This is from Andre Michelle Laboratory, but I had to repost it here so I could have three simultaneous sets. Unfortunately I don’t know how to make them synchronize perfectly, because they load at different speeds… oh well. Also, if you have an iPad or iPhone, check out Soundprism too!
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This issue has been around for about as long as recorded history, and has formed a central piece of some very detailed philosophical considerations. It shows up in the 4th Century B.C.E. in the famous Taoist Zuangzi’s “butterfly dream”:
“Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.”
It also forms a central part of Indian philosophy, especially advaita vedanta, which explores cosmological questions through the exploration of (more…)
This lecture presentation was given at the East Bay Waldorf School in 2007 (see flyer below). It explores the Matrix trilogy of movies from the perspective of spiritual science. Close attention is paid to the actual events in the “text” of the movies, with an eye towards illuminating features concerning the major characters and plot elements in a coherent, symbolic, and mythological perspective. In particular the movies are shown to be uniquely understandable from the perspective of Steiner’s anthroposophical insights concerning human evolution.
The video is based upon this essay, but (particularly because of some very astute questions from the audience) also contains a number of details that I was unable to put into the original paper.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAobTuY08Vg
shadows fall on shadows, aghast at their own darkness
times keep falling out of place, surprising themselves,
trailing numberless atrocities like the dust of a comet
sweeping ominously across a shrouded, weeping planet
the forces are arrayed, the engines started
words have been spoken, in earnest, in fear, in foreboding
the percolating matrix of desire is abroad
spewing the churned filth of age upon age
grasping through coated vision, sickly sweet with unknown blood
mine? or is that just the fading of words in the rain
a forgotten calligraphy of music and coincidence
swept into the tragic dust of memory
we are all the friends of death
we have slipped our milky white hands in his
threaded our fingers into the dying bones of the future
and now hold on for dear life
know then benevolence, you royal heir, the polarity of spirit
awakening with the sound of inversion upon inversion
every coming forth speaking through white knuckles
shaking your being, lighting it on fire
death isn’t waiting for you
you are the one who shall transform
you are the one to phosphoresce in embrace
while all the world casts off from your shore
unshackle your breath
unmoor yourself from the known
take wing, rise up,
you are the gift
