Re: mystic otherworld from Alex Ferguson on 2000-10-13 (Glorantha Digest Vol 08)

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 10:50:26 +0100 (BST)

David Cake:
> There is no sharp dividing line between Vithelan theists and
> Vithelan mystics (eg Mairnali etc) - and certainly, I think that the
> Vithelan theists have more in common with the Vithelan mystics than
> they do with, say, Umathelan theists. The Four Worlds hypothesis
> argues otherwise, which is one of the things I think is rather silly
> about it.

Last I heard, Mairnali was on the mystic side of that "sharp dividing line", which tells one all one needs to know about its sensibleness, IMO.
> I think the 'otherworld is always alien' is a mistake along
> the lines of assuming that all mystics are ascetics.

That latter would be a mistake?

> Sure, there are hardcore orthodox mystics who think that
> there is no response to the otherworld except refutation, and they
> are going to treat the whole of it as alien.

Even they, though, are going to have "Refutation set exercises" for their students (assuming they're not so hardcore orthodox they don't have students, never communicate with anyone at all, and have disappeared up their own fundament). Thus it seems to me to be astonishingly unlikely that they're surprised afresh by it each time, and find all parts of the other side equally "alien".

> My root dislike of the Four Worlds idea is mostly due to the
> way it exalts 'objective' categorisation over culture.

When talking on (or around) this topic at Convulsion, Greg gave very much the impression that the 4W scheme was just _a_ description, not _the_ description. Unfortunate that HW presented it the way it did, then.

Cheers,
Alex.