course of humanity's evolutionary development there are three forms of consciousness.

Simple Consciousness, our instinctual consciousness.
Self Consciousness, that self-awareness that allows a human to realize hirself as a distinct entity.
Cosmic Consciousness, a new developing faculty at the pinnacle of our evolution.


Dr. Bucke catalogued this newest form of consciousness in his book. But what about the experience itself? From his catalogue of those he believed to have had this experience, he presented an outline:

"Like a flash there is presented to his consciousness a clear conception (a vision) in outline of the meaning and drift of the universe...He sees and knows that the cosmos...is in fact...in very truth a living presence. He sees that instead of men being, as it were, patches of life scattered through an infinite sea of non-living substance, they are in reality specks of relative death in an infinite ocean of life. He sees that the life which is in man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain."

"The person who passes through this experience will learn in the few minutes, or even moments, of its continuance more than in months or years of study, and he will learn much that no study every taught or can teach. Especially does he obtain such a conception of *the whole*...Along with moral elevation and intellectual illumination comes what must be called, for want of a better term, a sense of immortality."

Evelyn Underhill takes up the banner in her MYSTICISM. Talking of the mystical side of ectasy, she stresses that it "represents the greatest possible extension of the spiritual consciousness in the direction of Pure Being: the blind intent stretching here receives its reward in a profound experience of Eternal Life. In this experience the departmental activities of thought and feeling, the consciousness of I-hood, of space and time...all that belongs to the World of Becoming and our own place therein...are suspended. The vitality which we are accustomed to split amongst these various things, is gathered up to form a state of pure apprehension...a vivid intuition of the Transcendent."

Underhill proceeds: "This is that perfect unity of consciousness, that utter concentration on an experience of love, which excludes all conceptual and analytic acts. Hence, when the mystic says that his faculties were suspended, that he *knew all and knew nought,* he really means that we are so concentrated on the Absolute that he ceased to consider his separate existence...so merged in it that he could not perceive it as an object of thought, as the bird cannot see the air which supports it, nor the fish the ocean in which it swims. He really *knows all but thinks nought, perceives all, but conceives nought.*"

Marsha Sinetar, in her book ORDINARY PEOPLE AS MONKS AND MYSTICS, refers to this mystical ecstasy...this cosmic consciousness, in terms of the Peak Experience (Gnosis).

"The peak experience is critical to any discussion of the mystic's journey, since through it and because of it the individual gains an overarching and penetrating view into what he is at his best, into what he is when he simply *is.* The peak experience means that the person experiences himself *being* rather than becoming. He also experiences direct...the Transcendant nature of reality. He enters into the Absolute, becoming one with it, if only for an instant. It is a life-altering instant which many have described as one in which the mind stops, as a time in which the paradoxical change/ changeless nature opens up to a person."

Sinetar contines: "The peak experience expands the individual's field of consciousness to include everything in the universe...he feels he *has* everything because he experiences everything within. This field is what author Joseph Chilton Pearce calls the *crack in the cosmic egg.* Although Pearce is also talking about the metanoia... the transformation of an individual's entire believe system which accompanies the peak experience or the moment of illumination...he writes of the exquisite inshight which makes *all things new again,* the unifying, integrative moment which provides the individual with a glimpse of the connectiveness of all things...the micro-macro web of the universe, interrelationships of all people and things."

Both James Redfield and Alan Watts provide beautiful metaphoric descriptions of this peak experience, this achievement of cosmic consciousness.

Redfield, in his THE CELESTINE PROPHECY, allows his central character the experience. This character says that "I watched the limbs of the trees sway gently in the breeze [and] experienced not just a visual perception of the event, but a physical sensation as well, as if the limbs moving in this wind were hairs on my body."

Proceeding, "I perceived everything to be somehow part of me. As I sat on the peak of the mountain looking out at the landscape falling away from me in all directions, it felt exactly as if what I had always known as my physical body was only the head of a much larger body consisting of everything else I could see. I experienced the entire universe looking out on itself through my eyes.

Alan Watts, in his last treatise THE BOOK, says it in a similar fashion: "Thus when the line between myself and what happens to me is dissolved and there is no stronghold for an ego even as a passive witness, I find myself not *in* a world but *as* a world which is neither compulsive or capricious. What happens is neither automatic or arbitrary...it just happens, and all happenings are mutually independent in a way that seems unbelievably harmonious."

Watts carries forth that in "immediate contrast to the old feeling, there is indeed a certain passivity to the sensation, as if you were a leaf blown along by the wind, until you realize that you are both the leaf and the wind. The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside...they move together inseparably. Your body is no longer a corpse which the ego has to animate and lug around. There is a feeling of the ground holding you up, and of hills lifting you when you climb them. Air breathes itself in and out of your lungs, and instead of looking and listening, light and sound comes to you on their own. Eyes see and ears hear as wind blows and water flows. Time carries you along like a river, but never flows out of the present; the more it goes, the more it stays...and all space becomes your mind."

[Meem]

Endless Stars

Surely there was no thinking decider to account for them all, for thinking cannot be fundamental.

And visions of a former president danced in their heads.

[Drifter]

The End? Endless, or the coming [2012] " Great Shift" in Consciousness?

'The Day Before Disclosure' is a film about
the witnesses who were laughed at, the
researchers and reporters who weren't believed
and the governmental and military personnel that
were sworn to silence.


Video:

http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/page/5601.html