The last essay given, "Finding Dharma," was not particularly poetic and certainly not beautiful. Instead is was simply fact - that chance played a big role in my life and, I'm betting, in everyone's life. And not only chance - the circumstances in this case were timed so precisely as to confound the idea of random chance.
Freud said that there are no accidents - that everything we do and say and everything we don't do and say are determined by an apparent super-intelligence that he labeled the unconscious. But bigger still are the synchronicities in life that must come, at least partially, from "without." This was discovered by Carl Jung, Freud's student and later rival, although he would not say exactly what agency was responsible for this outside influence. He would not say, we might speculate, because it gets too close to the idea of an outside intelligent force that affects our lives. For a scientist who wants to be taken seriously, this is a tricky issue. But that is certainly the most logical conclusion, and a fundamental reason, besides a fundamental disagreement over the centrality of sex, that caused the rivalry between the two psychiatrists. On the one hand we had the atheist who conjured an invisible interior intelligence; on the other, a closet believer who cautiously pointed to an outside, or general, intelligence.
I have to say that my own essay gave me a great deal of hope - I often forget the reality of an outside agency. We are often like the Jews in the desert with Moses, who quickly forgot the miracle of the Red Sea and started to worship the golden calf. We are subject to the same sort of amnesia, but a little reflection from everyone on how their life got to the point where it is should cause astonishment. There is cause and effect, but there is also something else - reminding us that reality is a miracle all and by itself.
Cause and effect; we watched the last of the Matrix movies last night, "Matrix Revolutions," and that was the message, as well as that 'something beyond.' First, it presented what might be the Freudian view, as espoused by a character of east Indian, and probably of Hindu, background. "Each action leads to a reaction, and nothing is without meaning - every decision we make is part of the plan." We are at first led to see that this plan is highly structured and artificial, based on mathematical probabilities created by the high priest of the artificial intelligence that has taken over the world, a being called "the Architect." As this being explained with great arrogance to our hero, Neo, all his (and all most people's) memories and actions were decided by the program - except there had to be an element of "chance" to convince humans that the reality the machines had made for them was true. But with that "chance" came anomalies, and Neo, our savior, was just such an anomaly, and one that would be and had to be destroyed. The probabilities were geared towards this fate. Of course, he was not destroyed, and through a display of Christ- like martyr actions, he was able to force a truce between man and machine. Within the truce, those who wished to be freed from the matrix - the AI program - would be, without hostile consequences. Oddly, and this is another point that we do not have time to discuss here, many would choose to remain in an artificial reality rather than give up what they had within it - that is, they would rather live in a limited fantasy world than accept the truth.
But for others, they were thrown into the real world again - where uncertainty and chance reign. It is here, at the end, where the great wise woman of humanity, The Oracle, lets us in on our, rather than the Architect's, view on life; asked whether she had foreseen the triumph of Neo, she replied, "No. But I believed." She could have said, "I had hoped," and meant the same thing, for here she is admitting to the reality of an outside agency which we do not control and know little about. This is Jung's "synchronous" mind, which somehow involves us with something outside ourselves that is inexplicable. While we do, then, live in a world of cause and effect and Karma, we also have to deal with something from the outside, an "X" factor that can and often does play a central role in our lives. Some call it God, others the Will of Heaven. To believe in it is not only to have hope, but to understand life and truth just that much better - for this power does exist and does - although not at our bidding but by its own - strongly affect our lives. FK
Freud said that there are no accidents - that everything we do and say and everything we don't do and say are determined by an apparent super-intelligence that he labeled the unconscious. But bigger still are the synchronicities in life that must come, at least partially, from "without." This was discovered by Carl Jung, Freud's student and later rival, although he would not say exactly what agency was responsible for this outside influence. He would not say, we might speculate, because it gets too close to the idea of an outside intelligent force that affects our lives. For a scientist who wants to be taken seriously, this is a tricky issue. But that is certainly the most logical conclusion, and a fundamental reason, besides a fundamental disagreement over the centrality of sex, that caused the rivalry between the two psychiatrists. On the one hand we had the atheist who conjured an invisible interior intelligence; on the other, a closet believer who cautiously pointed to an outside, or general, intelligence.
I have to say that my own essay gave me a great deal of hope - I often forget the reality of an outside agency. We are often like the Jews in the desert with Moses, who quickly forgot the miracle of the Red Sea and started to worship the golden calf. We are subject to the same sort of amnesia, but a little reflection from everyone on how their life got to the point where it is should cause astonishment. There is cause and effect, but there is also something else - reminding us that reality is a miracle all and by itself.
Cause and effect; we watched the last of the Matrix movies last night, "Matrix Revolutions," and that was the message, as well as that 'something beyond.' First, it presented what might be the Freudian view, as espoused by a character of east Indian, and probably of Hindu, background. "Each action leads to a reaction, and nothing is without meaning - every decision we make is part of the plan." We are at first led to see that this plan is highly structured and artificial, based on mathematical probabilities created by the high priest of the artificial intelligence that has taken over the world, a being called "the Architect." As this being explained with great arrogance to our hero, Neo, all his (and all most people's) memories and actions were decided by the program - except there had to be an element of "chance" to convince humans that the reality the machines had made for them was true. But with that "chance" came anomalies, and Neo, our savior, was just such an anomaly, and one that would be and had to be destroyed. The probabilities were geared towards this fate. Of course, he was not destroyed, and through a display of Christ- like martyr actions, he was able to force a truce between man and machine. Within the truce, those who wished to be freed from the matrix - the AI program - would be, without hostile consequences. Oddly, and this is another point that we do not have time to discuss here, many would choose to remain in an artificial reality rather than give up what they had within it - that is, they would rather live in a limited fantasy world than accept the truth.
But for others, they were thrown into the real world again - where uncertainty and chance reign. It is here, at the end, where the great wise woman of humanity, The Oracle, lets us in on our, rather than the Architect's, view on life; asked whether she had foreseen the triumph of Neo, she replied, "No. But I believed." She could have said, "I had hoped," and meant the same thing, for here she is admitting to the reality of an outside agency which we do not control and know little about. This is Jung's "synchronous" mind, which somehow involves us with something outside ourselves that is inexplicable. While we do, then, live in a world of cause and effect and Karma, we also have to deal with something from the outside, an "X" factor that can and often does play a central role in our lives. Some call it God, others the Will of Heaven. To believe in it is not only to have hope, but to understand life and truth just that much better - for this power does exist and does - although not at our bidding but by its own - strongly affect our lives. FK
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