Replying to LO26583 --
Dear Organlearners
In my previous reply to Leo Minnigh <l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl > I wrote:
. As for myself, if I cannot imagine initially what has
. to emerge, I seldom can observe the emergence later
. happening. Thus I have to rely heavily on my intuition
. what ought to emerge so as to imagine it first.
In this contribution I want to explore the role which religion plays on
learning. It will be a difficult because I do not want to defend or
criticize any particular religion, although my exploring will concern a
particular religion. I will merely try to express as far as possible only
my own pondering, although I have to make observations too. I do not imply
any judgement by such observations.
The second of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) of the God of Israel says
two things. Firstly that believers must not create images (it is not clear
whether material and/or abstract) and secondly that believers must not
worship them. It is as if two separate things are commanded. (The original
Hebrew does not have punctuation to help us to decide.) Through the years
I have encountered people who actually tried to avoid imagination or
physical works of art as being against the will of God as is revealed in
the 2nd Commandment. These people followed a literal interpretation of the
Bible and thus tried to be consistent to such an interpretation.
However, when the Bible tells us that the First Person of the Triune
Godhead may be thought of as the Father, is this not imagination? I simply
accept God as Triune, three distinct Personalities in one God. The
associativity pattern X*Y*Z of wholeness helped me immensely o accept this
Trinity.) Does the 2nd commandment say that I must not imagine, or does it
say that I must not worship my imaginations? I think it says the latter,
whether my imaginations stay abstract or be put into material form.
Let us make the problem even more difficult. Many women have suffered
through men, especially their fathers. Thus it becomes very difficult for
them to imagine God as the Father where the Father signifies all the good
qualities of an earthly father like love, compassion, security and
righteousness. They would rather imagine the First Person as the Mother
because from their mothers they experienced all these good qualities of a
parent. Should they now suggest this image of the Mother to men, it
usually cause extreme discomfort among them, especially because it seems
to be sacrilege since the Bible writes consistently from Genesis to
Revelations of the First Person as the Father!
But we have to keep in mind that during the whole history of the Bible,
from book to book, it was written in a patriarchal organised society. Men
were heading and managing all organisations from as small as families to
as large as nations, not only in Israel and Palestine, but also in much of
the rest known world. Women heading and managing an organisation were a
most rare exception. Even today women are a minority in the management
teams of organisations all over the world. The Bible writers used the
image of the father to tell that the First Person as the Farther manages
all of Creation because the Bible readers experienced their fathers as
managers too. The First Person in God Triune is the Senior Manager.
Do the managers of our present organisations have those qualities which
The Bible characterises as qualities of the Father like love, compassion,
security and justness? Is it possible that can we imagine the First Person
as the Senior Manager of all Creation and thus understand the First
Person? Sadly, I do not think so. We will be better off by imagining the
First Person as Father or Mother because we have relatively far more
earthly fathers and mothers who love their children unconditionally than
senior executives loving their employees in the same manner.
But what about the issue of imagining the First Person as the Mother
rather than as the Father? The 2nd Commandment tells me that I must not
worship any particular image. Should I experience discomfort with the
Mother rather than the Father as image, is it not because I am worshipping
the image "father" rather than First Person? As for me, it is partly the
case. However, there is something else which also causes my discomfort. Is
it not possible to imagine the Third Person in God Triune, better known as
the Holy Spirit, as the Mother because of the personal qualities of the
Holy Spirit? Having both the First and Third Persons as the Mother will
not do. Furthermore, I do not want to be part of endless arguments based
on LEM (Law of Excluded Middle) which are the best image, Father or
Mother.
For me the dilemma would be resolved by imagining the First Person as the
Parent, Father or Mother. More of us have at least one parent, father or
mother, who embodies the qualities of the First Person like love,
compassion, security and justness than having only a father with these
qualities. Were it not for my dear wife as the mother of our children,
they would have it too difficult with me as the father parent. She as the
mother brought harmony where I lacked it. It is a fact for me which I
cannot sidestep that I have to use my past sensory inputs and the
experiences derived from them in my imaginations. Both my own parents,
humans as they are, afforded me wonderful experiences as parents caring
with love for me.
Consequently, should it be the same with other people, where else will
they gain better experiences of the qualities of the First Person than
from their parents caring with love for them. Thus they will use these
experiences to imagine the First Person as the Parent, Father or Mother.
Their parents need not to be religious persons to love unconditionally,
i.e. religion cannot be a condition for unconditional love. Parenthood is
something which goes wider in creation than humans. For example, observe
how fine some animals like mammals, birds and fish act like parents.
Sometimes the male care for the offspring, sometimes the female do so and
sometimes both do it. This parenthood beyond the human species is for me
personally a profound witness to the First Person in God-Creator. In some
fish species like the cichlids of the rift valley lakes of Africa, the
beautiful mothers are incredible examples of parenthood. In other fish
species like the loricads of South America rivers, the ugly fathers are
incredible examples of parenthood. Sometimes both parents like in the
discus species of the Amazon river both parents will share the parenthood.
Sometimes the child will have foster parents like an uncle/aunt, or a
grandfather/grandmother or even no relatives at all. Even in the animal
world foster parenthood occur. Yet in all these cases the foster parents
will act like the actual parents, affording the child the necessary
experiences of the qualities of the First Person. In my opinion teachers,
men and women, ought to play as parental role models. Their job is not
only to let the children learn, but especially to let the children
experience that one parent can be substituted by another. My admiration
for those teachers acting as substituting parents, manifesting the
qualities of the First Person, has no bounds. Sadly, in a secular society
teachers are often prevented from acting as substituting parents and
forced to become information mongers.
When I say that for me it is necessary to use my intuition and imagine an
emergence so as to prepare me for observing it when it happens, is this
not self a kind of worship? Is it not putting mind above matter and thus
worshipping the mind with its power of imagination? Furthermore, should I
enforce what applies freely to me on other people too by claiming that all
people have to imagine first so as to prepare themselves for observation,
is this not worshipping myself?
Yet God says in many ways that God is not physical, but spiritual. The
most powerful way is when God articulate God Self as Love-Agape.
Love-Agape is spiritual, even though making use of physical means so as to
get the Message through. (Again the associativity pattern of wholeness --
God*matter*souls.) So how can I prepare myself to emerge into a friendship
with God other than first imagining such a friendship? I think that the
answer to this question is to think of imagination as a major part of the
divine within us. For me imagination is to manifest the divine rather than
the demonial -- to manifest the Breath of God as is told in Job.
I think that anyone with a vivid imagination is a blessed person. I
further think that any artist who can fire vivid imaginations in other
people is even more a blessed person. How can we speak of God in terms of
metaphors or parables without imagination? Lastly, I think it is
impossible to observe God-Creator in Creation without first imagining God.
I know it sounds silly because it is so easy to stick to one's
imaginations rather than to proceeds to observations. But I cannot deny my
too many experiences that imagination is requisite to observe most, if not
all creativity, whether emergent or digestive.
In fact, it is impossible for me to deny that imagination play even the
minutest role in observing creativity. For example, I have discovered
empirically that LEP bridges the material and mental worlds. In my work on
soils I had to imagine often the chromatographic behaviour of soils in
separating different ions as a result of the flowing of water setting up
entropy production. Thus, when I obtained similar chromatographic data in
some specific mental enterprise, I could not help to observe the
chromatographic effect among minds. Also, I have discovered the 7Es after
having imagined that there has to be a second bridge between the material
and the mental worlds. I searched for that bridge and eventually it
emerged by discovering it phenomenologically.
That is why I think that the 2nd Commandment has been given to us -- to
serve with our imagination and creativity the Creator as the Creator Self
serves us with Godly creativity which baffles the mind. As soon as we
begin to serve ourselves with our imagination and creativity, whether as
individuals or as organisations, we set on a path in which it becomes
increasingly difficult to manifest authentically the qualities of the
First Person like love, compassion, security and justness. It is easy to
love, to be passionate, to secure and to be just to myself because of the
reversibility and reflexivity so common to equilibria.
However, these qualities are irreversible and transitive rather than
reversible and reflexive. It taxes my free energy for the 7Es far more to
love others than to love myself, to care for others than to care for
myself and to seek for the coherency in others than in myself. It drives
me to the edges of chaos where ordinate bifurcations happen and back again
to the valleys of equilibrium where digestion happen. I have to dance
endlessly LEP on LEC so as to serve others with my creativity. I have to
keep on imagining new perspectives for each of the 7Es so as to observe
creativity within me and in the world around me.
Dear fellow learners, do not take the medicine too seriously. I have given
my fishes a dose of mebendazole (an anthelmic) to get rid of a persisting
attack of some protozoan species. I live very close to a very dirty river,
heavily polluted by chemicals and microbes, causing infection which the
mind cannot imagine. I made a wrong calculation and overdosed them. For
the past 72 hours they are fighting for their lives to get rid of the
poisoning effect. I am to blame for their ordeal because I have overdone
the medicine by acting on the advice of others. Perhaps I have killed the
resistant protozoans, but at what prize? When will I learn to act more
moderately, to avoid pushing other living organisms to the edge of chaos?
Should you find this contribution too pushing, expel it from you mind
because I do not want you to fight for your spiritual survival. Your
spiritual welfare is far more worth than the most costly of fish species.
You are the prime images of God-Creator, God's ultimata gift to Creation.
When human babies becomes murders, thieves and fornicators, it is our
problem and not God's. God gives them unconditional love, but it is us who
take it away with all our "medicinal recipes for spiritual health". I am
not a medicine man. I am merely someone who want you to discover in terms
of my articulations what it is to become human. If you find my
articulations to be bad medicine, throw it away as soon as possible
because bad medicine is poison which kills.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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