Thanks, Terryl, for these thoughts of beautiful imagining. To think that we might, at some future time, be able to clearly remember all of our precious interactions with loved ones, the moments of deep spiritual connection with heaven, and the lessons we have learned in every classroom of our lives (especially our own private classroom)... it causes me to take a deep breath and sigh with feelings of gratitude for this experience we call life.
Eternal lives--from B. H. Robert's viewpoint--were beginninglessly and endlessly historical. To be a serious experience the history of each life through its everlastingness had to be available to the free access of memory. Veils of forgetfulness provided useful brackets of focus--indeed, concentration itself is a self imposted veil of forgetfulness created by 'determination of the free will'. What we retrieve from our history provides 'the context of the present.' Thanks in this mortal sphere for books that amplify our current pitifully weak memories (except for some remarkable souls). I believe that intelligences are intelligent because (when not enduing mortal-like experiments with forced veiling) they have free selective access to all of their eternal memories. That is why atoning love in each of us can be infinite--we can choose when facing the horrors and pains of our histories to 'RE-member them no more'. We cannot live the past again. That makes each moment of eternity serious. Intelligences do not erase memories or forget the histories they are becoming. When not mortal fools we are fully aware we are dynamic souls--becoming different each 'now' than we were all 'thens'. I can never again remember my past as I was, but only as I have become now. Living eternal lives we experience serial new 'incarnations' with memory intact, not circular re-incarnations with no memory. Karma allows for no free excess, no creative origination because it is completely just--a closed system that needs no memory. The way out of the closed system is to end desiring of/for anything. However, the via positiva of Jesus aimed for MORE abundant life based on experiencing MORE through memory (how could there be 'more' without eternal memory.) More includes infinite originality that makes eternity interesting 'forever'. We never read the same book twice. (Gotama was right about that!) We never have the same memory twice. We create from our memories eternal lives that are dynamic negotiations with serious fixed and final historical instants that we retrieve 'anew'--making us who we are next becoming together. Thanks for this essay, Brother Givens
Steiner’s quotation is powerful. I think my biggest worry about “kids these days” is that they don’t have beauty stored up in their minds to sustain them in times of need… Just social media drivel… I take Steiner’s question as a challenge to myself as a philosophy professor — how can I help them practice building those memories in the temples of their minds?
Your words shed light on something I have been pondering of late. In considering how large language models work, and how creativity works, I can’t help but think sometimes that our brains are just big machines, and when we are creative, we aren’t doing anything different than ChatGPT, only the data set we are searching for patterns and connections is our own memories, not anything language on the internet it can get its code on. Your posts has me thinking and wondering about the quality of the memories of which you speak — and the vital role our individual consciousness plays in them, and whether that is what sets our use of our data apart from ChatGPT’s — not the creative activity that is different, but the qualitative nature of each memory, each bit of data, being processed…
Thanks, Terryl, for these thoughts of beautiful imagining. To think that we might, at some future time, be able to clearly remember all of our precious interactions with loved ones, the moments of deep spiritual connection with heaven, and the lessons we have learned in every classroom of our lives (especially our own private classroom)... it causes me to take a deep breath and sigh with feelings of gratitude for this experience we call life.
Eternal lives--from B. H. Robert's viewpoint--were beginninglessly and endlessly historical. To be a serious experience the history of each life through its everlastingness had to be available to the free access of memory. Veils of forgetfulness provided useful brackets of focus--indeed, concentration itself is a self imposted veil of forgetfulness created by 'determination of the free will'. What we retrieve from our history provides 'the context of the present.' Thanks in this mortal sphere for books that amplify our current pitifully weak memories (except for some remarkable souls). I believe that intelligences are intelligent because (when not enduing mortal-like experiments with forced veiling) they have free selective access to all of their eternal memories. That is why atoning love in each of us can be infinite--we can choose when facing the horrors and pains of our histories to 'RE-member them no more'. We cannot live the past again. That makes each moment of eternity serious. Intelligences do not erase memories or forget the histories they are becoming. When not mortal fools we are fully aware we are dynamic souls--becoming different each 'now' than we were all 'thens'. I can never again remember my past as I was, but only as I have become now. Living eternal lives we experience serial new 'incarnations' with memory intact, not circular re-incarnations with no memory. Karma allows for no free excess, no creative origination because it is completely just--a closed system that needs no memory. The way out of the closed system is to end desiring of/for anything. However, the via positiva of Jesus aimed for MORE abundant life based on experiencing MORE through memory (how could there be 'more' without eternal memory.) More includes infinite originality that makes eternity interesting 'forever'. We never read the same book twice. (Gotama was right about that!) We never have the same memory twice. We create from our memories eternal lives that are dynamic negotiations with serious fixed and final historical instants that we retrieve 'anew'--making us who we are next becoming together. Thanks for this essay, Brother Givens
Steiner’s quotation is powerful. I think my biggest worry about “kids these days” is that they don’t have beauty stored up in their minds to sustain them in times of need… Just social media drivel… I take Steiner’s question as a challenge to myself as a philosophy professor — how can I help them practice building those memories in the temples of their minds?
Your words shed light on something I have been pondering of late. In considering how large language models work, and how creativity works, I can’t help but think sometimes that our brains are just big machines, and when we are creative, we aren’t doing anything different than ChatGPT, only the data set we are searching for patterns and connections is our own memories, not anything language on the internet it can get its code on. Your posts has me thinking and wondering about the quality of the memories of which you speak — and the vital role our individual consciousness plays in them, and whether that is what sets our use of our data apart from ChatGPT’s — not the creative activity that is different, but the qualitative nature of each memory, each bit of data, being processed…
This is quite stunning to consider.
Thank you for this beautiful essay. It resonates deeply with me.