Robert wrote:brokenhead wrote:I think the point of most exercise is trying to attain something you cannot, that is, having a goal that is beyond your reach and trying repeatedly to attain it.
Hmm, that sounds a little fishy to me. Isn't that a definition of faith in something purely based on the ego? Where the actual object of your faith's direction is secondary (a God, a woman, a machine, a thing, whatever)?
brokenhead wrote:How can one apprehend something that does not exists, and yet does not not exist?
The same way you can or can't apprehend how anything has ultimate existence.
Not fishy at all.
The totality is not something one can apprehend. You cannot perceive it directly, and you cannot form a concept of it because if you do, it must be at the expense of some other concept, which the totality would logically include, so therefore your concept of it must always logically be lacking, i.e., partial and therefore faulty.
This does not prevent you from trying, and the trying produces results. This is like exercise, physical training, as I tried to point out. A miler may train with a three-minute mile as his goal, but he will not achieve it. Yet the training makes him stronger and capable of producing his personal best result. It is not illogical to strive for what is beyond your grasp, as that may serve to lengthen your reach.
But more to the point, suppose I were to divide the totality in half. Each half would not be the totality, yet would be equally inapprehensible, as neither half could be perceived, nor could a conception be formed of either half.
Here the Forum Gods may say it is impossible to divide the totality in half. This would of course be nonsense. The Totality is not a thing, as it does not exist nor does it not. While not a thing, these philosophers have seen fit to assign it a definition: it is defined to be utterly everything. I am merely defining two equally non-things - let us call them Pretotality1 and Pretotality2 - that may be considered sets, the union of which is the Totality. For the union to be infinite, at least one of P1 and P2 must also be infinite. Logically, they both could be.
The question is begged: Do we now have two Gods?
The answer lies in trying to keep thinks logically consistent. The only way I can see to do this is to dispense with the notion that the Totality and God are one and the same.
As soon as God first created, he created that which was not God and imbued the Creation at his discretion.
Let Pretotality2 (P2) be a photon. Pretotality1 (P1) is no longer the Totality, but in what way is it different? It is equally infinite, equally inapprehensible (or more precisely, incomprehensible because it is all-comprehensive). Yet if one insists on equating the Totality with God, this P1 cannot be God because, and
only because, it
lacks a single photon.
To me, it is sloppy reasoning that leads one to conclude God and the Totality are one and the same. The reasoning is that one cannot come up with a conception of God, and one cannot come up with a conception of the Totality. Therefore, one is tempted to equate them.
But if we take our P1 and P2 both to be infinite, what is to stop us from identifying P1 with God and P2 with that which is not God? Such as to be able to view the Totality as consisting of that which is God and that which
God has created to be not God?
If we do this, immediately the question arises as to the nature of our division. How have we decided what constitutes P1 and P2?
The answer is we cannot. But we need not. We need not know what God is to know what he is not. Our lives then become the exercise mentioned above, a constant striving with a goal in mind, a striving which may be for something always out of our reach but not our sights, a striving which makes us ever stronger.