Metamorphoses of the Spirit: Transfiguring our Thinking (Part I)

[AshvinP]

As you said before, I think the difference between us is very subtle. Because what you quote above and what you have quoted before seems exactly aligned with the perspective I am arguing for. I am not saying anything other than theosis is a becoming. Yes, precisely participation in the blood and body of Christ. Not metaphorical participation but literal participation. It is definitely an active choice - if we do nothing towards that aim of becoming One in Christ, then nothing will happen except further fragmentation. Every individual is responsible for their own spiritual destiny in this regard, no one can lay blame on anything external to themselves, whether it God, Nature, Culture, or anything else.

Yes I do see that there are many quotes from scripture where it will mean one thing to you, and another thing to me, but nonetheless the meaning we both take will often be very similar. You say the “literal participation”, I say the “literal participation”, but my version requires an act where the symbolic becomes manifest, where earth mirrors heaven and they touch. However I do see something important in what you say, as even though I believe in the real presence in the eucharist, I’m completely against the protestant idea that this is somehow the end of the story (which is even more bizarre considering that they don’t believe in the real presence). I do think the outward ritual act is important, but without the ‘inward’ reality it means nothing.

As I see it there is plenty of overlap in our understandings, but although I suspect you won’t agree, I think the big difference is at it’s foundation around the distinction between the self realisation of the east, and theosis. If MaL is the same as god, then these are indeed the same thing. Self realisation is like a falling away, a ‘rising’ ‘out of yourself’ to see clearly that which was always there. The mystical is similarly a ‘lifting out of yourself’, but it’s very much an encounter. You can of course argue that different cultural backgrounds shape the appearance of the experience, but I think the idea that these are the same has had a big influence on philosophy for the past few centuries.

Well now I am confused. The only thing I have been writing about in these essays is precisely the "inward reality" which we must take seriously. We cannot leave baptism, communion, theosis, etc. at the mere symbolic level, as the modern Church does for the most part. We cannot shirk the responsibility of being truly made in the image of God and truly One in Christ. I am outright rejecting any view of "MAL" which leaves it as a black hole of experience which we cannot, in principle, "encounter". I do not see "too big of a gap" between the King and the kingdom. As Meister Eckhart says, I do not see "God as though He stood there and I here" but rather "God and I are one in the act of knowing".

[Eugene I]

Sure I agree with all of that. My point is that reality is, in fact, structured a certain way, even if we are continually exploring and shedding more light on how it is structured. And, as we explore its structure, lighting up more dark areas, we are generally narrowing down the "various flows and perspectives" which are useful in that exploration. What we find the more useful is considered "higher" than what we find less useful.

Right, but how do we know if we are "narrowing down" to the exact perspective that you outlined and not to the perspective that the NDE experience that I quoted revealed? Do you have a proof that your perspective is more true or useful? Now, it may be true that the perspective that you presented is indeed useful for many people within modern humanity. But to assume that it is applicable to all humans is a stretch IMO.

Note that the "usefulness" criterium is not a universal one, but rather quite relative: what is useful for one area of reality, specific life phase or situation, or group of souls, may not be useful for another areas or groups or situations. Even within a group of souls living at a certain time in a certain place, not all of them necessarily are at the same developmental level and pursuing the same goals or paths. So, what is useful for some may not be useful for others.

So, this is not to de-value the view you are presenting in any way; you paradigm is indeed useful and therefore bears certain truth. Yet, it can not be assumed to be universal even for the whole humanity. What I'm questioning again is the universalism of your claims. You are presenting a picture as if we all humans are like chained slaves on a single humanity-boat all having the same telos and destiny. But that may not be necessarily the case. As many NDE accounts reveal, souls may have very different life goals when they incarnate.

[AshvinP]

Sure I agree with all of that. My point is that reality is, in fact, structured a certain way, even if we are continually exploring and shedding more light on how it is structured. And, as we explore its structure, lighting up more dark areas, we are generally narrowing down the "various flows and perspectives" which are useful in that exploration. What we find the more useful is considered "higher" than what we find less useful.

Right, but how do we know if we are "narrowing down" to the exact perspective that you outlined and not to the perspective that the NDE experience that I quoted revealed? Do you have a proof that your perspective is more true or useful? Now, it may be true that the perspective that you presented is indeed useful for many people within modern humanity. But to assume that it is applicable to all humans is a stretch IMO.

Note that the "usefulness" criterium is not a universal one, but rather quite relative: what is useful for one area of reality, specific life phase or situation, or group of souls, may not be useful for another areas or groups or situations. Even within a group of souls living at a certain time in a certain place, not all of them necessarily are at the same developmental level and pursuing the same goals or paths. So, what is useful for some may not be useful for others.

So, this is not to de-value the view you are presenting in any way; you paradigm is indeed useful and therefore bears certain truth. Yet, it can not be assumed to be universal even for the whole humanity. What I'm questioning again is the universalism of your claims. You are presenting a picture as if we all humans are like chained slaves on a single humanity-boat all having the same telos and destiny. But that may not be necessarily the case. As many NDE accounts reveal, souls may have very different life goals when they incarnate.

A few questions then:

1) How do we know a scientific hypothesis is more useful than any other one?

2) If we are to say the usefulness of a spiritual model is contingent on specific life phases or such other infinite number of factors, then can we ever respond to someone who claims their model is valid because it might be best for some hypothetical people in hypothetical situations? For instance, the anti-natalist who claims their model is useful to Gaia because it gets rid of all humans currently destroying her. Is there any valid response to challenge such a model?

3) If you are only questioning the "universalism" of my claims in the essays, which are otherwise useful and bear certain truth, then why even comment on it in the first place? Is it because my writing makes it seem like the perspective I am presenting is the only valid perspective anyone should consider? If so, then how would you propose I rewrite the claims to make them less "universalist"?

[Eugene I]

A few questions then:

1) How do we know a scientific hypothesis is more useful than any other one?

In natural sciences we test and compare the predictions of theories (ideas) against facts (perceptions). However, it does not work for the spiritual science because, as you claimed, there is fundamentally no difference between ideas and perceptions. And even if there would be a difference, the perceptions in the spiritual domain are non-verifiable and non-reproducible anyway. The followers of Steiner may experience one kind of structures and spiritual organs, and Hindu yogis may experience very different ones (chakras etc).

But even if we assume that there are certain structures that somehow could be verified, that does not mean that they inflexibly define our destinations and telos. Cars of the same model have the same design and structure, but that does not mean they all have to drive to the same destination.

2) If we are to say the usefulness of a spiritual model is contingent on specific life phases or such other infinite number of factors, then can we ever respond to someone who claims their model is valid because it might be best for some hypothetical people in hypothetical situations? For instance, the anti-natalist who claims their model is useful to Gaia because it gets rid of all humans currently destroying her. Is there any valid response to challenge such a model?

One principle that can be applied universally in any society is minimizing harm. People have right to believe in whatever they want, but if their beliefs entail in harmful actions, the society has right to restrict such actions. But regardless of the harm, any individuals or group has right to present arguments against any views of beliefs of any other individuals or groups, and that is also what we are doing here.

3) If you are only questioning the "universalism" of my claims in the essays, which are otherwise useful and bear certain truth, then why even comment on it in the first place? Is it because my writing makes it seem like the perspective I am presenting is the only valid perspective anyone should consider? If so, then how would you propose I rewrite the claims to make them less "universalist"?

Well, I assume that you position is universalistic because you are always arguing in favor of it. If you would make a disclaimer that it is not universalistic, then there would be nothing to dispute anymore.

[Simon Adams]

Well now I am confused. The only thing I have been writing about in these essays is precisely the "inward reality" which we must take seriously. We cannot leave baptism, communion, theosis, etc. at the mere symbolic level, as the modern Church does for the most part.

Sorry my fault as I’ve been replying between various distractions today. I agree completely with you on this, any church that treats the sacraments as purely symbolic is missing the whole point. It’s a fault of mine that I head straight for the bits I disagree on

We cannot shirk the responsibility of being truly made in the image of God

Agreed.

and truly One in Christ.

Here I don’t think all who are made in the image of god, are one in Christ. In your article you seem to write about predestination in the protestant sense, but for Augustine it’s simply god’s knowledge from outside of time. If people are going to chose the path that leads to unity with him who is beyond time, time becomes irrelevant. So predestination is the same as postdestination, but his knowledge from our perspective in time is predestination. Sorry I’m probably being confusing again!

I am outright rejecting any view of "MAL" which leaves it as a black hole of experience which we cannot, in principle, "encounter".

Well we live in ‘MaL’, so we encounter it every minute of every day . We can also transcend the boundary between us and MaL via meditation. I wouldn’t call this an encounter, more an experience of the formless substrate of the universe. My point is that this is not theosis. MaL comes from god, is sustained by god, and transcended by god, but is not god. This is where I differ - probably from everyone on the forum.

I do not see "too big of a gap" between the King and the kingdom. As Meister Eckhart says, I do not see "God as though He stood there and I here" but rather "God and I are one in the act of knowing".

Yes and this is theosis, which is standard catholic belief as you can see from these parts of the catechism:

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.

[Eugene I]

Just from looking at your discussion guys, and this is not to criticize Christianity in any way, but the fact that there are so many views and variants of faith under the umbrella of Christianity that never agree with each other, yet each claiming to know the truth, make an uninvolved observer to doubt in the existence of such thing as "universal truth" in the Christian faith. That does not mean that Christianity as a whole, or its particular variants, do not have important insights into realities beyond our physical existence, they certainly do.

[AshvinP]

Here I don’t think all who are made in the image of god, are one in Christ. In your article you seem to write about predestination in the protestant sense, but for Augustine it’s simply god’s knowledge from outside of time. If people are going to chose the path that leads to unity with him who is beyond time, time becomes irrelevant. So predestination is the same as postdestination, but his knowledge from our perspective in time is predestination. Sorry I’m probably being confusing again!

Here is a very significant disagreement. I believe the "foreknowledge" apologetic was only derived in the protestant era you mention, as a way to tamp down the harshness of the predestination view, which is pretty obviously harsh but somehow maintains in certain Reformed tradition. (I could be wrong about the dating on that, in which case I would like to know). Even the foreknowledge view is rather harsh, as it implies God created a whole set of humans with explicit knowledge they would be damned for all eternity. Regardless if we take that as eternal punishment in Hell or annihilation, I cannot see how a Just and Merciful God could possibly be involved in such a scheme.

Note: I am not arguing that the view must be ruled out because it is "harsh" - I think there are perfectly good philosophical-spiritual-scriptural reasons to rule predestination out as a doctrine of any importance to the Christian faith.

I am also curious, though, on what you think of my (admittedly brief) explanation for why Augustine took that view, i.e. the tension between his own individual experience devoid of immanent spiritual meaning and the holistic spirituality of Plotinism which he had explicitly studied and did not want to abandon completely?

I am outright rejecting any view of "MAL" which leaves it as a black hole of experience which we cannot, in principle, "encounter".

Well we live in ‘MaL’, so we encounter it every minute of every day . We can also transcend the boundary between us and MaL via meditation. I wouldn’t call this an encounter, more an experience of the formless substrate of the universe. My point is that this is not theosis. MaL comes from god, is sustained by god, and transcended by god, but is not god. This is where I differ - probably from everyone on the forum.

Well I am not much interested in MAL, whatever we take that to mean, but rather the God revealed in Christ given that we both appear to agree on that. Why do you limit "transcendence of the boundary" to meditation? What do you make of Aquinas' assertion below?

… it should be noted that different ways of knowing (ratio cognoscibilis) give us different sciences. The astronomer and the natural philosopher both conclude that the earth is round, but the astronomer does this through a mathematical middle that is abstracted from matter, whereas the natural philosopher considers a middle lodged in matter. Thus there is nothing to prevent another science from treating in the light of divine revelation what the philosophical disciplines treat as knowable in the light of human reason.

[Simon Adams]

Just from looking at your discussion guys, and this is not to criticize Christianity in any way, but the fact that there are so many views and variants of faith under the umbrella of Christianity that never agree with each other, yet each claiming to know the truth, make an uninvolved observer to doubt in the existence of such thing as "universal truth" in the Christian faith. That does not mean that Christianity as a whole, or its particular variants, do not have important insights into realities beyond our physical existence, they certainly do.

It’s a fair point based on this discussion, but I have a more traditional christian view, and it seems to me that Ashvin’s is an amalgamation of Christianity with the likes of Steiner and Jung. I’m not saying that I would agree on everything with all of the 1.2 billion catholics, but I think I would agree on most of the core things we are discussing here with +90% of catholics outside of the US.

Of course that isn’t a reason to believe it’s true, no more than my disagreements with Ashvin mean it’s not

[Eugene I]

it seems to me that Ashvin’s is an amalgamation of Christianity with the likes of Steiner and Jung.

Yes, that's what it is. The thing is, there is a continuous process in Christianity of dividing into more an more sects, denominations and sub-views, every new one claiming to encompass the Christian true faith and restore the lost unity, but in fact doing exactly the opposite and dividing and tearing apart Christianity even further.

[AshvinP]

it seems to me that Ashvin’s is an amalgamation of Christianity with the likes of Steiner and Jung.

Yes, that's what it is. The thing is, there is a continuous process in Christianity of dividing into more an more sects, denominations and sub-views, every new one claiming to encompass the Christian true faith and restore the lost unity, but in fact doing exactly the opposite and dividing and tearing apart Christianity even further.

Well, if we are simply ignoring all of the medieval thinkers I quoted in this part of the essay... then perhaps that "amalgamation" claim is somewhat accurate. There is a healthy form of "tearing apart", just as thinkers like Hoffman and Arakani-Hamed are "tearing apart" GR and QM to find a deeper sub-structure of explanation. That is also what we are doing here. No different from what Christ was doing through his Incarnation:

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."