"T.R.Reedy wrote:

Certainly for me, it is period of history which is not a pleasant thing to consider for it marks a time of conceptual materialization, where we are now. But the native artisans, in a very ontologically vibrant way, constantly repeat the Sun-Moon symbol upon every conceivable souvenir as the key to their highest knowledge. They are impatient to be asked about the symbol. Of course the symbol is available to all on Earth for those who are free of thought. It is the symbol of Reflection as it is in India, Europe and Africa. But, it is a symbol which is also substance. We need not worry that knowledge has been lost. It is there to be recovered at any time. It is in the architecture of experience, the collapse of opposites, and the gentle subduction of static imagery.

GARY C MOORE:

Dear Doctor Reedy,

The people where I live just think of them as stupid and lazy, and that is indeed an aspect I have learned they deliberately perpetuate although they are far more intelligent in their own language if and when you can get behind it and their hatred for "gringos." They live in a different world, not a 'stupid' one overall, although they, like anyone else, any so-called 'people' are basically all EXACTLY alike and all are just as stupid, lazy, and vicious as everyone else. What is interesting is how the same aspect is expressed in seemingly opposite ways in different cultures. Cultures exist because they exist as language. "Peoples" and "races" do not because, under pseudo-science, such distinctions are supposedly based on the body and are not being invented in the 18th century to justify the subhumanity of dark skinned peoples in order to enslave and enserf them. This attitude is still alive and well in Mexico, one of the fundamental causes of their political problems. In ways,"racial"discrimination in the US is mild compared to the unreported and drastic race and class distinctions in Mexico. "Unreported" is clearly justified, for instance, in the US reporting of the rebellion in Chiapas where 'Anglos' report it as a tempest in a tea pot whereas the Hispanic channels show pictures of dead bodies everywhere. Interesting isn't it? Now apply this to 9/11.

As I intimated in my message `Flowers', the Greek Philosophers, I believe, serve as a cultural bridge into India for us Westerners. I also said that I had given up the search for absolute origins of ideal or imaginal enlightenment since the `bridge' is best thought to serve both directions. And its availability is ubiquitous by nature.

GARY C MOORE:

What do you think of Ai-Khainum and THE QUESTIONS OF MELLINDHA (Menander)?

DR REEDY:

The Indians, I freely acknowledge, now carry the torch as they, perhaps, always have. I do sense though, that an early juncture of thought lies with Pythagoras and of course the Orphics.

GARY C MOORE:

What do you think of the "gymnosophists" that supposedly influenced Plotinus and other Neoplatonics, and whom the philosophers with Alexander the truly Great eagerly sought (found?) when they were in India? Where did they learn about them and what did they know that they so passionately wanted to meet them?

DR REEDY:

1) The study of the Monochord produced a coherent symbol

(and applied science) of Vibration and Harmonics where the Many

(diapason, harmonic, tonos, partial) is non-different from the One

(monochord under [at-]tention]), and Universal Motion, the First Cause, is non-different from To Ouden or Chaos, the First Object pouring forth.

GARY C MOORE:

I have found this in Damascius, Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida and need to put it together.

DR REEDY:

(It is up to us to `destroy' these two in order to find Self.)

GARY C MOORE:

Would you possibly agree, with the 'atheist' point of view so easily accepted by many of the Hindu philosophers -- I need to write about irony in Shankara forced on him by the same social mores that made Plato and Aristotle say atheists and homosexuals should be burned at the stake and, of course, got Socrates murdered -- that the true finding of Self is finding there is no 'Self'?

DR REEDY:

In him we see the `Philosopher-empiricist' at work, whose transcendent philosophy `resonates' in physical matter! 2) The geometrical and mathematical development of his realizations gives us the `counting' of ratios down the chord (must I also reveal this symbol-substance) which is the business of yoga, Patanjali, Samkhya and the NeoPlatonists. But it is most interesting that through Harmonics the transcendent philosophy can be integrated in to our modern western concepts of `science' as the mathematics and modular language have already been worked out, even though these implications are confronted with vehement fear in our institutions. We now have, via acoustics and neuro-science, the concept of `entrainment', an old magical concept re-outfitted for our amazement;

GARY C MOORE:

I am unfamiliar with this. Please ampliphy.

DR REEDY:

but no doubt second-nature to kings, barons, popes and advertising agencies, whose agendas are forever threatened by our beloved understanding. I am very interested to hear your thoughts on Pythagoras, Mr. Moore, at your leisure.

GARY C MOORE:

I fight for my leisure like an NVRA cornered by South Vietnamese sadists surversived by CIA thugs and very reluctant Green Berets beginning to doubt their "professionalism".But this is actually something I need to get into with the Neoplatonics. I am finding very unexpected scepticism of the CHALDEAN ORACLES in Damascius who supposedly wrote the put-together book "The Life of Isidore" that supposedly accepted every ridiculous superstitious practice of the Neopagans -- and yet, as time goes by, sounds almost far too much an imitation of a passionately credulous "Life of Saint blah-blah" who could sit on top of a pillar for ten years fed by a rope and pulley (Saint Symeon Stylites! I remembered!) Pythagoras 'seems' to be largely an invention of the Neoplatonics and I do not think we really understand their agenda at all. They thought in terms of the Dialectic, and, as time goes by, seem more and more like highly sophisticated Marxist Dialectians. Americans always think in terms of the most crude black and white whereas the more sophisticated Soviet ministers -- unfortunately rarely the top dogs -- thoroughly understood that capitalism IS economics that just needed tobe carefully amended by "political economy," not like Breznev drying up the Aral Sea or invading Afganistan.

DR REEDY: In terms of ethics, Pythagoras seemed to be clear; yet the ethic is somewhat detached from his physical studies. Obviously, Pythagoras, the Philosophers, and the taciturn Mystai, who we shall never know, leave to us such recognition. It is here that I look to the concept of Theatre to explicate the ethical (and sensorially operational) questions. Here again I find no exclusive difference between Greece and India.

GARY C MOORE:

This sounds fascinating! Are you talking of the Dionysia, the three tragedies produced with the Satyr play? Odysseos dumping a chamberpot on Achilles' head, the giant wooden phalluses? I am truly unfamiliar with Indian drama.

DR REEDY:

The Persians, in fairness to them and the present subject of the group, share in this and our legacy,

GARY C MOORE:

I have been reading lately about the reflections in the ZEND-AVESTA of the RG VEDA's magic mushroom "Soma" (visions of real Mexican {and the American Indian Church in the Rio Grande Valley!!!!} Indian culture, also ALTERED STATES with William Hurt and a beautiful naked lady with dark read hair, the marvelous Blair Brown who can act with true excellence with all her clothes off . . . if you can pay attention) and the Brahmanic search for a substitute when they ran out which they never came close to satisfying.

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore.