<< Trotsky replied: "I think there must be a lot more to it than that.
Reaching that realisation isn't particularly difficult for somebody with wide
enough experience, which doesn't seem to be how most people become
Illuminated."
People in Ancient (nay, even Medieval) Societies didn't have that sort of wide experience. Even in Glorantha (it seems to me anyway!) most people stay welded to the place they're born with few exceptions and question the status quo about as often as a member of the SS.>>
To be sure, which is why I used the qualification of 'wide enough experience'. I agree that the proportion of people with wide enough experience to be able to question the tenets of their faith is not a very high one, but I would argue that it's good deal higher than the number of people who end up Illuminated.
<< So why wouldn't observing an Illuminated Humakti breaking his geases count as a riddle then? That'd be a good candidate for a Religious Lore or Human Lore riddle: "How am you tied to your God?" Answer: "I am not, I am my own person." >>
I disagree that simply observing the existence of Illuminants and what they are able to do would in itself be likely to make one Illuminated. That doesn't sound like much of a riddle to me, more a factual statement.
<< The geases would still apply until he was Illuminated as the Humakti
aspirant would still believe they applied.>>
But why would he believe that? The fact that he can observe somebody who has taken Humakti vows walking around without being zapped by spirits of reprisal or suffering the effects of breaking his geases demonstrates that "things are not as black and white as you have been lead to believe". If simply coming to that realisation is enough to Illuminate you, a Humakti ought to be able (though I'd agree, not necessarily willing) to break his geases as soon as realises that Illuminated Humakti exist.
It seems to me that, under your example, there is no circumstance in which a spirit of reprisal would ever attack you. They only go for you if you deliberately break cult rules (in most cults anyway) but if anybody's doing that then they must surely have come to the conclusion that "everything is not as black and white as you have been told", or why else are they doing it? And if that realisation is Illumination, then, since Illuminants are immune from spirits of reprisal, said spirits are meaningless.
<<Whoaaa Tex!>>
Tex??
<< There's nothing mundane about that POV. Michael Cule uses a couple of
quotes to show that dogma, or a belief framework, is necessary for most
people. If Illumination is total free thinking, then they've freed themselves
from a large part of what makes them human. They've transcended (I couldn't
resist using this word here) their humanity and sure ain't mundane.>>
Ah, now this appears to be something different from what you were talking about before (which probably means I'm just dense for not understanding what you were on about). This implies not just freedom from what you have been taught or previously believed, but from any moral framework at all; a rather different thing, IMO. I'm still not entirely convinced by this, which I'd think is more a common side-effect of Illumination than the thing itself, but it is rather more workable. Personally, I think it is still possible (although rather difficult) for an Illuminant to retain some degree of human morality, and that this underlies the difference between Nysalor and Gbaji, for instance.
If on the other hand, we are talking not so much about freedom from moral principals, but from a belief framework about the nature of the Universe, then this seems to me to be more or less the mystical approach that you are decrying, and we are left simply with an argument over definitions.
<< Down with the little Budha clones spouting Zen bollocks! Forward the
humanists!>>
Humanists have both a moral code and a belief framework about the universe
(at any rate the ones I've encountered do, and quite strongly) so I'm not sure
I understand this comment. Indeed, one could argue that the Vadeli are
humanists, in that they ignore the dictates of deities in favour of entirely
human sources of understanding, be they entirely logical and rational (as Greg
suggests) or a mixture of the rational and emotional (as I prefer, at least
for the modern Brown Vadeli).
They also lack any kind of moral framework or code of ethics, yet I wouldn't
call the Vadeli Illuminated.
So I suppose I must have misunderstood you again :-(
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
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