The Challenge of The New Age

[Nick_A]

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile. Simone Weil

Hi Bob

I see a difference between “inner” and “elite” that you obviously don’t. I know that “inner” can be something exclusive, but it doesn’t immediately mean superiority like “elite” does. The inner circle is something internal or less apparent. The inner room is a metaphor for spirituality or relating to the mind. I can accompany esotericism, but have difficulty with elitism since I believe that Spirituality is something common to man, even if it has different forms.

You’ve helped me to better understand why the natural appreciation for hierarchy as in cosmology is seen as so repulsive. It has become associated with the egotistic validation of power. Actually it is the opposite as Simone Weil expresses above. The rejection of this power is what attracted her to the essence of Christianity.

cesnur.org/2002/slc/bauer.htm

In Simone Weil’s life, religion played a dominant role in the years following the mystical epiphanies she experienced in 1938. Long before, however, her wish to partake in the suffering of the distressed led her to a life-style of extreme austerity. It was under these circumstances that, in 1937, Simone Weil became increasingly attracted to Christianity, a religion she considered to be in its true essence a religion of slaves, and therefore in utter contradiction to the actual form it had taken in history. On this assumption, Simone Weil objected against Catholicism – the denomination she knew best and respected the most --[21] that it had ended by perverting itself for the sake of power. The historical “double stain” on the Church that Simone Weil denounces originates in the fact that Israel imposed on Christian believers the acceptance of the Old Testament and its almighty God, and that Rome chose Christianity as the religion of the Empire.[22] Despite its universal redemptive mission, the Church became from its very beginnings heir of Jewish nationalism and of the totalitarianism inherent in Imperial Rome. As the spiritual locus in which both traditions of power displaced the religion of powerless slaves, Christianity became the actual negation of its own foundational leitmotiv: the self-annulment of divine omnipotence by the godly act of kenosis or self-abasement.

This is a difficult and sensitive question. It shows the value of the Buddhist sangha where a certain attitude is considered necessary in order to discuss these things. It is extremely difficult on an open site such as ILP. Egotism will not allow it.

My banter with Tentative about him being a Mystic is precisely about this commonality. We are all sentient and just manage to deal with it differently. Either we drown it out in some way, or we use the tradition we have to interpret it, or we develop new ways of interpreting it. Either way it is something inherent that helps us find salvation and essentially health, or we find signs of psychosomatic irregularities and lack of perspectives.

But what is the Sangha’s attitude toward the teacher or elders? Is superiority the right word? Yet their being, their understanding, is greater though initiating from the same basic level of sentience. So IMO there is both commonality and qualitative difference of objective understaning. The problem seems to occur when these lawful differences are adopted and interpreted by our egotism.

You wake him up!

Not so easy. First there must be the desire or need to awaken and second the help of an awakened source. What good is a sleeping expert trying to awaken another? It just creates the illusion of understanding and sounder sleep.

Once there was a mother who banged on the door of her sons room every morning shouting, “Bernard, wake up! You have to get up and go to school!”
Bernard replied, “I don’t want to go to school, and I’ll tell you three reasons why! Firstly, it’s boring. Secondly, the teachers are continually complaining at me. Thirdly, the children don’t like me!”
His mother replied, “Bernhard, I‘ll give you three reasons why you have to go to school. Firstly, we all have responsibilities. Secondly, you are the Director of the school and people are waiting for you. Thirdly, you’ll loose your job if you go on like this!”

In the case of the true young and budding “black sheep” I and I imagine Simone Weil would give the child his due in his suspicion of mainstream education.

Firstly, it’s boring.

“Monotony of evil: never anything new, everything about it is equivalent. Never anything real, everything about it is imaginary. It is because of this monotony that quantity plays so great a part. A host of women (Don Juan) or of men (Celimene) etc. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.”
– Gravity and Grace

The kid may be feeling a profound truth.

Secondly, the teachers are continually complaining at me

The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice, gold is the social order. In the case of ambition, power is the social order.

Back to"power"again. The kid may be sensing the duty of the teacher to perpetuate societies idolatry and the evils it supports.

the children don’t like me!”

Black sheep are never popular when young nor are “ugly ducklings.” They don’t fit in. Again, the kid may have a point.

The question of what responsibility and growing up really means may be more profound then we give it credit for.

[Bob]

Hi Nick,

the kid may have a point.

Sorry, but you have missed it completely …

Shalom

[Nick_A]

That’s OK. Us “black sheep” have learned the art of ducking out of the way. It is a survival skill.

[PieceFullthyme]

@Bob

Yes, but there are many factors that seem perfectly normal and take away the hope that to do the things these people did, you have to be somehow deranged. That means that these things are possible today in other societies than the German, Japanese, Turkish etc. when these factors come together.

You have to remember that Germany is nearly the opposite to what it was in the 1930`s and that the book is a sound scientific study. This has nothing to do with national pride or excuses. It is also a warning that the opinion that only the Germans could do something like this, or that you have to be deranged, just isn’t true. Effectively it was efficiency that made the Holocaust possible in that nationalistic European climate of the day - even some Jews were nationalists!

Shalom

Perfectly normal person was never born. Again, Sin is Judeo-Christian
concept, which is Illusion, derived from belief of Man serving God.
Serial Killer is not Sinner, but Mentaly Ill, by blood, not CHOICE.
It was locked in his DNA, since He was born. Good baby, obedient child,
grew up, and then one day got “Idea” that killing people is not wrong
thing to do.
Michael Schumacher did not know as a boy, that He is going to become
the Best Formula 1 driver ever born.

I was born and grew up in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, used to speak fluent
German, and know about Deutschland more than many people on this forum. Just like for many Germans, Donau, Danube or Dunav as we call it
is my blood, that is who I am, as Flesh. I’ve visited Schwarzwald, where
it starts, and been all over Germany so many times.
I love Germans, together with Japanese, most disciplined nation on planet.
I do not see one single reason for German nation to make Excuse for
what have happend in 20th century.
Adolf Hitler was created by British bankers and Astrologist, brilliant mind
with appearance of wrong Ideas. It was just beginning of world domination by British Empire. England, the most brilliant , most intelligent
People.
My favorite are Dutch, loveliest nation on planet

Jews are on the same level as Adolf Hitler, when it comes to mentality,
with identical aspiration and beliefs.
[/quote]

[PieceFullthyme]

@Bob

I wouldn’t want to say that Jesus is predicting the future, but that he is pointing to the fact that Spirituality doesn’t need Temples of Stone, which is what King David had been told long before. In that time it was already known that empires and buildings disappear – the first Temple had, other cult sites had, the Egyptian and Babylonian temples had disappeared, so why shouldn’t this one disappear?

Rather, when talking to the Samaritan woman who had mentioned the argument between Jews and Samaritans about the place of worship, Jesus replies, “there cometh an hour, and it now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father also doth seek such to worship him.” (Joh 4:23) It isn’t a question of the place of worship, nor other external issues. Far more we have to learn what seems to be coming from eastern sources more than from Christianity:
Look within,
Be still,
Free from fear and attachment,
know the sweet joy of the way.

We have to fight the continual attempt to externalise or materialise the Spiritual and learn to draw together in spiritual unity. That is the challenge of the new age.

You dear Bob, are Super Inteligent Person, in wrong state of Mind, you got Hint of Difference between Truth and Faith, Hopefuly, you are one of “Chosen Ones” and very soon, you’ll be able to Feel that. Until then, just try to do your best, or keep pretending. It’s all Good

Thanks for the flowers, but it doesn’t have anything to with intelligence. I also don’t see myself as anyone caught up in some kind of Rapture. I think that the call to love my neighbour would forbid that. It is a question of learning to understand spiritually – everything else is speculation.

Shalom

Disciples did not know who was Jesus, they lived with Him. Despite
Prophecies by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, predicting exact day when
boy from blodline of David will be born, Jews could not accept truth,
that Jesus is Messiah, because they took Prophetic metaphores literaly.
Feeling the truth is not matter of Inteligence, it is genealogy,
Human lineage, or pedigree if you will.
You can not understand truth, if you have Emotions, other than Love.
That is why, I am not sure do you understand what Dimension was Jesus.
Because you’ve said Jesus wasn’t predicting the future in Luke 21:6
If Anyone says " The time will come when blah, blah, blah " it is what is
called predicting the future, something that we can not be certain about.
I am not a Prophet if I say " Sun is going to shine tomorrow "
Jesus was God in flesh 2000 years ago, and today He is God in flesh, and
nobody will ever know His name, because He came silent as thief in the
night.
There is no Prophecy to proove this truth, but Jesus himself.
You see Bob, for God one day is our Millenium, He died on Cross, and was Ressurected after two days, came back on third day.
Third Millenium, and He is Here in Flesh, again, and this time forever.

Rapture is Christian concept based on Science fiction belief, what really
means is, that Chosen people will, when the time comes start feeling
the Truth, which produces feeling of Heaven on Mental level, not
Physical. If you know the Truth, If that Gift was given to you by God,
you will be spiritualy ascented above others.
Your love towards your neighbour, does not have absolutely nothing to do
with His Destiny. If you were chosen, and not Him, there is nothing you can do, but watch Him die.
Just like me telling you the truth, does not have absolutely nothing to do
with your Future. It was your destiny to read this, and I am giving you all the Love I got, but You will live what He gave you, long time ago.

I am not Religious freak, and do not have religion.
Have started my own ( 100% ) Non-profit Corporation, named
" LoveScience of Destiny corp. " with mission to gather Men and woman
who See what I see, and Feel what I feel. That’s all.

                           much love !

                                 Peter

[PieceFullthyme]

@Nick_A

That’s OK. Us “black sheep” have learned the art of ducking out of the way. It is a survival skill.

Why are you calling yourself a “black sheep”, don’t you have right to
feel what you feel ?
Very unusual for a musician

[Nick_A]

Hi PFt

“Black sheep” has a different connotation for me than the usual. I strive for individuality. The sheep is a creature that represents loss of individuality and just being led around and used. The budding black sheep in a herd of sheep starts to think: Hmmm…what’s wrong with this picture? This is the beginning of awakening which is an important word on my path.

Simone Weil was a true black sheep. I’ve got patches of black wool but a ways to go yet.

[Bob]

Hi Nick,

Quote:
“To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.” Simone Weil

I don’t like this translation. What does it mean “to get something over”? Does it mean “to enforce something”? Simon Weil lived through the age that was obsessed with theoretical Socialism and Communism, whilst managing to disassociate from the actual existing forms of Marxism und Leninism. Since it was reactionary towards Capitalism, it had a high standard to fulfil – which it failed. By all esteem I can bestow on Simone Weil, this is one conclusion that she didn’t have to suffer.

I think that it is this understanding that took me from socialist ideals to spirituality, and spending a long time in Christianity. You see, the greatest problem with all forms of socialism was its disfigurement. It became severe and unyielding, loosing the sympathy for the oppressed that had been the main motivator and taking on a character that could hardly be distinguished from Fascism. This is something that is well described in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”.

That is why I don’t see the answer to the challenge of the new age in political reform. We have gone through a century of disillusionment, seeing how ideals are betrayed when power is made desirable. Incidentally, this is a lesson that the Old Testament tries to bring over when the Kings of Israel are said to trust the power of political alliances more than their God. Rather than to trust structures that want rigid concreted foundations and monuments, we need organisms that can be flexible and supple, bearing the challenge of the day, catching the weight of change. (Luke 21:5)

You’ve helped me to better understand why the natural appreciation for hierarchy as in cosmology is seen as so repulsive. It has become associated with the egotistic validation of power. Actually it is the opposite as Simone Weil expresses above. The rejection of this power is what attracted her to the essence of Christianity.

But of course, her idea was that Christianity is a religion of slaves. People who need to be strengthened in the way I have described above. She rejected the disfigurement of the Papal Church in its desire for power, but embraced the idea of pastoral service it its agility and dexterity. The structures of the church must have sinews and bones, rather than stones and mortar. But this is what has been disappointed over the last century. No wonder then that hierarchy has become associated with the egotistic validation of power – that is the way people have experienced hierarchy, however idealistic the leaders were at the beginning.

a difficult and sensitive question. It shows the value of the Buddhist sangha where a certain attitude is considered necessary in order to discuss these things. It is extremely difficult on an open site such as ILP. Egotism will not allow it.

That is surely something we both know at first hand and you would be wrong to accuse others without accepting that we are all caught up in the same structures. I understand that a cross-cultural, inter-religious organisation needs a basis upon which it can discuss issues. But you have to create structures that enable you to do that. Just like you need a pot to boil water, you need a structure to heat up issues. So, effectively, you could start a heavily moderated Forum to argue the issues you are talking about.

This is what the Church has to relearn. It is loosing its structural integrity and consequently can’t hold water. In this case, it was the rigidity of the structures that caused crannies and fissures to grow under the pressure of a changing world. If these structures had remained organic, there would have been fewer repairs necessary and the structural integrity would have remained. We need an organic structure – perhaps the Sangha is a good model.

But what is the Sangha’s attitude toward the teacher or elders? Is superiority the right word? Yet their being, their understanding, is greater though initiating from the same basic level of sentience. So IMO there is both commonality and qualitative difference of objective understaning. The problem seems to occur when these lawful differences are adopted and interpreted by our egotism.

You have first to understand that authority is something that has to be recognised. Once it is common knowledge, then you may be able to expect it – but only perhaps. Real Authority is something that I have always experienced, but not something that had to be enforced on me. The dabblers and amateurs have sometimes made my life difficult, but that is a different issue. They are the ones who become elitist, not the real authorities.

First there must be the desire or need to awaken and second the help of an awakened source. What good is a sleeping expert trying to awaken another? It just creates the illusion of understanding and sounder sleep.

Nick, are you trying to be polite but at the same time to tell me that I am asleep? That is what it sounds like and is what leads to my distrust when you start talking about superiority.

Shalom

[Nick_A]

Hi Bob

“To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.” Simone Weil

This is more a psychological spiritual observation but political and societal results are natural extensions.

This is, of course, what the great beast strives to do in its process of enculturation by creating these psychological blocks against individuality substituting the group mentality in its place. Mechanized rituals, morals and their resultant suppressions then replace understanding and conscience so as soon as conditions are right for the release of suppression, it happens, usually resulting in unnatural violence.

In my esoteric tradition the highest form of love we can know is conscious love. This love desires the beloved to become itself even at the expense of the lover.

To get power over means to control, inhibit, even unconsciously, the growth in being of another and denying them the ability to become themselves in the esoteric sense. So getting power over another is defined as manipulation for personal gain which in the context of “being” is defilement. This is different than voluntarily surrendering ones will to another of understanding in order to acquire understanding. The goal here isn’t dominance and suppression but the agreed upon value of the freedom itself being offered.

That is why I don’t see the answer to the challenge of the new age in political reform. We have gone through a century of disillusionment, seeing how ideals are betrayed when power is made desirable. Incidentally, this is a lesson that the Old Testament tries to bring over when the Kings of Israel are said to trust the power of political alliances more than their God. Rather than to trust structures that want rigid concreted foundations and monuments, we need organisms that can be flexible and supple, bearing the challenge of the day, catching the weight of change. (Luke 21:5)

Bob, I agree that the solutions aren’t political. I’m the one organizing discussions IRL on the ideas contained in Jacob Needleman’s “Lost Christianity.”

But in fact, no assumption of moral authority by secular humanism has taken hold or now seems in any way likely or justified. The modern era, the era of science, while witnessing the phenomenal acceleration of scientific discovery and its applications in technological innovation, has brought the world the inconceivable slaughter and chaos of modern war, along with the despair of ethical dilemmas arising from new technologies that all at once project humanity’s essence-immortality onto the entire planet: global injustice, global heartlessness, and global disintegration of the normal patterns of life that have guided mankind for a millennia. Neither the secular philosophies of our epoch nor its theories of human nature - pragmatism, positivism, Marxism, Liberalism, humanism, behaviorism, biological determinism, psychoanalysis - nor the traditional doctrines of the religions, in the way we have understood them, seem able to confront or explain the crimes of humanity in our era, nor other wise and compassionate guidance through the labyrinth of paralyzing new ethical problems.

What is needed is either a new understanding of God or a new understanding of Man: an understanding of God that does not insult the scientific mind while offering bread, not a stone, to the deepest hunger of the heart; an understanding of Man that squarely faces the criminal weakness of our moral will while holding out to us the knowledge of how we can strive within ourselves to become the fully human being we were meant to be – both for ourselves and as instruments of a higher purpose.

But this is not an either/or. The premise --or rather, the proposal – of this book is that at the heart of the Christian religion there exists, and has always existed, just such a vision of God and Man. I call it “Lost Christianity,” not because it is a matter of doctrines and concepts that may have been lost or forgotten; nor even a matter of methods of spiritual practice that may need to be recovered from ancient sources. It is all that, to be sure, but what is lost in the whole of our modern life, including our understanding of religion, is something even more fundamental, without which religious ideas and practices lose their meaning and all to easily become the instruments of ignorance, fear, and hatred. What is lost is the experience of oneself – myself, the personal being who is here, now, living, breathing, yearning for meaning, for goodness; just this person here, now, squarely confronting ones existential weaknesses and pretensions while yet aware, however tentatively, of a higher current of a higher current of life and identity calling to us from within ourselves. This presence to oneself is the missing element in the whole of the life of Man, the intermediate state of consciousness between what we are meant to be and what we actually are. it is perhaps the one bridge that can lead us from our inhuman past toward the human future.

No politics here. The value of presence both for individuals and society is an ancient but forgotten religious and psychological truth. Yet it requires active attention. I see even on ILP how imagination is favored over attention. But this is without a gradual progression of ideas as presented in the book. Hopefully IRL some understanding can be shared from a broader perspective. It’s worth a shot. If it bombs it bombs but I can at least say I tried.

This is what the Church has to relearn. It is loosing its structural integrity and consequently can’t hold water. In this case, it was the rigidity of the structures that caused crannies and fissures to grow under the pressure of a changing world. If these structures had remained organic, there would have been fewer repairs necessary and the structural integrity would have remained. We need an organic structure – perhaps the Sangha is a good model.

This would be the presence of the Holy spirit in a Living church. It offers the perspective of wholeness that allows all the pettiness to be seen for what it is. This doesn’t means suppression but actually experiencing its hold on you in contrast to what the Holy Spirit reveals as your potential in the context of re-birth. This is not suppression but experiential understanding of the value of letting it go.

They are the ones who become elitist, not the real authorities

.

Agreed. this is the difference between the experts and the master.

Nick, are you trying to be polite but at the same time to tell me that I am asleep? That is what it sounds like and is what leads to my distrust when you start talking about superiority

.

No. I’m speaking theoretically. I would consider all of us including myself as asleep with inclinations towards awakening. In this way we are all “one”

I try to remain objective but still fall victim to my hot buttons.

For example, I’ve become increasingly sensitive to the problems of education. There seems to be some natural law that the more important the position is the greater the lunacy that will occupy it. Thema is an example. Here is a situation that the importance of leadership is hopefully never required but when it is, it is vital to have a real individual in charge capable of keeping their head in the face of urgency and chaos while making clear sound speedy decisions. I know it is hard to find but non the less, it is what is what the position requires. Yet, it seems that the person in charge was just the opposite and pure politician.

It is the same with mainstream education. The people in charge more often than not have sacrificed the depth of its purpose in the human sense for political gain So in your last post you had a joke. I, beginning to sense the usual clichés, lost my presence and make assumptions losing the meaning entirely.

It is tendency in all of us best gotten over but it isn’t so easy. We all have these tendencies but the best we can do is admit them and not try to defend them. It is part of the growth I admit to needing.

OK so mainstream education is damaging to the human psych but will it do any good if I turn red? No. So I admit it