[MD] Hume's Post-it to Ham

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Ron --


> I think what David is trying to say is that the more one
> interpolates away from known points the more error
> one accrues. I definitely understand your point of
> reaching beyond ourselves which brings me to the
> question I'd Like to ask you, or more like your opinion.
> I am currently investigating a concept called, for lack of
> a better name, a soul matrix. It is described as a web
> of living beings with each being's Experience described
> as a node. This collection of nodes transcends time
> And is known individually through the finite. This sounded
> something akin to your concepts but I didn't know
> whether or not you fostered the idea of a single life force
> expressed as individuals via finite experience throughout
> time and space and if so is this similar to what you are
> terming is essence?  Or is essence a larger more universal
> concept of source.

Soul matrix sounds too much like another name for collective consciousness 
to me, Ron, but you'd have to define what you mean by "soul".  Since I've 
defined it as "the core of conscious awareness which, in its purest state, 
is undifferentiated from Essence," I see little need to use the term.

There are two basic tenets of Essentialism that you should be aware of: 1) 
Since Absolute Essence is immutable, there must be a "clean break" between 
the unity of Essence and the differentiated world, and 2) existential 
awareness is proprietary to the individual and cannot be transferred.  The 
matrixing of individual nodes by a life force, it seems to me, would violate 
the autonomy of the self.

The Eastern mystics are forever exhorting their practitioners to merge their 
souls into the "Oneness" of God, while Western egalitarianism strives to 
make a unity of a diverse society.  As an individualist, my own view opposes 
this collectivist trend, also disguised as the "intellectual level" in 
Pirsig's MoQ .

When we extract ourselves from the collective ideology that civilized 
culture has made of "mankind", it becomes clear that human beings are 
created as separate and distinct creatures whose only connection with each 
other is the commonality of an objective universe.  Attempting to make a 
unity of what is by nature diversified and pluralistic may be a desirable 
goal of corporations, governments, and social engineers, but it is not 
consistent with metaphysical reality.

So, although I don't want to discourage your soul matrix concept, if it is 
your interest to develop such an ontology, I'd have to say that it is not an 
idea that sits well with Essentialists.

Thanks, though, for bouncing it off me.

Best regards,
Ham