"Make oneness." (p. 369)
"Be not afraid of the strangers with single bodies. Terrible are their powers, but those We can someday learn to wield like them if we choose. Rather pity that race, who are not beasts but can think, and thus know that they will never know oneness." (p. 520)
Thus begins and ends The Rebel Worlds. Thus also, a Didonian first becomes self-conscious, then reflects on humanity.
"Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear.
"When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorrow can ever be near him?"
-Juan Mascaro (trans.), Isa Upanishad IN The Upanishads (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1984), p. 49.
"'An invisible and subtle essence is the Spirit of the whole universe. That is Reality. That is Truth. THOU ART THAT.'"
-Chandogya Upanishad IN op. cit., p. 118.
Human beings can know a greater unity than that of the Didonians.
I have one philosophical disagreement with Vedanta: sages realize their identity with the essence of the universe but that essence is conscious of itself only through human beings and other conscious organisms. Before the evolution of such organisms, THAT was pre-conscious. I think.
(I might be having computer problems so don't be surprised if I am off-line for a while.)
6 comments:
I'd say the point of consciousness is increasing individuation.
Agreed. Consciousness is not diffuse.
Kaor, to Both!
Now I'm wondering how plausible it would be for a tribodied Didonian to be conscious if heesh's self awareness depends on the varying combinations of heesh's units.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Even changing one unit generates a very different personality.
Paul.
Didonians are sort or the ultimate 'plug-in' consciousness...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But so complicated and easy to "disrupt" in its earliest days if a single bodied intelligent species had evolved on Dido. As Flandry said, such a race would have made short work of the tribodied form when it was still clumsy and primitive.
Ad astra! Sean
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