Quotes: System is thought's way of orienting itself. Facts are largely useless until reason can fit them into their correct contexts (historical, logical, psychological, or causal ones). All rational thinking is based on principles and systems. Every thinking man has made his own system, whether he knows it or not. Systems afford a correct apprehension of ground and consequence of thinking, as well as of cause and effect of objective realities. The quality of the system shows the individual's level of development, his ability of judgement, and his knowledge of facts. Most people's systems are the belief systems of emotional thinking which no facts can upset. Thereby the individual has reached his point of maturity, the limit of his receptivity, being captive in the prison of his own thoughts. Ignorance about existence is so great that the dogmatic systems of theology, the speculative systems of philosophy, and the primitive hypothesis systems of science have all been accepted as satisfactory explanations.
This is because knowledge, as Platon maintained, is remembrance anew. Everything which we are able immediately to grasp, comprehend, understand, we have assimilated in previous incarnations. Also qualities and abilities once acquired remain latently, until they are given opportunities to develop in some new incarnation. Understanding of the old remains as well as the turn for skills. One of many examples of this is the genius, an otherwise incomprehensible phenomenon. Belief is absolute, unreasonable emotional conviction, unamenable to correction or reason. Everybody has his petty beliefs about almost any absurdity, and this is because man is unable to truly know anything but definitively established facts in the visible world. In contrast, assumption is preliminary, valid only until one has come to know, is amenable to rational arguments, and desires correction. Authorities there may well be in all domains of life, but their assumptions do not amount to any final instance for common sense, which, however different for each of us, is still the highest sense and that which everybody ought to strive to develop. Existence is a trinity of three equivalent aspects: matter, motion, and consciousness. None of these three can exist without the other two. All matter is in motion and has consciousness. Matter is composed of primordial atoms, which Pythagoras called monads, the smallest possible parts of primordial matter and the smallest firm points for individual consciousness. The original cause of motion is the dynamic energy of primordial matter. To begin with, consciousness in the primordial atoms is potential (unconscious), is gradually awakened in the process of manifestation, becoming actualized passive consciousness, and subsequently becomes increasingly more active in ever higher worlds of ever higher natural kingdoms. Pythagoras realized that the Greeks had the prerequisites for comprehending objective reality, for scientific method, and for systematic thinking. Cultivating the consciousness aspect, as the Orientals do, before the foundation for understanding material reality has been laid, results in subjectivism and in a life of unbridled imagination. It is to Pythagoras we owe most of our fundamental reality concepts, which today's conceptual analysts are so busy trying to discard, thereby making conception of reality definitely impossible. Pythagoras, with his doctrine of monads, and Demokritos, with his exoteric atomic theory, can be considered the first two scientists in the Western sense of the word. They realized that the matter aspect is the necessary basis of a scientific approach. Without this basis there will be no accuracy in exploring the nature of things and their relationships. There are no controllable limits to individual consciousness, but it has a tendency to drown in the ocean of consciousness. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig Dickson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Debian-User" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 5:02 PM Subject: Re: knowledge -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
