Ultimate Reality Asserts Itself
Lately I've been struck by the persistent interest people have in the secret, the mysterious, even the "magical." There's no denying that for many, knowledge need only be labeled "secret" or "arcane" for it to become really fascinating.
If this preoccupation is merely a diversion - say, reading a horoscope now and then - we smile and call it a hobby. But when it approaches the level of compulsion, or begins to actually influence a person's life...the smiles fade.
After all, there's no place for superstition in the modern world. Such blind, compulsive behavior - "faith," we call it - is obviously a vestigial weakness, a form of dependence, and therefore pathetic. Right? Doesn't science rule out this sort of thing? True "stark realists" have no place for reality that isn't, well, visibly stark... Right?
But the hunger remains. And science, despite its pretensions to omniscience, cannot explain the origins of this tendency. Science has "declassified" the soul, debunked the spiritual world, or so we're told. Why then, does the unseen still tug at us? Inexplicably, our souls are unabashed.
We are haunted by dreams of non-empirical reality.
Monday, November 29, 2004
The Real World
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2 comments:
Speaking of the secret and the mysterious, I started reading a book called Mysteries of the Creation by Rabbi Dovid Brown. It's written from an Orthodox Jewish perspective (I think).
From the title page:
"A cosmology derived from Torah, Nevi'im, C'suvim, Mishna, G'morroh, and Midrash"
Another description:
A look at the mysteries of our complex universe, using scientific discoveries to illuminate the words of the Holy Scriptures. Studies the physical world, and its more esoteric concepts, like the seven "restructurings" of the world and the nature of the Messianic era.
To disconbobulate:
Torah - Five books of Moses
Nevi'im - The Prophets
C'suvim - The Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, etc. I'm used to seeing it spelled Ketuvim)
Mishna - The basic text of the Talmud
G'morroh - Synonomous with Talmud, the main composition of the Oral Law
Midrash - Generally works that expound various books of the Torah
It's been an interesting read. The author goes into some things that could come from Kabbalistic thinking, but he's not an expert in that area, and makes that known.
One thing he gets into is that Torah could have many layers of truth and meaning. There's the plain meaning of the text, but as you get deeper into it, there are hidden meanings and other mysteries to be found.
I read it, scratch my head, and go, "Huh?"
Completely agree with you when you say "knowledge need only be labeled "secret" or "arcane" for it to become really fascinating." I have seen this happen so many times.
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