A Disconnect

[Cleric K]

I don't think people operate with a single kernel, be that the bible or the spectrum of sensory impressions. The JW would appeal to both in addition to his rational faculties and even the laws of logic. The Anglicans have their 3 pillars of authority - scripture, reason and tradition.

Yes, of course there are more than one kernels, and thank God for this! In the inner conflict between different kernels also lies the means for salvation. If we’re completely dominated by one kernel, then only death can change our mind. The conflict between kernels is what can stimulate us to seek higher synthesis (as if by Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis).

Of course your most contentious statement, the point of pivot, is "The most challenging evolutionary transition for man today is to find this support within his spiritual being." I wanted to respond, "Says who?" but was reminded of my question to you almost a year ago to the day, "But where do we actually derive our marching orders from?" for which the essence of your response was to develop an expanding intuition of the temporal structure of the Cosmos.

This shouldn’t be surprising at all. It has been mentioned many times that the impulse for scientific understanding (in the ordinary sense) is in fact highly spiritual. It is precisely the instinctive attempt to find grounds of existence in something that transcends appearances, tastes and preferences. This something is most often mathematics. Even though this is a quite instinctive endeavor for most, in its essence it is precisely the inner striving of the “I” to find the support for its existence into something ideal, eternal, truthful. The scientist’s “I” can never feel at peace if his existence needs to lay on the support of religious documents, external doctrines, human-devised ideological systems, etc. He needs to find the explanation of reality from within himself. That's why it's highly desirable, for example, to find the constants of nature as some purely mathematical numbers, like π or e, instead of simply measuring them through experiments. Of course, there are probably quite few scientists that will express in such a way but there’s no doubt that even though they may not admit it, they still seek the ideal lawfulness of existence. If they were true materialists they would consider it a superstition to speak of ‘laws of nature’ (since they can’t be seen, touched, weighed). Such lawfulness can only be found within intuitive thinking (mathematics as a domain of it), it cannot be perceived as some external object, color, sound, etc. We know the ideal dimension of reality when our thinking moves in its streamlines.

In mathematics we already live in the spiritual world. It’s only that its ideal essence is sieved by the ‘lowest common denominator’ of the intellectual activity which can only grasp stable forms and their mysterious relations. Thus the spiritual world is experienced only as eternal mathematical forms existing in timeless relations. It’s very important to be aware of this: in mathematics, although we speak of 1 + 1 = 2, we actually never encounter the operation. We never see how two ones somehow merge and transform into two or vice versa. Instead, these are eternal forms and the operation is only the description of their timeless relations.

It is precisely the reality of this ‘operation’ that makes the difference between the mineralized spiritual world and its living essence which we can innerly know when our spiritual activity finds its resonant flow in it. It is funny that this science of the spiritual world is precisely what the normal scientist secretly yearns for in the depth of his soul: the experience of the ideal foundation from whence the world of appearances becomes lawfully comprehensible. What stops him from entering there is simply the fact that there we find not only ideal forms but also ideal life. The ‘operations’ in the spiritual world are not only timeless and never changing relations of eternal forms but continually metamorphosing ideal life of spiritual beings. It is completely unintuitive for modern man who is dominated by reductionism, but in the spiritual world movement (metamorphosis) is more fundamental than form. Forms appear as ideal flow stabilized into standing waves, so to speak. Thus, the Logos is not simply a mathematical structure that we explicate through our intellect but one where there is life (metamorphosis) and intentionality. As long as the scientist wants to feel as the only ego in their inner space (thus preserving all life and intentionality for himself, while allowing only static lifeless forms to surround him), the path to the fuller spiritual world is barred. We can only transcend our intellectual and imaginative states if we’re willing to awaken in a resurrected mathematical space, where we find not only forms but also the life and intentionality characteristic to our ego, now spread out everywhere in the Cosmos. Then our inner being pours out in the spiritual world proper, where archetypal forms evolve and serve as the metamorphosing ideal ‘lattice’ along which the imaginative and sensory life coalesces.

So regarding your question “Says who?”, you simply need to read between the lines of historical development. Not only what people say and write but the nature of the inner life from whence the words spring. Then you’ll see clearly that ever since humanity has been shaking off from the medieval religious slumber, it’s been trying to do nothing but this – to reach a higher ground within itself that can give inner support for sensory, social and moral life, free from outer dogma and enforced rituals (external kernels). So far this has had only limited success in the most inert part of our existence, simply because this is where some mappings can be made between mineralized mathematics and the likewise mineralized appearances of the physical world. But if we are to ascend to social and moral life, our mathematical thinking needs to likewise become similar to things that live and have intentions. And this means nothing else than that we need to develop the higher forms of consciousness (Inspirative, Intuitive) through which our ideal mathematical activity is liberated from the constrains of the inert forms and grows into the more encompassing ideal life which is the foundation not only of form but also of everything that has soul and spirit.

I find it interesting you mention the Logos here given this was mentioned by Sheldrake in his discussion with Kastrup. Thinking of Jesus as embodying the Logos is certainly a lot to get one's head around. I feel there is a disconnect between viewing Jesus in this light and viewing him as the one who "died for our sins" as a propitiatory sacrifice.

Well, I’m sure that you can already find some examples so far where prior disconnects have been connected through deeper insight. The question is whether you conceive that this particular disconnect could be just another step in the process or you consider it as a showstopper which somehow proves that all further pursuit in that direction is simply an error.