Monday 31 December 2007

Pic of the day: The people who hang out at OC are called raccoons, or (in composite words) just coon. They are sexy and glow in the dark. But you may need coon-vision to see that. ^^

One year, One Cosmos

Actually I have been reading One Cosmos for more than a year, but this is my first full year of reading it religiously. Pun intended. Despite the long forays into politics, Godwin is basically a minor "vehicle of grace" to use an expression he favors, albeit not about himself.

The vehicles of grace are (possibly a subset of) people who have found the "apertures" in life through which the higher reality seeps into our own. The cracks in the cosmic egg where the light gets in. While the axial religions – the classic world religions – have elaborate procedures for achieving this, it also happens "wildly" with some people. They are living their more or less ordinary lives – usually less, it seems to me – and then something happens, and something from beyond rushes into their life. And it starts seeping out of them and into the world around them. People are either put off or drawn to this strange light, but it is hard to stay neutral and ignore it. Those who hang around and don't run for the hills, start to change as well. Some of them may even start to shine with their own light from within (or above, which is the same).

Godwin is hardly shining so brightly that people fall down and worship (or physically try to stone him). But there is definitely a glimmer of light there. I've seen it before and recognize it. The thing is, and Godwin understands this at least even if some others don't: I don't need to agree with him to benefit from his work. This may sound strange, but it is not. Agreement happens on a lower level than the transmission of grace.

What do I mean by level? Well, consider me and my sims. The sims exist on a lower level of reality. They are a bit real, but not very much compared to me. They have an existence and live in a reasonably consistent world, where they act out their small personalities. But they and their world are really just an imperfect reflection of a more real world, in which we live. When I play The Sims 2 and make stories about them, I project into them much which isn't really there, but which my reader and I will both understand because it is true in our world. To the sims, if they were able to think, it would not be literally true. There is a lot of meaning that exists in a higher reality but can only be inferred in a lower. Likewise is our world not the highest world there is. We too are conditional beings, very transient. Life is short, but truth and beauty and virtue are far more lasting. It is on a higher level that grace is conveyed.

Another way of saying it is that you will never know the meaning of a poem by analyzing the chemical composition of the ink with which it was written. Whatever you can say about the ink may well be true, while the poem on the other hand may be pure imagination. And yet the poem is relevant, while your ink analysis is not. (Though there will certainly be experts willing to ponder it, if the poem is famous enough.) Likewise a dream can be deeply meaningful even though it is obviously not true. If you have electrodes on your head and they capture the brain activity during that dream, they will be factually exact, but they will not capture the dream. In the same way, mere agreement or disagreement cannot capture the grace of someone whose cosmic egg is cracked. Perhaps you need to be a bit cracked up yourself for that?

In any case, I have enjoyed the daily transmissions. It is a cheap way to replenish the soul. Sometimes there is too much American politics, which is like strong liquor to me: It may be intoxicating as first but in quantity it becomes just toxic. But when there is not too much of that, I enjoy my stay. I notice that I grow slowly more conservative over time, admittedly, but I don't think that is a bad thing. Rather, isn't that a natural part of growing up? You realize that the world is ... not an evil place, but a place with much stupidity. The longer you live, the less you believe that the state can use your money more wisely than you can, or that detailed legislation will be more moral than your own heart. Of course, if you don't grow wiser and more moral over time, I suppose this might not apply. But one way to grow wiser and more moral over time is to keep good company, and I intend to continue doing that for the foreseeable future.