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It's all wordsReader comment on item: Musing on History Submitted by Michael S (United States), Jul 11, 2015 at 23:26 Hi, Waz. It's always pleasant to talk with you -- it's relief from the mundane. Our perception is subjective.... but things are actually happening independent of the observer in the 'outside' world - of course. e.g. you are not actually just happening within my mind. Are they actually happening? How? I'm not saying this from a Hindu point of view, nor even from the point of view of The Matrix -- though the latter comes close to my thinking in some ways. We think we live in a world, which seems real. We seem to move, we seem to bleed, we seem to get bonks on the head, and Michael S seems to be talking with Mohammed Waza Whatever. When we sleep, Michael seems to dream his own dreams and Waza seems to dream his. Sometimes I'm in Australia in my dreams; but it isn't the Australia I once lived in, nor is it, I dare say, the one you live in now. When we die, our dreams continue. According to the Bible, they converge in a new place, hopefully, if both Michael and Waza somehow find themselves acceptable to the Lord of that place. In The Matrix, the characters in the common "reality" were really avatars, linked by a computer program. We have prototypes of this sort of world, in computer games people play: The avatars are all on the monitor, and the individual players are in control of their respective images; but there is no physical reality to it all other than the images on the monitors. The world we live in is very much like this. We can't see photons, or muons, or gluons, or any of the other wavicles that supposedly comprise our universe. Neither can we perceive the bends in space-time that we are assured exist. None of these things are "real", except for the great "computer program" that defines their existence and their relationships to one another. What is REAL, without quotes, it seems, are words. Schrödinger's equation is real, though I can't understand it for the life of me. The "real number system", a form of language, is real; equally real is the "imaginary" number system, because it is also necessary for describing real phenomena. These are words. Torah is also real: it is words that describe not only God but also our own character. Laws are real, even when those charged with enforcing them might be flaky. Are atoms real? Neither you nor I, certainly, can see them, even though I spent a few years studying them on a nanometer scale with an atomic force microscope. If we could actually see or touch a proton or electron, what we would be seeing would be simply a manifestation, created for our benefit in our respective dark brains, of the underlying physical laws and relationships. It's those laws, those relationships, that are real: The electrons and protons are just 3-d pictorial "words", 3-d hieroglyphics if you will, expressing that underlying reality. What about when we dream? Are our dream worlds real? They are, and they are interconnected. I took a nap the other day, and began dreaming. I had been thinking about the world situation -- about Egypt and South Sudan, in particular. In my dream, I remember saying that Sisi and South Sudan were disintegrating; then I looked at my hands, still in my dream, at an old, worn, bleach-eaten T-shirt. I awoke immediately after this, and realized that the tattered T-shirt was a pictoral "word" expressing the same word I had spoken about Egypt and Sudan. Sisi is real, so we believe. Egypt is real, at least in the minds of many Egyptians, etc. Those are "objective realities", quite outside my dream; yet I saw those things in my dream in a way that even many objective observers don't see them: I saw them as tattered and fragmenting: The "word" of the T-shirt I saw in my dream is real, objectively real, though I saw it subjectively. How about eternity? the world beyond our ken as finite beings. Our only contact with that world, at the moment, is through revelation; and of course, even if the revelation is real, we have to believe it in order to "see" this reality. What do things look like in this revelation? Here's an example: Ezekiel 2: All Ezekiel saw, in his vision, was a hand: He didn't see whom it was attached to. In Revelation, John saw a more complete picture: Rev 5: Rev 10: Do you see what's going on? The scroll had words on it; but the scroll itself was a word, which the avatar of John ate in the revelation. Then he was to prophecy, speaking forth the words he had eaten. The angel, moreover, was a word, a 3-d word in John's vision. The same goes for the other scrolls, words, hands, etc. in the visions John and Ezekiel saw. Those words produced thunders, lightings, plagues; just like the words of the "Standard Model" produce planets, nuclear explosions and the Big Bang. It's the words that are real, in this world and the next; and you and I are also words -- binary words at the moment, in ASCII characters. These same words are in my mind; and when you read them, they will be in yours. I need to get some housework done. God bless and keep you and yours. :-)
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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (206) on this item
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