I guess there are two ways to look at it depending on interpretation, and these two ways can be traced in almost every tradition.AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Sep 23, 2021 1:39 pm No, we deceive ourselves through the creation. We don't deeply consider anything anymore, only pretend to be "experts" in this or that so our ego has a voice. We misrepresent positions on purpose so our own ego can feel like it has satisfactorily engaged with the material and dismissed it. We make up our mind to read something, to take some concrete action towards actual understanding, and then we back out immediately. It is not "many historical religions" which have recognized this fallen nature and need for redemption, but every single spiritual tradition which has ever existed. Christianity was the first to make clear what I say in the first sentence, among other things, and how we can only seek the redemption from this fallen nature within ourselves, not from external sources like abstract idea of "Divine" or from fantasized images like "Godel's candy store". Those are easy ways for the ego to ignore the hard work necessary for actually making a difference in our own lives and perhaps the life of others. These things will take many lifetimes to reach their complete fulfillment, but the redemptive arc of history is perfectly clear to anyone who will open their eyes, and it is available to be manifested in the desires, feelings, and thoughts right now of each individual soul who is willing to take hold of it. As Cleric eloquently put it on the other thread, "it is at a thought's distance. Just like in geometry, it takes only an infinitesimal step in a direction perpendicular to the flat surface, in order to know that a depth axis exists." The Divine is no abstract idea but a concrete reality living in each of us right now, and can be nourished if we just give it a little bit of thoughtful, loving attention.
“Some people want to look upon God with their eyes, as they look upon a cow, and want to love God as they love a cow. Thus they love God for the sake of external riches and of internal solace; but these people do not love God aright ... Foolish people deem that they should look upon God as though He stood there and they here. It is not thus. God and I are one in the act of knowing.” - Meister Eckhart
One ways is the escapist: life on Earth is fundamentally immersed in evil and is broken/fallen and unacceptable, and the only way to deal with it is to escape from it into some higher realms, or to completely transform it into something fundamentally different by Divine intervention. This can be seen in the original Buddha's teachings (yes, Buddha was a complete escapist, but later Mahayana Buddhism mostly abandoned his escapism), in Plato (cave), in Gnosticism, in monastic Christianity etc.
Another way to look at the life on Earth is as an evolving situation with certain problems which is a work in progress. There are problems that need to be addressed, resolved and fixed (primarily with human ego), and the help from higher realms and from the Divine is needed for that work. But we are not supposed to break the rules of the Earth realm, but transform and fix it within the framework of the rules. If completely opening the veil between the Earth and the astral domain and merging them together with full-blown intervention of the spiritual beings would be the right solution for the problems, it would be done long ago, but that is not how the life on Earth was intended to evolve. So, as usual, there needs to be the right balance between our work as humans on Earth and certain portions of intervention and help from higher realms. And we don't need to worry about the intervention part, they know what they are doing up there and know exactly what kind of help is needed. We just need to do our part of the job down here.
Fully agree with Eckhart