If you immediatley know the candle light is fire....

[wiseowl777]

A meal cooked a long time ago...is cold and unpleasant.

-these guys musta never had cold pizza, cause sometimes its just as satisfying and pleasant...

[~Dave]

If you do not immediately know that Stargate SG1 is a fictional series, your brain was fried long ago. LOL!

~Dave

[Constanza]

If you do not immediately know that Stargate SG1 is a fictional series, your brain was fried long ago. LOL!

~Dave

[Gibsnag]

To quote the brilliant Terry Pratchett:

"In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: "Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?" Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!" And Clodpool went away, satisfied."

-Thief of Time

[RM_2000_A]

If you do not immediately know that Stargate SG1 is a fictional series, your brain was fried long ago. LOL!

~Dave

[AvatarIII]

i think it means that you don't know anything unless you've experimented with it, therefore if you immediately know what something is then you must have already used that knowledge before,
"If you immediatley know the candle light is fire then the meal was cooked along time ago"
is basically
"if you immediately recognise candle light as fire, you must have seen fire before"
or as a metaphor for
"if you know what ascension is you must have ascended before"
also could be worded as
"you can't know what ascension is until you have done it"

[Zatnikitelman]

i think it means that you don't know anything unless you've experimented with it, therefore if you immediately know what something is then you must have already used that knowledge before,
"If you immediatley know the candle light is fire then the meal was cooked along time ago"
is basically
"if you immediately recognise candle light as fire, you must have seen fire before"
or as a metaphor for
"if you know what ascension is you must have ascended before"
also could be worded as
"you can't know what ascension is until you have done it"

Darn, you beat me to it. I saw Avalon again tonight and came to the same conclusion. But of course, if it truly did relate to a Buddhist story about searching for fire with candle light, then the least I can do is relate our conclusion to that.
Basically, the guy searching for fire either had no knowledge, or forgot that the candlelight was fire so instead of knowing what it was and immediately recognizing what it could be used for, he was unenlightened enough to not use it.

[GateDragon]

If you immediately know blow out the candle the dinner went cold a long time ago

[ParadoxRealities]

"If you immediatley know the candle light is fire then the meal was cooked along time ago"

Okkkkkkkkkkkk

I have thought about this over and over and although I do have a few theories about what Oma Desala meant by this i'm not totally convincing myself.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on what Oma meant by this or what she was trying to get Daniel to think about when she said this?

Mechanisms cannot be apparent until their effects are. This may seem odd, but consider that, even if you knew a candle's light was fire, you would not know what fire was without seeing it cook something (or burn, etc).

[captain jake]

My theory is that it doesn't mean any one thing, it is a statement that puts the mind into a state of openness. Oma would say it in order to open the mind of the one she is trying to help ascend. That is why RepliCarter couldn't figure it out, it isn't a puzzle it's a tool.

[NoobTau'ri]

Does anyone else have any thoughts on what Oma meant by this or what she was trying to get Daniel to think about when she said this?

It doesen't mean anything. It is complete crap. Even though I'm an atheist, I am a student of Oriental esoteric teachings - in a dry scholarly way -, and that sentence is not even something an avatar would say, or a religious leader. It is just meaningless semantic babbling with no meaning whatsoever, and the reason why the writers put it there is just because it sounds so convoluted that it would probably make the fans think it is some jewel of wisdom so profound that only an ascended(superior) being could understand it. The end.

[AvatarIII]

It doesen't mean anything. It is complete crap. Even though I'm an atheist, I am a student of Oriental esoteric teachings - in a dry scholarly way -, and that sentence is not even something an avatar would say, or a religious leader. It is just meaningless semantic babbling with no meaning whatsoever, and the reason why the writers put it there is just because it sounds so convoluted that it would probably make the fans think it is some jewel of wisdom so profound that only an ascended(superior) being could understand it. The end.

perhaps it was an experiment by the writer, in finding meaning within nonsense?

[comment]

The whole ascension process seems to be esoteric and Asian... tantamount to Enlightenment or even Transubstantiation. But in my opinion, if we consider what the Ascended once were and look at some of the big thinkers in modern times, then we get an even more interesting interpretation of the aphorism.

Consider the Ancients: human, but more than human. Knowledge, experience, technology... and ethics to boot, all more seemingly human than humans themselves are.

Consider the Ascended: such paragons of human quality that they really aren't human anymore.

"If you immediately know the candle light is fire" implies you could.. or could not. The candle could be understood, or a mystery. This is classic Heidegger, considered one of the biggest and most meaningful existentialists in modern times... if not one of the most difficult to read...

Under Heidegger's theory, a tool can be present-to-hand, or not quite understood and thus something we FOCUS on and try to figure out. It can also be ready-to-hand, or understood and useful.. something we don't even THINK about, we just use it. Consider how we've seen different technologies that, in some hands, are used as easily as we humans would use a hammer. The stargate itself, for instance, started as a mystery: it was present-to-hand, and had to be figured out. So, if you realize the candle light is fire, you understand the candle so well that its already part of you. If you understand ascension well enough, it doesn't require thought.

Heidegger's concept of Dasein is a little more lofty and easily chocked up to the trend for philosophic writings to be obscure in order to appear complicated to the layman, and, thus, as serious as science would be. In Stargate, ascension is certainly no less mysterious to us than Ori technology was, but for the latter, Dr. Carter can adorn complications on it... the former, we're left with the strange words of Oma and the other Ascended.

Anyway, Dasein is concerned with "being human" versus "human being," an individual versus an ideal. The ascended move beyond the physical and enter a self-awareness that even Dr. Jackson did not immediately have. I can't really give any accurate paraphrasing beyond that, but suffice it to say the Ascended as they exist fit very neatly into Heidegger's ideology.

This brings us to the second half of the quote: "Then the meal was already cooked a long time ago." What does this mean?

One option is that the meal is spoiled. That, if the experience is already experienced, the journey is no longer an exploration. This could be a gentle admonishment for us to not rush consideration of the mysteries, a reminder to respect mysteries of mind and being as much as Stargate does technology and science, or other such thing. In other words: "this is not a light-switch, but it is a yes/no situation."

The other is a more trendy, Vajrayana buddhist type appeal. The phrase becomes a koan, a call to realize that perhaps you are ALREADY ascended, that the meal was already cooked if you already knew the light was fire. Ascending becomes a lightning bolt of existence, a transformation that divides one's life into two categories: before... and after.

Another interpretation comes from considering why a meal would be cooked in the first place. A meal is cooked in order to be eaten. It is sustenance, a process of living, perhaps even, if taken existentially. If the meal was cooked a long time ago... we should hurry up and eat it before it goes bad! Not to think just for the sake of thought... to cook just for the sake of cooking... but to give direction. In this sense, the phrase is a focus and gives direction. Its not a lightning bolt, and its not a warning... it is a reminder, and a guide, and seems to be more in-line with the other ways the Ascended involved themselves with the corporeal. It doesn't say what do to or how to do it... but why to do it and when you know you're finished.

Just my two cents. Read too much, and you tend to wind up writing too much, too.

[Aer'ki]

People this is what it means-

Some things require a process in order to reach the end. You cannot skip ahead or attain the end without going through that process.

If you immediately know the candle light is fire is referencing your current position at the end of that process, the culmination.

...then the meal was cooked a long time ago. Means that you must have already gone through the process if you are currently at the end of the sequence.

Take learning a new skill. It takes time to learn, and is a step by step process. If someone comes up and says they got it in just thirty seconds of trying, then you know they're lying. Either they don't get it, or they went through the learning process prior to now and are only pretending to 'get it' immediately.

If you're counting to 10,000 and you say you're on 9,900 then that means you started at 1 and went through all the other numbers up to 9,900. Whereas some smart nosed brat will just say, 1, 2, 3,... 10,000.

You can't skip to the end. That's what the quote means.

[Admiral Mappalazarou]

But I don't think the candlelight is fire. I think it's electronic.

1+ to the Cantina. *flees thread*