 163. Terminology |
PLEASURE AND PAIN: These are a form of controlling conditions. With too much pain one seeks pleasure. If one indulges in pleasure, one creates pain again. One begins to develop intelligence by the alternating cycles of pain and pleasure. One learns to control the body which is the foundation for spiritual matters.
PLEASURE PRINCIPLE: In Freudian psychology, the idea that all people from birth pursue pleasurable experience in the form of physical and emotional gratification.
PLURALISM: The belief that the world is made up of lots of separate, independent things.
POLIS: The Greek word for city-state. Athens was a city-state. The words "politics" comes from polis.
POSTMODERNISM: The current state of philosophy falls under the label of Postmodernism. Perhaps future generations will have another name for this era.
PRAGMATISM: Philosophy founded by C.S. Peirce and William James that says the meaning of anything depends on its practical effects.
PRANIC: The Sanskrit work "prana" literally means "life-energy." It generally refers to the life-energy animating all beings and pervading everything in conditional Nature. In the human body-mind, circulation of this universal life-energy is associated with the heartbeat and the cycles of the breath. In esoteric Yogic Teachings, prana is also a specific technical name for one of a number of forms of etheric energy that functionally sustain the bodily being. The finite pranic energies that sustain individual beings are only conditional, localized, and temporary phenomena of the realm of cosmic Nature.
PREDESTINATION: The belief that your fate is determined before you are born, and nothing you do in this life will make a difference as to whether you go to Heaven or Hell. The Calvinist belief that God has determined ahead of time whether you will go to heaven or hell.
PREMISE: A statement given as a reason for an argument's conclusion.
PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS: The group of philosophers, also called Monists, who offered theories that the nature of reality was composed of one thing (water, air, fire, numbers, and so on).
PROPOSITIONS: In analytic philosophy, statements that may be asserted, whether or not they are asserted and whether or not they are true.
PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC: According to Weber's sociology, the tendency among Protestants to work hard and lead thrifty lives. This work ethic contributed to the development of capitalism.
PSYCHOMETRY: The ability to touch or hold an object and receive mental pictures of what this object has been through in its life.
PURE LAND: A metaphorical expression for the world of Truth and Purity revealed in enlightenment. (same as holy land)
PURGATORY: Not heaven or hell. It is a temporary place you stay in between life times in the physical and decide what you did wrong in the physical life and how to overcome it in the next incarnation into the physical world again. When one finally evolves enough and achieves enlightenment, etc. one is not reborn into the physical world again.
