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Eternal return (German: Ewige Wiederkunft; also known as eternal recurrence) is a concept that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space.
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Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return
"Nietzsche introduced the concept of eternal return (often referred to as “eternal recurrence”) in The Gay Science, and the concept forms the underlying conceptual framework of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It’s one of the most powerful concepts in continental philosophy, and though it certainly borrows heavily from Hinduism and Buddhism, Nietzsche’s treatment isn’t meant to articulate a physical or spiritual cosmology. Rather, he treats it as a challenge and a “burden”. While modern quantum theory has explored the cosmological relevance of the concept, the underlying “burden” Nietzsche articulated remains the central challenge, regardless of its scientific validity.
Nietzsche’s first reference to eternal return may be his most concise description of the “burden” inherent in the contemplation of the concept:
The greatest weight. — What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
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"This is from aphorism 341 in The Gay Science. Nietzsche goes on to convey the burden:
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? […] If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight.
Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
"Thus we understand Nietzsche’s interest in the concept of eternal return: it isn’t, for Nietzsche, a concept of cosmological curiosity. Rather, it is a challenge aimed — as so much of Nietzsche’s work — at combatting nihilism through the ultimate affirmation of life: being willing to relive it over and over again. medium.com/…
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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (/ˈniːtʃə, ˈniːtʃi/;[37] German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtʃə]
listen) or [ˈniːtsʃə];[38][39] 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 45, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900. en.m.wikipedia.org/...
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As a cosmological principle, it has been supposed to mean that time is circular, that all things recur eternally.
In ancient Egypt, the scarab (dung beetle) was viewed as a sign of eternal renewal and reemergence of life, a reminder of the life to come. (See also Atum and Ma'at.)
The Mayans and Aztecs also took a cyclical view of time.
In ancient Greece, the concept of eternal return was connected with Empedocles, Zeno of Citium, and most notably in Stoicism (see ekpyrosis, palingenesis).
The idea is also suggested in Virgil's Aeneid. en.m.wikipedia.org/…
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In mathematics, a fractal is a subset of Euclidean space with a fractal dimension that strictly exceeds its topological dimension. Fractals appear the same at different scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set.[1][2][3][4] Fractals often exhibit similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales, a property called self-similarity, also known as expanding symmetry or unfolding symmetry; if this replication is exactly the same at every scale, as in the Menger sponge,[5] it is called affine self-similar. Fractal geometry lies within the mathematical branch of measure theory.en.m.wikipedia.org/…
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~Named after "Complete illustrated book of the psychic sciences" Book by Walter B. Gibson. 1966 (a fun and interesting read) 'Occult and Psychical Sciences' on DK
is a spooky group for the Spook season.
The group will consist of stories about the spooky and scary, personal anecdotes, and general Paranormal, Philosophical, metaphysical Arcane, Esoteric,and Existential information, and conversation.
People are encouraged to share their personal spooky experiences, and similar influences. Please contact me in kmail if you wish to join us.~ psychicscience.org/
"To admit ignorance is the highest knowledge. It is the necessary condition for all learning"
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(Please be respectful-
and don't Troll the group.
Rules of the proverbial road):
No name-calling.
No insults.
No personal attacks on other commenters.
If you come in with a glib, “superior” attitude, or with one-or-two sentence mocking claims and broad generalizations … be prepared to be challenged on them.
If challenged, be prepared to back up your claims. If you aren’t able to back up your claims … review the first three rules.
And.…
Ending a comment and leaving the diary with a haughty “Have a nice day” will be taken as an admission that you have just been owned.
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(Thanks to Neiman and Sockpuppet)
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The Tales of DK:
Clio2
Another—just one time—was something like a shadow person, a small woman in black, Vietnamese-style “pajamas” who stood in the middle of my hotel room when I woke that night...outlined against the sliding glass doors to a balcony. From this figure seemed to emanate a tangible wave of malice. I came out of the experience shaking all over and freezing cold; even a hot shower helped only a little. As with some of my other stories, I think there is a physical explanation: specifically, a shrimp dinner. I’m sensitive to sulfite preservatives, sometimes used on shrimp and certain other foods; the restaurant may have used a LOT of the stuff, possibly causing a mild anaphylactic reaction.
BTW I also have a match for Sue Blue, though less spectacular: merely a smallish, very individual and to all appearances perfectly solid and normal brown dog, crossing the street in front of my car, in Georgetown, D.C., at 8:00 in the morning after a New Year’s Eve party.
My passengers asked, “Why did you just slow down?”
“I didn’t want to hit the dog.”
“WHAT DOG?”
Don’t think I was drunk at that point, as we’d stayed over at our hosts’ to sleep it off, but possibly half asleep. ;-)
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Well, I did see a shadow figure once in my room. It was back in my late teens, I’m late twenties now, and I woke up and saw a figure standing in front of my closet. It was featureless, completely black, just a silhouette, but it took up space, if that makes sense. It was tall and just there. I didn’t feel any sense of acute distress or fear, aside from the fact that something unexpected was in my room. There wasn’t anything that could be casting the shadow except maybe the vines outside my window, except it was still night out. I would have thought sleep paralysis except that I pulled the covers over my head, so I wasn’t paralyzed. Never saw anything else weird or unusual in my house since. I like to joke he took a wrong turn and ended up in the wrong house.
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Years ago, when I was in the Navy, I was driving from Long Beach California up to the high desert (where I grew up) a few hours northeast of Los Angeles. I was just starting to get into the desert when I had a feeling that my Grandparents had been in a car accident. Thirty minutes or so later, as I was heading north, an ambulance passed me heading south. I got the feeling that my Grandparents were in that ambulance. And they were. I have no idea why or how this happened to me. It had never happened before and hasn’t happened since.
I also use to see a lot of strange stuff in the air, like UFO’s. But I grew up close to Edwards AFB and they used to test aircraft at night that they didn’t want the public to see in the light of day. So I’m not sure if they were indeed UFO’s, or top secret military planes.
Those are my stories and experiences and I’m sticking to them. Hahaha.
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Well, maybe a “shadow dealie”. I was running down to dinner back around when I was ten. I glimpse a black blocky thingie sticking out of the wall. I bump into it and got hit on my side. I turn around and it’s gone. I’m asking family what hit me. They have no clue.
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Oh, I had forgotten something. To be honest most of this specific form of spirit beings stuff is kind of behind me, I don’t work on that level so much anymore. So I’ve more or less forgotten a lot of my activities and experiences back then.
Anyway for some years I worked night shift (after it was closed) in a large grocery store that was haunted in a conventional sense. Everyone heard things like voices calling their names when the store was closed and no one there, etc.
The floorguy, who was contracted out and was only there for a few hours at a time, asked the manager one night why he heard a baby crying when he was working on the floor in one of the isolated aisles. That sort of thing went on there on a more or less regular basis.
The thing is there were moving shadows there, whether technically shadow people or not I don’t know. You could see them darting along the ends of the aisles moving too fast to really see what they were. And yes, they sort of glided, not a natural movement at all.
One night when not working I meditated on being in the store to try to ‘catch’ them and had the impression that they were white men dressed in tuxedos and wearing tall black top hats. I don’t think they were malevolent or benevolent, really, they just seemed to be there.
For what it’s worth
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The only time I can maybe attribute something I’ve seen to a Shadow Person was years ago when I needed some respite from looking after Mom and Dad, and had a weekend by myself in another part of the state. I booked a room in a motel in a college town on graduation weekend. It was the last room available, and as luck would have it, the sliding door to the balcony would not lock. There were no other rooms, and it was too late to look for another place, so I just dragged all the furniture I could in front of the door and hoped that if someone tried to get in, they’d make noise and I could scream for help. I was very uneasy as I went to bed, and laid awake for a long time, and sometime along I slipped into sleep without knowing it.
I dreamt that I was lying on that uncomfortable mattress in the same position, and a dark form had entered the room through the balcony door. Oh no… I thought, laying there petrified as the dark form came closer and closer. Oh no, on no, oh no, oh no… It was all I could think of as it came around the end of the bed and slowly sat beside me. I felt the bedsprings depress under its weight, and as it leaned toward me, I woke up, still in the same position, terrified, locked in place. After a few moments of staring into the darkness, listening to the sounds from elsewhere in the old motel, I was able to move, joints and muscles protesting, and turned on a light. All the stuff by the balcony door was still in place — no one had come in. Not a physical being, anyway.
I’ve always chalked it up to a nightmare born of fatigue and stress (Mom was ill with cancer at the time). It still gives me the cauld grue to remember it.
My Mom saw a shadow figure once, in the house she and Dad rented in around 1951. She had her baby daughter (my eldest sister) out on the lawn with her on a sunny May morning, and when she went to go back inside through the shed ell of the house, their little dog Lassie barked and bristled and would not let Mom go in. Mom said that she saw what she described as a shape “like a shooting range target” standing in the shadows of the shed, giving off a feeling of malice and hatred. Mom took the baby and Lassie and walked a mile or so to her in-laws’ house, and stayed there until Dad came home from work. She always said it was one of the most terrifying things that she ever experienced
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I was having coffee after breakfast in our kitchen with my then wife in the mid-morning and we were chatting away. There was a glass sliding door that opened onto our patio that we hadn’t closed the blinds to. All of a sudden, a human shaped shadow walked across our patio, a bit tall and purposeful in stride as if it was headed somewhere. All glimpsed peripherally by me. I looked at my tw in shock and she said “You saw that too?”. I opened the door to look out but no one was in our yard. The only other possibility I could consider is that it was somehow the shadow of a plane flying over, but neither of us heard engine noise. Cloud shadows act differently than this.
I still can’t explain what I saw, as I was conscious and awake. Scientifically, anyhow.
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I have had so many experiences that it is hard to choose just one incident. The clearest one happened in about 2006 in my in laws large Victorian house.
My father in law had to move to assisted living, and we had been working to clean out the accumulation of 50 years. I asked my sister to come over to see if there was anything she would like to have. We were standing in one of the middle bedrooms. I was facing the open door. My sister had her back to the door. It was a sunny afternoon in spring, and the upstairs was pretty bright. As we discussed some of the items in the room, I saw a human shaped shadow very slowly proceed down the hall on the other side of the doorway. I was looking directly at it, but it is hard to describe. It was in the center of the large hallway, not a shadow on the wall. It was dark yet clear, no duskiness to it at all. It moved at the same speed that a person would casually walk. I watched until it was out of sight. I didn’t say a word to my sister. She is an ultra conservative evangelical, and I figured she would try to start casting demons out of me or something. I just shrugged and shook my head, and my sister never noticed. On a subsequent visit to my father in law, I mentioned the experience. He replied, “Oh, thank God! You saw it too.” He had seen the same thing in another room in the house some years before. He was relieved to know he wasn’t crazy.
That was not the only odd thing that occurred in that house. There was odd raps, footsteps on the stairs when no one was on the stairs and doors slamming, but that was a shadow that was seen by two people at different times.
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This reminds me of two experiences I had while in graduate school, living in a 100 year old house that seemed to have a lot of spirits wafting in and out, some lovely and nice — like the old man who apparently lived there and smoked a cigar and played with my cat — and occasional icky visitors.
A couple of my much more psychically open friends had been talking about such creepy spirits, and I had said, “Hmm. I’ve never experienced anything like that.” So, of course, wouldn’t you know, a few nights later …
I was lying in bed upstairs, very relaxed, and heard creaks in the old stairs. It was a creaky old house, so just humorously, to myself, I thought, “Oh, it must be Mr. Norton (the nice old man ghost) coming up to say good-night.”
Then, in a weird sensation I’ve only experienced with strange things like this, I had the sense of something moving through the door into the room. I can only compare it to what a bat’s sonar must be like, because it’s a very specific feeling of shape and movement in the dark, but it’s not vision; yet it’s so distinct and definite it’s sort of analogous to vision. I thought, “Whoa, it really is Mr. Norton.” Then …
I had the feeling of the thing swooping quickly down at me, and then — the only way I can describe it — trying to enter me, all down my left side. I describe it like my body was an unzipped sleeping bag, and it was trying to slide in. I thought, “Agh! Agh! This isn’t Mr. Norton!” — and did what my Wiccan friend had talked about, calling in my guardian animal. I had a sense of the animal leaping over me and chasing it off.
Then, to make it worse, I remembered that the very same thing had happened the night before, but I had been too asleep to remember it until then! It didn’t feel like a terribly powerful spirit — just sort of a little second-rate spook that had to try to sneak his way in. I actually got an image of him as a sort of skinny nineteen-thirties guy with greasy hair and a little mustache and suspenders.
The next day I told my friends, “Ah! Ah! It happened to me!” — and their sort of blase responses were actually sort of comforting in that they told me it wasn’t that big a deal, as long as you set up the right mental defenses:
“Yeah, that’s never very pleasant, is it?”
“Hm, so now you know what it’s like.”
“Well, you’re just too open! You have like a big ‘Everyone Welcome’ sign flashing! You need to be more discriminating!”
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Almost forgot. While at the kitchen sink I once saw out of the corner of an eye a flat shadowy thing maybe 9 inches wide, that swooped swiftly from the top of a 5-foot-high dining-room cabinet to the back door, at floor level. Gliding like a ray (fish) underwater, giving that impression.
Naturally I went wtf??? and stepped into the dining room to look. Nothing there.
I never mentioned it to anyone (and managed to forget about it) because I have an older relative who now sees things on account of dementia and that made it just too scary, what if I am going the same way?
Told myself it was a shadow of a falling leaf outside the back door. Reflecting...dubious a shadow could behave like that in that location.
Been a couple years and fortunately hasn’t happened again
(-Thanks everyone)
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