***COMPLETE*** ON PHILOSOPHY (TRAINING FOR DEATH)

PROLOGUE

Together we have arrived at this place

With rows of towering marbled columns

giving rise to those who debate the problems

that have, and will, and shall, plague the human race

a life well lived births a death justly won

as we arrive in hell, the gate bolted shut

reminisce: wanton wand’ring under th’sun

the great philosophers stay here, stuck in a rut.

Rhetorical rhetoric is antithetical in task,

As it fails to do what of you, they and I ask.

This matters not, for your task is but to learn

And ease the hearts burden, of all that it yearns.

So come, sit, and join the fellows with us here

listen and orate, as you’ve been implored to share.

THE ARGUMENT

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. God: the creator

formed man and woman, and like the angel fell the sky woman, and on turtles’ back

man was born.

And so, God’s turtle Terra Gaia, birthed Ouranos

And like Eve was fashioned of Adam

Caelus was fashioned of Terra Gaia

So, when sin brought forth the monster who violated the earth

the fashion of hell arose, birthed in violence.

From this defiance God exiled the patriarch of sin,

along with the treasonous army of fallen angels

And so, the creator punished the defiant:

for the fates cannot be opposed,

just as God, Allah, Yahweh, Odin, Vishnu and Brahma, Ogdoad, Waheguru, Bahái, the creator, in all his names

has not afforded her children the cold comfort

of predestination.

So then came the son of Christ and the rise

and eventual fall of the Titans, from whomst sprung

the Holy Spirit in the Olympians and their kin

so then, the spawn of God gave us heroes.

They together with the son of Christ came to cleanse the earth

Of monsters born from the depths of hell

and sought to bring humanity to salvation –

rescuing men from their own destruction.

Till the End Days

and the End of Days.

And so, God, in his creation, caused the great bang

so the entire universe would condense into matter

from atoms and particles came the mortal realm

that grounds and fixates humanity in its existence

and magical, extraordinary, and godlike creatures

with use of such powers known by some as witchcraft and wizardry

elevate above the mortal plane, and remain

immortal and untouchable.

So then, life is bound by the blind casts of the beings above

such that when our fragile shells become hollow

our person is fragmented and recycled

our energy returns to Mother Earth and the turtle shell

and spirits to judgement, sent to the angels above

or the devil below

and all other sentences, crafted in his image,

privileged by his mercy. Or yet frozen still

held in false enlightenment, repurposed

to bear the gifts and burdens of another life:

a sailor embarked on the endless voyage

until the end days.

What fortune beholds then, those saints of nirvana

who fashion themselves among all of God’s children

And lead their lives as a burden before enlightenment

guiding us in philosophical science

to ethical morality and moral ethicality

to march onward to our greater end

or to what purpose may lay in waiting.

So becomes the single question that tortures all of man

from the beginning to the end

until salvation or oblivion

to believe or not to be: live

life until death.

That which we cannot know yet forever seek

the eternal mystery that drowns all genius

and exceeds man: such that there can be no conclusion that there are those above

that which we call God, or by any other name

which saints and angels we harken

and the devils, monsters, and demons, we fear

this is where all our roads meet

in death.

And so, this is one tale of our creation.

THE PLAYERS AND THEIR ARGUMENTS

Together we arrive at this vast void

that is both dark and light

of the living and undead

whereupon we came to a great chamber

like a royal hall, the walls could not be seen

and for as far as the eye could see of the unending expanse

bare empty nothing across the ground, met the horizon

so sat giant, luminous beings, opposing one another

with voices that seemed to be deistic in themselves.

So, we approach, hand in hand, yours in mine

until upon these great beings, souls with no sex or gender

unburdened by their mortal coils

yet shackled by their mental troubles.

And so, Confucius said: Your life is what your thoughts make it

for life is but a simple thing That we insist on making complicated

And so, we all have two lives With the second only beginning

when we come to realize that we only ever have one

It is in this way that everything has beauty

but not everyone sees it Just as real wisdom

comes not from knowledge But by knowing the extent of

one’s own ignorance

Thus, it can be said that our greatest glory is not in never failing

but in rising every time we fall Just as beauty is power

and a smile is its sword For it is easy to hate

and it is difficult to love This is how the whole scheme

of life works All good things are difficult to achieve

and bad things are contrarily very easy to get

Therefore, I recommend you skim those you party with

as silence is a true friend that never betrays

while man is fickle, foolish, and frail

Just as the man who says he can

and the man he says he can’t Are both correct

and the man who asks a question is a fool for a minute

While the man who does not ask is a fool for life

For Heaven sends down its good or evil symbols

and wise men act accordingly

of all that Heaven produces or nourishes

there is none so great as man Who is bound

by life and death Death and life have

their determined appointments Riches and honours

depend on Heaven and Heaven, means to be one with God

but always remember: I am a transmitter who invented nothing

And so, Sophocles said: He who seeks truth shall find

how dreadful knowledge of the truth is, when he

who seek’d truth sees that there is no help or solace in it

For the keenest sorrow is to recognize that we ourselves

are the sole cause of all our adversities – in life, and in death.

Thus, it is in not knowing anything

that is the sweetest life.

Oh sweet, bittersweet death.

But there remains the melancholic kiss of hope,

for one word frees us of all the weight and pain

of this dreaded life: that word is love.

No matter how foolish your deeds, those who love you

will love you still. I speak now of true things

for old age and the passage of time teach all things

as no lie ever reaches old age – and I now, life beyond my years

it is in my nature to join in love, not descend into hate.

I used to believe wisdom to be the supreme part of happiness,

yet not even old age knows how to love death.

Yet death is not the worst,

but when one wants to die and is not able to even have that.

So, I find solace in reason: God’s crowning gift to man

reason says that there is no success without hardship

that wisdom outweighs all other wealth

and that fail with honour than succeed by fraud

and so, I remain a slave

here within my grave.

This is the truth and wisdom of all my years.

And so, Plato said: For a man to conquer himself

is the first and noblest of all victories for

Reality is created by the mind, and so we can change reality

by changing our mind. And at the first touch of love

everyone becomes a poet. But not everyone does

for no one is more hated than he who speaks truth

as false words are not only evil in themselves

but they infect the soul with evil. Thus, wise men speak

because they have something truthful to say:

fools because they have to say something. 

Just as knowledge which is acquired under compulsion

obtains no hold on the mind. Wonder is the feeling

of the philosopher and philosophy begins in wonder,

opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

and thinking – the talking of the soul with itself.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself

to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile

for knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning

rather than wisdom and cunning is but the low mimic of wisdom.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping

and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake,

and talking to one another in the waking state?

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

for no one knows whether death, which people fear

to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good

for no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death

of fate, the blame is his who chooses: God is blameless. E’en so, always recall that we are twice armed if we fight with faith.

And so, Aristotle said: Happiness depends upon ourselves

for happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life,

the whole aim and end of human existence

the ultimate value of life depends upon awareness

and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel,

but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so

for all virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil and

men are swayed more by fear than by reverence

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him

who conquers his enemies for the hardest victory is over self.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not,

is a question that may fairly be asked;

for if there cannot be someone to count

there cannot be anything that can be counted,

so that evidently there cannot be number;

for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

It is during these darkest moments that we must focus

to see the light: that the Gods too are fond of a joke.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets

the art of telling lies skilfully for the poet

being an imitator like a painter or any other artist,

must of necessity imitate one of three objects –

 things as they were or are,

things as they are said or thought to be,

or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

And so, Descartes said: Except our own thoughts,

there is nothing absolutely in our power.

Thus, I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine

the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.

With that, each problem that I solved became a rule,

which served afterwards to solve other problems.

I therefore conclude that it is not enough to have a good mind;

the main thing is to use it well. For when it is not in our power

to follow what is true, which frequently is the case,

we ought to follow what is most probable.

Therefore, an optimist may see a light where there is none,

but still I ask, why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world,

for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it

that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters

are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest virtue

and the greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices.

In this vain, the mind will always believe everything you tell it.

Feed it faith, feed it truth, feed it love – gain hope

for hope is the desire of the soul to be convinced

that the dream will come true.

God alone is the author of all the motions in the world

and so, we do not describe the world we see, but rather

see the world we can describe. Just as Plato said, I say now:

When I consider this carefully,

I find not a single property which with certainty

separates the waking state from the dream.

How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?

To this question, I conclude only one answer:

I think, therefore I am.

And so, Kant said: Two things

Fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe,

the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them:

the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

for thoughts without content are empty,

intuitions without concepts are blind.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind,

forgetting the Greek who said:

War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.

and so only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.

All our knowledge begins with the senses,

proceeds then to the understanding and ends with reason.

There is nothing higher than reason. Nothing is divine

 but what is agreeable to reason and religion – the recognition

of all our duties as divine commands.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore

those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason;

by the latter one necessarily shunned,

Happiness is thus not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. While morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless,

so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting

to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure

in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.

For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve

into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.

And so, by God, without man and his potential for moral progress,

the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness,

a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.

And so, Kierkegaard said: Life is not a problem to be solved,

but a reality to be experienced. Just as trouble is

the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, Don't forget to love yourself.

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all. Love God.

A man who as a physical being is always turned

toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

These are the truths, for most men pursue pleasure

with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

Make time for prayer, as prayer does not change God,

but it changes him who prays. God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. Thus, be virtuous:

People commonly travel the world to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human;

they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence

and they think they have seen something.

This: a concept, and concepts, like individuals, have their histories

and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time

as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain

a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

This is the paradox, which is really the pathos of intellectual life

and just as only great souls are exposed to passions

it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

What thoughts are born or boredom! And since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder then that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads.

This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world.

The Gods were bored; therefore, they created human beings. Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances. From death, we turn to faith:

Faith is the highest passion in a human being.

Many in every generation may not come that far,

but none comes further.

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment

when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other,

to let their souls blend in a soft whisper,

so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can,

as it were, creep into God.

And If I am not capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

And so, God teaches me to be noble and just – to refrain from sin

To the Christian, love is the works of love.

To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind

is an unchristian conception of love.

That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic

and everything of that nature.

But to the Christian love is the works of love.

Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not,

it was the work of love which was his life.

Thus, God teaches me to love and to be just, so that if I may die

I may die a martyr.

For if I be a tyrant, I am consigned to the fate of all villains:

The tyrant dies and his rule is over,

the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Thus, philosophers are poets: but what is a poet?

An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish

in his heart

but whose lips are so formed

that as sighs and cries pass over them

they sound like beautiful music.

And so, Nietzsche said: All truth is simple

is that not doubly a lie?

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils

because it prolongs the torments of man.

Religion is hope.

And in Christianity neither morality nor religion

come into contact with reality at any point

for if there is something to pardon in everything,

there is also something to condemn

such that in heaven, all the interesting people are missing

and a casual stroll through the lunatic asylum

shows that faith does not prove anything. For

the Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad

has made the world ugly and bad.

So, I say unto you:

God is dead.

God remains dead.

And we have killed him.

Yet his shadow still looms.

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned

has bled to death under our knives;

who will wipe this blood off us?

What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

We hear only those questions –

for which we are in a position to find answers.

You have your way.

I have my way.

As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way,

it does not exist.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it

that in the process he does not become a monster.

And if you gaze long enough into an abyss,

the abyss will gaze back into you. Such are our hollow bibles.

To this, all things are subject to interpretation

as whichever interpretation prevails at a given time

is a function of power and not truth

for when a hundred men stand together,

each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Thus, one should die proudly when it is no longer possible

to live proudly

for morality is the herd-instinct in the individual,

and the doer alone learneth,

and convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Thus, to use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee

of understanding; one must use the same words

for the same genus of inward experience;

ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.

Thus, I conclude, we love life,

not because we are used to living

but because we are used to loving.

To live proudly then,

One must still have chaos in oneself

to be able to give birth to a dancing star – that is art.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

But sleeping is by no means art:

for its sake one must stay awake all day.

Perhaps I know then, best why it is man alone who laughs:

he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Thus, the most profound subject for a great poet

would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Here the ways of men divide.

If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe: if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire into God’s death.

And so, Camus said: Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil. Thus, the absurd

is the essential concept and the first truth.

What is happiness except the simple harmony

between a man and the life he leads?

But ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God

and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful

For if there is a sin against life,

it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life

as in hoping for another life

and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life

as the world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds

with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears.

As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us,

occasionally a chord, never a melody. Think of that song:

the Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock

to the top of a mountain,

whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.

They had thought with some reason

that there is no more dreadful punishment

than futile and hopeless labour. We are all special cases.

But the struggle itself towards the heights is enough

to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Therefore, I would rather live my life as if there is a God

and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't

and to die to find out that there is.

Yet the pragmatist beckons me onwards and says:

only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today,

could justify non-violence

and to assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society  

is absolutely good,

and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

Thus, I can say, with confidence, that the modern mind

is in complete disarray.

Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where

neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foothold.

It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die –

and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

And still, men are never really willing to die

except for the sake of freedom:

therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

While other men are convinced of your arguments,

your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts

only by your death

We continue to shape our personality all our life.

If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

For in order to exist just once in the world,

it is necessary never again to exist.

So, do not wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

Death is freedom, and freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

And still man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is,

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward,

but he who has hope for it is a fool.

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope

as this desire will dictate all his actions.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing

And a man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

But even so, you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life: living and death are one in the same.

(Luke 6:20)

And all the people were trying to touch Him, for power was coming from Him and healing them all. And turning His gaze toward His disciples, He began to say, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. "Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

(Luke 9:43)

While he was still approaching, the demon slammed him to the ground and threw him into a convulsion. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the boy and gave him back to his father. And they were all amazed at the greatness of God But while everyone was marvelling at all that He was doing, He said to His disciples, "Let these words sink into your ears; for the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men."

(Luke 12:22) 

“So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." And He said to His disciples, "For this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life, as to what you will eat; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. "For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

And so, I said:

Alas you ask, a final time, the question burning in your mind

who am I?

this speaker who has been your ever so faithful guide

To this question of identity, I answer with brevity:

You to I, like Zeus to Athena

have birthed me: as I, having leapt from your mind

you figured my being, I, but your creation

I am your avatar: your seat at the table

a reservation, on the shoulders of giants.

The council turns, they all face me now.

I turn to you, with a smile.

and you said:

 ~ THE END ~