Infinity takes a backseat

When you read this article think about all the possibilities which could have existed in the past two thousand years but didn't. Think of the technological death which occurred (several times, in fact!) due to literalist religions stamping down any new ideas and stringing people up in a noose, tossing them on a bonfire, crucifying them, or pulling them between two horses(or trees) until their bodies fell apart.

It is sobering to see just how far the human mind pushed itself, willingly, testing boundaries of the physical world on paper or animal skins because we had no other way to do so physically. So naturally now that we have the ability to test the physical world the majority of us sit on our asses and play XBox360 numbing ourselves to the infinite possibilities which exist all around.

We need more Archimedes and Einsteins to wake us up.

Idea of Infinity Stretched Back to Third Century B.C.By: Robin Lloyd

Date: 17 February 2009 Time: 05:49 AM ET

CHICAGO - The first mathematical use of the concept of actual infinity has been pushed back some 2,000 years via a new analysis of a tattered page of parchment on which a medieval monk in Constantinople copied the third century B.C. work of the Greek mathematician Archimedes.

Infinity is one of the most fundamental questions in mathematics and still remains an unsolved riddle. For instance, if you add or subtract a number from infinity, the remaining value is still infinity, some Indian philosophers said. Mathematicians today refer to actual infinity as an uncountable set of numbers such as the number of points existing on a line at the same time, while a potential infinity is an endless sequence that unfolds consecutively over time.

The parchment page comes from the 348-page Archimedes Palimpsest, the oldest copy of some of the Greek genius' writings, which were hidden for centuries because a monk partly scraped them off the animal-skin parchment in the 13th century A.D. to clear the pages to print a prayer book. Also, a forger painted pictures over the prayer book hundreds of years after that.

A scholar named Johan Ludvig Heiberg in 1906 studied the written remnants behind the religious words to discover the Palimpsest, finding evidence of Archimedes' systematic use of the concept of infinity in a portion of the document called the Method of Mechanical Theorems. In the past few years, the Palimpsest was re-examined at a far higher level of detail using multispectral imaging and also a hair-thin X-ray scanning technique at Stanford University's Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in California. The scanner can image a million pixels in less than one hour.

With one of the X-ray images, Stanford classicist Reviel Netz made out the edge of a torn page, where Heiberg had figured just one line of text was missing. The X-rays produced images of iron from the ink used on the document.

Netz examined the scan and was able to deduce the presence of previously unseen Greek letters, kappa and alpha, which were likely followed by an iota to spell the Greek word for "and." This led Netz to conclude that two lines were missing, rather than one and to arrive at a new reading of the passage, physicist Uwe Bergmann of the Synchrotron facility told a small group of reporters here Sunday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Scholars are now talking about some new words which are emerging in the reconstruction of the evidence in introduction to the Method, that Archimedes' concept of infinity was rather different from what was previously thought," Bergmann said.

In fact, the new reading reveals that Archimedes was engaged in math that made conceptual use of actual infinity, as Netz describes on the Web site ArchimedesPalimpsest.org. The calculations involved adding infinite numbers of sums, such as the number of triangles inside a prism, as well as the number of lines inside a rectangle. Archimedes tried to argue that these values are equal to each other, making a statement about actual infinity, not just potential infinity, Nets writes.

The Palimpsest resides at the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore.

The Archimedes Palimpsest project forced researchers to come up with a new system to scan large objects, Bergmann said. A commercial-grade X-ray scanning machine might take a year to complete a scan that the Stanford Synchrotron now can complete in half a day, he said.

"It is now taking milliseconds rather than seconds to get each pixel — that has been for us the great novelty," he said.

Gnosis in the News

Ahh Valentinus! How gnostics are rejoicing now!

Some beautiful verses were found. Enjoy, Readers!

World's Earliest Christian Engraving Shows Surprising Pagan Elements

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 30 September 2011 Time: 10:09 AM ET

Researchers have identified what is believed to be the world's earliest surviving Christian inscription, shedding light on an ancient sect that followed the teachings of a second-century philosopher named Valentinus.

Officially called NCE 156, the inscription is written in Greek and is dated to the latter half of the second century, a time when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power.

An inscription is an artifact containing writing that is carved on stone. The only other written Christian remains that survive from that time period are fragments of papyri that quote part of the gospels and are written in ink. Stone inscriptions are more durable than papyri and are easier to display. NCE 156 also doesn't quote the gospels directly; instead, its inscription alludes to Christian beliefs.

"If it is in fact a second-century inscription, as I think it probably is, it is about the earliest Christian material object that we possess," study researcher Gregory Snyder, of Davidson College in North Carolina, told LiveScience.

Snyder, who detailed the finding in the most recent issue of the Journal of Early Christian Studies, believes it to be a funeral epigram, incorporating both Christian and pagan elements. His work caps 50 years of research done by multiple scholars, much of it in Italian. The inscription is in the collection of the Capitoline Museums in Rome.

"Assuming that Professor Snyder is right, it's clearly the earliest identifiable Christian inscription," said Paul McKechnie, a professor of ancient history at Macquarie University in Australia, who has also studied the inscription.

As translated by Snyder, the inscription reads:

To my bath, the brothers of the bridal chamber carry the torches,
[here] in our halls, they hunger for the [true] banquets,
even while praising the Father and glorifying the Son.
There [with the Father and the Son] is the only spring and source of truth.

Details on the provenance of the inscription are sketchy. It was first published in 1953 by Luigi Moretti in the "Bullettino della commissione archeologica comunale di Roma," an Italian archaeological journal published annually.

The only reference to where it was found is a note scribbled on a squeeze (a paper impression) of the inscription, Snyder said. According to that note, it was found in the suburbs of Rome near Tor Fiscale, a medieval tower. In ancient times, the location of the tower would have been near mile four of a roadway called the Via Latina.

How was it dated?

Margherita Guarducci, a well-known Italian epigrapher who passed away in 1999, proposed a second-century date for the inscription more than four decades ago. She argued that the way it was written, with a classical style of Greek letters, was only used in Rome during the first and second centuries.

After that, the letters change; for instance, the letter omega, Ω, changes into something closer to the letter w. The letter Sigma, Σ, changes into a symbol that resembles the letter c.

Snyder essentially added more evidence to Guarducci's theory. He analyzed a 1968 catalog of more than 1,700 inscriptions from Rome called "Inscriptiones graecae urbis Romae." He found 53 cases of Greek inscriptions with classical letterforms.

"Not one case is to be found in which, in the judgment of the [catalog]editors, an inscription with the classical letter forms found in NCE 156 can be securely placed in the mid-third or fourth century," Snyder wrote in his paper.

In addition, Snyder analyzed an inventory of inscriptions from nearby Naples, published in a series of two volumes in the 1990s called "Iscrizioni greche d'Italia." He found only two examples that might date into the third century. "In sum, Guarducci's case for a second-century date for NCE 156 is stronger than ever," he wrote.

McKechnie said that, after reviewing Snyder's work, he agrees with the date. "The first time I read his article I was far from sure, but the second time I read it I was convinced by his argument about the letter shape."

Who was Valentinus?

The author of the inscription likely followed the teachings of a man named Valentinus, an early Christian teacher who would eventually be declared a heretic, Snyder said. The presence of the inscription suggests that a community of his followers may have lived on the Via Latina during the second century.

"We know that Valentinus was a famous Gnostic teacher in the second century (who) lived in Rome for something like 20 years, and was a very sophisticated ... poetic, talented, thinker, speaker, writer."

His teachings are believed to be preserved, to some degree, in the Gospel of Philip, a third-century anthology that was discovered in 1945 in the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. That gospel is a collection of gnostic beliefs, some of which were probably composed in the second century, that are written in a cryptic manner. However, like the inscription, it also refers prominently to a "bridal chamber."

One example, near the end of the gospel, reads in part:

The mysteries of truth are revealed, though in type and image. The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden. It is the Holy in the Holy. The veil at first concealed how God controlled the creation, but when the veil is rent and the things inside are revealed, this house will be left desolate, or rather will be destroyed. And the whole (inferior) godhead will flee from here, but not into the holies of the holies, for it will not be able to mix with the unmixed light and the flawless fullness, but will be under the wings of the cross and under its arms...

(Translation by Wesley Isenberg)

"It's not quite clear what it [the bridal chamber] is, it's explained to some degree, but explained in cryptic terms in the Gospel of Philip, it's a ritual involving freedom and purification and union with the deity," McKechnie said.

Perhaps rather than an actual ritual, the bridal chamber is a metaphor.

"It may be a metaphor for something that happens in death — maybe it's a kind of ritual that happens when people are still alive. That you achieve a new kind of existence or spiritual status based on this kind of wedding with your spiritual ideal counterpart," Snyder said.

"Some groups may have celebrated it as a concrete ritual, others perhaps sawit in metaphorical terms. I like the idea that it is connected with the death of the believer, who has cast off the mortal coil and enjoys a new life in the spirit," he added in a follow-up email.

But there were some important differences between Valentinians and other early Christians. "Valentinians in particular, and gnostics more generally, most of them wouldn't, for example, get martyred," McKechnie said. "They wouldn't think it was wrong or unlawful to do the things that Christian martyrs refused to do, like take an oath in the name of Caesar or offer incense to a statue or that kind of thing."

The reason for their lack of bias has to do with the Valentinians' beliefs about all things physical. "They believed that not only matter and the physical world was evil, but also that matter and the physical world was unimportant," McKechnie said. "Therefore, it was unimportant what you or what your body did in the physical world."

"It's mostly about the world of the mind."

Valentinians were also likely influenced by earlier Greek philosophers such as Plato, Snyder has found, though he doesn't think they would have interpreted the story of the resurrection of Jesus in a literal way.

"It's certainly not the case that they would have considered that to be a physical resurrection," he said. "Christians of this particular variety (who incorporated Plato's philosophy) generally speaking saw the material body as something not so desirable, not so good."

Christian and pagan

When analyzing the inscription, Snyder also noticed some similarities with funeral epigrams composed for non-Christians. In those inscriptions, the wedding imagery is used in a tragic way.

One example, written about 2,100 years ago, reads in part:

I am Theophila, short-lived daughter of Hecateus. The ghosts of the unmarried dead were courting me, a young maiden, for marriage, Hades outstripped the others and seized me, for he desired me, looking upon me as a Persephone more desirable than Persephone. And when he carved the letters on her tombstone, he wept for the girl Theophila from Sinope, her father Hecateus, who composed the wedding torches not for marriage but for Hades...

(Translation by Gregory Snyder)

"Typically, that wedding imagery is tragic," said Snyder. "Here's the promising young person entering into the prime of life, suddenly snatched away, and betrothed, married to Hades."

What the second-century Christian inscription does is turn this convention on its head. "They're playing with that... it's not decline, it's looking forward to a new life."

Snyder said that the mix of Christian and pagan traditions in the inscription is striking. He told LiveScience that he's studied early Christian paintings on the Via Latina that mix biblical themes, such as the story of Samson or the raising of Lazarus, along with figures from classical mythology, like that of Hercules.

"Those kinds of things I find particularly interesting, because they seem to suggest a period of time in which a Christian identity is flexible," Snyder said. "Is it just a simple either/or between pagan and Christian?" he asked. "Or is there really something rather like a spectrum? Or are you really sort of both in certain respects?"

Hearing The Phone Ring

"He didn't believe in anything real. He only believed in what he saw."

I don't know who that message is for I just know that I am supposed to post it here. Someone was being cryptic today and blurted that out when I was on the edge of sleep. If it's for you then I hope it helps you.

Procrastination And Living With Blinders On

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's book The Laughing Jesus talks about 'living lucidly' in chapter ten. I equate this task with removing the blinders and getting up off our spiritual butts. It's very difficult to stay disciplined with the way ordinary life slips in, demanding our immediate attention. The authors had interesting things to say about procrastination concerning gnosis:

"Life is a game of awakening and the way we win is remarkably simple. We live or ordinary life, just as we have always done, but we choose to live consciously. We recognize that even the most seemingly trivial events are opportunities to enjoy the moment and love others. We embrace the stranger who serves us at the local shop with big love, because we no longer see them as just a cashier, we know they are also the mystery made manifest. And when we love others we may help them wake up and become more loving. In this way we can send out ripples of kindness wherever we go.

We wake up by approaching our everyday existence as an ongoing spiritual exercise. Not in some overly serious way, but like a game we enjoy playing. Yet it does also have a serious aspect. Life will naturally present us with the challenges we need to become more conscious, some of which can be hard to face, and the best way to avoid being pushed is to keep moving.

We tend to think that it is when we feel bad that we need to wake up and when we feel good everything is fine as it is. But actually it is often when we are enjoying life that we become most unconscious. When life is bad we are impelled to do something about it and we may take a step forward on our journey of awakening. But when we feel good it is tempting to settle into a comfortable unconsciousness. We need to pay attention to waking up all of the time, not just when we are pushed into it because we felt bad.

Once we understand that the game of life is about waking up and that what we really want is to love this moment, we will cease distracting ourselves with the relentless quest for transitory satisfaction, through accumulating material possessions, acquiring social status and attaining personal power. We will stop numbing the pain of separateness with TV and trivia. Instead we will give our precious attention to the process of awakening. We will stop seeing lucid living as an attractive idea and make it a reality. We will stop procrastinating and go for it."

As I write this my ten year old son is sitting out at the dining room table sobbing his little heart out because he procrastinated all day long on school work and now here it is only a few minutes before Daddy gets home and he swears he's going to be killed. It's always just before Daddy gets home that the kid looks at the clock and freaks out.

I've given him pep talks ten times a day. I've taken away all his toys, electronics privileges, had him write papers concerning procrastinating, and even had him write essays forcing him to give HIMSELF a pep talk to stop procrastinating; listing all the reasons it's not such a good idea and specifically what he loses by doing it. But we still haven't broken through that barrier in his mind.

As the two good authors say, "you have to want to wake up more than you want to stay asleep."

And as I've asked my youngest time and time again, "why are you stopping yourself?"

Children teach us patience in surprising ways. I look at him and at times think, 'why can't he do this?! It's easy! If he gets done then he gets free time. What's the issue? I got done with my school work in a reasonable amount of time when I was a kid. What's the big deal?'

But to him it is a big deal. So I get to watch him overcome this demon and in the process learn more about him and myself. Can I be patient enough to not scream at him every time I see him staring off into space or 'accidentally' dropping his eraser on the floor for the thousandth time? Can I be compassionate enough to let him learn from his mistakes? Can I be strict enough to enforce that no work will carry over to the next day and watch him sit, miserable, at the table until 11pm? It's no fun for me or my husband. We don't get anything out of it. This is a roadblock of our son's making and his life is his own journey. But our journeys sure do intersect an awful lot!! And that's where loving others with Big Love comes in handy. I can give John a big loud kiss on the cheek, hug him tightly, tell him that I love him with all my heart... but afterward I still have to nudge him toward the table to get his school work done.

We're only human

"Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for."

Earl Warren
1891-1974

Keep looking for those 'answers'

Einstein said, "the important thing is to not stop questioning."

But does the Right Answer exist? .... I don't think so. I think it's all subjective to our own mindset and circumstances. In most cases there's going to be someone who feels they were Wrong and the Right person is just a jackass. Or vice versa.

I don't want to be in a coma, metaphysically or physically. Or religiously. But the past few months I've been questioning things that are more mundane and it leaves me truly befuddled how disillusioned we can become (and continue to be!!) just to continue to 'not rock the boat.'

I am speaking of relationships, obviously; one I can't change easily. Like I tell my two stepsons, "you can't change people, you can only nudge them or influence them." I wish I could take my own advice sometimes. I feel like I've got a big fat granite boulder sitting on top of my neck instead of a real cranium with a brain contained therein.

So now the question evolved into, "what am I going to do?" I can't change this person. I can nudge, influence, shout and scream, but at the end of the day nothing will change this person's behavior because they don't see the danger in it.

Anti-Gnostics

A few months ago I found a Christian site devoted to rooting out the 'scourge' that is Gnosticism. Great read! I really enjoyed it. It's always nice to know what ten layers of hell people are wishing on you. Or just how confused they are about gnosis. This was their home: (http://www.intotruth.org/apostasy/NewGnostics.htm) This is the only link I have. It's dead now. The whole site is gone.

I did a search for some of the following quotes from a particularly enlightening article but found pieces of it all over the place. Narrowing it down I discovered that it was part of a sermon called "Understanding the New Gnosticism" by Don Clasen. It is now listed in its entirety on the SermonIndex.net site here: http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=11018 The portion I am quoting below is found about ten paragraphs from the bottom in the full length sermon.

Mr. Clasen's sermon is cringe-worthy. He jumps all over the place between the literal interpretation of holy scripture and what he thinks gnostics believe. You have to be really careful about how you read it or you'll get lost in the maze of his rationale. (I think I found our modern Irenaeus, btw.) He says:

"It's interesting to note that after Adam and Eve ate of the tree, the first thing they noticed was that they were naked and they hid themselves. The implication is that until then they had the glory of God clothing them, the very presence of God. That removal of Himself from them was when they spiritually died, as it ruptured their walk with Him.

But it also had another consequence. They now were stuck with an undue self-consciousness, a consciousness of their own selves. Before this, they were conscious of themselves but the presence of God was an even stronger consciousness. And to this day, people partake of an endless quest to "get back to the Garden". They will take drugs, meditate, dance, chant--do lots of repetitious things, in order to enter into an "altered state of consciousness".

Why? Because they want relief from the tyranny of self-consciousness for a while. Perhaps it's because we instinctively know we're unworthy, and that there's Someone or something out there worth plugging into."

_____________________________________________

Unworthy?!! RELIEF from the TYRANNY of self-consciousness?!! You mean relief from responsibility. That's what this ultimately boils down to. If you don't have to THINK then you can't be held responsible for your sheep-like actions.

That's it. You've convinced me and converted me. I'm throwing all my sins on Jesus and leaving my brain behind. I am 'washed in his blood' and am now sinless. I draw the line at voting Republican, though, just because that's what my church says I should. My ballot is between me and the Lord.

The fact that Mr. Clasen believes gnostics are to be vilified because, "They're always seeking for some newer and deeper revelation of God and His Kingdom" says a bit about what he believes a relationship with God should be like: one sided and boring as hell.

He also says: "Gnostics generally tended then to one of two extremes in dealing with life. Either they became ascetics, in an attempt to starve the flesh to death so to speak. Or they became libertines because since the flesh was evil, it is not part of the "real you" which is spiritual because it's been "enlightened" by Gnostic "revelation".

And that, my dear readers, is a line straight from the infamous Irenaeus himself.

From a masochist to a hedonist? ...Yes. I have to agree with him on this point. It's all about finding a balance. We do tend to veer off to extremes at times. And so do the Literalists. The Franciscan order is quite comfortable with the concept of ritualized self-flagellation and I haven't seen any skeletal looking clergy in quite a while; most are pleasantly plump. Pot/kettle, much?

Picasso's Vision

Pablo Picasso said, "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."

On that I feel I must agree to a certain extent. As a sporadic painter I most often feel driven to pick up a brush when I am at my most sensitive and vulnerable. Most of the time I am not quite sure what I want to express until after it's already out there and on the paper/canvas/board. And as this quote of Picasso's jumped out at me from the tag on a bag of tea this afternoon(Good Earth brand, Black Tea "Tropical Peach" YUM!) it has stayed in my heart the rest of the evening.

As I dug through my files of art I tripped across this old painting and I wanted to share it with you. I think it would be closest to what Picasso is talking about, at least for me personally.

When I was a toddler I drowned in a pool. I lay there on the bottom staring up at the sky. This is what I saw(click on it for a better view):


This watercolor painting/collage on board was done in 2007. I don't have the original any more. Once I was done with it I scanned it and then destroyed the actual painting. I felt free. So here you go. Here's a page out of my 'diary.'

Islamic Words of Wisdom

"What is the best type of Jihad [struggle]?" He answered: "Speaking truth before a tyrannical ruler."

This contradicts the following scriptures in such a stark way that it seems impossible the same person(or group of people) wrote the Qur'an.

1. "Whoever desires a religion other than Islam in the next world he shall be among the losers."
   

2. "One may be negligent toward God but one must be respectful toward Muhammad."
   

Megalomania has no place in gnosis and warmongering prophets are always suspect. Especially when promises of several baker's dozen virgins are dangled in front of a sinful man as if he were in a bakery and not about to blow himself up to fight 'the infidel.' What happened to 'speaking truth'? It has been replaced with totalitarian sparked violence and this is truly distressing. Literalists pitted against literalists. There are no winners here- no matter what sect of religion you profess faith in.

Universal love is invisible, it seems. Like 'magic' ink it disappears on paper and if it's not visible then it can't possible exist. But if it's written on the heart it is eternally visible.

And so seekers of gnosis are left picking piecemeal bits of wisdom from the Qur'an just like any other spiritually inspired text.

Heavy Words of Gnostic Wisdom From Socrates

"There is a doctrine uttered in secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away."

"Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service."