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What is the Absolute for you?

Psyduck

Bluelighter
Joined
Feb 24, 2008
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672
What is the Absolute for you? With the "Absolute" I don't necessarily mean 'God' (from organised religion, or a personal God). You can fill in that word with plenty of (other) things: Goodness, Beauty, Truth, The Creativity of the Universe, Infinity, Universal Consciousness, Love, happiness, freedom... be free to give other answers

What strikes me is that every human being can make sense of something Absolute, independently how one wants to fill that notion in. How is it even possible that such a thing can enter our thought? Where does it come from?

(p.s. please avoid flaming on each other and redundant religious/atheists discussions.)
 
Absolutely Nothing.

(I am not being an asshole - this really is my honest reply to your thread, and two words to express it are already two words too much...)
 
I agree with Jam but it can also depend on what you are looking for.

Absolution is resolve in self fulfillment.
 
My approach to the Absolute is basically in line with the Dharmic religions' conception of Isvara (the prime mover, the absolute foundation of this all) -- beyond the capabilities of human language to capture, or human thought to make sense of. This Tao-that-cannot-be-named is best left a mystery, and best spoken about indirectly using myth and metaphor.

But that's all academic.

Generally speaking, I see the divine in that which builds, binds, connects, bridges, or heals.
 
Duns Scotus says that the absolute transcends being- it is,and it is not. The self-limiting nature of language is the problem.
 
^ It has been my belief for the longest time that the very inadequacy of words can itself be exploited to express extra-linguistic absolution.

The apophatic method - that of describing things for what they are not rather than for what they are - ought, eventually, to give rise in the mind's eye to an implicit understanding of such that neither is nor is not. This, to me, is basically the only none-hypocritical way to express absolution with language. The trick, however, is to be aware of an inherent paradox in an utterance - otherwise one can get stuck dwelling on the explicit emptiness of the word "nothing" rather than the implicit beauty of the noun "Nothing," thereby turning into a depressed existentialist* ;). By this, I mean that the very utterance, or the very sentence, is itself not the absolute, nor does it by its own merit signify the absolute, and therefore to "take my word for it" (literally!) is to actually accept being lied to.

An implication through negation, on the other hand, is one way to express something by tricking the words to cancel each other out (or even the one word canceling itself out by contradicting its own grammatical structure, as is the case with "Nothing"), leaving an emergent understanding behind to those aware of said canceling-out.

That said, if one is mindful of this truth of lies (and that entails resisting the temptation of forgetfulness that leads to belief in lies), one can enjoy a sort of play with language, and be awed by its infinite beauty, through the creative use of metaphor, symbol, and paradox to continuously imply the absolute. I call this (true) Poetry. What's more, Poetry does not have to be only verbal. It can involve action too: and that is what (true) Love is to me, and subsequently compassion and healing, etc. which I agree with MDAO about. True Love as I see it cannot exist without implying the absolute. Btw, this is what I believe a certain madman meant by "Love under Will."

My personal life has for many years been anchored in the above line of thought. All my other, more concrete beliefs revolve around it. Sort of like a bright accretion disk around the black hole.

Actually, geeky as it sounds, I think black holes make great metaphors for the absolute :). The part you are able to perceive is not, in fact, the hole itself, but rather the stuff gravitating towards it. In my very limited understanding of physics, no one can actually explain a black hole on its own terms, but rather through the examination of the spacetime phenomena surrounding it. Those of you more proficient than I am in physics, feel free to correct me.

* It has been my observation so far that the mirror-image of all this, ie. a person who thinks the absolute can be expressed and contained in the word itself, can become excessively obsessive with the words themselves and lost in a never-ending semantic discussion. Sound familiar? This is actually what I think happened in Judaism and in the European Enlightenment (Philosophically), generating volumes of commentaries and anti-commentaries and commentaries on those, and much of which is still debated today (and will probably remain unresolved so long as people insist on trusting words). It is this absolute trust in words that has spiritually-repelled me from both traditions, Qabalism nonwithstanding. Mind you, these traditions share the same problems with depressed existentialists: it is simply that one trusts that words can reveal what really is, and the other suffers from a constant anxiety of no-words because he refuses to accept implication. As such, I personally believe that the Dharmic religions offer a wonderful third-alternative. The Buddha explicitly expresses the fact that It neither is nor is-not.
 
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The uselessness of language is the only way we have to talk about it, so I guess it's going to have to do. I find words break down in the face of the experience of the numinous,to misquote Orwell: "Old thinkers unbellyfeel the Absolute."
And I don't think that's what Uncle Aleister meant by "Love Under Will"- it was an Ipssissimus thing. The man was much more of a fatalist than people give him credit for.
Happy New Year, Jamshyd
 
He was a fatalist indeed! See, Will here is capitalized, denoting one acting as a medium or organic part of the Will an unspeakable whole, thereby freely choosing to be fatalistic :D. It is actually in my opinion not unlike the central idea of Islam: to submit to the Will of God.

Happy New Year to you too, my friend :).
 
For me, it is non-being which encompasses the constellation of possibilities for actually becoming, these possibilities at once encompassing 'every thing' that they condition, but defying our ability to articulate entirely, for they adhere at the level that makes expression possible, not within the expressible itself.

Basically, I THINK that I'm on-board with Jamshyd. :p

ebola
 
the space between my ears is absolute.

makes it a bitch when buying a hat that's f'sho


serious answer: absolutes are lazy. it's a way of encompassing more than what is actual, which is neither absolutely stuffed nor absolutely void.
 
However, is it absolutely neither (but also absolutely not-neither)?

ebola
 
Some days I feel I have some core values. Some of my favorite poetic words seem to imply absoluteness to some extent like abyss. Ultimate as bestest or latest is getting towards an absoluteness but usually an absoluteness that is going to get bumped.

As a presumably finite being I'm not sure it is my place to choose an absolute, I think I'm supposed to wait for an absolute to choose me. Absolutes are the most extreme or do they encompass the most extreme points and everything in between.
 
Interesting question.

Any verbal description of "the Absolute" would be relative, as language and thought is all relative.

Nisargadatta Maharaj: "You're asking who is God? Is he not the very light by which you ask the question?"
 
The word "Absolute" is just a vague abstraction. It's like asking people what "Good" and "Evil" are. Everyone will have different ideas. To me, none of it has any real existence outside of our own heads.
 
Im not quite catching on what is meant by the word "absolute". In my personal understanding.... The absolute is the source, what fules the ray of creation. In order to understand anything, we have to break it down into its smaller components. Sub atomic particles --> atoms-->elements --> compounds--> molecules--> cells--> tissues--> organs--> system--> organism. Everything is part of a bigger body... We can say that we are part of a living breathing organism that is our universe, continuously growing and changing... And at the beginning of that ray of creation... Is the source.which is wat the christians wud call god. May i reccomend a rather interesting read? P.D Ouspensky - The Fourth Way an G.I Gurdjieff - In Search Of The Miraculous. Fantastic stuff.
 
And ultimately our goal here is to reach The Absolute, but decoding the universal language requires alot more than curiosity and speculation. But studying ancient esoteric knowledge could perhaps help us rediscover the divinity we once lost..
 
like 'P says: it's all in your head!

yes, of course, but the question is: how does it come there? Can one say that a notion such as "perfection" is constructed by our mind the same way we can construct a perfect circle.
 
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