A

Mercy plus Perceiver 107

as Someone who is „sitting‟ on a throne. Art and religion themselves are
related. Many religions use static art as an aid in worshipping a static God.
The Greek Stoic philosophers took this idea of static religion and
carried it to its logical extreme. If perfection was a passive state, then God
had to be immovable, since any shift would take Him away from His state
of perfection. Changing matter became evil, by definition, since anything
which moved obviously did not stay within a perfect place.
The problem with static objects is that they are „dead.‟ An object just
sits there; it does nothing; it is not alive. When a body does not move or
breathe, we conclude that it is a corpse and we bury it. I suggest that the
same principle appears to apply to systems of belief. When they become
static, they also „die.‟
I suggest that we have stumbled across something which is quite
significant. Remember that the goal of this book is not just to understand
the mind. Rather, we want to build an understanding which can guide us in
programming the mind. Therefore, when we come up with a relationship
involving „static lack of motion‟ and „death,‟ we need to examine the topic
further. So, let us look at the interaction between time, movement and life.
I suggest that we will discover insights which are not found within the
average book or news magazine, even if the name claims a connection with
time or life.