A quote from a lecture I've been listening to, given by Manly P. Hall -
"The alchemist does not manufacture gold; he does not create gold. He discovers it. He finds it where it is. He causes it to grow. He feeds it the nutrition that is necessary for its survival, and when he has brought it forth into birth, then this gold will transmute a world of base metals a hundred thousand times its own weight into the purest gold."
11 comments:
I am glad you highlighted that. This is an important piece.
I think for centuries, the human mind could not "see" the gold where it is.
It could be right under their noses, but they do not see it because the human mind is still trapped in impossibilities.
Every generation deals with "impossible" less than the generation before.
This gold has always been where it is. It is always right THERE. But the word impossible will soon drop out of Minds...then existence.
Huh? "Impossible"?
Never heard of it.
;)
This all makes me think of how one of Arthur C. Clarke's laws should have read:
"The way to explore the limits of the possible is to push a little beyond them to the possible."
His "impossibility" laws sound paradoxical, but they can be resolved by remembering that they are time-dependent - what's impossible now will not be so in the future for such a rapidly evolving world.
And of course "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - that one appears to be true, just experience everyday life.
donstockbauer *at* hotmail.com
Very nice points, Don, thank you.
The first caused me to do a double take. I'm glad you explained it.
Hi, Sophia.
People have come up with variants on Clarke's 3 Laws over the years. Another one is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from disappointment."
Positive self-fulfilling prophecy is a rather powerful force.
donstockbauer *at* hotmail.com
These are like riddles; I like them. I also like paradoxes.
Could be I'm wrong, but I think your latest refers to how new technology becomes obsolete before they're even put out on the shelves. But it's this disappointment that keeps us making progress.
Yes, if one thinks that technology has become advanced enough, that should be cause for disappointment, and thus one should try to advance further.
Clarke basically had the view that the future of the Earth is limitless and positive. I think so too, although any one person has to suffer through a lot of negatives during their life.
This could also apply to personal improvement. Although at the same time it could give one reason to continuously feel disappointed when they think they have not progressed enough.
There is a fine line I think. We have these images in our minds of how much better we could be, and we try to achieve that by becoming better, better and better. Each level of better that we reach we want more better. It's like reaching for a state of perfection that does not exist at a human level. But without this urge to be better, we'd not make any improvements.
Stagnant water attracts mosquitoes.
Personal improvement is different from transmutation.
Gold could be an analogy for God.
Good eye. :)
Or should I say, Golden eye?
About transmutation - couldn't personal improvement be a side effect of transmutation? I can't see how one can go without the other.
Sort of like the carrot dangled out in front of the donkey, it plods ever forward trying to get to it.
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