To attribute collectiveness to a spell and individuality to a mortar is, at the very least, idiosyncratic. The fact of if the matter is that a spell didn’t kill an individual spaniard, and a bullet did kill and individual sorcerer, in a similar way as a “collective” European smallpox virus did obliterate half of the Aztec empire (Diamond).
Spells failed to deliver the goods, that’s what decided their faith. Had it been otherwise, we would be having a conversation with Harry Potter now.
When you want to see consciousness, you see it everywhere and in different forms, that’s why this very elusive term is never picked up by serious historians. Was Doña María an individual who greatly helped Cortés serve his greedy collective King for her own individual revenge? That’s a spurious question. One thing we do know for sure, because it is an historical fact, is that the Aztecs and the Incas fought ferociously, to the last drop of blood, they did launch military offensive upon military offensive, until they finally lost. The 200 soldiers Pizarro and Cortés had on their initial assault could have been crushed at any moment, if only one of the multiple elements that run against them had turned otherwise, but they didn’t. Was that due to some inherent force of the spirit? No, it wasn’t, it was sheer luck.
“The Spaniards’ superiority, which compelled the Mexicans to surrender almost without a struggle, resulted primarily from their consciousness of individuality, not from their superior weaponry.”
You would struggle to pile up in a single sentence a wrong historical fact and a biased westernised view better than this. I stopped reading there.
Perspectival and aperspectival worlds are entangled parts of a whole in a scheme aiming at understanding our experiential duality. Their time of appearance and properties are projected and mediated by the human being.
They are created and decreated by the mind in a stepwise learning process without really being separated entities. They coexist dynamically in the kind of vortex called Bindu in the Vedic tradition.
Our vision separates and/or unites them according to the individual prism, our "eye of the heart". Our consciousness in its integral state is aware of this dynamical process that is projected on the time scale of our historical development.
The supports and images chosen and their illumination are subject to individual experiences and interpretations as documented by different views of the same historical progress.
In our daily life we need perspective to live our a-perspective, a-dimensional and timeless existence. An integrating mental vision is a step towards an integral life where the mental is traced back to the spiritual and is expressed by the emotional and physical realities in a globally coherent manner.
Otherwise we risk to stay with nice discussions where the intellectual understanding is not followed by a global evolution through a real transformational process.
To attribute collectiveness to a spell and individuality to a mortar is, at the very least, idiosyncratic. The fact of if the matter is that a spell didn’t kill an individual spaniard, and a bullet did kill and individual sorcerer, in a similar way as a “collective” European smallpox virus did obliterate half of the Aztec empire (Diamond).
Spells failed to deliver the goods, that’s what decided their faith. Had it been otherwise, we would be having a conversation with Harry Potter now.
When you want to see consciousness, you see it everywhere and in different forms, that’s why this very elusive term is never picked up by serious historians. Was Doña María an individual who greatly helped Cortés serve his greedy collective King for her own individual revenge? That’s a spurious question. One thing we do know for sure, because it is an historical fact, is that the Aztecs and the Incas fought ferociously, to the last drop of blood, they did launch military offensive upon military offensive, until they finally lost. The 200 soldiers Pizarro and Cortés had on their initial assault could have been crushed at any moment, if only one of the multiple elements that run against them had turned otherwise, but they didn’t. Was that due to some inherent force of the spirit? No, it wasn’t, it was sheer luck.
“The Spaniards’ superiority, which compelled the Mexicans to surrender almost without a struggle, resulted primarily from their consciousness of individuality, not from their superior weaponry.”
You would struggle to pile up in a single sentence a wrong historical fact and a biased westernised view better than this. I stopped reading there.
Adrian, I respect your views, but shouldn't you have devoted a little more thought to the meaning of "primarily"?
Perspectival and aperspectival worlds are entangled parts of a whole in a scheme aiming at understanding our experiential duality. Their time of appearance and properties are projected and mediated by the human being.
They are created and decreated by the mind in a stepwise learning process without really being separated entities. They coexist dynamically in the kind of vortex called Bindu in the Vedic tradition.
Our vision separates and/or unites them according to the individual prism, our "eye of the heart". Our consciousness in its integral state is aware of this dynamical process that is projected on the time scale of our historical development.
The supports and images chosen and their illumination are subject to individual experiences and interpretations as documented by different views of the same historical progress.
In our daily life we need perspective to live our a-perspective, a-dimensional and timeless existence. An integrating mental vision is a step towards an integral life where the mental is traced back to the spiritual and is expressed by the emotional and physical realities in a globally coherent manner.
Otherwise we risk to stay with nice discussions where the intellectual understanding is not followed by a global evolution through a real transformational process.