ScottRoberts wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 10:33 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 7:34 pm
Correspondences:
This morning I was reading Martinus'
Meditation, Art. 3 Chapter 8, his demonstration of the immortality of the living being:
(by the way I would be curious to know what ScottRoberts thinks of it
)
I have an issue with it, but I think I can say how it can be resolved (see below).
Martinus wrote:All created phenomena are time- and space-dimensional, and cannot therefore be eternal.
The creator existed before the created and will live when the created no longer exists.
This is what I have an issue with (and with the Steiner quote of Eugene's). But there are also some things I am not following:
The state of eternity that this "something" is in is its analysis. But this analysis can only be nameless and can only be termed "X1". As the above-mentioned "something" has a faculty of creating, this faculty must be just as eternal as this "something" itself, for if there had been a time when it had no faculty of creating how could this faculty have come into existence? It is therefore likewise to be expressed as a nameless "something", which we must then term "X2". But when "X1" and "X2" thus exist eternally, these two X's, just like "X1" and "X2" in the structure of the Godhead, are the source of a reality we must call "X3". Just as "X3" in the Godhead constitutes the eternal result of his manifestation or creation, so too is "X3" in the living beings the result of their manifestation and creation. As these three X's, just like the Godhead, constitute an inseparable unity, which in this case is the same as a living being, the living being is thus absolutely eternal.
This is what I have trouble following (and a terminological issue). First, what is "its analysis"? Who's analysis? Maybe it's a translation problem. But mainly, I don't understand what he means by X3. Isn't the "result of [living beings'] manifestation and creation what he earlier said is impermanent, i.e., not eternal? The terminological issue here is to call "creating" a
faculty of X1. Rather, I would say it
is X1.
My issue, then, is with saying the creator is prior to the created. That thinking is prior to any thought. (And, as an idealist, I consider "creating" and "thinking" to be synonyms.) Without a created there is no creator. It is the case that my thought "What shall I have for dinner?", considered by itself, is not God. But does it exist "by itself"? No. It exists in relation to other thoughts, which in turn are related to others, and those relations are themselves thoughts.... In short, there is only one ever-expanding Thought (Created), which is in polar relation to the power to Think Create), so I would say the latter is not prior to The Thought. Which means that everything created (thought) is eternal, existing in the Akashic Records, to speak theosophically.
Scott, I don’t think there’s any translation issue (I’ve checked, Danish and Swedish are very similar). The translation is not beautiful, but it is accurate. In particular, the word “analysis” is the same (analyse) in Danish.
Scott wrote:First, what is "its analysis"? Who's analysis? Maybe it's a translation problem. But mainly, I don't understand what he means by X3. Isn't the "result of [living beings'] manifestation and creation what he earlier said is impermanent, i.e., not eternal? The terminological issue here is to call "creating" a faculty of X1. Rather, I would say it is X1.
I would understand Martinus' word “
analysis” as ‘qualities’, like the qualities of experience. So I believe he is saying: “
That “something” that we call the I cannot in itself bear any qualities.” He means that qualities are proper to manifested phenomena only. The qualities of the created organism cannot identify the creator of the organism. I would further translate:
“
The condition of eternity in which this “something” is, this condition is its quality (analysis). But this quality can only be nameless, and will then only come to expression as X1."
Here I will make a short digression, to come to the meaning I believe Martinus is trying to express by the use of nameless X1. In the post “how the world began, in “w-a-t-e-r” and in spirit”, Max Leyf illustrates how the experience of perception narrated by deafblind Helen, confirms how intelligible sensory perception, far from being standalone and objective, depends on concepts and their expression in words:
Max Leyf wrote:Helen Keller’s testimony shows us that without language, there is no world for us, only an immediate sensory environment. She says this much herself: “Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world.”
Just as “water” remains imperceptible to Helen Keller until she had grasped the word for it and, by extension, the concept or idea of it, so “the world” is not perceptible to us until we perform a similar task. Just as ideas share in the nature of things, so things share in the nature of ideas and that is why the world is intelligible to us (...). Humans, without ceasing to inhabit an environment, can begin to occupy a world, but that is not a genetic inheritance but a cultural and spiritual one. That means that every individual must realize or actualize this inheritance in his or her own lifetime. It is perhaps in undertaking this task that we also begin to undertake the Great Work, or magnum opus of the alchemists: namely, the forging of the self. Again, Helen Keller’s account illustrates what each of us accomplishes in our own way:
“When I learned the meaning of “I” and “me” and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me.”
So I believe Martinus decides not to give any name to X1, in order to avoid equating it to a perceived phenomenon, or thing, with qualities. For this reason, X1 is the name-less and concept-less
condition of eternity of the I.
X2 is X1’s equally eternal creating capacity. And just as X1-X2, as structure of the Godhead, is the origin(ator) of reality, so X1-X2, as structure of the I too, is the origin(ator) of reality. Reality therefore has to be referred to as X3.
X3 is the eternal result of the Godhead’s creating capacity, and also the result of the creating capacity of the I. And the living beings you and I are (constituted by the I with its created manifestations) acquire eternity by the fact that they are the same as the inseparable unity of the three Xs, just like the Godhead is the same as the inseparable unity of the three Xs.
(incidentally, here is where I think Eugene can find a more explicit "nondual touch and feel")
That was as for my attempt to clarify what I believe Martinus says.
As for your issue with the creator nor preceding creation, I don’t think Martinus states that the creator is
prior to the created. Rather he says: the creator is eternal, the created is its impermanent manifestation.
You say: “
creating and thinking are synonyms” - yes.
You say: “
without a created there is no creator” - no, because creating/thinking is a verb, an evolution, a time-immersion, off of, or out of, eternity.
You say: “
there is only one ever-expanding Thought (Created), which is in polar relation to the power to Think Create), so I would say the latter is not prior to The Thought.” - I don’t think so. I don’t get the polar relation thinking-thought. Rather, thought is the arbitrary precipitation of thinking activity in the individual perceptual spectrum. Thinking has to die, become stripped of its creative living capacity, and fall into standard perception as hyper-fragmented and dry” thinking dust” mixed in, and smeared all over, the screen of our experience, together with the rest of our perceptual flow (feeling, willing, sensing). There is a structural imbalance between thinking and thought.
I believe you are abstracting a supposed polarity thinking-thought as if it went parallel to the spiritual-physical polarity? But I don’t see any "one ever expanding Thought". Thoughts can only be
fragmented. That’s why we have to keep them at bay, we have to keep the fragments out of the way, by concentrating on only one tiny point, and that’s the only way to trace back to the unity of thinking. Besides what Ashvin says about livingly inhabiting the meaning of polarity, maybe you hold this view because you have not tried to consider thinking as X1 (or X1-X2 if you prefer) ‘above’ (not prior to) all else, which includes the manifested-perceptual, which includes thoughts-pictures?
By the way, as Ashvin says, it is straining