Perfect Gods and Perfect Divination
Jun. 10th, 2021 02:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tunesmythLet us imagine that we take up devotions to a particular deity and find them incredibly responsive. Every prayer is answered with a clear and unambiguous responses; if praying for some outcome in particular, the deity either brings the wish into manifest reality, or explains to us the next step into working toward that outcome ourselves, or patiently teaches us in vision why that prayer can't be answered. Every one of life's hurdles, material or philosophical, seems to melt away as this perfect deity grants us satisfaction in every sphere of life we can think of.
Having imagined this scenario, some drawbacks to the situation come to mind.
For one thing, assume the common spiritual teaching that humanity is inherently created with imbalances in order to create difficult situations, from which our eternal spirits can learn and grow. The easier our lives become, the less opportunity we have to grow. The more that we have everything comfy and easy, the more satisfied and satiated we feel all the time, the less that we feel any need to change... and the less that change will come.
And even if that reasonable-sounding spiritual teaching doesn't actually turn out to be literally true, there's a bigger problem. Just as a book where the characters are all happy and get along all the time is dreadfully boring to read, so would such a life be dreadfully boring to live. Give a human all the wealth, health, sex, and prestige they can ask for and, pretty soon their dopamine is all tapped out, and none of it seems to mean anything at all.
Which brings up the question of whether, even given a magical wish-giving deity of infinite plentitude, such a state of plentiful placidity is even possible to maintain for more than a very short time. In fact, if our wonderfully perfect and generous deity is so wonderful and generous, as soon as we started feeling dissatisfied by how bloody bored we are all the time, we would pray, and our perfect deity would naturally seek to help us to feel more satisfied... by denying things. First by giving us only small challenges. But if these challenges were always too easy, they wouldn't alleviate our unsatisfying over-satiation. So our perfect deity would need to truly start to make things challenging: sometimes not helping out with everything; hiding some relevant and important information so we have to search for it ourselves; scattering the puzzle pieces in increasingly difficult configurations so we could enjoy the eureka moments of when things finally start to fit together; maybe even outright deceiving us so that we would have to learn to rely on our own wits.
In fact, if this went on for long enough, the world might pretty much start to resemble one like we live in right now. If the Garden of Eden wasn't a dreadfully boring place, that snake wouldn't have been able to liven things up; but the wonderfully perfect and generous deity of that tale thoughtfully arranged to kick out Adam and Eve with a staged psychodrama for the purpose of their mystical initiation.
So, in short: thank you, gracious deities of the world, for giving us so much but not too much!
Now. Let's imagine a completely different scenario. In this one, we don't know any deities. Instead, we open a package our beloved grandmother bequeathed us and find a book with instructions for a system of divination we're never heard of, called Answeromancy. We try it out, and we find that it always gives correct and unambiguous answers to any question. If we want to know about something secret that our boss only knows, Answeromancy tells us, and our boss is amazed at how prepared we were for that meeting. If we want to find buried treasure, Answeromancy tells us, and we end up richer. But Answeromancy works a level deeper. We want to find love; well, Answeromancy doesn't just tell us where to meet our true love; Answeromancy directly answers questions about our inner psyche, such that we can use the information to become worthy of that love! Questions about philosophy, meaning, purpose? Just find ways to fit the questions into Answeromancy's relatively simple symbolic structure, and Answeromancy provides clear and satisfying answers! Anything in the world that we might wish to know about, we can know about! The only limit is how fast we can ask Answeromancy questions.
And yet... we end up, here, with a very similar set of problems. Essentially, we have just replaced one deity with another that is only slightly less directly omnipotent: the ruling intelligence of the wondrous Answeromancy. But if we are just a little bit studious, we end up with the exact same situation of quickly finding ourselves on top of the world and bored stiff by it. In fact, the only compassionate thing that this new deity could do to relieve us of our self-inflicted perfection would be to start holding back on information sometimes; giving vague or intentionally unhelpful answers; perhaps even outright lying to us.
In fact, very quickly, if the intelligence behind our divination system were really out to help us, really help us, in a way that teaches us skills of awareness, reflection, and self-reliance, while still gaining ongoing satisfaction from the very process of being alive in the world... it would soon make itself difficult enough to use that it would start to resemble... every divination system that exists on the planet right now.
So, thanks for caring about us, divination systems of the world!
There's of course one more very important issue I haven't directly addressed lurking on the edges both of these scenarios. That is the issue of free will. In the early, "pure" versions of these scenarios, the gods and intelligences give us anything we think we desire. What results is that we don't think for ourselves. Instead, we end up completely at the mercy of these gods and intelligences. Though in the examples given we just kind of know that our perfect deities are wonderfully perfect... what if they are not? If we give ourselves completely over to whatever something else tells us is true, then as this classic Twilight Zone episode sagely illustrates, all that can result is a complete annihilation of the self without reason or choice. Only a demonic entity would encourage that to happen. Luckily our wonderful and perfect deities and intelligences care about us a lot more.
And that is the final point I wish to bring to. A perfect vending machine of wishes or truths would quickly become just that: a vending machine. Even if it starts out good, if all you do is take, take, take because you can, there is no relationship there. There is only a mechanistic, servant and master relationship-- where completely the wrong side of the equation, us, the unenlightened denizen of the universe, are playing at king. Deities and divination that sometimes fall silent, or are enigmatic, or who artfully deceive for our greater good, are alive. They are not machines. They require forming a positive relationship with in order to continue the relationship to mutual benefaction.
Luckily this, it seems to me, is the path that seems most rewarding of all.
Having imagined this scenario, some drawbacks to the situation come to mind.
For one thing, assume the common spiritual teaching that humanity is inherently created with imbalances in order to create difficult situations, from which our eternal spirits can learn and grow. The easier our lives become, the less opportunity we have to grow. The more that we have everything comfy and easy, the more satisfied and satiated we feel all the time, the less that we feel any need to change... and the less that change will come.
And even if that reasonable-sounding spiritual teaching doesn't actually turn out to be literally true, there's a bigger problem. Just as a book where the characters are all happy and get along all the time is dreadfully boring to read, so would such a life be dreadfully boring to live. Give a human all the wealth, health, sex, and prestige they can ask for and, pretty soon their dopamine is all tapped out, and none of it seems to mean anything at all.
Which brings up the question of whether, even given a magical wish-giving deity of infinite plentitude, such a state of plentiful placidity is even possible to maintain for more than a very short time. In fact, if our wonderfully perfect and generous deity is so wonderful and generous, as soon as we started feeling dissatisfied by how bloody bored we are all the time, we would pray, and our perfect deity would naturally seek to help us to feel more satisfied... by denying things. First by giving us only small challenges. But if these challenges were always too easy, they wouldn't alleviate our unsatisfying over-satiation. So our perfect deity would need to truly start to make things challenging: sometimes not helping out with everything; hiding some relevant and important information so we have to search for it ourselves; scattering the puzzle pieces in increasingly difficult configurations so we could enjoy the eureka moments of when things finally start to fit together; maybe even outright deceiving us so that we would have to learn to rely on our own wits.
In fact, if this went on for long enough, the world might pretty much start to resemble one like we live in right now. If the Garden of Eden wasn't a dreadfully boring place, that snake wouldn't have been able to liven things up; but the wonderfully perfect and generous deity of that tale thoughtfully arranged to kick out Adam and Eve with a staged psychodrama for the purpose of their mystical initiation.
So, in short: thank you, gracious deities of the world, for giving us so much but not too much!
Now. Let's imagine a completely different scenario. In this one, we don't know any deities. Instead, we open a package our beloved grandmother bequeathed us and find a book with instructions for a system of divination we're never heard of, called Answeromancy. We try it out, and we find that it always gives correct and unambiguous answers to any question. If we want to know about something secret that our boss only knows, Answeromancy tells us, and our boss is amazed at how prepared we were for that meeting. If we want to find buried treasure, Answeromancy tells us, and we end up richer. But Answeromancy works a level deeper. We want to find love; well, Answeromancy doesn't just tell us where to meet our true love; Answeromancy directly answers questions about our inner psyche, such that we can use the information to become worthy of that love! Questions about philosophy, meaning, purpose? Just find ways to fit the questions into Answeromancy's relatively simple symbolic structure, and Answeromancy provides clear and satisfying answers! Anything in the world that we might wish to know about, we can know about! The only limit is how fast we can ask Answeromancy questions.
And yet... we end up, here, with a very similar set of problems. Essentially, we have just replaced one deity with another that is only slightly less directly omnipotent: the ruling intelligence of the wondrous Answeromancy. But if we are just a little bit studious, we end up with the exact same situation of quickly finding ourselves on top of the world and bored stiff by it. In fact, the only compassionate thing that this new deity could do to relieve us of our self-inflicted perfection would be to start holding back on information sometimes; giving vague or intentionally unhelpful answers; perhaps even outright lying to us.
In fact, very quickly, if the intelligence behind our divination system were really out to help us, really help us, in a way that teaches us skills of awareness, reflection, and self-reliance, while still gaining ongoing satisfaction from the very process of being alive in the world... it would soon make itself difficult enough to use that it would start to resemble... every divination system that exists on the planet right now.
So, thanks for caring about us, divination systems of the world!
There's of course one more very important issue I haven't directly addressed lurking on the edges both of these scenarios. That is the issue of free will. In the early, "pure" versions of these scenarios, the gods and intelligences give us anything we think we desire. What results is that we don't think for ourselves. Instead, we end up completely at the mercy of these gods and intelligences. Though in the examples given we just kind of know that our perfect deities are wonderfully perfect... what if they are not? If we give ourselves completely over to whatever something else tells us is true, then as this classic Twilight Zone episode sagely illustrates, all that can result is a complete annihilation of the self without reason or choice. Only a demonic entity would encourage that to happen. Luckily our wonderful and perfect deities and intelligences care about us a lot more.
And that is the final point I wish to bring to. A perfect vending machine of wishes or truths would quickly become just that: a vending machine. Even if it starts out good, if all you do is take, take, take because you can, there is no relationship there. There is only a mechanistic, servant and master relationship-- where completely the wrong side of the equation, us, the unenlightened denizen of the universe, are playing at king. Deities and divination that sometimes fall silent, or are enigmatic, or who artfully deceive for our greater good, are alive. They are not machines. They require forming a positive relationship with in order to continue the relationship to mutual benefaction.
Luckily this, it seems to me, is the path that seems most rewarding of all.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-10 08:12 pm (UTC)(I'll put my cards on the table: I don't yet have a reasons for these that I think are convincing :) )
no subject
Date: 2021-06-10 11:45 pm (UTC)That said, it’s a fair question given what I wrote, and I already have some inchoate responses floating about my brain. Let me meditate on it a bit to see if they’re obviously dross or not and get back to you.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-11 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-01 04:49 pm (UTC)But I have a slightly different interpretation. The idea that you'd get bored of enjoyable things if they weren't punctuated by unenjoyable things has never really sat well with me. I can't say if there's ultimate truth to it or not, but I do find a different explanation more satisfying. There is an enjoyment that comes from novelty, and industrial culture is heavily biased toward that kind of enjoyment, but I think that's just a matter of over-emphasis. (Technicality: I do think you need change to sense anything at all--gwyar in DA terms--but I do think you could oscillate between enjoyable states without having to dip into unenjoyable states.)
In my case, I find the metaphor of sleep useful. Outside of dreams, I tend to sleep "vaguely conscious" instead of "totally blacked out," and I find being asleep to be tremendously enjoyable. If there weren't forces pulling me to wakefulness, and if I could stay in that state forever, I'd probably have been perfectly happy to stop waking up a long time ago.
There are two problems with this. The first is that it's not actually possible to stay like that forever. Leaving aside the issues of being alive and assuming it were possible to be out of incarnation in a "sleeping state," that state would probably turn negative after a while. It is probably only so positive for me because it has to "restart" on a regular basis and can't get stuck going down any one path for too long. If you just half-consciously drifted forever, it would probably be very easy to drift into a positive feedback loop of bad dreams that you'd have no way of escaping from. Passivity sounds fine when the situation is all good, but passivity gives you no way to improve your situation if things turn bad.
The second problem is that of mental level. Essentially, the potential inherent in higher mental states blows the lower ones out of the water, even when you're talking about the most positive versions of the lower ones.
I can't explain that too much, but I'll say this, since I believe you said you were a Dolmen Arch student: I'm only a Gwyddon y Ffordd (working on grade 5--meaning I haven't even gotten to the highest teachings), but I can honestly say that if given the choice between staying in the mental state I had before starting the Dolmen Arch but having a storybook fairy immediately grant my every desire, and living as I do now but with the mental changes that have occurred on account of the Dolmen Arch work, I'd choose the latter. Having desires fulfilled in that less-coherent state is just so much less meaningful than simply existing in the higher state. (And again, I don't claim that my "higher state" is especially impressive, just higher than where I was--I haven't even finished the course!)
So regarding Gods: I think it'd be dreadfully boring for them to waste their time constantly bailing us out of unenjoyable states. I also think that, as beings in higher mental states, they'd have a certain motivation to encourage anyone they cared about to do things that would help them increase their mental state--and yes, that sometimes means facing suffering.
Regarding divination: In most cases I don't think misleading is "intentional," but that skill with this does correlate to mental state, and that a mental state high enough to always get perfectly accurate readings would be high enough to no longer care about human incarnate existence. (Technically speaking: A sufficiently developed mental body could solve any conundrums on the planes below the mental, but would also turn its attention to the mental plane. Or in DA terms: An Elaeth capable solving all the puzzles of Abred is possible, but upon reaching that state it would become A Dweller in Gwynfydd and see no need to meddle in the affairs of Abred save out of compassion to provide Grace to those who still dwell in Abred, with the desire to help them reach Gwynfydd themselves being much more important than temporarily alleviating the suffering inherent in Abred.) Perfect readings about philosophy etc. would probably also do no real good: No amount of increasing complexity of explanation on a lower plane will substitute for understanding from a higher plane.
And finally, you're absolutely right: Never having to think for yourself would do nothing but degrade your mental state.
I find the story of Manabozho and the Maple Trees relevant here. I primarily read it to imply that the people wouldn't reach the potential inherent in their consciousness without struggle, but it does say that Manabozho intentionally made things harder, so maybe that's more likely (as you suggested above) than my analysis implies.