Religion & Physics. XXIc.

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
61

Hello Nick:
I am writing this post strickly for you, for I doubt anyone could stomach such length.

— This has always been interesting to me. Simone Weil also helps here with two observations that appear contradictory until placed into a higher perspective.
Quote:
Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being. Simone weil The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit. Simone Weil

She was brilliant and respected intelligence. But as a mystic, she knew its limitations and recognized that something else would be needed, a higher experiential perspective beyond what the associative mind can provide. For this, the associative mind must submit.
O- We can agree in that the path of faith subjects our reason. Reason is like acid and destroys the beautiful tapestry of our belief. One cannot endure being a complete sceptic; a person with no faith whatsoever.

— My path presents a skeleton of the universe and it is called cosmology. This is the hypothesis. It is logical and mathematical.
O- And that might just be why it is false. Mathematics have to do with concepts, with words, with man-defined ideas. I reaches a conclusion because we accept the premises as true, but the premises are not, by that acceptance, ruled as verifiable or true. They are simply agreed upon. Same with logic. The conclusion is true in direct dependence of what I say is true. To put it differently: Man then God, not God then Man.
— My task is to experientially fill in the skeleton so that I can verify for myself if it resonates with me.
O- So you don’t need logic math etc. These are just excuses. The truth begins within you. What is the Truth asks Pilate: “Whatever you agree it to be…”

— What you call conclusion is really the beginning of the question at which point the associative mind submits to contemplation. The answer is theoretical until it is personally verified.
O- But it is conclusive in that you have one hypothesis and not 20. For example, excuse if I intrude, but have you tried Islam for size? But why even go there? Within the Christian churches already established, how many have you been a member of?
· Roman Catholic? Eastern Catholic? Oriental Orthodox? Ever been a part of the Assyrian Church of the East? Most suppose that Jesus’ Way is better reflected by the beliefs of the Ebionites. Or perhaps you have a more Protestant flair within you? Ever been an Anglican, or Lutheran, Reformed, Evangelical, Charismatic, a Presbyterian? Baptist? Well who has ever been a christian without at least onced been a Baptist…at least in America? Methodist, Nazerene, Anabaptist or Pentecostal?
· Mormon, Jehova Witness, Santero or Vodooist? That is just a portion of the names we could easily identify as hypothesises, as skeletons, and I don’t deny the validity of yours as one, but that as a scientist, you should verify the others as false or less true (?) as you verify, or seek to verifu yours as valid, as more truthful. Suppose that we have to hypothesis about the way the World is situated, one that says we live in a sun-centric system the other in a earth-centered system. One hypothesis will be found true and the other false by one specific method, be it looking at the sky with telescopes, or using complicated math, or both, the diversity of the two hypothesis will give a different result. One, based on the shared and accepted method, will better explain what has been observed and predict other observations based on the generalizations derived from the hypothesis. Much is the same with our spirituality. In your case, for example, the accepted method is a personal verification. Jerry, as you see elsewhere, would agree. But this being the method, you must only accept one hypothesis as valid and only becomes valid after the other hypothesis have been put under observation and received the same personal verification. Don’t do it just for christianity but for all others; not just for mystical versions of christianities, or Simon Weil’s ideas of christianity, but also Joseph Smith’s.

— God is perfect and self contained.
O- How do you know?
— The Bible is an amazing book. If one takes it superficially and literally it can be seen as such. Yet at the same time, there are incredible ideas under the surface if one opens up to them. I’m amazed how when I read a passage, all of a sudden I can discover something new. Yet if the end of Luke is correct, I have a long way to go.
O- I don’t know, Nick but it seems to me that if Jesus truly gave those two commandments, Love God above all things and your neighbor as yourself, we should look at the neighbor again., as it might be that our purpose as related to God is delivered by our neighbor:
See John 21:15-17, and Matthew 25:40 and Mark 9:37.
Sometimes we are amazed at what we discover behind the evident, but if we ignore the evident, then we might loose a part of the message that was no less real. In trying to find how to become one with God, one might forget that our neighbor is with whom we are intended to connect and become one, as Jesus is one with God. Evident, no? But so hard, so very hard to do… Don’t you fear sometimes that there are some things Jesus said that get ignored because they are very hard to do, if one was to do them literally, and so they look at the symbolic meaning? I am not saying that you’ve done this but that many do, and I wonder if you’ve considered this. It is my opinion that Jesus message was radical; all original ideas are. But while the message seems evident in Acts, it is absent in our day, as people have softened the radical aspect by hoisting before it the symbolic aspect.
For example, Tim LaHaye, a true literalist in almost all of what Jesus said, was once giving an interview about his new book and doing so from his very big ranch. Praising his ranch and it’s beauty, the journalist asked about that annoying command: Sell everything you own and give it to the poor. Literally, it is radical and world-changing. But this literalist instead takes it conditionally and presumes that it does not apply to him because this that or the other. Some may even see it as methaphorical, or say that the message, the command was solely for that rich young man.
Could it be that it is a general weakness in ourselves to subscribe to what is hidden and mysterious because we rather accept that than the inhuman command to be selfless? One view allows us to continue to live as if nothing really has changed, and this is why the world has looked exactly the same since Jesus. The other view is harsh, and when accepted, leads to a radical departure from what society is generally.
I hope that again you see this not as a personal attack on your views, but as an honest representation of what worries me in mystery traditions or interpretations used.

So I expect quite a number of more surprises from my readings until my understanding means something…

— Do you believe that we can have experiences initiated by a higher consciousness that make us aware of our sleep?
O- Maybe, but I have never experienced this, so I can’t say for sure.
— My own experiences have verified it for me. They have allowed me to experience inner taste and more familiar with the taste of imagination.
Of course you can say that this is nothing but more imagination. I wouldn’t normally do this but I’ll describe an experience to show why I believe it to be true for me.
Years ago when I was really in need of the experience of meaning, I began meditating on a painting by an ancestor of mine who was a very gifted artist. In fact I don’t believe he had many peers if any in seascapes; not even Britain’s celebrated genius Joseph Turner. Yes you can say misguided family pride yet I still believe what my eyes have revealed.

I could see in his art that he knew of things I needed to know so I would meditate on his art and together with my “need” created this psychological question of “why.”
O- As a skeptic, I would say that you depart from an assumption, something you take as true, imagine as true: That he knew things… all you had was a set of colors arranged creatively. Everything else you brought with you, you transferred onto the canvas. This is not truly an objection though, because the object which we need is itself subjective, so that it is by our subjective rather than our objectivity, that we arrive at truthful answers.

— Then through some strange circumstances I discovered an old book that resonated with me.
O- If it was not from Simone Weil, who else?
— I had finally discovered that there were people and ideas that actually made sense to me. Before that everything I read were always partial truths and with my chess player type mind, I could always find the flaw in it to the annoyance of all around me. Now all of a sudden I am up a against reason that exists as an organic whole allowing me to see that what always had been nonsense was natural and couldn’t be any other way. No matter what my question, it fit logically right in to a larger organic whole. During these mind blowing times I experienced qualities of emotion I did not know existed. Distinguishing between these qualities is what I now call inner taste; a different quality of “seeing” altogether.
O- I think that you might have simply tired from the constant battle and were desiring a worthy knight to whom you would submit. I myself have not found such a knight, but found the battle itself, though futile, more desirable and truthful that any truth that will bring me peace.
“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace’ they say, when there is no peace.”

— Quote:
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
Simone Weil

But detachment is without should or ought. These words only come into play from attachment. Detachment is pure non judgmental affirmation.
O- Then call it the “Personal Verification” used as measure. I propose another saying:
“Life is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can only be attained by someone who is dead.” Total detachment is impossible. It is not simply “am”. It is attached to the “I”.

— It is our state of sleep or attachment that is inhuman.
O- How do you know? You’ve judged as sleep what you sense and real what is beyond your senses. I am born with eyes, mouth, ears, hands and a nose. This characteristics describe a human. However I am not necessarly endowed to feel what you feel and sense the “reality” you claim exist. It is normal of humans to sense and become attached to what we sense. You call it a “dream”, you call it “sleep”, but only by an appeal to some inhuman quality, or should I say rather “superhuman” quality, that comes from a detachment, a detachment that paradoxically discriminates between this sleep and this real but is “detached”. Because of the measure used to discern what is real and what is sleep, this personal factor of verification, any detachment becomes in fact an illusion and attachment the only real; attachment to the self, the only real, the only bridge to reality. All becomes dream but the dream itself; all is real but reality itself.

— Being really human as before the fall is free of this unbalanced attachment to the earth from our imagination…If detachment is by definition a freedom from attachment through imagination it seems to me to be clear that it is through this freedom that we begin to experience reality. I really do not understand your objection.
O- My objection is that the detachment is actually attachment. That it is actually an imagined state that we are detached, because there is always an I that we cannot escape; a self from which we depart, the “I” goes before, as it were, before the “am”. Look at it this way, it is the theistic view that every effect must have a cause. The cause of the universe being God. The universe is not detached. It is attached to it’s cause. Same with reality. Reality, the perception of it, the declaration that what is real is real, is an effect. It is the “I” that personal verification that is the cause of the real or what passes as real. We might say that if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear her she will still make a sound. This we imagine, on this we come to an agreement; this however is no detachment. Detachment, in my opinion can only occur when there is no more “I”. This, I believe, can only occur to a dead person, or to a brain dead subject. No matter how spiritual we suppose the “I” to be, it is for all intended purposes the same as the carnal self, or regular “I”.
For us to discover what really happens when the tree falls we must enter the forest either with our imagination or in person. Thus the attachment.

Part 2:
— You are misunderstanding her. She is suggesting that it is through pain that we begin to search for something higher to get away from it. It is the motivating force.
O- But it is a force by it’s very misery. It is a force by it’s conviction that pain is the normative condition rather than a facet of what is. It is the person looking at a rainy day and believing that all other days will be the same. He denies the sunny day that will also have it’s time. The person that is so even-keeled has little motivation to flee from this reality, to doubt this reality, to hunger for another. Yet, he is the most detached, because by holding to the hope that what rain he sees must be temporary and not the norm, he becomes detached from the sadness it brings him and he looks from above this event. The other person who is motivated by pain to become detached instead is attached, attached to his perspective that this pain shall not pass, that this pain is all that is, that no joy can be found. This gloom and doom becomes fuel to become detached, but why? Because things are not as they should be. Because something tells him that something else exist, a real real. This is his attachment. He detached from one reality by the attachment he created to another.
I remember a candy commercial that was very philosophical. Three children are sitting on a rainbow. As they are enjoying their candy, one of them asks the other two: ”What if this rainbow is not real…?” He is cut in the end because the rainbow open up and lets him fall. He has become detached. Now what? Will he fall eternally? No. He will probably “land” somewhere which is “real” and his weight supported by the ground, he becomes attached to this new terra-ferma. I keep making this point consistently because it is so obvious in my mind.
Remember perhaps that film “the Truman show”. At the end, the Director tells Truman a truth: the world out there is no more “real” than this world.
Quote:
“The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, but a supernatural use for it.” – Simone Weil

Detachment isn’t escaping from pain but detaching from what prevents our conscious experience of it for the purpose of transformation.
O- Either way, pain is dealt with. The pain when used as a tool for transformation, leads not to a detachment but to a new attachment , a new appointment with a new reality. Polycarp may have sought to earn the eternal life with his suffering. He did not seek to escape his suffering but escaped the meaninglessness of it. Not by detaching from reality and it’s pain, in fact, but imagining to detach from it as his heart became centered and attached on Heaven, the prize for his pain.
— This is because you misunderstand her.
O- Maybe.

— I’m not sure what you mean.What do you believe this emotional impartiality is partial to?
O- Pain of course.

— By judgment I mean good or bad. Most will define a war as either good or bad depending on which side they are on and who is fighting. A person then judges war in this way. But it is being suggested that war is just the natural manifestations of man’s being in response to earthly and cosmic influences. It just happens because we are as we are…From this perspective it is neither good or bad but an indication of the unnatural state of Man’s being. To really see war for what it is as an aspect of man’s being requires abandoning our definition of it as either good or bad.
O- Very Nietzschean, Nick, but quite dangerous, wouldn’t you agree? And would that be something Jesus himself would care to affirm? I believe that war is inevitable based on what we are and our circumstances, but I believe that Jesus message had an opposition to simply let us remain detached to such things. He tried to bring peace between brother and brother. He might have told the tax collector to keep his money and make no reparations to his brothers because he being a tax collector was neither a good or a bad thing, or giving back money neither good or bad. But then there is that second command. War comes when we ignore that command. The adultress is about to be stoned; war in her future. But her attackers have not loved her as they loved themselves, have failed to grant her what they themselves ask for: Forgiveness.
Viewed from this point, what is bad for you is bad and what is good for you is good, and it is an attachment that is a commandment as well. You can criticize Jesus here, but that I believe was his message.

— Detachment allows the possibility for pain to be experience from a higher perspective and as such furthers the development of human perspective rather than escaping from it.into imagination where nothing can be gained from it.
O- The perspective as high as it is imagined is still from an “I”. You search for a use for pain, a gain from pain, that gain is release from all pain ultimately. We flee it nonetheless. Buddhist flee it in this life by becoming emotionally detached. Others by proposing that the affirmation of pain in this life has a purpose, an end, in which the pain is gone. The bad news, it seems, is that we have pain, that we suffer and seems like there is no justice regardless of what we do. The good news is that it is because justice is not to be found in this world, that joy cannot be found in this world and these are the good news because this is not the only world, and all this pain is a test, all this pain has meaning, all this pain, suffering and injustice is not even real, because this world itself is not real. So we wait and endure and pick up our cross that we might follow his example and earn our way into heaven. I detach from what in the end not even real and use it to gain that which is and which my hearts longs for, which is free of pain and suffering. I use pain only in so far as to free myself from pain. I detach myself, only so that I may be attached to Heaven…

Quote:
O- They sell with you don’t they? What you find “attractive”, you take as the “truth”. Because it is attractive

Actually I find it attractive because it provides the means for which I can verify for myself.which is completely different from blind acceptance.

Its amazing how we see these things differently.
O- The verification is done by yourself period! Everything, everything can and does provide the means. I Have already said that other religions have “skeletons” that let themselves to be verified personally, through, reading, meditation, whatever else you can think of a suitable for your verification. Math and Logic are not incompatible with other hypothesis. The same difficulties it brings to others, it repeats with yours. This is a crucial point. It is a common critique that religions attack other religions with argument, that if turned against itself, would damage itself. They likewise defend their beliefs with arguments, that if made equally with other religions would also defend them as easily.

— But again it is a matter of ones personal goal.
O- so much for “Detachment”.
— I believe this to be an essential point of disagreement between us It is true that reality exceeds our senses but where you accept diversity as equal, I believe in mans capacity to awaken so as to become closer to objective meaning and purpose that has become diversified through the normal results of man’s sleep.
O- I don’t deny that possibility, but you must realize that it is annoying to hear such an attack on the imagination, calling what is evident our sleep-state etc and then you simply put this “I believe in man’s capacity to awaken? You, who seek to be free from the imagination, imagine this. You, who seeks to awaken, dream this. You have questioned reality, consciousness, but do not question what you believe. How come? Because like Descartes, your doubt is no real doubt, but a simple need, water and mild soap to erase what is contrary to your new taste. You erase what is evident so that you might place in it’s place what you believe to be the case and what you believe is beyond question, it is the “Is”, it is being, it is “Reality”. Where all else was found to be wanting your “real” is not.

— Your approach seems to pull objective reality down to our fallen level and the acceptance equal quality of diversity.
O- Your approach by contrast pulls down objective reality, that which we both sense, down, proclaims a fallen state, which I guess you can only “see”, and then save us just as quick by affirming our ability to discriminate between the two cases, you have imagine. What you claim for humanity, really, you only need to claim for yourself. The salvation you bring us, that ability to discriminate, saves first of all, you. Me? I have to feel what you feel and “see” what you “see”, first and it is here we we find ourselves. This is our true mess. The problems of other minds…
— We are unable on our own to do anything but psychologically turn in circles exchanging one quality of imagination for another.
O- How do you know? Have all of humanity so far just been turning in circles within their imagination? Don’t you think such a statement needs to be qualified?

62

Hi Omar

A post just for me. Now how to take that? :slight_smile:

Yet sometimes the beautiful tapestry exposes the limits of associative reason as it relates to context.

Now this would be an interesting discussion.

The integration of consciously manifested universal laws expressed mathematically was not created by Man. We became aware of it. This indicates to me: God first, then Man.

This is subjective truth. Objective truth is what exists beyond your suggestive reason. This is why objective reason begins when subjective reason stops.

Its not a matter of arguing over the different forms of secular interpretations. Then same essence exists within them all. This is what interests me. What value is one "expert"interpretation over another? The only way to verify the truth is through the Socratic axiom the essence of which predates Socrates: “Know Thyself.”

His wife told me. :slight_smile: Seriously though, it is part of the cosmological theory. If it makes it seem less egotistical I will say that I believe that God’s isness is not limited by time and space as is existence within God. This is part of theory that interests me but is not something I could really “know” as the wretched man…

You are considering these statements from the secular perspective while I am from the esoteric perspective.

I don’t sense any attack. Besides, when I sit at the computer now, I wear a suit of armor." :slight_smile:

Awakening is not peace. Sleep is peace. Awakening requires conscious verification while blind submission invites peace.

Life is continual unconscious manifestations reacting in accordance with universal laws. It doesn’t fabricate anything. it is our corrupt psych that manifests illusions. I cannot believe it is impossible to live without the imagination of yourself rather than knowledge of yourself which is all detachment is. It is hard, takes courage, requires a need for it, and annoys the Great Beast, but impossible? No.

You can’t. The only way is to try for the experience of awakening. When you do, even to a minimal extent, you will experience the difference.

Perhaps it would be clearer to change detachment to non-attachment. A person could not be completely detached since there is a connection between the observer and observed. However attachment is exaggerated need that becomes an unnatural necessity. Detachment seeks to put the experience of life into a balanced perspective. Attachments or exaggerated cravings deny the balanced life experience.

I believe it is the opposite. Detachment allows for the state of presence denied by attachments where “attention” balances mind, body, and spirit, inviting a greater quality of “I”

But this is not detachment, it is sleep. Detachment requires the active state of attention. Sleep requires the passive state of imagination. They are two different psychological states.

I agree. One attachment is exchanged for another.

This pertains directly to my “Love of God” thread" Read the Link. I’d be curious to read your remarks . The author integrates Simone with some others in explaining this complex question of affliction and attachment. If you read that, it will make our conversing much easier.

I believe he did. He spoke of wars and rumors of wars and how the message and messenger would be attacked. Also he said forgive them for they know not what they do. Why is saying it as it is dangerous? I believe all these “wonderful thoughts” and platitudes I read are far more dangerous since they only justify sleep. As such, the cycles of war and peace just repeat.

He tried to bring peace between brother and brother

Not all that wonderful. People have different needs. The trick of course is to get beyond wonderfulness and platitudes.

Viewed from this point, what is bad for you is bad and what is good for you is good, and it is an attachment that is a commandment as well. You can criticize Jesus here, but that I believe was his message.

They were believing themselves justified by the Law and Jesus was teaching that the law is a means for reaching the "good."in relations to man’s being. As such the law must make room for mercy in relation to the good.

This seems to me like several bad chess players having a tournament. If one truly wishes to be a better player,is it worth arguing with other bad players or try to discover the ingredients of good chess and verify them over the board?

You are making the mistake I believe of assuming that these religions do not have enormous gradations of quality between their living essence and secular mechanical manifestations. The same word can have entirely different meanings. The real arguments only occur on the surface and this doesn’t interest me.

Of course it is annoying. This is why Jesus was strung up. But is it worthwhile being annoying for our benefit and mankind’ struggle with the Great Beast. Plato seemed to think so in his analogy of the Cave. Simone did say to “Annoy the Great Beast.”

If one seriously wishes to discuss Christianity,I cannot see how it can be done without this annoyance. Maybe it is better not to discuss Christianity but secular Christendom instead and feel good?.

You say that my suggestion as to awakening is in itself imagination. Is Paul’s description of himself as the Wretched Man imagination or has he verified this through self knowledge? Maybe I’ve discovered this to a degree myself? Again, the only thing one can do if they wish to verify these things is to engage in attempts to"know thyself." The idea isn’t to erase but to verify what is there. If you want to erase, see Dr. Phil. If you want to verify, see Christianity or any esoteric system that genuinely values self knowledge.

First of all I am not saving anyone. I’m more concerned with my own understanding now All Iam doing is discussing ideas. It is Christianity that proclaims the fallen state and many have proclaimed to experience in relation to their potential. Why shouldn’t it be discussed on a philosophy board? I haven’t demanded acceptance. Frankly I’m more interested in disagreement as long as its not the usual useless nastiness I’ve experienced from so many that speak of “Love” sigh. I’ve even tried to establish an attitude free board for exchanges requiring mutual respect. It is denied meaning that the primary weapon and joy of nastiness cannot be sacrificed. in favor of in depth exploration. It is too important.

Isn’t this just history? Others have said the same but it takes guts to become open to the idea at the expense of our platitudes. The following is very annoying but I believe it to be true:

63

Hello Nick:

Quote:
Reason is like acid and destroys the beautiful tapestry of our belief.
— Yet sometimes the beautiful tapestry exposes the limits of associative reason as it relates to context.
O- Where else could it’s beauty come from but from that limitlessness. So infinite is the belief that it must be real: that is the error.

Quote:
Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data and yet we don’t understand.

O- I am sorry, but what exactly is so hard to understand about 2+2=4? How hard can it be to understand when it is accepted universally as the only universal language? Let’s not get confused here. I am not trying to debate Godel’s theorem, but simple math, which is what I and most people in the world know. Also, I doubt that we have, as she claims, all the data. We have axioms, not facts; we have agreed upon units, not empirical ones, and this goes back to the enlightement, where the faith of the Pythagoreans was shattered by the doubts of the Aristotelians, such as Hume.

SW- We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence. Simone Weil
O- Again this "Wretchedness. This wound that cannot be closed because she licks it raw again and again. So “detached” she has become from the sleep, most call Reality, that she attaches her tongue to her sore, which is for hear Awerness of the Real. Passionate, yes, but a passion that leads to errors.

Quote:
Because mathematics gives us the sense that it comes from beyond us
O- That sense is questionable. To what sense do I owe this sense impression? To my objective senses or to my imagination?

… it is beautiful.
O- Beauty is not objective. I find many great works of art, such as Picasso, as grotesque. Likewise when we are dealing with these feelings on mathematics, which give some this sense of awe, we must remember that this awe does not represent some objective reality shareable by you and me equally, but like beauty, subjective and confined to my ideas on the subject. Yet, as strong as I may feel about Monet, it does not render these works objectively, or really, beautiful. They are beautiful in my mind and in the minds of those who agree with me, as it agrees with what we consider beautiful.

… We are aware that it is not our own creation but is the image of something eternal.
O- Wrong. You’re unaware that this is your creation. Color along a white canvas are not beautiful in themselves, but in the eyes and minds that gaze upon it. The beauty is in your interpretation. Mathematics does not give me an image of something beyond us, or eternal. It is an effect of our minds which impart order upon chaos. Shall I marvel at the feats of ordinary language? Should I consider it eternal as well? Because what we find is that language and math and even logic are brothers and sisters.

… “Joy … is the feeling of reality. Beauty is the manifest presence of reality.” Simone Weil
O- Joy is not the feeling of reality, but because we feel joy, we say that it is reality. Beauty is not the manifest prescense of reality, but because we think of it as beautiful, we imagine that it is the manifest presence of reality.

— The integration of consciously manifested universal laws expressed mathematically was not created by Man. We became aware of it.
O- So you take it to be. I believe that these ideas simply evolved, and from simpler forms became more complex with time. We were once only two cells.
Mathematics is tied to the history of man in his quest to dominate his world. But these abstractions, though beautiful in your eyes, pertain to the human ability to organize ideas, be through logic or language. as such the Genesis of Mathematics occured in ourselves, in our humanity, and not in the sky, in heaven, or in God. It speaks by it’s universality of the universality of the structures within the normal human mind.

— This indicates to me: God first, then Man.
O- As I see it, it is still Man then God.

Quote:
O- So you don’t need logic math etc. These are just excuses. The truth begins within you. What is the Truth asks Pilate: “Whatever you agree it to be…”
— This is subjective truth. Objective truth is what exists beyond your suggestive reason. This is why objective reason begins when subjective reason stops.
O- Physics begin after Metaphysics? it is the other way around, Nick. Subjective reason begins and must begin, when objectivity stops. It is the subjective that can declare that God Is, Not the Objective. The Objective is that which is public. The Empire State is an Object. Love is not. Death of a loved one is perceived; his/her soul or spirit survival is not. the after life is not; God is not. Here we must move away from our public experience, which can declare a subject, a person, dead, and move towards the subjective reason which declares that it is not the end, even if this is not publicly shared.
If talking about God was a function of our objective reason then our conversation would be rather short. talking about the Empire State building, such as where is it located, will end rather quickly. that is the virtue of an Object.
So how can we tell them apart? Well, I suggest you try this. What is close in proximity, either in time, location and memory, is objective. as you move away from this and dig into times beyond your birth, into sites you’ve never been and faded memories, you have to rely more and more upon the subjective because only your feelings can guide you when your senses have failed.
Keep in mind that in my mind we walk by faith not by sight, so that I accept that life requires it’s bit of imagination, but the distinction between subjective and objective takes shape within that faith and cannot materialize outside of it, as objectively in itself, I cannot assert a thing.

— Its not a matter of arguing over the different forms of secular interpretations.
O- Not secular at all, but religious and spiritual.

— Then same essence exists within them all.
O- Yeah, that is why there is such wide agreement between them and their behaviours. Is the essesnse of homosexuality essentially rejected by what is essential within all faiths? Until you pray to Allah as a muslim does, or gyrate like crazy on the floor like the Pentecostals, how will you know what is the essense between them and your beliefs? You speak of an essense that you have no idea exist in all others and have spoken about uniting science and religion and personal verification but fail at taking the steps to personally verify what is truly in need of verification and which could scientifically be verified, this “Essense”.
You want to “deduct”. That is too easy and easily leads into vain imaginings.

— This is what interests me. What value is one "expert"interpretation over another?
O- I am not saying to ask, but to personally verify, which is what you’ve said you wanted to do.

— The only way to verify the truth is through the Socratic axiom the essence of which predates Socrates: “Know Thyself.”
O- I am baffled again at just how you seek to discover what is objective by a trip into the subjective. You wish to describe the essense of all beliefs by better knowing your own beliefs. You want to verify other’s beliefs by personally verifying yours. The deeper you delve into your imagination the more objective you feel yourself to be.
But that is because your judgment of reality is that which has no limits and thus the only reality that can be obtain is that found within you. Rather than deal with the task of experimenting with other faiths, as any good scientist should, you quietly file abstract from them an “Essense” without a care in the world that this might not be real at all. You are convinced that it must be real, it seems, because you have come to “know thyself”.
You have pointed to a transformation that requires the rich to be like the poor, to be poor in order that they might understand what is like, what is really like. Why not extend such exploration into the imagined essense of religious experience?

— His wife told me. Seriously though, it is part of the cosmological theory.
O- So you don’t know. You only imagine that it is so, that it should be so.

— You are considering these statements from the secular perspective while I am from the esoteric perspective.
O- The question is from which perspective were they uttered?

— Loving God first is a statement of perspective. It places the head on top of the body. The purpose of Christianity is re-birth. It is love of self rather than the usual self love.
O- Another discrimination among synonyms…

— Colors arranged creatively is just the usual.
O- Creatively. Creativity is never “usual”, or else it would not be creative, would it?

— I’m speaking of the expression of mathematical universal laws as they manifest as water. It is like looking at a chess position. it is not a bunch of wooden pieces looking pretty but a logical expression of the interaction of forces given the laws of the game.
O- It is uncertain that when viewing the pieces on a chess board, we will immediately agree as to what each piece was meant to do or can do. We could as well imagine that the pieces move as in checkers. What is valid in this whole scenario is that we are players and imagine that if the pieces are arranged in a symetrical way in a symetrical pattern that there must be rules that dictate their movement. this is how we arrive at gods.

— Awakening is not peace.
O- You have already said that it brings you joy.

— Sleep is peace.
O- How come since it is those that are awake that are detached from the pain?

— Awakening requires conscious verification while blind submission invites peace.
O- Lovely. What verification have you done? Your theory in a sea of a thousand? that is all that is required for you since the only goal, the only imperative is to know thyself and none other, your theory as true and tried and none other. And this is not blind submission? Your very unesiness with dealing with “experts” seems to indicate that there is already a peace that must not be disturbed. You might be still battling, but only your own shadow, and as challenging as that might be, it can never replace a real encounter, a real test. Your theory, in this way, will never become a Law.

— Life is continual unconscious manifestations reacting in accordance with universal laws.
O- You prove this very morsel as false, for you are alive and live life and are consciouss, are you not?

— It doesn’t fabricate anything.
O- Have you ever spin very fast? Has the room not seemed as if it was still turning though you had stop? Is that not an illusion? or have you see the street on a hot day and saw water above it that never can be reached? Or is this what you call real? Yet this is life. It is interesting that we are unconsciouss of “universal Laws”. If we are unaware, how are they universal? And if they are Laws, how can I not be aware of them?

— it is our corrupt psych that manifests illusions.
O- Maybe all these universal Laws are nothing but illusions. Perhaps the Law that light travels at 186,000 miles per second is just a tale we tell ourselves, and illusion we just have not yet discovered; like the belief that within the clouds laid heaven, or that the earth was flat; both illusions that were once Laws…

— I cannot believe it is impossible to live without the imagination of yourself rather than knowledge of yourself which is all detachment is.
O- That is why you can have knowledge of yourself, because you cannot believe that it is impossible. You imagine that it is possible and so it is. As Morpheous tells Neo: “Your mind makes it real”.

— Perhaps it would be clearer to change detachment to non-attachment. A person could not be completely detached since there is a connection between the observer and observed. However attachment is exaggerated need that becomes an unnatural necessity.
O- Then you’ve described only an extreme case, of someone who is exagerated the importance of something to an unatural degree. By this you have failed to describe the human condition, the natural state, the moderate attachment that we habitually maintain.

— Detachment seeks to put the experience of life into a balanced perspective.
O- If attachment is an exagerated need, then so must also be true of detachment, not that detachment can now serve as our synthesis.

— Attachments or exaggerated cravings deny the balanced life experience.
O- So can, by definition as an opposite of such an extreme, detachment. detachment too, as I believe to have demonstrated, with it’s center of attention on Pain, distorts reality and is an exagerated need for peace, an escape from pain, at the price of a balanced life experience, which often you have called “sleep”.

Quote:
Yet, he is the most detached, because by holding to the hope that what rain he sees must be temporary and not the norm, he becomes detached from the sadness it brings him and he looks from above this event.

— But this is not detachment, it is sleep. Detachment requires the active state of attention.
O- Attention to what? My man pays attention to life, pays attention to the others that suffer as he does, that laugh after a similar loss. He listens to the other, to the world, nature, humanity. Yours just falls within himself and seeks to know only himself. as such he forgets what being he is, he abstracts from what he is; he slices out what is limited in himself and in what he can come to know. He dances in the light and freedom of reductions he has made and ignored the great mystery posted by the heart of another. He hides that mystery in essensess, in generalizations which he committs by attention to himself, by being awake to himself, which can only make sense if he has become his own object. Detachment apparently requires an active state of attention of ourselves and results in a nice quiet sleep in respect to all others. they do not matter…
Perhaps I am rash, but consider the propositions you’ve given me.

— Sleep requires the passive state of imagination.
O- But when you establish that there is an essense within all beliefs, without ever trying out all belief, what can this be but the result of passive imagination? You spin a web of hollow treads…

— This pertains directly to my “Love of God” thread" Read the Link. I’d be curious to read your remarks . The author integrates Simone with some others in explaining this complex question of affliction and attachment. If you read that, it will make our conversing much easier.
O- I’ll probably try to keep this current dialectic slim by reading and posting my opinion on that tread, with references to this one.

— I believe he did. He spoke of wars and rumors of wars and how the message and messenger would be attacked. Also he said forgive them for they know not what they do. Why is saying it as it is dangerous? I believe all these “wonderful thoughts” and platitudes I read are far more dangerous since they only justify sleep. As such, the cycles of war and peace just repeat.
O- I believe that war is inevitable also Nick, but from a very materialistic stance. If i allow that God exist, or that Jesus was a teacher (and most of the time I deny this) then I must accept, based on my premises, the conclusion that war is not inevitable, or else Jesus’s lessons would make no sense. “Love thy enemy”? Why, if war is inevitable; if we were created like this? The lesson, to me, demonstrates that war, in the teachers opinion, was not inevitable. That is why it is a sin. Pointing out that you shall always have the poor, or that you shall always have wars, does not mean that you should, or that you cannot be without or were made that way, or that war and the poor are acceptable, but that in His omniscense it was plain to see the future, a future that we see today. his message was true, but there were and are very few ears willing to listen and that is why there shall always be war and there will always be those that are poor.

— This seems to me like several bad chess players having a tournament. If one truly wishes to be a better player,is it worth arguing with other bad players or try to discover the ingredients of good chess and verify them over the board?
O- As i mentioned before, even as we stare at the Chess board we are not forced to imagine the rules of Chess over those of Checkers. We can agree that ought to be rules, but there is no agreement as to what those rules are because the pieces do not have them inscribed on them and the instructions on how to play have long been gone, if they ever were. We are not even sure that we are playing Chess, or a single game, because in the history of this board, the King and other pieces have changed the way they move across the board and some have started new games, with different rules, based on the same pieces. They still call it “Chess”, which makes one wonder just what the @@#$%^& can it be?

— You are making the mistake I believe of assuming that these religions do not have enormous gradations of quality between their living essence and secular mechanical manifestations. The same word can have entirely different meanings. The real arguments only occur on the surface and this doesn’t interest me.
O- Then dive in and verify what lies beneath the surface. Don’t just take for granted or else you have done a diservice to them and your own beliefs.

— Of course it is annoying. This is why Jesus was strung up.
O- Not at all. The secret of his demise is found in the inscription made at the top of the cross. he annoyed because he was a Messiah with no army, and a Messiah with a following.

— If one seriously wishes to discuss Christianity,I cannot see how it can be done without this annoyance.
O- My friend, we are not even close to discussing Christianity…

— Maybe it is better not to discuss Christianity but secular Christendom instead and feel good?
O- This is not about Christendom or Christianity, but about Metaphysics, empiricism, realism, idealism…much more philosophy in our way than theology at this point.

— You say that my suggestion as to awakening is in itself imagination. Is Paul’s description of himself as the Wretched Man imagination or has he verified this through self knowledge?
O- His self-knowledge revealed only that which was within him, his condition, not the condition of every man woman and child that had ever lived or was ever to be born. Only the denial of this limit allows for the description of one man’s condition to be able to convey everyone else. as someone else correctly pointed out, we do not choose top be atheist, nor to be theist, we simply become that which we already are.
Theism, for example, requires a suspicion about the world that rules out chance. I cannot learn this, I cannot fake this. I cannot teach a true believer that God does not exist. i could show him all the vidence in the world, but the evident is always open to interpretation. What the reason provides, the heart judges upon. And so we find ourselves in the same earth, the same universe, but with different hearts that render how we feel about the beauty of it, the origin of it, the reality of it separated, not because of our reason but because of the heart that, as you mentioned, makes it submit.

— Maybe I’ve discovered this to a degree myself? Again, the only thing one can do if they wish to verify these things is to engage in attempts to"know thyself." The idea isn’t to erase but to verify what is there. If you want to erase, see Dr. Phil. If you want to verify, see Christianity or any esoteric system that genuinely values self knowledge.
O- Verify what there? what is within you? Then see Dr Phil. To verify that which is? Then move beyond mere Christianity, esoteric or otherwise. Otherwise, you’re just living your dream…

— First of all I am not saving anyone. I’m more concerned with my own understanding now All Iam doing is discussing ideas. It is Christianity that proclaims the fallen state and many have proclaimed to experience in relation to their potential.
O- Well then, what do you take it to be?

— Why shouldn’t it be discussed on a philosophy board?
O- I did not say that it should not be discussed, especially on a philosophy board.

— I haven’t demanded acceptance.
O- No you have not, and I must admit that, but by calling “Objective” what I would normally pass as “subjective” you have drawn a line that sets sides. I guiess it is just the nature of our discussion. I shall not forget that, but i leave you my post as is, because I am committed as to what I have said and jotted down. I believe that your distinction between sleep/awake, detached/attached, consciouss/unconsciouss are in need of development because while it seems clera to you, I see a river of assumptions running under a bridge made firm by the subjective and paved by the imagination. At all corners you speak of objectivity and awareness, but frankly this “Know Thyself” seems like a sure way to fall asleep in regards to what is real. Know thyself might be a great tool to eliminate the baggage of our your, that which we have taken for granted in schools etc and in initiating an honest discourse with reality by up front identifying what we hope and long for and knowing that it will affect our interpretations. this is the postmodern way of science. I applaud that. But this one you bring is not interested in recognizing, it seems, any of this. Most of all, in my mind, any objectivite search into a universal that begins and ends in the particular has no right to call itself a universal.
You have the freedom to do as you please, but, I wish to challenge this unchallenged assumption that I feel pepper your theory.
Humanity has a history, but we must also recognize that history is a theory itself. It records the exceptional moments in history, which coincidely seems to alsways be war. But what of that? Is what is found in the history book representative of the entire spectrum of human experience? That is like saying that we can know all that has happened or is happening in Iraq by reading the headlines.
There is a mother with her child somewhere in the world singing to her baby as she nurses him. No one shall record it in history. There is Christian having a meal with a Muslim and debating God with simply their minds…who will write that down for posterity? There are schools that just open in Kabul, where the first 12 year old girl from a particular family will be educated. All of these softer sides of our natures will not be recorded and no one will know that amongst the thunder of cannons, a rose was exchanged.
We live at a time when we can look back at true horror. Are men dying by the thousands across the trip to America in slave boats? No. Would you say then that the fact that the Secretary of State, of the only Hegemon left on this Earth being a descendant of slaves is not progress?

— It is useless to think that wars and horrors and revolutions, etc. are exceptional. What is at fault is the level of being of people.
O- War and peace are different sides of the same coin and what brings harmony equally, at times, brings disharmony and strife. The strenght of the in-group is magnified by it’s conflicts with out groups. The patriotism a people feel is most evident when under a collective treath from an outsider.

— History repeats itself because man remains at the same level of being - namely, he attracts again and again the same circumstances, feels the same things, says the same things, hopes the same things, believes the same things.
O- Perhaps simply “is” the same thing… but this would deny our evolution.

64

Hello Nick:

Quote:
Reason is like acid and destroys the beautiful tapestry of our belief.
— Yet sometimes the beautiful tapestry exposes the limits of associative reason as it relates to context.
O- Where else could it’s beauty come from but from that limitlessness. So infinite is the belief that it must be real: that is the error.

Quote:
Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data and yet we don’t understand.

O- I am sorry, but what exactly is so hard to understand about 2+2=4? How hard can it be to understand when it is accepted universally as the only universal language? Let’s not get confused here. I am not trying to debate Godel’s theorem, but simple math, which is what I and most people in the world know. Also, I doubt that we have, as she claims, all the data. We have axioms, not facts; we have agreed upon units, not empirical ones, and this goes back to the enlightement, where the faith of the Pythagoreans was shattered by the doubts of the Aristotelians, such as Hume.

SW- We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence. Simone Weil
O- Again this "Wretchedness. This wound that cannot be closed because she licks it raw again and again. So “detached” she has become from the sleep, most call Reality, that she attaches her tongue to her sore, which is for hear Awerness of the Real. Passionate, yes, but a passion that leads to errors.

Quote:
Because mathematics gives us the sense that it comes from beyond us
O- That sense is questionable. To what sense do I owe this sense impression? To my objective senses or to my imagination?

… it is beautiful.
O- Beauty is not objective. I find many great works of art, such as Picasso, as grotesque. Likewise when we are dealing with these feelings on mathematics, which give some this sense of awe, we must remember that this awe does not represent some objective reality shareable by you and me equally, but like beauty, subjective and confined to my ideas on the subject. Yet, as strong as I may feel about Monet, it does not render these works objectively, or really, beautiful. They are beautiful in my mind and in the minds of those who agree with me, as it agrees with what we consider beautiful.

… We are aware that it is not our own creation but is the image of something eternal.
O- Wrong. You’re unaware that this is your creation. Color along a white canvas are not beautiful in themselves, but in the eyes and minds that gaze upon it. The beauty is in your interpretation. Mathematics does not give me an image of something beyond us, or eternal. It is an effect of our minds which impart order upon chaos. Shall I marvel at the feats of ordinary language? Should I consider it eternal as well? Because what we find is that language and math and even logic are brothers and sisters.

… “Joy … is the feeling of reality. Beauty is the manifest presence of reality.” Simone Weil
O- Joy is not the feeling of reality, but because we feel joy, we say that it is reality. Beauty is not the manifest prescense of reality, but because we think of it as beautiful, we imagine that it is the manifest presence of reality.

— The integration of consciously manifested universal laws expressed mathematically was not created by Man. We became aware of it.
O- So you take it to be. I believe that these ideas simply evolved, and from simpler forms became more complex with time. We were once only two cells.
Mathematics is tied to the history of man in his quest to dominate his world. But these abstractions, though beautiful in your eyes, pertain to the human ability to organize ideas, be through logic or language. as such the Genesis of Mathematics occured in ourselves, in our humanity, and not in the sky, in heaven, or in God. It speaks by it’s universality of the universality of the structures within the normal human mind.

— This indicates to me: God first, then Man.
O- As I see it, it is still Man then God.

Quote:
O- So you don’t need logic math etc. These are just excuses. The truth begins within you. What is the Truth asks Pilate: “Whatever you agree it to be…”
— This is subjective truth. Objective truth is what exists beyond your suggestive reason. This is why objective reason begins when subjective reason stops.
O- Physics begin after Metaphysics? it is the other way around, Nick. Subjective reason begins and must begin, when objectivity stops. It is the subjective that can declare that God Is, Not the Objective. The Objective is that which is public. The Empire State is an Object. Love is not. Death of a loved one is perceived; his/her soul or spirit survival is not. the after life is not; God is not. Here we must move away from our public experience, which can declare a subject, a person, dead, and move towards the subjective reason which declares that it is not the end, even if this is not publicly shared.
If talking about God was a function of our objective reason then our conversation would be rather short. talking about the Empire State building, such as where is it located, will end rather quickly. that is the virtue of an Object.
So how can we tell them apart? Well, I suggest you try this. What is close in proximity, either in time, location and memory, is objective. as you move away from this and dig into times beyond your birth, into sites you’ve never been and faded memories, you have to rely more and more upon the subjective because only your feelings can guide you when your senses have failed.
Keep in mind that in my mind we walk by faith not by sight, so that I accept that life requires it’s bit of imagination, but the distinction between subjective and objective takes shape within that faith and cannot materialize outside of it, as objectively in itself, I cannot assert a thing.

— Its not a matter of arguing over the different forms of secular interpretations.
O- Not secular at all, but religious and spiritual.

— Then same essence exists within them all.
O- Yeah, that is why there is such wide agreement between them and their behaviours. Is the essesnse of homosexuality essentially rejected by what is essential within all faiths? Until you pray to Allah as a muslim does, or gyrate like crazy on the floor like the Pentecostals, how will you know what is the essense between them and your beliefs? You speak of an essense that you have no idea exist in all others and have spoken about uniting science and religion and personal verification but fail at taking the steps to personally verify what is truly in need of verification and which could scientifically be verified, this “Essense”.
You want to “deduct”. That is too easy and easily leads into vain imaginings.

— This is what interests me. What value is one "expert"interpretation over another?
O- I am not saying to ask, but to personally verify, which is what you’ve said you wanted to do.

— The only way to verify the truth is through the Socratic axiom the essence of which predates Socrates: “Know Thyself.”
O- I am baffled again at just how you seek to discover what is objective by a trip into the subjective. You wish to describe the essense of all beliefs by better knowing your own beliefs. You want to verify other’s beliefs by personally verifying yours. The deeper you delve into your imagination the more objective you feel yourself to be.
But that is because your judgment of reality is that which has no limits and thus the only reality that can be obtain is that found within you. Rather than deal with the task of experimenting with other faiths, as any good scientist should, you quietly file abstract from them an “Essense” without a care in the world that this might not be real at all. You are convinced that it must be real, it seems, because you have come to “know thyself”.
You have pointed to a transformation that requires the rich to be like the poor, to be poor in order that they might understand what is like, what is really like. Why not extend such exploration into the imagined essense of religious experience?

— His wife told me. Seriously though, it is part of the cosmological theory.
O- So you don’t know. You only imagine that it is so, that it should be so.

— You are considering these statements from the secular perspective while I am from the esoteric perspective.
O- The question is from which perspective were they uttered?

— Loving God first is a statement of perspective. It places the head on top of the body. The purpose of Christianity is re-birth. It is love of self rather than the usual self love.
O- Another discrimination among synonyms…

— Colors arranged creatively is just the usual.
O- Creatively. Creativity is never “usual”, or else it would not be creative, would it?

— I’m speaking of the expression of mathematical universal laws as they manifest as water. It is like looking at a chess position. it is not a bunch of wooden pieces looking pretty but a logical expression of the interaction of forces given the laws of the game.
O- It is uncertain that when viewing the pieces on a chess board, we will immediately agree as to what each piece was meant to do or can do. We could as well imagine that the pieces move as in checkers. What is valid in this whole scenario is that we are players and imagine that if the pieces are arranged in a symetrical way in a symetrical pattern that there must be rules that dictate their movement. this is how we arrive at gods.

— Awakening is not peace.
O- You have already said that it brings you joy.

— Sleep is peace.
O- How come since it is those that are awake that are detached from the pain?

— Awakening requires conscious verification while blind submission invites peace.
O- Lovely. What verification have you done? Your theory in a sea of a thousand? that is all that is required for you since the only goal, the only imperative is to know thyself and none other, your theory as true and tried and none other. And this is not blind submission? Your very unesiness with dealing with “experts” seems to indicate that there is already a peace that must not be disturbed. You might be still battling, but only your own shadow, and as challenging as that might be, it can never replace a real encounter, a real test. Your theory, in this way, will never become a Law.

— Life is continual unconscious manifestations reacting in accordance with universal laws.
O- You prove this very morsel as false, for you are alive and live life and are consciouss, are you not?

— It doesn’t fabricate anything.
O- Have you ever spin very fast? Has the room not seemed as if it was still turning though you had stop? Is that not an illusion? or have you see the street on a hot day and saw water above it that never can be reached? Or is this what you call real? Yet this is life. It is interesting that we are unconsciouss of “universal Laws”. If we are unaware, how are they universal? And if they are Laws, how can I not be aware of them?

— it is our corrupt psych that manifests illusions.
O- Maybe all these universal Laws are nothing but illusions. Perhaps the Law that light travels at 186,000 miles per second is just a tale we tell ourselves, and illusion we just have not yet discovered; like the belief that within the clouds laid heaven, or that the earth was flat; both illusions that were once Laws…

— I cannot believe it is impossible to live without the imagination of yourself rather than knowledge of yourself which is all detachment is.
O- That is why you can have knowledge of yourself, because you cannot believe that it is impossible. You imagine that it is possible and so it is. As Morpheous tells Neo: “Your mind makes it real”.

— Perhaps it would be clearer to change detachment to non-attachment. A person could not be completely detached since there is a connection between the observer and observed. However attachment is exaggerated need that becomes an unnatural necessity.
O- Then you’ve described only an extreme case, of someone who is exagerated the importance of something to an unatural degree. By this you have failed to describe the human condition, the natural state, the moderate attachment that we habitually maintain.

— Detachment seeks to put the experience of life into a balanced perspective.
O- If attachment is an exagerated need, then so must also be true of detachment, not that detachment can now serve as our synthesis.

— Attachments or exaggerated cravings deny the balanced life experience.
O- So can, by definition as an opposite of such an extreme, detachment. detachment too, as I believe to have demonstrated, with it’s center of attention on Pain, distorts reality and is an exagerated need for peace, an escape from pain, at the price of a balanced life experience, which often you have called “sleep”.

Quote:
Yet, he is the most detached, because by holding to the hope that what rain he sees must be temporary and not the norm, he becomes detached from the sadness it brings him and he looks from above this event.

— But this is not detachment, it is sleep. Detachment requires the active state of attention.
O- Attention to what? My man pays attention to life, pays attention to the others that suffer as he does, that laugh after a similar loss. He listens to the other, to the world, nature, humanity. Yours just falls within himself and seeks to know only himself. as such he forgets what being he is, he abstracts from what he is; he slices out what is limited in himself and in what he can come to know. He dances in the light and freedom of reductions he has made and ignored the great mystery posted by the heart of another. He hides that mystery in essensess, in generalizations which he committs by attention to himself, by being awake to himself, which can only make sense if he has become his own object. Detachment apparently requires an active state of attention of ourselves and results in a nice quiet sleep in respect to all others. they do not matter…
Perhaps I am rash, but consider the propositions you’ve given me.

— Sleep requires the passive state of imagination.
O- But when you establish that there is an essense within all beliefs, without ever trying out all belief, what can this be but the result of passive imagination? You spin a web of hollow treads…

— This pertains directly to my “Love of God” thread" Read the Link. I’d be curious to read your remarks . The author integrates Simone with some others in explaining this complex question of affliction and attachment. If you read that, it will make our conversing much easier.
O- I’ll probably try to keep this current dialectic slim by reading and posting my opinion on that tread, with references to this one.

— I believe he did. He spoke of wars and rumors of wars and how the message and messenger would be attacked. Also he said forgive them for they know not what they do. Why is saying it as it is dangerous? I believe all these “wonderful thoughts” and platitudes I read are far more dangerous since they only justify sleep. As such, the cycles of war and peace just repeat.
O- I believe that war is inevitable also Nick, but from a very materialistic stance. If i allow that God exist, or that Jesus was a teacher (and most of the time I deny this) then I must accept, based on my premises, the conclusion that war is not inevitable, or else Jesus’s lessons would make no sense. “Love thy enemy”? Why, if war is inevitable; if we were created like this? The lesson, to me, demonstrates that war, in the teachers opinion, was not inevitable. That is why it is a sin. Pointing out that you shall always have the poor, or that you shall always have wars, does not mean that you should, or that you cannot be without or were made that way, or that war and the poor are acceptable, but that in His omniscense it was plain to see the future, a future that we see today. his message was true, but there were and are very few ears willing to listen and that is why there shall always be war and there will always be those that are poor.

— This seems to me like several bad chess players having a tournament. If one truly wishes to be a better player,is it worth arguing with other bad players or try to discover the ingredients of good chess and verify them over the board?
O- As i mentioned before, even as we stare at the Chess board we are not forced to imagine the rules of Chess over those of Checkers. We can agree that ought to be rules, but there is no agreement as to what those rules are because the pieces do not have them inscribed on them and the instructions on how to play have long been gone, if they ever were. We are not even sure that we are playing Chess, or a single game, because in the history of this board, the King and other pieces have changed the way they move across the board and some have started new games, with different rules, based on the same pieces. They still call it “Chess”, which makes one wonder just what the @@#$%^& can it be?

— You are making the mistake I believe of assuming that these religions do not have enormous gradations of quality between their living essence and secular mechanical manifestations. The same word can have entirely different meanings. The real arguments only occur on the surface and this doesn’t interest me.
O- Then dive in and verify what lies beneath the surface. Don’t just take for granted or else you have done a diservice to them and your own beliefs.

— Of course it is annoying. This is why Jesus was strung up.
O- Not at all. The secret of his demise is found in the inscription made at the top of the cross. he annoyed because he was a Messiah with no army, and a Messiah with a following.

— If one seriously wishes to discuss Christianity,I cannot see how it can be done without this annoyance.
O- My friend, we are not even close to discussing Christianity…

— Maybe it is better not to discuss Christianity but secular Christendom instead and feel good?
O- This is not about Christendom or Christianity, but about Metaphysics, empiricism, realism, idealism…much more philosophy in our way than theology at this point.

— You say that my suggestion as to awakening is in itself imagination. Is Paul’s description of himself as the Wretched Man imagination or has he verified this through self knowledge?
O- His self-knowledge revealed only that which was within him, his condition, not the condition of every man woman and child that had ever lived or was ever to be born. Only the denial of this limit allows for the description of one man’s condition to be able to convey everyone else. as someone else correctly pointed out, we do not choose top be atheist, nor to be theist, we simply become that which we already are.
Theism, for example, requires a suspicion about the world that rules out chance. I cannot learn this, I cannot fake this. I cannot teach a true believer that God does not exist. i could show him all the vidence in the world, but the evident is always open to interpretation. What the reason provides, the heart judges upon. And so we find ourselves in the same earth, the same universe, but with different hearts that render how we feel about the beauty of it, the origin of it, the reality of it separated, not because of our reason but because of the heart that, as you mentioned, makes it submit.

— Maybe I’ve discovered this to a degree myself? Again, the only thing one can do if they wish to verify these things is to engage in attempts to"know thyself." The idea isn’t to erase but to verify what is there. If you want to erase, see Dr. Phil. If you want to verify, see Christianity or any esoteric system that genuinely values self knowledge.
O- Verify what there? what is within you? Then see Dr Phil. To verify that which is? Then move beyond mere Christianity, esoteric or otherwise. Otherwise, you’re just living your dream…

— First of all I am not saving anyone. I’m more concerned with my own understanding now All Iam doing is discussing ideas. It is Christianity that proclaims the fallen state and many have proclaimed to experience in relation to their potential.
O- Well then, what do you take it to be?

— Why shouldn’t it be discussed on a philosophy board?
O- I did not say that it should not be discussed, especially on a philosophy board.

— I haven’t demanded acceptance.
O- No you have not, and I must admit that, but by calling “Objective” what I would normally pass as “subjective” you have drawn a line that sets sides. I guiess it is just the nature of our discussion. I shall not forget that, but i leave you my post as is, because I am committed as to what I have said and jotted down. I believe that your distinction between sleep/awake, detached/attached, consciouss/unconsciouss are in need of development because while it seems clera to you, I see a river of assumptions running under a bridge made firm by the subjective and paved by the imagination. At all corners you speak of objectivity and awareness, but frankly this “Know Thyself” seems like a sure way to fall asleep in regards to what is real. Know thyself might be a great tool to eliminate the baggage of our your, that which we have taken for granted in schools etc and in initiating an honest discourse with reality by up front identifying what we hope and long for and knowing that it will affect our interpretations. this is the postmodern way of science. I applaud that. But this one you bring is not interested in recognizing, it seems, any of this. Most of all, in my mind, any objectivite search into a universal that begins and ends in the particular has no right to call itself a universal.
You have the freedom to do as you please, but, I wish to challenge this unchallenged assumption that I feel pepper your theory.
Humanity has a history, but we must also recognize that history is a theory itself. It records the exceptional moments in history, which coincidely seems to alsways be war. But what of that? Is what is found in the history book representative of the entire spectrum of human experience? That is like saying that we can know all that has happened or is happening in Iraq by reading the headlines.
There is a mother with her child somewhere in the world singing to her baby as she nurses him. No one shall record it in history. There is Christian having a meal with a Muslim and debating God with simply their minds…who will write that down for posterity? There are schools that just open in Kabul, where the first 12 year old girl from a particular family will be educated. All of these softer sides of our natures will not be recorded and no one will know that amongst the thunder of cannons, a rose was exchanged.
We live at a time when we can look back at true horror. Are men dying by the thousands across the trip to America in slave boats? No. Would you say then that the fact that the Secretary of State, of the only Hegemon left on this Earth being a descendant of slaves is not progress?

— It is useless to think that wars and horrors and revolutions, etc. are exceptional. What is at fault is the level of being of people.
O- War and peace are different sides of the same coin and what brings harmony equally, at times, brings disharmony and strife. The strenght of the in-group is magnified by it’s conflicts with out groups. The patriotism a people feel is most evident when under a collective treath from an outsider.

— History repeats itself because man remains at the same level of being - namely, he attracts again and again the same circumstances, feels the same things, says the same things, hopes the same things, believes the same things.
O- Perhaps simply “is” the same thing… but this would deny our evolution.

65

Hi Omar

She is referring to something far more advanced. Her older brother Andre Weil was one of the foremost mathematicians of the twentieth century. Her appreciation of the depth of math was far beyond all but highly qualified mathematicians. Bit still, even at that level, apparently we still cannot understand the depth of these mathematical relationships.

The real question here is if mathematics represents objective universal law or is just a subjective creation of man’s. I maintain that essential mathematical laws that exist for example in Pythagoras conception of the octave, would still exist as basic for the functioning universe even if man became extinct.

This is an essential difference between us that is worth exploring…

As I understand it, sleep is what prevents us from experiencing the reality of the human condition, our wretchedness. Since you believe that you are awake to reality, you see this as imagination.

I’ve learned that the more one begins to know on these things, the more one realizes that there is to know. At least this is how it has been with me.

Take for example a talented pianist. Most would say how great he is. Yet such a pianist will know how bad he is. How much the music is beyond his capacity for expression.

However, a regular pianist may accept normal appreciation and think how great he is.

This is what you cannot IMO understand about those like Simone Weil. They understand in a way that we cannot just as the talented pianist appreciates music at a higher level then ourselves. She calls herself wretched because the depth of her being allows her to “Understand” humanity, its potential, and her limited understanding in relation to it. It is "sleep"that prevents us from objectively “seeing” what Simone could

I believe Simone could “see.” But this is impossible to appreciate for those that think and even more so for those who just talk. We simply cannot grasp her appreciation for “wretchedness.”

You accuse me of claiming truth but why do you doubt the possibility of something beyond the limits of man’s subjective level of appreciation?

Simone asserts that beauty is a mixed blessing. it guides us towards something but if we become infatuated with it, it serves to deny it.

staff.bcc.edu/philosophy/SIMONEWEIL.htm

Instead of being so quick to deny, why not try and put what you’ve written on subjective beauty into her perspective. it may be an eye opener.

Omar, it is a cycle. Initially meatphysics was understood and gradually degenerated to the level of physics. Then the continuum is simultaneously moving in the other direction where some begin to understand beyond physics into the higher realm of metaphysics.

It is the same with objective and subjective reason. As long as someone is occupied and attached to subjective reason, there can be no objective reason for them. Yet when a person loses the conscious state of objective reason, they fall back into the unconscious level of subjective reason. All these things continually flow in cycles.

But you continue to refer to secular or cultural values. there is religion and spiritualism that reflects this unconscious level. Yet there is religion and spirituality that we are unaware of since it is not restricted by culture.

All the fuss about homosexuality exists only because the ancient knowledge of the importance of blending qualities of energy or yin and yang has been forgotten as a lawful part of a cycle.

For the transformation of the human essence to occur as is man’s potential and an essential principle in all religions initiating from a conscious source. an inner balance must be established between these two polarities of yin and yang. Much of the stabilizing factor is done through sex of the right balanced quality and not the expressions of negative emotion stimulated by sex energy that is normal for today.

So the homosexuals interested in this transformation must find ways to compensate for this and they are known. But the bottom line is that the esoteric reasoning behind the concerns for homosexuality has been conveniently forgotten in favor of the pleasures of debating all of this lunacy in relation to morals that occurs in society as it pertains to homosexuality.

Self knowledge is not knowing your own beliefs. You’ve got yourself hooked on this judgment trip which completely denies self knowledge.

I will agree that there is a tendency to do this since it is difficult to remain impartial. For the really serious person, I believe a teacher, one who has already gone through it, is necessary. I can assure you, it doesn’t make you feel like Mr.Wonderful. It is not so easy to experience the truth of ones inner self.

It is a hypothesis that I wish to verify or abandon through self knowledge. Imagining anything is of no value. This is hard to explain if someone has not acquired the attentive “presence” necessary to experience the inside. Without this “presence,” experiences can easily degenerate into imagination.

Quite true. If we witness the same patterns over and over again from the microscopic worlds to the telescopic worlds, give me a better explanation for lawful interactions than expressions of laws initiated by higher consciousness.

If you’ve ever experienced joy, was it a peaceful experience?

Detached from pain is not the same as oblivious of pain. Any Tibetan Monk worth anything could have experienced the cross while in a state of deep meditation and not experienced anything. But that was not the purpose.

Detachment only refers to the unreal, acquired, emotional attitudes used to become enculterated and to justify oneself.

It would be foolish to speak of my own verifications since by definition they are mine. The first goal must be to know thyself since everything else is determined by how genuine this knowledge is. If I am right to assert what Jesus, Buddha, Plato, and others have asserted in that we are asleep, what knowledge can a sleeping person have? If I truly want to "Understand"in the real meaning of the word, it can only come through awakening which begins for the average person through self knowledge.

I’m not uneasy with “experts” I am disgusted with those that are open charlatans but also believe that I must be a seeker of pearls in manure. So I listen to what they say. Manure is not uncomfortable with manure so this isn’t as hard as it seems.

I’d appreciate you being honest and tell me why you are so adamant against the possibilities I’ve been sharing with you. What prevents you from saying I don’t know and leave the question open?

Whatever gave you the idea that you were conscious for more than brief intervals during the day? This belief in our consciousness is IMO one of the great misconceptions of modern times.

This is why I keep the question open. I am attracted to consciousness as the intellectual step above associative thought. I am attracted to “meaning” “wisdom” as a step above blind acceptance. If we cannot develop the capacity to distinguish between objective and subjective reason, then my efforts are wasted. I don’t believe it to be the case. I’ve read and experienced too much that has made sense to believe in the impossibility of objective human understanding.

You do not appreciate objective attention which is different than just focusing on a task. I know what Simone is saying here because of what I’ve studied and been involved with. It was not easy coming to grips with such observations. I feel I should justpost it for the sake of completion rather than in the expectation of understanding.

You insist on thinking that all religions exist only on one level. Their differences are on the surface. Who has time to try and work themselves into the deeper realms of different beliefs? I’ve come to understand Man as a relative concept that can mean one of seven different levels of existence. there is a level of Christianity that corresponds for each since it initiated from the highest level. This is what is important to me. Some people I know went to see the Dalai Lama when he was visiting the United States. One of his associates was asked how he regards esoteric Christianity. the answer was that at that level, esoteric Christianity and esoteric Buddhism are the basically the same. This is what interests me.

They make sense once you admit that and individual has possibilities that the collective does not. I know it is not politically correct to say but if see that collective man is a result of collective human “being,” then it must remain as it is. There is not enough of an impetus to cause such a change in the being of the collective. Yet there is enough impetus to allow for a minority to change and as much as they are scorned and ridiculed by the collective, it is precisely through their efforts that the hope for mankind resides.

Perhaps I do, not only by myself but with others.

Maybe there are those born without the same degree of inner chaos. But it is this condition that we feel in ourselves that is the attraction of Christianity and the help from above it offers impossible for Dr. Phil.

A way out through awakening from the slavery of the human condition.

Challenge away but remember, I didn’t speak about ending with self knowledge. if you remember in Plato’s analogy of the cave the idea of the necessity to return to the cave was insisted upon.

It is progression along cycles. A person walks up a hill and then down again. He has made progress. Another person falls from a ten story building and is making progress towards the ground. All this is progress. But we define progress by our subjective standards. This is why it is so difficult when the opposite occurs. What happened to the progress? Everything is still progressing but just changing form.

What gave you the idea that collective mankind is evolving other than at such a slow rate that it is imperceptible to us? More knowledge is not evolution. Evolution is a change of being, of “isness”.

66

Hi Nick.
I have to give you praise for even getting to read these post in their entirety. That is a mutual pat in the back…

— She is referring to something far more advanced.
O- there are paradoxes that Russell and Godel have shown, but the common human does deal with high end math. Even those that know this type of math probably do not use it to go to the bathroom, or order something from the menu. I hate to be mundane but often one must take off that hat of the philosopher’s head.

— The real question here is if mathematics represents objective universal law or is just a subjective creation of man’s. I maintain that essential mathematical laws that exist for example in Pythagoras conception of the octave, would still exist as basic for the functioning universe even if man became extinct.
O- Suit yourself, but from where do you draw this position? You do not know therefore you imagine that that would be the case.

— As I understand it, sleep is what prevents us from experiencing the reality of the human condition, our wretchedness.
O- And I must here question the objectivity of such assertion, because you take only as real what is contrary in life and ignore what is worthy to be alive. If one brings that up, as i am, then that person must be asleep. But it is not that I do not see the suffering and the pain and the wretchedness and in fact have seen it up, close and personal. But I realized long ago that this wretched condition is tied with a perspective that is not objective but subjective by the very fact that we are tied in that moment to our sense of pain and sympathy. As real as the wretchedness is our happiness. Both are temporary and both get their strenght from the absence of the other though implying the other. We feel anguish because we know what it is to be at peace; we feel happiness, for we know what it is like to be miserable. He who does not know what is like to be happy can never be truly wretched and vice-versa.
That is it. Don’t tell me because you place your attention in what is wretched that you’re awake. To me you are asleep to what is as real and causes joy and pleasure. Let me ask:
1- Have you loved someone? Are you currently in love?
2- Do you have any children?
3- How was your childhood?
4- Do you have joyful memories?
5- What has been the worst thing that has happened to you in your life?

— Since you believe that you are awake to reality, you see this as imagination.
O- Because I take a fuller view of what is the case. To me, our condition does not end in the Wars we waged, the slaves we’ve been or have made, in our hunger and tears. To me our condition must also extend (Ying-Yang) to the light, to our peace and brotherhood, our freedom, satisfaction and laughter… But, in accordance with you, I must be asleep? No. I am awake in the true sense of the word because my mind is aware of that which is dark and that which is light.

— This is what you cannot IMO understand about those like Simone Weil. They understand in a way that we cannot just as the talented pianist appreciates music at a higher level then ourselves. She calls herself wretched because the depth of her being allows her to “Understand” humanity, its potential, and her limited understanding in relation to it. It is "sleep"that prevents us from objectively “seeing” what Simone could
O- That excellent pianist might continue to push the envelope, as he feels the melody fails to capture the muse he has received, but he has only himself as reference, needs only himself and his goal is to express perfectly what lies within his chest.
Now what of Weil?
I am not a pianist so I cannot understand that genious. My art is visual. but be it music or another art, the artist conception of what is perfectly beautiful does not indicate, be it Mozart or Munch, that they have tapped into an objective beauty. Same with Weil. The depth of her being denotes her opinion on what is and what she imagines should be, not that she has penetrated the ground of being, just as the pianist or artist cannot claim to have revealed perfection with their craft. No matter what we cannot escape our subjective. Some might consider his most mediocre work higher than his most regarded piece: Who is right?
The Potential she sees for humanity is not the actual potential period of humanity, but her opinion of what that potential should be. Another may conceive of man’s potential at a higher level still, and yet another at a lower lever. However, neither the higher, Weil’s nor the lower transcend the subjective and by faith become objective. They remain imagination, dreams.
It isn’t sleep that keep us from seeing what she saw but the normal capacity of man. If you think you see what she saw then you must read minds. If you mean it figuratively, then only you can imagine what you mean or what she must mean. Whatever the case, just because I disagree does not put me on a state of sleep that separates me from what is the case, but only from what you imagine is the case. I am asleep in your opinion and in your world view.

— I believe Simone could “see.” But this is impossible to appreciate for those that think and even more so for those who just talk. We simply cannot grasp her appreciation for “wretchedness.”
O-
1- Was she ever married?
2- was she ever in Love? In lust?
3- Did she ever give birth to a baby and nurtured it in her breast?
What can she truly tell us about living? Like Morpheous tells Neo:“Your mind makes it real.” Perhaps what she saw was what was within rather than without, and her wretchedness her condition rather than objectively ours.

— You accuse me of claiming truth but why do you doubt the possibility of something beyond the limits of man’s subjective level of appreciation?
O- “I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a St. Paul.” Cioran. It is less injurrious to claim our limits than to wage our at the table our emancipation from them. For someone who wishes that the question be left open you seem only to eager to approve of the mechanism to logically close the question and provide the answer. It is not the question that moves you…

— Simone asserts that beauty is a mixed blessing. it guides us towards something but if we become infatuated with it, it serves to deny it.
O- “Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky

— Instead of being so quick to deny, why not try and put what you’ve written on subjective beauty into her perspective. it may be an eye opener.
O- I would only turn into an impostor, and declare peace with her after I do violence to her memory. Though…
“It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other.” Cioran

…Until you pray to Allah as a muslim does, or gyrate like crazy on the floor like the Pentecostals, how will you know what is the essense between them and your beliefs?

— But you continue to refer to secular or cultural values.
O- Is prayer secular? I thought it was religious…

— there is religion and spiritualism that reflects this unconscious level. Yet there is religion and spirituality that we are unaware of since it is not restricted by culture.
O- Restricted by culture? Again, this sounds like a cop out. How do you know that a person who begins to speak in tongues is “restricted” by culture? How do you know whether you are not yourself restricted by culture also? There might be a religion that reflects your consciouss level even though you believe that they are unconsciouss. Rather than decide from the comfort of your chair and imagine that they are restricted, unconsciouss, unaware, as if they are completely different from you, as if you had a third eye or something, why not simply try to experience what they feel? You ask me to give that much to Weil, why can’t you for them?

— Self knowledge is not knowing your own beliefs.
O- Self knowledge does not require that we know our beliefs? So much for the word “knowledge”…

— I will agree that there is a tendency to do this since it is difficult to remain impartial. For the really serious person, I believe a teacher, one who has already gone through it, is necessary. I can assure you, it doesn’t make you feel like Mr.Wonderful. It is not so easy to experience the truth of ones inner self.
O- You have already admitted the joy of it. One wants what is good, not what is contrary and even if it is rough or hard, the fact that we prefere it demonstrates that in fact the alternative is relatively worse so that in relation to what we trade for, all that pain and discomfort you may feel is actually the good in this binary system. You may deny it, but going through hell can make you feel afterwards just Wonderful…

— Quite true. If we witness the same patterns over and over again from the microscopic worlds to the telescopic worlds, give me a better explanation for lawful interactions than expressions of laws initiated by higher consciousness.
O- The interactions at the microscopic fail to explain what occurs at the telescopic. This is why they are right now trying to find a Unified Theory. what if in the end God is fond to play dice…?

— If you’ve ever experienced joy, was it a peaceful experience?
O- Yes, but you’ll never buy that simplest of answers. You’ve mortified “Joy” into a straight-jacket, that made it an antonym to a synonym.

“No, no. Really my experience of Joy was like being in a War…”

— Detached from pain is not the same as oblivious of pain.
O- If you still feel the pain then how are you detached from it?

— Detachment only refers to the unreal, acquired, emotional attitudes used to become enculterated and to justify oneself.
O- Are you unjustified? Detachment itself seems unreal (for who corroborates this miracle but yourself, who wants to be and might just lie to yourself that you are detached), adquired (because you begin on this road, this path), emotional attitude (free from pain, full of Joy), to become assimilated (into esoteric christianity, or the path laid by the teacher as role model) and thus justify yourself (the ultimate goal).

— It would be foolish to speak of my own verifications since by definition they are mine. The first goal must be to know thyself since everything else is determined by how genuine this knowledge is.
O- what of yourself do you wish to know?

— I’d appreciate you being honest and tell me why you are so adamant against the possibilities I’ve been sharing with you. What prevents you from saying I don’t know and leave the question open?
O- Because, as I have said, you present me with what I clearly know of and propose a bizarre set of conclusions. I feel at peace therefore i must be asleep? Joy is not pleasurable? To that I cannot say: “I don’t know” honestly. These possibilities are impossibilities as I see them. My detachment is my attachment; my consciousness my sleep? Unacceptable based on your arguments which all depart from a subjective forgeting it’s place.

— Whatever gave you the idea that you were conscious for more than brief intervals during the day?
O- are you imagining now when I am conscious and when I am not? Since when my private states became public experience? If YOU are conscious only briefly through the day then you will probably know that, but what you do is not what all others must be doing equally.

— This belief in our consciousness is IMO one of the great misconceptions of modern times.
O- This belief in our unconsciousness the great misconception you have as well in kind.

— If we cannot develop the capacity to distinguish between objective and subjective reason, then my efforts are wasted. I don’t believe it to be the case. I’ve read and experienced too much that has made sense to believe in the impossibility of objective human understanding.
O- That is your belief and not necessarly what is the case.

Quote:
Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object.
O- The fact that we are ready, means that we lay in wait and attached to whatever we expect shall penetrate our minds. So much for detachment.

— It means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of.
O- “Holding in”,“within reach”, “lower level”, “not in contact”…every detachment is an attachment…

— Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate it."
O- How can it be empty, when so much attention must go into what position my mind must be in relation to the “object”? We wait for what we are convinced must come. We lay in wait for what engages us and arrest our attention…so much for detachment. How can we seek nothing from it, when we pay so much attention to it?

— "Absolute unmixed attention is prayer. "
O- All attention is by necessity, mixed.

— You insist on thinking that all religions exist only on one level.
O- you were the one that brought the idea of an essense. Not on only one level but one level in common.

— Their differences are on the surface.
O- How do you know without verifying it for yourself? Perhaps you’ll find that there is no such thing as a “common ground” or “essense of religion”. I don’t know, but if i wanted to know, I would do as I have advised.

— Who has time to try and work themselves into the deeper realms of different beliefs?
O- One who’s serious and recognizes the difficulties, not just those posted by a teacher, but those posted when one accepts more than one teacher.

— I’ve come to understand Man as a relative concept that can mean one of seven different levels of existence. there is a level of Christianity that corresponds for each since it initiated from the highest level.
O- See, and this is why all that talk about “leaving the question open” or having a theory which you “will personally verify” speak of an openess that simply is not there. You have come to understand, you already believe. Why do you understand, why do you believe if not for the fact that your hypothesis is your Law?

— This is what is important to me. Some people I know went to see the Dalai Lama when he was visiting the United States. One of his associates was asked how he regards esoteric Christianity. the answer was that at that level, esoteric Christianity and esoteric Buddhism are the basically the same. This is what interests me.
O- ahh yeah, the most impressive and engaging of religions which is not itself a religion in any sense of the word as it applies to Christianity.

— A way out through awakening from the slavery of the human condition.
O- There is that objectivity and detachment again…

— It is progression along cycles.
O- How do you know?

67

Hi Omar

Well I guess a mutual pat on the back is better than a mutual cursing out. :slight_smile:

Pythagoras Law of Octaves is based on the relationship of vibrations. This is a large topic but just to give an inkling:

sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta19.htm

Rates of vibrations define individuality. It seems foolish to me that if Mankind became extinct the mathematical relationships between vibrations would cease.

Life has its good and bad moments for us. It is a continuum that can manifest as either desirable or not depending on conditions. Some feel a need for "meaning that is not satisfied even from the good times and the flowof this continuum. They feel something calling from beyond the flow of life itself.

I can’t really answer to many personal questions about myself. I’ve found it better not to trust certain proponents of peace and love around here. That is why I don’t refer to my path or the previously mentioned ancestor by name in public. It doesn’t feel right to do.

If this is your belief, it is fine with me.

And the pianist sees he cannot. There is always something beyond. Simone pushed by remaining open to her relationship to the human condition as opposed to the temptation to just becoming “normal.” and bask in vanity.

Prayer as normally practiced is secular. Religious prayer is much different than you’d expect.

Rather than decide from the comfort of your chair and imagine that they are restricted, unconsciouss, unaware, as if they are completely different from you, as if you had a third eye or something, why not simply try to experience what they feel? You ask me to give that much to Weil, why can’t you for them

Maybe so but the goal of Christianity is to do just that. As Paul said, without the Resurrection Christianity has no relevance. If people cannot evolve in their being, the best thing is to stick with “wonderful” thoughts and good scotch until the next battle.

Art critics are a breed of their own so trying to determine why something is highly regarded requires a whole case of good scotch to figure out. I think Joseph Turner sold at his highest price for 35.8 million. I still prefer some of my ancestor’s seascapes. Does that make me wrong or ignorant of art?

Somewhere you got this idea that I’m claiming to be awake. To the contrary I’ve verified the hold of sleep on me which for me is a big thing. I once put this idea into a thread called “Simone, Plato, and the Cave.” If you have not read the cave analogy in a long time, you’ll see what I am driving at. I just feel as one who is not content with what Plato describes as the human condition.

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … imone+weil

I’ve only smelled the coffee. Coming to grips with it is something else entirely.

Possibly so and for those really concerned, their obligation is to verify their own inner condition. But Simone did say:

If this is true, she is basically speaking of sleep. A person has to either verify it or not to be able to know for themselves. It also extends out into society:

IMO virtually all of society’s collective ills are due to this lack of consciousness.

What is my solution and how do you feel it neglects the question?

Good Russian observation… I see there is hope for you. :slight_smile:

Reads like a classic description of sleep to me.

Try an experiment with me. Imagine yourself angry. Do you feel a difference in these two descriptions of the condition?

  1. I am angry

  2. Anger is in me.

I am angry is a description of attachment. You don’t exist. You’ve become the emotion of anger. However "anger is in me is a description of detachment. There is “you” in the direction of “I” that observes and is detached from the existence of this anger that has entered into your common presence. This freedom takes a long time to develop.

What difference does it make what I am imagining? I asked what made you believe that you were conscious. What do I have to do with it?

So we have this difference. How could we verify it one way or another?

Omar, I’ve worked directly with similar ideas so I understand her experientially. You really will not be able to understand what she means now assuming that there is meaning, until you have a better grasp of the difference between Attachment and detachment. This is a very Eastern distinction as well. I’m not claiming any superiority here but my own path stresses the necessity of this quality of Attention so I’m more familiar with it in both theory and practice.

I believe so. The sacred teachings initiating with a conscious source all begin at this same level of consciousness that is higher then what passes for consciousness on earth. At the same time, a true teaching must adapt itself to the differing levels people are on. The Christianity for an Apostle is far different than the one for the TV Evangelist.

The trouble here is that the lower cannot verify the higher. I know this is politically incorrect but it is what I’ve come to believe. Actually this is one esoteric meanings of the Commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery. We cannot understand a necessary part of a teaching and seek to feel good from another. All this leads to is a person becoming an “expert,” while denying themselves their desired understanding. A true teaching, and not just wishful thinking, puts the student up against themsselves at the risk of sacrificing our "wonderful. thoughts. It is apparently an annoying necessity.

This is the hypothesis. it is up to me to verify it or not. Entertaining a hypothesis is not by definition becoming a slave to it. I’ve been around these things long enough to know there are times when even obvious inconsistencies are introduced to further a person’s capacity for critical thinking. The purpose of a genuine path is not to create slaves but free men which is impossible if a person will swallow anything.

Intellectually from my study of the Great Laws and experientially from what happens both to me and in life itself.

Seem familiar?

68

Hello Nick:
By now we’ve left just about everyone else, including socratus out of this tread. :confused:

— Pythagoras Law of Octaves is based on the relationship of vibrations.
O- Here’s Hume’s response:
“‘Tis usual with mathematicians, to pretend, that those ideas, which are their objects, are of so refin’d and spiritual a nature, that they fall not under the conception of the fancy, but must be comprehended by a pure and intellectual view, of which the superior faculties of the soul are alone capable. The same notion runs thro’ most parts of philosophy, and is principally made use of to explain oar abstract ideas, and to shew how we can form an idea of a triangle, for instance, which shall neither be an isoceles nor scalenum, nor be confin’d to any particular length and proportion of sides. 'Tis easy to see, why philosophers are so fond of this notion of some spiritual and refin’d perceptions; since by that means they cover many of their absurdities, and may refuse to submit to the decisions of clear ideas, by appealing to such as are obscure and uncertain. But to destroy this artifice, we need but reflect on that principle so oft insisted on, that all our ideas are copy’d from our impressions.”

Johann Döbereiner proposed a similar “Law”. These are laws of the subjective and not actual laws. Dictating “laws” in this way makes for interesting books such as the “Bible Code”, but the enigma is human, all too human…

— Rates of vibrations define individuality. It seems foolish to me that if Mankind became extinct the mathematical relationships between vibrations would cease.
O- What relations exist but those that we imagine? Hume says:
“When therefore the mind is accustomed to these judgments and their corrections, and finds that the same proportion which makes two figures have in the eye that appearance, which we call equality, makes them also correspond to each other, and to any common measure, with which they are compar’d, we form a mix’d notion of equality deriv’d both from the looser and stricter methods of comparison. But we are not content with this. For as sound reason convinces us that there are bodies vastly more minute than those, which appear to the senses (…) we clearly perceive, that we are not possess’d of any instrument or art of measuring, which can secure us from ill error and uncertainty. (…) the addition or removal of one of these minute parts, is not discernible either in the appearance or measuring… This standard is plainly imaginary. But tho’ this standard be only imaginary, the fiction however is very natural; (…) The case is the same in many other subjects. A musician finding his ear becoming every day more delicate, and correcting himself by reflection and attention, proceeds with the same act of the mind, even when the subject fails him, and entertains a notion of a compleat tierce or octave, without being able to tell whence he derives his standard. A painter forms the same fiction with regard to colours. A mechanic with regard to motion. To the one light and shade; to the other swift and slow are imagin’d to be capable of an exact comparison and equality beyond the judgments of the senses.”

All these small miracles are fiats of the imagination.

— I can’t really answer to many personal questions about myself. I’ve found it better not to trust certain proponents of peace and love around here. That is why I don’t refer to my path or the previously mentioned ancestor by name in public. It doesn’t feel right to do.
O- Then give me those biography facts of Simone Weil and see the point there.

— And the pianist sees he cannot. There is always something beyond.
O- The point in the musical piece is not it’s completion but it’s execution. The point of life, the good in life, might not be to attain that which lies beyond but to do that which can be done. Perhaps that is my advise to the pianist. If you ever reached that beyond, well, what then?
Sysiphus stood there at the top of the hill after pushing his massive rock up it’s bank. Tired, he still knew that this was not the end and wept, for no matter his effort, he could never reach the end which lies beyond.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man in a prone position. He was old and thin. And he basically asked Sysiphus, why the long face? Sysiphus explained and the man laughed.
If you reach what you seek, as I have, you will lose your youth and vitality, since now you don’t need it and your mind will grow numb, as it now it seeks only to remember what used to beyond but now is part of memory.
Sysiphus departed the summit and walked down the hill. He placed his hands upon the rock as one places his hands upon a friend. Before he proceed, he placed a small pebble in his pocket. Upon reaching the summit again, he threw the pebble to the tip of the hill, trying to make it higher.

— Simone pushed by remaining open to her relationship to the human condition as opposed to the temptation to just becoming “normal.” and bask in vanity.
O- Bask in vanity? Only vanity kept her from being “normal”. Open to the human condition, but refusing to be normal? What price that openess? It is meaningless. It is like the Rich who remains “open” to the plight of the poor, but denies that such openess and understanding would ever require that he himself become poor. Weil wanted to understand the “human condition” without even trying to be human, to do as humans do.

— Prayer as normally practiced is secular. Religious prayer is much different than you’d expect.
O- How do you know?

— I just feel as one who is not content with what Plato describes as the human condition.
O- And from discontent you seek contentment. This is common. I often read Nietzsche with that thought in mind. Perhaps all philosophers do it, but it is clearer with Nietzsche. There is a pain, a disease that initially motivates their study. When the study end, the last chapter can reveal their prescription, their opinion on just how life should be.
But because the origin in them is partial, so will their conclusion show this partiality and regardless of how objective the study seems to be and how perfectly it captures the “human condition”, the meagerness of their lifes cannot be equaled to the fullness or presummed fullness of life.

— What is my solution and how do you feel it neglects the question?
O- To personally verify the hypothesis presented by esoteric christianity. How is there a neglect of the question? Because every hypothesis has within it’s own answer. The only question left is not the original question but if the answer given by the hypothesis passes muster.

Quote:
“It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other.” Cioran
— Reads like a classic description of sleep to me.
O- Or a timeless revelation about what is true.

— Try an experiment with me. Imagine yourself angry. Do you feel a difference in these two descriptions of the condition?

  1. I am angry
  2. Anger is in me.
    O- The person that says 2 is not really “angry”, as I use the word. he might say that he has anger within himself, but the word cannot serve as a public concept in this case.

— I am angry is a description of attachment. You don’t exist. You’ve become the emotion of anger.
O- Very nice.

— However "anger is in me is a description of detachment. There is “you” in the direction of “I” that observes and is detached from the existence of this anger that has entered into your common presence. This freedom takes a long time to develop.
O- I see what you say but again, some questions exist.
In 1 you say that I don’t exist, but clearly there is the “I am”. Secondly that I have become the emotion. But then I would say:“I am anger” equating the “I” with the emotion but as it is the sentence declares an emotion being felt by the subject.
In 2 you say that “anger is in me” detaches the emotion from the I. Yet the I in turn is detached from itself. It creates a “me”, and added a veil of protection. By this time, how can the I report from a 3rd party view? “There is anger in me”. Well, how do you know? Because you are angry…
The game played with words are just that: games. and cannot provide a clear distinction of experience, only of reflection and expression.

I said: O- You prove this very morsel as false, for you are alive and live life and are consciouss, are you not?
You added: “Whatever gave you the idea that you were conscious for more than brief intervals during the day? This belief in our consciousness is IMO one of the great misconceptions of modern times”.

— What difference does it make what I am imagining? I asked what made you believe that you were conscious. What do I have to do with it?
O- It is your opinion that we are unconsciouss. is this opinion informed by anything but your self? Your consider the belief in consciousness as a misconception, but how can you even begin such concept. The only mind open to enquiry is yours so the particular from which you drw the general is yourself and as such, other than your past self, no one else can be coceived as unconsciouss.
There are consciouss states and also unconsciousness. As I use these two words, my general condition is consciouss. For there to be an “I”, or “my”, something else must be there of which the “I” is consciouss. The I arrives by the awerness of an other. To be unconsciouss is to be in a dreamless sleep, to be dead, in a coma, or just knocked out so that you do not react, as if you cannot become aware of others, or another.
During the day, when you are awake, when do you feel to be asleep or unconscious?

— Omar, I’ve worked directly with similar ideas so I understand her experientially. You really will not be able to understand what she means now assuming that there is meaning, until you have a better grasp of the difference between Attachment and detachment. This is a very Eastern distinction as well. I’m not claiming any superiority here but my own path stresses the necessity of this quality of Attention so I’m more familiar with it in both theory and practice.
O- Fine, Nick, but keep in mind that the opinion here expressed is that a lot of dichotomies are being hatched that are synonyms.

69

Hi Omar

It was a rough day. I’ll try and get back to this Sunday morning before work. However, I wanted to explain a bit more about the following before conking out.

I know you prefer the idea of experiencing religion on the secular level and I’ve been referring to a conscious source that equates all religions initiating from a higher level of consciousness that become absorbed by the world and manifested as parts.

This idea does not go over well. I believe it is primarily because of our egotism that denies our collective ignorance and the idea that there could be consciousness that dwarfs ours.

I know you’ve read complaints about me quoting and all that foolishness but I see no reason why I have to write everything out when something is in plain sight. So I’ll post this link to a page that gives a diagram of what I refer to. Actually the Integralscience.org has some interesting articles on it and even some comparitive statements between Einstein and those attributed to Buddha. So SOCRATUS, if you’re still around, you may find that interesting as far as our mutual concern for the unity of science and Religion. Some could be worth discussing.

integralscience.org/unity.html

Exoteric here means external or in life itself as in our unconscious functioning in the external world. Esoteric means the “Inner Man.” It refers to the objective nature of being and the function of consciousness as an atribute of “being.”

So here is a fine diagram of what I was trying to express. The different great traditions having begun in their unique way to compliment the culture and mindset of the time and habitual nature, have become distinct entities at the exoteric level. However, consciousness as it relates to transcendence, reveals the deeper truths that are the same. The author seems to be making the wise point that this unification is far more distant for our psych as it is than we suspect. I would agree from what I’ve read on my own path that takes the same approach.

This is what is missing on the ineffable thread: this sense of scale and relativity. IMO people in general believe themselves much closer to anything objective then is the case. This can only lead to fantasy. Yet I believe Man, with his potential for consciousness may become capable of far more then is believed. It is all linked to that strange word: “awakening.” But hopefully you can see my attraction to this transcendent unity. As shown, it can even be related to mathematical relationships.

I find this idea of levels of consciousness dwarfing me invigorating. I don’t feel anything insulting about it at all. Actually I have gratitude for it since I begin to get a glimpse of human meaning and purpose through these experiences.

We’ve been discussing this and I think it only fair to make you aware of another source I just discovered. Looks like I’m buying another book. :slight_smile:

70

Hi Socratus,

Did you say something?

Look, you’ll have to stop behaving as though you started this thread and meant something other than Nick or Omar want to talk about … and no, Nick can’t start his own threads so put up with it!!

Sorry Socratus, I hope this experience hasn’t dampened your wish to discuss with us.

Shalom

71

Bob

When was the last time you replied to anything from Socratus? I did because he was being ignored. Then Omar responded. No one else was around so we communicated. In my last post I even mentioned including some ideas from the Intergrlscience site as in the complimentary ideas of Einstein and Buddha since if Omar, Socratus and any others are interested,we could share and develop some ideas.

It really isn’t that far off topic. Quantum physics deals with vibrations. The connection betweeen physics and metaphysics lies with vibrations and how they manifest as either waves or particles. I admit that this is over my head but I don’t mind learning since it coincides perfectly with what I’ve come to know as levels of being.

Secondly, conjecturing over the kinds of people like Simone Weil that have gone deepr into the direction between the exoteric and esoteric is very valuable for our considering the broad topicof human understanding.

I don’t mind a thread on this idea raised by the book I just linked to.

integralscience.org/unity.html

But the clique has made it uncomfortable for those that could be open to such ideas like the transcendant unity of the ancient traditions in favor of this secularization and ineffable thought. Appreciating these ideas necessitates beginning to see ones nothingness and you’ve openly attacked those open to such things in favorof secularization.

That is why such threads belong on the New Board. The attitude would attract those more open to these transcendental possibilities for Man. Who is a regular here that would appreciate participating in considering these thoughts?

What is it that compels you to write so nasty in this way?

monasticdialog.com/a.php?id=151

The Transcendent Unity of Religions

Introduction by Huston Smith

Frithjof Schuon

Theosophical Publishing House

1984
This republication of Schuon’s “superlative” work on the unity of religions has a long, learned and enlightening introduction by Huston Smith, with a helpful diagram making even more precise Schuon’s thesis on the relation between religions

The dividing line is horizontal and occurs only once, rather than the distinction being between the religions themselves. For Schuon, existence—and, therefore, cognition—is graded. Hence, in God at the apex, religions converge; below the line they differ. So, too, religious discernment unites at its apex and divides below it.

Smith compares Schuon’s thesis with others, quoting the author himself in saying that there is “a unity at the heart of religions” that can be “univocally described by none and concretely apprehended by few.” Smith’s introduction concludes with a helpful description of the esoteric and exoteric distinction restated—a key, he says, to the understanding of the whole book. T.S. Eliot said of Schuon’s volume: “I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion.” From beginning to end, Schuon quotes Muslim and Christian, Hindu and other mystics alike to substantiate his valuable insights. He insists that the unity of the different religions is not only unrealizable on the external level, that of the forms themselves, but ought not to be realized at that level even were this possible, for in that case the revealed forms would be deprived of their sufficient reason. The very fact that they are revealed, he claims, “shows that they are willed by the Divine Word.” He uses the word “transcendent” in the title because it means that the unity of the religious forms must be realized in a purely inward and spiritual way and without prejudice to any particular form. “The antagonisms between these forms no more affect the one universal Truth than the antagonisms between opposing colors affect the transmission of the one uncolored light.”

You like to condemn and that is OK. It would be nice though if an area could exist to be condemnation free Where those that are neither secularists, advocates of la la land, or mocking Atheists could feel comfortable in trying to understand ideas both so valuable and profound.

72

Hi Omar

I guess we’ve cleared the field. Sometimes these things happen. We’ll have to get Socratus into another discussion and entice new blood since we sort of hopelessly adopted this one. :slight_smile:

This reminds me of the distinction drawn several posts ago between consciousness and contents of consciousness. But the very fact that we may perceive the relationship of vibrations as visual colors and remember them as these contents of consciousness does not exclude a basic objective mathematical relationship known as the octave or the basis of the color wheel.

To do justice to this question would require you to become familiar with something called “worlds within worlds” and “discontinuity of vibrations.” I cannot diagram this out for you but at some point if the question really interests you enough to contemplate new ideas, PM me and I can show you where to read on it. I’m not trying to be obnoxious here but I know from experience these ideas are simultaneously easy and difficult at the same time. So really I’m only trying to be right by you.

How to do justice to this? Well as far as certain basic impressions of Simone, start here:

rivertext.com/weil3a.html

Remember her aim and now consider some facts:

simone.weil.free.fr/home.htm

Click on Biography and what others have said. Some links are outdated. I believe the stories of her childhood related to her refusing candy at five years old since she had heard talk of the French soldiers denied sugar. It seems as though from the beginning she was concerned with life beyond her self intrests.

Yes she was despised as the “Red Virgin” though it has become a term of respect just in protest of all this lunacy from those like the following:

She seemed to have a genuine awareness of global human suffering and hunger in particular that we are normally oblivious of other than in lip service. I don’t know why she felt hunger so strongly since her family wasn’t poor. But here is an account of Simone Weil from the other Simone:

I’m not being critical of you since you don’t know her. But this is just wrong. Simone Weil lived her philosophy. She willfully sacrificed her body for it. She voluntarily undertook factory work and starvation wages so she could experience this reality. Read factory work under her bio. If you read “her criminal error” under the bio, you will see the truths she learned about Communism.

If you think that the reason she held these beliefs was from some sort of female frustrations and escapism, it is just not true. She was as she was because she saw so clearly and could not be happy in la la land. She went into the trenches. So even though slight in build, she stood up against the best because it was the human thing to do.

There is an excerpt from Meister Eckhart that I am very fond of. I only use it in regards to very few. I would not want to cheapen it. I do use it for Simone Weil and the life she lived.

Prayer as normally practiced is secular. Religious prayer is much different than you’d expect.
O- How do you know?

innerlightproductions.com/th … an0602.htm

This is what I cannot get through to you. The goal is not contentment but the inner experience of “meaning” and “purpose” that is non existent for us in the world other than through family and culture. Some feel a higher calling that is nothing like contentment but the experience of objective human meaning and purpose.

But the question itself is alive. It is not static. It is life itself and as such is participating in the process of evolving or devolving. The task of keeping the question alive isn’t through the acceptance of an answer that kills it and begins its devolving cycle back into chaos. The real questions evolve in accordance with our spiritual evolution. The question is how to begin to understand without killing the question.

It does appear to me to be a timeless revelation about what is true for us.

This great question of “I Am” is one of the great attractions of my path. It rests in-between Buddhism and Christendom. Where Christendom asserts the existence of a completed soul, “I Am,” Buddhism asserts that we are a plurality of a virtual infinity of small i am’s that continually respond to external life. I’ve come to appreciate the idea that “I AM” exists in us as a potential but as of now we exist as described in Buddhism. Real “I Am” would be the soul of Man which we lack and function as described as the plurality in Buddhism.

You cannot say I am anger simply because anger is a transitory state. One emotion moves into the other in the flow of our lives. But I can come to see when anger is within me and consciously experience and verify it. Can one experience anger without becoming angry? Yes, but it requires becoming familiar with the difference between the unconscious suppression of emotion and its conscious non-expression. This becomes heavy stuff.

When you walked to the computer, were you conscious of yourself or did it just happen? Instead of saying "I am watching the screen, relax first and then say Omar is watching the screen reserving “I” for this conscious awareness. Omar is now watching the screen and "I"is watching Omar. This is conscious self awareness. You will see that you can only retain this state for a very short time. After that we lose self awareness and once again, everything just “happens” as a normal flow of reactions to life’s influences both externally and internally. This level of human programming is “sleep” natural in the absence of self awareness. In sleep, everything just “happens.”

73

Hello Nick.
I am going to take both of your post as one.

— I believe so. The sacred teachings initiating with a conscious source all begin at this same level of consciousness that is higher then what passes for consciousness on earth.
O- First, I doubt that “The sacred teachings” share some unity over the centuries. Each generation, it seems brings along it’s own concerns and views them through the lenses of what was said before, but this doesn’t mean that Moses and Paul are speaking about the same things. The Messiah means a different thing for the jew than it does to the christian. You might see this division as secular, but I see it as essential, as it is here that jews and christian split.
There are certain foundamental teachings, essential teachings, that establish the identity of “christianity”, for example. At the essense of christianity is a belief in the divine identity of Jesus. was he the Christ? It is essential that this answer is clear or “Christianity” would be a false name.
As far as how much these diverse religions agree or are alike in respect to how they view God, I shall only say that what is important for the faithful, in general, is not that there is a God, Goddess, or Gods. No religious experience begin and ends at this. No scripture we can find simply says: I believe in God. The end.
Now you might say that this is because God speaks to our hearts etc; but a darker explanation is that we need more than that. Religious devotion is entertwined with certain activities and events in our lives. One facet that is elemental to religions is it’s concerns with Death.
In my experience, most churches dedicate prayer for those who are sick, or at war, or otherwise in danger. Rites like Baptism have as it’s root a concern with the fitness of the child. The ancients sought help from oracles and prophets to better predict events or guidance for their actions.
God and Gods have been many things and not always strickly human, but one common theme, another essential quality if you will, is that the Gods are in control and in turn are persuaded or can be persuaded in one way or another. we can continue to speak like a Feuerbach about all these “essentials”.
To speak of what is essential about religious experience without mention to these concerns is to have missed something.
It is a temptation of us all to find an under ground under which all appearances, their chaos and diversity, finally fall and coalese onto One, onto an order, an essense. But we must look at this presumed order from all angles and with restless honesty, lest we settle for an illusion, sweet as it might be.
Do Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Voodoo, Purple Wombatism all share an essential quality? Make your case and we’ll see.

— At the same time, a true teaching must adapt itself to the differing levels people are on. The Christianity for an Apostle is far different than the one for the TV Evangelist.
O- In what sense? In that they believe Jesus is the Christ?

— I know you prefer the idea of experiencing religion on the secular level and I’ve been referring to a conscious source that equates all religions initiating from a higher level of consciousness that become absorbed by the world and manifested as parts.
O- I nor you can speak objectively of the higher origin of faith. But even if we allow for the higher we also must out of fairness allow the lowest. For example, instead to believe that a “conscious source” equates all religions which originate from a “Higher Level of Consciousness”, we could also make a case as Howard Bloom did in the Lucifer’s Principle, that religions originate from an unconscious source within ourselves, and from this source, which preconditions our reason, the little doctor, the ego, a “Higher Level” is imagined to accompany this higher (conscious) source.

— This idea does not go over well. I believe it is primarily because of our egotism that denies our collective ignorance and the idea that there could be consciousness that dwarfs ours.
O- But Nick, if Bob disagrees with you, it is not that he has denied the existence of a consciousness higher than his. He believes in God after all.

— I find this idea of levels of consciousness dwarfing me invigorating. I don’t feel anything insulting about it at all. Actually I have gratitude for it since I begin to get a glimpse of human meaning and purpose through these experiences.
O- The you tell me elsewhere that this awakening is rough, kicks your butt etc. all that violence you feel elsewhere you see here leads to feelings of gratitude and dare I say:“hope”?

— I guess we’ve cleared the field. Sometimes these things happen. We’ll have to get Socratus into another discussion and entice new blood since we sort of hopelessly adopted this one.
O- Socratus, if you’re listening, please accept my excuses. Not to justify myself but perhaps to help you see it in a positive light, remember that sometimes a thread can be like a child. It comes from you but eventually, it strikes on it’s own and becomes the world’s.

— I believe the stories of her childhood related to her refusing candy at five years old since she had heard talk of the French soldiers denied sugar. It seems as though from the beginning she was concerned with life beyond her self intrests.
O- Fascinating. But that is what sympathy is defined as. No need for some trancendental explanation, except for the stauchest acusser of altruism.
A note: Albert Camus’ The Rebel was a great book that also showed the distance which separated the soviets and the original anarchists like Peter Kropotin.

— She seemed to have a genuine awareness of global human suffering and hunger in particular that we are normally oblivious of other than in lip service.
O- Makes you wonder, then, about the accusations that Simone actually starved herself. Perhaps she did, in the same manner as she forgoe candy while soldiers were denied sweets. Perhaps she meant her starvation as a protest, and placed her fate along the fate of those that are starving. Women like her and Mother teresa are admirable in this way. However, while I admire her in these respects I do not consider opinions as measured and moderate, but opinions that depart from an exageration in feeling. To me she was too concentrated on what the workers lacked on what the soldiers lack on what everybody lacked that she never looked at what we all may have. So complete was her commitment to being a slave that she never could consider the Master’s position as Nietzsche once did. While Nietzsche sought to go above the perspectives of master and slave and saw them as perspectives without a material value but to those that held them, Simone chose a side, the Slave…
I read what she said to Beauvoir:
“I don’t know how the conversation got started; she declared in no uncertain tones that only one thing mattered in the world: the revolution which would feed all the starving people of the earth. I retorted, no less peremptorily, that the problem was not to make men happy, but to find the reason for their existence. She looked me up and down: ‘It’s easy to see you’ve never been hungry,’ she snapped.”
What a materialist! Beauvoir was alluring to the metaphysical needs in humans and Weil on the physical needs of others. We are not one or the other but a combination of both. People cannot and should not be reduced to a single need.
I wonder what she would say at the sight of the prostitute at Jesus feet: The first Christian?
"She broke the jar, and poured it over his head.

4 But there were some who were indignant among themselves, saying, "Why has this ointment been wasted?

5 For this might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and given to the poor." They grumbled against her.

6 But Jesus said, "Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for me.

7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want to, you can do them good; but you will not always have me."

She probably would have sided with those indignant and retorted as well to Jesus himself: “Obviously you’ve never been hungry”.
The Miracle of the bread and fishes was not that there were thousands of fish and loaves of bread but that from what little there was people SHARED with one another. At least that is a not so famous interpretation…

— I’m not being critical of you since you don’t know her. But this is just wrong. Simone Weil lived her philosophy.
O- And that justifies her or her philosophy?

— If you think that the reason she held these beliefs was from some sort of female frustrations and escapism, it is just not true.
O- Nope. Out of an internal sense of righteousness that far exceeds ours. But I say a sense, as in an internal feeling, not due to some synchronicity with a metaphysical “Righteousness”.

— She was as she was because she saw so clearly and could not be happy in la la land.
O- From her perspective, limited as it was, reality became “la la land”. But again, the blind cannot teach us what is like to see, only what is like to be blind. I have read what links you have provided and i thank you for giving me a chance to come to know such a person but still that does not make me change my mind. It is a repeated critique of mine towards philosophers and saints. Be a philosopher, if you desire, but never forget to be a man. You can doubt reality all you want, but at the end of the day, you’ll still set your alarm as if it is a done deal what you have doubted as a philosopher all day.
Same for the humanitarian. Hunger is not a moral flaw, or a sin.

— Religious prayer is much different than you’d expect.
O- How do you know?
Quote:

Read St;Simeon’s account.
O- So I get to “know” by reading someone else’s account of the feat? Another’s opinion on what it should be?

— Tell me if this is the same as “Dear God please give me a new car.”
O- Make it: “Please God save my child’s life”. The essense is the same. As Mann puts it: “…the coercion of a Divinity.”

— This is what I cannot get through to you. The goal is not contentment but the inner experience of “meaning” and “purpose” that is non existent for us in the world other than through family and culture.
O- And what does this bring? Catasthrophe? Or Gratitude?

— Some feel a higher calling that is nothing like contentment but the experience of objective human meaning and purpose.
O- And how do you think those with that higher calling feel as they come to EXPERIENCE (the great honor, I would suppose, kept for the few) OBJECTIVE HUMAN MEANING AND PURPOSE? Whaever you call it, to me this is “contentment”…

— But the question itself is alive. It is not static.
O- Not really. Who has the time for questions? Who has the stamina for doubt?

— It does appear to me to be a timeless revelation about what is true for us.
O- Exactly!!!

— Can one experience anger without becoming angry? Yes, but it requires becoming familiar with the difference between the unconscious suppression of emotion and its conscious non-expression. This becomes heavy stuff.
O- It is possible only because at that point we would be using the word in very distinct ways, which would be divorced from one another. I have already said that it is not possible as I use the word, and probably as other people too use the word.

— When you walked to the computer, were you conscious of yourself or did it just happen?
O- It happened because I was aware of what I wanted to do. I wanted to get on the computer.

— Instead of saying "I am watching the screen, relax first and then say Omar is watching the screen reserving “I” for this conscious awareness.
O- Why don’t I make it interesting and say that “Omar and Bernie are watching the screen and I am watching them both”? Whiloe you describe schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, I might as well add more characters to the inner world before the hypothetical (at that point) “I”?
Better explained, all you are capable of doing is again to create a false division among synonyms. Might as well say: “I is watching the screen and I am watching myself”.
It is not that it is hard to do this for me, but that if i did this sort of stuff, it would be from little concotions in my imaginations. “There is I and there is Omar” as if the two are not interchangeable, perfectly so, in language?

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Hi Nick,

you can say all you want about me, although it is off topic, but with an average of 3.87 (very long) posts per day, I would expect to find more threads started by yourself. But from January until today I can find only the following:

Humor and Honest Discourse
Biblical language and oral tradition
An Easter Observation
Aspiration
Love Of God

They all ran a short while, but it seems you were more bothered with spreading Simone Weil all across other threads – I am very interested in Simone Weil, don’t get me wrong – but can’t you see what I am getting at?

But this is off topic.

Shalom

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Hi Omar

The diagram shows that there is a great span in understanding between the highest in the esoteric part on the left and the lowest in the exoteric divisions on the right.

I don’t think you appreciate this great span of human being that separate the exoteric from the esoteric.

The messiah may mean different things to adherents of Judaism and Christendom and it is expected so due to the human condition. But to the messiah and the conscious perspective, they are the same as attempts to deal with “sleep” and what it denies mankind. They contain within them, representations of this span of being from the corse to the fine.

The essential teaching is re-birth. Everything else is secondary to it.Without re-birth, the teaching serves no purpose other than on the secular level.

Paul speaks of this and how it relates to sleep but since the Bible is more often read from a secular perspective, the depth of what Paul expresses falls on deaf ears.

Jesus speaks of being born again as the goal. Paul does so from experience. Yet Christendom speaks of other things. Why? Because to seriously consider re-birth requires a person to consider their own nothingness. Not in these days of self importance. Digesting such thought is worse than digesting a spoon of castor oil though they can serve the same benefit.

Buddhism has its 4 Noble truths and its Eightfold Path. If you consider the ancient excercises related to this, it is obvious a change of being is the goal. Yet in modern times those advocating their teaching forget this and the results are often from suppression rather than experience resulting in hostile Buddhists. How in these conditions could Christianity and Buddhims ever understand each other. Their essential nature is lost to the secular so what really is being debated is Christendom and the equivelent degeneration of Buddhism.

Agreed but the esoteric and exoteric methods are not the same. Consider a funeral. The person that dies may be hated moreoften than not. In fact the faster he dies and others get his money the better. Yet the eulogy will express all sorts of wonderful things no one believes. So where a funeral should be a ritual to establish the truth and others learn from it, now it is a ritual that is desingned to support a lie. Rather than the momentary awkening that should come from a funeral, its exoteric secular result is more often than not to put people to sleep even more.

It is impossible for a secular religion to accept this. By difinition it is on the side of “life” as it understands it and without the living blend of the esoteric and exoteric. Now this is a real question. but again, it needs mutual respect to share on something so profound.

A genuine religion must serve the needs of people on all levels of spiritual development. Some only want consolation for their personal experiences with suffering and that of their loved ones. Others like Simone Weil desire understanding at the expense of consolation. A real religion has within it and knows how to serve the gamut of these needs.

If Purple Womabitism can reveal itself as having initiated with a conscious source, it can be done. I believe you are mistaken to believe that this commonality is so easily seen. I intend to read that book to add to my knowledgeof these things. Perhaps if you did also we could have a book discussion.

The difference is in how it is valued. Even the demons admitted the nature of Jesus. Most give lip service since the importance of re-birth is not felt. Secular concerns dominate. It is the power of “sleep.” Yet for some others, the VAUE of the opportunity Jesus brought through his life and death for Man is much more active in their being. Their belief is of another level.

Quite true. The descending influences of the conscious source to arouse people from sleep are met by the ascending power of “experts” that create all sorts of interpretations of this conscious effort from their sleep and rendering them impotent. Believe me I accept the reality of both influences.

It is not a matter of belief in God but in the quality of the God/Man relationship. Where I value the distance between them and the necessity of the growth of our own being for the sake of raising ourselves through first admitting our nothingness, those like Bob prefer to unite them on a secular level or bring God down to its level and validate the human condition. This is why I appear so insulting. My point of view attacks the sacred cow of self importance.

Violence is not effort. It is the attitude behind an effort. I don’t look upon my willingness to get my inner ass kicked as accepting violence. It is just an alarm clock that helps one along the path towards awakening. It does arouse “hope” but not hope IN something, but hope as a normally suppressed human quality or objective connection with conscious life.

Sympathy or empathy? There is a big difference. Where sympathy does not require a trancendental explanation, I believe when this degree of empathy expresses itself, it is beyond just animal emotion but something that indicates becoming human.

But we define exaggeration by the standards of sleeping people. Perhaps from being more aware, she is also expressing the results of the experience of human feelings.

If humanity were awake, war would be impossible simply because it is inhuman. Yet as we are, it is an acceptable periodic occurrence. Some might protest and the majority may view their awareness, if indeed it is not just a conditioned response, as an exaggeration but at the same time it may be more human from a greater conscious perspective.

Yes, IMO this is where it must start; the recognition of our nothingness. I know how offensive this appears.

This is why Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman is so hard to deal with. We put it in terms of our normal dreams. But I don’t believe it is something we can truly begin to grow towards without first appreciating our nothingness. Only this IMO provides the base from which this idea of evolution or Superman can be put into a meaningful human perspective.

First things first. What is the metaphysical value for an unaware person starving to death. Suppose you came upon a member of your family starving to death, would you start giving lectures or providing food? People like Simone are not restricted to just what is in physical sight or familiar ties, they feel humanity in ways we cannot comprehend. Consider the extraordinary way she puts this:

This refers also to the passage you quote from the Bible. Those that were offended by Mary’s actions thought Jesus too precious to be destroyed and his dead corpse should be celebrated. Mary Knew that his living essence and its transformation rather than the corpse must be celebrated so surrendered the highest quality of herself so as to receive the help he could provide her. She knew the enormous meaning of Jesus’ sacrifice so sacrifice and misfortune did indeed suit him.

What justifies an acorn to becoming an oak or a caterpillar becoming a butterfly? It is something that is inwardly known but impossible to explain to a mouse. I believe that her willingness to experience raw rough truth without the need for rose colored glasses or psychological mayonnaise, is something a person has to come to regardless of the protestations of the Great Beast. I just don’t know how it could be justified to the Great Beast.

First strive to be a Man and then philosophy will begin to make sense. but what does it mean to be a man?

“Awakening” that exists beyond the experience of catastrophe or gratitude allowing them to be put into a human perspective.

Well, just as an example, a Bodhisattva would disagree. This feeling of meaning and purpose is not the same as our usual feelings of contentment.

But in all fairness, this is beyond our comprehension due to our personal closed minded limitations and exists only as a potential.

integralscience.org/redemptivelove.html

Only those who have the need and courage to begin as Simone says to “Annoy the Great Beast.”

This is like the old question: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” To get to the other side. It seems as if you are describing what a chicken or dog does, But perhaps a human being has the potential to be more then a reactive animal.

I see that these things don’t interest you which is OK. People that are interested seek to verify for themselves rather than just deny through speculation. Efforts like this are a beginning to begin to “know Thyself.” rather than argue over theories… Well if all else fails, there is always good scotch which when devoured properly can virtually guarantee contentment. :slight_smile:

76

Hi Bob

If there were a board that seriously wanted to discuss philosophy as it relates to religion, I would post several threads. But the atmosphere has made it so that those that take their religion seriously as a vehicle to grow and not just justify cannot feel comfortable for obvious reasons. The bottom line is that posting my interests will not get responses because they don’t reflect the norm. Those like sincere Buddhists, Hindu’s and the like have to be attracted again because of seeing the benefit of such discussions where shared appreciation of what lies beyond our usual life’s meanings replaces the joys of condemnation and escapism.

That’s why I request an additional board. Ideas like the transcendent origin of religions could be looked at both from interest and respect. With interested people I would even contact some of these authors and ask if they would consent to a short interview as to their meaning of what we are discussing.

I am not against fruitful efforts but only against the accepted belittling of the sacred.

The best I can do now is to become so annoying with common sense that you and others of my fan club will support my efforts for the alternative board for the purpose of getting rid of me. Then we can all be happy.

77

Nick,

You have not demonstrated that you are capable of having respectful discourse.

A

78

A

Unfortunately this empty ridicule has become frighteningly normal. A, where in this discussion have I been disrespectful towards Omar? It is this kind of uinnecessary unfounded nastiness that ruins everything. It may be gratifying to attack, but I don’t think you are aware of what you lose by it.

You may win the battle because it sounds good to the clique and you puff up your self importance, but you lose the war since it is empty.

79

I refer to your last post to Bob and to the fact that you have hijacked this thread to discuss your own agenda as usual. And you don’t know what you are talking about. There is no clique.

A

80

A

There is nothing disrespectful to Bob in my last post. Why not concern yourself with his previous posts to me?

I didn’t hijack this thread. I first answered Socratus and Omar asked me something. I responded.

Omar seems to be an intelligent Atheist and it is quite normal for them to try to figure out why those like me do not see the logic of their position. So I am answering questions. This really is the unification with the religious mind and the scientific mind. I am primarily answering questions at the heart of this naive IMO division between science and religion.

Unfortunately because you are so caught up with an agenda, it doesn’t dawn on you that others may not be this way and not so caught up with this foolishness.