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The Mark of Humanity

February, 2012



Throughout our ancient history, ideals were passed through the generations through the use of tablets, parchments, and the like. The invention of the printing press caused a huge intellectual boom in which new conceptions of everything arose. The creation of the Internet has opened up a door for a new golden age if we only play our cards right...



In the beginning God brought about all things and cast a conscious self awareness within Adam and Eve, and it was good. God was made known to them through their environment, for they saw that all the individual details acted as representations of their origin. As the ideal couple develops through the joys of life, they become enticed by the conception of existing in the same nature as God. They examined their psychology and made the necessary arrangements in order to achieve this divine nature. Ignorant to them was the ramifications of their actions. The causal chain fell upon them and they became naked.



God had given humans everything they wanted, including the ability to become it, that is to live in its nature. The hardships of the struggle to actualise god-like characteristics overwhelmed the newly formed self-awareness. Thus it became a struggle to align themselves with the psychology in which they modified. The growing burdens of the world crashes down upon them and they die. History has lived the consequences of their choices, and we will soon not forget the virtues of their actions. For they paved the way for human kind to take our place on the throne, as the demigod's that we are. And if our follies destroy us before we get there, then humankind would of proven its unworthiness for its bestowed honour.



As the original man had not the facilities for understanding, they employed the use of tools in their strife towards the divine. They learned to effectively communicate with each other and their environment. They learned to create methods for conveying meaning by utilising the planet's resources. Ideals passed through the generations and the one's with solid foundations outlasted any sword. Ideals are passed by written communication through a medium such as scrolls, animal skins, tablets, and the like. These ideals were preserved but exclusively available to the educated, wealthy, and powerful. The printing press is then invented and the scope of education spectrums. We then develop wonderful new technology as a result of these methods of media distribution. The golden age results from a careful analysis of our psychology in an attempt to articulate the abstraction.



Computers are born and act as a basic representation of its human creator. Human memory looks into the mirror and electronic storage is discovered. The technology develops and copulas amounts of information becomes portable. These computers naturally evolve to become like their Creator and network themselves together. This then brings about computer networking data centres that enable any desired resource to be at every humans fingertips with the use of any portable or fixed communication device.



The toils of Adam and Eve and their descendants is near its realisation. The history of man had to actualise itself through a long process of suffering. It had to overcome its physical and mental hardships. It had to create the required technology to effectively retrain its own psychology towards healthy methods of mental distribution.



We are so close to being free from our chains! The Internet unlocks our shackles and manifests a moral responsibility on everyone. The path of ignorance will show itself for its superfluous qualities, and one will be in common understanding to realise that the reason for all errors in judgement is only a result of a learning process or sheer laziness to educate oneself. No longer will the government rule our education and we the people will teach each other!



When vast ranges of University grade educations are obtainable through easy, popular, and free methods of distribution over the Internet, the seekers of the world have the necessary means to achieve an infinite spectrum of potential. When one is given a mind to fill which has no observable limits, the blank slate is transformed into a life sculpture. The potential individuality of the creator that creates their own mind has the potential to achieve god-like characteristics. The day will come upon us when the merit of each individual is no longer assessed by their status in society, currency in their bank, or qualifications accumulated but instead through the character and abilities in which they possess. When we form ourselves into what we are from ourselves as a result of the external in which guides our passions, we align ourselves with God. And from the creations of mankind will come great things that represent our divine image.



With such power comes great responsibility, and we must carefully consider how such involvements could result. We are nearing the end of our poisoned fruit and the future of our races quality and longevity will come into question. The collective result of our answers to our problems will determine the possibility of continued existence. Judgement day will come upon us and we will have to pay for the consequences of our actions. Evolution will enquire into our overall well-being and we must answer honestly. When the search for knowledge is at everyone's fingertips, we possess no excuses.



The turn from the phenomena of the world into the psychology of the sufferer has given our kind the tools to overcome our mundane. Asceticism has crafted mankind an adaptable mould to go beyond their physical and mental limitations. When we prepare the body and mind for any conditions, the mind lets go of needing anything. And when the finer things in life make their way to us, those things are realised and appreciated for their true value. The continual need for this and that keeps us shackled to our turmoil. Thus, to live in the moment without any needs opens up the true scope of our freedom and we escape our constant clinging. When we come to understand suffering as the wise teacher that it is, our disdain for it will fade into the background. For this or that pain is only an experience and not part of us. We suffer when we identify pain as belonging to us. We are not our sufferings. We are presented direction to transcend our despair through a welcoming adaptation of all that is presented to us. In acceptance of what is, we open our eyes to what we truly have.



When an individual immerses themselves into the safety of the collective identity of society, they become vulnerable to being manipulated by it. The atrocities of our past massacres paint this image and calls into question whether one can claim to be "good" while allowing such events to unfold. As a learned individual who is skilled in the art of rhetoric paints their picture on the world, the creation resembles its origin. The darkness in which we cast within our souls will manifest itself in our character and environment. The only way to overcome such things is through individual action, welcoming all persecution, subjugation, and oppression that it incurs. Let us breed Hitler out of our genes.



Our distorted and abused understanding of the term "belief" has caused much suffering over the course of our human history. A simple modification of the term to not identify oneself within, but instead demonstrate a degree of inclination towards, without limiting the scope of, could solve many of our irrelevant disputes. But can a horse be a man? Our identification of the self is not in this or that but instead a disconnectedness towards the one.



The entire philosophical and religious scope of our human history has been in a process of coming to its realisation. Significant developments can be seen and our human consciousness evolves as a result. Hostility from diversity is seen in our actions which occurs from misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and misinterpretations of the wisdom being conveyed. Regardless of any beliefs or lack there of, every unique individual human being is asked one question at every moment of their existence: What will you do with the given? The answer to this question will determine if one is or is not able to save their soul.

Transcript Prologue

I come to you in your most darkest and lonely of hours, bearing a message from the gods, regarding the fate of your soul. All of your sufferings, all of your triumphs, all of your past, present, and future moments in their entirety will be repeated, not once, not twice or thrice, but forever into the abysmal infinite spectrum of space and time and your continuity there within!



Am I, the bearer of this news, a daemon or an angel? Have you been cursed or blessed? How will you perceive your new found insight? What will you do for all of your past and all of your future which result from your present is in the hands of its creator. You are its creator.



For all that you claim to know is nothing more than a farce played upon you to chain you to your burdens. Instead I say embrace your burdens and become what you are. Break free from your chains and accept your unique calling by learning and directing your psychology. The light will cast itself over you darkness. Claim your place in life for it is yours for the taking.



But I have pity on your soul because I know its bearer all to well. Let me shake you from your slumber and assist your understanding of the phrase Carpe diem.



The pinnacles of human existence is formed from the individuals found within its species! Welcome to the birthing pains of education reformation. Enjoy this philosophy course entitled, The Meaning of Life...

Transcript Lecture 1: Introduction

Greetings and welcome to lecture one of the course of The Meaning of Life. This course will be composed of ten lectures and I, Wendell NeSmith will be conducting these lectures. I hope that I do an efficient job in conveying the meaning that are behind these important and crucial topics that have haunted the minds of humanity since the beginning of known human civilisation and most likely before.



Lecture one will be an introductory lecture that will explore some of the topics that we will cover over the next ten lectures. The way that this course will be structured is that each lecture will be accompanied by a set of readings and these readings can be found below and they will be in audio format to make this process as easy as possible for you. I hope that you do take on this course seriously and consider these topics that I express to you and that these readings convey to you because these topics are the only thing that is important in your life whether you realise it or not. And I hope that you come to understand this as the course goes on.



This lecture will introduce some of the topics of each lecture that we will be going through so I am going to start that now.



In Lecture 1 which is this lecture I hope that you will get an overview of what is going to be covered and maybe even think about these topics before we cover them so that you can compare your own views to the views that you accumulate through the process of these lectures and the relevant readings.



Lecture 2 will be composed of, The Painter, that's what its called, and the painter is the mediator of the Divine and the Divine is the wisdom that the philosopher has found. And the wisdom that the philosopher has found they then take and contemplate for long periods of time and then attempt to express that to convey that divinity to others in the most efficient and practical manner.



And that is what we all do within communication to some degree or another for we are all painters. We are all painting a picture for other people. When you use your words you might say "I am saying exactly what I mean" but no you are not you are saying an abstraction of what you mean and we will be covering this in lecture two. For if I say sit down on a chair, a chair to you and a chair to me are two entirely different things considering I live in the wilderness a chair to me would easily be a log which I am sitting on right now or even the ground or a rock, and that is my favourite place of sitting , a big rock is my favourite. And to you it is probably a LazyBoy or a couch or something else so what the painter is doing is attempting to articulate the abstract. And the abstract is his message of wisdom that he is trying to share.



And when I say he, unfortunately the English language does not have a He/She term yet, and I am hoping they will eventually, so I am meaning One. But One separates the individual, so if I slip up and say "he" that is why, I am waiting for that term which probably will never come unfortunately. So I mean he or she.



So the painter is a poet, they are trying to convey something to the best of their ability without actually being able to convey it directly. So let's think about a painter that wants to paint a picture of the sun, the bright sun, on a canvas. So that painter is painting and he brings the canvas to his friend and says, "Look at my painting, its of the Sun". And that's exactly what it is, its of the Sun it is not the sun, it is a representation of the Sun. And this is what we will be talking about in lecture two for the mediator between the Divine and the Human, the fallible, the material is only somewhere in between.



Lecture 3 we will be speaking about belief and suffering and their interconnections. So why do we have beliefs and why do we hold on to these beliefs and why are they so important to us and why do we suffer and what is it that causes suffering and even what could we do to overcome suffering. And interestingly enough, belief and suffering are two sides of the same coin. So we need to understand both aspects of these sides in order to understand how to go beyond the suffering that it causes and their interconnections will be discussed in more detail in lecture three.



In Lecture 4 we will be exploring the perception, human perception and experience. And what we will be talking about then is from how our senses come to make an image of the world. Let's use an example of, let's say our eyes. That is the easiest for most people to understand. So the light reflects in a certain way and it goes through our retinas and gets sent through a complex system and sends signals to our brain and our brain then paints a picture of what it is that we "see". And what it is that we see is actually cast by our brains into the imagination. So our perception is not really what we see it is just a representation of what we see. Our experience therefore is an experience of an imaginary world, to some degree, or maybe to a large degree, or maybe entirely, but we will discuss that in lecture four.



In Lecture 5 we will then discuss the possibility of existence and knowledge. So do we exist and if we do in what manner do we exist? Does other objects in the world exist and if so in what manner do they exist? And is there at all that we can say to Know? So these questions will be dealt with in lecture five.



In Lecture 6 we then go on to explore The Seeker which the seeker is the philosopher: the lover of wisdom who searches for this wisdom at all times. And we will be speaking of the seeker and what it is that he seeks and then what it is that he attempts to convey and express. So we can then relate that back with the painter and we can see how the painter comes to paint the picture that he then blesses to the world.



Lecture 7 will be reviewing the topic of God. Does God exist or does God not exist? What can we understand from the nature of God if God exist or if He does not exist what meaning can we find in the world. The topic of God is very very controversial in today's society that has placed Science as its highest good and I want to put up red flags about this and you need to think about that especially when we are going through lecture four and five about knowledge and what we can understand to know because science says its knowledge and even though science guides us and helps us with many many things, we need to be careful about what we put our faith in. And putting our faith in science has its ramifications. And we will be talking about that.



Also the controversy which God has created, and diversity, God has started, or people that have said in the name of God have started many wars and caused great suffering throughout mankind's history. And this has put a bitter taste in our mouth about God, especially since Christianity dominated the {Western} world for a very very long time and you had to be in line with the orthodox church because the church was the church and since the state was the church the state punished you if you were not in line. You became a heretic and was either exiled or martyred. And we are going to be talking about these topics and how God and the misconception of God can cause great follies of mankind.



I also want to state before going on to the next lecture, that I am a called man. I am a man of God that follows God in everything. But I look at all religions objectively as I can and learn what I can from these religions. I am religious because I do worship this Divine which is in everything, and I am called, I have been called. There was a point that I was called to do what I am doing now. And I want to also say that I think a lot of these follies that these religions have asserted is God and then work everything else from God. And the only thing that we are given is our consciousness, our human perceptions, our mind, our experience, that is the only thing that is given. And we need work from there to God; to be a true follower of God we are following from ourselves to God and not to God back to ourselves. And modern religion does just the opposite. I am not a fan of organised religion at all and I do not identify with any religions in particular but I learn from them all.



Lecture 8 is "Why Act Morally?". And this is an important topic especially if we are to consider God because in the past God is the reason why we should act morally, and if there is no God then what reasons do we have to act morally. And if there is a God what reasons do we have to act morally? We will be bringing from lecture four and five perception and experience and this idealism that if all we have is our experience then why should we worry about what is outside of our experience. So why should compassion drive us when we are not experiencing these situations directly. Should we not only worry about our experience? We will also be looking at different theories of justice and why one would act morally.



This brings us on to Lecture 9 which is what type of life should I live? This will talk about each conscious second and what we are to do and make with it to have a connection to ourselves and the world and a feeling of belonging to our investments. And what we are to do with the time. And I am going to give you a little bit of a spoiler and that is that you should become a philosopher. And you can become a philosopher in many different ways but the philosopher is the one that searches for wisdom and through searching for wisdom we are learning theories to bring about practical application onto the world. So as a searcher of wisdom we are able then to actualise this wisdom into our own lives and be able to live the best life that we are able to live.



And this brings us then to our final lecture, Lecture 10. And this will be discussing building a meaningful life. We will be talking about how to break the chains that society has shackled to us and how to find the meaning and destiny that we ourselves are supposed to follow. And fate a free will will be talked about throughout this course but this course is a course on practical application which is Phronesis, that is from Aristotle, which we will be reading some Aristotle as well. But this will be about building a meaningful life and what we are to do considering the constraints from being brought into the world that we currently live in.



So we have now gone through lecture one through ten and some of the topics that we are going to cover within these lectures. And now I want to discuss some of the reading material that we will be exploring over the next ten lectures. I want to say that I will not be talking specifically, at least not in great detail, about this reading material that I am providing, but this reading material that I am providing is an aid to understand from different perspectives about where I am coming from. So I am not expounding on this material. I am giving you new material, at least to the most part, that you can build upon to increase the foundations of your own understanding. So I am not going to be reviewing these books. I might be referencing them but that is the extent that these lectures will be functioning.



As far as your reading material for this lecture, and I suggest that you can choose to read the material before or after the lectures, but if it was me I would probably read before that way I understand different aspects of what could be involved in the lectures. But it is your choice and remember that these are available in audio format and go to them so you can do the course , if you just listen to the lectures you are not doing the course, you are just getting a taste. Which is better than nothing but if you are going to do it then do the whole thing; that is what I recommend.



This lecture we have two readings. Crito by Plato is about Socrates and his friend Crito comes into his prison after Socrates has been arrested for corrupting the youth (and all Socrates was doing was asking questions and the youth would come and say, "This guy is interesting, let's watch him" and then they would mimic some of the things that he did and all Socrates was doing was going, "Why do you do that? Why do you take your fruit from this stand and then put it in this stand?" He's just asking questions trying to figure out the why's of humanity and more or less try and teach and help others understand why they do the things they do.



But this is about his being in prison and Crito comes and says, "We can help you escape" and Socrates say's, "No". And you will see his reasonings behind why he wants to stay and carry out being martyred. He did not consider it being martyred and I want to make that clear. He came from a different age and a different culture and he did not have that perception of martyrdom. For him it was the greatest good to be eliminated through a democratic approach which he invested his life into.



We get a little taste of an "Absolute" good. Throughout these lectures I am going to be slamming absolute goods, to some degree, but as I said before the painter is only a mediator and the absolute can never really be reached but we can get as close as we can to it. Socrates then says, you know, is one man's just as good as another man's opinion? And Crito says no. And we can see this: if you go to a wise grandfather and ask him a question and go to one of your friends who is off the rails and ask him a question you are going to obviously get different results. And from those results you are obviously going to take into consideration the two different approaches that are given to you. So one man's opinion is not equal to another.



And not just that, is the mob opinion, which is the opinion of the group, more valid then the opinion of one man. And we can easily see just by looking around that this is not the case. The group does retarded things, like really horrible things, they lose the individual and we can see this in Nazi Germany and we can see this in Stalinism and this is what we are talking about with absolutes. There is some type of absolute that we are striving for and we get different degrees the more wisdom we achieve as to how close we are to that absolute. That is one of your readings and this is a very good reading and I hope that you consider this and reflect and all of these reading and all of these lectures I don't just want you to one time go, "oh yeah, okay". I want you to actually think because that is what we are here for; we are here to think and contemplate, ponder, upon these very difficult questions.



We also have Jonah which is about a man who ran from his destiny. He knew his destiny and he ran. And I did that for a while too, it is only the last two years that I have fully embraced my calling. Before there was bits and pieces - I would pick and choose what I liked from my calling and then just dump the rest. And what I dumped came back on me to its fullest and I suffered and I suffered greatly. This can be related to life. We have the choice. We have that calling there, we might not quite understand or know that calling yet, but we come to learn it if we embrace it. And then we can carry it out.



There is another point of this reading that I would like you to consider and that is Jonah's suffering and I want you to think about this so in lecture three when we talk about belief and suffering you can start to relate different aspects of Jonah's suffering with what we are talking about in lecture three. So those are the two books that we are going to be reading and I hope you guys enjoy this. All of this material that I am providing you is very very popular material, at least it is what passes on through the ages. You go into a book store and you get recommendations from your friends and what you are looking at is pornography. These are books that will wear away in one or two generations. But what you are looking at with philosophy is timeless material that will stay as long as we are here.



And that is what we need to consider is what it is that we are putting into our heads, but this material that I am providing you has actually shifted the thought process of mankind and developed it: the reason that you think like you think is because of this material, and more material, and hopefully as I offer more courses, we will expand upon this material and if you choose to take on those other courses as well, you will be given the tools to understand why you think the way that you think. But these are all passed down, we learn something new, a smart guy comes along and says, "this", and we go "oh okay", so the world is not flat or the sun earth revolves around the sun instead of the sun revolving around the Earth. And at first we go, "no, no!" and gets criticised and ridiculed and martyred and then we go, "oh okay, we will accept that now" and then we lose the meaning of it and once it is over we put it back in the subconscious or the unconscious.



I am here to bring it back out because we need to consider these topics. To understand yourself, to be able to follow your own destiny and create and develop meaning in your life you need to understand why you are the way that you are. And if you don't then you are not master of your own destiny. You can not play an arcade or XBox game without learning how to play your character. So you have a character here that you need to learn how to control. And in order to learn how to control that character you need to understand the strings that that character has.



Throughout this course we will be looking at Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, we will be looking into Buddhism. We will be looking into a few books in the Bible. We will be looking at the great philosopher Kant, Plato, and many more and I do hope that you enjoy these as they are very significant and powerful works, powerful masterpieces. Most of the time I am only going to be able to give you selections of these pieces.



That is what my philosophy degree does, did. They gave me a lot of different information in like just a section of the book that it came from. And it was just a lot and it was hard to understand it all. And over time then I began to learn the material because it all correlates in one way or another. And then after I finished the major I went back and said, "Okay all of this material came from books. Now I am going to read all of these books. And I have read most of them and am still reading most of them. I read a lot. I read probably thirty to fifty books a month. I have read more than that. There is a lot of material that I go through. And I love it because the more that I learn, the more that I can understand, control, and dominate my life and in turn the more that I learn about my suffering and human condition the more that I can overcome that suffering and that condition. And I hope that this course will show you some aspects of that and maybe provide some tools for you to be able to do the same with your own life.



So that is what this course is about and I hope that you do enjoy it. I hope this first lecture has enlightened you to certain aspects of what we are going to cover and interested you as well. I hope I don't not fail in my mission and my mission is to open your eyes to "what is" and when your eyes are open you will be in a much better position to be able to make the decisions in your life because the decisions that we make in our life are the most important thing possible. Not making a decision is making a decision as well and I want you to be aware that every single conscious second we have a decision, "What are you going to do?". This is the question that you need to fight with so you can figure out what you are going to do each moment. And if you are to make a meaningful life, what are you going to do with your conscious seconds, you have been given so many of them.



I hope this has intrigued you at least a little bit. I hope you do continue and take on this course. If you want to contact me then I am happy to have a chat and you can contact me on my site My Reflected Life. These lectures are all a part of my site. I do YouTube to build my website. I do not do YouTube to be on YouTube. If you are a YouTuber coming to this then I recommend you to my website. So YouTube acts as a medium that allows me to build my website. So if you want to chat about any of the things that we talk about in these lectures then I am happy to do that. And I think these issues are so important not to the masses but the individual, and the individual is you. So I want you to be able to take your life under your own control and make it the life that you should be living. And I do not know how that is. That is for you to figure out. And I hope this course helps you do that.

Transcript Lecture 2: The Painter

Greetings and welcome to lecture two on the meaning of life. Last lecture we introduced the topics that we will be covering over this course. And what I am going to do now is get right into it as we don't really need to review what we spoke of previously because we will be talking about these subjects now and the future lectures.

To begin with we will speak of birth, childhood, youth, growing up into adulthood, life, and then death. We are all brought into a society, a culture, a particular culture. So a time and place within that culture. So we live over a certain period of time and we have no say about that and we are brought into a place and we have no say about that. And this affects our entire lives, for we can move on to a different place but the places that we were in our past will condition where we go in our future.

So we are born and then brought up into a culture and we are taught the normalities and traditions of this culture as well as the "truths" that these cultures hold as valuable. We are handed down a preconception of what a life should be. And in most capitalistic cultures this is preparation for employment. We learn how to walk. We learn that feet go on the ground and hat goes on the head. We develop ourselves and learn speech to communicate because we become frustrated not being able to communicate and that causes us to cry. Once we learn from observation and immersion the language of our culture we then start to learn its values and believe those values to also be our own. We grow up and get educated within this culture as to how we should live our lives and we follow the path of this culture unless we break apart from it.

We all have rose tinted glasses. We see around and see straight but these rose tented glasses block our peripheral vision. And it is the philosopher's job to pry these glasses off so that they can see what truly is. And that is the goal of the philosopher. And as the philosopher learns how to do this then they are in a better situation to control their own lives.

This lecture called The Painter is to help and prepare you to read and understand the text that will be provided in this course. Not only that to be able understand expression on a higher level. And that is not only text but any type of expression for example this transcript that I am typing right now is a type of expression. And hopefully after this lecture, you will be able to make better decisions from understandings brought from the lecture about what it is that people are trying to say. So this is not only limited to the text that you will be encountering in this course but expands to life and everything within human communication. We can then learn to look at speech and language from an overview.

It is the expressionist' role to express themselves in a manner that is receptive to the audience. And the audience depends on the expressionist. For me the audience is people that are looking for meaning, people that have not found meaning but are searching. The future philosophers is the people that my heart is put out to. A philosopher can be many things but that is your path, or the philosophers path.

But that is their role to articulate their abstract in a way that is receptive. This is no easy task at all. I have been doing this my entire life and most people have not been receptive at all to me. So I tweak and manipulate my words and my structure of whatever medium I use to express myself in order to convey my meaning and be heard by others. So that is the role of the painter, for they are painting a picture of what it is that they are trying to say. And this picture is in attempts to convey the meaning that they have to express.

I am going to get right into a debate or an argument and that goes into Socrates and Hermogones and they were speaking about names. Let's say we call all horses men and then we call all men horses, so now a man is a horse and a horse is a man. Is a man really a horse then and is a horse really a man, or we just postulating something that is not true? And language is meant for the user of the language, so if we assert our language into an object or an understanding, how can we say that that understanding is true? Or is it true or we just completely screwing up our own language.

A very difficult and interesting article that I struggled with greatly with a few years ago was Wittgenstein's private use of language. Wittgenstein takes this discourse of Socrates and Hermogones a step further and questions whether private language can exist, for language is a communal activity, and for one person to say that something is something else then is that possible or not. So if I claim this stick to be a dog and for the future this stick to me is a dog, can this stick be a dog. In a round about what Wittgenstein is coming to grips with or bringing our minds to question is whether language at all can exist or be valid, for all language in a certain perspective is a private use of language. For there is colloquially and we all have different types of verbiage that we utilise. The argument is much more detailed than that but this is an introductory course and I do not want to confuse anybody, but that is basically the way the argument goes.

So we are questioning language here and we need to start thinking about this method that we use to convey meaning in order to understand the painter. And this method in many cases is language. And not only language, if another method is used then it carries the same ramifications. So let's keep that in mind. When I say that it is hot and being hot comes to your mind, I feel that it is probable that my hot is burning to you. As well as cold. I am sure that my cold is freezing to you. And this is because I have trained. And I have trained in the intense heat and I have put myself through rigorous extremes in order to no longer worry about those extremes. So to escape suffering I went through suffering, which we will be speaking about next lecture.

If you go to a doctors office and you have a boo boo and the doctor says, "How much does this boo boo hurt? Your scale is 1-10. Now tell me , is it like a two or a three or is it a seven or is it a nine? How are we able to articulate an abstract such as labeling our pains to a number? So this is impossible. Yet we do it every day. Yet we go to the doctor and we tell them and not just the doctor, we have other scenarios in our day to day lives that these situations come up. So we need to start thinking about the use of language and being able to say what you mean.

For if I point to the moon it is not the moon. What I am pointing at is the moon. The conveyance of pointing at the moon is not the moon. If you have two friends that come over and you ask them if they would like some coffee and the first one says, "Yes, I would like some coffee" and the second one says, "A coffee would be magnificent". Who is expressing more meaning there? The first friend advised you specifically, "Yes, I would like some coffee". The second friend did not give you an answer, yet somehow they did. So these are things that we need to think about within language and expression.

Salvador Dali and the painting of the melting clock is my favourite painting of all time. When we look that painting we are not thinking that Salvador Dali wanted to say that clocks melt. We are looking deeper into the painting. And if you have never seen that painting, which I am sure everyone has, but go and look at it if you have not and if you have not looked at it for long I would recommend you to just observe it for a while and see what comes about there. He is attempting to convey a message and that message is up for interpretation.

Friedrich Nietzsche is the most quoted philosopher of all time but at the same time he is the most misunderstood. Not only that is that he utilised his paintbrush in an interesting manner. He went and started attacking different ideas and concepts in order to express deeper meaning. So most people who read Nietzsche will be greatly offended by what he says, but when you learn to step back and try and look at what image he is attempting to convey, then we come to the point where we are looking at the clock again. The meaning that he conveys through his controversial topics, through his bold statements that will get you upset. But he is preparing a road and if you look at what he says then that road becomes open for you to follow and observe the surroundings.

So can we say what we mean? I have had a debate about this with somebody, it was a very short debate. Through this debate we had some problems {the results of being homeless during this course} and it ended up falling out, not on my part but the other part. But they were not appreciative at all that I could not say what I meant. I said to them "I mean everything that I say but I can never say what I mean" and they were greatly offended by this and said that they did not wish to have a friend that was like that. It was a short debate, a few minutes, because they did not have ears to hear and they did not want to hear the meaning that I was attempting to convey. And that is what we need to learn to do is unplug our ears so we can understand what message our fellow human is attempting to convey. So from intolerance such as close mindedness we end up with diversity where there was none. And we end up hurting our fellow humans.

For each of us are equipped with a paintbrush. Some go out and look for other paintbrushes to also utilise. And we can have different types of paint brushes. We can have thick ones and small ones and not only that the painter has a style and they can paint wide strokes or small strokes. And what it is that the philosopher does is paint in a way that can convey meaning regardless of the content of some of their words. So you might notice with me that I might be very aggressive towards humnankind in certain situations. And this is very true, and I am to a large degree. But behind these strokes of my paintbrush is deeper meaning. And if you learn to pull off your rose tinted glasses, then maybe you might see something that you did not see previously.

So we come back to the painter that paints the sun. Are they painting the sun or they merely painting a representation of the sun. To point at the moon is not the moon. And the artist can only point. We can only act as signs to guide the audience towards the direction of the insight that we see. Wisdom must be learned through understanding and experience, and suffering, and can not be taught. You are not going to gain anything from these lectures until you learn how to practically apply this information. You have the resources now from this course to gain these tools but you do not have the wisdom: by me doing this course is not passing on wisdom but only tools to achieve your own personal wisdom. Your own personal divinity.

So we come now to the philosopher and the philosophy. And what so many people do, especially people that are beginning with philosophy, is read the philosophy. So they will go through and read Kierkegaard, or Descartes, or Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, etc... And they will learn their content, they will learn the philosophy of the philosopher. But they will not understand. They might think they understand but they will not. And I will tell you why is because behind the philosophy is the philosopher, and this is an important point. And there is a theme that is beginning here , even began in last lecture, but I hope you pick up on it. But to understand the philosophy you must understand the philosopher. Because that philosophy was built by philosopher and that philosopher built that philosophy from the happenings, understandings , occurrences and experience of his or her own life. So in order to understand the philosophy in the best and most efficient manner possible, we need to understand what is behind that philosophy and that is the philosopher.

We need to then analyse the medium that this philosopher or artist, painter, whatever we are talking about here. We need to look at the medium that they are using to convey their message. Are they using paper like most, I mean are they writing or painting or they making a demonstration or they making a video? How are they conveying what they wish to convey? Once we look at that then we can say well why did they use that medium?. A lot of the medium that survived in our past was writing and now we have something called technology, the Internet, the Internet is such a wonderful thing and I am taking it and I am making it my own. I am starting philosophy online for all. I am making it free for everyone. And the medium that I use many mediums. Many of you might notice that I do artwork that scrams and I write and I do lectures now and I also read aloud and record my articles. I have photographs with text. There is many things that I use to convey messages. And always in attempts to figure out how to best express myself.

It has only been maybe a few years that people have started to listen to me or be frightened, more so frightened, but all through childhood and youth and much of my adulthood I was confused about a lot of things. I misunderstood the world in front of me. And I was screaming for help for understanding and nobody was answering, so I went to philosophy. And I looked for mentors as well and nobody was interested and I was just a child to everybody. I started to learn and learn and learn philosophy. And eventually my arguments became solid. And instead of people arguing against and claiming me as "froth on the beer", I became to be frightened of, there was no point in arguing with me about anything because the arguments that I had were forming into solid arguments. And that is not to say that doesn't happen, like there are some people sometimes that I can have good debates with. But it is few and far between.

So now instead of people condescending me I have people running from me. I think that is better than people condescending me but... You see my point is that I had a message but I did not know what it was and I was striving to look for it. And I was screaming out to the world for help and the world was not answering, so I would utilise different methods to convey my message. Music as well. There is a lot of different methods that I did utilise and still utilise, and I am always growing; my palette is always getting more colours. This then allows me to increase my audience, and it does, it definitely does. And then some people either unplug their ears or they have already somewhat been awaken or even halfway awake. Somnambulance: sleepwalkers, I live in a world of sleepwalkers. And I was always wanting to get out of that world. And even my philosophy professors, they were not interested in helping me. I was just a kid and for my youth I get looked down upon. And when I open my mouth people then run because, "hey there is this kid who is speaking frightening things". And what I preach isn't appreciate by the majority of people. And this is obvious because what I preach is not your personal comforts in society but something different.

My audience still remains these people. And I am constantly looking for ways to express meaning and wake up the world to themselves, but I run into the deaf. Those who have no ears to listen. And it is these people that I want to help the most for my heart screams out to them because they suffer and they suffer and they suffer for the sake of suffering. I suffer to overcome. The Superman is why I suffer. They suffer to suffer and it makes me sad and I see it, being homeless, I travel from place to place to place to place, to family to family to friends to friends, to families, to everywhere. I mean I am constantly meeting new people. And I see the world for the people that are in it. And a lot of their unhealthy traits that they utilise and have no concern to overcome makes me sad because those unhealthy traits cause them suffer. And it is that suffering that I strive to overcome and it is suffering that humanity strives to overcome. And this is my gift to humanity, is to help it overcome suffering.

If we only learn to take our hands away from our ears, to pry off our rose tinted glasses, and suffering for the sake of overcoming; of transcending, instead of suffering for the sake of suffering, then we can live in a much better world. And not only that but a much more compassionate world. And it all aligns, for when you find the root cause of something then everything else aligns. So if you suffer in one area and you find out why you suffer in that area and then you take care of that problem, the rest sorts itself out. If your car has a problem, you need to figure out what that problem is in order to fix it. And then you can fix the problem and have a working functioning car again. If you leave that problem alone or rig it up so it works for a little bit longer other things are going to start to get affected. But we will speak about that in the next lecture on suffering.

The deaf is my audience. And if you are reading this and you are awake or awakening then I want to talk to you. But in saying that you are not my target audience. But also in saying that you are the ones that I want by my side. So in a way you are, I want you to come to me. And I want us to talk about the future of the world. But as far as why I do this is for compassion for those who are sleepwalking.

We were looking at the painter and his picture but now we need to look at you as the painter and your own picture. So when you use language what type of language do you use and why? When you express something why do you express it the way that you do? How are you articulating the abstract? Are you saying what you mean? For you can't say what you mean and even if you think you can you can't but you can mean what you say. And if you do mean what you say then how meaningful is what you say? What can you do to involve more meaning within your expression?

This is an important topic in order to review the world that you live in and yourself within that world. How people communicate is everything. For when you walk into a shop and when you walk by someone or when you are talking with someone, you are right there in this subject that we are speaking of right now. So how you communicate, how you paint your strokes, is going to affect how others interpret you. And I would like you to think about that. This isn't something that you just think about once. This is a process that will continue on your entire life.

So we went to the beginning of adulthood if you remember the beginning of this lecture, and we now come to a point where we have been educated and we are then thrown out into the world, and they make you think that this is the world, and you become employed. So the world of employment IS the world. It is not but maybe you think that or not, most people do so I am speaking to those most people. You are now employed. Somehow you manage to wake yourself up and sleepwalk through the day and then you come home and your beer or you relax and sit on your lazy boy or turn on the TV and spend the night away on the TV. Or you begin to get set in your life and over time this will eventually bring about the fact that your life is meaningless. And it is meaningless because of what you made it. And when you understand this or when you think about this a little bit, because you get stuck in it, you get stuck in what you are doing. And when you think about this it makes you sad.

So how can you fix that? Well the best way to fix that would then be to get married. You get married and you combine your life and your life is now a bit different and you are going along and it happens again and you feel, "oh where is the meaning in my life" so you have children. And then you raise those children and you think this is meaning, this is real meaning raising these children and you continue the process and paint on the rose tinted glasses onto your children. But this time in your own way because you found a few different things out that are relevant to you and you think it should be done this way instead. So you are making minor adjustments and you are raising your children. Your children grow up and then they move out and then you go, "okay, well what do I do now? I've spent all of this time on the children and now my life is again meaningless". So this is when a lot of people go through their mid-life crisis. After the mid-life crisis they learn to be content because they have seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of things. Being content within their miserable life becomes what they strive for everyday. Because they feel like most of their life has passed them by and they are coming to the end and then we put these people in old folks homes when they get to the point where they can no longer take care of themselves.

All the employment that went through the life, you learn how to deal with it. And then after it all means nothing. There was nothing that could be said for your employment but "you did a good job", you might get a watch or something like that, a few pats on the back. And then you grow old and you whither away and you get sick often and you reflect on the life that you wasted or you then occupy your mind with hobbies. And over time you deteriorate and eventually you die. And this is all considering that and accident didn't occur during your lifetime to kill you. What I say is that is that we should invest ourselves into ourselves. We will be talking about throughout the lectures. And I want to ask you a question. The life that I depicted is the life of most people. Do you think this is a meaningful life. I want to leave you with that question for this lecture but before we finish I want to speak about the relevant readings.

To begin with I want to speak about an author that has a warm place in my heart, and this is Ayn Rand and we are going to be reading a section of her novella called Anthem. The reason why this author has such a place in my heart is because she is the one who introduced me to Western philosophy and some the ramifications that it spoke of. After I read The Fountainhead which was a really good book (Atlas Shrugged was really good as well), but after I read that I turned my life around. And everything started being invested in philosophy. And over time I was able to pry my rose tinted glasses off. And I am very harsh on people and I say, "pry off your rose tinted glasses" and they go, "how do you know I got rose tinted glasses one?" and it is like, "well look, I have been spending my entire life prying away my glasses and there is still some days that I have to question what it is that I do and why it is that I do it.

So it is not an easy process. Have you spent the time to pry your glasses off, that is my question, have you done that. I am going to be harsh on you. I am going to be harsh on every single person because it is not a flick of the fingers. It was like eight years ago that I read Ayn Rand and she opened my heart into Western philosophy (I was into Eastern philosophy because I did martial arts). But Western philosophy opened a huge, everything for me, it opened up my life. And it brought much suffering too but that is a different story and we will talk about that in the next lecture. But Anthem, back to the relevant reading (we are getting off topic again) but the relevant reading is Anthem and this is a world where the "I" has been taken away. So We no longer say "I" We say We, so how are We today, what are We doing? It is a very interesting read and while reading it I want you to think about how she utilises her words and how she paints her picture.

Similarly, I want you to do the same thing with our next relevant reading which is another book that is dear to my heart, probably in the top ten list of my favourite books of all time. And not necessarily for its structure because there is parts of that book that I find boring but there are a lot of gems within it. And this book is called The Symposium by Plato. A symposium is where everybody gets together and speaks about a subject, and in this case they were speaking about love, and what love is and Socrates was there and his friends. They were drinking a little bit and when Alcibiades, I think they started drinking more but he was drunk, but we won't be reading that section and if we do it will only be a small portion of it. But the section we are going to be reading is when Socrates is speaking about Diatoma and what she conceives love as, her perceptions on love, and I want you to notice and think about these because these are part of the theme. So whenever Socrates goes into the words or the understanding of Diatoma, I want your ears to be very perceptive. And I want you to relate this material with everything we are talking about. And look at the picture that is being painted.

As far as The Symposium as well, I want you to understand that this event was told to Plato by his friend, I don't remember who it was, but I think it was thirty or thirty five after the event took place. And then Socrates is speaking about a lesson that he learned from Diatoma and I think that was like five or ten years prior. So we are getting second hands of second hands. We are lost as far as interpretation. And this is where the painting comes in because we have multiple paintings that are built upon one another. So perceive this and realise what is happening and I think you will enjoy the readings a great deal.

That's all for this lecture and I hope you were interested and enjoyed it. And next lecture is going to be an interesting one on pain and suffering. So hopefully we can have a little bit of fun with our own pain and suffering instead of suffering through the lecture. Stay safe.

Transcript Lecture 3: Belief and Suffering

Greetings and welcome to lecture three of the meaning of life. In lecture two we spoke of the painter, that is the expressionist who is attempting to articulate the abstract to the audience that he feels most in need of what inspiration that he or she has to offer and their manipulation of the tools of expression that they possess in order to most effectively communicate that meaning.



In this lecture we will be speaking of belief and suffering and their interconnections. For belief brings about a sense of security and we are then given hope for our lives. This belief that I am speaking of can be about anything; we are not necessarily limiting our self to God and belief in God will be spoken about in lecture seven. This brings about a sense of finality to our lives for when we have achieved these beliefs we are then in the position to relax and no longer search for new beliefs.



A belief stands as something that we can commit ourselves to even though we do not understand or are able to know. This finality allows us to condense ourselves into one aspect. It gives us a sense of belonging, for when we believe we can also others who believe similarly or the same and group ourselves within them. Then we are able to be united and have a community of belivers directed towards a certain aspect. This in turn creates diversity and we can see this throughout history. The example that we will use in this lecture is only one of many is that of Jesus. When Jesus died many different Jesus "sects" formed and there were many followers of Jesus who then interpreted Jesus' works and life in different manners.



Most of these sects fought against each other and there was a lot of blood shed that went into that. And in the end one power won. What happened is that Saint Paul was the one to not create Christianity but pave a way for modern Christian thought. The apologist then guided the church and formed an organised religion. And this organised religion then created dogmatic doctrines to follow and in order to achieve this they had to stamp out their competition and their competition were other forms of Jesus movements. So we have different interpretations being eradicated into one interpretation and eventually this formed into Christianity as we know it today.



We see this creating diversity everywhere and not just that diversity within religions because Christianity was no longer Jewish as it was taken over the Gentiles. And the Jewish people were no longer saved. And then the Muslim people came along which were monotheistic, which even Christianity claims monotheism but they worship three gods: Jesus, The Holy Spirit, and God. And that is polytheism any way you look at it so modern Christianity is not actually a monotheistic religion. But in saying that Jesus did not claim that he was God and he pointed to God.



But these are just different interpretations and what you see today within the organised Christian and Catholic church is a result of this one interpretation. And it creates diversity everywhere. The way that I have interpreted it is that Jesus opened the way to God to everybody. I understand that Jesus opened and paved a way for all to reach God and this is not through dogmatic doctrines. But this is a different story and we will not be talking about that any further. Sorry I got on a little bit of a rant, this was not supposed to be in this lecture.



So we see that this creates mob mentality, a "you are with us or against us" which is George Bush's famous saying. Jesus actually said in Luke is that those who are not against me are with me. So we have different perceptions of understanding here and this coming from George Bush who is supposedly a Christian. We then reach self-righteousness, for I am right and I will put this flag in the ground and say that there is no other difference. That I can not be disputed because I have found this truth and I will close my ears to any other things because other things harm my ears. But this is not what is being preached, for Jesus preaches that what goes into a man does not matter but what comes out of a man does. But these are not really recongised. A lot of times organised religion will preach this but not follow. There is a lot of hypocrisy. And I am getting off track again because I have a lot of views so I will get back on track. But this creates self-righteousness and people being sturdy in their beliefs and will not hear out their fellow human being because of what they believe and they do not want to hear it any other way. This in turn puts ear plugs in those individual's ears and they become close minded.



I am going to go on now to Buddhism and the teachings of it about suffering because we have talked about belief for the last ten minutes and now we are going to speak about suffering. The whole objection for Buddhism is the cessation of suffering, so the end of suffering. That was Buddha's goal for everything, Siddhartha Gautama who later became the illustrious Buddha. And he found enlightenment through finding a way to overcome this suffering. He had a choice whether to help the world or to just stay in the forest with what he had learned and he was unsure of whether he should. He was seriously debating to just stay and be one with all things and then he decided that he wanted to help, but he didn't think that others had ears to hear but it turned out that they did.



So in order to efficiently convey his message, remember the painter, and according to his era he needed to create dogmatic doctrines that people could follow to surpass suffering. And that is what he did, but we are just going to hear these out. I want to say that these dogmatic doctrines are not close minded. He was very open with many things. As far as dogmas go, Buddha's is one of the better ones. So then get to the cessation of suffering: how are we to stop suffering? He found the origin of suffering. As if you want to fix a car you have to find out what the problem of the car is. If you want to fix a computer you have to find out the problem and then you have to focus on the problem and repair what the actually problem is.



And he says that the problem with suffering is that we "cling". And we cling to all things, so we are clinging to our material. We are clinging to our TV, we are clinging to our phone. We are clinging to our friends and our work and music and entertainment and alcohol and all these different vices, which we are going to talk about vices and virtues later. But we are clinging to all of these things and this is causing our suffering because all of these things, and not just these things: those are the material, we also have ideals. We are clinging to these ideals as the greatest good and these ideals also let us down. But he is saying that all of these things actually cause our suffering, for when they are removed from our life or when we get tired of them, let us say we get a new phone, we are so excited but two months later there is another phone out and our phone becomes crap. So we then want to get another phone and we suffer with the phone that we have. So we are always looking towards the future but never being content that we have.



So these are the things that are causing our suffering. And in order to go beyond that suffering, to pass that suffering, is to "uncling" from these things. And as we uncling from these things (which is a process) then we slowly overcome suffering. And Buddha saw how people, especially in his time, would most likely not be able to do this in one lifetime. He then shared a doctrine on recurrence and he explained it as a flame. So you have two candles, one goes out "death" and then to another and you get reincarnated into either a higher being or a lower being. And how you were reincarnated depended how you lived your life. And through his doctrines you could live a good life. I have studied his doctrines and living his doctrines you can live a good life. So we will go on from Buddhism because I do not want to spend all day on it, I mean we might come back to bits and pieces of it later but I just wanted to explain the outline to you.



We go on to Eckhart Tolle and he is alive and well today and very inspirational. He is one of the spiritual leaders of the world and he says that the reason that we suffer is because we feel that we should not have to suffer. So I suffer because I feel that I should not have to suffer. And I suffer because I feel that my child should not have to suffer. Or I suffer because I feel that something should not be the way that it is. And through this Tolle suggests that we can get beyond it through acceptance. So if we learn how to accept all things then we are able to get beyond suffering.



This then leads us to Jonah, and if we think back to lecture one where you read Jonah, I asked you to remember his suffering. Do you remember why it was that Jonah suffered? Well there is a few reasons but what we are going to be talking about in this lecture is the vine. God grows a vine for Jonah and it was a wonderful shade to protect him from the scorching sun. And Jonah was pleased and happy. But then the next day the vine withered away by being eaten by an insect or something like that, a worm I think it was. Then Jonah suffers again and goes, "I want to die, you know I can't even get good shade. You give me shade and then you take it away." And God goes to Jonah, "You had nothing to do with this vine. I was the one who presented this vine to you and now that it is gone why are you angry at me? This was never yours to begin with." I want us to think about that in accordance with all of these other topics that we are discussing.



We are now going to speak of the human condition. The human condition is our suffering, and each human from what I perceive and what I understand, is different. The core of it is very similar but we each go through different things and we each experience different things. We each have a different life and we all have the reasons why we do the things that we do. From our experience I am postulating that we have slightly different aspects of this human condition. And this is why one person's wisdom can be different from another person's wisdom and both still be valid. Our human condition is then our battle. This is our life purpose. And this is important because this is the whole purpose of this course. To overcome our human condition is then the purpose in life. Then if you want to share with others your journey to overcome your human condition, you can then best live your life for the future of humankind.



This is another topic that we will speak about later with Why Act Morally?. So why should we do that? But right now what I am saying is that the human condition is something to be overcome and when we overcome it is something to be shared. And when we share it we become "the expressionist" and we then are helping others overcome theirs. And there are so many people out there that need it. So... We need you! We need your overcoming of the condition. I say overcoming and overcome because we can learn from the painter's image within the process of overcoming and not just overcome. So don't say, "oh I will do that when I overcome it", but the process is part of it.



Most people that I see... you got to realise that I am working with the life that I live within the experience that I understand and I see a world of sleepwalkers. The sleepwalkers avoid the fact. They avoid these issues because they take solace in ignorance. This is a blind ignorance; they know that they are ignorant. They choose to be ignorant because they do not want to face these hard topics. And to turn and face your human condition instead of running away from it is no easy task and it in itself will cause more suffering than you could ever imagine until you face it. But once you slay your dragons then are in the best position to stand up and take your life back.



This then is transcendence. And this is the striving that we as humankind must take on. This is the cross that we must bare in order to overcome the human. And the human is something to overcome and become and go beyond. And that is what Nietzsche's life purpose was: beyond good and evil, beyond the self, beyond morality and that was what he was talking about. So how do we do this? Well we have vices. And these vices are the ones that cause our suffering. We obtain these vices, and you can find out what your vices are for when you take them away you will suffer. To find out your vices and then figure out methods to overcome them is facing your dragon. And to find out your vices is no easy task, especially when they have been repressed by your subconscious. When they are hidden away because you don't want to deal with them. When they have been hidden away for so long they become very difficult to find.



So this not something you can snap your fingers: this is a life project. And I am not saying that it is going to take you your entire life. I have just recently overcome. I have continued to overcome. I have become more at every moment. But I have just recently, over the past four or five months accepted and become what I am. And I had to go through much pain and suffering in order to get where I am. And I can't say that I no longer suffer, but suffering is no longer something that I identify with. And this is something that causes our suffering, is identification. And when we identify with the thing as being part of us, we label and compartmentalise our self into this or that. And we then suffer when that suffers. So when you break your phone you suffer because you identified that phone as being part of you. And it is the identifying that causes great amounts of our suffering.



I have an article on this if you would like to read that called, The Identification Process. It is a painting for you to consider. This course is not going to spoon feed you everything. So I might direct you to different places and I might name drop a lot of things, and it is up to you to follow those up. I am introducing you to a lot of these subjects. I understand identification to be heavily connected with suffering. And belief is heavily connected with identification. Therefore you have belief and suffering and they are together like this. And if we remove these and realise what they are, which is nothing because they do not exist - there is no existence to them. They are conceptions that our human condition has created from a result of many different factors. Much I believe... I understand to be part of our society and the way that it conditions us to be, for example using the word "belief" so recklessly. And I myself have been trying to work out of that over the last year or so. Using belief here and belief there. But if you listen to anyone that is speaking around you will notice that it is "believe this, believe that, believe that. And we are all trying with different people through beliefs. And we are unable to effectively then create close relationships because if there is beliefs that conflict, we are then out of that.



But in saying that I am no better with effective relationships. But that is because I do not like beliefs and I don't like when people believe in things that are unhealthy. I will not put myself in a situation that is unhealthy for me. And I learned that through my divorce, and I am not going to go on too much about that, but I choose where I am at all times. And if I am in an unhealthy situation, you see I went through ten years with my ex-wife of an unhealthy relationship. When there is people that passionately commit their beliefs to unhealthy traits then I will not stick around regardless of the circumstances. I live in the wilderness so it does not matter. I will walk away and I am good. But I had to create that for myself. It was a process to get to that point. Because before when I walk away I would suffer and now I am part of. Before I was an outcast of. I won't go on about this, this is my life and this is a course about your life so let's go on.



Through our purpose of overcoming these vices then we are able to create virtues from theses vices. It says in Isaiah 40:28-31 that God will use your weaknesses more than your strengths. If we look at this in consideration this is talking about overcoming this self. And I am a primary example of that. All of this speaking, all of this conversation that I am doing right now was a weakness. I have not been good at speaking. I have spent my life writing because speech was something that I could not articulate in the manner that I desired. However, with writing I was able to contemplate ideas and articulate them in a manner that was most meaningful. But people did not want to read what I had to write. So I was always in a catch-22 because I wanted to communicate through writing and others wanted me to communicate through speech, and I was terrible at speech. But as you see, I have been working and working and working on it. Not only that, the more that I learn and the more that I understand, the more that my ideas are able to flow in a better manner.



You see, my articulation within speech has been difficult for the fact that my brain has always worked so fast that I have been in the position that I would lose my train of thought extremely quickly. So I would go on about something and then I would go, "oh, what were we talking about?" and this would cause many hardships within conversation and I would be treated like I did not know what I was talking about and I would be condescended from that. So this is my awakening to to being able to communicate effectively. Because speech is also one of the expressionist methods and I have been working my whole life on different ways of expression and over the last year I have been working on the ability to speech clear and distinctly and be able to convey my meaning through speech. And the only reason that you are now receiving this video is because I turned that vice into a virtue.



I will end the content of this lecture with an ideal. And that is to become what you are. And if you look at your vices, they are not you. And if you turn those vices into virtues then you are becoming the self that should be realised. We will be speaking about this in a future lecture but the example is an acorn. If you have an acorn and it then gets thrown into the ground and under the right conditions it can realise itself into a tree. And this is the process of the human. We need to, we realise our self, not we need to, we do. We will always be what we are and we have no ability to do any other. So if you become something grand, it is you becoming what you are. And if you don't it is still you becoming what you are and what you are just might not be grand. But the thing is that the human is not an acorn. It is not a tree, it is not a plant, it is a mobile creature. So what I am asserting here is that we are able to move around and position ourselves in the best possible soil for our particular selves. In this way we can become the grandest tree possible. We are not limited by a fluke indecent where an acorn grows in awesome conditions and becomes a marvellous tree. We are not limited by those conditions because we are a mobile and thinking creature. So we are able to become a grand tree and realise our divine selves.



Our first reading is The Book of Job. Job is a strong and faithful follower of the Divine and he gets greatly tested and this is through suffering. He suffers great amounts and then goes to God, "Why am I suffering, why am I suffering, why am I suffering?". And then God basically says, "How are you to know God's plan?". I am not going to go into details about this story because you should read it.



Our next reading is On the Sufferings of the World from Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer. This is Schopenhauer putting through his ideals on suffering and they are very good things to consider. I do want to say that Schopenhauer is a pessimist but he is very inspirational; his words have great meaning. And in some ways I am a pessimist but we can become more. Becoming what you are is no easy task until the time that you become a butterfly. For we have to go into a cocoon and form into the best self that is possible. This will cause copulas amounts of suffer. I want you to suffer so that you no longer have to suffer. And it is this suffering that we are to overcome if we so choose. Otherwise you will be wallowing in your own humanity until the day that you die. And if you have managed to transcend suffering then I congratulate you for that, for that is a very commendable task. And if you have I would recommend that you begin to paint for the world how it is that you overcome that suffering.



We come to an end of lecture three. I hope you enjoyed this lecture and did not suffer too much through it. And I hope it has given you direction as to the cause of suffering. I need to mention that many of these assertions that I am saying are contradictory to the history of Western philosophy, especially in regards to beliefs, for belief in Western philosophy in most cases has been considered a virtue. And through my own experience and interpretations and understandings, I have come to a different point of view about this. So I would like you to be aware that I am not preaching the doctrines of our past philosophers in regards to beliefs but am presenting my own understandings as far as them. However, when they speak of beliefs within Western philosophy, I see what they are saying, but I think that we do not need to hold on to all of those beliefs.



For me, I have one belief and one belief only. We will speak of that in lecture seven. I hope you had fun and stay safe.

Transcript Lecture 4: Perception and Experience

Namaste and welcome to lecture four, perception and experience. In lecture three we lead towards how we have inclinations towards beleifs. In a way if we look at it we don't really have those beliefs but just different degrees of those beliefs. So we are inclined towards something to a certain degree. And when we are at that certain degree then we tend to jump ahead of ourselves to find some absolute truth, and that is where dogmas comes in and following a certain set of guidelines. What we are doing is asserting God before the self, but we will talk about this in the God lecture. But what it is saying is that this tends to revolve us around some absolute, if you remember Crito in lecture one. And this absolute depending on how we revolve around it will affect whether we suffer or whether we go beyond suffering - whether we truly experience what is. But there is a lot of different things that you have to learn for philosophy is vast and it is a life thing.



In lecture two we were leading towards articulation of the abstract by looking at what is not said as well as what is being said then you can understand where the author is coming from. The way we do this is to learn the author and their train of thought and then we can follow what they are saying. And that way we are getting closest to understanding what it is that they are talking. Through that process we become more profound and to some degree reach a higher truth. Even if we don't say something or we say it, it is an entirely different perspective.



That is the end of the recap and now we are going to begin the lecture on experience and perception which we are going to start out with cognition. Res cogitans is our cognition that receives data from our senses so if I get hurt there is going to be electronic impulses sent to my brain to tell me that I am getting hurt. I get bit by a mosquito or I feel a mosquito on me and I get told "hey I need to do something about my leg" and that is why I am slapping every once in a while because I am getting rid of mosquitos because they are all around.



Our senses, through our vision, we are being told what's in the world. There is a tree here and that tree is within my vicinity. And my senses tell me that and I receive that information and then I can work my way around it and make the necessary improvisation like if I am hurting or if there is a mosquito that I do not want to bite me that is on me.



And this is what we call the external world or in philosophy its the phenomena. The phenomena of the world is everything that is within it. And it is within the space/time continuum, we have time and we have space. And according to Kant, which is one of your readings which we will talk about later, time and space is the only things that are a priori, which means before the fact. So in order for experience to be necessary we have to have time and space available for our understanding of experience. So within space and time we have a continuity which is where this tree remains in this similar form over time and I can know that this tree is the same tree that it was yesterday that it is today and I am in the same area that I was before.



So we have this continuity and this then over time creates memory. And this memory is what our experience is. So this painting that our imagination is making is then creating this memory which results as experience. We then make assertions on things to see if they are right so we will dip our finger in the water to see if it is hot. We will test the world and see how it responds. We will trust ourselves in something but this creates misunderstandings a lot. So if a boy climbs up a tree and there is a poisonous snake right beside him but he has not seen the snake then he misunderstands the situation. And if I am talking to you about perception and experience and you are not understanding and not tracking back when you get lost then you might misunderstand what it is that I am trying to convey.



This causes us to learn or to "understand". As a biproduct of all of this stuff that I am talking about we get consciousness which is like the "froth on the beer" I have heard it called, "the wash of the ocean", also "the haze of the world, the haze of everything, the haze". Neurological impulses. And this is where we come to realism and idealism. This course I am going to ammit is pushing a little bit towards an idealist approach however what you have in idealism is that everything is a product of the "spirit" or "consciousness", so they are saying everything is reduced to the mind. So everything exists as the mind perceives it to exist. So then this is sort of leading away from the existence of material objects because all that exists is the mind. In saying this we also get the realist that come back and say "no, everything is reduced to the physical". Which the "physical" is the brain states in which occur. But then how can you reduce neurological impulses to physical and that is where they try to explain.



This then brings us to an external cause which is talked about by Immanuel Kant and you will be reading this for your reading, and he said that there must be something out there because there is an external cause for me doing the things that I do. So what I do, the situations that I am in and what I choose to do is caused externally. So whether we exist or not, whether things exist or not, or how they exist, we don't really know. But we can make assertions on and understand more but we are still only understanding our perception which is a subjective point of view. This subjective interpretation is really all we are given but we try to make it more. And that is what science does is try and make a subjective interpretation into something much more as a"truth". But they combine subjective interpretations. And it does help us know the world around us because we get a common understanding of the thing outside. But it is still only a painting of what is outside. So science is the artist of the painting of science and its classifications that greatly aid us in our understandings.



Now we get the existentialist which then focus on consciousness; what this consciousness is focused on. So we now know what our consciousness is and how it comes about then we are now in the position to study and analyse where our consciousness is focused. And where this is focused is explored by Heidegger who explores where that essence lies and for him it is in the future. We do things for a result of something else. So we are constantly going beyond what we are to get a better result. We can see this if we go to chop wood, we are chopping wood for the result of that wood that we can then use for fire and heat. And if we are making a barrel, he says, we are focused around making that barrel. And I am focused around making this video and this course (writing this transcript). And I am focused around my studies and continuing to learn the human condition and society and how the human condition can best function in society.



And that is what I am going to continue to do. And how to express this meaning to everybody else. And hopefully we can as a group of human, loving, compassionate, and wonderful creatures that can reach so much if we only put our hearts to it. We can become what we are. We can become the tree from the acorn, and right now our tree is dying. But that was not Heidegger's point. Heidegger's point was that we live for whatever it is that we are attempting to achieve. And this acts in small intervals which we are constantly working to get to. I am trying to get passed this sentence and make sense of what I am saying so my mind is then contemplating the words that I need to make this sentence best understandable. {Just like my mind is attempting to transcribe this section using only basic edits to be clearly understood by the public} Heidegger was German and there is some controversial stuff about him so you might want to read up on him.



French philosopher Sartre... He's lucky enough to have a philosophy chick man, he had a lifetime long relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, and she was brilliant just like him. That relationship gives me inspiration, although I am monogamous, but besides that... I really respect that relation, and I want that. But I am going to go on. Sartre was in a war and he was imprisoned but he was just like a weather guy or something and he got captured. But I do not think it was a hugely strict imprisonment from what I have heard, but it was bad. But he then escaped eventually and then started a revolution in France. He spent a lot of his time in coffee shops, analysing and thinking. He started a trend. People started dressing in black and wearing sunglasses talking about these big life subjects.



He said that our consciousness is focused on nothing. He gives an example scheduling to meet a friend at a coffee shop. We go to the coffee shop and we look around and what we see is nothing. Our consciousness blurs out everything that is not important to what we are focused on and is then directed towards what is not there. So what is not there is the object of our consciousness at all times. So if we are looking for our wallet or writing something or trying to speak {or transcribe} , we are constantly focusing what is not there and trying to put into place something to be there. And then we are on to what is not there again because we are always in this nothingness. Then we get to this essence of the person. If you look around at people and you see the waiter or something, what is the essence of this waiter? We then get to a soul. If we look at a soul, if we just assert a soul, we can see a certain level of direction towards their life towards something that they have chosen to do. So this "essence" or this "soul" is certain persuasion or inclination of this energy in a certain direction of where we are going.



This is just one interpretation of what a soul might be. Then we have the question of the immortal soul. If we remember back to Buddhism then we can find that our suffering comes from clinging and desiring and wanting. And if we think about it, this whole wanting more and more and more causes us suffering, so why would we want more life than we are provided. So this life that we are provided then should be enough for us to be happy and content within what we are. So the whole conception of the immortal soul, for me, is a very interesting subject but ultimately irrelevant as it is not a practical matter because we should not be so desiring that because we should be content and happy and joyful within whatever is because if we remember Tolle, we don't want to suffer. And that clinging and desire for what is practically irrelevant is a poor choice of beliefs because it ultimately causes suffering and we are trying to pry away all of this suffering from our lives. So to be content with what is and hope for the best in what is to come is the method that I have adapted, thus the soul can live in accord with itself.



I wanted to end this lecture with some wisdom that I have found personally and I really want to say that this is a personal thing that my life has been geared towards, and there has been steps all along the way. So I do not want to say that this is right or wrong for anybody. At first in my life I figured out how to dominate the physical. I have did martial arts for a very long time and now that I have reached a certain level of martial arts I now practice myself. I am a pacifist, but if there is something then I do not know, because I live in faith so I am not going to commit myself to pacifism, but I strive to be passive in all scenarios. But I was not always like that and I have gotten in some fights with bullies before because they were bullies and not because they were picking on me. So I dominated my physical and I was able to roll around and I was introduced to nature because a lot of what I have done is Ninjutsu. Once I learned my physical and was able to just do what I wanted with my body, anything you know, I have done rigorous training to make my body do whatever I want it to do.



Then I learned how to dominate the mental. This is when I started studying, and a studied and I studied and I studied, and my choice of books became more and more refined into different philosophical matters and I read in many different formats great amounts. So I dominated my mental. But then, especially after the last two years when I was called (which was basically a result of my divorce). It was the call of Jonah because if you remember in lecture one, Jonah running from his destiny. Because I knew what I had to do but I was not prepared to do it and I was not strong mentally, so I then developed my mental apparatus. And once I got to a certain point with that where it was just developing itself, then I could focus my essence that I had on the spirit, which is the spiritual side, which is my soul: the soul is the spirit. And now I do everything that I can and I focus to get my spirit in alignment with God, which we will talk about that with the God lecture. That way that I become as close to that absolute as possible.



If we look at a metaphorical thought experiment, we are all revolving around the sun. We all see different aspects of that sun, and the sun being the possible absolute, or absolute, or objectivity. But the thing is that all of the planets are different distances from the sun. So we are all revolving around that sun but we can see clearly how other people are closer to that sun than other people that are around. So we get different types of people. And these different degrees are the essence of the soul: where the soul is directed.



The way that I perceive and understand it to be is that I align my spirit with the Divine and then everything else is built upon, and I see this happening. So you start with yourself, from your physical to your mental to your spiritual. When you finish training your physical then you train your mental and let your mental control over your physical and then your spiritual control over your mental and physical, and be able to bypass the spiritual to the physical. This is where you get people who go beyond pain and to the most degree I go beyond pain. I do surgeries on myself, I have fixed my teeth. It was like nine thousand dollars of work and now I probably only need one or two, with plyers and a dental set. One day in my life I would like to get cut and then sew it back up, I am not going to try to do that though. {I screwed that one up} The talented person that can do all three and work on all three at the same time, I commend them, but I had to go through a process.



Now we are going to talk about An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. What we see with Hume is that what we get is sense impressions. We see that when we pick up a cup in a certain manner the cup then follows order to be moulded to what we want to do. Let's do this more scientific: if I spit on the ground, wherever I spit on the ground it is going to be wet. If then I spit on the ground enough times and it is always wet where I spit on the ground then I am going to begin to understand that whenever I spit on the ground it is going to be wet. So we are getting these impressions, like 1, 2, 3, and then we gain understanding from these impressions that are given to us. We can then make experience: this is where empirism comes from which is then developed into science and induction. So they then observe what happens when you do one thing and what is the reaction? So they then observe the reactions, and when you do it so many times then it becomes something that you can call a principle.



This is how our knowledge is built and we make all of these classifications. In saying this we need to think that these are only impressions and that experience itself can not say anything to be true because we do not know the other causes and effects. So if we see that I flick a lighter on and I see the flint spark and then the lighter come on, I know that the flint striking created a spark which then the gas was combined with to make a flame. But we do not know all of the other factors. We have oxygen, the amount of oxygen in the air and there is many many other factors that we can observe and try to learn from what we can experience through our senses, but outside of our senses then we have no idea about because we do not perceive everything. We are only perceiving in certain perspectives.



So those are the ideas and I know that this lecture was probably a difficult one and there is a lot of ideas here and if you struggled with any of them then I really recommend that you go back and review them again because they are very complex subjects and they are not something for us to take lightly. This will have an effect on where we go next with our lecture on existence and knowledge. Whether we do exist or if we do exist then why? We are going to be looking at that. And as a result of what we are given what can we say to know? Can we have any knowledge in anything and this is what we are going to be looking at in the next lecture and we have some more good readings that will be coming from that. So I hope you enjoy those readings and if you need anything just contact me on my website and we can talk anything out. Stay safe.

Transcript Lecture 5: Existence and Knowledge

Greetings and welcome to lecture five, existence and knowledge. It is a Sunday today, the day of rest, the day of our Lord. And I wanted to start this lectures to speak about the Jews {Hebrews}. This is the day of the Sabbath, the day that God passed over our souls. This came from the last plague when they were slaves in Egypt when Moses set them free. It also comes from the day of rest in which God reflected on His creation, and it was good. So there is meaning behind the things that we do and it is good to look at that meaning and respect that meaning.



I want to now reflect on the Jews and their subjugation that they have gone through throughout our history and I want us to think about that so their subjugation, death, and massacres will not be in vain. Let us remember the six million under the rule of Hitler. Let us just reflect on how they were slaves in Egypt and later on were dispersed and for their beliefs in God, which is the ten commandments, they have been persecuted and throughout our history been treated less than human. And we need to learn how to go beyond that because our fellow man is the only thing in this life that matters, and our insanity to subjugate and oppress that fellow man is what we need to learn to overcome. So let's just understand the topic that we are dealing with, and that is what we are going to be going through today is history. And we need to respect what it is that we are touching on. And as far as the Jews, I am very sorry as my part of being the human race. And I will not sit back and let something like that happen to me, if I see an atrocity I will do everything I can to prevent that and I will do everything I can to help you to your promise land.



Okay, its Sunday so we are going to relax. We are going to relax this lecture. So just sit back and let this lecture come to you. Just listen out to these ideas and just be receptive and we are going to take it slow. We do have a lot of material to cover but I want you to realise the topic that you are dealing with. It is philosophy and you have your entire life to sort through these topics. So to introduce you to this incredible and enormous history is but a tip of the iceberg so if you just let the ideas come in and out of your head they will be repeating over your time invested into philosophy. But this will just give you a general overview about some of its history.



As far as online learning, this course that I have set out for you has all come together from a long time of study. Everything in my mind started linking. I have been doing online learning in different methods for a lot of my life. I have been doing university external, it is not really online but I download the lectures on the Internet and I get sent the material and then I read the material and I listen to the lectures. I have done a lot of different types of external studies and I am trying to present this with the best of what I have been receptive to. Not only that, you are not limited to any time with this. You have a pause button there and I encourage you to make use of that pause button whenever you want. You can walk away and come back to it later. These are online and free for you so you can make use of them as you will. Just go through the material slowly. If you only want to do a lecture and readings a month, if that is the amount of material that you can go through and understand then that is fair. I would recommend doing more then that (maybe one a week). But schedule it your own way. You have a lifetime to tackle these subjects.



I am going to tell you the entire key to this subject that will put your mind to rest, so any time you get a little bit confused with what I am talking about, just fall back on this, and that is that we know nothing. As I am talking about these subjects at any time just think, "okay, well we know nothing". So that will help reorientate your mind back to what type of subject we are talking about. Also you can download these le