word

[Guest guest]

CNji wrote:

I don't see Mythos as being fundamentally different from Logos.

Mythos is the first stirring of Logos as well as the penultimate

destination at which Logos arrives after its voyage round the

universe. Mythos I think is largely anamnetic, whereas Logos

 

operates

through weighment (ratio-cination) of (Logos) itself before it

arrives at the anamnesis.

 

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Namaste CNji,

So's we'll know what we are talking about or the

simple beginner's definition I discovered this

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logos - mythos

<philosophical terminology> Plato's Greek

distinction between two ways of explaining

what happens: either by providing an explicit

rational account (logos), which combines with

belief to form accurate knowledge (Gk. episteme)

of the essence of things; or merely by telling

a story with figurative significance (mythos).

The Stoics elevated logos into an active

principle that generates the specific

"seminal reasons" (Gk. logoi spermatikoi)

from which individual things flow.

Philo Judaeus fully personified this

notion as the divine agent responsible

for creation of the world. Recommended

Reading: F.E. Peters, Greek

Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (NYU,

1967).

[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]

 

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M: The merely in the definition does not do justice to the

power of myth to evoke what cannot be expressed by the

bare expression of doctrine. The Stoics and Plotinus tried

to turn the Logoi Spermatikoi into the synthesis at a higher

level of Logos and Mythos which is acceptable. What is not

valid is to confuse the two at their own level and say that

what is expressed as myth is really a rational description of

what is the case. This is what creationists of all hues

do and it matters not whether you say man has been

around for 4,400 years or 4.5 billion years, to take

either as factually true is to fail to get the point of

myth. In these cases there is no nearer the truth or

further from it both are pictures serving a world

view or philosophy.

 

There was no cave as Plato tells us but the linked

series of images release understanding far greater

than a logical chain of reasoning. Tatwalla Baba

was walking along the river bank when a nut from

a tree fell to the ground before him. It cracked

open and out of it sprang the 7 ft. tall figure of

Shiva with a trident who told him that he must

commence 20 years of tapas......

 

Best Wishes,

Michael.

[Guest guest]

Dear Sri Michaelji,

 

My friend, Erich von Abele, believes Mythos to be somewhat like what

you have stated it to be. Erich was an avid follower of Christian

Metaphysics until he met Eugene Webb, the biographer of Eric Voegelin

the twentieth-century philosopher of history. Erich then became

enamoured of Voegelin's philosophy (in which the distinction between

Logos and Mythos is as you have stated it to be), and using

Voegelinian 'logic' he extended the Voegelinian argument in a very

incisive manner to arrive at the conclusion that the Big-Bang theory

is as much mythopoetry as the Greek legends were. That is what Erich

(von Abele) believes. As for me, I believe it to be like this:

 

 

THE GREAT ACTOR SUTRA

---------------------

 

1. Lord Shiva is Consciousness.

 

2. Lord Shiva is the Great Actor.

 

3. Logos is the instrument through which He acts.

 

4. The schema of Logos is Grammar.

 

5. All grammatical forms of Logos are Logical.

 

6. Shiva is Ontology and Grammar is metaphysics.

 

7. Truth is Shiva.

 

8. On the stage that Shiva acts, the truth is the drama.

 

9. The truth of the drama is Shiva's Truth given to it.

 

10. The difference between Mythos and Logos is not a logical

difference because they are both grammatical and hence they are both

logical.

 

11. The difference between Mythos and Logos comes from their

conformance to the truth of the drama that Shiva acts.

 

12. Whatever happened in creation is true.

 

13. Whataver didn't happen in creation is myth.

 

14. The Timaeas of Plato is a myth because it is merely a device

chosen to explain creation. Its position is that of an analogy.

 

15. The Puranas are not myth. They are not myth because the things

said in them were remembered. What is remembered is called Smriti.

 

16. Creation has many aspects to it and hence there are many

perspectives of creation.

 

17. Creation is cyclical, and hence there are many accounts too of

creation.

 

18. There are more things in heaven and earth than what is given by

twenty-first century 'logic'.

 

19. The drama is a possession.

 

20. It is enacted by the possessive hold of Logos over the psyche.

 

21. A good actor is not possessed when he acts.

 

22. To be a good actor, one has to be dispossessed of the possessive

hold of words.

 

23. It is called nihsreyasa.

 

24. One then acts from a situation called apavarga.

 

25. The next 'stage' is Kailasha, the abode of Lord Shiva, also

called Advaita.

 

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan