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Permalink Reply by Hari Menon on November 9, 2012 at 3:02am

Dear PLJ ,

   From the individual to the collective is the rule , not vice versa - the basic unit is the individual , household being the next aggregation and society the third level which is an aggregation of households , this is according to modern day economics and the older Platonic philosophy .  Now one of the greatest minds to have emerged in the last 250 years is undoubtedly Nietzcshe , who is also among the most misrepresented and misquoted and misunderstood among philosophers - he very clearly states time and again through his various writings that our ability to forget is the reason for "Eternal recurrence''. This pet theory of his which was very dear to him (ie. Eternal Recurrence) has a much deeper connotation than what appears on a superficial reading of his writing - he was steeped in greek mythology and had a very deep understanding of both western and eastern thought systems - and he had one of the finest intellects a thinker could probably possess. Eternal Recurrence has to be seen as an ''Idea that was enlivened'' by Nietzcshe alone by the sheer depth of his understanding. Not every philosopher or thinker is capable of enlivening ideas that stand the test of time . He does say that man will suffer more and more due to his capacity to forget and it leads to an eternal recurrence of events .History according to him was one such area , declining cultures another and strife among people another . Forgiving is also another evil aspect - particularly when one forgives without discrimination (I tend to agree wholeheartedly in this ). It is only a man of understanding who can really understand that . Actions can never be forgiven nor the man who made the body do it . It is never for anyone  to forgive  - forgiveness  is just a type of  metaphysical consolation (but that does not mean that the unforgiving man does not have love !!!! He is unforgiving to himself alone and not another since there is no other )

It is was well known among the Greeks that metempsychosis (as they called it) and among the Buddhists (reincarnation) and the Vedic Aryans (Transmigration ) was a continuous repetition of events the emiprical individual undergoes due to the fact that it keeps forgetting itself repeatedly or in other words its knowledge is not that firm about itself that it is unable to maintain an unbroken memory of its past lives .. which led it (the individual) to be a victim of its own nature and repeatedly kept forgetting between lives - thus necessitating each birth to be from scratch again. This collective forgetting is reflected according to him in world events also . The anguish in his writings are mainly because in his earlier stages he was toying with the idea of a "Physical Transcendence" .

In the eastern context each life that we live (though perceieved by us as unique and in that life ) is the same , the inccidents and events are same only the Name and form of the person and the locale of his life keeps changing . As long as we do not remember ourselves - eternal recurrence is the rule . Scientists and poor people of lesser thinking capacity might insist on evidences - they rarely seem to understand that not all proofs or results are involving physical evidences. The greatness in knowing oneself is one is granted the absolute privilege and one earns the  right to be his own authority - no other  is required and no Vedas or anyone else is required not even God  - it is common among people who realize the self and always dwell in the infinite without forgetting , though they may appear like other ordinary people , doing actions and living . corrective methods are always with the individual - there are no collective corrections - anything collective is a distortion of perspective and a subtle conditioning of its constituents. Where the truth lies can be plainly seen even to a blind man - just look around at the innumerable people in this world who struggle with truth and can hardly convince the parson next to him whereas there have been in all ages in all countries a handful of decent human beings who shun the light and stay firm in their knowledge that the world does not exist and all differences are only appearances in consciousness and are not called mad or crazy but are hailed as men of wisdom ......What is truth indeed ....

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