W.O. is a scientist, or at least a scientific mind. He's the webmaster of one of the best sites on amateur-science on the Net ( http://oelen.net/science/ ). Apart from that he likes a good beer, has a sense of humour, has three children and... he's religious. So I could not resist a "Gedankenexperiment" (literally): how does a person like that react on the different themes that Nat and I were discussing? As expected his reaction was precise, clear, and putting the whole thing in perspective. I translate his words as faithful as I can. This is his "theory" :

"I have read the thread. I agree with the examples of spirituality as you write them down. I also experience spirituality in nature, also in lifeless nature, or in astronomy. But for me spirituality is not the same as religiosity. I even think that all people, including hard-core atheïsts, have spiritual experiences. A great piece of music that makes your backbone shiver, a beautiful cathedral, a magnificent mountain-range with snow and sharp peaks of rock: all things which awake a certain feeling which can even become a spiritual experience...

Religion is something else, that is BELIEVING in a Higher Power. Religiosity can lead to spirituality, but not all spirituality is for me a consequence of religiosity. Faith can also be very rational. My faith is not nourished by my spiritual experiences, on the contrary a part of my spiritual experiences is a result of my faith (not all of them). Faith that is pulled by spiritual experiences is doomed to die, because spirituality is strongly emotional. What if you're in a bad mood period? Then the feeling is gone, and with that your faith. My faith is based on God's Word and that is something permanent, also when I'm feeling bad and not at all in for a spiritual experience..."

Now Swami Wittgenstein says: "What can be thought can be said, and what can be said, can be said clearly". But in spite of its clarity it's just a start, it has an awful potential. Anybody comments?

At first sight we have three core concepts here, that we need to discuss and (tentatively) define. Of course I'm only exploring, still blind, using my nose and my fingertips. First there is spirituality, a difficult concept but excellently circumscribed by Nat (I love his way of circumscribing complex concepts with multiple associated attributes). Having a spiritual experience feels indeed like an experience of beauty but that may be only the physical side of it (the goose-pocks, the adrenalin...). But something wholly different is happening than during a spiritual experience. In the case of an aesthetic experience the whole thing is momentanous, limited by the object and by the circumstances, and not necessarily "significant" on a larger scale; a beautiful sight is enjoyed but is often soon forgotten (until the next attractive girl ). Spirituality lies in discovering the important, the significant: when you have a spiritual experience you feel your mind turning like a wheel, and the world with it. It involves much more the mind than the eyes. It is like an earthquake high on the Richter scale; something important has been said, a fundamental lesson has been learned. Objects impossible to perceive as beautiful can lead to a spiritual experience, even objects created by your own mind (are there any others?). When you have a spiritual experience you are shuttered and changed and you built forth on it, and sometimes you keep building. You start with the initial experience and it feels so great that you have to talk about it, that you have to show it to others, convince them... and you end up in religion. Religion is a spiritual experience condensed and frozen, an image without a soul, a lesser avatar. As Wilco pointed out, religion is indeed compatible with rationality and with the written word; it is best expressed by the Text, sacred itself by some osmosis from its content (see the Wikipedia on Jewish bibliolatria). But as Nat would point out religion can also lead to rigidity, to dogmatism, to intolerance (not with Wilco, he's really too nice a guy ). A story to clarify this: the myth of Moses seeing the Burning Bush (may have been just cranberries). The bush is not only perceived as God, declaring Divine Truths ("I Am the One who Is": one of the many translations), it also leads to one of the weirdest stories of the Old Testament, and to Jewish orthodoxy. Throughout the history of every religion one has been trying to return to the original inspiration, often felt as heresy by the orthodox and yet called "spirituality" by the many who practise it. One last approach: the aesthetic and the spiritual are both largely "subjective", personal, common as a potential but incredibly various in actuality. While religions tend to be "objective", trying to argue and proove and talking about "external" things, especially the being of God and the rules of morality. Spirituality opens you up while religion narrows you down. And God, oh my God, there He Is again (mind the caps)! We really must talk about Ishtar...

Watch out what you type, man-in-a-dress...

I find love makes a good example for explaining many spirituality-related things. Beauty is to spirituality as noticing a random pretty person is to truly loving someone. Consider the term "significant other"... I think I already wrote in my previous post that spirituality can be described as beauty + significance, except that there is a whole lot more to it than just the "pretty" type of spiritual experiences. Spiritual experiences can be ugly, cold and painful too. (It's not surprising many people believe satan exists...) Or passionate and positive yet different from beauty.

Interestingly enough love can also be like all that. And that brings us to the paradox of Ishtar. Goddess of love AND war??? How can that be, such opposite concepts in one goddess? But this is just an apparent paradox, a superficial one caused by the incomplete view of love our (Christian?) culture has.

Consider how some couples fight all the time yet are completely addicted to each other. And, yeah why not, consider what some people do with whips and stuff. There is no necessary contradiction between love and violence.

But I should watch out what I say. I do know a goddess who responds to the name Ishtar, but I'm no expert on her personality. Gosh I wish Carmen was here.

Ah, my identity. I'm a girl. Or so I say, and I also say it should be obvious from my name. But am I really a girl? You don't know, I'm just some person on the net. And what's the point of me saying it here? I've been saying so all along, by using the name Natlia.

What is a real girl anyway? Yes one can be born with a female body and have two X chromosomes, but does that make one a girl? What if one lives the life of a boy, is one still a girl? And a born boy living as a girl, is that a girl? Or is it determined by the scalpel?

Is Michael Jackson black or white?

Is someone with multiple personalities, some female and some male, a girl? Is someone with one personality, but who switches between presenting hirself as female/neutral/male a girl?

Who is the door "keuken" next to "mannen" and "vrouwen" for? (Sorry, international readers, that joke cannot be translated)

All I know is that it's only polite to refer to people by the gender they claim to have, regardless of what you believe them to be.

Does that mean I believe in pure mind? No, I think all attributes of the body we are born into have an influence on who we are, just like the location at which we are born, our parents, and all experiences during our lives. It means I don't believe in genderism, just like I couldn't care less what color Michael decides to paint himself next, or how many noses he decides to have. We are all humans, and the gender role we choose or accept without thinking is only a weak hint at our true identities. There are plenty of masculine women and feminine men, and plenty of people where either label doesn't fit, or doesn't fit all the time.

But if like I believe gender isn't all that simple, how could I make a statement like "I like girls"? Well, think of it in the same way as me saying I like dark hair. Plus I cannot choose how pheromones affect me . Yet I can fall in love with someone I never met, just because of the way they think. What if the gender they told me to have turned out not to match their smell? I don't know. But that's a normal risk in webdating, having to go out with people who smell like a dog that smoked a cigar after swimming in the sewer and drinking cheap perfume.

Now is there a parallel between all this and religion and spirituality? Maybe. In religion I didn't exactly accept the obvious defaults either, now did I? And as a Unitarian Universalist I reject dogma... might be just like my rejection of the dogma of gender.

As for the bullshit level of your writings, how much do your hands resemble the rear end of a bull? I can't say I understand the poem, maybe I will when I read it again another day.

Catcha, Catcha... What else than the "his" could have provoked my response? I think most of the regular Babylonians know about my complicated identity, but that doesn't mean I appreciate it when you shout it out on the web. You didn't get the man-in-a-dress hint about my lack of amusement, so I chose to play Obama ( = give a long and good speech about the topic that embarrassed me). Hey, if someone breaks my closet, I should get to have some fun in shattering it too, right? I just... thank some deity "Natlia" is an alias.

The sailor and mermaid: Now you have to picture me raising an eyebrow and saying "okay...." . I can't easily link this double concept to Ishtar. The Ishtar of myth did go to the underworld, but she is a goddess of the upper world, not a double face that is at home in both.

> Is there hope for Humanity?

I hope so!

> Is Love a failure or an answer?

Both. One who finds an "answer" at the first try is extremely lucky, maybe even impossibly lucky. Cause is an answer really an answer when you haven't figured out the question yet? (42)

But with a quite reasonable amount of luck, we can find an answer, or even multiple answers, and we might even end up marrying one of those answers.

I wonder if the long silence is the answer to the questions of view 2 :/ .

I sort of understand the sailor/mermaid thing now, I think I would have understood more quickly if the mermaid had been referred to as siren. Damn Disney changing the meaning of the symbols of our culture!

It's a nice poem, but I think trying to fit Ishtar into the life/death duality will not lead to much better understanding. Ishtar isn't life, but (part of) what we feel when we're "feeling alive". Sometimes doing things that make us feel alive will kill us, but usually not. Ishtar is passion - benevolent, but watch out for accidents!
But! Whatever we say, Ishtar is this, Ishtar is that, it is all oversimplification. Ishtar is a person.

Does Ishtar matter? Is she a real goddess, or just an entertaining fantasy? Should we listen to what she tells us? I say we should listen, but with healthy criticism. Maybe she is a goddess, maybe she is "only" an avatar of part of our intuition. That huge difference doesn't matter, in both cases her message is valuable - but should be checked by our "cold" rationality, that tool of self-protection.

And don't forget Ishtar is only one of many. We should listen to them too, especially when they contradict her. Especially-especially when the one that keeps us close is someone else than Ishtar.

Ones ultimate authority in life should always be oneself, not someone else, and therefore not a god or goddess either.

What does Ishtar literally look like? She might show something else to different people, whatever makes for the best way of explaining herself. I haven't seen her *that* literally as having visions, but she feels like love and courage, molded into a female shape.

Catcha, I thought you wanted to stop talking about something? I do want you to stop talking about it.

Not quite on topic (not without the information I'm leaving out anyway), but worth mentioning (you can skip everything in italics, it's information-free): A story came to me years ago, which I could never forget. It has some great jokes (if I may say so about my own story), some wisdom, and unfortunately I didn't have a clue what ending to direct it to. At the beginning the protagonist meets a strange woman, she leaves something that is important to her in his house, and then disappears (no, she doesn't resemble Carmen). Of course the guy goes searching for her, but then what? If he finds her, that's too cliche, and if he doesn't find her, what makes the story finished?

The discussions with Catcha, thoughts about a book on philosophy I'm reading, things I've learned in the last year... all these suddenly came together in my mind with the concept the strange lady represents (I'm not explaining ), and then it was clear what the ending should be (I'm not saying, otherwise people won't need to buy my book )... and then I noticed this ending is already predicted in the symbolics of the beginning scenes, I just didn't see it. Made me do this: (the jawdropping smiley should have been here, but clicking it doesn't do anything for me. weird.). Now I only needed a middle part for the story... well... how about mixing in all I learned about deities, mythology, as well as the ideas from my sermon? Oh my, the latter fits in very well with things the strange woman talks about, creating a beautiful and really unexpected parallel... another jawdrop.

So what I'm saying is... I really must write instead of talking on the net. The pieces of a REALLY great book just came together in my mind.

What I wanted to say (I think ) is that my previous approach to love as Intentionality is a dead end. There can be hardly any love in dr. Mengele's interest for the bowels of a person he's cutting open on the operation table. "Loving the world" is an empty expression: you know the world (or at least some parts of it), and you love (some of) your fellow human beings. "Loving Ishtar" is also an empty phrase, because one cannot love an idea or a concept in this approach; loving an idea is only loving oneself (which is a contradiction-in-terms). So Ishtar can only be understood as somebody else and not as something else, that is if we really believe in her, not just "considering" her. Love is only possible towards our fellow human beings; it is born from the full encounter of two (or more?) human "souls", not being there -or at least being incomplete- when there's no real other involved (now I'm talking about love and not about Ishtar). Love is (brace yourself): the echo of an echo, a depth that fully realizes itself in another depth, the full deployment of a subject in the subjectivity of another. Now that's contrary to Carmen's intuïtions whose love is the most dominating aspect of her whole mentality. For her one can love the whole world, in an huge general movement that embraces and includes everything and that becomes the basis of moral values and practical behavior (for example your choices on climate issues or social injustice). This "unpersonal love" is symbolized by the "hug", which is an all-embracing and compressing movement, pushing and putting it all together, even a bit agressively, like in a "grip". Perhaps my present conception of love is better expressed by the kiss, and I mean hmm the mouth-to-mouth kiss, where there is a response or "answer". An even better example is sex, which is also a coöperative matter; if I remember well the hug is not too frequent in sex, while it hampers "play". When you think of it sex is indeed a convincing illustration for this approach: one does not f... a tree or a panda-bear, nor does one have a passionate argument with it (well most people don't). So with Carmen some other thing than love seems to be involved, it may be something aesthetical or moral but it is not love (applying the Ishtar cluster-of-concepts on natural phenomena may be a bit... unnatural! Ishtar is a goddess of Man). Carmen, now you have no choice: you have to come out and correct this old heretic ! Well, all this is just theory; Ishtar scratches her hair, maybe just like Carmen or Nat. In an other posting I hope to make a "synthesis of the research" in this thread, just summarizing what has been said with as few interpretations as possible. Is there any development or unity behind it? And I must think about the relation between polytheïsm and discordianism, and how they prevent you from thinking you know it all. And what's that Unitarian Universalists stuff? Yet another thing to be learned. To Google!

Ok, no e-mail then (don't expect a long apology for me reading your postings badly ).Hey, I'm mighty proud to be part of your thinking process as a novellist ànd as a human being, and as a book-collector I'd really like to have a signed copy of your book once it is published (I once knew a guy called Jeff.......... nooooo??? ). For now I'll do three things. First of all I'll respect the message "don't disturb" on your door-knob and I will not add another long text to this thread. Secondly I want to mention a good book for further reading that arrived at my place today and that is very relevant for many of the issues that were touched (*). Thirdly I do intend to read this thread a few times over and make my own summary of it, that may or may not be "published" in this (or another) thread, but that may contain a few ideas worth retaining (probably Natlia's). A summary I said, not an interpretation, but I of course I may interprete the whole thing as I like; I'll just won't bother you with it. So just as in SL I give myself a testosteron-injection and I say with my Ahnuld voice: "Hasta la Vista, Baby!", and: "I'll be back!". And I hope to see you all soon... in Babylon! .

Commin' up, bay-bee ! (Testosteron needs time to disappear out of the bloodstream). Will not be for today though, 'coz I want to rewrite the whole thing a few times in order to make it hmm more "faithful". Damn difficult with this kind of stuff! Hey, I thought it was inspiring? Oh well...

I just wanted to draw attention to a devastating story by the great librarian Jorge Luis Borges, describing the consequences of philosophical thinking applied to religious matters, and the risks of it for ones health:

http://southerncrossreview.org/49/borges-judas-eng.htm

Now you either love or hate Borges, but don't condemn him for his abundant culture. Sounds pretty moralising but books open incredible depths. Give them a chance, folks!