A perfectly reasonable question, that any sensible and worthwhile person would answer when asked respectfully. Language, written or spoken, is simply an abstraction used to convey deeper meaning behind it. The definitions of words, if strictly taken, would never be able to convey the meanings of every subjective experience, and thus if our words had strict "this means this and only this" definitions, we would require several million times the number of words we have currently, since the strict definitions would eventually have to specify the exact complete context they are being used in. It's a good thing that this isn't the case, with English, and really any modern language that I know of.
The words that we use are very flexible in their definition. While we may think of something like "plane" as describing the giant metal people-carriers with the huge turbine engines, the term "plane" could also be used to describe things that move through the air with wings. Or really things that have controlled movement through the air in general. The only thing that stops the abstraction of it's definition is the fact that there are other words to describe different kinds of "planes" with different attributes. We wouldn't call a helicopter a "plane" because we know that a helicopter uses vertical fan-like structures to lift and move itself, and thus the definition of the word "plane" was truncated, and the abstraction used to define something that flies using fan-like blades was rededicated to the term "copter", or something like that. We created all-purpose abstractions for concepts first, and broke them down later into more specific use-cases to describe more complex ideas, like iterations of detail into a fractal of information. You only need to go so far before the objective thing you are referring to is conveyed and the information the two parties are focusing on synchronizes.
I am writing this about abstract concepts that are very important to my understanding of the world, and the words I use to convey them. Somehow, specific groups have "claimed" the meanings of words to their own degree of abstraction, when in truth the word is of a much higher and broader abstraction than what they use it for. One example of this is "ecstasy". The word "ecstasy" refers to a feeling, which can only be described by the word used to define it. It is sort of a joyful contentness, a feeling of interconnectedness with all things, a loving warmth, all wrapped up into one. Now, ecstasy as an experience can be achieved in many ways: deep meditation, MDMA, tantric sex, ecstatic dancing, or simply high-awareness moment to moment living. However, at some point, the word "Ecstasy" was misused to describe a more detailed construct, like MDMA, and the meaning was lowered to simply describe 'the feeling of being on MDMA', instead of the proper connection, which is that the feeling of being on MDMA is described as "ecstasy". Unfortunately, since the only exposure most people have to the word "ecstasy" is when describing the drug with the street name "ecstasy", it became a bit of a 'bad word' somewhere along the line. This is just one example of how lowering the abstraction of a word can cause definition to be lost, and eventually cause certain feelings to become unconveyable by the words of a language. It happens all the time, and as someone who sees the more abstract meanings, it is our job to use words in all of their proper contexts without the fear that we would be misinterpreted as describing the lower uses. Another such example of this is "heaven", but everybody needs to find the true definitions of this word on their own. It's much more subjective than it's made out to be, more of a feeling or "vibe" than a place or goal, but that is all I will say about it here, since "heaven" you need to define for yourself.
A few terms I would like to personally 'raise' the meanings of here and now are reincarnation, multi-dimensionality, and consciousness.
Consciousness, a term to describe anything that is conscious, anything that makes decisions, interacts with the world around it on its own accord. I would take it a step further to say anything that can stop interacting with the world around it. The concept is much more widely applicable than anything that could be described logically, since consciousness means entities of life, beings of subjective experience, but should never be bound to single iterations of such things. Humans have consciousness, animals have consciousness, plants have consciousness, minerals and crystals have consciousness, organs and tissues have consciousness, cells have consciousness, molecules have consciousness, atoms have consciousness, planets have consciousness, stars have consciousness, star systems and galaxies have consciousness, and ultimately universes have consciousness. Interacting your consciousness with theirs is an entirely different story, but the definition should hold.
Multi-dimensionality should refer to how consciousness interact with others. A multi-dimensional construct should map, from the present moment, all possible dimensions(decisions) that consciousness can take from the given point, using one of the parameters as a constant. Even in mathematics, graphing of a function shows how from one point(consciousness) in time(the constant dimension being iterated through), the point really only has the decision to move forward or backward, and since it is a fixed function, it has already been to one of them to get to where it is(otherwise it would be a singularity(only exists in one moment of time and none other) or a constant(constant function) and therefore be independent of time, making the graphing process a bit futile). Abstracting this(shakily defined) definition for any consciousness, from the point, the present moment, the multiverse is every possible universe accessible from the point where consciousness currently exists(consider a universe to be a screenshot of all matter and energy in existence in any moment), where time is only the abstraction used to define previous universes passed through to get to the current one, and the universes one wishes to pass through next, usually to achieve some kind of state of being or feeling. Multi-dimensionality defines this construct of subjective existence. Of course, the explanation of it gets a little hairy since the concept exists just on the brink between duality and unity, where time becomes more of an abstraction than a real dimension, and the present moment is the only moment, but other moments were known to exist previously and more moments are known to come, so it too is something that the definition needs to be understood on your own to find it in its greatest and most powerful abstraction, I just hope this helped.
Finally, reincarnation. Every group that has defined reincarnation would likely agree that meaning comes from within, and so should the meaning for this. Reincarnation is how universal consciousness, when it creates lesser entities, splits itself and interacts with itself in real time. Subjectively, a single consciousness may experience one lifetime as one creature, and the next as a totally different one, and the order of what is experienced is determined by other laws and such, but the fact itself, the term reincarnation, is the observation that this is what happens at death: life. One life ends, another begins. Perhaps in a different place, a different time, a different creature, a different planet, a different dimension, all of these things are unimportant to the observation that somehow, seamlessly, life takes a new form, and consciousness inhabits that form, and takes on its parameters, and understands its walls, and in doing so, must forget its own universal nature. Reincarnation refers to nothing more than the connection of the end of one life to the beginning of another, like a point on a circle, or a cross-section of a mobius strip. Attempting to define it by any of the laws by which life goes about this cycle takes away from the richness of the definition.
These are terms that are used in many contexts in spiritual practice, feel free to use them whenever they feel right, as that is how the words want to be used. As long as the meanings and concepts get across, words are happy to be used in any way they can be.
No comments:
Post a Comment