From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
>In my case the "awe" that you describe comes, I suspect,
>from initimate acquaintance. (This would also fit your
>having studied science for so many years.)
Yes, but in my case, I'm sure it goes back many more years,
before my formal education.
My childhood in the 60s was spent in Hawaii, where,
beaches/sailing/boats/Pacific ocean was a part of my family life.
(My family lived on our boat for a year, as well.)
I have vivid recollections of sleeping on the deck of our boat,
watching the stars, which, as you might imagine, were brilliant
at that latitude over the Pacific Ocean. As the boat rocked me
to sleep, the canopy of the light above me seemed to engulfed me,
I didn't think that there was any separation between me and those
stars at all. In a large sense, I felt as a child, that I _was_
those stars, and it doesn't take too much effort now as an adult
to recapture those early feelings of awe and wonder and 'oneness'
with what exists.
>Now, I must also candidly say that there is one huge
>problem with any such explanation or definition, and
>it's this: many people will ADAMANTLY resist any such
>reduction to concrete words or concepts for these reasons:
>
>1. such an active reduction is itself rational/scientific,
> and therefore *itself* not emotionally compelling
>
>2. any such description is "third person" instead of
> "first person"---hence "detached", "analytic",
> "unfeeling", and so on.
I think that such a definition is highly individual, as you say,
and can only be accomplished by turning inward, and discovering
these aspects for oneself. I wrote quite a lot of this to Mitch
a month (two?) ago, regarding discovering one's own dreams (rather
than grabbing someone else's dreams, and following those).
>Some deeper psychology may also be involved
Perhaps...
Amara
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Amara Graps email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: finger agraps@shell5.ba.best.com
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
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"Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the
future of the human race." -- H. G. Wells
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