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Australia has started to test a network of drainage with mesh so that plastics and other pollutants do not reach rivers or sea. 

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A Specially Adapted Underwater Wheelchair Brings Artist Sue Austin Beneath the Earth’s Surface

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Enlightenment Versus Spiritualized Ego

Anyone who claims to be so special, as in having a unique connection to God, talking to angels, etc. is a salesman. Compare to Joseph Smith with his magical glasses. This behavior obviously creates a position of power ready to abuse the gullible.

While we cannot say such behavior rules out someone having experienced an enlightened insight, such behavior would be difficult for an enlightened mind and is also counter to the enlightened perspective. More likely is a case of spiritualized ego.

Enlightenment seems paradoxical from the outside in terms of being both special and nothing special. Relative rarety, esoteric knowledge and claims of union with God imbues a sense of eminence. However internally one knows nothing was earned and everyone is in union with God too.

Mohammed’s religion is known for persecuting those bringing an enlightened perspective:

I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart.

He said, “Who are you?” I said, “I am You.”

You are He Who fills all place

But place does not know where You are.

In my subsistence is my annihilation;

In my annihilation, I remain You.

- Mansur Al-Hallaj (Brutally executed by the clergy for blasphemy)

Commenting on the famous expression of Mansur al-Hallaj, for which al-Hallaj was executed as a blasphemer…

People imagine that it is a presumptive claim, whereas it is really a presumtive claim to say “I am the slave of God”; and “I am God” is an expression of great humility. The man who says “I am the slave of God” affirms two existences, his own and God’s, but he that says “I am God” has made himself non-existent and has given himself up and says “I am God”, that is, “I am naught, He is all; there is no being but God’s.” This is the extreme of humility and self-abasement.

- Pete Ashley

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“Ask The Universe” by Olesya Umantsiva

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“The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries.”

— John Stuart Mill 

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Agostina Sky by Simon Haiduk, Motion Efffects by David Letelier

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“Push” by Seth McMohan

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“I’ve been working on the woman I know I’m destined to be. Everyday I am learning how to better myself.”

— Sopha Rush

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Sam Brown Taos Spiral

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Jean Delville, Angel of Splendour (1894)

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“Man, then, Asclepios, is a great marvel; a creature worthy of respect and adoration, for amid this divine Nature he moves as if he himself were a God. He knows the order of the genii, and, aware that he is of the same origin, he despises the human side of his being in order to attach himself exclusively to the divine element. How happily constituted and near to the Gods is humanity! In joining himself to the divine, man disdains that which he has in him of the earthly; he connects himself by a bond of love to all other beings, and thereby feels himself necessary to the universal order. He contemplates heaven; and in his happy middle sphere in which he is placed, he loves all that is below him, he is beloved of all that is above. He cultivates the earth; he borrows the speed of the elements; his piercing thought fathoms the deeps of the sea. Everything is clear for him. Heaven does not seem to him too high, for knowledge lifts him to it. The brightness of his mind is not obscured by the thick mists of the air; the earth’s gravitation is no obstacle to his efforts; the profundity of deep seas does not disturb him; he includes everything and remains everywhere the same.”

— Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, The Virgin of the World

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The soul is bound to the body by a conversion to the corporeal passions; and again liberated by becoming impassive to the body.

Porphyry (via pathofregeneration)

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The Twofold Death

“That which nature binds, nature also dissolves: and that which the soul binds, the soul likewise dissolves. Nature, indeed, bound the body to the soul; but the soul binds herself to the body. Nature, therefore, liberates the body from the soul; but the soul liberates herself from the body. Hence there is a twofold death; the one, indeed, universally known, in which the body is liberated from the soul; but the other peculiar to philosophers, in which the soul is liberated from the body. Nor does the one entirely follow the other.”

— Porphyhy, Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Natures

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Roman wallpainting of Perseus freeing Andromeda House of the Dioscuri, Pompeii, Italy (1st century AD)

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Luca Giordano, The Boat of Charon, Sleep, Night and Morpheus (1684-86) Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence

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“For thus it is said: that the daemon of each person, which was allotted to him while living, endeavours to lead each to a certain place, where it is necessary that all of them, being collected together, after they have been judged, should proceed to Hades, together with their leader, who is ordered to conduct them from hence thither. But there receiving the allotments proper to their condition, and abiding for a necessary time, another leader brings them back hither again, in many and long periods of time.  . . . The soul, therefore, which is properly adorned with virtue, and which possesses prudence, willingly follows its leader, and is not ignorant of its present condition but the soul which still adheres to body through desire (as I said before), being for a long space of time terrified about it, and struggling and suffering abundantly about the visible place, is with violence and great difficulty led away by its presiding daemon.  . . . But such a soul wanders about, oppressed with every kind of anxiety and trouble, till certain periods of time are accomplished: and these being completed, it is driven by necessity to an abode accommodated to its nature. But the soul which has passed through life with purity and moderation, obtaining the Gods for its companions and leaders, will reside in a place adapted to its purified condition.”

— Plato, Phaedo

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Oriane Safré-Proust

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