Dear Poirot,

"The spiritual mirrors the material."

It seems that you still think of the spiritual as of a different plane of existence.

Or is it possible, perhaps, that you actually meant "psychic", mixing it up with "spiritual"? These are not the same.

There are no spiritual objects. "Spiritual" is an adjective describing that (person, path, interest, aversion, belief, tendency, effort, group, company, practice, instruction, teaching, book, film, song, poem, image, view, realization, atmosphere, guide, master, life, etc.) which pertains to the negation of the material illusion.

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Just saw your latest post:

The mental picture of a chair in your mind is neither a chair nor a symbol. It is simply... a mental image!

Still enjoying this discussion, and still finding it poses questions worth pondering. Let me just reply to a few of you for the moment.

Lexi: Congratulations! Your topic has opened up some excellent discussion. It may appear sometimes that we have wandered way off your topic, but actually it is all about identity and the relationship it has with religion.

Squeers: <<Jung's archetypes are also not outside the symbolic order. Interestingly, Lacan (the pre-eminent theorist of the symbolic order) was a disciple of Freud, and of course Freud and Jung (former friends) fell out over their antagonistic theories.>> Thanks, but I can't accept Lacan's proposition that the unconscious has a structure similar to that of language. The conscious has a structure, the unconscious does not. I would suggest that an aspect of human being is an innate urge to create such a structure, and that this manifests in an effort to bring more and more of the unconscious into consciousness.

Poirot:<<It seems to me that the ego is utilised to assist the individual in his material undertakings. I'm more inclined to believe that in order to grasp a sense of the spiritual that one is required to subdue the ego in favour of detachment.>> Thanks for your response. "The ego" is a term I use in accordance with its origin in the psychodynamic school (Freud, Jung, Adler etc.) It comprises will, memory, perception, language, thought, learning, etc. It is the "self" that in everyday awareness we consider ourselves to be. The ego DOES the undertaking mentioned in your statement above. It is the agent, not an instrument. (It is often, however, despite its assertions to the contrary, manipulated by urges from the unconscious.) Concerning your second sentence, "one" cannot subdue the ego because "one" IS ego. Detaching is "letting go", sometimes called the Via Negativa. Your probing thoughts here lead us to a very important matter, but I"ll have to leave it for another context. Sorry.

Yuyutsu: It has been good to engage with you. We seem to have some perceptions and understandings in common.

Please keep up this discussion. I am enjoying reading all of your posts tremendously. This discussion has far exceeded my expectations and I am very grateful to you all. It's gone in directions that I had not expected - but I am delighted that it has. So many questions have arisen. I can't wait for the next series of inputs.

I find it interesting reading the various theodicies, that explain human problems in many ways. For example, the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation deals with suffering and evil by extending the life span indefinitely: one's present existence becomes merely a tiny link in the endless chain, in which death and misery seem only temporary and insignificant. The mysticism of Buddhism or Taoism offers the believer salvation at a spiritual level, where earthly cares become unimportant. Christian theodicy holds out the hope of eternal salvation in heaven in recompense for ordeals on earth. The Zoroastrian theodicy sees the universe as a battleground between the evenly balanced forces of good and evil, with the misfortunes of humans stemming from their failure to throw their weight on the side of good. In Shintoism, which focuses on ancestor worship, one's sorrows and the idea of death are made more tolerable by the knowledge that one's life will be remembered and celebrated by one's descendants forever.

It's these theodicies that imply that religion has some function in social life, and, in fact, this perspective offers many insights into the role of religion in society.

More later.

sorry to dig in with symbology
but poirot/quote..""the mental picture of a chair
in your mind is not in fact "a chair" -it's a symbol of a chair.""

i will agree with yuyutso..that its image rather than symbol

in egsamining your reply..""The same as if I sat down beside you
and drew a chair on paper.""

when i said god looks like an engorged nipple
i conveyed an image by a word..[not a symbol]

your drawing a c[hair]..[loved that one]
means you symbolised a chair..that before wasnt in here
[as in within my minds imagry]..but now i seen your picture
i hold the image of your hair quite clear...

i can accord meaning to the image
but its still an image

just like...""The drawing is not a chair,""
but put wheels on it..you got an image..[that means wheel chair acces/freindly..[or whatever]..the key seems to be that a symbol convey's a specific meaning..dependant on its situation or context

but my image of hair
only means a c/hair that isnt really there
the image cant have meaning...till i first get that it is a chair

a symbol should be self evident..[like road signs]
where the meaning is more than the mere image

but lets simply agree to disagree
a sign may reveal a meaning by symbol
but is a symbol a sure sign..
of pre-judging..

[pre determining..
[pre destination..
[cant find the ad verb]
a sure sign of pre-ciousness

pre judging a symbolic meaning
...so as to miss the sign
by wrongly reasoning

a sign as a pre-egsistant constant...
symbolised meaning...making..the past more relivant than the present

the tree of life..could be a symbol
[it does have symbolic meaning]

but how to tell 'it'
the symbol...
from any other sym*bolised...tree

symbols are by and large a destraction
that the master..confers as meaning full..upon a stu-dent[or novice/child..

spirit...dosnt need to talk in symbols
it talks in imagry*/emotion/sense/senses/experiences/feeling

OUG and Yuyutsu,

Perhaps we should replace the word "symbol" with "sign".

Ferdeinand de Saussure's theory postulates a "signifier" (sound) and the "signified" (thought - mental picture) as being components of a sign in language.

http://www.criticism.com/md/the_sign.html

Emile Durkheim, one of the first sociologists to study religion, pointed out that a single feature is common to all religions: a sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane. The sacred is anything that is regarded as part of the supernatural rather than the ordinary world; as such it inspires awe, reverence, and deep respect.
Anything can be considered sacred: a god, a rock, the moon, a king, a symbol such as a cross. On the other hand, the profane is anything that is regarded as part of the ordinary rather than the supernatural world; as such it may be considered familiar, mundane. Of course, the profane, too, may be embodied by a rock, the moon, a king, or a symbol.

Something becomes either sacred or profane only when it is socially defined as such by a community of believers. A religious community always approaches the sacred through a ritual, a formal stylized procedure, such as prayer, incantation, or ceremonial cleansing. Ritual therefore is a necessary part of religion because the sacred has extraordinary qualities, and according to Durkheim must be approached in a carefully, prescribed, reverential manner. He states that religion is a system of communally shared beliefs and rituals that are oriented towards some sacred, supernatural realm.

Seeing as this phenomenon is of such universal social importance -
I would like someone to discuss the functions of religion. Why is
religion universal in human society?