Saturday 26 December 2015

Les visiteurs

Comedy gold!!! ROFL
 


Studying Yajur Veda


I'm studying Yajur Veda in my leisure time as I love the Shukla Yajur Veda tradition or the Vajasaneyi Samhita which is the tradition of the great sage Yajnavalkya who gave the Isha Upanishad to the world. Actually there are two Yajur vedas, Black Yajur Veda also known as Taittariya Samhitha or Krishna (Krishna means Black) YajurVeda from the Vaishampayana school and White Yajurveda also known as Vajasaneyi Samhita or Shukla Yajur Veda from the Yajnavalkya school. There is a story on the origin of the two Yajur Vedas and here is how it goes:
 
According to traditional accounts, Yājñavalkya was the son of Devarāta and was the pupil of sage Vaisampayana. Once, Vaisampayana got angry with Yājñavalkya as the latter argued too much to separate some latter additions to Yajurveda in being abler than other students. The angry teacher asked his pupil Yājñavalkya to give back all the knowledge of Yajurveda that he had taught him.

As per the demands of his Guru, Yājñavalkya vomited all the knowledge that he acquired from his teacher in form of digested food. Other disciples of Vaisampayana took the form of partridge birds and consumed the digested knowledge (a metaphor for knowledge in its simplified form without the complexities of the whole but the simplicity of parts) because it was knowledge and they were very eager to receive the same.

The Saṃskṛt name for partridge is "Tittiri". As the Tittiri (partridge) birds ate this Veda, it is thenceforth called the Taittirīya Yajurveda. It is also known as Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda or Black-Yajurveda on account of it being a vomited substance. The Taittirīya Saṃhitā thus belongs to this Yajurveda.

Then Yājñavalkya determined not to have any human guru thereafter. Thus he began to propitiate the Sun God, Surya. Yājñavalkya worshipped and extolled the Sun, the master of the Vedas, for the purpose of acquiring the fresh Vedic portions not known to his preceptor, Vaiśampāyana.

The Sun God, pleased with Yājñavalkya's penance, assumed the form of a horse and graced the sage with such fresh portions of the Yajurveda as were not known to any other. This portion of the Yajurveda goes by the name of Śukla Yajurveda or White-Yajurveda on account of it being revealed by Sun. It is also known as Vajasaneya Yajurveda, because it was evolved in great rapidity by Sun who was in the form of a horse through his manes.The rhythm of recital of these vedas is therefore to the rhythm of the horse canter and distinguishes itself from the other forms of veda recitals. In Sanskrit, term "Vaji" means horse. Yājñavalkya divided this Vajasaneya Yajurveda again into fifteen branches, each branch comprising hundreds of Yajus Mantras. Sages like Kanva, Madhyandina and others learnt those and Śukla Yajurveda branched into popular recensions named after them.

It is important to note that within the hierarchy of Brāhmaṇas, certain sects believe in the Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda while others practice from the Śukla Yajurveda.

Yājñavalkya married two wives. One was Maitreyi and the other Katyaayanee. Of the two, Maitreyi was a Brahmavadini (one who is interested in the knowledge of Brahman).The descendant sects of Brahmans are the progeny of the first wife Katyaayanee. When Yājñavalkya wished to divide his property between the two wives, Maitreyi asked whether she could become immortal through wealth. Yājñavalkya replied that there was no hope of immortality through wealth and that she would only become one among the many who were well-to-do on. When she heard this, Maitreyi asked Yājñavalkya to teach her what he considered as the best. Then Yājñavalkya described to her the greatness of the Absolute Self, the nature of its existence, the way of attaining infinite knowledge and immortality, etc. This immortal conversation between Yājñavalkya and Maitreyi is recorded in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

Yajnavalkya teaches Brahma Vidya to King Janaka.
 
Wisdom of Yājñavalkya is shown in Brhadaranyaka Upanishad where he gives his teachings to his wife Maitreyi and King Janaka. He also participates in a competition arranged by King Janaka about the selecting great Brhama Jnani (knower of Brahman). His intellectual dialogues with Gargi (a learned scholar of the times) form a beautiful chapter filled with lot of philosophical and mystical question-answers in Brhadaranyaka Upanishad. He was then praised as the greatest Brahmajnyani by all the sages at the function organised by king Janaka. In the end, Yājñavalkya took Vidvat Sanyasa (renunciation after the attainment of the knowledge of Brahman) and retired to the forest.

Wednesday 23 December 2015

There's something wrong with the world

Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

The reason why I ended up as a Valentinian gnostic is because right from my teenage I have always felt that there's something wrong with the world. That's the basic premise in the origin of gnostic thought that there's something wrong with this world. This world was not created by the supreme God instead this world is just a shadow copy of the real things that exists in the Pleroma. Plato and Neo-Platonists were right. This world is not real and we are mere prisoners of the cave. The pagan mystery religions exist solely to return us to the source where we came from.

Friday 18 December 2015

Sexual intercourse for producing spiritual children

Marriage and Procreation were an hotly debated topic among early Christian fathers. What should be the attitude of Christians on procreation, sex and marriage? While I cannot speak for all Christians and for all sects of Christianity out there I will be more concerned with the attitude of those Christians who believed in the same doctrines which I believe in. In this case I am concerned of Valentinianism and the attitude of Valentinian Christians on marriage, procreation and celibacy which is my main concern since I am a Valentinian Christian.

April D DeConick from the Rice University has made a thorough study on this subject and her work The Great Mystery of Marriage. Sex and Conception in Ancient Valentinian Traditions will be the main subject of this post.

April proposes a unique view not supported by reputable scholars in the field by saying that Valentinians neither advocated celibacy nor did they practised promiscuous sexual intercourse but instead they had pure sexual intercourse to bring forth children possessing divine qualities in them or in other words children with a pneumatic spiritual seed in them.

Its true that the positive attitude on marriage and sex by the Valentinian Christians is due to their high emphasis on mythogony. Their eschatology is a consequence of their mythology and their positive attitude on marriage and sex is a consequence of their eschatology. According to them myth was far more real than ordinary reality. Achamoth, also called the Lower Sophia brings forth spiritual fetuses or seeds out of joy after seeing Jesus along with his angels descending to her realm from the above Pleroma. Since these spiritual seeds were conceived without a proper sexual intercourse between Achamoth and Jesus these spiritual seeds were weak and immature and needed a place for them to grow and to become mature. It was then that Jesus ordered Achamoth to bring forth the Demiurge Jehovah so that she can use him as a tool to create earth and human beings. Therefore human beings are nothing but mere carrier bodies for the pneumatic spiritual seeds of Achamoth which she sows every time a child is conceived from a mother's womb.

Earlier I had argued that the Bridal Chamber should be interpreted allegorically as a union between the Holy Father and the individual obviously disturbed by the idea that Valentinians practised carnal sexual intercourse inside earthly Bridal Chambers. The Bridal Chamber in Gospel of Philip should be interpreted allegorically and spiritually. After reading the work of April D DeConick I have to accept that I was wrong and I have to advocate the view that the Valentinians might have had a pure sexual intercourse inside Bridal Chambers just to produce children possessing divine qualities. We cannot be sure because remember Gospel of Philip insists that the marriage in the Bridal Chamber is not fleshy.

However I don't think that marriage and sexual intercourse was so important a thing for Valentinians as April makes it out in her work. The reason being if marriage and procreation were so important to Valentinians then Saint Paul would have obviously stressed more on this point and would have recommended us to strictly marry without fail at least for the sake of bringing forth spiritual children instead Paul advocates the view that it is better to remain as a celibate but if men cannot control then he says it is better to marry rather than to burn with the passion of lust which is completely in contrast with the view espoused by April D DeConick in her work.

Marriage and procreation should be of secondary priority and importance for human beings since it is not mandatory that you should be married to receive redemption instead one should worship only the Holy Father through sacraments and become like the Holy Father which is a view also espoused by the same Gospel of Philip.

It is not possible for anyone to see anything of the things that actually exist unless he becomes like them. This is not the way with man in the world: he sees the sun without being a sun; and he sees the heaven and the earth and all other things, but he is not these things. This is quite in keeping with the truth. But you saw something of that place, and you became those things. You saw the Spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw the Father, you shall become Father. So in this place you see everything and do not see yourself, but in that place you do see yourself - and what you see you shall become.

- Gospel of Philip
If time permits then one might concentrate on having sexual intercourse to produce spiritual children so that as many souls as possible receive the gnosis of the Father and return to the Pleroma as soon so possible but the main goal of human beings should be to be in search of the unknowable Holy Father through sacraments and to finally rest with him.

Even the Isha Upanishad advocates that man should live a hundred years without lusting after other men's possessions and without renouncing the works of the Law but one might question what good does it serve when this whole world is full of evil and not from the Father of Truth. If we press hard on the Aryan religion and demand an answer to this question it would go not quite far and they would give an answer like that this world was created for humans and gods so that they can live happily and peacefully here after through give and take i.e. humans should perform Yajna and offer sacrifices to the gods and gods should receive those sacrifices since Yajna is the food for the gods and in turn gods should fulfil the desires of human beings. In this way this world was created for gods and human beings to peacefully coexist and finally to establish the truth of Brahman and live a righteous life accordingly. In this sense the God of the Aryans is a loving god who cares for humanity and wants human beings to live on earth even though it is difficult just for the sake of establishing the truth and saving as many human beings as possible and finally return them to Pleroma. Even though the soteriology of the Aryans is quite similar to the Valentinians the former lack proper mythological explanations for their attitude towards the world and also on the question of how we got here in the first place. The myth of the Valentinians surpasses all religions in correctly communicating to us on questions like how we got here in the first place? Why there is so much evil in this world and why an omnibenevolent and an omnipotent God does not try to stop evil? Why do some people don't believe in any God while others easily believe in the truth? Why do bad things happen for good innocent people? What is the purpose of life? Why does the universe exist? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What should be our attitude? What should be our code of conduct? What should be our role in life? Who should follow the Law and who should not? When does the universe come to an end? We all are truly indebted to Valentinian Christians for their remarkable Depth Psychology on the human condition and behaviour, their insights on the cosmos and their way of creating myths to convey their fascinating ideas even embracing their opponents who think them as unintelligible mad men devoid of any rationality.

Thursday 17 December 2015

Teaching Gnosticism in schools

I honestly had to wait for over 16 years of my life just to hear the word 'Gnostic' and 'Gnosticism' and that too I didn't hear it from one of my teachers or in any lesson of my school curriculum. I heard it while I was watching the National Geographic Channel who did a documentary on the lost gospels found in the Nag Hammadi library in the year 2006 Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him and yes I was 16 years old then.

So if the NGC had not made a documentary I wouldn't have heard about the existence of the Gnostic sects of Christianity to this day or would have encountered that term at some point in time later in my life. It was from their documentary that I was introduced to people like Marvin Meyer and Elaine Pagels and the likes of others. As I was not aware of the big picture at that time the documentary was interesting to watch but I didn't do any further research on Gnosticism. 

This clearly shows that the history which is being spoon fed to us in schools is entirely a fabricated false history of the world suppressing those things which goes against the established order. I prefer to have truth over an corrupt established order based purely on lies. I prefer to have light than be in the darkness like a prisoner in the cave.

Why there is not even a single lesson on the Inquisition of the Catholics or even just a paragraph on the existence of the gnostic sects of Christianity? The stupid Indian school curriculum wants us to believe in the idiotic doctrine of Sarva Dhama Sama Bhava (All religions are equal) and that's why they don't include any material in the school curriculum which goes against that doctrine. They want to make us believe that all religions existed peacefully throughout our human history like the way India believes itself to exist now. Why not a chapter about the Multan Sun Temple in the History subject of the school curriculum? Let the kids know who did what and who is evil and who is good. The Indian minds are so stupid they never question what is being fed into them and they rarely try to know how they got here in the first place. While some good teachers do encourage students to cultivate individual independent thinking rarely do students take such an advice seriously.

Doesn't our kids deserve to know the true history of the world? What are the established systems so afraid of?


Monday 14 December 2015

The mystic of Tarsus and the pagan mystery cults

Was Saint Paul influenced by the pagan mystery religions? For me, this is a billion dollar question and the very foundation of Christianity and of its followers depend on it.


As I long argued that Christianity is a mystery religion of Valentinian Christians similarly both these scholars agree with me that Christianity itself became a mystery religion in the hands of Saint Paul. But where they differ from my view is that they believe Paul either unconsciously or deliberately borrowed Pagan doctrines into his form of theology while I maintain that Paul truly received the Pleromic revelation from the Pneumatic Christ and based his doctrines solely from the revelation that he received from the Pneumatic Christ.

The reason why I hold such a view is that Saint Paul knew about the highest revelation of all the mysteries. Saint Paul seems to know more about the deity of Mithras than Julian the Emperor himself who self-proclaimed himself to be initiated into the mystery of Mithraism. Even Julian was aware of the calibre of Saint Paul but he spoke negatively against him because he was irritated and annoyed by the literal interpretation of the Bible enforced upon him by his orthodox Christian teachers when he was young. Julian himself says that Saint Paul surpassed every magician of every place and of every time but accuses him of being a polypus who changes his colour according to circumstances like the polypus changes its colour to match its rocks.

But that from the beginning God cared only for the Jews and that He chose them out as his portion, has been clearly asserted not only by Moses and Jesus but by Paul as well; though in Paul's case this is strange. For according to circumstances he keeps changing his views about God, as the polypus changes its colours to match the rocks, and now he insists that the Jews alone are God's portion, and then again, when he is trying to persuade the Hellenes to take sides with him, he says : "Do not think that he is the God of Jews only, but also of Gentiles : yea of Gentiles also."  Therefore it is fair to ask of Paul why God, if he was not the God of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles, sent the blessed gift of prophecy to the Jews in abundance and gave them Moses and the oil of anointing, and the prophets and the law and the incredible and monstrous elements in their myths? For you hear them crying aloud: "Man did eat angels' food." And finally God sent unto them Jesus also, but unto us no prophet, no oil of anointing, no teacher, no herald to announce his love for man which should one day, though late, reach even unto us also. Nay he even looked on for myriads, or if you prefer, for thousands of years, while men in extreme ignorance served idols, as you call them, from where the sun rises to where he sets, yes and from North to South, save only that |345 little tribe which less than two thousand years before had settled in one part of Palestine. For if he is the God of all of us alike, and the creator of all, why did he neglect us? Wherefore it is natural to think that the God of the Hebrews was not the begetter of the whole universe with lordship over the Avhole, but rather, as I said before, that he is confined within limits, and that since his empire has bounds we must conceive of him as only one of the crowd of other gods. Then are we to pay further heed to you because you or one of your stock imagined the God of the universe, though in any case you attained only to a bare conception of Him? Is not all this partiality? God, you say, is a jealous God. But why is he so jealous, even avenging the sins of the fathers on the children?

- Julian, Against the Galileans

Julian is entirely ignorant of the Valentinian tradition whose leader was Saint Paul of Tarsus. Julian though knew that there were hidden secret teachings associated to stories in the Bible was completely ignorant about the esoteric teachings of Saint Paul and as such none of his criticisms against Saint Paul hold now because we now know that Saint Paul was a gnostic and held beliefs contradictory to the Roman Catholic Church.

But the problem still remains how can Saint Paul who was a convert of Jesus Christ knew more about the mystery cults and the deity and the doctrines of Mithras compared to emperors like Julian who were fully initiated into the mystery of Mithraism and yet looked puny in front of a giant like Saint Paul when it comes to the pagan mystery religions. May be his birth place Tarsus might have had a huge influence on Saint Paul's thinking but still how did he figured out the highest esoteric truth of Mithraism which only the worshippers of Mithras can know.

This problem cannot be solved without taking some extreme positions like either Saint Paul was a priest of Mithras as some of his detractors claimed or he truly received the highest revelation from Christ himself. The former view seems absurd to me because why would a priest of Mithras hide the divinity of Mithras and proclaim Jesus Christ as the first-begotten in place of him.

Its true that the salvation preached by Saint Paul is identical to the salvation that we see in the mystery cults but the reason for that similarity is not because Saint Paul intentionally borrowed pagan elements into his doctrines which as I have shown above is a charge if we are making on Saint Paul we have to admit that he was a priest of Mithras because the kind of doctrines espoused by Saint Paul is not something like how a nut-job can just plagiarize blindly someone's else idea because the pagan mysteries requires one to participate and take part in the rituals to fully understand the mystery behind them and Saint Paul does in no way look like an outside copy cat of pagan mystery cults in fact he looks like someone who has attained the highest mastery of Mithraism.

If we deny the view that Saint Paul was a priest of Mithras which is very unlikely and absurd to believe then how can we account for the similarities between the Pauline doctrine of salvation and the salvation of the pagan mystery cults and other such similarities. The answer to that question is my belief that the Pneumatic Christ or the post-resurrected Christ was sent by none other than King Helios-Mithras himself, the unknowable Holy Father of the Gnostics.

This is the reason why Pauline Christianity is so similar to the pagan mystery cults. It is not because Paul borrowed from it but instead it is because the post-resurrected Christ was actually the son of King Helios-Mithras. There is no wonder why Saint Paul knew so much about Mithraism compared to the fellow initiates of Mithraism.

According to Valentinianism there are two Christs a psychic one at the Kenoma and a pneumatic one at the Pleroma, the psychic Christ was sent by Jehovah, the god of the Old Testament and the god of the Jews, also known as the Demiurge while the pneumatic Christ was sent by King Helios-Mithras, the god of the New Testament and the god of the Gentiles, also known as the unknowable Father of the Gnostics or the representation of the GOOD form according to Plato.

Iamblichus: Taking the Shape of the Gods

Taking the Shape of the Gods: A Theurgic Reading of Hermetic Rebirth
 
This is an another paper like the earlier one Offering to the Gods: A Neo-platonic perspective which shows the supreme wisdom of the Neo-platonic philosopher Iamblichus and how he defends the art of theurgy.

People often misunderstand theurgy as an irrational shallow practice since they normally do not understand the esoteric perspective behind those practices. But Theurgy and Esotericism being a profession carried out by only elite members of a society possessing special interests is intelligible only to those who have special knowledge.

"Theurgic union is attained only by the perfective operation of unspeakable acts correctly performed, acts which are beyond all understanding, and by the power of unutterable symbols which are intelligible only to the Gods"

Iamblichus, De Mysteriis. 2,11

Friday 11 December 2015

Strong AI is impossible without conscious machines.

RP. I can give examples of non-computational things, but it’s not obvious why they are non-computational. The one I like the best is the tiling problem. You have these shapes made out of squares glued together, things called polyominoes. You’re given a collection of these, a finite number of different sorts but an unlimited number of each sort, and you are asked: can you use these shapes to cover the entire plane without gaps or overlaps?

That is an example of a non-computational problem. That is to say, there is no computer programme which will answer yes or no for any given set of tiles: no programme where you can feed in the information of the tiles into the computer and ask it, will they tile the plane or not. Although the answer "no" can be computational, the answer "yes" is not computational. That is to say there is no way of being sure, for an arbitrary set of polyomino shapes, that they will tile the plane. It’s quite a subtle piece of mathematics to show that this is a non-computational problem. There is no computer programme whatsoever that can make this decision for any possible given set of tiles.

CC. Okay, so there are some non-computational problems. Now your argument is that there are some of these problems which cannot be solved computationally, but which can be solved by bringing in human consciousness. How does this argument go?

RP. You have to phrase the problem in the right way. In the case of the tiling problem, the way it works is like this. Suppose you were given a computer programme which would answer correctly "yes" or "no" to a set of tiles, but sometimes it will say not come to any conclusion at all (you could certainly have computers like that). Then by knowing that the computer doesn’t give you the wrong answer, from the computer’s construction you could build a set of tiles which the computer will get stuck on: a set of tiles which you know will tile the plane, and which you also know will not be able to be answered correctly by this computer.

CC. But when you say "you know" what is it about me as a conscious human being that enables me to know, what particular faculty is it that I’m applying?

RP. It’s the understanding really. It’s basically Gödel’s theorem, but you have to know that the computer doesn’t give the wrong answers. Gödel’s theorem is telling you, if you like, that the procedures we’re prepared to accept as proof cannot ever be limited to specific computational procedures: they’re never computationally limited because once you can phrase the rules of the computational system then you can see how to transcend them. So provided that you trust those rules, so that you’re prepared to count following the rules as constituting a proof, then you can see how to get methods of proof which are outside it. Our mathematical understanding, or mathematical intuition as Gödel would put it, is something outside computation.

CC. Is the open-endedness of this procedure crucial here? I take Gödel’s theorem as producing some proposition that you can’t prove, but always with a bigger system in which you can prove it. But you don’t just stay with the bigger system - isn’t the crucial point here that you can always keep going out to yet another proposition that you can’t prove?

RP. It is like that, that’s right. And in fact in our understanding we’re using this kind of procedure all the time; it’s not limited to sophisticated mathematical logic. Imagine you have some procedure at which you work away, and you think you’ve got the rules right; and then you get worried and think maybe it’s not doing everything … so you step back and you look at what it is that you’ve put into that system, and you think about what are the implications of the kinds of rules you’ve been using. This sort of reasoning ¾ stepping back from the system ¾ is doing the same thing as Gödel’s theorem, and you always have to bring your awareness in to do that. 

CC. So the insight you’re talking about is self-reflexive: looking at your own thinking in order to enlarge it ?

RP. I think that’s essentially right; that’s basically what you’re doing.

An interview with Professor Roger Penrose - Published in Network,May 2000 Interviewer: Chris Clarke

I think Penrose has made an important discovery here that in order for machines to have the capability of strong AI surpassing human intelligence they have to be conscious beings first because without awareness it is virtually impossible to analyse self-referential statements (emphasizing bold words from RP) and therefore machines without this fundamental quality in them would never be able to transcend Gödel's statements and therefore forever remain below the levels of human intelligence. It is our nature of Self awareness which helps us in our mathematical understanding and allows us to transcend Gödel's statements.

But Self awareness or the procedures of mathematical understanding itself might be something which you cannot simulate it on a computer i.e. human thought process or awareness itself might be non-computable (Penrose proves this in great lengths in his Shadows of the Mind) which in such a case the proponents of Strong AI are doomed because without conscious machines there can be no Strong AI but without a non-computable machine simulating human thought process there can be no conscious activity.

Thursday 10 December 2015

The universe is non-local, non-real and super-deterministic





Locality, Realism (Value Definiteness + Non-contextuality)  and freedom of choice all three premises should be abandoned. The Universe is 

1. Non-local - instantaneous communication is possible between the two opposite ends of the universe outside of the space-time continuum.

2. Non-real  - The universe is only a state of mind and empirical reality does not exist independent of observers.

3. Super-deterministic - Everything in the universe is predetermined and we have no freedom of choice to choose between different measurement settings or different polariser orientations without in any way affecting the prepared quantum ensembles.

We need to give up local-realism, non-local realism as well as our freedom of choice to be consistent with nature.


 

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Emperor Julian and the god of the seven rays

Emperor Julian in his Oration upon the Mother of the Gods alludes us to the god of the seven rays in one of his passages.

"But if I should touch upon that unspeakable mystic science which the Chaldaean hath uttered through inspiration, concerning the "god of the seven rays" making souls ascend through him, I shall be speaking of things unknown; yea, altogether unknown to the vulgar, yet familiar unto the blessed ministers of the gods, wherefore I shall now pass it over in silence." 

- Emperor Julian, Oration upon the Mother of the Gods.

Many scholars and researchers believe that the god of the seven rays which Julian is alluding here is Mithras, the Father but I believe that Julian is alluding to the God Jupiter and not to Mithras, the Father. There are many compelling reasons to believe that the god of the seven rays is none other than the God Jupiter which can be verified through comparative mythology supporting my view.

In the Indo-Persian religion of the Aryans the God Jupiter was known as Bṛhaspati and this is what Rig Veda says about this god.

"Bṛhaspati, when first he had his being from mighty splendour in supremest heaven, Strong, with his seven fold mouth, with noise of thunder, with his seven rays, blew and dispersed the darkness."

- Rig Veda, Book 4, HYMN L. Bṛhaspati, Verse 4

As far as I know no other god in the Rig Veda is so explicitly associated with the seven rays except the God Jupiter or Bṛhaspati which adds more weight to my view. Moreover I am also a member of the Julian Society and I asked the same question there and one of the members cited this passage from Proclus commentary on Plato's Timaeus and I quote him.

"Proclus, in his Commentary on the Timaeus (1,34) says, "the educational and judicial section [of the ideal state or, by analogy, the created universe of Zeus] is analogous to the Sun, in whose domain according to the Theologians [the Chaldeans] are Justice , the Upward Leader, and the Seven-Rays ....."  Harold Tarrant, the translator, has a note in this passage that says the scholar Festugiere identifies the last two of this triad with Attis and Mithras respectively.

I don't know if that helps."

Tim
 
If Festugiere is right then Mithras, the Father is under the domain of Zeus which is absurd since King Helios-Mithras is the supreme God of all gods who resides in the intelligible realm and through him all other intellectual gods follow including Jupiter or Zeus.

The Zeus of the Greeks was the same god as the Jupiter of the Romans.

The Romans regarded Jupiter as the equivalent of the Greek Zeus,[5] and in Latin literature and Roman art, the myths and iconography of Zeus are adapted under the name Iuppiter.

- Wikipedia


Zeus and Jupiter had many of the same qualities as gods. Both of them were the gods of the sky as well as the king of the gods. They were both also married to their sisters: Hera (Zeus) and Juno (Jupiter). Other than being the god of the sky, Jupiter was also the god of light and victory, but Zeus was not. As a result, Jupiter protected the state of war and maintained its peace and well-being even though Zeus didn't.

- Roman and Greek Mythology

King Helios-Mithras is a Sun God of many rays and not a god of just seven rays. The triads in Proclus commentary should be interpreted as the qualities of Zeus or Jupiter and not as three individual gods corresponding to Justice, the Upward Leader and the Seven rays respectively. If one interprets them as qualities of the god Zeus or Jupiter then it adds even more weight to my original claim that the God Julian is alluding to in the above passage is none other than the God Jupiter himself and not Mithras, the Father. Also there is nothing in that passage of Julian which gives us any clue to make us believe that he is talking about the God Mithras here but if you read his previous passages before this passage he was frequently discussing the theology and the nature of God Jupiter.

More evidence supporting my view.

In ancient Greek mythology, Zeus takes the bull-form known as Taurus in order to win Europa. Taurus is also associated with Aphrodite and other goddesses, as well as with Pan and Dionysus. The face of Taurus "gleams with seven rays of fire."
 On the contrary side.

In all of the tauroctony iconography in Mithraism, Sol Invictus/Helios is always depicted as wearing a crown of seven rays. 



May be both Helios-Mithras and Jupiter emit seven rays.


"On this account, it appears to me that Plato delivers a twofold generation of the Sun; one indeed, in conjunction with the seven governors of the world, when he fashions the bodies of them, and inserts them in circulations; but the other according to the enkindling of light, through which he imparts to the Sun supermundane power. For it is one thing to generate the bulk of the Sun itself by itself, and another in conjunction with a ruling characteristic, through which the Sun is called the king of every visible nature, and is established analogous to the one fountain of good. For as this fountain, being better than the intelligible essence, illuminates both intellect and the intelligible, thus also the sun being better than a visible nature, illuminate both that which is visible and sight. But if the Sun is beyond a visible essence, it will have a supermundane nature. For the world is visible and tangible, and has a body. Hence, we must survey the Sun in a twofold respect; viz. as one of the seven planets, and as the leader of wholes; and as mundane and supermundane, according to the latter of which he splendidly emits a divine light. For in the same manner as The Good luminously emits truth which deifies the intelligible and intellectual order; as Phanes in Orpheus sends forth intelligible light which fills with intelligence all the intellectual Gods; and as Jupiter enkindles an intellectual and demiurgic light in all the supermundane Gods; thus also the Sun illuminates every thing visible through this undefiled light. The illuminating cause too is always in an order superior to the illuminated natures. For neither is The Good intelligible, nor Phanes intellectual, nor Jupiter supermundane. In consequence of this reasoning therefore, the Sun being supermundane emits the fountains of light. And according to the most mystic doctrines, the wholeness of the Sun is in the supermundane orders; for in them there is a solar world, and a total light, as the Chaldean Oracles assert, and which I am persuaded is true. And thus much concerning these things." 
- Proclus on the Timaeus of Plato

Monday 7 December 2015

Quantum Mechanics does not apply to me

I have repeatedly stated that Science cannot give an objective account of reality because Quantum mechanics proves that Scientific realism is false. While the sadist alternative is to resort to solipsism there is still one optimism for realists like me which is Platonic Realism which has withstood the test of times.

In this 1939 paper London and Bauer question the validity of scientific objectivity and claim that consciousness or our "faculty of introspection" is a distinct property possessed by systems like us who can treat ourselves as alien external observers who can modify the Schroedinger's wavefunction without ourselves being subjected to it.

Consciousness is the only true measurement apparatus and leads to mind over matter. The fact that physicists cannot solve the measurement problem even after eight decades proves that non-physical minds exists and quantum mechanics even gives us a clue that the evolution of such non-physical minds should be non-linear or even non-computable as Penrose argues.

The Theory of Observation in Quantum Mechanics by Fritz London and Edmond Bauer (1939)

SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY AND OBJECTIVITY
At first sight it would appear that in quantum mechanics the concept of scientific objectivity has been strongly shaken. Since the classic period, the idea has become familiar that a physical object is something real, existing outside of the observer, independent of him, and in particular independent of whether or not the object has been subjected to measurement. The situation is not the same in quantum mechanics. Far from it being possible to attribute to a system at every instant its measurable properties, one cannot even claim that to attribute to it so much as a wave function has a well-defined meaning, unless referring explicitly to a definite measurement. Moreover, it looks as if the result of a measurement is intimately linked to the consciousness of the person making it, and as if quantum mechanics thus drives us toward complete solipsism.

Actually, however, we know that the relations between physicists have undergone practically no change since the discovery of quantum mechanics. No physicist has retired into a solipsistic isolation. Physicists use the same means of scientific exchange as in the past and are capable of cooperation in studying the same object. Thus there really exists something like a community of scientific perception, an agreement on what constitutes the object of the investigation, and it is this that still has to be looked into.

First of all, it is easy to recognize that the act of observation, that is, the coupling between the measuring apparatus and the observer (see our example in §11), is truly a macroscopic action and not basically quantal. Consequently one always has the right to neglect the effect on the apparatus of the “scrutiny” of the observer. Tracing things back in time, one will obtain definite conclusions about the state of the apparatus (or the photographic plate) and consequently the state of the object before the observation (but of course after the coupling is turned off). Moreover, nothing prevents another observer from looking at the same apparatus; and one can predict that, barring errors, his observations will be the same. The possibility of abstracting away from the individuality of the observer and of creating a collective scientific perception therefore in no way comes seriously into question.

It might appear that the scientific community thus created is a kind of spiritualistic society which studies imaginary phenomena—that the objects of physics are phantoms produced by the observer himself. In classical physics, one can picture a system at every instant in a unique and continuous way by the set of all of its measurable properties, even when it is not subjected to observation. It is exactly the possibility of this continuity of connection between properties and object that has ordinarily been considered as proof that physics deals with something “real,” that is, having in principle an existence “independent of all observers.” In quantum mechanics an object is the carrier, not of a definite set of measurable properties, but only a set of "potential" probability distributions or statistis referring to measurable properties, statistics which only come into force on the occasion of an effective well-defined measurement. If one abstracts away from all acts of measurement, it is meaningless to claim these measurable properties as realized; the very mathematical form of the statistics does not allow it (see §8).

But that does not keep us from predicting or interpreting experimental results. Theory fixes the rules. It teaches us first of all how to filter an object to get a pure case —that is, reproducible conditions, then it suggests how to make measurements, either to check theoretical predictions or to discover new empirical regularities. The theory adapts itself truly marvelously to the realities of experiment. It gives answers on all desired details and is silent on hypothetical questions with out experimental meaning.

In present physics the concept of “objectivity” is a little more abstract than the classical idea of a material object. Is it not a guarantee of “the objectivity” of an object that one can at least formally attribute measurable properties to it in a continuous manner even at times when it is not under observation? The answer is No, as this new theory shows by its internal consistency and by its impressive applications. It is enough, evidently, that the properties of the object should be present at the moment they are measured and that they should be predicted by theory in agreement with experiment.

In the limiting case of macroscopic phenomena, quantum theory rejoins classical theory. Thus it justifies the use of the “naive” concept of “objectivity” and at the same time specifics the limitations of this concept.

What has just been said relates to an important philosophical problem that we cannot enter into here: the determination of the necessary and sufficient conditions for an object of thought to possess objectivity and to be an object of science. This problem was perhaps posed for the first time in any general way by such mathematicians as Malebranche, Leibniz, and especially by B. Bolzano. More recently Husserl (1901, 1913; see also the rather similar ideas in Cassirer, 1910, 1936) has systematically studied such questions and has thus created a new method of investigation called Phenomenology.”

Physics insofar as it is an empirical science cannot enter into such problems in all their generality. It is satisfied to use philosophical concepts sufficient for its needs, but on occasion it can recognize that some of the concepts that once served it have become quite unnecessary, that they contain elements that are useless and even incorrect, actual obstacles to progress. One can doubt the possibility of establishing philosophical truths by the methods of physics, but it is surely not outside the the competence of physicists to demonstrate that certain statements which pretend to have a philosophical validity do not. And sometimes these “negative” philosophical discoveries by physicists are no less important, no less revolutionary for philosophy than the discoveries of recognized philosophers.