Seeing the truth is not conductive to survival

[AshvinP]

Oh boy. I think we're hitting the center of the dispute here finally. Right at this moment, I can't put nearly the amount of care that I'd like to into responding, but if I could sketch a rough outline of what I think we might most fundamentally disagree on (a "low-resolution" sketch, to be sure, but I think useful enough for our purposes), it might help us refocus the conversation.

I get a kind of neo-Gnostic sense from you (Ashvin): highly influenced by Platonic and Neoplatonic thought. Some of your assertions would fit very well within Valentinian texts, for instance. For you the great hope is to escape the bonds of the physical world and merge with the Source, the immortal One, from which the physical world and our incarnation within it represent distance. This distance was bridged by Jesus, the manifestation of the Source in flesh, who, in your reading of his teachings, teaches us how to unify with the Source once again. Is that a fair (albeit low-resolution) reading of your sort of Big Picture theology/philosophy?

Thanks for the empty quote box, I definitely would have missed this otherwise.

Normally I would resist the use of any past philosophical labels to characterize my position. They just carry too much unnecessary baggage for the average person and they also imply that I am trying to return to a philosophy-spirituality of the past rather than integrate those things with modern philosophy-science-spirituality. At the end of the day, it is all about what is verifiably true about the nature of Reality and therefore no past labels can be held too dogmatically. But since you understand this is all really "low resolution", I will say yes you are hitting pretty close to home. As strange as it may sound, I do not actually hold Christ-being to be the "Source" of all, which is hinted in the verse, "no one comes to the Father, except through me".

[SanteriSatama]

"no one comes to the Father, except through me".

As with "I am the path, truth and life", the 'me' and 'I' is much better to read in the generic distributed and decentralized meaning, rather than as the objectifying personification of a monopolistic gatekeeper.

[AshvinP]

"no one comes to the Father, except through me".

As with "I am the path, truth and life", the 'me' and 'I' is much better to read in the generic distributed and decentralized meaning, rather than as the objectifying personification of a monopolistic gatekeeper.

You say you are making it "generic, distributed and decentralized" meaning, I say you are making it meaningless. You say my framework for Thinking makes it lose distinction, I say it makes its distinction much more specified and clear in relationship to non-Thinking activities. You say I am using rationalist abstractions to exert colonial control mindset, I say you are using abstractions to get out of Thinking for yourself. Basically we arrive at the exact opposite conclusions from the same facts, so let's just agree to completely disagree.

[DandelionSoul]

Oh boy. I think we're hitting the center of the dispute here finally. Right at this moment, I can't put nearly the amount of care that I'd like to into responding, but if I could sketch a rough outline of what I think we might most fundamentally disagree on (a "low-resolution" sketch, to be sure, but I think useful enough for our purposes), it might help us refocus the conversation.

I get a kind of neo-Gnostic sense from you (Ashvin): highly influenced by Platonic and Neoplatonic thought. Some of your assertions would fit very well within Valentinian texts, for instance. For you the great hope is to escape the bonds of the physical world and merge with the Source, the immortal One, from which the physical world and our incarnation within it represent distance. This distance was bridged by Jesus, the manifestation of the Source in flesh, who, in your reading of his teachings, teaches us how to unify with the Source once again. Is that a fair (albeit low-resolution) reading of your sort of Big Picture theology/philosophy?

Thanks for the empty quote box, I definitely would have missed this otherwise.

Normally I would resist the use of any past philosophical labels to characterize my position. They just carry too much unnecessary baggage for the average person and they also imply that I am trying to return to a philosophy-spirituality of the past rather than integrate those things with modern philosophy-science-spirituality. At the end of the day, it is all about what is verifiably true about the nature of Reality and therefore no past labels can be held too dogmatically. But since you understand this is all really "low resolution", I will say yes you are hitting pretty close to home. As strange as it may sound, I do not actually hold Christ-being to be the "Source" of all, which is hinted in the verse, "no one comes to the Father, except through me".

Oh, I agree with you about the use of labels: they're very tricky, and it's easy to get lost in the historical baggage attached to the words and import ideas that the other person doesn't hold. But they're also useful as shorthand, I think, so long as we're clear about what we do and don't mean by them and allow for that meaning to be renegotiated through the course of the conversation. In this case, using a label like "Gnostic" or "neo-Gnostic" is only meant to draw out some of your view's distinctive features and not to exhaust it or pigeonhole it, in the same way as any invocation of an "-ism" label is usually not pointing at everything that has ever been called by that name. With that said, I think it might be helpful to lay my own cards on the table before proceeding: my view could be cast as roughly neo-animistic and highly pluralistic. Liberation is precisely a freedom from our need to master and ultimately escape the world of physical forms and a freedom from the obsessive drive for immortality, a recognition that the multitude of finite and contradictory perspectives is precisely the expression of divinity. I reject both monism and dualism as accurately capturing the relationship between the One and the Many, and for that reason, I usually just use the term "nondualist" to describe my view. My perspective is not emanationist: we did not emanate from the Source to which we strive to return. Rather, it's incarnationalist: it's the nature of the Source to continuously incarnate, and the body marks the site of the encounter between perspectives.

As you said, this is all a very rough sketch, very "low-resolution," but I think it draws out some of the more fundamental differences between our views, and I suspect that might help us understand just what it is the other is saying and why.

[AshvinP]

Oh boy. I think we're hitting the center of the dispute here finally. Right at this moment, I can't put nearly the amount of care that I'd like to into responding, but if I could sketch a rough outline of what I think we might most fundamentally disagree on (a "low-resolution" sketch, to be sure, but I think useful enough for our purposes), it might help us refocus the conversation.

I get a kind of neo-Gnostic sense from you (Ashvin): highly influenced by Platonic and Neoplatonic thought. Some of your assertions would fit very well within Valentinian texts, for instance. For you the great hope is to escape the bonds of the physical world and merge with the Source, the immortal One, from which the physical world and our incarnation within it represent distance. This distance was bridged by Jesus, the manifestation of the Source in flesh, who, in your reading of his teachings, teaches us how to unify with the Source once again. Is that a fair (albeit low-resolution) reading of your sort of Big Picture theology/philosophy?

Thanks for the empty quote box, I definitely would have missed this otherwise.

Normally I would resist the use of any past philosophical labels to characterize my position. They just carry too much unnecessary baggage for the average person and they also imply that I am trying to return to a philosophy-spirituality of the past rather than integrate those things with modern philosophy-science-spirituality. At the end of the day, it is all about what is verifiably true about the nature of Reality and therefore no past labels can be held too dogmatically. But since you understand this is all really "low resolution", I will say yes you are hitting pretty close to home. As strange as it may sound, I do not actually hold Christ-being to be the "Source" of all, which is hinted in the verse, "no one comes to the Father, except through me".

Oh, I agree with you about the use of labels: they're very tricky, and it's easy to get lost in the historical baggage attached to the words and import ideas that the other person doesn't hold. But they're also useful as shorthand, I think, so long as we're clear about what we do and don't mean by them and allow for that meaning to be renegotiated through the course of the conversation. In this case, using a label like "Gnostic" or "neo-Gnostic" is only meant to draw out some of your view's distinctive features and not to exhaust it or pigeonhole it, in the same way as any invocation of an "-ism" label is usually not pointing at everything that has ever been called by that name. With that said, I think it might be helpful to lay my own cards on the table before proceeding: my view could be cast as roughly neo-animistic and highly pluralistic. Liberation is precisely a freedom from our need to master and ultimately escape the world of physical forms and a freedom from the obsessive drive for immortality, a recognition that the multitude of finite and contradictory perspectives is precisely the expression of divinity. I reject both monism and dualism as accurately capturing the relationship between the One and the Many, and for that reason, I usually just use the term "nondualist" to describe my view. My perspective is not emanationist: we did not emanate from the Source to which we strive to return. Rather, it's incarnationalist: it's the nature of the Source to continuously incarnate, and the body marks the site of the encounter between perspectives.

As you said, this is all a very rough sketch, very "low-resolution," but I think it draws out some of the more fundamental differences between our views, and I suspect that might help us understand just what it is the other is saying and why.

Yes it definitely will help, thanks! In fact, I find it very refreshing that you were able to discern those broad philosophical categories from what I posted. Sometimes I feel like I am writing in hieroglyphics here given all the confusion over my arguments with others. And I could definitely discern the neo-animism in yours. We have a good deal to debate over now : )

I will let you respond to my previous posts first, or if you want to just start fresh from some of the above points that works for me too.

[SanteriSatama]

"no one comes to the Father, except through me".

As with "I am the path, truth and life", the 'me' and 'I' is much better to read in the generic distributed and decentralized meaning, rather than as the objectifying personification of a monopolistic gatekeeper.

You say you are making it "generic, distributed and decentralized" meaning, I say you are making it meaningless. You say my framework for Thinking makes it lose distinction, I say it makes its distinction much more specified and clear in relationship to non-Thinking activities. You say I am using rationalist abstractions to exert colonial control mindset, I say you are using abstractions to get out of Thinking for yourself. Basically we arrive at the exact opposite conclusions from the same facts, so let's just agree to completely disagree.

I am not saying you are using rationalist abstractions to exert colonial control mindset. I say that the "framework" is still to some extent being used - that You are being used - by colonial control mindset. To paraphrase Cleric, egotism is a mental cancer. Which manifests among other things with rigid identification in the form "I am using", instead of the factual "I'm being used".

I'm saying that You are not the cancer. I'm saying that we can - and will - heal.

[SanteriSatama]

"no one comes to the Father, except through me".

As with "I am the path, truth and life", the 'me' and 'I' is much better to read in the generic distributed and decentralized meaning, rather than as the objectifying personification of a monopolistic gatekeeper.

You say you are making it "generic, distributed and decentralized" meaning, I say you are making it meaningless. You say my framework for Thinking makes it lose distinction, I say it makes its distinction much more specified and clear in relationship to non-Thinking activities. You say I am using rationalist abstractions to exert colonial control mindset, I say you are using abstractions to get out of Thinking for yourself. Basically we arrive at the exact opposite conclusions from the same facts, so let's just agree to completely disagree.

Instead of trying to get out of Thinking by running away and trying to shut down communication, let's try this thinking experiment:

If you were Christ, based on your inner sense of ethics, would you declare yourself as a monopoly gatekeeper?

If you would not, then surely you agree that claiming that Christ is a monopoly gatekeeper is blasphemy.

[AshvinP]

As with "I am the path, truth and life", the 'me' and 'I' is much better to read in the generic distributed and decentralized meaning, rather than as the objectifying personification of a monopolistic gatekeeper.

You say you are making it "generic, distributed and decentralized" meaning, I say you are making it meaningless. You say my framework for Thinking makes it lose distinction, I say it makes its distinction much more specified and clear in relationship to non-Thinking activities. You say I am using rationalist abstractions to exert colonial control mindset, I say you are using abstractions to get out of Thinking for yourself. Basically we arrive at the exact opposite conclusions from the same facts, so let's just agree to completely disagree.

I am not saying you are using rationalist abstractions to exert colonial control mindset. I say that the "framework" is still to some extent being used - that You are being used - by colonial control mindset. To paraphrase Cleric, egotism is a mental cancer. Which manifests among other things with rigid identification in the form "I am using", instead of the factual "I'm being used".

I'm saying that You are not the cancer. I'm saying that we can - and will - heal.

I know what you are saying, SS. You have said it to me many times on this forum, so I get it. But I am saying you only think that because you misunderstand my arguments and/or refuse to let go of modern cultural baggage - the baggage which views all claims to the existence of hierarchy as unavoidably "oppressive" and further equates "oppressive" with automatically wrong. I say it is using you as you think CCM is using me. And, in my experience, at that point there is no possibility of further productive conversation because it is no longer about the truth of the matter but only about identity-and-power politics. Offers of "forgiveness" and "healing" and "deprogramming of NPC status" and whatever other cool terms are employed these days are merely politics in religious disguise.

[DandelionSoul]

Yes it definitely will help, thanks! In fact, I find it very refreshing that you were able to discern those broad philosophical categories from what I posted. Sometimes I feel like I am writing in hieroglyphics here given all the confusion over my arguments with others. And I could definitely discern the neo-animism in yours. We have a good deal to debate over now : )

I will let you respond to my previous posts first, or if you want to just start fresh from some of the above points that works for me too.

I'm flattered! Esoteric Christian (or Christian-adjacent) theology is actually my jam, so while I haven't read a lot of the specific authors you're citing, I noticed some of the streams of influence looked very familiar.

That seems as good a place as any to use as a point of departure:

As strange as it may sound, I do not actually hold Christ-being to be the "Source" of all, which is hinted in the verse, "no one comes to the Father, except through me".

I agree with this statement on its face, but my sense is that I would disagree with the substance of what you mean by it. Can you elaborate?

[SanteriSatama]

I know what you are saying, SS.

You don't.

In Truth, the actual and present spiritual Truth, there is hierarchy - meaning holy order, holy principle - the hierarchy of spiritual anarchy. Based on the holy principle of the Golden/Silver rule. And 'holy' means also 'border', 'tabu' and 'gatekeeping'. Gatekeeping against violating the holy principle in the spirit world, in the source of power.