[Francis Buck]

- 14th Dalai Lama

For the precise reason that without this primordial antagonism we could not explain the minimal distinction between the void and its vibrations, between the nothing and the ontologically incomplete realities barely distinguishable from it—in short, how the symmetries between particles and forces could have been broken in the first place.

- Slovaj Žižek

[H]

FB, you're on Less Than Nothing now?  It is a pretty good book.

[sciborg2]

What if we posit that “Things-in-themselves” emerge against the background of the Void of Nothingness, the way this Void is conceived in quantum physics, as not just a negative void, but the portent of all possible reality? This is the only true consistent “transcendental materialism” which is possible after the Kantian transcendental idealism. For a true dialectician, the ultimate mystery is not “Why is there something rather than nothing?” but “Why is there nothing rather than something?”

-Slavoj Žižek

Every now and then I suspect Zizek is more than a cranky slob. ;-)

=-=-=

"What is ethical cannot be taught. If I could explain the essence of the ethical only by means of a theory, then what is ethical would be of no value whatsoever."
 -Wittgenstein


"you have a home for sure merlinus. as to the worthiness of my mind --"

theo stares squarely into the smoky crystal of the traveler's eyes.

"i must warn you now your gold cannot buy my mind. i am an acolyte.
i go every day at noon to the church to keep up my studies for the priesthood.

if you stay with us, you can bet i will do my best to win you to our Savior.
please, take your coins back  and move out now if that offends you."

Merlinus squeezes his hand with genuine affection and promises him,

"Nothing done with love offends me."

Theo smiles widely, teeth white and even as truth, his heart glad with
the innocent pride that faith brings.
 --Attanasio, The Dragon and the Unicorn

[sciborg2]

A voice claps through their souls, so loud it draws blood through the
pores of their skin.

The Gates are no longer guarded.

Mimara is also on her knees, also shrieking, yet her fingers somehow
find her purse, begin fumbling, pinching the Chorae that nearly killed
the Wizard. She cringes beneath the looming aspect, a child beneath a
collapsing city wall. She hugs her limbs against the piercing pleas of
little mouths, the moaning masses of the damned....

And somehow lifts her Tear of God.

She knows not what she does. She knows only what she glimpsed in the
slave chamber, that single slow heartbeat of light and revelation. She
knows what she saw with the Judging Eye.

The Chorae burns as a sun in her fingers, making red wine of her hand
and forearm, revealing the shadow of her bones, and yet drawing the
eye instead of rebuking it, a light that does not blind.

"I guard them!", she weeps, standing frail beneath the white-bleached
Seal. "I hold the Gates!"

  -The Judging Eye

[sciborg2]

"The only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality--the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical--as compatible with each other, and embrace them simultaneously."
- Wolfgang Pauli

[sciborg2]

"Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it." –Andrew Boyd

[sciborg2]

'There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.'
 – Jorge Luis Borges

'Men ... think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.'
 – Charles Mackay

"...I just had the most awful, amazing dream. I was so far away, in the dark.
 
 Then I saw your grave.

 I...I read the inscription...and that's when I knew everything would be okay.

 That's when I woke up."
 -Lois to Clark, Superman Beyond: 3D

[sciborg2]

‘Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence.’
 -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.”

―Rainer Maria Rilke

[sciborg2]

‘Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence.’
 -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.”

―Rainer Maria Rilke

"Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love."
 -Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

[TaoHorror]

"Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love."
 -Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

And do you understand why this is?

[sciborg2]

"Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love."
 -Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

And do you understand why this is?

My guess would be the fear of being alone is often confused for love?

[TaoHorror]

"Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love."
 -Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

And do you understand why this is?

My guess would be the fear of being alone is often confused for love?

If your happiness is dependent on another, that is not love. Happiness independent on whose around ( "allowing" you to be alone ) frees you to love others, proper.

[sciborg2]

"Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time."
 -Thomas Nagel

 “If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.”
    -Douglas Adams

“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

[sciborg2]

In front of the bear that has just been cut into pieces, the hunter murmurs a prayer of vertiginous sweetness:

“Allow me to kill you even in the future.”

Roberto Calasso, The Celestial Hunter

=-=-=

Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality?

In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic.
-Hans Hoffman

[sciborg2]

“There will remain a certain sphere which will be outside physics ... It is obvious that a man who can see knows things which a blind man cannot know; but a blind man can know the whole of physics.”
- Bertrand Russell

"We can recognize a materialist author by his habit of using the traditional forms of Christian piety in speaking about the material world.'
 – RG Collingwood

'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma. ... Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell

“The physical world is only known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure—features which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.”

- Bertrand Russell