From: pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey)
Subject: Re: Witches and death
Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'.
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 07:04:32 GMT

Just to set the tone, I'm not trying to attack you, I'm only trying to
bring ideas out. I may sound offensive, but that is not my intent. My
intent is only to learn.

In article <BsuasB2w165w@hogbbs.scol.pa.us> 
wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman) writes:
>From my own experience with traumatic events, near death experiences
>(nothing so glamourous as those reported in the books), astral
>projection, and ritual/ecstatic confrontations with death, I conclude
>the following...

Have you read E. Kubla Ross's On Death and Dying? Have you read the
Tibetian Book of the Dead, or other Books of the Dead?

>Personal death is a blissful flowing into the "I Am", into an absolute
>conciousness without time and without distinctions. Ones energy is
>reabsorbed completely into the "Mother", and returns to a state of
>union, perfect knowledge, and timeless joy.

Out of the field of opposites and into the transcendent? Separation at
birth, re-unification at death? Unity -> Diversity -> Unity ?

>Ordinary re-incarnation may or may not occur-- I have no certain
>evidence of it. There are, however, at least three possible
>"immortalities", as I call them; these "immortalities" are ideas about
>death that I have drawn from my meditations and visions on the subject:
>Genetic immortality, in which the selfhood continues through sexual
>reproduction. I celebrate this through the worship of children.

The dance of the dna?

>Memetic immortality, in which the selfhood continues through the
>transmission of stored, abstracted ideas and knowledge and experiences.
>I celebrate this through the worship of ancestors.

The dance of the story?

>Selfhood immortality, very rare, in which the personal selfhood awakens,
>that is, "acheives enlightenment" (Which I as a pagan call 'wisdom'),
>and becomes more or less free of the body, and of time, becoming
>_something_ like what we colloquially call a "God", a higher level of
>intelligence, conciousness, and selfhood. I celebrate this through my
>personal practice of 'spiritual' discipline.

The dance of the dance?
But, *IF* the transcendent is transcendent of knowledge, what is it that
an enlightened person "sees"? And enlightenment is usually the ticket
out of town, you vanish in a puff of light. But buddha came back to play
with the children, why? Is there value in the short human life? Are you
familiar with the terms feed the fire and quench the fire?

>I could go on, but these are only my personal views; why inflict them on
>others?

Memetic immortality?

>To people, of course. Just like my thoughts on this may be useless to
>you, causing you to reject them. If enough people reject them, they die,
>as ideas, especially after my own biological death.

I won't reject them, but most likely I will not read exactly what you
write. See what I'm saying? I reflect what you say into my own reality.
I am not you, I am that I am. I see the world differently than you do.
But, that is not bad, is it?

>Yep, that's what you get-- a religion that is fitted to it's followers
>through the process of supply and demand.
>I look at christianity, and I see a lowest common denominator religion
>that cruelly, through a process of survival of the fittest, gutted
>Yeshuah's best ideas, and imposed a slaveish mindset, by force, on it's
>followers.

Agreed.

>Of course, the imperial greek paganism wasn't _that_ much different.

Oh, I dunno. There's some interesting stuff in Greece. The Romans on the
other hand were mostly warrior brutes. And we emulate the Romans in
Western culture, not the Greeks. Even worse, we emulate Apollo and scoff
at Bacchus as the unemployed artist, the rebel without a cause.

>I expect this thing we call modern paganism to suffer exactly the same
>fate. When I compare 80's and 90's paganism with sixties and seventies
>paganism, already much has been lost, and already the lowest common
>denominator rears it's ugly head, imposing a ethic-default doctrine of
>"Do the right thing", or the oxymoronic "An ye harm none, do what ye
>will", on all of us collectively.

Cycles come and go I suppose. Heads go down like the sun. If it's any
consolation, I doubt modern paganism can suffer the same fate as
Christianity. There is only room for one "common denominator" or
mass-market product and that slot is occupied by Christianity which will
continue to evolve to better fit its niche. After all, Christianity
represents the combination of the scriptures of Judaism, the light and
dark dualism of Persia and the Lord of the Underworld of Greco/Roma.
Christianity was the "modern paganism" of its time. I suspect "convert
or die" was a fairly effective marketing technique.

>The more it happens, the less willing I am to call myself 'pagan'. But
>that's my problem, not yours. if you are happy with your paganism, and
>seek nothing more, fine.

Well, to tell you the truth, I don't call myself any "ism". I am that I
am. I learn from all dogmas and reflect into the reality of myself. I am
not constrained by what anyone else thinks I should be.

>I want to see it be a high quality product. So sue me.

That's really the only market niche available to non-Christian products.

>I have no interest in unity. Unity and rigor are not synonyms. I could
>care less about what you or other's believe, and have no desire or even
>the vaguest curiosity about 'unifying' your belief system.

OK, that's cool, but not what I meant by Unity. I meant, "Can we just
get along?" That is Unity of Diversity, where diversity isn't a crime.

>What more do I desire? I desire simply that we talk about important
>things; life, death, sex, wisdom, community, replicability, survival,
>raw experience, on and on... Things all pagans share, whatever their
>mythology.

So, talk, um, I mean write. Post, post, post!

>"Modern" philosophies would, for instance, take the knowledge gathered
>by the modern sciences into account, among other things...

OK, but a bit tricky. Science is science. Certainly science can be a
guide, but how far can you get on strict true/false reductionism?

>"Convincing" means consistent, rigorous, without loose ends, internally
>coherent, like any good argument or thesis.

Not all that easy to do in science, but in religion?

>Through the synthesis of new experiences and explanations into the
>still-valuable elements of earlier philosophies.
>It's not enough to reclaim the old-- the old has to be integrated into
>the new, if it's to be relevant to our life here on this planet.

Agreed. It is the duty of the young to absorb the way the dance used to
be done from the sources of the way the dance used to be done, and to
recreate, to reflect into their reality, to keep the cycles alive. Once
something becomes stagnant and unchanging, it is dead. So, one of my
dogmas: Learn from dogma, but please do not become dogmatic.
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