~HARQALYA~






        

      Author Topic:   Apprehending Place 
      Mr. Nowhere posted 1/8/01 9:47 PM     

      How to apprehend place is possibly the greatest single lesson we have to 
      learn from the archaic mind-set or worldview. We have to learn how to 
      dream with our eyes open. In terms of cognitive science, we will have to 
      reprogram our neuronal processes to allow into the limelight of our 
      consciousness the information received from place that currently falls 
      ouside the spectrum of our awareness. The informtional model our 
      brain-minds create of the world needs modification, or at least 
      enhancement...Technically, we do not directly apprehend the world at all, 
      but reconstruct it from electrical and chemical signals used in the vast 
      processing capacity of the brain-mind, and that the product of this is 
      shaped and modified by our own range of memories, associations, and 
      cultural enviroment. What gets into our direct consciousness is a highly 
      edited, selective view of the world. The enviroment we apprehend is a 
      cognitive construction, built within the recesses of our brain-minds, and 
      sacred space is therefore a division of that cognized enviroment. But even 
      if sacred space is made for us within the brain-mind, that does not mean 
      that we can assume it is illusory--at least, any more than any other 
      aspect of what we fondly think of as reality. Indeed, if we find ourselves 
      engaged by a sacred place, and have our consciousness provoked by it, the 
      reason such locations seem sacred, seem to possess a "numen loci", may be 
      precisely that we receive MORE information from them. The very fact that 
      there are, and have always been, sacred places demonstrates their 
      psychological importance to our species. They may be where we get a 
      greater glimpse of reality...
      Such threshold places are known in anthropology as "liminal", a term 
      coined by Arnold van Gennap in his "The Rites of Passage" in 1909, and 
      developed later by anthropologist Victor Turner. The word derives from the 
      Latin "limen", boundary, from where we get "limit" in English. The Romans 
      had household gods (such as Vestia, guarding the hearth), and the doorway 
      was the realm of the deities Limentinus and Limenting. The liminal 
      condition is a phase of transition between different states of being, and 
      can apply to a wide variety of circumstances--social, ritual, temporal, 
      and spatial. Quite often, it involves a mix of these. The Romans also had 
      a god of transition, Janus, who faced both ways at once and presided over 
      comings and goings...
      This "betwixt-and-between" stage or place is remebered in surviving folk 
      traditions like the groom carrying the bride across the threshold of the 
      new home, and also in apparently nonsense nursery rhymes such as that 
      about the Grand Old Duke of York, who marched his men to the top of the 
      hill and then marched them back. "And when they were up they were up, when 
      they were down they were down, but when they were only halfway up", we 
      recall, "they were neither up nor down." A.A. Milne put it a little 
      differently in "Halfway Down" in "When We Were Very Young" (1924):
      "Halfway up the stairs
      Isn't up 
      And isn't down.
      It isn't in the nursery,
      It isn't in the town.
      And all sorts of funny thoughts
      Run round my head:
      'It isn't really
      Anywhere!
      It's somewhere else
      Instead!"
      Rather like utopia...Or Harqalya for that matter! 
      Parsifal posted 1/9/01 0:08 AM        

      This is kinda strange, but my car has kinda been a sacred space! What I 
      mean is that when I am on an open stretch of highway, or just parked on a 
      quiet street sitting in it, I have had some really cool revelations when 
      pondering something. Maybe the metal around me shields my mind from noise 
      or something, I don't know. Also, I never listen to the radio in it. But I 
      have found that it is one of the best places to think. As long as I'm not 
      driving in rush hour traffic! And the halfway point is always the best 
      place to be. Balance and harmony, no struggle to go one way or the other 
      but just be still and centered, able to feel "up" and "down" at the same 
      moment. Of course, I hate it when I am in my sacred car driving home 
      during rush hour and I am still only halfway home. 
        




Post New Topic