[G_burnett]

Originally Posted by melanie

que?


Lost in Translation


ps... if you want to have a good laugh .. watch six episodes of fawlty towers back to back. CLASSIC TV VIEWING imo.

or one good episode of Married with Children!

[melanie]

Originally Posted by Drifter

"Hello, You have reached Nobody. If you would like to leave a message for Nobody, Nobody will return your call, as soon as He returns from Nowhere.
At the tone, please leave your message."

Sorry but there's .......

[Drifter]

THE METAPHYSICS OF GENIUS

By Merton S Yewdale

[From THE ARYAN PATH, June 1939, pages 279-82.]

Throughout history there have appeared ever so often among the
peoples of Earth, certain individuals who bear all the signs of
having been born for a kind of work which is not only inevitable
but destined. Yet while these individuals have been something of
a confraternity through the ages, their lives and characters have
greatly varied. Some of them have been shy of life and so
solitary that hardly anyone knew of their existence. Some have
lived in little groups, working in the poverty of their
surroundings, but in the wealth of their dreams. Some have lived
in conventional comfort; and not only have they continued to do
their destined work, but they have had the time and the energy to
take part in the practical life of the world.

But however they all may have differed in the details of their
personal life, they have always been of one accord in dedicating
their powers to bringing into existence works of aesthetic beauty
that have enriched the lives of men and women through the ages.
These gifted individuals are the world's men of genius, and their
works are those of the four fine arts -- music, poetry, painting,
and sculpture.

At first view, man lives primarily in the material world and is
closely attached to it, with the feeling that the spiritual world
is outside of himself and beyond him. Actually, he lives between
the two worlds, and their forces flow into him from either side.
The material world brings its energies so that he may develop his
physical powers as well as the resources of Earth. The spiritual
world brings its ethical riches so that his life on Earth may be
spiritualized and he may thus be kept from falling to the level
of sheer materialism. The ideal man is he in whom the spiritual
and material worlds unite in a perfect equilibrium. But man in
general falls short of that balance; he inclines too much to one
side or the other. Thus, failing to achieve it himself or
achieving it for a time and then losing it, he yearns to see it
achieved in some form in which it is permanent. It is in works
of art that he recognizes his ideal of the permanent equilibrium.

So far as the human mind is able to determine, the spiritual and
material worlds are the only ones which came forth in the Great
Beginning. Yet there is a third world -- the aesthetic, which
comes into existence through the man of genius as medium. It is
in him that the spiritual and material worlds not only meet, but
periodically issue forth united in works of art, which he alone
has the power to beget, and which in turn contribute to the
embodiment of the aesthetic world. Without the man of genius,
there would be no aesthetic world, and consequently no works of
art.

Where the man of genius differs from ordinary men is that he
lives largely in the world of himself. Into him the spiritual
and material worlds also flow, but as into a sanctuary where they
offer their resources for his works. From the spiritual world he
receives his visions of the Eternal Ideas, the intuitive
understanding of the essential harmony and equilibrium of the
universe, the gift of hearing with his inner ear, as in music and
poetry, and of seeing with his inner eye, as in painting and
sculpture. From the material world he receives the substance for
his works, the cosmic energy necessary for their formation and
the technique to give them the universal form that will insure
their continuance throughout time.

The purpose of the man of genius is to give aesthetic form to his
visions by representing the universal in the particular. His
ultimate achievement is that in his works he effects a union of
the spiritual and material worlds by imposing upon the amorphous
substance of the material world the order of the spiritual world.

It is the man of talent who CREATES works of art; the man of
genius GIVES BIRTH to them. The first is the conscious act of a
man who elects to construct from material outside of himself; the
second is the instinctive act of a man who yields to the command
of the Divine Energy to submit to the birth of substance within
himself. The man of talent is like a builder who constructs a
building; the man of genius is like a woman who brings a child
into the world. For the word genius comes from the Latin
"gigno," meaning, "I beget."

But there is a further and profounder difference between the two
kinds of men, which is revealed in their origins. The man of
talent is of the male species and a member of the race which for
millions of years has been divided into two sexes. But while the
man of genius is also male outwardly and a member of the present
race, he is inwardly male and female; that is, his ethereal or
astral body is bisexual or androgynous, and thus a representation
of the inner physical formation of the race of androgynes, who
lived many, many millions of years before our race, and who
self-reproduced their own kind.

That such a race of primordial beings once lived on this Earth
and that our race evolved from it, is clear, not only from
vestigial evidence in the race of today, but from references in
the writings of Plato and Lucretius; in the Puranas, the Zohar,
the Kabala, and Genesis; and principally in "The Book of Dzyan,"
portions of which Madame Blavatsky translated and interpreted in
her chief work, THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

It is in the man of genius that the androgyne continues its
function; but instead of reproducing himself, the man of genius
brings forth works of art -- first the conception of the idea,
then the gestation of the substance, lastly the birth of the work
itself in the form of music, poetry, painting, or sculpture.

Works of art are symbols of the great drama of the universe, when
in the Beginning it first emerged as chaos and then took form,
and when the mighty celestial bodies rolled into their appointed
places and in silent majesty began their heavenly movement. For
the primary elements which go to make up a work of art --
subject-matter, form, balance, and rhythm -- are from the world
of the universal.

The subject-matter comes from the Eternal Ideas; the form from
the essential unity of the universe, in which all its parts are
related in a harmonious whole; the balance from the cosmic force
which maintains the heavenly bodies in their relative positions;
the rhythm from the measured movement of the heavenly bodies
within the universe. Only the particular characteristics of
works of art indicate when and where they first appeared in Earth
life. Works of art have their roots in the past; they grow in
the present and come finally to maturity in the future where they
are understood and prized.

[Drifter]

THE METAPHYSICS OF GENIUS contd.


Just as art works when they appear are primarily for a future
generation whose emotional and intellectual consciousness is
different from that of the contemporary generation, so the man of
genius possesses within himself a corresponding consciousness,
which is transmitted to his works.

Within him also are the feminine intuition and the masculine
reason, by which he feels and thinks his works before they have
emerged into the world. Likewise, there are reflected in him the
universal elements -- subject-matter, form, balance, and rhythm,
by which all works acquire their universality, for it is the man
of genius who is truly the microcosm of the universe.

As soon as the art works are completed, they take on a meaning in
the particular, which brings them closer to the understanding of
people in general. The subject-matter becomes an idea or an
object which is related to life and recognizable in it. The form
becomes a symbol of man's inborn desire to bring order out of
disorder. The balance corresponds to the symmetrical
construction of the human body and to man's love of proportion in
all things. The rhythm corresponds to the ordered movement of
the days, months, and years, the seasons and the tides, as well
as to the human love of measured sound and movement. Thus works
of art completely satisfy, in a universal and a particular sense,
our innate desire to see the Eternal Ideas presented in perfect
form, balance, and rhythm, and to observe them aesthetically
interpreted in compositions of universal and permanent harmony.

In past centuries, when the multitudes were largely uneducated,
art was only for the cultured few. In modern times, it is for
all people, not only because they are much more enlightened and
because it develops their sense of aesthetic beauty, but
principally because it opens up a new world of vision and
provides a new outlet for their energies which are frequently
restricted and sometimes frustrated amid the confines of
regimented life in the modern world.

Art is not the means of an escape from life, but instead a master
collection of works in which every feeling and thought in the
whole human gamut may find instantaneous and sympathetic
response. A work in a bright major key symbolizes in general the
idea of evolution or coming into life in the visible world. In a
somber minor key, it symbolizes the idea of involution or
returning to the invisible world whence everything came. Also,
the stricter its form, the nearer the work approaches the
spiritual world and breathes the spiritual life. With freer
form, it approaches the everyday life of the practical world.

Works of art are for the young and the old, and for both sexes;
for men of genius, like the universe, are ever young and ever
old, and their works are therefore ageless and timeless. Also,
because of their androgyny, men of genius are able to represent
in their works, with equal skill and understanding, both male and
female characters and forms. The direction of a civilization may
be determined by the spirituality or materiality of its art
works. Likewise, as a civilization inclines, so do its men of
genius, who reflect in their works something of that to which the
civilization aspires. Yet the greatest works of art are more
than records of the aspirations of individual civilizations: they
are the immortal record of man's hopes and ideals which he has
ever held aloft on his journey through the ages.

Nothing is stranger than that, while astronomers can predict the
unusual movements of the heavenly bodies, and seers the coming of
great events, no one ever seems to have predicted the coming of a
man of genius. He is like a new star which is born in the
universe, but which does not become visible until its light has
come among men on Earth. Apparently, no one ever suspected that
a little boy in Ancient Greece would become Homer; or a boy in
India, the poet Kalidasa; or a boy in Germany, the composer Bach;
or a boy in Italy, the painter Da Vinci. Nor have men of genius
generally been born of illustrious parents. On the contrary,
practically all of them came from humble parents; and the history
of genius shows that the humbler the mother and therefore the
nearer to Nature, the greater the man -- which is perfectly
logical, since the energy of Nature is one of the physical
elements which are highly necessary to the man of genius in
bringing forth his works.

Linked to this force of Nature is the clairvoyant power of the
Spirit, by which he perceives the eternal beauty of things that
he imparts to his works and leaves as a legacy to all men and for
all time. The man of genius is but an instrument of Destiny, and
his masterpieces belong not to him, but to the ages forever.

[melanie]

THE METAPHYSICS OF GENIUS
Who put the genie in genius?
Why it twas us the geni-us who else?

[melanie]

Originally Posted by melanie

THE METAPHYSICS OF GENIUS
Who put the genie in genius?
Why it twas us the geni-us who else?

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by melanie

THE METAPHYSICS OF GENIUS
Who put the genie in genius?
Why it twas us the geni-us who else?

[melanie]

Originally Posted by Drifter

Metajoy!

[Drifter]

A two year old that's in a class all his own!

http://tbknews.blogspot.com

enjoy

[N0B0DY]

Noticed this gem while reading the updates, and thought it relevant to those interested in time symmetry.

"The basic idea of counterfactual theories of causation is that the meaning of causal claims can be explained in terms of counterfactual conditionals of the form “If A had not occurred, C would not have occurred”. While counterfactual analyses have been given of type-causal concepts, most counterfactual analyses have focused on singular causal or token-causal claims of the form “event c caused event e”. Analyses of token-causation have become popular in the last thirty years, especially since the development in the 1970's of possible world semantics for counterfactuals. The best known counterfactual analysis of causation is David Lewis's (1973b) theory. However, intense discussion over thirty years has cast doubt on the adequacy of any simple analysis of singular causation in terms of counterfactuals. Recent years have seen a proliferation of different refinements of the basic idea to achieve a closer match with commonsense judgements about causation."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ca...counterfactual