Carter-the mystic man

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Jason Carter wrote:


> >DAVIS

> >Let's just say, to be accurate, that you "believe" her beliefs to be wrong.

>

> CARTER

> No, I KNOW her beliefs concerning God to be wrong, whether or not I can

> convince you.

>

> >Since you cannot, after repeated requests by numerous list members, including

> >me, demonstrate the physical reality of your God (or the alleged demons who

> >oppose Him)

>

> CARTER

> Davis, this is very simple, and I am surprised you have not caught on yet.

> You cannot demonstrate the PHYSICAL reality of a NON-PHYSICAL entity. It's

> like saying, "Demonstrate the physical reality of 'love.'"

>

> you are speaking of belief, not knowledge. Since you are "saved by

> >faith" and "walk by faith, not by sight" your definition of salvation assumes

> >that you CANNOT HAVE ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE of God.

>

> CARTER

> Having faith does not rule out actual knowledge. We may have faith because

> we have actual knowledge, and we may have actual knowledge because we have

> faith.

>

> -Jason


NYQUEST:
"A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with
the minds of others. Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his
own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their
arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of
independence that he renounced his rational faculty.  At the crossroads of the
choice between "I know" and "They say," he chose the authority of others, he chose
to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think.  Faith in
the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others.  His surrender took
the form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of understanding, that others
possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is
whatever they want it to be, through some means forever denied to him.


>From then on, afraid to think, he is left at the mercy of unidentified feelings.

His feelings become his only guide, his only remnant of personal identity, he
clings to them with ferocious possessiveness--and whatever thinking he does is
devoted to the struggle of hiding from himself that the nature of his feelings is
terror.

When a mystic declares that he feels the existence of a power superior to reason,
he feels it all right, but that power is not an omniscient superspirit of the
universe, it is the consciousness of any passer-by to whom he has surrendered his
own.  A mystic is driven by the urge to impress, to cheat, to flatter, to deceive,
to force that omnipotent consciousness of others.  "They" are his only key to
reality, he feels that he cannot exist save by harnessing their mysterious power
and extorting their unaccountable consent.  "They" are his only means of
perception and, like a blind man who depends on the sight of a dog, he feels he
must leash them in order to live.  To control the consciousness of others becomes
his only passion; power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an
abandoned mind.

A mystic seeks to escape the risks of a quest for knowledge by obliterating the
distinction between consciousness and reality, between the perceiver and the
perceived, hoping that an automatic certainty and an infallible knowledge of the
universe will be granted to him by the blind, unfocused stare of his eyes turned
inward, contemplating the sensations, the feelings, the urgings, the muggy
associational twistings projected by the rudderless mechanism of his undirected
consciousness.  Whatever his mechanism produces is an absolute not to be
questioned; and whenever it clashes with reality, it is reality that he ignores.

Since the clash is constant, the mystic's solution is to believe that what he
perceives is another, "higher" reality--where his wishes are omnipotent, where
contradictions are possible and A is non-A, where his assertions, which are false
on earth, become true and acquired the status of a "superior" truth which he
perceives by means of a special faculty denied to other, "inferior," beings.  The
only validation of his consciousness he can obtain on earth is the belief and the
obedience of others, when they accept his "truth" as superior to their own
perception of reality."  ("The Ayn Rand Lexicon")  Thank goodness for Rand another
of my heroes along with Farrell. Gloria

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