Spiritual concepts

Wisdom

Klimt - Pallas Athena was the Greek personification of wisdom, her Roman

equivalent was Minerva

Knowledge is any information - data or function - stored in Memory which has been derived from the 5 senses.

Wisdom on the other hand has been acquired by ignoring the 5 senses and going Beyond the Mind via spiritual experience. The information so gained is also stored in Memory, but is not sullied by using the perceptions of the physical. It is, if you prefer, pure knowledge, clean knowledge, direct from the source.

Only those who are spiritually open have wisdom, those without spiritual openness only have knowledge, and whilst knowledge can be useful, it is severely limited when it comes to, for example, blue sky thinking or any form of creativity and inventiveness. Golems only have knowledge.

R W Trine - There are no new stars, there are no new laws or forces, but we can so open ourselves to the Spirit of Infinite Wisdom that we can discover and recognize those that have not been known before; and in this way they become new to us.

On what do we base knowledge?

I need to start this section by asking the simple question what do we base knowledge on?

Firstly we base knowledge on our observations of the world about us. We do this with a very limited set of senses. Even if they are not damaged or deficient in some way, they still do not provide us with a full picture of what exists around us. If you turn to the page on the 5 senses, you will see that much of the sensory and nervous input we perceive has been highly processed before it is committed to perception, in order that we can cope and function in the role we have been given as human beings. And of course we only observe what lies within our experience, which implies we are basing our knowledge on a very tiny sample of possible observations.

For example, if we have three unsuccessful love affairs [why three, I don’t know, but it may as well be three!], we might conclude that all men are rubbish, all men are incapable of forming a steady relationship, or all men cheat on you.

This is learned behaviour of course and the belief system has been constructed on a rather unsteady foundation.

So from the word go, our knowledge is likely to be flawed because it is incomplete.

We can also obtain knowledge from other sources – books, our parents, school, university – in other words from other people, because books are written by people, university lecturers are people and school teachers are people – all with the same senses as us. So we may have extended the scope of the observations a little but we are still relying on flawed senses – theirs this time.

There are also a fair number of people without the ability to pattern match properly or reason properly which means that their conclusions are often wholly illogical. Furthermore many people are biased and an almost equal number of people have a tendency to reject observations which don’t match their preconceived belief system. They don’t learn in other words, they stick with a flawed set of beliefs and a limited belief system.

In theory therefore, we can study until we are blue in the face, night after night of reading and poring over the texts of others. But we will in reality be no wiser.

Books do not necessarily contain 'the truth', unless extremely carefully selected and even those that contain some measure of truth may only contain truths relevant to the author, not to the person reading the book. As I have also found you have to read a huge number of books in order to even get a tiny grain of wisdom. It could be a lifetime's work just to gain only a small amount of insight [and I speak from rather bitter experience here!].

Knowledge is what is acquired by accessing the physical world and knowledge can actually be deeply flawed.

Knowledge is discarded when we die and although our personal memory banks may have ‘knowledge’ within them as a form of local store, no common information store has this sort of data. We get by on knowledge remarkably well considering, accommodating things as we go along. But we actually live in a fog of ignorance.

So where does wisdom come from?

Wisdom comes from the spiritual world, because it is only in the spiritual world that we have Reality. When we access the images, functions and data of the universe we are accessing the actual systems - the actual images and the actual data of the universe – not an observation based guess of how it works.

Instead of simply building a model of the weather system, for example, we access the weather system. Instead of guessing at a plant’s systems based on observed physical movements and chemistry, we can access the plant’s systems directly. Instead of trying to work out what the laws of the expansion of gases is, we go to the spiritual world and get them. This is what shamans do when they try to find out which plants heal or can be used to treat illnesses – they go to the spiritual word and ‘ask the spirit of the plant’ – or more correctly study the plant system directly.

And this is where most of our greatest scientists have been able to find out the laws of the universe – they went to the spiritual world and they went with a very specific question needing a precise answer and received it as Inner speech.

How does it work?

What really starts the process is the person’s thoughts………

Our wish for true knowledge ‘wisdom’ is recorded as a fervent thought – a prayer, and the composer takes over

The composer searches through the forms and images, systems and functions of the universe to see if it is able [and willing] to give us a little glimpse of the data and processes themselves. Thoughts provide a number of important details - what we need in the way of input, what we are searching for and what we’ve already been working on – how far we’ve got. This latter detail is important because the wisdom provided can then be new – not duplicate what has already been created.

In order to find out if anything matches the request it may make a request to other composers - in effect, ask other composers if they have any information. Things can go wrong here, this is why people sometimes appear to be plagiarising the work of others, when they have done nothing of the sort - they have both received the same input from their composers.

The outcome is then fed back to the person in the form of a dream or a vision or just ‘Inner speech' – the flash light goes on!! Rarely are these insights fully formed answers. Even after they have been received they still have to be worked on as they are sometimes symbolically described and very often not fully formed. They are never in fully formed sentences and explanations. The spirit world does not use language, it uses signs, symbols and images.

When we seek wisdom it may come when we are asleep or in the waking state as a sudden flash of insight or a vision only in the abstract. We may however get single words used as a symbol – the words to help us with a law or formula, we may get images that help us with a form – such as the structure of DNA

You can also gain access to unusual functional ability and via the function be 'wise'.

Personifications of wisdom in various cultures

Sophia (Σοφíα, Greek for "wisdom") is a central idea in Hellenistic philosophy and religion, Platonism, Gnosticism, as well as Christian mysticism. But the idea of wisdom was carried through to a sort of perfection by the Greeks.

In Greek mythology, Metis was an earlier personification of wisdom.

She was the first great spouse of Zeus. By the era of Greek philosophy Mètis had become the goddess of wisdom and deep thought, but her name originally connoted "magical cunning" and was as easily equated with the trickster powers of Prometheus as with the "royal metis" of Zeus.

Pallas Athene – Franz von Stuck

Gradually, however, Metis was replaced by Athene as the goddess of wisdom.

The Stoic commentators allegorized Athene as the embodiment of "wisdom" or "wise counsel". But in later Greek mythology Athene came to take on far more roles.

Not only was she the great Olympian goddess of wise counsel and heroic endeavour, she also took on the functions of weaving, 'pottery and other crafts' – except that this extract from Wikipedia assumes a literal meaning to her 'crafts', whereas all of these extra attributes were symboic additions.

And she acquired functions associated "with war and the defence of towns" – so in part strategic thinking. But Cities are symbolically systems. They are not the ‘human being system’ which is symbolically represented by Castles. Nor are they the systems of the universe as invented by the Intelligences. Cities are symbolically the systems we as human beings have invented. In essence, she represented the ability to invent new systems and defend and promote them. This is a co-creation role, but needs wisdom to achieve.

Pallas Athene - Rembrandt

She was depicted crowned with a crested helm - a symbol of enlightenment - permanent openess to the spirit world - and armed with shield and spear. The overall impression given is of a very robust defender and promoter of ideas.

Once having received wisdom, you are going to have to be extremely clear in your promotion and defence of what you have found, old cities may have to fall in order to build new ones.

Whilst a poet may receive inspiration and create poems, and a painter use inspiration to produce a picture, neither requires further explanation.

By contrast, wisdom drawn from the spirit world is going to need a great deal of explanation.

Observations

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WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

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