Spiritual Forum

The quote is from Ex 20.

It refers to the phenomenon of original and image, or of reality and shadow.

1. There is a difference between reality and image. 

I´ll leave it to you finding for yourself what reality means, but mind the difference to reality: an image of reality is not reality itself.

2. Images come around in many forms and shapes. Sometimes images have been also called shadows. If you look at shadows on the wall, you actually see 2-dimesional figures of 3-dimensional things (like a human or a table). Thus a shadow is kind of image.

3. We get mostly our knowledge by using images or shadows displayed in 2-dimensional forms: printed papers and tv screens. Thus we use images to get world and life knowledge. 2-dimensional displays replace real life encounter and looking into real eyes.

4. By using many hours a day images and shadows understanding world and life, we have come to accept image and shadow versions of world and live, which are in fact no real versions.

5. This is the deep reason mathematics - which is actually an image science - has only descriptive character: live itself is always more than every math could cover. And so is language - in life there is always more than every language could express.

6. Which leads to the sense of keeping quiet. Silence is not only an absense of language, but also transcending language in some ways.

7. Encountering real life - instead of dealing with images and shadows preliminarily - challenges real exposing of the encountering subject: to all senses even to the point of possible refusal. Real humans can suck and hurt.

8. Real life encountering and exposure is always both refreshing and dangerous. Is that a main reason humans prefer image and shadow existences? Real human can really bite while image existences don´t.

9. Even enhanced and perfected image and shadow appearences can never replace real life happenings.

10. The western world has become a society of image and shadow lovers. Humans are treated and considered  as things and article, which means, as objects rather than living subjects.