Odin's Blog

Up and coming….soon!

Odin — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 01:15:23 +0000

It is going to take some time to put this site together, but I am working on it.

PEACE AND ENLIGHTENMENT IS FOR YOUR TAKING

Odin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 05:58:00 +0000

We have been accustomed to think that enlightenment is the result of an arduous search for an altered state of consciousness. Enlightenment is not normal; it is the result of years of hard spiritual labor, struggle, and most of all, self-purification. You will have to pay your dues in order to be/achieve enlightenment. It is like everything else in our human society, nothing worth having come free. To get a little recognition for personal achievements, people boast and tell stories of great sacrifice and suffering in order to get some value-added attention to our lives? As with every personal achievement (like that of any fishing story), to be appreciated, it has to come with a sense of bragging rights so to enhance ones personal standing. I could go on illustrating the many mental attitude and fallacies related to our perception of personal success, but this will do for now.br / Enthusiasm is nothing in particular or extraordinary. It is normalcy itself. Think of it as a state of contentment in activities. It is a state of mind when you are one-with-yourself doing the things you do when unobserved by others (or free from judgment). Like being lost, reading these sentences while scratching yourself or picking your nose unabashed. Think of it as being of one mind doing one thing with no differentiation caused by judgment, validation, resentment or desire. I used to tell my daughter before a public performance, dance as if no one sees you, sing as if no one hears you, in other words, and be one with what you do and not self-conscious (I should know I am an expert of being self-conscious).br / To be of a split mind (“I” and “that,” “those,” “this and that”) is perfectly ok and very human indeed. To have an ego, an “I” feeling, is both a blessing and a curse. It all has to do with proportionality. Too much self-consciousness interrupts spontaneity and hinders free expressions. Being less self-consciousness, on the other hand, it may be important to count our blessings and hope we are a likable individual. The redeeming quality of it all is that our human specie by nature is social; we are a herd animal that relies on each other’s for welfare and comfort. That means if a person (do to some mental problem) has lost his/her self-organizing abilities, then we as a society come forwards to assist. To survive and function as a well-adjusted human it is necessary to self-actualize, but equal to that, we also need to allow us self to rest in our existential of me-ness with no interrupting mental self-editing. Have you ever tried to force yourself to fall asleep and been successful at it? We all have been in that situation. No matter how much one tried the attempt, remain unsuccessful.br / There is the saying, “Before enlightenment, I toil on the land as a farmer, now after archiving enlightenment; I work on the land as a farmer.” All what changed were my perception and neuro-associative meaning to the word toil, it is now an activity. Think about it and look around yourself, is there anything you see that do not have a particular nature attached to it, an existential value, motion, or motivating propensity. Activities are built into the very shapes of an object, not only that, it is the form (of the object) itself. An object is a dynamic wholeness that holds the thing-ness (an appearance) together. What we in the West refer to consciousness is not necessary the motivator of an activity, consciousness is more likely an after effect thereof. Motion (behavior/activities) is energy being expelled and consciousness being revealed. It is important to know that energy is consciousness complementary other half. According to Eastern tradition energy and consciousness is the same, just two side of a coin, so to speak. Neither can exist without the other. Energy activates consciousness and consciousness shapes energy. Reality demands an operative and cognitive faculty to exist in order to appear. The day you realize this to its fullest extent, you have indeed gone mad to the world. As crazy as it may seem, your lunacy maybe a measurement of the degree of your enlightenment. Back in the eighties while visiting Benares, India, I once came upon a group of sadhus lost in ecstasy dancing naked at the bank of river Ganges. This was not considered out of the ordinary; people watched them with veneration and reached out to them for blessings. This was my initiation to mystical India and was one of the triggers that set me on to my own personal quest for truth. Considering the artist lost in ecstasy entertaining the public while unaware to their presence. We have all seen a musician lost in joy while improvising melodies of perfect delights.br / Enlightenment is here and now for your taking. No need to wait for a specific moment to arrive in some distance future. All what needed is genuine unconditional love for what you do and are. It is not in ‘who’ you are, it is in ‘activities’ you are. Remember, expressed consciousness expels energy (behaviors) and while expelling, consciousness is revealed. It all lies at the existential based of every form. You are born destined to have a particular behavior, to exercise a particular activity and while living, doing it well, I mean, extremely well, to the point of non-differentiation between the activities itself and the doer. To achieve the ecstasy of a musician, you have to be one with what you do, which means, you will have to attain excellence in its application. The same goes for everything we do from gardening to truck driving. No activity is insignificant or unimportant. We are talking about the law of dharma (entitetic nature) as it pertains to every single individual. Now, one may argue, what about good versus bad activities. Evil is always present in some form or another, so maybe a cautioned note is prudent. What we need to know, is that there is cause and effect to all behaviors/activities. The law of karma rules us all. Which means that all psycho-physical activities, none excluded, will have to be inspected for selfish tendencies and undesirable motivation. This is where mindfulness comes to play, which means that we stand back a little before initializing a conscious act (certificated needed). Of course, this can only happen after one has realized the difference between trance and ecstasy. An individual that has come to know his true nature does not need to worry. For such individual a happening just happen, pure and simple and happiness is…, followed by none.br / This articled was inspired by a story I heard this morning on NPR, Morning Addition, October 30, 2009, Sufjan Stevens: Finding Inner Peace In Traffic, see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId

DUALISM VERSUS MONISM

Odin — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 19:50:00 +0000

The dualistic worldview claims that there is me (the self) and then there is the other. It states that at the bases of human existence is the soul and that this soul is immortal and changeless. The body, in this view, is looked upon as the other, similar to the way we see the otherness outside ourselves. In this way, dualism discriminates and claims that you and your body are two different things. On one side, we have matter, and on the other side, we have the self (the me-ness in me claiming to be the soul). There are schools of philosophy that have worked out great treaties on this topic arguing the facts to prove this point very clearly. br / It is said, “Mortality claims the body/matter/mind and immortality claims the soul.” When the body dies, it starts to disintegrate and dissolves into its component parts returning to the soil from where it was made. The spirit, or soul, rises from the death body and merges with the supreme spirit. From here it will return to another body and continue it journey to work out its liberation. Now, dear reader, as comforting as this may sound to your soul, lets stand back a little and consider these claims; are you able to point out its fallacies? br / Let us continue with the process of death. As the physical structure dies, its vital functions retrieve back to the mind and after that, the mind gets dissolved into ‘vital energy’ (prāṇa )and then enters the “soul” of the person who died. The soul with all this content leaves the body and takes residency in the spatial realm (ākāsha). Here it remains suspended in its subtle body (seed [soul]) as a storehouse of all the previous tendencies (saṁskāras) of that person, good or bad, and wait for an opportunity to take a rebirth. The destiny of the soul next incarnation is determined by the merits and demerits of a person’s previous life. And so goes the circle of life and rebirth until final liberation has been achieved.br /The merits or demerits are a result of the action and activities of a person’s life. Selfish action, it is said, leads to increased bondage, whereas selfless action leads to increased freedom. Of course, psychologically there is logic to this point; selfishness, by its very nature, condenses the personality, enhances contraction and densifies desires. Selflessness, if such action is even possible, would by its very nature lead to the opposite, expandedness; however, just for argument sake, wouldn’t selflessness also lead to detachment, which can easily come across as insensitivity? If there is no “self’ to activate an action, then there would be no other self to receive or view such action. “Selfless action” is by definition impossibility. However, if we by selflessness mean that it is natures own activities working itself out through the selfless human, then there is a point to be made, but such action would still be of an indifferent and detached nature. Natures own rules and activities do not personally care about who live and who dies. It just does its things in its own way in accordance to the law of causation. I am challenging you to question the above paragraph and see what you come up with. Read my previous blog/article Soul Searching.br / Most religions and a few Indian schools philosophies embrace dualism as its premise. There are you and then there is (a) God (Monad) or the Supreme Being. If you are a devout Christianity and follow its particular belief systems, it would be blasphemy to claim to be equal or oneness with God. The emphasis is separation and distance, the devotee, and the worshiped. People sometime confuse monotheism to mean the same as monism (that all things are essentially one system). Monotheism is by definition embedded in dualism and not in a singularity concept as with monism. Its fundamentals are ontology and with that come theology. With the birth of theology, it is not in the church’s interest to empower the individual to seek truth in his or her own. A freethinking individual are frond upon and seen as a significant treat to any ecclesiastical system. To have a mystical experience on your own is generally the gateway to further investigation by the individual. This often leads to the shatter of duality causing the individual to questions their own theology. All the three monotheistic religions tend to prosecute their own if its theology is challenge. A scientific minded person, on the other hand, is more incline to accept the idea of monism straight away without going through a religious experience. It is actually the holy grail of science to unite all the forces of nature into one singular concept, although practically, they communicate through the language of dualism, but its inherent quest is to find simplicity. br /There are two schools of religious and philosophical thoughts that stand out (there are many more) in the embrace of monism, i.e., Advaita and Buddhism. Of this two, Buddhism in particular, can easily correlate to modern science and therefore fit into the language of today’s psychological lingo. br / This is just a short treaty on a longer article that I wrote some time back…

SOUL SEARCHING

Odin — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 01:07:00 +0000

Self, Soul, and I came to a agreement that it is all about “me.” So what was the argument all about to begin with? br /br /A search requires an intention and according to the vigor of one’s intention, so is the strength of the seeking. The soul has a concomitant characteristic with consciousness and therefore, is the product thereof, but only in name as it pertains to humans. Through the gateway of the mind, one develops increased awareness of the world inside and outside. In this process, consciousness is set free and the soul is born as a concept (in linguistic terms) of attraction. There is an intrinsic unconscious knowing of a “watchman” within, a witnessing or cognitive faculty at the fundamental bases of existence. It is therefore important to keep in mind the idea that reality is “one undivided whole,” while at the same time practically or cognitively speaking, accept that our mind senses a world of “otherness” We start the journey from a dual perspective, but with a lingering yearning to summaries diversity into one singularity.br /The word yoga means unity and as such, refers to a state of ultimate oneness or monism. We start fragmented and with a split personality and end with a realizing, that everything exists because “I” exist. The truth reveled (after such discovery), is that there is no second to the one that bear the existence at the soul level, which means, that it is linguistically none-communicative, that the ultimate reality is impossible to explain realistically. It has to be “self” realized (which is the actually meaning of the spiritual term “self-realization”). Let me clarify here that I use monism and yoga synonyms. It could be argued otherwise, but my intention is to make a connection between the two terms. Those who practice yoga know what I mean. In meditation, there is no room for differentiation when the mind gets absorption into pure-consciousness. Hence, the yogīc method involves sublimination of generalities into an absolute sense of wonder in which the journey fulfill itself. br /All journeys need a preliminary originator to enthuse the onwards trust. It is no difference in this exploration. Everything needs a medium through which the process unfolds. The media here, of course, is your psyche. Did you know that the word soul and psyche are considered synonyms in western literature? I agree conditionally to such interpretation. It should be clear by now that the soul is not a destination to be reached or a location to be found. It is what evolves the process into itself. The Sanskṛit word ātman relates to consciousness, or more correctly, a state of untainted awareness. Furthermore, it needs to be mention that there is a distinction (theoretically speaking) between mind (mānas [Sanskṛit-“to measure”]) and the soul. The word ātman does not necessary translate into the English word soul, but it is generally used so in literatures. The ātman signifies “unmodified consciousness temporally reflected as “unit” consciousness. It is through this “unit consciousness” that the mind exist as a temporal servant. br /It is important to bear in mind that brain, mind, and consciousness are not three different things. They are one process, one system in constant transformation. By pouring milk into a mug, the milk takes the shape of the mug and we call it a mug. Similarly, by pouring pure consciousness into a vessel, it takes the shape of the vessel (which again is measured, analyzed, and named by the mind and then transformed (through knowledge) back into consciousness, and so on). Whereas the universe is an objectification of mind-stuff (chitta), life, is this process in reverse, from gross to subtle. There is a tug or war, a dynamic conflict between these two processes, but eventually one succeed over the other and the wheel turns.br /Matter is objectified mind/energy or bottled-up consciousness. Every material object therefore, is highly compacted energy longing to be discharged. This existential oomph will under favorable circumstance turn on itself and become vitalized energy or life (prāṇāh). Energy and consciousness are like two sides of a coin. They are inseparably, but realistically for unit being, has to be approach subjectively in two ways. Existence is two faced, if it was not, who would be there to argue otherwise? Subjectivity is a developmental, but so is objectivity. A newborn child sees no differentiation but as subjectivity develops, the world split in two. Knowledgeification of objectivity is life’s essential drive through which matter get purifies and absorbed. br /Essentially, (and it should be contemplate) there is no universe outside, or reality outside you. Everything is and always has been subjective. Actually, the concept of internal/external is an oxymoron that should be replaced with one unified descriptive word. In Sanskṛit, the word chitta come to mind. Dualism may be practical and useful in our daily lives, but eventually, and gradually it will be abolished through knowledge assimilation.br /As we have seen, the process is consciousness-mind-brain and then, brain-mind-consciousness. All this is just a process of energy usage and transformation from one form into another. We know this from thermodynamics and other laws of physics. Through knowledging something (remember, knowledge is consumption, similar to that of food consumption, turning an organic material into energy for physical maintenance), energy releases its frozen form and converts back into consciousness. Nothing is ever lost or gained in this process as “everything ends up equal to itself.” It is a dance of energy, which the Hindus call the rasalila of Krishna or the tāṇḍava of Śiva. There is life and then the universe came to be, without life who would verify its existence. Without a witnessing counterpart, who is to tell its story and describe its forms? Without sentient beings, there would be no one there to enliven it (the universe) and the strange thing is that without a cognitive faculty, there would be no reality. We can truly say that at its initial base, it all takes place within the brain of the beholder. br /We are all trapped in an illusion of an inside outside duality, a mental construct extremely difficult to surmount. We are conditioned, and practically so, to see things as separated from ourselves, the me and the others. The entire purpose of yoga is to escape this prison of minds and become free from these conceptual distortions. The word ātman can be broken down into three words, an (to breath), at (to move), and va (to blow). This is why in Ṛig Veda ātman is referred to as “the breath of the God [consciousness].” In other words, ātman is the breath of consciousness in which all things lies/depends. When we start to awaken from the long slumber of materialistic encapsulation, the first sign is the birth of “conscience.” With the birth of conscience deception becomes intolerable and deceit impossible. Truth starts to stare straight in our eyes and with nowhere to hide, we start disciplining our action. It is at such a time that one start to surrender and submits to the process of enlightenment (soulful education). It is here we realize that reality is in the mind of the beholder and with the beholder absent, reality change in an instant. Without conscience to purify our action, the internal journey becomes impossible. br /The mind is a “measurement instrument.” It is like a mental grasping (knowing) machine consuming everything in its path. It is a cognitive operational process of defining the/a world, analyses it, and then digests its essence as in “understanding” (understanding does not take place in the mind, the final consummation of knowledge into pure consciousness). In this progression, knowledge purifies matter and as a result sets the knower free, a freedom that comes at a great cost to the knower. The fact is that eventually the knower turns on himself and tries to assimilate (know) its own entitetic existence. The ensuing battle leaves only “one” left standing, the all-prevailing witnessing consciousness (here, there is no you or me, no name or form, it is all just raw potentiality). The knower gets consumed by its own desire to know leaving only pure-awareness in its wake. A clean sheet of consciousness (is a clean sheet of potency) is at the bases of all phenomenons ever happened. With the knower gone, potentiality has reached its crescent point (symbolized as the dot and the crescent over the OM sign) and brakes into spontaneous combustion of creativity and there it is born anew, and so the samsara kept pulsating through eternity. A happening has to have a medium and the medium is also the happening, but in the process appears temporary objectified and so on. The story forever unfolds and the mystery never truly known by the knower. But, lets comfort ourselves with the knowledge that it is impossible “to be” nothing, just as nothingness “cannot be claimed to exist as a concept.” Meditate on that and you will be wise.

The Tea Party verses the Masala Tea Man

Odin — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 05:43:00 +0000

Was it you I saw at the Y yesterday standing with the Tea Party people. Quite a show of ignorance and bliss, wasn’t it? Of course I am kidding referring to the first sentence, but the second, well; one question was asked and the eyes glazing over as in deep thoughts, or rather deeper confusion. One poster screamed, “America is for free market capitalism and not for socialism” and then there was all the rest of the anti-Obama stuff. br /I leaned out of the window and with a gentle compassionate voice I told them, “Remember, no matter how much you are afraid and scared of ‘socialism’; deep within us all, no matter what, we are all socialist. We are all creatures of social bonds and social arrangements. None of us was born ‘free market capitalist,’ it is all about family, friends and society. We are a nurturing creature who cares for tribe, group, clan, and country. No matter how we turn and twist the obvious fact, at the heart, we are all socialist.” br /I am sure my statement was taken as fool hearty and naive, and judge as just an other “Liberal Nazist” (a oxymoron), as one poster said. Oh’ what a confusion… what a tragedy…br /Otherwise, my friend, what about it, and how is life doing you???? See you soon!

Dualism, Monism, Death and Decay

Odin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:30:00 +0000

The dualistic world view claims that there is ‘me’ (the soul) and then there is ‘the other’. It states that at the base of human existence is the soul and that this soul is immortal and changeless. The body, in this view, is looked upon as ‘the other,’ similarly as we see the ‘otherness’ outside ourselves. In this way, dualism discriminate and claim that you and your body is two different things. On one side we have matter/mind, and on the other side we have the ‘self’ (the ‘me-ness’ in me claiming to be the soul). There are schools of philosophy that have worked out great treaties on this topic arguing out the facts to prove this point.br /It is said, “Mortality claims the body/matter/mind and immortality claims the soul.” When the body dies it start to disintegrate and dissolves into its component parts as it returns to the soil from where it was made. The spirit, or soul, rises from the death body and merge with the supreme spirit or entity. From here it will return to another body and continue it journey to work out its liberation. Now, dear reader, stand back a little and consider these claims; are you able to point out its fallacies?br /Let’s continue with the process of death. As the physical structure dies, its ‘vital functions’ retrieves back to the mind and after that, the mind get dissolved into ‘vital energy’ (prāṇa)and then enters the “soul” of the person that died. The soul with all this content leaves the body and takes residency in the spacial realm (ākāsha). Here it remain suspended in its subtle body (seed [soul]) as a storehouse of all the previous tendencies (saṁskāras) of that person, good or bad, and wait for an opportunity to take a rebirth. The destiny of the soul next incarnation is determined by the merits and demerits of a person’s previous life. And so it goes the circle of life and rebirth until final liberation has been achieved.br /The merits or demerits are a result of the action and activities of a person’s life. Selfish action, it is said, leads to increased bondage whereas selfless action leads to increased freedom. Of course, psychologically there is logic to this point; selfishness, by its very nature, condenses the personality, enhances contraction and densify desires. Selflessness, if such action is even possible, would by its very nature lead to the opposite, expandedness; however, just for argument sake, wouldn’t selflessness also lead to insensitivity and total detachment? If there is no “self’ to activate an action, then there would be no other self to receive or view such action. “Selfless action” is be definition an impossibility, however, if we by selflessness mean that it is natures own activities working itself out through ‘the selfless human,’ then a point to be made, but, such action would still be of a indifference and detachment nature. Natures own rules and activities does not ‘personally’ care about who live and who dies. It just do its things it own way in accordance to the law of causation. I am challenging you to question the above paragraph and see what you come up with. To have or not to have…, soul, self, ego, etc.br /Most religions and a few Indian schools philosophies embrace dualism as its premise. There are you and then there is a God (Monad), the Supreme Being. If you are a devout Christianity and follow it belief system, it would be blasphemy to claim to be equal or oneness with God. There is an emphasis on distance, the devotee and the worshipped. People sometime confuse monotheism to mean something similar to monism (that all things are essentially one thing). Monotheism is by its nature embedded in dualism at its core theology. It is not in the churches interest to empower the individual to seek its own truth. Therefore, it does not embrace monism openly and often prosecute individuals who have got their dualistic reality shattered through a mystical experience. Scientist, on the other hand, are more open and incline to accept the idea of monism—it is actually the hole grail of science to unite all the forces of nature into one singular simple concept—although practically, they communicate through the language of dualism.br /There is two school of religious and philosophical thoughts that stand out (there are many more) in the embrace of monism, i.e., Advaita and Buddhism. Of these two, Buddhism in particular, can easily correlate to modern science and therefore fit into the language of today’s psychological lingo. br /This is just a short treaty on a longer article that I wrote some time back…

Enlightenment is for your taking…

Odin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:13:00 +0000

We have been made to think that enlightenment is the result of an arduous search for a altered state of consciousness. Enlightenment is not normal; it is the result of years of hard spiritual labor, struggle, and most of all, self-purification. You will have to pay your dues in order to be/achieve enlightenment. It is like everything else in our human society, nothing worth having comes fro free. To appreciate your achievements stories have to be told of years of suffering and sacrifice, otherwise, what is the value of such realization? As with every personal achievements (like that of any fishing story), to be valued and appreciated, it has to come with a sense of bragging rights so to enhance ones personal ego. I could go on illustrating the many mental attitude and fallacies related to our perception of personal success, but this will do for now.br /Enthusiasm is nothing in particular or extraordinary, it is normalcy itself. Think of it as a state of contentment in activities. In some sense, it is when you are one-with-yourself doing the things you do when unobserved by others. Like lost reading these sentences while scratching your self or picking your nose unabashed i.e., of one mind doing one thing, no differentiation and no ego judgment or validating, resenting or desiring. I used to tell my daughter before a public performance, dance as if no one sees you, sing as if no one hears you, in other words, and be one with what you do and not divided.br /To be of a split mind (“I” and “that,” “those,” “this and that”) is perfectly ok; it is totally human. To have an ego, a “I” feeling, is a blessing but also a curse. It all has to do with proportionality. To much “self” consciousness interrupt spontaneity and hinders free expressions. To less “self” consciousness, on the other hand, count your blessing and hope you are likable person. The saving part of it all is that our species base nature is to be social; we are a herd animal that relies on each other for substance and comfort. That means that if a person (do to some mental problem) has lost his “self” organizing abilities, then we, as a society, come forwards to help. To survive and function as a human we must “self” actualize, but, equal to that, we need to also “rest in the existential me-ness” with no “self” interruption or editing going on. Have you ever tried to use your ego (your will) to force yourself to fall a sleep, of course you have, and totally unsuccessful in your attempt.br /There is the saying, “Before enlightenment I worked hard as a farmer, now after archiving enlightenment, my activities is to be a farmer.” All what changed was my perception and neuro-associative meaning with the words “work and labor” verses “activities.” Think about it as you look around yourself, is there anything you see that don’t have a particular nature and existential value/motion/motivation. Motion or activity, is build into all shapes and forms, not only that, it is the form (the object) itself. It is this dynamic wholeness that eventually binds all things (forms and shapes) together. Consciousness is not the motivator “to” activities (like a bystander). Motion (behavior/activities) “is” consciousness, just as much as consciousness is an activity. If you realize this to its fullest extent, you are indeed gone mad to the world. In this regard, madness may be a measurement of enlightenment. I once so a group of saddhus lost in ecstasy dancing naked down the street of Calcutta and people venerating them with tears of joy. Considering the artist lost in the ecstasy of the moment entertaining the masses. Considering a musician lost in joy while improvising notes of perfect delights.br /Enlightenments is here and now for your taking. No need to wait for a specific moment for it to arrived. All what you need is real unconditional “love” for what you do and are. It is not in “who you are,” it is in “what you do and are.” You are born destined to do a particular activity; it is about doing it well, extremely well and to the point of non-differentiation between the activity itself and the doer. To really achieve ecstasy as a musician you have to be one with it, which means you will have to achieve excellence in its techniques. The same goes for everything we do, from gardening to truce driving. No activity is too insignificant or too important. Now, one may argue, what about good versus bad activities. The evil is always present, is it? Yes, that is true and may be it is right for a cautioned warning as well. What we need to know, is that with all activities there is cause and effect. The law of karma rules all psycho-physical activities, none excluded, so to that regard we will have to prune our selfish tendencies and desires in order to render our services to the good of all. In this regard, if you have realized the difference between trance and ecstasy, you are in good hands and do not need to worry.br /This articled was inspired by a story I heard this morning on NPR, Morning Addition, October 30, 2009, Sufjan Stevens: Finding Inner Peace In Traffic, see span style=”font-style: italic;”http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId./span

Dogmas no more…

Odin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:48:00 +0000

Quotation:br /br /…Piety, then, needs a counterpoise, something to prevent it from being exercises in an excessively rigid way; and this it has, in most intellectual temperaments, in the quality I would call playfulness. We speak of the play of mind; and certainly the intellectual relishes the play of mind for its own sake, and finds in it one of the major values of life. What one thinks here is the element of sheer delight in intellectual activity. Seen in this guise, intellect may be taken as the healthy animal spirits of the mind, which come into exercise when the surplus of mental energies is released from the tasks required for utility and mere survival. “Man is perfectly human,” said Schiller, “only when he plays.” And it is this awareness of an available surplus beyond the requirements of mere existence that his maxim conveys to us. Vebler spoke often of the intellectual faculty as “idle curiosity”—but this is a misnomer in so far as the curiosity of the playful mind is inordinately restless and active. This very restlessness and activity gives a distinctive cast to its view of truth and its discontent with dogmas.? Note:Richard Hofstadter, span style=”font-style: italic;”Anti-Intellectualism in American Life/span. (New York: Knopf, 1963), 30.br /br /…The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.”…br /An intellectual is one who turns answers into questions, said Harold Rosenberg.