Wisest Man in Athens

 

Starship PLATO

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:

Let’s say that you and your family and friends are living aboard a spaceship; you were born aboard the ship and have lived there all your lives. The ship is a starship called the Plato. It left home eons ago and traveled to many distant worlds seeking adventures and knowledge, and now it’s returned to its home planet to report everything the people aboard have experienced.

But something has gone terribly wrong. The ship has been traveling for so long that its passengers have forgotten where they came from. They think the ship is the real world—the only world!

The ship is actually orbiting Earth, its home planet from where it began its voyages of discovery. It’s been orbiting Earth for generations because no one aboard remembers how to get off the ship and get down to Earth—to the real home. All the unused shuttles for returning home are stored in a forgotten cargo bay, covered in thick shrouds of dust.

Every once in a while, ambassadors from the planet’s surface visit the ship to check up on the passengers and try to help them. Mostly, they tell the passengers about the real world. But because the visitors are big and healthy—they’ve been living in the sunlight and fresh air—they always seem like giants. The people on the ship don’t realize these visitors are just healthier versions of themselves: fellow Earthlings! Most of the people on the ship think the visitors are angels or gods.

One day, a beautiful woman comes to visit you from Earth (let’s say her name is Sophia). Sophia tells you how to board a shuttle to get down to Earth. Following her guidance you find the passageway that leads to the bay with the shuttle—and you get aboard and it takes you down to the planet.

Oh, the open sky, the sun, the fresh air—it’s unbelievably free and bright! No walls! Your heart breaks from the beauty. And the people on the planet welcome you with open arms, as their own long-lost child.

But… You can’t bear to stay, because you remember all your friends and family still aboard the ship. You’ve got to go back to tell them the good news! You’ve got to get them off that cramped tin can they think is the real world!

So you go back.
Now what do you SAY?
How can you tell them about “OPEN SKY”?

Six Vajra Verses (from the Dzogchen tradition)

The nature of all phenomena is non-dual flow.

What IS never can be determined,

Yet the total universe spontaneously arises without obstructing.

Everything already has been accomplished;

Therefore, relaxing from the strain of seeking and trying, 

find yourself whole and bright.

This is contemplation.

Metaphor of the Garden of Eden

"Eden" (paradise) refers to the paradise of little childhood, the pre-egoic, pre-verbal life, up until about 4 years old. Our parents (if we're lucky) nurture us and provide us with every need. We have not yet acquired "the knowledge of good and evil," for we have not acquired language and intellect and built the self-image. But then when we become verbal (at about two to four years old) and the discursive mind begins to develop, we construct an ego-“I” that is no longer "innocent" for it now knows "good" and "evil", "self” and "other," and it exercises comparison and judgment. At that point, we can no longer remain in the paradise of childhood (of selflessness), for we have developed the discrete self-sense.

May all beings be well and happy!

Eve, the Original Human

The archetype of the Great Goddess calls to mind a fact from the field of embryology: The female form is the primary human form, the template of all human beings. That is, every male human body develops from a modification of the primary biological form, which is female. If this conversion from female to male is blocked for any reasons, the fetus does not change from its basic form, and is born as a female, by default. Sterile, to be sure, but morphologically female. 

Between the fifth and seventh week after conception, human embryos of either sex develop generic gonads that later become either ovaries or testicles. If these generic sex cells are removed from a female embryo, the baby will still be born a female; completely female in outward appearance, but sterile because of the lack of uterus and ovaries. 

What is more fascinating, if you remove the generic sex cells of a normal male fetus, the baby also will be born as a sterile female, vagina included. Therefore, the female form is recognized as biologically innate for humans. (For some species of fish and birds, the opposite is true: removing the generic sex cells will result in a "default" male body.) 

If you do not tamper with the human male embryo, the generic gonads begin turning into testes around the eighth week; otherwise, they begin turning into ovaries around the thirteenth week. Nothing is needed for them to change into ovaries—they do that by default. However, something has to intervene—genes on the Y-chromosome—to make the gonads change into testes.

Many things can go askew in the transformation process. Such accidents lead to genetic males, called pseudohermaphrodites, who show a mix of incomplete male and incomplete female structures.

In fact, there is one type of genetic male who perfectly resembles a woman. No chest hair or masculine build, no deep voice, and of course, no penis. They are missing a cell receptor for testosterone, so although they have internal testicles making normal serum levels of male hormone, they never grow any of the male equipment that depends on that hormone for development. The “girl” does not suspect any abnormality until she reaches puberty and worries, “How come I’m not menstruating?” A trip to the doctor leads to the discovery that she has no female internal organs, just a vagina that dead-ends, and testicles hidden in the abdomen, where the ovaries belong.

As it happens, these blocked-androgen-receptor males tend to be strikingly beautiful “women.” They have got the long-legged height of males, large breasts and flawless skin (testosterone is a major cause of oily skin and acne). According to my research in a number of medical journals, more than a few pseudohermaphrodites have turned up among female fashion models!

Androgen-blocked males nearly always choose to continue their lives as women. They often get married to men and raise adopted kids, as the mom. Without the receptor for testosterone they are women, by default.

Devotees of Devi will be tempted to interpret this fact of nature—that the female form is the fundamental embryonic form—as scientific evidence of the primacy of the Goddess. A psychological analysis might ask, does this biological principle (in some deeply subconscious way) give rise to the Goddess archetype? In either case, every male vertebrate on this planet has been developed from the female template, not the other way around!

Emptiness-Luminosity

The interrobang is a nonstandard punctuation mark that superimposes a question mark (also called the interrogative point) and exclamation point (called, in printer’s jargon, a “bang”). It is a humorous symbol for The Way of Wonder, for it pairs the meanings/values of Wonder (?) and Radiance (!), or Transcendence (?) and Immanence (!)—the archetypal Complements. 

I could wear an interrobang around my neck as "religious" jewelry: a symbol of Radical Agnosticism.