Seeing the truth is not conductive to survival

[AshvinP]

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?

I sense you will too - basically with reference to all of these things, in their essence, I am referring to living beings who are deeply involved in our own evolution. Christ-being is highest being in the evolution of our solar system - the Sun. Yet there are extra-Solar beings who we simply cannot perceive-cognize now, even with highest intuitive cognition (or we can only cognize that portion of their activity which overlaps with our solar system). Anyway, if we are talking about "low resolution", then this topic remains at the epitome of low resolution for that reason and, for all intents and purposes now, the Christ-being is our highest Self within which we are metamorphosing towards becoming.

[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.

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.

Christ testifies to himself as what he actually is and nothing else. It is no more complicated than that. At the distant point where I myself am fully merged with Christ, I imagine I will only testify, "before Abraham was, I am" as well. Whatever that means, it means, and it is certainly not left to my limited ego-self to determine its meaning.

[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.

I'd like to pick up discussion on some of these very deep points of departure above, starting with the bolded section. So for you, the idea of "being liberated from physical forms" is itself unfreedom. Is that correct? I think I share your concern with that general idea, especially as it is expressed in fundamentalist theology of "escaping from the world" into the "afterlife". That is not at all what I mean. For one thing, our Earthly evolution still has a long ways to go, and we must focus on each step ahead of us in our own individual spiritual development rather than anything so far distant into the future. Secondly, everything that occurs in our metamorphic progression is contiguous and continuous. There is no "supernatural" realm to which we evolve to escape from the "natural" world. There is only the natural world and therefore we are never escaping it in a very literal sense. The only question is, do we take seriously this inseparable connection between the spiritual and the physical and therefore acknowledge it is progressing in a certain direction away from the physical forms which are sheaths for our souls? I would say it's pretty clear that nothing in the physical forms we currently perceive is a permanent state of affairs - it simply cannot be that way under my metamorphic view. None of these conclusions should have anything to do with how I feel about them or what seems "fair" or "equitable" or anything of that sort - I view that as a particularly harmful form of arrogance in the modern age, where we assume our extremely limited perspective on living Cosmic forces can capture and assess the totality of their essence and, moreover, dictate what they should be as opposed to what they are.

[SanteriSatama]

At the distant point where...

Keeping your distance, huh?

I-We-It are also here already, present.

[AshvinP]

At the distant point where...

Keeping your distance, huh?

I-We-It are also here already, present.

And that's the essence of our entire disagreement, which somewhat dovetails with my current discussion with DS (and also Cleric's points on the other Steiner-Schopenhauer thread). If you are "here already, present", then naturally there is no reason to travel further. Of course you do not see it that way, rather you will say you are always moving forward-backward-up-down etc., but the fact remains that, regardless of how you phrase it, you will act as if you are "here already, present". That also motivates the very narrow and arbitrary view of Thinking that Cleric mentions on the other thread, where it is viewed as essential for meaning only in rational discourse but not essential for meaning in anything else we find important, like spirituality. Pretty much the entirety of my essays so far have been addressing that one point in various different ways - Thinking is essential for meaning in all domains of our existence, especially spirituality. We are "not yet Thinking", as Heidegger remarks, which means we do indeed have a ways to go before we can call ourselves free beings participating in the fullness of Christ's redemption.

[SanteriSatama]

If you are "here already, present", then naturally there is no reason to travel further.

A non-sequitur, it's more like that there is no permanence to stay in. Presense means being both part and whole, without either-or division demanded by sticky habit of bivalent logic. Also, did you forget that there are lost lambs to travel with?

Of course you do not see it that way, rather you will say you are always moving forward-backward-up-down etc.,

Well, rotations of group theory are an important part of math...

We are "not yet Thinking", as Heidegger remarks

In other words, you and Heidegger say that you can't think yet (but might some day at some point in distance learn how to), but yet somehow you know what thinking is, know so well that you can define "it"?

[AshvinP]

In other words, you and Heidegger say that you can't think yet (but might some day at some point in distance learn how to), but yet somehow you know what thinking is, know so well that you can define "it"?

No, we definitely can Think, but we mostly choose not to. Once we begin Thinking, it practically defines itself. A good rule of thumb is, whenever we speak of "meaning", as in we speak of the meaning of an experience or we speak of what it "means" to speak of meaning of experience, we are speaking also of Thinking. Like we are now and we always are when we read and type.

[SanteriSatama]

In other words, you and Heidegger say that you can't think yet (but might some day at some point in distance learn how to), but yet somehow you know what thinking is, know so well that you can define "it"?

No, we definitely can Think, but we mostly choose not to. Once we begin Thinking, it practically defines itself. A good rule of thumb is, whenever we speak of "meaning", as in we speak of the meaning of an experience or we speak of what it "means" to speak of meaning of experience, we are speaking also of Thinking. Like we are now and we always are when we read and type.

Yes, we definitely can enjoy the metacognitive social aspect of thinking, with all the struggle and challenge involved in trying to express thinking in language.

[DandelionSoul]

Whew, lots to respond to again, and no time before work, but I'll do my best to get to it tonight!

[AshvinP]

In other words, you and Heidegger say that you can't think yet (but might some day at some point in distance learn how to), but yet somehow you know what thinking is, know so well that you can define "it"?

No, we definitely can Think, but we mostly choose not to. Once we begin Thinking, it practically defines itself. A good rule of thumb is, whenever we speak of "meaning", as in we speak of the meaning of an experience or we speak of what it "means" to speak of meaning of experience, we are speaking also of Thinking. Like we are now and we always are when we read and type.

Yes, we definitely can enjoy the metacognitive social aspect of thinking, with all the struggle and challenge involved in trying to express thinking in language.

I think humanity has grown tired of "all the struggle" to express simple realities in the wake of Descartes and Kant. That may even be the practical definition of "nihilism". Heidegger definitely grew tired, hence he gave the lectures on Thinking. That was back in 1953, so he may have thought it was still only barely possible to start Thinking, especially since he was completely unaware of Steiner by all accounts. But now it's 70 years later, in the year 2021, where all of this wisdom is immediately accessible at our fingertips, so no such excuses remain.