The Eternal Return

[Psychonaut]

The heaviest burden. What if a demon crept after you one day or night in your loneliest solitude and said to you: `This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you, and everything in the same series and sequence... The eternal hour-glass of existence will be turned again and again--and you with it, you dust of dust!'--Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you experienced a tremendous moment in which you answered him: `You are a god and never did I hear anything more divine!' If this thought gained power over you it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you; the question in all and everything: `do you want this again and again, times without number?' would lie as the heaviest burden upon your actions. Or how well disposed towards yourself and towards life would you have to become to have no greater desire than for this ultimate eternal sanction and seal?
-Nietzsche, The Gay Science

What do you think of this idea of the Eternal Return? To me it seems to be a very useful myth in that it forces us to confront our lives and judge whether it is truly being lived. It is a myth that affirms life and implores us to live for the sake of this life, not some imagined afterlife. What say ye?

[Beorn]

My life has many, many, many moments in life that to this day can resort me to tears of any emotion you care to imagine, but I would not face any demon without a full heart and without a full interest as the spirit that awaits me has ordained that this is my worth; this is my life. If I cannot handle it or cannot fathom that this is my destiny and only esoterical chance within the great scheme of what could and couldn't be, then tough!!!

My life is full of more love and hope than it has been of hate and despair. Something which the younger of my kind could do with hearing more often then some will allow.

The Demons of my life; of any life can go suck a fat one as they have no control; no discernible hold with which to torment me upon my arrival to the next world.

As hard as they wish to try, my entrance into the next world is full of hope, love and empathy. No damned emotional traits to drag me or my own down.

[Ulf]

Myth my good sir? I object.

I don't know if I feel comfortable doing this because I'm not used to many people reading my writing. I wrote this for a college philosophy class a few years ago. I don't like how it's written because I feel I've grown past it. I still believe what I've written I think maybe I could improve on it, but don't have the willpower currently. It is short because we needed to write a journal of articles and not one single paper. So here it is :embarrassed :embarrassed I may regret this in the sober morning...


It is called Eternal Recurrence, or the Eternal Return. This idea isn’t explicitly Nietzsche’s, Heinrich Heine also wrote about the eternal return in his works of philosophy. Basically Nietzsche states that we will live this life over and over for the rest of time. He supports his idea by stating that if the universe is finite in size and there is a finite amount of matter in the universe, then over time, which is infinite, this collection of matter will eventually repeat itself and I will be here writing this article and you reading it again, and so on until the end of time.

To explain it in more simple terms imagine the universe like a chess board. The pieces on the chess board are representations of the matter of the universe, planets, stars, people, mountains, everything that has substance. If that game of chess were to be played for all of infinite time, eventually the same game would be played over again, the same order of things would be repeated. This is my explanation of how Nietzsche posited how the eternal return works.

This is only my interpretation of his thoughts, but it is very profound to me. Recently some scientists have theorized that the universe is in a constant state of expansion and contraction. They theorize that the universe is around 1 trillion years old, far greater than the previous number of 14-16 billion years. Physicists theorize that ‘the big bang’ was merely one of many big bangs. That the universe will continue to expand and once the rate of expansion slows down below, and due to, the pull of gravity the galaxies will start to move back towards each other, eventually compressing back into a giant mass until they once again explode under the pressure.

This current scientific theory ties into my interpretation of the eternal return. This one expansion may be looked at as one of the games of chess. Eventually all the combinations of chess pieces (energy and matter) will have been used previously, and there will be no choice but to repeat a previous played game.

This idea had many implications for Nietzsche’s views on life. He felt that this was the reason we should try and live our lives as best we can, to have as much fun as possible and to be generally good natured, happy people, because who would want to live their life over and over constantly being unhappy through out eternity? Regardless of whether any of this is true, Nietzsche’s message speaks to me in a way nothing else has ever done before. I try to be as easy going and happy as I can, I try not to regret anything I do, because I cannot change what has already passed but I try and learn from mistakes and make myself a better person so that I may be able to look back on my life and say that it was a good one and that I would gladly live it over again if given the chance.
Ultimately the theory of eternal return has had a great impact on my life. It is probably a contributing factor to why I view a lot of things as mundane and tedious. I want to do something great eventually, but getting to that one act of greatness doesn’t seem worth it. I would prefer that I could live on my own and do my own thing, being master of my own life and destiny. Alas, today’s society doesn’t much allow for that as I can’t accomplish anything with out vast amounts of education which to me seems quite useless.

The eternal return isn’t a reason to go out and party all the time, and it is no excuse for an all play-no work lifestyle. It is about having a life worth living, a life you can be proud of, of having great accomplishments and overcoming great adversity. It’s about loving the simple things and being true to yourself and not hiding who you are, because you cheat yourself and those around you if you hide your true self from the world.

A quote from The Will To Power:

If the world may be thought of as a certain definite quantity of force and as a certain definite number of centers of force--and every other representation remains indefinite and therefore useless--it follows that, in the great dice game of existence, it must pass through a calculable number of combinations. In infinite time, every possible combination would at some time or another be realized; more: it would be realized an infinite number of times. And since between every combination and its next recurrence all other possible combinations would have to take place, and each of these combinations conditions the entire sequence of combinations in the same series, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the world as a circular movement that has already repeated itself infinitely often and plays its game in infinitum.

[Psychonaut]

Myth my good sir? I object.

First off, thanks for sharing an essay. I'm far too embarrassed of my thoughts at eighteen to share them now. :D

However, in even Nietzsche's day the clockwork universe of Newton was being disproven. While there is certainly a possibility that the end of this universe will be a big crunch followed by another big bang, both the uncertainly principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle) and the existence of quantum foam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam) render it an impossibility for the same universe to arise twice. Not that this negates the value of the Eternal Return at all. On the contrary, I see it as one of the greatest myths (in the good sense of the word ;))of the modern era.

[Ulf]

Indeed. But also I feel there is something involving deja vu with the Eternal Return. I'm tired now, I'll come back to this tomorrow hopefully. :thumb001:

[Aemma]

I'm not so sure that I myself fully accept the notion of the Eternal Return. Absolutely it is the best way of viewing the flow of life as opposed to embracing a linear model, given the choice between the two. But there's more to the cycle in my opinion in that the cycle though retaken is never repeated per se but mimicked at best. Just as there is not any one snowflake that is the same, no one moment can be repeated nor relived. I tend to see the 'cycle of life' as a spiral, (or perhaps a series of knotwork on a three-dimensional plane??) instead of a fully enclosed two-dimensional circle. The circle encompasses a certain finiteness in its limited dynamism for me that I don't believe aptly symbolises Life, either in this dimension or any other.


Ack, you're going to make me re-read Eliade aren't ya?! Jeepers...it's been like 20 years!! :D

Ok, I have him handy. Seems I got some brushing up to do. :D

Some minor thoughts from me for now...

Cheers!...Aemma

[Psychonaut]

I'm not so sure that I myself fully accept the notion of the Eternal Return. Absolutely it is the best way of viewing the flow of life as opposed to embracing a linear model, given the choice between the two. But there's more to the cycle in my opinion in that the cycle though retaken is never repeated per se but mimicked at best. Just as there is not any one snowflake that is the same, no one moment can be repeated nor relived. I tend to see the 'cycle of life' as a spiral, (or perhaps a series of knotwork on a three-dimensional plane??) instead of a fully enclosed two-dimensional circle. The circle encompasses a certain finiteness in its limited dynamism for me that I don't believe aptly symbolises Life, either in this dimension or any other.

More importantly than any cosmological implications are the behavioral ramifications. Whether or not the model is true, do you think it to be a useful construct in evaluating the way your life is lived?



Ack, you're going to make me re-read Eliade aren't ya?! Jeepers...it's been like 20 years!! :D

You can never read Eliade too many times :D

[Aemma]

More importantly than any cosmological implications are the behavioral ramifications. Whether or not the model is true, do you think it to be a useful construct in evaluating the way your life is lived?

Hmm I'll have to be like Ulf here and come back to this question tomorrow. Too much wine and not enough neurons firing at peak capacity if you know what I mean! :D



You can never read Eliade too many times :D

I suppose not, though I wish I could remember more from then. All that reading...and now I have to do it allllllll over again! :eek:

:D...Aemma

[Oresai]

I was raised with the notion of moving on to other states of being, other realms of existence. Both of the root cultures of my belief system, Celtic and Scandinavian, have the notion of afterlives, of other states of being, not especially of return and repetition.
Over time, I`ve evolved my own theory, usually thought of as slightly crazy to others, but what the Hel. ;)
I believe that when this body we wear now expires, our souls get what our core beliefs provide for us.
For instance, I believe there are many `converted` heathens, once xtians, who claim to have a heathen mindset, live a heathen life, with heathen beliefs. But watch them....crisis hits and one of the first things they do is pray to their xtian god "Oh, please fix this for me, I`ll never do anything wrong again!"
No? Haven`t you seen that? I have. :) And it shows me that their core deep beliefs are not their surface ones.
So perhaps, when we shift from this place, we are taken what our core recognises as our own personal truths. For me, that would be one of two places....either a place in Frigg`s realm or Niflheim, take your pick :D
or Tir na`nOg, the Celtic Land of Youth.
I feel privileged never to have been tainted by xtianity because from what I have read of their afterlife, I`d find it boring or very hot.....

I think our souls are wise enough to provide us with a familiar, comforting sight and experience in order to facilitate the passage from one realm to the other.
Interesting, that once Alastair Crowley, known for his occult interests, had his own dark night of the soul because he believed he was shown a vision of his afterlife, and it was his own particular hell. His own core beliefs....
And you`d think then, that it should be so easy as to choose the nicest, prettiest, most appealing afterlife myth and just force yourself to believe in that. But have you noticed, true belief can`t ever be forced upon your soul? :)
I believe in the Eternal soul. And that it journeys through realms we can only barely conceive of. I do NOT believe we live only to suffer, or to `learn lesson`. I think life is for life`s own sake..we exist, and though we strive for higher things, well...I don`t think what we do or learn prohibits us from moving onto those other places.
And that the concept of responsibility over our behaviour in life is set in place by other men, speaking on behalf of gods that may or may not have condoned such speech, to create order in life.
Long winded way of saying, no, I don`t believe in Eternal return but in Eternal progress, the Eternal Journey, with different, yet familiar destinations.
So beware of what you believe in, in your heart of hearts, hee ;)
(and, I do feel sorry for Atheists ;) )

In the end, I also think we all reside each, in the same place. Though, it simply wears different faces for us all, depending upon those core beliefs. If that makes sense.

[Oresai]

Oh, forgot to add..the one abiding thing that has made me consciously aware of how my life should be lived according to my own desires and ethical values, has been in almost dying twice. Mortality gives one a true sense of the value of life, I find. :)

[Ulf]

I have a lot of déjà vu. 4 or 5 times a month. Often when déjà vu occurs for me I'll remember having dreamed it. Often I tell my wife about those dreams if I remember them. Several months later I'll usually have déjà vu in which I'm doing exactly what I dreamed. Most times it's mundane things in life, but just last night I had déjà vu while sitting on the sofa with my dog and wife.

My opinion is that déjà vu is some sort of memory of your last life. I do feel we do this life ad infinitum, but each time it is different, if only slightly. Those moments of déjà vu could be moments in your past life that are exactly the same as now, and despite never having done or been around where your déjà vu occurs you seem to be remembering it as it happens.

I'd love some input on my 'theory' it's just something I've come up with to help myself explain why I always get déjà vu. Some people say they almost never have it. Maybe I just have a messed up brain. :crazy:

[Psychonaut]

I'd love some input on my 'theory' it's just something I've come up with to help myself explain why I always get déjà vu. Some people say they almost never have it. Maybe I just have a messed up brain. :crazy:

I've experienced severe déjà vu a few times in my life, but it was always during a semi-lucid dream, never during a fully lucid dream or during waking life. Each time I was more confused and frazzled than anything else. :confused:

[Ulf]

I've experienced severe déjà vu a few times in my life, but it was always during a semi-lucid dream, never during a fully lucid dream or during waking life. Each time I was more confused and frazzled than anything else. :confused:

I'll dream about say, going to the store with my wife. I'll go to the store 5 or 6 times with my wife and no déjà vu, but it seems eventually that all events sync up to how my dream was on, say, the 7th time. It will be exactly how I dreamed it and usually lasts for ~30 seconds. I just go about my business but saying "déjà vu, déjà vu...". :confused: Which I don't do in my dream but doesn't remove me from the feeling.

All the dreams I have are during normal sleep, I don't meditate or lucid dream. Although my wife wishes I would, but that's for another thread I suppose...

Also: The weirdest place I had déjà vu was in a noodle shop in Hong Kong... wtf

[Revenant]

With the dejavu, I get like a sea sickness. It's something I really don't like. I don't get it more than a few times a year though.


What do you think of this idea of the Eternal Return? To me it seems to be a very useful myth in that it forces us to confront our lives and judge whether it is truly being lived. It is a myth that affirms life and implores us to live for the sake of this life, not some imagined afterlife. What say ye?

I'd say you're correct Psyc, it's certainly thought provoking and more than likely that's the way it was intended. To trigger introspection.

Still makes me wonder, Life isn't so black and white with many circumstances beyond control. Some people have quite nasty things happen to them and it isn't their fault. I wonder if he factored those people into this idea of his. I haven't read much Nietzsche, so there could be a obvious answer to this, something I'm missing here.

[Oresai]

I always wondered if deja vu wasn`t simply an awareness of the `illusion` of time?
Meaning, imagine if we could step outside time, and look in at our existence.....it would be encapsulated in a bubble of what we call `time`, whole, start to finish, every single moment.
But say for sanity`s sake, we never get to view life that way. :D
However, maybe there`s a tiny part of our awareness which pokes out feelers, curious, enquiring, and touches briefly the `overview` we would see from that outside view?
And also aware that it may destroy our minds, our sanity, to have total awareness and clarity of vision, it retracts in an instant, snapping back into us so that we become aware of it as deja vu, because we have seen, outside of time, the whole of our life...and as the feeler comes back to the point it ventured out, it resonates with what it touched and thus gives us the impression of been there, done that....

okies...making little sense and probably sounding very much like a bad sci fi pulp novel. :D
I do know what I mean though. ;) And get deja vu an awful lot.

[Lyfing]

I think the Eternal Return can be seen from several different perspectives. On an individual, societal, and metaphysical level it can be looked at.

As individuals where “life itself is Will to Power” we are responsible for making our own sandwiches and eating them as well. If we don’t like the one we are eating then we make another one that tastes better and is easier for us to swallow. There is an inherit creative quality. What this “myth” can activate in us is a notion of “No Regrets” where if everything hadn’t been exactly like it was we would not be exactly who we are and that to be otherwise would be a shame as it is great to be who we are. ( The Norns decree )

As individuals in a society it is us who create it. Not only did Nietzsche focus on the Superman, but also a society of Supermen. He said “the task is to breed an animal able to keep promises.” I think this is a very important notion that ties right in with Eternal Return and amplifies it to this next level of society. A society eternally returning because of the creative quality in its oaths continually kept. You know, everyone swears by this just like in the beginning was the word. ( Wyrd )

Then there is the metaphysical notion of whether or not if we roll the dice we will eventually roll the same thing. Just because it can only be “as if” doesn’t mean we aren’t closer ( to our truth ) than we think. Here I am reminded of Joseph Campbell’s words..


Kant, in his Prolegomena to Every Future System of Meta-*
physics, states very carefully that all our thinking about final things*
can be only by way of analogy. "The proper expression for our*
fallible mode of conception," he declares, "would be: that we*
imagine the world as if its being and inner character were derived*
from a supreme mind" (italics mine). 14*

Such a highly played game of "as if" frees our mind and spirit,*
on the one hand, from the presumption of theology, which pre-*
tends to know the laws of God, and, on the other, from the bond-*
age of reason, whose laws do not apply beyond the horizon of*
human experience.*

I am willing to accept the word of Kant, as representing the*
view of a considerable metaphysician. And applying it to the*
range of festival games and attitudes just reviewed from the*
mask to the consecrated host and temple image, transubstanti-*
ated worshiper and transubstantiated world I can see, or be-*
lieve I can see, that a principle of release operates throughout the*
series by way of the alchemy of an "as if"; and that, through this,*
the impact of all so-called "reality" upon the psyche is transub-*
stantiated. The play state and the rapturous seizures sometimes*
deriving from it represent, therefore, a step rather toward than*
away from the ineluctable truth; and belief acquiescence in a*
belief that is not quite belief is the first step toward the deep-*
ened participation that the festival affords in that general will to*
life which, in its metaphysical aspect, is antecedent to, and the*
creator of, all life's laws.*

Primitive Mythology

Anyhow..I hope that made some sense..*

...

When it comes to the emphasis being on this life..I do know that I have this life and I do not know if I will live any other after this one. I'm going with that.

Later,
-Lyfing

[Psychonaut]

Still makes me wonder, Life isn't so black and white with many circumstances beyond control. Some people have quite nasty things happen to them and it isn't their fault. I wonder if he factored those people into this idea of his. I haven't read much Nietzsche, so there could be a obvious answer to this, something I'm missing here.

I think that it's less geared towards interpreting events that are out of our control and more about defining our lives purposefully through the choices that we can make.

[Oresai]

think that it's less geared towards interpreting events that are out of our control and more about defining our lives purposefully through the choices that we can make.

Do you ever wonder about Fate and Free Will? Most folks tend to think of it as, either/or. But why not a mixture of both? There ARE certain inevitables in life...we are born, and we will die...and I think most folks, looking back at intense or huge events in their lives may even see that there was no way they could be avoided.
I tend to the notion, that there are certain life events we cannot avoid...Fate..our destinies bring us to them regardless of what we would want. These will be the life changing events, the often awesome things which change forever the way we think, act or which impact on us so massively, they imprint on the rest of our lives til the end. The serious, heavy stuff. ;) :)
Our free will lies, I believe in the mundane, but not so lightly, for each choice we make, though it might still direct us to the Fate events, dictates the experiences we perceive and go through for much of our lives.
We can surely choose to approach life with a certain level of ethics and values, and choose for example, to stubbornly dig our heels in about life and issues, which then has the knock on effect of snarling knots in the skein of our wyrd, or we can use our instinct and intellect to spy out the landscape and take the most profitable route.
I like to see life precisely as the Norns woven tapestry...they might have the Fate issues already set into the pattern, but we`re free to add the colour, the richness of the thread, and yes, even the knots. :)

[Psychonaut]

Do you ever wonder about Fate and Free Will?

I certainly do, so much, in fact, that I started a new thread about it right here (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=10494). ;)

[HawkR]

I have a theory about these so called dimensions and stuff, what if there's alot of different dimensions, it's the future, the present and the past, all at the same time, lying on top of eachothers, at the side of eachothers, inside eachothers. And as these are all at the same time, there's a reason why we get "deja vu" and stuff. Since we live right now both in 5 minutes and for 5 minutes ago. Understand?

[TheGreatest]

When I was younger, I frequently got the feeling of Deja Vu and could predict the near future.
I think the human mind has a great untapped potential. In the distant future I think once we've taken care of the daily grind, that we could all become spiritual and higher-paned like Siener van Rensburg.

[HawkR]

I don't have the time to read about Seiner now, unfortunally, but I'll do it later today:)


But if you take my theory with everything happening at the same time just in different dimensions, then it might be plausible to "slip" into other dimensions during sleep, getting high and stuff like that. Or the most used during the times, a trance.

[Aemma]

Excellent thread folks...all very thought-provoking posts.

I agree with most of the theories/notions posited I should firstly state. Deja vu is a very real phenomenon and mine have only ever happened in a fully waking state. I usually interpret these events, which I experience on an occasional basis, as a momentary fully conscious sense of the synchronisation of past, present and future, as though the concept of Time has been at the very least suspended if not momentarily made non-existent. I don't know how else to phrase it really. My experience of self momentarily clicks in the Greater Experience of Self (if any of this makes sense). Additionally, my own deja vu experiences are purely in the domain of the mundane: a conversation I remember having had once before; knowing in my bones that I have sat in the same chair and looked out upon the same landscape once upon a time. And all of my deja vus have been personal; they are clearly me as an agent of action (be that passive or not) within my own perception of my surroundings. I have never had experiences where I have not been involved in the deja vu; I have never been a third party in these experiences.

And as such, my philosophy about this type of experience leads me to agree very much with the same lines of thought as Hawkr's, this being that Time may be considered as a constant along many different dimensions, the latter which are not or cannot always be known, experienced or understood by us. In essence this line of thinking even negates the concept of linear Time (as we know it) and instead makes us aware that Time is a relative entity which may or may not exist in other areas of the multiverse.

To be sure, a heathen's concept of Time is most often different than a non-heathen's: the former believes in Time's circularity while the latter believes in Time's linearity. Thus the concept of Eternal Return is more in keeping with a heathen worldview of course.

As for the Eternal Return, Eliade reminds us that " the life of archaic [heathen] man...does not bear the burden of time, does not record time's irreversibility; in other words, completely ignores what is especially characteristic and decisive in a consciousness of time....[Instead] the primitive lives in a continual present." (Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 1954, p. 86). I think it is this last part that is most important when thinking about our behaviour and the eternal return: we are our present deeds which eventually become past but since they live on in memory (ancestral/collective/individual), they are still forever in the here-and-now in the world of the heathen.

I'll leave things at that for now. I want to come back to this eventually, but have to end it here for now. :)

Cheers for now!...Aemma

[Ville]

What do you think of this idea of the Eternal Return? To me it seems to be a very useful myth in that it forces us to confront our lives and judge whether it is truly being lived. It is a myth that affirms life and implores us to live for the sake of this life, not some imagined afterlife. What say ye?

It is interesting that some great pieces of literature too may act as the Nietzsche’s demon above and cause the moments of ultimate existential reflection.

We re-discover the Uniqueness of Life, the opportunity to face the Mystery of Existence; we suddenly understand what God really meant when He gave us this chance.

I think our evolutionary drive towards technological re-definition of human is, in part, driven by subconscious fear of our downfall as species. That is to say: we fear the existential state that provides no simple answers to our post-animal consciousness hence we are driven to re-engineer ourselves into a new species with new consciousness.

[Logan]

More Ville:thumb001:, and rather less Nietzsche.;)



Some need a wakeup, and it becomes a bit of philosophical romantisim. A profound thought to some. I doubt the ancients had much time for such ruminations.
http://lib.lbcc.edu/handouts/images/Vikings/vikings3.jpg

[arcticwolf]

Ah the recycling process again? Overwhelming majority can't even imagine or is aware of that the thinking process as useful as it is for understanding duality, may not be useful at all for understanding the ultimate. You can't use sledge hammer to build a watch. ;) Perpetual recycling is a fact and we can see it day in and day out. Everything is recycled, one way or another. How about the law the underlies all other laws, cause and effect? Let's forget about the Big Ghost in the Sky with a plan for a while, let's take responsibility for our own plight. How about taking responsibility for our own destiny in the ultimate sense? Maybe there is a way to know, not believe but know what reality is really like. The point is why wonder when one can know for sure? I know you are not sure that you can know for sure, but have you tried? You are limited only if you think you are, mind has no limits. But on the other hand, you can play and work yourself to death, and run from the real questions, you'll be back, don't worry you'll get another chance at some point to screw it all up again. Good luck! :D