Apparitions

Two Kinds Of Spiritual Realization
(i) The individual realizes the truth of a proposition for himself.
(ii) The individual projects a deity who tells him the proposition.

(A Zen Master dreamed of a Bodhisattva who uttered a single sentence. On waking, the Master remembered the sentence and wrote it down. Therefore, that single sentence counts as Buddhist scripture. I read the sentence in Sangharakshita's book on the Buddhist scriptural canons and can probably look it up.)

If a writer of fiction presents a dialogue between a human being and a superior being, then both sides of the dialogue are written by a human being, who therefore must exercise his imagination, but does the author intend us to accept that the superior being (fictitiously) "exists" or instead to regard that being as projected by the mind of the human character? We can compare a scene in Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time with a scene in SM Stirling's The Scourge Of God - kind of complementary titles?

In The Shield Of Time
Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly of the Time Patrol walk on a beach. Suddenly, there is a stranger before them although there had been no one else on the beach. He, or she, is robed partly like a Christian monk but partly like a Buddhist monk. S/he seems to blend black, white and Oriental, has overheard their conversation and explains the meaning of the Patrol. Everard says, "'Rabbi...'" Wanda says, "'Sensei...'" The stranger heartens and blesses them and is no longer there. A Danellian.

In The Scourge Of God
Father Ignatius climbs a hill to pray alone. He is addressed by a woman's voice. There is a robed, blue-mantled woman of indeterminate age with Jewish features. Her feet press the snow. She introduces herself as Miriam and speaks of her Son. Ignatius says, "'Lady -'" Miriam addresses Ignatius by his baptismal name and says that he will be her knight... A projection?

Grill And Bar Food

SM Stirling, The Scourge Of God (New York, 2009), Chapter Twelve, pp. 325-326.

Plump, hot, steaming, aromatic sausages with juices sputtering from cracks in their skins;

beets with herbs;

cabbage;

a strong-tasting, spinach-like, boiled green;

pan-fried sliced potatoes, described as "glistening";

mustard;

a brown loaf with butter;

mugs of hot cider smelling strongly of berries.

(Out of respect for my own vegetarianism, I have attached an image of pan-fried potatoes, not of sputtering sausages.)

For more food, see here.

"High Is Heaven And Holy"

It may only have been in the combox but somewhere on the blog I have quoted CS Lewis saying that, when God became man, myth became history. Father Ignatius says this, almost quoting Lewis, in SM Stirling, The Scourge Of God (New York, 2009), Chapter Twelve, p. 321. But of more interest on Poul Anderson Appreciation is what Ignatius says later in Chapter Twelve while praying, looking at mountain peaks and dazzled by the sun:

"'High is heaven, and holy...'" (p. 328)

This memorable phrase from Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind has been quoted several times on this blog. See here. (It is a search result. Scroll down.)

The setting of sun on snowpeaks is the same. The phrase was introduced earlier in The People Of The Wind as part of an Ythrian song and makes a perfect conclusion to the novel:

"Snowpeaks flamed. The sun stood up in a shout of light.
"High is heaven and holy." (See the above link)

Fate

Rudi Mackenzie says that his fate is.
Mathilda does not believe in fate except that we make our own. There is the will of God but that is different.
Guion says that there is no destiny. There is the structure of the plenum. See here.

So is there a Weard, Dharma, Tao, Kismet etc? (I have seen theists translate "dharma" as "the will of God.") It seems to me that each person's life is an unfolding of what was in him from the beginning. So where does each person come from?

Each human being is a unique combination of genes followed by a unique organism-environment interaction. A human organism is both complex and sensitive, able to learn and use language, and each such organism is different from every other. Can I break from my past and, if so, is this because I always had the potential to break from my past whereas someone else did not?

Vegetarian Food In A Buddhist Monastery

SM Stirling, The Scourge Of God (New York, 2009), Chapter Twelve, p. 300.

Potato soup with barley and onions.
Hard white cheese grated on the soup.
Warm dark bread with butter.
Pickled cucumbers.
Hard-boiled eggs.
Sauerkraut.
Dried apples and berries.

Our heroes would prefer meat.

The Change has been followed by a flourishing of religious traditions. Tiphaine feels lonely as one of the last agnostics. She should hang in there. Being determines consciousness. Drastically changed material and social conditions and some accidental circumstances have revived various religions. Conditions and circumstances will change again. Philosophical and scientific truths are independent of social conditions although our ability to ascertain any objective truth is heavily circumscribed by social conditions. The Emberversers need a reasearch program to find out what has happened and whether it can be reversed.

(From about 9.00 PM today, I will be elsewhere at an Election results party.)

Nonsense Syllables

"'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla...'"

That is a quotation from English literature. It is the sound made by Martians dying in London. See HG Wells, The War Of The Worlds, Chapter 8.

The following coincidence is probably of no significance. When Poul Anderson's Merseian character Brechdan Ironrede speaks to his newest grandcub, he croons:

"'You will have stars for toys...Wudda, wudda, wudda.'" (Ensign Flandry, end of Chapter Three)

- and, in SM Stirling's The Scourge Of God, when an enemy assesses the Mackenzies before a battle, he refers to their war-paint and the "'...wudda-wudda-wudda stuff. It's like something out of ancient history.'" (Chapter Eleven, p. 292)

A familiar phrase resonates even when there is probably no implied cross-reference.

Stirling's battle scenes are intense. All those arrows in the air at once. Is this what it was like?

Wanderer

We have followed Odin through the works of Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman. (He is Mr Wednesday in American Gods.) Now Rudi Makenzie meets "Wanderer" in SM Stirling's The Scourge Of God, Chapter Ten, pp. 265-273.

Wanderer explains history, legend, myth and time. Need I say more? I feel that we have reached a timeless peak where we should rest and contemplate before returning to time. Rudi wakes from his dream (the realm of Morpheus) to hear Father Ignatius invoking Mary, the saints and the Trinity.

"All things are full of gods." (Thales)

Possession

I asked about demonic possession in two previous posts. See here. We definitely have possession in SM Stirling's The Scourge Of God: a human body is almost visibly invaded by a hostile consciousness and continues moving with evil intent after it should be dead. I am having to accept that we are at last learning about whatever was behind the Change and am curious to know more about these malevolent entities.

I searched for an image of "possession" but the ones that I found were over the top so I thought that the attached "Syllabus of Errors" might be of interest. Eat meat and do not read Tolkien or Harry Potter. All fantasy and science fiction should probably be on the list.

How do some people get their heads into mental spaces like that?

A Perennial Issue

The question of a hereafter has been an issue on the blog:

Ysan souls are heard to go somewhere;
Dahilis returns as a seal;
Dahut lingers and has to be exorcised;
Budic is seen in a hereafter;
SM Stirling's Wiccans are dead serious about their Summerland;
some of Poul Anderson's characters merge with AI's in a technological hereafter;
we discussed the issue here.

It is on my mind again because British imams are refusing Muslim funeral services for terrorists killed by police.

Years ago, a parish priest told a neat story from his own experience of a Bishop refusing Christian burial for a young man who had left the priesthood, then changing his mind when someone who had known neither that X had left the priesthood nor that he had died, claimed to have seen Father X among other clergy attending an ordination service in a Cathedral. (Mistaken identity but it meant something.)

At the moment of death, I hope to be alert, letting go and expecting nothing. I would like a few more decades of life to be better prepared. I request that of any relevant deity.

Escape And Education

Fiction writers can not only entertain by offering an escape from reality but also educate by reflecting reality and can even do both simultaneously. Ingenious. We can do some of this for ourselves with help from imaginative authors. My own immediate environment is exotic enough:

in London, a devotee of Krishna offers me free vegetarian food;

in Birmingham, a Muslim propagandist hands me a free Koran while a passerby tells me that I should read the Bible;

in Liverpool, I passed a parish church, a mosque, a Krishna Temple and a Latin Rite Catholic Church before returning to my apartment to meditate -

- and all of this reminds me of Poul Anderson's Technic civilization where:

on Avalon, Tabitha Falkayn says that we are mostly of the Old Faith in Highsky Choth;

on diverse planets, the natives are converted to Terrestrial religions;

in the Patrician system, a revolutionary proclamation claims that the Divine in whatever form It manifests Itself to you is with us! (See here.)

Three powerful statements, from an epic, a play and a traditional story respectively, have gained a universal significance:

"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" (I fear Greeks bringing gifts);
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark";
"...appointment in Samara."

Here we discussed the politics of Mongo, Barsoom, Technic civilization, the Emberverse and that other strange mental construct, contemporary Britain. Imagine one Zodangan trying to assassinate the Jeddak of Helium or to sabotage a Heliumite airship while another leads a peaceful protest against Heliumite occupation or imagine similar political differences between Anderson's Braeans. Such is fictional life.