An Apology from God? https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/t34863 Runboard| An Apology from God? en-us Fri, 29 Mar 2024 15:08:18 +0000 Fri, 29 Mar 2024 15:08:18 +0000 https://www.runboard.com/ rssfeeds_managingeditor@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds managing editor) rssfeeds_webmaster@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds webmaster) akBBS 60 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156450,from=rss#post156450https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156450,from=rss#post156450I'm more optimistic. Obviously the internet mainlines on idiotic egocentric waffle and pornography. People who never had voices in their lives before are suddenly able to be read everywhere. This may be a recipe for much mediocrity but over time things tend to level out and I see more opportunity than has ever existed before for new voices to be heard. Of course nobody will come to know those voices unless writers make their points in a clear and interesting way. If I search for Tarkovsky on Google I will be directed to a million university style theses that couldn't lose me quicker than if they'd been written in Russian. At the other end is the absurd oversimplification of films as either being cool or sucking. This site is a good example of an exception. I'm sure there are many others. In time I suspect most people who surf the internet looking for something to take them on a journey of some kind (and even pornography is a journey) will find themselves infinitely more drawn to those sites which offer something which makes them feel something or realise something about the nature of their lives. One of the prime urges of humanity (right up there with sex) is the search for meaning. Sometimes it is easier for modern man, associating so much religion with backsliding into idiocy, to fall into the trap of seeing de Sade as a prophet and the saints as clowns. But we know that the path of hedonism and satiety leads to a kind of ennui. Reading the musings of someone with nothing to say (and it's possible I might fall into that category for many reading this) is boring. I do believe there is a sea of banality in the cinema but I believe this has nothing to do with the opening up of cinema to anyone with a camcorder. We won't ever see the like of Bergman, Fellini, Tarkovsky and their like again but I think we have some very interesting film-makers at work and finding audiences. Where the banality is most apparant is in the way so much of popular cinema has been boiled down to a recipe. The DVD revolution has made a huge difference to the importance of those big Hollywood movies though. More and more films are being made available. The internet has made it possible to make work available internationally. And, of course, we have the ability to talk to each other now. If you want to tell a few hundred people about a magnificent film that you think everyone needs to see you can post the information on numerous message boards and reach a huge audience who might, otherwise, never have heard of it. The ones impressed by the authority of your advice might seek the film out and, if moved by it, pass on the information. Ten years ago the distribution and publicising of the film existed only in the hands of a small number of publicists and critics. Now everyone has the option of guiding opinion. It will take a while. The internet as an arena for discussion is still sniffed at by the over 25's. And yet the under 25's are a lot more open to seeing and appreciating the great works of the cinema than pessimists suppose. Kids who you might think would stop at Dude, Where's My Car discover Bergman and Fellini and find a world they never look back from. As for God and divinity. It's a bad time for both. When mass murderers claim a hotline to God and fundamentalists of all faiths try to impede human progress it's hard to wrestle God and divinity away from purely negative interpretation. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Jago Turner)Wed, 11 May 2005 21:11:31 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156449,from=rss#post156449https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156449,from=rss#post156449Jago, I think your comments are a helpful corrective to some of the wooley minded speculation on spirituality and the downfall of humanity that it is tempting for one to get trapped within. Humanity has not been one downward march of spiritual detereoration and deprevation (although it may sometimes seem that way). Our societies may be ruled by cowards and ass-lickers, the population may be hooked on the morphine of consumerism and childlike banality, our environment may be choking under the fumes of our recklessness, but, and an important but, humankind has never in recorded history lived in harmony with nature, or been absorbed in spiritual and moral contemplation. Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev is not a nostalgic reminiscence on the quietude of medieval life, but on the harshness of circumstances and the face of evil and greed which an exhalted spirituality has to face. There is Janus face to our modernity. What may constitute the impending crisis, is not that of the wickness of humanity but its sublimation, and the emancipatory power of capital and the industrial revolution. Just as the word lost its power with the coming of mass-literacy, so poetry died, so the divine lost its power with mass-divinty in the freeing of the slaves and the disintegration of feudalism, and ultimately with the release of the working class from the strictures of middle class morality. What does all this mean? That the social situation of high modernity is a confused one. Those linguistic hurdles required to reach a spiritual dialogue are now more illusory than ever, why else look to film rather than to poetry, the Bible, Koran etc..? In the film Uzak, the protagonist switches off Stalker and puts on a tape of pornography. The interchangeability is a beacon of the fact that film is primed for its death. The very mechanisms of mass reproduction, lowering costs in digital technology, the internet etc. are the very mechanisms that likewise have equally the ability to debase everything that filmmakers like the Pearses and myself are trying to do. The erosion of elitism and the artistic, moral class has led to an explosion of filmmaking of dubious worth. The remaining great auteurs are now beseiged by a sea of banality coming from the digital revolution. This is why I also caution against believing that the internet will cure our woes or that online communities have hope. The very agent that allows this forum is the same agent that renders the talk of god, divinty, spirituality itself rather quaint. The options presented by this conundrum are stark: return to a state of ignorance (impossible), re-assert the power of the word/image via an impenetrable mysticism and denunciation of the agreed terms (this was Heidegger's and now Sokurov's tactic), retreat inwards with a self-affirmatory stance, or, the most tempting option, forget about all the above issues and plough ahead regardless - in a manner unchanged from all the history of ascetics: past, present and future. I wish I could devise any easy way to live in this world, one in which the means that allow me to move beyond serfdom or life as a petty bourgeoise, would not be the very trends that deny and collapse the aspiration to be able to concieve the absolute and communicate it. I have said to much. Unhappy compromise is the future. nondisclosed_email@example.com (NPCoombs)Wed, 11 May 2005 18:38:54 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156448,from=rss#post156448https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156448,from=rss#post156448Humanity is not adult. It is still adolescent. Adolescents are ill treated in that we somehow expect a child to be a child one day and then slip into a cocoon and emerge as fully adult. Some of the problems of the world are caused by unfinished technological advance. probably most are caused by the cruelties of the natural world. Many more problems emerge from the chauvenism implicit within various faiths. I remember my own adolescence and how I found some solace through all the terror and frustration by losing myself in some of the things that had comforted me as a child. To some extent I think this is what we do when, trapped in a half way world, we meditate on nature. It helps us even though we know we can't return to living as though we were just a part of it. From the bronze age on we've been marching, often painfully, to a future we don't yet have the capacity to fully imagine. And yet we must remain optimistic and create a world in which we are all fed and all have health care and all have homes and the option of security. At the moment we have lost extended families and tribes without having found a social structure that replaces these profound needs. I think internet communities provide a step towards a different kind of social condition through which we might find a clearer spiritual life without having to clutch on to medieval belief systems. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Jago Turner)Tue, 10 May 2005 21:30:36 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156447,from=rss#post156447https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156447,from=rss#post156447The posting that preceded the one above (which Matthew Dickinson is quoting from) was written by Matthew J and was accidentally deleted. Sorry! Gregory and Maria Pearsenondisclosed_email@example.com (questers)Thu, 30 Oct 2003 08:39:01 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156446,from=rss#post156446https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156446,from=rss#post156446quote: The reason why we are the way today is that the one-sided cultivation of the frontal brain which leads to the want of gross material things only is the equivalent of telling God, "Naff off, wer'e going to do it our way". Had this only been two centuries ago you would not likely be thinking of the mind or soul or spirit as housed physically as the brain inside the skull of humans. You wouldn't have this knowledge about "frontal brains." Had this been only ten years ago we could not be having this protracted conversation in this way. Neither of us may not even know where the other lives. quote:This is aptly represented in the story of Adam and Eve, which led to the great fall of man. Tasting from the tree of knowledge. But this doen't work, hence man's numerous failed and irritating social systems,social engineering and customs. Religion as much as everything else has suffered a crushing blow by being directed by the intellect. This is not to say technology is bad, it is that the creation of it does not seem to be for the betterment of man. These ancient creation myths and stories were part and parcel of the culture of the birth of civilization. Without agriculture and the aggregating of large masses of people into larger and larger communities, villages, city-states, empires our entire religious worldview would be entirely primitive, that of European and Middle Eastern hunter-gatherers. Stone age people. How far back do we go? When do we draw the line for when there is too much technological and intellectual exploration? If it is the material possessions, technology, overpopulation, medicine, science, and so forth that is at the heart of our spiritual problems should we not return to being tribal, nomadic hunters? I mean, was it the renaissance which screwed things up? Were things okay doke in the 18th century and had we stayed there and not invented the train, car, telegraph, telephone, paper money, the computer, etc. things might be better? Obviously the running theme throughout this website and films like Reggio's is that modern life has been getting progressively worse from a religious or spiritual perspective. How far back do we go? Or what kind of society should we construct? You can rely on your intuition all you want. Then you wake up one day and realize you have to feed the mouths of your family. I mean I guess you can be a saint or monk, living in a shack in the mountains as a vegan with a small vegetable garden to support you... quote:The way to God, you see, lies in the use of Spiritual intuition - you will know this when at times you have had a deep inner feeling. It is this intuition that gives us an anchorage to the Light, to God. Now as this was shut off through the one sided cultivation of the intellect, which is bound to matter, we were cut off from the Light as the intellect lacked the ability to receive from it. Where is the spiritual progression in man? In history? Or even in individuals whose lives have been chronicled? When do our prayers ever end? We pray for the same things day in and day out until the day we die. So far as man's timeless spiritual plight goes, I do not see a "light at the end of the tunnel." Matthewnondisclosed_email@example.com (matthew dickinson)Wed, 29 Oct 2003 05:44:27 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156445,from=rss#post156445https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156445,from=rss#post156445The hectic, hyper-kinetic, over-crowded atmosphere the city brings will probably clog my lungs. I'll visit cities again sooner or later. I plan on traveling extensively in Europe. Surely some sections and some aspects of them I will greatly enjoy. It seems the environment you grew up in will, in large part, be the one you will always feel the most comfortable in. My 9 year old cousin was visiting here this summer and almost the entire time he played video games of mine. Like too much tv for children, video games create an artificial environment that I think works on the mind much like real environments do. He may grow up like me and a lot of kids who grew up on video games with nostalgia for the some of the old ones which bring him back to his childhood. I'm sure that real, natural environments are better for kids to grow up in. We're becoming increasingly virtual. Books had a similar hold on people years ago, but I think the internet is a more "addictive" and contagious thing for young people. Imagine the void one experiences later in life when they realize their childhood consisted mostly of Disney movies and video games and the internet. Almost every year my family goes to the mountains of GA for vacation in a cabin. I've always liked it very much there. I enjoy the woods and the lakes and the high altitudes. Living in the mountains isn't a lonely thing to me, as many would imagine it would be. Matthew nondisclosed_email@example.com (matthew dickinson)Wed, 08 Oct 2003 00:51:19 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156444,from=rss#post156444https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156444,from=rss#post156444quote: Do you think someone that did not grow up in a natural environment can appreciate what it is like for those that did, and what they may be missing? In the same way that I can’t appreciate the beauty of a city, because for me an artificial invironment is cold and lifeless. Maybe I’m missing something. So I don’t know. quote: And can photos and movies ever come close to substituting? A photo or film is not the the same as experiencing the “natural” invironment. You have to experience it yourself. People from the city that take a holliday to a “natural” invironment often go for the wrong reasons: to be entertained or to show off later to family and friends. They also travel fast and on shedule and it’s more like a sightseeing trip instead of an experience of the life there. Even when people move from the city to the countryside they are soon bored. They can’t stand the silence, the isolation from the outside world. I don’t know what the expectations are of these people. It’s certainly a completely different way of living that is more natural and closer to life. Maybe it’s the confrontation with theirselves? You know: the silence and isolation that confronts you with yourself? If you really want to experience a “natural” invironment I suggest you go live in it for a couple of years. I lived for a few years in the city of Brussels for my education and I have to say this city has nothing for me to offer. I really missed the silence, the cows,... I’m glad I don’ t have to go back anymore. I couldn’t live in a city. It’s a too crazy way of life. Chris Kelvin nondisclosed_email@example.com (Chris Kelvin)Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:24:45 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156443,from=rss#post156443https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156443,from=rss#post156443quote: On film they are certainly beautifull. I personally have grown up in nature. There were only here and there a few houses. The rest was landscapes, trees, fields, rivers, meadows, cows, pigs, sheeps, horses, silence, a place where you can feel and hear the wind, see clouds, the stars,.... A sacred place. But today a lot of this doesn’t exist anymore: they have built houses, apartments, big buildings, freeways (means more traffic, more noise),... For me this is really tragic and I really have the need to go back to such an untouched invironment again. It keeps getting worse and worse and I feel myself obliged to move to a more “primitive place”. This is just something I need in order to live. Chris - Kelvin Do you think someone that did not grow up in a natural environment can appreciate what it is like for those that did, and what they may be missing? And can photos and movies ever come close to substituting? Stupid question, maybe, and I want to say "no" to both answers, but a lot of people like me would disagree or, worse, agree without caring. I've heard enough of city people who one day get the urge to go canoeing or skiing or something and talk about all the natural wonders they enjoyed during their travels, but they only thing they got out of it was their Kodak pictures, and maybe they did experience something, but they'll need to show you those pictures to "tell" you about it. Now I'm confused. Matthew nondisclosed_email@example.com (matthew dickinson)Tue, 07 Oct 2003 00:12:33 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156442,from=rss#post156442https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156442,from=rss#post156442quote: Why did Adam in the Garden of Eden took the apple of knowledge that led to their abandonment by God? This myth works on other levels, but when seen amidst the history of Jews and Christians it seems ridiculous given that both peoples have always valued knowledge and, even if reluctantly, ultimately accepted its advances. Judaism was the birth of historical thought. I don't think, though, that this is analogous to the question I raised, which is why technology and the artificial have held such an attraction for man for thousands of years. In retrospect, it seems as though the technological forms we use were waiting to be uncovered as part of the inherent design of the universe; the same goes for knowledge and ideas, and I see these things to be akin to Platonic forms. Unless there is divine intervention in the creative life of man, we have never actually had original ideas, only original discoveries of ideas and ways of living. And this presupposes there is/was a creator of the universe who expected highly intelligent forms of life to develop and discover its wonders and joys. Machinery and the artificial may have value in helping to define who we are on an existential and moral plane by virtue of its contrasting qualities. We need the antithesis of man to accomplish this, even if it is only conceptual (as angels once were used), revealing what it is we are not. Primitive cultures projected their unconscious fears and anger on out-groups who were considered immoral and not-them or not-human. Modern cultures have recognized that evil lurks within us all. Very modern cultures have realized that evil lurks in some much more than it does in others and that this can be scientifically measured. Thus we need a new antithesis, a complex machine or automaton that imitates or doubles man. The simple difference between man and machine is commonly thought to be a lack of spirit or soul - or consciousness (a subjective life inside of them), which I think is a more precise term. Yet there may be no way of truly knowing that they cannot theoretically have consciousness. Behavior and physical that exactly imitates man can still have the lack of mind of a zombie. It is our immediate peril if we do not understand this basic issue. Matthew nondisclosed_email@example.com (matthew dickinson)Sat, 04 Oct 2003 16:09:25 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156441,from=rss#post156441https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156441,from=rss#post156441quote: The question is: why has technology, materialism and the artificial held such a seduction for us? Why are we so easily led astray down these paths, if being led astray is what it is? We are, after all, asking such questions through some of the most advanced technology yet created. Is it the devil, probably, then? Why did Adam in the Garden of Eden took the apple of knowledge that led to their abandonment by God? quote: Do you not find great beauty in the techno-industrial landscapes and machines in Koyaanisqatsi? I certainly do, but I have lived with such images and sounds from an earlier age than you have. On film they are certainly beautifull. I personally have grown up in nature. There were only here and there a few houses. The rest was landscapes, trees, fields, rivers, meadows, cows, pigs, sheeps, horses, silence, a place where you can feel and hear the wind, see clouds, the stars,.... A sacred place. But today a lot of this doesn’t exist anymore: they have built houses, apartments, big buildings, freeways (means more traffic, more noise),... For me this is really tragic and I really have the need to go back to such an untouched invironment again. It keeps getting worse and worse and I feel myself obliged to move to a more “primitive place”. This is just something I need in order to live. Chris - Kelvin nondisclosed_email@example.com (Chris Kelvin)Sat, 04 Oct 2003 10:58:09 +0000 Re: An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156440,from=rss#post156440https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156440,from=rss#post156440I feel I understand what you say, but that I do not have the ability to explain it. If what you say is accurate about me (or people like me), then this cannot be true, or it can only be true to a very minor extent (i.e. "people, who have not yet suffocated their own spirits within them completely and who can therefore still register some of these vital signs of the spirit in their brains..." ) I gripe as I do because in all the discussions I have had with spiritual or religious people - and this includes when I was once a believer, many years ago - not once have they offered a vision of a better life that was viable. (I admit the possibility that these things are laid clear in Abd-ru-Shin's book, which I have not read. There are many religious texts which I have not read.) They do not bother to envision how an ideal society would operate that accepts the limitations of man. From a realist's perspective, we can only make a society so good, suppressing the inherent failings in ourselves only so far; a matter of percentage and not totality. Christians, for instance, apply their morality to a world that I can only see existing in heaven, which is a place too divine for humans to imagine. I presume that there is or was a creator of man or the universe because I know of no good reason for believing we could exist without a prime mover of some kind. This is a very deistic viewpoint, and because it is so limited it is almost as good as presuming there isn't a God. Yet to imagine what God wants from us - and we have the historical and anthropological records to support this - seems only to be a hubris of man on par with his anger towards him, as I expressed in the last post, with his creation and miserable existence. No one knows why humans became civilized and why we have continued this march of "progress," (if primarily in technological form only now) as we have. We could have stayed at a primitive level, like that of the aborigines of Australia who were likely to have remained an entire continent of nomadic hunters for many thousands of years had there not been European interference and destruction. Life may not have been better off on this level, but certainly primitives, without technological and material excess, were among the most spiritual of societies documented. The entire world they lived in was contained in a religious and magical aura barely imaginable by us moderns. And through every technological advance we have stepped further and further outside this aura. We are at such a rock bottom that spirituality is sometimes best expressed through websites such as this one, read by a small number of individuals. The question is: why has technology, materialism and the artificial held such a seduction for us? Why are we so easily led astray down these paths, if being led astray is what it is? We are, after all, asking such questions through some of the most advanced technology yet created. Is it the devil, probably, then? I usually have faith that this is all leading us somewhere, to a kind of rebirth, spiritual or not, and that this is destiny. It's certainly not a new idea by any means. It is exciting because I wonder if people my age will begin to see it happen in their lifetime before their very eyes. Eyes which may be technologically aided, though. Every step along this technological odyssey we have further recreated the universe in our image. It is not just through the destruction of nature and the expansion of urban and industrial landscapes, for I’m talking of our entire conception of life and our ability to see with our NAKED eye - with our intuition and spiritual seeking, if that's the words of choice here. An entirely rational worldview is limited by only what man can bring to it, and if it is a complete one it seals itself off from any hope or possibility to access to the divine. We cannot pick ourselves up from our bootstraps to rise towards the heavens. Similarly, this is so the more we immerse ourselves in our technological creations with the by-nature assumption that this is some kind of holy, natural landscape or place to live because it is seductive and pleasure-ful. Yet these artificial landscapes may only be a modicum more pleasing and enriching than the beauty found in our natural landscapes had we been born in them to understand their similarities and differences. (As a sidenote, do you not find great beauty in the techno-industrial landscapes and machines in Koyaanisqatsi? I certainly do, but I have lived with such images and sounds from an earlier age than you have.) While some philosophers and scientists have "cut theirselves adrift" from these higher realities long ago, it is now becoming a commonality among the multitudes all over the planet. Once we no longer have access to these higher realities, we will no longer even know what it means to be human. We need belief in something higher than us to distinguish how we differ and relate and therefore understand who we are in the process. Again, we are close to believing we only know who we are through our own creations, like the humans (and robots) in "A.I." It is a collective delusion of the worst sort. Have we hit the point of no return already? Can we only have faith that what could be extinction of our species is only a second act in a larger cosmological drama? Or is it, as you say, having only to deal with the introspective and spiritually seeking aspects of existence, that the physical world is of no consequence for someone with strong enough of will? This is a philosophy I see heavily influenced BY the modern world, though, and without our way of living, I’m not so sure you could have yours. Matthew nondisclosed_email@example.com (matthew dickinson)Fri, 03 Oct 2003 21:42:47 +0000 Man and his Free Willhttps://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156439,from=rss#post156439https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156439,from=rss#post156439The condition “He” left us in is our own creation. Man has a free will you know. Chris Kelvin nondisclosed_email@example.com (Chris Kelvin)Fri, 03 Oct 2003 11:05:31 +0000 An Apology from God?https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156438,from=rss#post156438https://bcinemaseekersforum.runboard.com/p156438,from=rss#post156438quote:"I desire instead a physical manifestation of God with a hand-delivered apology for the sorry condition he has left us in. This is not a complaint, because I do not suspect he is listening. He vacated the premises long, long ago and is no doubt on the far side of the universe creating more miserable creatures, or basking in the light of billions of suns, cocktail in hand. Yes, his thug smile seems to have left an imprint in our star-filled skies, though, and it says this to me: "these are the lands you damned know-nothings will never reach or comprehend no matter how tall of a tower you build, no matter how fast your spaceships go. Eternal envy of my power and knowledge is my gift to mankind. Bah humbug." Matthew Dickinson We, human beings on planet Earth, have failed like no other creatures have ever failed before in this entire Creation. We have turned this planet into a garbage dump and a pigsty. We have violated our own spiritual nature by cultivating almost exclusively the material philosophy of existence. We have perverted all our thinking into a purely intellectual thinking, suppressing all evidence of intuition, until today most of us are no longer even capable of exercising our precious intuitive faculty. And now some of us feel that they have a perfect right to stand up and blame the Creator for the mess that WE have made! Is this not the greatest proof of how far gone we are?! How every trace of personal conscience and responsibility must have been wiped out before a person can utter such an accusation! Alas, there are many, who feel that they have a right to call the Creator to account for the misery of their pathetic existence, while they themselves would not expend one ounce of energy to change their own lives. Even when genuine help comes to them in the form of rational explanations about the nature of the Creator and His Creation (contained in the book "IN THE LIGHT OF TRUTH: THE GRAIL MESSAGE" by ABD-RU-SHIN), these people will pass it by because they have let their intuition atrophy to such an extent that they are no longer able to make use of it in their rational thinking. It is high time that these brain-cripples, with their ludicrous demands for "material proofs", be put on the defensive instead of the spiritually-seeking and spiritually-awakening individuals. Let them try to assert - in the face of even scientific reality! - that only materially visible evidence qualifies as proof. No truly great scientist would ever utter such a ridiculous statement! In fact, it is precisely in science that we find the best evidence that all life originates, sustains and continues only in radiations/vibrations/frequencies. The materially visible forms are merely the consequence of the real life, which takes place in radiation - modern physics already proved that beyond the shadow of a doubt. All that is left for anyone to do is to connect the dots in the logical manner, as outlined in THE GRAIL MESSAGE, between the concepts of radiation and spirituality. The greatest of scientists (Tesla, Einstein) were filled with gratitude and awe, because they found the irrefutable evidence of Primordial Spiritual Power everywhere in the Universe. The acknowledgement of this ever-present, ever-nourishing Power was the very foundation of their great scientific breakthroughs (which left the others in the dust) because in their thinking they made the extensive use of intuition, so that theirs became a process of intuitive thinking. They have not made the fatal mistake of leaving their intuition behind, when it came to their investigations of the physical world. The brain without the intuition is a cold and lifeless thing, incapable of producing an accurate picture of life. The brain is merely a tool, through which the frequencies of the actual life (which always remains invisible) are processed. That's why it can be so easily duplicated artificially, since the principle nature of it remains the same: it is a mere tool (whether it has wires or nerves makes no difference), it is a tool, cold and useless until it is programmed by a living thing. Without this input by something genuinely living, no tool can function. And the only living thing within man is his spirit, while the brain only measures, records and transmits the "vital signs" of the spirit. That is why people, who have not yet suffocated their own spirits within them completely and who can therefore still register some of these vital signs of the spirit in their brains, do not feel threatened or thrilled by artificial intelligence, as they clearly sense a very definite limit to its ultimate evolution. People, who can no longer sense the spirit within them, are very similar to artificial machines. This, however, is not progress, but an act of perversion in the deepest and most tragic sense of that word. And, despite their best efforts, they cannot hold God responsible for this aberration, for they have done it to themselves. Gregory and Maria Pearse (cinemaseekers)nondisclosed_email@example.com (cinemaseekers)Fri, 03 Oct 2003 07:28:33 +0000