> > > What Illumination
> > > teaches is that the knowledge that what everybody says or believes
> > > is wrong. Because most people say that Chaos is evil, this is
> > > known by the illuminate to be wrong.
>
> >I do not agree with this negative presentation of illumination.
>
> >Illumination does have a negative aspect certainly, given that it is
> >not mysticism.
>
> >But illumination *certainly* doesn't teach that "what everybody says or
> >believes is wrong", because this is what everyone already knows in the
> >first place.
>
> No, they do not.
You're Wrong, Wrong ! WRONG !!
I suppose that we must *both* be illuminated then ?
> Everybody knows that foreigners are wrong and their
> own leaders and elders etc. are right.
No. People agree with their leaders and elders for social reasons, not epistemological ones.
> OTOH the Illuminate knows from
> his own insight that what his leaders and elders say is wrong just
> as much as the foreigners.
Again, I must disagree. This insight reveals some form of transcendental truth, not the falsehood of others. That others are liars is a given.
> >The idea that "what everybody says or believes is wrong" is simply an
> >expression of the Dark Side of illumination,
>
> No, it isn't.
'tis ! 'tis !!
It includes the idea that what one says or believes oneself is also wrong. Dark side.
> It's an apt summary of the illuminated insight
> and essentially comes from the RQ-Con 2 Compendium.
I'm tempted to say "out-of-date", but I'm a bit scared of Dan's sarcasm so I'll shut up.
> The Dark
> Side does not arise from this but from drawing the false
> parallel that since there is no difference between Law and Chaos,
> there is also no difference between their own desires and their
> own ethics.
OK but this game of definition and counter-definition can only lead to ineffective tail-chasing.
I personally cannot accept the notion that Illumination has the negative definition you've proposed, for several reasons that it would be quite tedious to delve into at any length.
I fail to see that there is any effective (or pragmatic) difference between knowing that "what everybody says or believes is wrong" and knowing that there is "no difference between ... desires and ... ethics". Two variants of the same darkness IMO. I'll spare you the tedious logic between the two, because this isn't the transcendant-philosophy-digest.
More to the point, I believe that Illumination involves neither ethics nor desire, but aesthetics.
> >minus the idea that one is
> >transcendentally right where everyone else is wrong.
>
> Illuminates do not have a realization that they are transcendentally
> right. If they did, they wouldn't be illuminates any more.
I fail to understand this particular gnomic comment.
> >Illumination is a form of limited transcendance where previously distinct
> >categories are perceived (contrary to other members of one's society) to
> >be expressions of a larger transcendental concept that is unexplainable
> >using the ordinary logic, words, rituals, or language of the society.
>
> I disagree. Illuminates have no knowledge of this "larger
> transcendental concept" (be it God, Durapdur, the Cosmic
> Dragon etc).
There are several different kinds of transcendance. I mean middling levels of transcendance, above the normal transcendance of ordinary consensus and communication, but far below the level of the huge entities or mystic voids that you mention.
> They only have the understanding that the
> world they experience is in some way Not True and their
> subsequent actions are a tragic attempt to make sense of
> all this and to try and find something that is True.
I disagree.
Although I would agree that the categories of True & Not True can certainly be an object of Illumination, I doubt that this is a universal. I believe instead that Illumination reveals something which is outside (some of) the normal categories of one's society : "what everybody says or believes is wrong" is simply *one* case of such, not the be-all and end-all.
> In
> HW terms, they lack the mystic's ability to refute and
> the mystics consider them damned.
Well sorry, but "what everybody says or believes is wrong" sounds like pretty drastic Refutation from where I stand...
Julian Lord
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