Personalism 102

First topic message reminder :

This is a topic reminder post……

Personalism 102 is just a continuation Personalism 101…….. as we approach the limit of 40 pages.  

The contention remains that the best possible world is necessarily based on the philosophy and ontology of Personalism.  

The ontology is immaterialism, taken at it’s most fundamental level.

There is only One thing to do, just one.

Know thyself and follow it out.

Go all the way.

Nothing in the world can compare to this.

You are only ever competing with yourself.

But when you are done fighting yourself, life will open and expand for you.

This is the hardest achievement for a human being and maybe 95% won’t make the attempt.

I think the cream is skimmed off the top.

Be the cream.

Knowing thyself will open everything else up.

Does this make you a mystic?

Those labels and names are created by muppets for things they couldn’t possibly understand.

Knowing thyself is beyond belief.

Life appears to be all about competition, it’s about being adaptable.

Taking fixed positions or labeling yourself will limit your adaptability.

Stay open.

Always be improving.

Be kind.

Simple code to live by.

This is the summary of all I have experienced.

You got something better, ha, let’s see it.

Nothing you or a princess knows will ever compare to knowing myself.

And if you had done this yourselves, you would be encouraging others to do so.

But I know better.

I know everyone is pretending.

Jokes on them.

I know you and your princess and left foot are children Dan.

One must learn to be patient with children.

I came here to help you kids.

But really, you can only help yourself.

I know I’m here to learn patience.

chivo,

So God brought us all this way to witness the vast majority of us be cast to the wolves .

That’s not very clever of God.

After all we’ve seen up to this point, you’d have thought that she would have left herself an encore.

You have to keep churning the mass.

If you don’t get it this time, back to the muck with ya.

For gold will rise.

We all have that gold within us as potential.

But we must do the work.

And it is the best and only real work in life.

It’s a beautiful thing to touch the tip of light that dances on the edge of the abyss

All our efforts to understand die in our knowing ourselves

Be Open

Be Kind

Deepen our quality moment to moment

I think smelly has summed it up nicely

You can think in a no-think way

Speaking from
Before thought
Like a diamond sword

That’s disclosure



You won’t find the joy without forgiveness

A release of tension rather

Like melting butter on warm bread

Knowing yourself and accepting it all

If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with

What did the goat say to the chicken?



What did the goat say to the chicken?

Ewe wouldn't understand, it's a baa-d yolk!

We have spoken of Being.  

Next we might ask about the ground of Being.  

You know…… three persons in one substance.  

What’s the substance?  

With the I Am, I’ve been implying that there is no substance.  

God is called the "ground of being" in part because God is the answer to the ontological threat of non-being…..

Hmmm……

God comes with her own ground.  

How does this relate to the circumstances of the I Am?  

Is this a BYOG party?  

What did Heidegger say about the ground of Being?  

Was his implication that Being was necessarily grounded in Time.

But then what is the ground of Time?

What was the ground of the Big Bang ?  

What is the ground of the Multiverse?  

Is consciousness grounded in the unconscious?  

The first act of the I Am is to observe her own existence.  

Then she has a mental breakdown……. like in an isolation tank….. as with schizophrenia.  

In Hinduism, Brahman is the ground of Being.  

Is Brahman the ground of Atman?  

But I’ve heard that Atman = Brahman.  

There seems to be some confusion on these points.  

RNA - Ursula Goodenough….

Paul Tillich was critical of the view of God as a type of being or presence. He felt that, if God were a being, God could not then properly be called the source of all being (due to the question of what, in turn, created God). As an alternative, he suggested that God be understood as the “ground of Being-Itself”…… As such, God precedes “being itself” and God is manifested in the structure of beings.

goodenough for .  

And, on behalf of chivo, we might ask…… so what?  

Before being there is potentiality……..

Within the Tao, there is yin and yang .  

And let us not forget the Hiraṇyagarbh…….. the cosmic womb.  

But I’m partial to the Buddhist notion of pratītyasamutpāda…….. co-dependent arising.

It’s not so much that Atman = Brahman.  

It’s more like Atman <<=>> Brahman.  

It’s a bootstrap operation.  

It’s personhood and the transpersonal….. all the way down……. and all the way up.  

Noté bené…… transpersonal /=/ transhuman.  

The transpersonal includes the (collective) unconscious.  

There is a strong sense in which the transpersonal = the primordial abyss……

the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Reminiscent of the virtual chaos of the quantum void.  

With Heidegger’s Being and Time, my suggestion is that Being is necessarily grounded in the context of the Metanarrative.

And the only possible Metanarrative is the best possible…… as with the Leibniz/Feynman principle of optimal action.  

Chivo is quite insistent…….

There is only One thing to do, just one.

Know thyself and follow it out.

My question for chivo……. is there anything else to know?  

Hey, I could be following a rat down a drain pipe, and I’d only be following myself.  

Or we could follow the jguy……. it might be a slightly more optimal path.  

By the way, relationalism is virtually tantamount to personalism/interpersonalism…… talk about a bootstrap!  

Have we neglected to speak of internal relations?  

The doctrine of internal relations is tantamount to coherentism/holism….. as in the CohTT.  It’s also about the microcosm.

Here we are speaking of monism….. the One….. the Logos Spermatikos…… the Hieranyagarbha.  

Or, how about that popular favorite…… Agape.

This is what chivo is on about……. I’m just trying to explain it to all the rest of us who are spiritually challenged.  

While we’re in a syncretic mood, you might wish to check out Joseph Kaipayil.  

Yes, philosophy is coming to eat everyone’s lunch 🥪.  

In particular, the Metanarrative is coming to eat your lunch 🥪, and I do mean _yours_!  

Chivo thought he could hide from it.  

No such luck !



(cont………)

There is only one thing to know, yourself.

All else flows from this.

There is NO other way than that.

Imagine a child born in the jungle, no parents, awareness of no narrative.

They are found by a tribe with little contact with the world.

What do they do, they teach the child their version of history.

Metanarratives include religious traditions, philosophies, scientific theories, and political ideologies.

Metanarratives tend to generalize and oversimplify complex realities. They can ignore nuances, local context, and individual differences in favor of a unified and standardized version of truth.

Metanarratives can suppress marginalized perspectives and voices that do not align with their dominant narrative. This can contribute to inequality, social injustice, and cultural hegemony.

Metanarratives often present a single, fixed perspective, which can resist change and evolution over time. This rigidity can hinder adaptation and innovation, and can prevent us from understanding the complexities and uncertainties of life.

This is why I reject them.

Metanarratives can be reductionist, reducing complex and multifaceted phenomena into simplified concepts or ideas. This can lead to a lack of appreciation for complexity and can oversimplify our understanding of reality.

Metanarratives can legitimize and reinforce existing power structures, often serving the interests of those in power at the expense of those without power.

You have preferences and these can be altered through rhetoric.

Capitalists are not ready to cede power.

They hold everything captive.

I reject their narrative, but I must participate to live.

Doesn’t mean I like it.

Jean-François Lyotard argued that metanarratives have lost their credibility in a postmodern age, and instead advocated for "little narratives" or local stories that emphasize the diversity and complexity of human experiences.

I lean his way.

Metanarratives can help provide a sense of shared purpose, identity, and understanding in a complex world. Without them, it can be difficult to mobilize collective action or maintain social cohesion.

Knowing thyself though replaces the metanarratives and connects you actively to the real element in life.

The metanarratives are like training wheels.

Knowing thyself is the counterbalance to metanarratives.

Knowing oneself can lead to personal empowerment and authenticity. Instead of relying on a metanarrative to dictate one's identity and role in the world, self-knowledge allows for individual autonomy and self-determination.

Self-awareness encourages the questioning of assumptions, including those propagated by metanarratives. This critical perspective can expose the limitations, biases, and power dynamics present in grand narratives.

A deep understanding of oneself can facilitate personal growth and development. Metanarratives, on the other hand, can sometimes limit growth by presenting fixed and rigid concepts of human potential and social roles.

Knowing oneself acknowledges the diversity and complexity of human experiences. It allows for multiple truths and perspectives to coexist, counteracting the tendency of metanarratives to homogenize and oversimplify human experience.

Self-knowledge can help in building authentic relationships, both with oneself and with others. Metanarratives, in contrast, can sometimes contribute to misunderstanding, conflict, and dehumanization by encouraging stereotyping and other forms of bias.

However, it's important to note that self-knowledge doesn't entirely replace the role of metanarratives. We all live in a social and cultural context that shapes our understanding of the world and ourselves. We are influenced by metanarratives, whether consciously or unconsciously. The challenge is to recognize this influence and reflect critically on it, integrating it with our own personal experiences and insights in a way that fosters authentic self-understanding and growth.

So like all else in life, nothing is black and white.

Stay open.

Be kind.

Straight on.

Thank you, Chivo for your thoughtful and helpful response.  

Nonetheless, I fail to find it persuasive.  

I harbor the concept of a universal Truth…… it is a cosmology that I refer as the Best Possible World Hypothesis BPWH.  

I understand the BPWH as our true Metanarrative and present it as a counter to the scientific narrative of Darwinism.  

I do figure Darwinism to be persuasive from the perspective of a correspondence theory of truth (CorTT).  

However, the CorTT fails to to be persuasive from a personalist perspective.  

You fail to even mention the scientific perspective, and instead launch into a very politically correct defense of postmodernism.  

In theory, postmodernism establishes a level playing field for all and sundry personal and ethno-religious narratives.  

The anti-personal Darwinist narrative becomes the default narrative for all public/secular discourse and education.  

In other words, right off the top, you are failing to abide by the spirit of postmodernism, because you operate under the pall of scientific orthodoxy.  

Rather, you present yourself as being blind to the social and political context in which you are operating.  

Yes, I find this stance to be very unpersuasive, but all too typical of our actual social conditions and constraints.  

The general public is hardly aware that there are any alternative rational perspectives, or that there even exists such a thing as the CohTT.  

You, however, cannot avail yourself of this excuse, so I am mildly baffled as to what is your excuse.  

I am under the impression that in our discussions your preferred stance is to block your ears and go la-la-la………

Even the most highly educated members of our society simply refuse to make any effort to consider or even acknowledge that there are any alternatives.  

Such is the nature of the Katechon under which we all live.  

And, yes, ours is the best possible Katechon.

So who planted all those fossils, concocted all the DNA 🧬, calculated all the astronomical phenomena, etc, that we observe, at all levels of sophistication?  

But any thoughtful physicist faces a similar mystery……. who imposes the mathematical structure on the phenomena that we observe, both inside and outside the laboratory?  

The Pythagoreans came up with the only explanation, and it still stands…… the mathematical nature of reality is ascribed to the Creator being a mathematician.

But, hey, let’s not get our knickers in a knot 🪢.  All our ancestors have gone along with it.  It’s just part of the scenery.

If you wish to see it with your own eyes , just google the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.  

This unreasonableness is just the basis of the Anthropic Principle, which, in turn, is the basis for the BPWH.  

Our own Gary is a follower of Max Tegmark who states……

that physics is so successfully described by mathematics because the physical world is completely mathematical.

This belief implies that the world is immaterial or that it’s apparent materiality is merely an illusion.  

I agree with that, but say that the basis is our collective unconscious….. of which mathematics and physics are but one manifestation.  

It is widely supposed among computer scientists and many others that the world is the manifestation of a computer model…… in other words, it is a virtual reality.



(cont……….)

Well, you can’t win em all

I am very aware of the circus we appear in.

I just gave a wink to the postmodernists.

I’m in the middle on everything.

I’m here and I’m not.

I’m on and I’m off.

The eye of the storm is real.

This is all a real clown show.

I know your grasp of the truth forces you into your way of thinking.

Thinking traps us.

This is why the Sufis spin.

I appear in the truth of every moment.

If all your senses were shut off, that.

That behind all of this…movie.

My knowledge has come from my spinning ‍

My whole project was to spin people around who I met on OMF.

Everything is spinning.

But we want to stop it all.

Nope.

Never will.

Dance in circles until you are no longer dizzy.

The worship of materialism or immaterialism is boring.

Everyone is stuffed with their chosen metanarratives.

Boring.

I’ll take my chances letting my right brain lead.

Seems to be working out very nicely.

Can’t complain.

You just go with the flow and stop judging and start living.

One strange side effect is you desire less and less.

You mostly have nothing to say to others.

You don’t care about others sharing your values.

Let the materialists have their fun with matter.

Shrug.

If they don’t want to know themselves, shrug.

They want to worship the laws of nature, have at it.

But we all know, things are not just as they appear.

But most of us pretend that what appears is all there is.

Shrug.

Knowing thyself removes these limitations.

No theory, hypothesis, or opinion could.

Knowing thyself begins with watching your thoughts and very quickly you see that they have minds of their own and are not you.

Because they can be silenced and you can see they do not all want your best.

Then what are you if not your thoughts?

You just keep going from there.

Most can’t get through the storm of their senses and thoughts.

It is hard.

I am not writing to you, I’m pointing at it is all.

I’m naked.

We are terrified to strip our egos away.

But bit by bit you can see what is behind it.

Nothing.

Chivo…….

I’m in the middle on everything.

I’m not aware that there is any middle ground between nothing and the One.

We all agree that we are seeing Something rather than nothing.  

The Buddha, bless his heart, believed that this something was only a reflection of our ignorance and innate biases.  

He taught the emptying of the mind…….. stripping away our instincts, habits and illusions, layer by layer.

Wondering if that is all there was, motivated my sojourn into physics.

Was there anything behind our evolutionary struggle to survive?  

Was there anything behind the physics?  

But we all know, things are not just as they appear.

But most of us pretend that what appears is all there is.

So, maybe it’s time to stop pretending.  

Poor chivo, he’ll want to know what’s in it for him.  

Well, ok, we’ll all want to know.

What if we find out that our struggle to survive is an illusion?  

Starving to death is not an illusion.  

Well, death may be an illusion, but the starving and suffering are not.  

Our grief and sense of loss surrounding death are not.  

Telling folks that their lives are pointless is certainly a moral failing, if you have not done your due diligence.

Has chivo done his due diligence?

His diligence appears to be to provide a foil for the Truth.

He has done rather well at that……… he certainly has demonstrated stamina and patience…… in the pursuit of any possible alternatives.

In physics there are many reports of negative findings……. where one is able to push the boundaries on the possible existence of various proposed phenomena.  

Is the existence of postmodernism evidence for a moral failure?

But if it is, it is very difficult to determine where to point a finger.

The ultimate culprit is no less than the Katechon.  

Who’s behind the Katechon?  

It’s all of us…… co-Creators……. it is at the heart of the cosmic conspiracy that is responsible for our existence.  

Should we try to fight city hall?  

In that regard, we can only surmise that……. les jeux sont faits.

What will the Truth buy us?

It will buy you a ticket to hang out on OM.

If that virtue is not its own reward, then may God have mercy.



(cont……..)

Actually I won’t be asking what’s in it for me to be.

It’s kind of obvious.

What’s in it for a human being is being.

As I said, one desires less and less and the world means more and more.

Have I done my work?

Yes, and then some.

Like Kierkegaard and Heidegger, we have awoken to the good news of Being.

Are we sufficiently celebrating 🥳?  

We may have to wait until the wedding feast.  

But, in my humble opinion, there are no muppets, in this regard.

We all have a piece of God….. we all have a piece of the Truth.  

And, in truth, we have more than a piece of each.  

If one understands anything of Truth, one understands that it is of a piece.

That is an odd phrase…… maybe I’d better check it out…..

Now I’m remembering…… to say that something is _all_ of a piece…..

It is an expression of coherence…… an expression of the holistic nature of the subject matter in question.  

This tantamount to saying that something is Truth incarnate.  

This notion, historically, is sourced principally to John…… in the beginning was the Word……

How many of us have the Word?

The only sensible answer is that we all do…….. on some level.  

Cognate concepts are found in Hiraṇyagarbha and the Logos Spermatikos…… also in Qi, Pratītyasamutpāda, etc.  

But wait, is Qi personal or impersonal?  

Hold that thought, just a minute………

Sam H recommends the Power of Wonder by Monica Parker, and I do as well.

It pretty much covers the waterfront. The only thing it doesn’t touch upon is Eschatology! That might have been over the top.

So, back to Qi……..



(cont……..)

Interestingly Plotinus is very close to Buddhism.

I hadn’t thought of Plotinus as a Buddhist.

I’d better take that under advisement.  

I think of Plotinus as having to do with the Plenum, which might be understood as the opposite of Sunyata.

But then we can follow Parmenides, and reduce or expand the plenum to the One.  

Plotinus and Parmenides seemed to be barking up the same tree…… but approaching it from rather different directions.

But, yes, I’m noticing a number of articles on Plotinus and vijñānavāda Buddhism.  

Buddhism is immaterialist, in general, and vijñānavāda stands out, within Buddhism, for its emphasis on this ontology……. mind only.  

Maybe that’s what Siddhartha was trying to trying to point to is reality, in its most basic state collapses onto the One.  

What is the difference between the One and the Buddha Nature?  

We leave the many spheres of Hindu existence right behind.  

Vedanta, however, is pretty much on that same page.  
……….


Back to Qi…….. so get a load of this……..

Neo-Confucianism is an extremely complex and deep field, but to put it simply, there are two core concepts: Li (principle), and Qi (psycho-physical force). Neo-Confucian scholars believed that all beings in the universe shared an “original nature” comprising all the principles in the world.

Hmmm….. this is saying a mouthful.  

It seems that we can’t get away from Parmenides……. the original nature of Being…….. the common ground of Being.

I’m not seeing anything impersonal about this.  

Is Li/Qi a real phenomenon….. observed by whom……. if not by us, Beings?

Is there anything in Asian philosophy that is not personal?  

The only reason that Personalism stands out in Western philosophy is because of our dualism between Creator/Creation…… spirit/matter.  

Making the connection between Being and personhood is the critical assumption.  

Parmenides’ One is the missing link.  

Is the Being of beings not personal?  

Who would like to prove it?  

Is Mt Everest ️ personal.  

It rather was to the Nepalese

Many take the ascent of Everest quite personally.  

Is the Moon personal?  

Wolves howl at the moon as well as we can…… probably better.  

The wolf and the Moon get along just fine.  Who says they need our intervention?  



(cont………)

Yes, the wolf and the moon make a cozy little pair…… why should we have to butt in to their little just-so story?  

The problem is that the wolves don’t howl at the stars.  

Our astronomers howl at the stars.

But who needs astronomers?  

Who needs mathematicians or meteorologists?  

Who needs lawyers?  

It’s about coherence.  

Who needs priests and monks?  

Who needs philosophers?  

Just so stories………

Who needs Scheherazade?  

Shahryar needed Scheherazade, or so we’re told.  

Who needed the best possible world?  

Why is there something rather than nothing?  

Vladdie only wanted his something.

He didn’t want your something.

Can we have Being without Time.  

Can we have linear time without a Metanarrative?  

Why not just shut up and calculate?

Why not get a chatbot?  

Why was the Princess talking to Vladdie?

Can we guess?

Maybe about the opening of the portals…… when the wolf stops howling at the Moon .

I awoke this morning
Love laid me down by the river
Drifting I turned on up stream
Bound for my forgiver
In the giving of my eyes to see your face
Sound did silence me
Leaving no trace
I begged to leave, to hear your wonderous stories…


Sister bluebird flying high above
Shine your wings forward to the sun
Hide the mysteries of life on your way
Though you've seen them, please don't say a word
What you don't know, I have never heard…


Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face
Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human race,
On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place,
If the summer change to winter, yours is no disgrace

(cont……..)

Did the princess speak to vladdie?

Anything is possible.

But probably not.

Neoplatonism and Buddhism do share a lot in common.

Monism, ego absorption, ultimately reality, mystical union, suffering and liberation.

Plotinus’s metaphysics has the one at the top, but Buddhism has experiential realization.

Buddhism's approach to suffering and liberation is based on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, which offer a very practical, ethical, and meditative path, unlike Plotinus's more intellectually and contemplatively oriented method.

There have been attempts to merge reason and mysticism. Spinoza, Kabbalah, Sufism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Romanticism.

It took me awhile to see this and explains why I was drawn to explore all these systems.

The ineffable nature of "The One" challenges the ability of reason to fully comprehend it.

Dan doesn’t seem to want to play that game of bridging mysticism and reason.

But you can’t get around direct experience.

Needless to say, this discussion is light years beyond the cultural conflicts of today.

The liberals and right wingers seem like cavemen.

We are pointing to the nature of being.

The moron masses have no idea what they are a part of.

God bless those simpletons.

That rich morons manipulate the poor morons is more a sad joke than anything to be proud of.

I am skeptical of power and wealth.

Not because I have none, I do and could have more.

But those are not the real accomplishments in life, union is.

Who is more unified?

Those separated have a long way to go still.

Now is not the time to separate.

All together now.

There is a thing that penguins do.

Sometimes they make for the interior.

They head toward certain death, they are thought to be depressed.

Even if you bring them back to the group, they will take off for the interior land again.

That to me demonstrates the gravity of the One pulling us in.

We will end in certain death.

Union.

We have no concept of what is beyond this event horizon.

We guess and have clues, but no one can really say.

God told me to relax.

God showed me…

Can’t go over this, can’t go under this, have to go through this.

Just play, have fun, enjoy the game.

Dan doesn’t seem to want to play that game of bridging mysticism and reason.

Hmmm…… that’s news to me.  

I thought that was all I did….. with the BPWH (best possible world hypothesis).  

An immaterial world is a mystical, intuitive conception.  

I attempt to rationalize this mystical intuition.  

I apologize if I miss the target.  

Someone will get it right……. in the near future.  
………


I’m reviewing the articles on Time in the Stanford Encylopedia (SEP).  

They do focus the mind in attempting to apply them to the BPWH.  

The panpsychist view of time perhaps comes closest to the personalist view.

This also comes close to the Bergsonian view…… an organic view….. pretty much the opposite of the Newtonian, absolutist view.

But it’s not clear how to reconcile the organic and eternalist views.



(cont……..)

The fullness of truth is always immediately present.

“Some faith traditions share a silence that abides within each tradition, as silence is everywhere the same, and as logic insists upon the identity of indiscernibles, this might provide the common horizon of intelligibility within which the possibility of participation across confessional boundaries becomes real.

They describe a mystagogical movement of thought and will towards a mysterium tremendum that transcends rather than lacks words, because it is itself the fullness of truth immediately present. And it must be a venture, therefore, of faith, because the various ways in which differing traditions speak of that final terminus—that shared horizon of meaning—will never coincide in some third place outside all particularities. The Vedantist may envisage it in terms in the original and final identity of Brahman and Atman, the Christian perhaps in the eschatological reality “that God may be All in All”; and the ontological and gnoseological grammar of the one cannot simply and cavalierly be translated into the cosmic and historical grammar of the other.

…I do not believe in the existence of any real esoteric transmissions of privileged wisdom in any of the major traditions. Nothing of significance has ever been learned in hidden caves outside the city walls, where small circles of initiates foregather to intone mystic litanies and pore over secret doctrines. There are no hermetic symbolic economies cunningly woven into the exoteric fabrics of the great faiths, whose deeper meanings are known to only a very few. There are, of course, differing levels of metaphysical sophistication among believers, but that is something very different. But the Buddha taught with open hand; Christ taught daily in the temple; Ramanuja proclaimed the way to truth in the open, even at risk to his own soul. As for the esotericists, leave them in their damned caves.

What believe in, then, is a kind of contrapuntal complementarity of traditions, interweaving with one another in moments of consonance and moments of dissonance, departing from one another into thematic developments of their own, enriching and ironizing one another, echoing and inverting one another, and all together reaching toward a final resolution—adumbrated in all that has led to it, and yet undoubtedly immeasurably more than any of our traditions can fully foresee.“

—David Bentley Hart

He has a polyphonic understanding across religions. He speaks of a prisca theologia when discussing the commonalities between faiths rather than of a philosophia perennis.

I tend to vibrate with him.

Thank you for the continuing reference to DBH.  

There is no active theologian who I find to be more cogently provocative.

You and I probably agree on that, and we are certainly not alone.  

This was already before spending most of the morning binging on DBH & eschatology.  

He has much to say of eschatology, but always denying an Eschaton.  

At best, he is an amillennialist.  

Second coming?

I sure wouldn’t count on it…… unless he could be the one.  

He spends a lot of time talking around the Eschaton.

Yet, it’s quite evident that he considers himself more Christian than any Pope and quite a few other notables…… but only in the most ironic sense.

He might just leave the Eschaton as a mystery.  

But, no, he outright denies it.  

He does not deny that the jguy embraced the Eschaton.  

He does believe in Jesus incarnate and resurrected, but, sorry , no Second Coming.  

But, no, he’s not sorry, he’s just very matter of fact.  

I don’t think he denies miracles….. neither generally nor particularly.  

He is a personalist and a Trinitarian……. I’m not sure if he denies the infinitude of personhood……. certainly not its potential infinitude.  

What about Being, then, I have to ask myself.

What about in Asia?

The Buddhists are being consistent……. deny time, you deny Being.

Without Creation, there are no creatures.



(cont……..)

The answer to this videos question is ....YES.


hobbit

hobbit,

Yes, thank you for pointing us to Bernardo Kastrup.  

(I think Gary B may also be a fan of Bernardo’s.)

He should be your kind of idealist……. the impersonal kind.  

He promotes a kind of Spinozan panpsychism.  

In other words, he favors an impersonal idealism which should be right up your alley.  

What I don’t know is what kind of cosmology would make sense of his panpsychism……. big world, small world, or what.  

I have at least one of his books, which I should check out…….

Gosh, it looks like I have five of his books!

I’m reading what he has to say about his mythic cosmic split…… https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2012/09/the-great-cosmic-split-myth.html …….

Body and soul also correspond in form. After all, the soul imports forms from the body, while the body imports meaning from the soul. Soul and body are integral parts of one single system. You are both simultaneously; right now. Your soul isn't a separate entity with a separate consciousness; it is you in the same way that the multiple split-off personalities of a patient with Dissociative Identity Disorder are, despite their assertions to the contrary, the same person.

I’ve always been aware that Bernardo is lacking in coherence, and the more I look at his stuff, the more aware of it I become.  

He’s trying to split the difference between physicalism and idealism.  

I’m sorry Bernardo, dualism has not ever made any sense.  

But, hey, it may be the best possible nonsense, and, yes, it will get folks to think about alternatives.  



(cont……..)

DBH pisses everyone off about something or other.

He’s damn funny and who can match him?

He is a universalist.

He believes all will be saved.

He is squarely against the infernalists.

We share the same politics.

I do like him quite a bit.

He helped me really look deeply into perennialism and what he notes, I had found, but he said it much better.

Every path I take, DBH was already there.

He doesn’t even think of himself as a theologian.

He’s just smarter than the ones alive

And he has a snooty way of showing you he’s smarter than you.

Haha.

I like his abrasive wit.

He’s got very good taste.

I respect him a great deal.

He is now focusing on consciousness and philosophy.

He’s tired of fighting fundamentalists.

If anyone would have been burned a heretic, it would DBH.

I’m with the heretics.

He’s writing a book about consciousness now, should be interesting.

He has many excellent articles on First Things, online Christian journal. He wrote there for years before the politics chased him away.

He’s written some insightful stuff on AI recently.

We share the same view about American religion too, it’s a wasteland and disaster area.

Yes, good on Chivo for bringing DBH to us.

DBH should be a starting point for any aspiring metaphysician.  


Now, let’s get back to being and time……..

Experientially, being and time both manifest within intentionality.

But not for Plato.  

For Plato, the Good was timeless…… not to be found in the sub-lunar realm.  

Doesn’t art aspire to timelessness…… to the Eternal?

Poor Plato, he could never understand the planets 🪐……. why were they so restless in Heaven?  

What was so good about cyclical time?

Asia was enamored with cyclical time.  

Cyclical time brings birth, but for mortals it mainly brings death.  

But Asians, like the Platonists, aspired to the Eternal.

Down here was corruption.  

The best laid plans, too often go awry.  

What good is the good, if not to inspire aspiration?

We do recall the ode to the Grecian Urn ……

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
   When old age shall this generation waste,
       Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
   “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all
       Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

No object is a real object unless attended to.  

Attention implies intention.

Objects hardly exist without a scheme of teleology.

I gather that this is what time is up to.  

But too often the Telos ventures to be beyond time.  

We, silly humans, stand out as being Teloi unto ourselves, transcending, on our better days, mere object hood.  

Should this not be true of any sentient creature?  

Well, I don’t go around kicking dogs, but I don’t consider them as Beings……. in any philosophical sense.  

Perceptivity is not the same as subjectivity.  

I seldom have the feeling that anyone is there….. over and above the wagging tail.  
…………



Well, be the pooches as they may……..

Let’s consider if we can truly separate ontology from epistemology.  

I’m suggesting not.

Berkeley would agree……. to be is to be perceived.  

But then what counts as perception.  

Joe has perceived that his foot 🦶 hurts.  

Well, wait, I guess my question is what counts as a perception…… are all perceptions equal?  

I’m suggesting that doggy perception may not have the same ontological weight as human perception.  

Previously, I’ve been at some pains to distinguish between sentience and sapience.  

I’m wanting to apply relationalism to perception…… to being.

Does this mean that the hermit monk in the cave will wind up as ontically deprived?  

The poor blogger who only has ten followers, can hardly be said to exist!  

Hmmm……..

We have stated that the unobservable universe is no universe at all.  

Can we grant existence to the dear departed after all memory of them has vanished?  

Does this grant vastly more onticity to the Statue of Liberty than to the average New Yorker?

And why should anyone care about onticity?

According to physics, existence should be a level playing field……. from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy.  

Existential existence, however, involves only phenomenal existence, and so only Beings.  

Such problems as these may help to explain the allure of monism…… only one thing exists.  

Ok, love is a many splendored thing, especially when viewed from 10^10 angles of perception.  

We could call this Agape.  

But is Agape a person?

Agape magnifies the personhood of its participants.  

Monism rules the field of agape.



(cont………)

What the mystics tell us is that there is no hope for resolution down here.  

The mystics support no ontology whatsoever……. no Being.  

You have to turn to the prophetic traditions to find Being.  

There is no Being without a prophesied resolution.  

What about Atman and Brahman?

Each of us is an incarnation of Brahman.  

Isn’t that Being enough?  

Wouldn’t Heidegger be happy?

I’m not so sure.

Brahman was very abstract……. outside of time.

One would become one with Brahman, only at the end of an indefinite number of life times.

Only within Christendom do we see the fraught, individual choice.

I, of course, deny that choice, but there it was in history.



(cont……..)

Dualism is how consciousness operates.
it is not an equal dualism.
The Northern hemisphere dominates the Southern with compression into 3d been the difference in ratio, hence so called gravity and so called speed of light, neither actually exist.
Gravity been a consequence of the implosion over the outrush...male over female.
Light is occurring relative to the same as the implosive spin from the star arrives with the resistance of the 3D planet blocking such to variant degrees causing less light.

The duality ( duat) is the musical creator in the geometry of universe which is the solid clear as crystal platform.

This is a cyclical at all scale, hence the knowledge is pouring in presently creating a great awakening as the information is is in the flowing consciousness and We are akin to radios receiving the information from the last time ( which doesn't exist) as such the planet was subjected to such flows ( the planet is not moving, consciousness is)

Tempus fugit.

Kevin

But, hobbit,

you have stated, often enough, that people have no place in this mechanical scheme.  

We are accidental onlookers.  

There is no narrative.  

The whole thing is pointless…….. we are an absurdity in a meaningless universe.  

If this is what you believe, you are welcome to it.

I gather that you are fearful of having any cosmic significance.

This leaves much room for nihilistic mischief…… wanting to game the system…… show who’s boss……. for people like Donald Trump.
………….




(cont……..)