Re: mystic otherworld

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 23:27:10 +0100 (BST)

David Cake:
> To be completely honest, I think this abscence of a mystic
> otherworld is very overstated, anyway. For something that doesn't
> exist, we seem to know a fair bit about it (Summer Land Heaven,
> Yothbedta's Stream, etc).
> For a RW example, the Tibettans certainly spent a lot of
> effort on describing the details of the otherworld. They essentially
> believe much of it is illusionary or unimportant, but they still have
> one.

At the risk of sounding like D. Adams, what do we mean by 'mystic'? How can we reach an empirical definition of 'otherworld'? The Kralori certainly have heavens and hells, though they're not what they would call "unconditioned reality", or whatever.

> I think the mystics believe that those who are not of
> sufficient mystical development definately do interact with the
> otherworld

You mean insufficiently advanced mystics, or others? And, "which" otherworld? Not at all clear what you mean here. (About four permutations at least...)

> I suspect that the draconic way doesn't really distinguish
> the way other cultures do - if you put enough dragons in it, the
> material world starts to become the otherworld.

That sounds rather crude, stated thusly, but I can't qualitively improve upon it.

---