Heaven and Earth

Started by Yawne Zize’ite, June 12, 2012, 07:36:14 PM

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Yawne Zize’ite

While I was working on translating Ecclesiastes 1, I started thinking about and in Naʼvi thought. The few cultures with which I am at all familiar all have the dichotomy of ם‎השמי (unreachable home of (the) god(s), eternal paradise) and הארץ (realm of mortal humans). In these systems, "heaven" and "sky" are usually the same word. This is distinct from جنة and the cosmological opposite of 黄泉.

Humans were unable to fly until the 18th century, so the sky was in the realm of the imagination. The Omatikaya Naʼvi, in contrast, have routine flight, floating mountains, a religion that venerates trees, and a specific pit in the ground that is the home of Goddess on earth. (Yes, this is an oversimplification, but bear with me.)

Do, or would, the Omatikaya have any concept of taw as a divine force, or is it part of the ordinary world? Is there any concept of an otherwordly realm of the divine, or is this world all there is?

If there isn't, translating the concept of "heaven" is going to be a pain interesting.

Edited to try to clarify my question.

Puvomun

Interesting question. Here is how I see this:

The Na'vi live in a very different way from us earth people. many have the concept of a higher spirit, a heaven.
The Na'vi don't seem to have that. They have an awareness of Eywa that surpasses almost everything we can muster, save a few lucky ones here. Their idea of life  and death is therefore different too. In the movie you hear Jake say: "The people believe that all energy is only borrowed. One day you will have to give it back."

I think their transition between life and death is much purer, more nature-connected. Their concept of "heaven" seems to be that their spirit joins Eywa without a physical body. I think that is the closest you can come to a heaven nìNa'vi; being with Eywa. Tsaheylu with utral mokriyä already gives them a good view of 'heaven'. Going there "in spirit alone" (after death) can only make the experience more real.
Krr a lì'fya lam sraw, may' frivìp utralit.

Ngopyu ayvurä.

Kamean

QuoteTheir concept of "heaven" seems to be that their spirit joins Eywa without a physical body.
Agree.
Tse'a ngal ke'ut a krr fra'uti kame.


Blue Elf

Quote from: Puvomun on June 13, 2012, 03:19:31 AM
In the movie you hear Jake say: "The people believe that all energy is only borrowed. One day you will have to give it back."
Also: "Na'vi say: Do not take care - Eywa will take care". Or something similar, I'm lazy to find it in the movie...
Quote
I think that is the closest you can come to a heaven nìNa'vi; being with Eywa. Tsaheylu with utral mokriyä already gives them a good view of 'heaven'.
This. Nothing to add.
Oe lu skxawng skxakep. Slä oe nerume mi.
"Oe tasyätxaw ulte koren za'u oehu" (Limonádový Joe)


Puvomun

Quote from: Blue Elf on June 13, 2012, 02:15:47 PM
Also: "Na'vi say: Do not take care - Eywa will take care". Or something similar, I'm lazy to find it in the movie...

Eywa will provide.

(I know the movie. ;) )
Krr a lì'fya lam sraw, may' frivìp utralit.

Ngopyu ayvurä.

Yawne Zize’ite

Actually, what I am interested in is the ancient meaning of "heaven" as "unreachable place where God/gods live", distinct from "where the dead go" (which, in ancient mythologies I know, is usually some gloomy realm beneath the earth; in Japanese mythology the realm of the dead being as far from Heaven as possible is symbolically important).

We've got a thread on the Na'vi afterlife already.  :)

Puvomun

Quote from: Yawne Zize'ite on June 13, 2012, 03:14:56 PM
Actually, what I am interested in is the ancient meaning of "heaven" as "unreachable place where God/gods live", distinct from "where the dead go"

I doubt the Na'vi have such a concept. Their culture and life revolves around Eywa and Eywa'eveng. Don't forget that the Na'vi are a relatively simple people in that way (I think so at least) and they probably don't need something like that. After all, as far as we know now, they don't have other gods, hence these non-existent beings don't need a place to dwell.
Krr a lì'fya lam sraw, may' frivìp utralit.

Ngopyu ayvurä.

Yawne Zize’ite

To use theological terms I don't understand very well, Eywa is immanent (present in the material world) but not transcendent (existing beyond the material world)? I'm not sure that's right either, since the word Eywaʼeveng presumes a distinction between Eywa and her ʼeveng (and likely analytical thought processes alien to the Omatikaya), but I'm certainly no closer to expressing the typical tawtuteyä concept of a holy otherworld of the gods and realizing that it probably doesn't exist; for the Omatikaya, no escape from the world is possible.

This lack is going to make translations of Earthly religious writings difficult, but that's part of the challenge.

Puvomun

Quote from: Yawne Zize'ite on June 14, 2012, 01:04:22 PM
for the Omatikaya, no escape from the world is possible.
Perhaps they do not want to, or there is no need to.

I wish you good luck with your challenge.
Krr a lì'fya lam sraw, may' frivìp utralit.

Ngopyu ayvurä.

Human No More

You're projecting your own culture onto people who are completely different and really don't have 'religion' - it doesn't apply, especially not when they have a full understanding of memory sharing and the biological and physical process of death.
"I can barely remember my old life. I don't know who I am any more."

HNM, not 'Human' :)

Na'vi tattoo:
1 | 2 (finished) | 3
ToS: Human No More
dA
Personal site coming soon(ish

"God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand."
- Richard P. Feynman

Yawne Zize’ite

Yes, it is a cultural projection, since I'm taking a text written by Iron Age humans using typical Iron Age human concepts and trying to express them in Na'vi; perhaps that's one reason why it's customary to translate into your native language instead of into a foreign language? (At the same time, it is a text written by Iron Age humans, and I have to be careful not to superimpose concepts from Late Antiquity as far as possible, let alone modern ones; the notion of an afterlife in heaven is a product of Late Antiquity and utterly foreign to the Old Testament.)

What I find most interesting is the conclusion that in traditional Omatikaya thought there are no other worlds at all; I'm mostly familiar with human mythologies of Eurasia, and they have a triple overworld/human world/underworld setup. The lack of transcendence reminds me of materialism.

Seze Mune

#11
Quote from: Yawne Zize'ite on June 17, 2012, 04:04:19 AM
Yes, it is a cultural projection, since I'm taking a text written by Iron Age humans using typical Iron Age human concepts and trying to express them in Na'vi; perhaps that's one reason why it's customary to translate into your native language instead of into a foreign language? (At the same time, it is a text written by Iron Age humans, and I have to be careful not to superimpose concepts from Late Antiquity as far as possible, let alone modern ones; the notion of an afterlife in heaven is a product of Late Antiquity and utterly foreign to the Old Testament.)

What I find most interesting is the conclusion that in traditional Omatikaya thought there are no other worlds at all; I'm mostly familiar with human mythologies of Eurasia, and they have a triple overworld/human world/underworld setup. The lack of transcendence reminds me of materialism.

I'm not sure how transitive your idea of transcendence is.  :)

As I grok it, Eywa is expressed through physical things but when those physical things cease to exist, Eywa doesn't diminish. There are conceptual lines we can follow here about whether the physical expression was ever truly independent of Eywa in the first place, but that's not where you're going with this. The spirit, if that's what you want to call it, continues to exist but can no longer be expressed physically.  

Not only that, but it is interesting that the Omatikaya find it completely understandable and acceptable that an alien essence like Grace Augustine would join with the Eywa gestalt.  If alien essences can become part of Eywa, that begs the question of whether Eywa is in ALL beings regardless of world of origin which means that Eywa certainly transcends the concept of a strictly local phenomenon, so on that level the concept is transcendent.

A gestalt concept is in itself a form of transcendence, and the Omatikaya evidently believe that all things are connected via Eywa to all other things within the 'balance of life'.  If your framework is heavily Christian, then this is not translatable through the dominant Christian belief system.  You might be more likely to find it expressed within the Christian mystic traditions, but these are not mainstream.

I have the sense that if the ToS or ToV were destroyed, the Na'vi would believe that Eywa would continue to exist; they just wouldn't be able to communicate with it overtly.  They presume that when/if they too die, along with all life, that Eywa would continue, but without physical form.  It's being-ness is essentially independent of its physicality.

Godhood, within most religions I am familiar with, is not a gestalt.  God is seen as separate and distinct from his creations, and exists within the eddies of social and cultural life.  In fundamentalist religions God is something to be feared because It metes out punishments of all kinds, but the Na'vi do not have a concept for this dynamic within their theology.  They are already expressions of their godhood, and therefore they recognize their relationship to all other life within their world.  Because the Sky People do not see this, they are blind to the natural connection which is why they do the destructive things they do.  Sky People religions are more separatist. I see materialism more evident in sawtute religions, then, than in Na'vi.

Dominant 'Rrta religions sequester the godhood in a gender, which actually limits the godhood's expression to the psychological frameworks associated with the cultural beliefs surrounding the expression of that particular gender.  Males are seen as dominating, punitive, powerful, more valuable, etc.  To my knowledge, the Na'vi godhood Eywa is genderless.  This has profound implications for the culture which are probably not easy to understand for a sawtute who has been marinated in dominant 'Rrta religious concepts centered on traditional maleness.

Niri Te

Quote from: Yawne Zize'ite on June 17, 2012, 04:04:19 AM
the notion of an afterlife in heaven is a product of Late Antiquity and utterly foreign to the Old Testament.)

Then how do you explain Job saying "And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see GOD. Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!"
Job Chapter 19, verses 26 and 27, NKJV. The Pharisees, unlike the Saducees, believed in a BODILY Resurrection.
Niri Te
Tokx alu tawtute, Tirea Le Na'vi

Yawne Zize’ite

Quote from: Seze Mune on June 18, 2012, 07:07:20 PM
I'm not sure how transitive your idea of transcendence is.  :)

As I grok it, Eywa is expressed through physical things but when those physical things cease to exist, Eywa doesn't diminish. There are conceptual lines we can follow here about whether the physical expression was ever truly independent of Eywa in the first place, but that's not where you're going with this. The spirit, if that's what you want to call it, continues to exist but can no longer be expressed physically.  

Not only that, but it is interesting that the Omatikaya find it completely understandable and acceptable that an alien essence like Grace Augustine would join with the Eywa gestalt.  If alien essences can become part of Eywa, that begs the question of whether Eywa is in ALL beings regardless of world of origin which means that Eywa certainly transcends the concept of a strictly local phenomenon, so on that level the concept is transcendent.

A gestalt concept is in itself a form of transcendence, and the Omatikaya evidently believe that all things are connected via Eywa to all other things within the 'balance of life'.  If your framework is heavily Christian, then this is not translatable through the dominant Christian belief system.  You might be more likely to find it expressed within the Christian mystic traditions, but these are not mainstream.

I have the sense that if the ToS or ToV were destroyed, the Na'vi would believe that Eywa would continue to exist; they just wouldn't be able to communicate with it overtly.  They presume that when/if they too die, along with all life, that Eywa would continue, but without physical form.  It's being-ness is essentially independent of its physicality.

To me, that sounds like the concept of a spirit world parallel to the material world, neither above nor below. It's a much better explanation than materialism.

QuoteGodhood, within most religions I am familiar with, is not a gestalt.  God is seen as separate and distinct from his creations, and exists within the eddies of social and cultural life.  In fundamentalist religions God is something to be feared because It metes out punishments of all kinds, but the Na'vi do not have a concept for this dynamic within their theology.  They are already expressions of their godhood, and therefore they recognize their relationship to all other life within their world.  Because the Sky People do not see this, they are blind to the natural connection which is why they do the destructive things they do.  Sky People religions are more separatist. I see materialism more evident in sawtute religions, then, than in Na'vi.

There are some truly monist traditions, mostly mystical as you said, but they aren't intuitive for sawtute (or fìsawtute). I'm not enough of a psychologist to explain why monist traditions are never popular with the general public.

QuoteDominant 'Rrta religions sequester the godhood in a gender, which actually limits the godhood's expression to the psychological frameworks associated with the cultural beliefs surrounding the expression of that particular gender.  Males are seen as dominating, punitive, powerful, more valuable, etc.  To my knowledge, the Na'vi godhood Eywa is genderless.  This has profound implications for the culture which are probably not easy to understand for a sawtute who has been marinated in dominant 'Rrta religious concepts centered on traditional maleness.

It's interesting that you talk about the gender of godhood. Indo-European and Semitic languages, although unrelated, both have grammatical gender with a few exceptions. It's simply not possible to discuss anything in Hebrew or Arabic without assigning it masculinity or femininity; Greek and Latin add a neuter that, as far as I can recall, isn't used for deities. English has taken gender assignment to an extreme with its remnants of a gender system, I believe, since people whose native language has masculine/feminine gender don't perceive "he" and "she" as strongly gendered. Probably because they're used to talking about chairs as "he" and tables as "she".

Quote from: Niri Te on June 18, 2012, 11:24:51 PM
Quote from: Yawne Zize'ite on June 17, 2012, 04:04:19 AM
the notion of an afterlife in heaven is a product of Late Antiquity and utterly foreign to the Old Testament.)

Then how do you explain Job saying "And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see GOD. Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!"
Job Chapter 19, verses 26 and 27, NKJV. The Pharisees, unlike the Saducees, believed in a BODILY Resurrection.
Niri Te

Job 19:26 is problematic; I haven't learned Hebrew over the last few days, but any passage that is translated "in my flesh" (most translations) or "without my flesh" (the 1917 JPS edition, etc.) must be difficult! In any event, the doctrine of the bodily resurrection doesn't require the doctrine of disembodied souls living in Heaven; the Jewish tradition was that souls remained in Sheol until the resurrection. "But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." (Job 14:10-12)

At any rate, this thread has given me not just a drubbing but also a translation-equivalent for "heaven"; tseng Eywayä (or maybe tsenge sireayä) for the idea of "eternal divine realm" and Eywahu (and grammatical permutations thereof) for the idea of "afterlife in heaven". They're not all that good, but there is no clean way to collapse three worlds into one.

Seze Mune

Quote from: Niri Te on June 18, 2012, 11:24:51 PM
Quote from: Yawne Zize'ite on June 17, 2012, 04:04:19 AM
the notion of an afterlife in heaven is a product of Late Antiquity and utterly foreign to the Old Testament.)

Then how do you explain Job saying "And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see GOD. Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!"
Job Chapter 19, verses 26 and 27, NKJV. The Pharisees, unlike the Saducees, believed in a BODILY Resurrection.
Niri Te

Ma Niri Te, I think there are several ways this could be understood.  I won't say that my ideas are *right*, only that they are possible. 

Part of the problem lies in the fact that language is really a poor descriptor for real experience.  For example, you know how much you love your kalina yawnetu, but you also know that no matter what written or spoken words you use to describe it, the words are merely a pale reflection of the experience of your feelings.  They don't do it justice. It's possible that whatever spiritual experience Job had that assured him of seeing God whilst still embodied was similar.  Spiritual ecstasy is a relatively rare state, especially for those who do not regularly meditate.  Whilst in such a state, one can receive knowledge which is difficult to translate into our languages because there is no true evocative equivalent.  Roughly speaking, it's like trying to describe the color 'red' to a person who has been blind from birth and has no verbal, physical or emotional referent for that experience. Job may have used the best descriptors he had at that time, to describe his intuitive knowledge, but it was in truth an impossible translation.

Taking this from another angle, you know from experience that when you are in the dream state you still exist.  Interestingly, this existence includes both a physical body which is inert on the bed and a mental body which is having the experience.  There are occasions when your mental body in the dream experiences a mental event like slipping and falling, and your physical body will react by jerking.  And people who are dreaming can sleepwalk, performing their dream actions in physical life without being aware of superimposing one reality over the other.  The mental/dreamlife and the physical are that closely correlated.  In fact, our sciences are showing us more and more that our "real" life is more a mental event than a physical one. This is important because we believe our essence lies in the physical, whereas it's beginning to look like the physical is in effect an avatar for what is in actuality really going on in our minds.  Job would have had his spiritual experience in his mental/dreamlike body, and being aware of the relationship between the mental and physical bodies but not having the language to explain the difference, he was forced to couch the words in a way which could be misunderstood by those who couldn't know what he meant.  As I said, 'love' and 'red' experiences are difficult to convey to those who haven't experienced them personally, and the spiritual cannot be fully expressed within the physical world.

Finally, as a battlefield warrior you are familiar the strange effect called phantom limb pain.  For those who don't know, people who have lost a body part can often still 'feel' the limb even though it no longer exists.  I have heard that there is research which seems to show electromagnetic and photonic residue at the site of the lost limb, though I can't confirm this.  What this suggests to me is that our bodies are not just physical, but they have magnetic and photonic templates that are connected to our minds.  When the physical portion is destroyed, the other templates remain within the physical world, at least for awhile.  It's possible these are portions of what is connected to the mental/dreamlike body with which we operate -  whether we are in body or out of it.  In effect, we still have a body which is not experienced within our 3D world the way we are conditioned to believe we must exist.

I'm smiling here because I feel like I've done a poor job using words to describe what I mean, which is exactly my case in point.  I've just used words to try to convey ideas which are (for me) far more complex than I know how to describe.  ;D  Maybe Job's experience was similar...

Seze Mune

Quote
QuoteDominant 'Rrta religions sequester the godhood in a gender, which actually limits the godhood's expression to the psychological frameworks associated with the cultural beliefs surrounding the expression of that particular gender.  Males are seen as dominating, punitive, powerful, more valuable, etc.  To my knowledge, the Na'vi godhood Eywa is genderless.  This has profound implications for the culture which are probably not easy to understand for a sawtute who has been marinated in dominant 'Rrta religious concepts centered on traditional maleness.

It's interesting that you talk about the gender of godhood. Indo-European and Semitic languages, although unrelated, both have grammatical gender with a few exceptions. It's simply not possible to discuss anything in Hebrew or Arabic without assigning it masculinity or femininity; Greek and Latin add a neuter that, as far as I can recall, isn't used for deities. English has taken gender assignment to an extreme with its remnants of a gender system, I believe, since people whose native language has masculine/feminine gender don't perceive "he" and "she" as strongly gendered. Probably because they're used to talking about chairs as "he" and tables as "she".


This shows that language distorts, even while it purports to convey ideas accurately.  It does not.  The best we can hope for is a close approximation.  Because of this, clearly it is a mistake to take 'the word' literally.  No words can possibly contain the true experience of something so vast and illimitable as Godhood unless it is watered down to human dimensions...and that cannot possibly do it justice.

When language forces Godhood into a gender box, the ramifications can be culturally devastating. 

God must be expressed as a gender, and the one which is chosen depends on what is culturally valued at the time.  God had to be seen as male in order to have any relevance to the part of the world in which Christianity developed.  The constraints of language and culture forced this.  Naturally the 'He' in God had to take on the characteristics understood and valued by that culture at that time.  The ideas of 'male' and 'female' are mental constructs which are themselves cultural distortions of the genders. Aside from this, the idea that something as illimitable as God would or could ever be confined to one gender is as nonsensical as it is incredible. Godness is far too great to be that limited, even if you want to break down Its components into facets which can be expressed through cultural associations with specific gender assignments which is what Hinduism does. While that is monist, there are theologians within Christianity who are also adamantly monist (Paul Tillich, for example).  All of which is to say that iterations of Christianity exist which can be fundamentally opposed to one another.  Language forces distortions and distinctions which most probably do not exist in actual fact.

I don't want to start discussing theosis, dualistic versus tripartite philosophies or what is right or wrong.  It all goes to show that whatever Godhood is, it is far beyond the ability of words to describe the true Being, and far beyond the ability of humans to truly understand it.  Until we're there in the experience, it is really silly to start insisting that one's own  or one's church's interpretation of it contains the Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth.

As for myself I try to leave it at following the philosophy of ahimsa and live and let live, whilst belonging to no specific religious traditions - I find them too limiting.

Sorry for the interruption.  I'll be quiet and let you get back to what you are trying to parse, religiously speaking.

Yawne Zize’ite

*looks up at the post above*

This is when I start backing away slowly and try to sneak out. I have a very analytical mind and studying mysticism is about as helpful as studying a finger pointing at the moon.

Seze Mune

#17
Quote from: Yawne Zize'ite on June 19, 2012, 11:04:26 AM
*looks up at the post above*

This is when I start backing away slowly and try to sneak out. I have a very analytical mind and studying mysticism is about as helpful as studying a finger pointing at the moon.

Exactly!

Which is why the Na'vi ability of tsaheyl si is so integral and important to their culture and why Tsu'tey would choose to die rather than live without that ability.  Tsaheyl si would give one the visceral and mental ability to almost completely understand another's experience of the world through their own eyes without the necessity for words.  Perhaps this is why the Na'vi would never have developed a written language. Didn't need one.  

A blind Na'vi could fly an ikran with tsaheyl si.

And unless a Sky Person also had an avatar, s/he could never understand the Na'vi experience.  Imho, the worldview of the Na'vi isn't translatable to the worldview of the sawtute.  But that's just one person's opinion.  Your mileage may vary.  ;)

{Note to self: Cuando la boca está cerrada, las moscas no entrar. Läpu fnu!}

Niri Te

Ditto Seze Mune, Ditto. BTW, There are many more examples of God's explanation of "self", either in BOTH genders, or demonstrating Femininity in the Bible. These could NOT be stricken from the Canon without eliminating whole Chapters, so they were left in by those who decided the form of the Bible.
If God created "man" in HIS own image, and the being that was created in God's own image HAS an "X" chromosome, than God, like a male "man", (Remember, "Male and Female created HE him), like the God who created him. It is odd, (perhaps "telling"), that you can have XX, XY, XXY, and a slew of other weird combinations, but NONE that I have ever seen written of have no "X" Chromosome, while not having a "Y" chromosome, (that which makes "male"), in NO problem at all. God is equally FEMALE, and soon the days of the MCP's will be OVER.
Tokx alu tawtute, Tirea Le Na'vi

Ateyo Te Syaksyuk

#19
It is sad but true that chauvanists have rewritten the Bible.  It gives me comfort that some lines where NOT stricken, for example,  Where God says to Job: "From whose womb were the glaciers born?"  Niri Te and I study our Bible and our Tenakh (Old Testament) together. Needless to say, we do not fit well into mainstream religion. (But neither did Jesus!)
In my story, I have created a character named Mendelson. A devout Jew, ex RDA surgeon who constantly seeks the Creator each morning.  In my story his human tokx keels over from a massive coronary yet Ewya preserves his Uniltìrantokx. Mendelson,(Mendllzong)prays Kaddish over his Jewish form, descends into his grave, covers his OWN human tokx with his prayer shawl and comes out of the grave a NEW MAN.
(So I could be stoned for heresy by both Christians and Jews!)
Ah, well.  Only the Creator knows that I honor Him/Her.
and what is the trouble? God created mankind in His own Image.  Male and female he created them.
Therefore God MUST be male/female.  HOW NOT?!
  Could he literally be male or female?  That would be silly! God is spirit and spirit is all that matters.  This is perplexing onlyfor those who do not SEE.