TO DANCE WITH THE ANGELS

To what purpose are we enlightened? A religious person would correctly say: “To know God in Heaven.” An unbeliever would say “To truly know yourself in the cosmic order of things.” Many other explanations exist. All of them are right. All of them say the same thing using different metaphors of explanation that makes the most sense to them.

This series of essays can at this point take two separate branches both compatible with the other. The first and most likely is that of explaining existence as it fits into the cosmos of which it is but an infinitesimal part.

This has been the subject of many religious discourses and one more is not really needed here. What is far more interesting is that second branch which can be entitled, “There Is More To See Than Meets The Eye!”

The Cosmic Interface:

What needs to be said of the first branch is this. Looking at the process, the accumulation, the analysis and the modulation of it all by this wonderful capacity we have as human beings to do it. It becomes undeniable that there is more than just death ending it all. It seems eminently clear there was more to us before we started with birth or even conception. The Buddhists taught me this most clearly however building on a sound Christian and Jewish foundation I already had.

This is covered in my book From AA to AD a Wistful Travelogue and is not in need of repeating here. Whatever it is it is unique. It is unique because we consciously seek transcendence beyond ourselves. In the process of this life we learn we are capable of doing this.

The evidence is apparent studying the process. We are efficient as we accumulate, as we learn, we pass up so much more that could be accumulated and learned. This occurs by reason of the way we exercise our talents for discovery. Whether or not intended this way it is the way we do it.

When we name something it goes into our data bank under the classification of name and links to whatever else relates to that name. When we learn how to do something we make formulas of the process of doing it. Once done that is filed in our data bank in the “How-To” category, we give a name to identify the known formula of how to do that something we have gone to the effort of learning to do.

Once done the name and the formula are the shortcuts to remembering them and remembering the data learned to perform them. However, there is much about the material we have learned making the formula and giving the name to it.

Only the process we worked through while learning how to do it is retained along with the formula for doing it and the name given it. The knowledge accumulated getting us there is discarded. The name and the formula remain in the memory forefront linked to the method of doing it a step back in memory. This becomes a shortcut.

What knowledge is not important or relevant to the identity or the necessary How-To instructions are let go. These over time are placed in a more remote category of our data bank and ultimately forgotten altogether.

The purpose we have in acquiring it determines that which is accumulated and thought about. With our finite talents we accumulate, store, then determine its status and relevance. That which has no utility, has no purpose, is then determined to have no need for retention. This then passes out of the orbit of our consciousness.

That does not mean it ceases to exist. It succumbs to the category of “Don’t Use it, Lose it.” Eventually it is lost to us for not using it.

It is error on our part to believe all we know is all there is. It is in our senior years that we reflect a broader view of our knowledge base. It is nonetheless initially limited to our pragmatic process for learning it.