[Glorantha] Mind, Soul, Spirit, Essence

[CJ]

Hi Jane
> 
> Thanks - nice to have some definitions and precise vocabulary. But I wasn't
> suggesting the mind is purely a property of the physical brain (and other
> squishy bits) and hence incapable of "post mortem survival" - software can
> have backups taken, and can be re-installed on another computer.
> 
Yes, true enough! :)  However the computer hardware here could be 
equated as the brain, that the mind is "running on"?  Anyway best leave 
this fo rnow as it's veering wildly OT.  There are also other brain/mind 
relationships proposed- serialism and paralleism are two.  I happen to 
find it academically interesting, as I hold to a very unfashionable 
theory, dualism, but it's not Gloranthan so we'll pass for now if that 
is ok?  I have bored enough people in my time!

> 
> 
>>i) immortality is conditional.  The Atheist No-God folk do 
>>not have it.
> 
> 
> That would appear to be the case, but I'm not all that familiar with them.
> 

Neither am I sadly.  I see them in terms of strong willed individuals 
who do not reject the existence of Gods per se, but just don't want 
aything to do with them, so live for today, and plan on death to escape 
the sufferring and joys of existence, content they have done all they 
want, and not to serve or continue as anything but what they are now...

CJ wrote
"
>>ii) conciousness appears to be a tripartite structure, where brain 
>>activity in most Gloranthans is currently a mix of Spirit, Soul and 
>>ssence working within a body. 
> 
> Jane wrote
> Mmm... Those are the three components of the "magic" side of things, at
> least. The interface between the middle world and the three Otherworlds.
> Brain activity concerned with normal life may well be something separate
> again."

Yep sorry. Tripartite structures in understanding personhood or mind are 
very common - Freud, Eric Berne, the classical Christain theological 
distinction between Spirit, Soul and Body (Body is also a seat of 
passions and hence impacts mind as mind is broadly described here; it 
seems to be a synonym for personhood.) However you are completely right, 
and I doubt that concentrated users possess a different kind of 
conciousness, merely a different harmony in the balance of the three 
forms of magic in their person.

> Jane wrote
> 
> It's an interesting analogy. But doesn't that imply that the "real self" is
> split between three different Otherworlds, with only the physical body (and
> the non-magic part of the mind) as an interface between the three? That
> sounds as if it would have significant consequences. "Schizophrenia" is
> probably the wrong word to use (especially as the clinical definition does
> not mean split personality at all), but something vaguely along those lines?

Well we all have concious, unconcious and subconcious, or id, ego and 
superego, or Soul, Spirit and Body, or... Tripartite models of 
personhood seem quite normal.  The mind, or personhood is the fusion of 
the whole, the sunm of relationships between the three, as in the 
Christian Trinitarian doctrine (at least in teh Cappadocian Fathers 
wonderful doctrine of perichoresis, which I love asit says our 
personhood is not just an internal set of realtionships, but also 
comprises our relationships with others - so our relationshuips with our 
friends are as much part of us as our desires and memories, f'r 
instance).  So maybe if we think of the signals as potentials mediated 
by actions while living in Glorantha in to the individual personality. 
Tuning in to one by concentration does not destroy or replace the oher, 
but it deemphasises them and harmonises them with the doominant signal? 
dunno.  Wild and wooly speculation on my part of zip value to anyone. 
OK, let's ignore this as worthless theory!

> 
> I like the transmitter/reciever analogy, though, if one takes it no further.
> Where is the Otherworld? Right alongside this one. And in some cases, if we
> add in the "hardware/software" analogy, the whole "where" concept becomes
> obviously inapplicable - where are we having this current conversation? If
> we were using ham radio instead, would the question be any more meaningful?
> 
  Yes, I like that idea.

(snip much good stuff by Jane as I have to go do some washing up 
shortly, but will return to it later)
> 
>
CJ wrote

>>v) Post mortem existence loses individual personality and 
>>self identity, 
>>and instead enters the person back in to the collective. 
> 
> 
Jane wrote
> Are we sure about that? Clan ceremonies that communicate with ancestors seem
> to be able to converse with individuals.
> 
> 
>>Ancestral Spirits are still to some extent individuals, but that 
>>individuality may be a function of the living worshippers mind, derived 
>>from the practitioners who invoke them. 
> 
> 
> Hmmm... This seems to me to be heading towards the idea that Gods are also
> shaped by their worshippers, which in Glorantha as opposed to Discworld,
> they're not. I like the idea. I just suspect it doesn't work.
>

Nah, I certainly don't believe the gods are empowered by worship.  I 
however do note that ghosts and spirits seem to only take on personality 
under certain very specific coditions, and that in the God World 
individuals are notoriously hard topick out.  yet they retain those 
individual personalities as we know from something in the Star Ship 
epuisode. I wondered if we allowedthem to manifest them by our Living 
presence which removes them and distinguishes them from the collective 
identity of the afterlife.  Again, wild theory, Greg could easily put us 
straight on this, if he has time, as he seems to be posting. :)

Anyway I had better go do the dishes.  I wa stempted to look at 
Heortling concepts of life as breath, and draw analogies with Germanic 
(geist) and Greek (pneuma) thought and ancient semitic parallels, but I 
have waffled enough.

I have had an odd thought though.  In Glorantha, is Death a positive 
metaphysical state, not merely absence of life? It appears to be.  So 
what makes you die?  Being hit repeatedly with a rock, burnt to ashes, 
or falling off a  mountain would not be enough, it would just severely 
curtail bodily fuction.  Death is an active principle, a spiritual 
reality, an is greater than mere cessation of brain activity, or 
whatever we undertand it as...


Mybe we should create a seperate "wild and inappropriate theorising 
about pointless philosophical minutiae of glorantha" list! ;)  I'd be up 
for it it seems!  I feel really guilty about this, because usually I try 
and focus on stuff relevant to my game. :(

cj x

>