The Phenomenon of Man ... Wo-man

The continued vitality of scientific discovery, philosophical debate, political systems, economic models and so on owe their merit to the ‘phenomenon of man’.

Who has compassed the ‘phenomenon of man’ despite milleniums of effort?

Posing the above question differently … What is the ‘totality’ of what I am?

Teilhard’s book “Phenomenon of Man” offers some worthwhile … for me at least … suggestions.

I had to stop when it said that consciousness in man has a cosmic extension and exists everywhere throughout space and time. I think the theory in which complexity exists as a natural consequences of energy differential, and functions (within the law) to expedite entropy, is more likely to be true because we see a man as a natural consequence of physics, which is more likely to be true; in other words, there is no universal pre-set story line into the future, the man is just a an outcome of natural process, a process that may exist in other parts of universe but not everywhere. If consciousness is seen as a phenomenon that is simply an outcome of complexity than you can say that it exists elsewhere in the universe (provided the law of entropy acts the same throughout the universe and the necessary energy gradients are present for said complexity to arise), but it wouldn’t be human consciousness, only an product of increasing complexity (maybe there is a special term for it in physics). I don’t know how God or divine story line plays into it because as soon as the energy gradient is removed (ex: our sun dies), all complexity will be gone because everything will be equalized, and that would be the end of that story. I suppose one could pick on the existence natural laws themselves that make complexity possible in the first place, but that would really be grasping for straws because to me, it doesn’t really prove anything. :-k

Pandora … I’m excited that the book tickled your curiosity … you seem to possess the kind of intellect that could help with the eventual fusion of science, philosophy and religion(spirituality)

Seems Sir Julian Huxlev disagrees with your opening comment … my small town mind doesn’t speak your language.

more emerging thoughts …

Carleas penned an OP in the Philosophy forum Feb 17th titled "Culture Flow. The content of the OP reads like a page out of Teilhard’s book “Phenomenon of Man”.

Did Carleas have Teilhard in mind when posting the OP?

If not … it lends support to another of Teilhard’s ideas/thoughts involving the transmission of ideas/thoughts … empirical evidence supports his view … what makes Teilhard’s view different is his proposal that this particular form of “transmission” will continue to intensify across time and space.

If Teilhard had witnessed the evolution of the internet … WWW … would he claim it to be a manifestation of the Noosphere in our physical realm?

more emerging thoughts …

Readers … are you familiar with the legend of the 36 Righteous Ones?

Some argue that the critical mass necessary to turn the herd (mankind) … to get the herd stampeding in a new/different direction … is 36 minds.

Begs the question …

Have the “36 Righteous Ones” been brought together here in ILP? … by chance of course :laughing: … or misfortune … which ever you prefer.

Spirit. Just thinking about it as I glanced at this essay.
I don’t know about the physical and scientific manifestations as a natural extension of complexity, per It’Self; but do have a feeling of Cosmic
Manifestation, grown out of a hidden practice which I have been doing all my life, of which I have become aware of from the age 20 something on. It’s difficult
to describe, and the the only price one has to pay is
the danger of falling into madness. This has been an oft repeated warning offered by various writers of enlightenment , and if goes unheeded, then one can
really not reach it, and is forced land into a middle
zone for which there can be no exit or cure. The cure of this sickness as Kierkegaard speaks of it in philosophical language, becomes much more
credible when those mystics , having had only
mystical experiences of it. It is quite possible that the irrational invasion can only subsist when the phenomenal mystical opening is closed by the
rational closure of any doubt.

 Very frequently, but most notably, great thinkers like Jung  will describe early experiences of being in a double world, where the content of experience is 

enveloped in its formal signification, but here, the opening becomes a dizzying, electrifying doubt, the kind Descartes opened a formal investigation into, -
setting the stage for a general coagulation. With Jung, it must have been a tremendously fragmentive and emotional abyss apart from the pre set formality of his logical edifice. Perhaps this is what saved him
from the impending danger of madness.

 The experience has occurred to me in an opening, while taking an eternally repeating nature hike, very early in my life,................................


where the cognitive motive was the idea of stopping time. Now I know, that my attempt preceded the
understanding of it in another way, where the idea
became contemporaneous with transcending the limitations which time presents, so as to able to understand the objective of negativing time, in order
to arrive at the experience of absolute imminence.

Once this idea is posited, the sole slowly emerges by bits and pieces, and then one day, it explodes like 

boom, the whole structure presents It’s Self.

Eternity becomes the only reality, through the Sole, he Ultimate Consciousness through which everything
else is filtered. Here, the scientific paradigms is but a
mere shadow, because it’s reductive and part of only an understanding, a closure to the pervading doubt, whose origin, or opening is simply a multiform
perfection Leibniz comes nearest to reveal.

Think of eternity from a singular point of view, where one starts to excercise in his mind the idea of putting
his feet into other souls shoes, starting with those
exhibiting the greatest proximate similarity, but then widening it to inckude more and more types of people. This practice after a while will increase, not
decrease the psychological uncertainty, the
dissociation accompanied by identity diffusion. Here wedges the danger into it, but here is where a young sole’s energy and compulsive need with the practice .
The general framework of the reified Decartian doubt,
bars this at more mature levels. The many form egolessness which can be a sorry outcome here, may simulate one of the best known signs of psychological
illness, and it can dissolve the effort into a negative
fall into one of the categorically pre set symptomaligies. If this stage is not passed through autonomously, then being stuck at this level will close
off the dynamic quest.

The perfect circle needs a perfect closure, via a total understanding of what Leibnitz proved. The mandala
of life does overcome with a perfect knowledge, a
secret knowledge of the enlightened soul. This can for most people arrive only from the idea attained as Buddha would have it, and Christ, and begin to
understand, that enlightenment viewed in this
manner, can only understood in terms of Paradise a Heaven , from which existence is not preferred, when non existence is viewed from such a plateau. But, the
heavenly sphere knows in perfect closure, that this
experience can be intuited here and now, and when he intuitive process grows to a mature state, the Eternal Consciousness begins to somehow take root.
The next step is the realization that this
Consciousness has always been there, and here, within each and every human being. It is where ‘we’ had come from, and where ‘we’ are going, of course
we are not coming and going anywhere, it is only an
illusion that we think we are.

This egoless state is always set to Descartes razor of
a Doubt, even upon completion of the full circle of all
the symbols of all mandalas ever, and there need always be a double self, one that forms of the original mystic union, and the other, of the very
necessary use of the conventional self. We do not
live in the age of wonders any more, where mystics can recluse themselves into a conventional role, qua as mystics, today’s spiritualists need to live a
conventional life making a living and settling into
established roles , in order to be able to live. The doubt, although an illusion, needs to be entertained, but now, it acquires a different level of
understanding. It can stand on its own leg, and
persist despite all claims to the contrary.

You do not have to live millions of lifetimes to acquire
this knowledge, but certainly, most everyone will
have to, unless they set up the practice very early on , and succeede to cross over the doors of perception, as Huxley so formidably made us aware.

No but will certainly look into it, thanks.

tom wrote

I am now and boy am I depressed. Who/What are the nested 7?

The way I interpreted it is that there are only 36-72 believers, God fearing/believing=righteous in God’s eyes, people alive in each generation and their relationship with God keeps this material world in existence. Does the End of Days harken that the number has fallen shy of 36 and God is actively casting judgement on the material Earth as he did on Sodom and Gommorah?

I don’t know … and Google wouldn’t tell me. :laughing:

The number “7” seems kinda special in both the secular world and the spiritual world … why? … I have no idea!

At the casino crap table isn’t rolling a “7” significant? Why did the West choose “7” for the number of days in a week … the Mayans didn’t. :slight_smile:

For some interesting Biblical uses of the number 7 click here … shmoop.com/revelation-apocal … ymbol.html

more emerging memories …

Many years ago a Catholic priest … not a Jesuit :slight_smile: … told me the number “4” represents man and the number “3” represents the Divine.

4=3=7

I just learned that one of the intentions of using the number “7” in Biblical Scriptures means “completion”.

Completion = The Unwind = Omega Point ???

Tom, I think you are over-thinking things. Maybe you should rest.

I’m sure I’ve seen many a movie loosely based on that biblical concept…

What would happen if one of these “Righteous Ones” happened upon another, I wonder. :-k

People are flawed but not hopelessly flawed. They’re allowed to make mistakes. God is there for everyone and anyone.

True belief is a phenomena in and of itself. Most people believe on and off, if ever at all. The Righteous 36-72 must be constant companions of God to never lose Faith. Yes Phyllo, God is accessible to all but most haven’t gone any distance with him based on their taking a leap of Faith. After taking a leap of Faith, one becomes more accessible to God and He communicates more because one pays attention more. One chooses how involved one is to be with God.

tom,

The nested 7 may be the 7 types of souls that come to Earth. Does everyone embody :stuck_out_tongue: one of those types?

Mags,

Supposedly the 36 are too humble to imagine themselves as the 36, but should they realize and run into others who realize…mums the word. :-$

Fortunately, you need not worry about anyone’s faith but your own. You only have control over yourself and your own relationship with God.

K: I haven’t heard of the 36 righteous ones before and being a research type of person, I looked
it up…I can’t go with it as is but it can be rewritten in another way…
what is needed is balance… in this world, finding bad or evil isn’t hard… just open
your eyes and all you see is evil hard at work and turn on the TV and you see large scale
evil hard at work… the story about the 36 righteous people (not necessarily men and
not necessarily Jewish either) is a reminder that evil must be balanced by good and
good must be balanced by evil… think of it as an equation where the two sides
must balance out 1+1 = 2… this is an equation and for the equation to be “true”
it must have balance… you have good = evil and that is an equation…
today in the US, you have an equation… left = right and that equation is
out of balance for society to work correctly you must have balance between the
two… you have freedom and security and you must have balance between the two…
that equation is also unbalanced… and you have the individual and society…
that too is an equation which is unbalanced…I submit that that the balance
that is needed within society has been shorted by the right in their fear driven
attempts at security…the right blames their fear on those who are different…
I wouldn’t be so afraid if “others” were just like me…it “others” would just prayed to
the same god and worshiped the same institutions and money itself… there would be
no need for fear… so thinks the right…the 36 righteous ones are a reminder
that in the face of evil, good still exists… but the good is not just a single
color like white but all kinds of colors and all kinds of shapes and all kinds
of dimensions and in all kinds of beliefs… good and evil is not about what
an object is, but how an object is used…even the idea of good and evil depends
on how good and evil is used…

Kropotkin

Until God calls you to do works, then it’s not so simple.

I don’t know what prompts you to complicate it. It’s always that simple. :confused: