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.

Kastrup and Kingsley are both on the mystical, impersonal side of things.

Kingsley is strongly pantheistic about the world…… saying we just need to meditate to see the divine in everything.

Neither has any notion of the divine in history……. as in a prophetic tradition.

I have no problem with daemons.

The BPW is a conspiracy of our better angels.



(cont………)

Come on.

Kingsley is a scholar of history.

He uncovered the ancient healing practice of incubation.

He has a sense of how our relationship with consciousness has evolved.

I think your understanding of mystics and personalism needs some nuance.

It’s not binary.

William James' four characteristics of mystical experience: ineffable, noetic, transient and passive.

The mystic can go converted to a theology of relation.

Mystical experience is marked by absorption.

A mystical "feeling," is something I possess inside myself; it cannot be a reciprocal, face-to-face, relationship. The "mystical" and the "personal" are treated as antithetical types of religion be most—the one of immanence, the other of transcendence.

“Christianity is described as a "personal" faith, by which is meant that man is addressed by the transcendent God in the revelatory word, "thou." This "addressability" is held to constitute man's "personhood." The mystical type of religion is then interpreted as a religion of immanence in which man's task is to develop his inherent potentiality-to become more and more divine as he climbs upward to God on a "ladder of ascent." This traditional mystic "way" is interpreted by Neo-Orthodoxy as a seIf-aggrandizing encroachment on the sovereignty of God; it seems to belie man's need for grace bestowed from above and unmerited below-the Reformation doctrine of sola fide.”

You and I often tussle on these points and I think I’ve laid out the basic differences here.

I think they are complimentary.

What do we say about inspiration for example?

Is that not mystical and the source of much of our progress?

“Needless to say, a result of these alignments (mystical with an "impersonal" self-help program; and "personal" with I-Thou encounter) is that the Catholic (and indeed the Protestant sectarian) appreciation for contemplation, prayer, and quietism tends to be excluded systematically. Today, there is evidence of a change of theological perspective on the "mystical" as a subject of critical inquiry and popular interest. There is, for example, an unmistakable popular and theoretical interest in Zen and Vedantism. There is, also, a remarkable willingness on the part of some Christian traditionalists, such as Benedictines, to adopt Eastern meditative techniques.' Such changes point to a need to apply theological tools to mysticism; unfortunately, in the recent past, the Neo-Orthodox charge against mysticism as "depersonalizing" has excluded it as a central emphasis in the Protestant form of Christianity. The result is that now, at a time when contemplative values have great popular appeal, we do not have a legacy of deep-going scholarship to draw on-nor even a continuing Catholic-Protestant discussion of contemplative values.”

The Bible is a channeled revealed document!

Does the Daimon represent a personal element of the divine?

According to Carl Jung and Plato, everyone has their own unique "daemon". Listening to it can make a big difference in your life. It's that inner voice that comes from your creative energy, asking you to make changes and take on new challenges.

This is just part of human psychology. We don’t have to give it a divine origin, but it’s pretty good evidence of things unseen.

Goethe, in his book Poetry and Truth, had to thank his demonic creature for his poetic and scientific achievements.

This force is equated with inspiration and giving us an inner sense of good and evil.

One can be possessed even by creativity.

“When your Daemon is in charge, don’t try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.”

—Rudyard Kipling

The Egyptians had a similar concept that they named Ba. Aristotle wrote that the daemon is a symbol of virtue and wisdom; the most enlightened essence of human beings; the place where your potential resides.

This is a mystical element inside of us.

It is personal perhaps too.

Dr. James Hillman said he waking your daemon requires self-knowledge. You’ll only be able to hear its voice when you get in touch with your roots. Achieving that connection has important repercussions on your happiness, which is where the term eudaemonia comes from.

We call it inspiration and intuition today and it leads us to innovations.

Through this mind feature, monsters can become muses. It best manifests from a disciplined calm mind and heart. Contemplation is key to developing the connection.

It’s a fascinating part of us.

The church fathers listened to this force and it informed their theology and philosophy, as did ones outside of the main religions.

We may experience union, but we live in a context we come back to.

A strong connection to family and nature enhance these experiences.

The inner life informs the outer life and vice versa.

Some don’t ever name this force or maybe are even conscious of it.

Bringing it into conscious awareness does seem to be an enhancement to our lives.

It can also overwhelm us and this is probably why the average layman was warned away from this force.

What do we say about Prometheans like Oppenheimer and Musk?

The church kept its mystics quiet.

Is this not the Holy Spirit, transcendental Personalism?

But you can’t control someone else’s genie 🧞‍

But what is this inner voice really?

Nature?

Our highest self?

God?

All the above?

Establishing a relationship consciously with this force is one part of knowing thyself.

Chivo,  

I cannot pick an argument with any of the above.  

I spend all the time contemplating various aspects of the BPW.

That is about as immanent as one can get.  

I think it would be very difficult to separate the immanent from the transcendent.  

I am more of a panentheist than a pantheist…….. God is in everything is quite an understatement of the BPWH……. no, everything is in God….. God being the cosmic conspiracy of our Daimons.  

There is nothing evolutionary about this fact.  

It has been the foundation of human existence from the start.  

And, yes, I pray frequently……. Lord, help me!  

Just as there is only one of us, ultimately, the is but one daemon, ultimately……. the I Am……. the Source…… one of us, ultimately.  

The transpersonal includes aspects of the impersonal…… to whatever degree is necessary/helpful.  

Make no mistake, the BPWH will cherry pick the best ideas from anywhere and everywhere……. beg, borrow and steal.  

The jguy just happens to be the main inspiration, and who else has such a lock on history?  

Just don’t place any obstacles or ladders or conditions between us and God.  

Our occasion is coming, and everyone of us will have the wherewithal to rise to that occasion.  

That should and has not prevented the lucky few of us from getting the jump on the cosmic trigger.  

Just don’t begrudge your luck on the rest of us.  

Yes, many of you have done the hard work …… but don’t tell us that your hard work does not come by grace.  

Thank your lucky stars for your inspiration.  

Look……. the longest shadows…. the darkest hour comes just before the dawn.

Hold your daemon…… hold your faith as tightly as possible.



(cont………)

Yea, mucho grace.

Yes, allegedly, God had no daughters.

But don’t forget that God had a Mother.  

Protestants are wont to give Mary a rather short shrift.  

She is almost an embarrassment……. you mean someone had to change God’s diapers!  

Oh, dear…….. I was just getting up on Brother Lawrence, and then he disappeared.  

I trust we have not seen the last of the Brother…….. the practice of the presence of God.  
…………..


I realize that Janus made a threat in one of his other sections.

I am consulting with Cyrellys about having him temporarily banned.
……………


Here is Rupert Spira, mentioned by Chivo on the previous page, along with Kastrup and Kingsley……..

In essence Spira teaches that 'The greatest discovery in life is that our essential nature does not share the limits or the destiny of the body and mind'.

Limits of the mind…..?

I wasn’t aware that there were limits, beyond those that are self-imposed.  
……..


What Chivo and his mentors keep stressing is that the Kingdom is within, and, from a proper perspective, it is in the world…….. here and now.  

In many respects, this is equivalent to the BPWH.  

Where it differs is that the BPWH is forward looking.  

We are participants in a Metanarrative….. the best possible one.

We are the creators of this comic story.

We have had all of eternity to fine tune it.

On our bad days, we beg to differ with this assessment.

Looking from either the outside or from deep within, we will understand the ins and outs……. the cosmic entanglement.  

We don’t have to wait for Revelation, but for many of us it will have been worth the wait.  

Faith is our most precious possession…… exercise it while we can.  

The biggest doubts from us moderns is that Nature is too natural.

I guess we’ll just have to excuse ourselves for outdoing ourselves in the design department.  

Do we really have to spend eternity counting the hairs on everyone’s head?  

My suspicion is that the detailing is carried out in our personal and collective unconscious….. in dimensions beyond space and time.  

And Nature itself hardly needs to be a passive onlooker.  

Coming to understand our own handiwork will be a significant part our experience in the great beyond.



(cont……..)

I’m in some good company when I say…all shall be saved.

Maybe we end up on god’s greatest hits iPhone if we live well.

I certainly have added some good content to our bloopers reel.

I have to say, I have come back to where I began…I really don’t know nuthin.

Yah, it seems Janus may be dealing with some psychological issues.

It happens.

Let’s not throw stones in a glass house.

But threats are not an example of open mindedness.

That’s a broke mind.

…

Some rabbis are suspicious of reason and mind.

Some think reason is the path.

Some are non-dualists, everything is one.

Some think god is there and we are here, dualism.

The rabbis just can’t agree.

I think I’m with those rabbis who say…just live.

These are not questions I think with answers.

The words all break down.

Panentheism, sure, god contains the universe and penetrates it.

Panentheism with a small and personal world……. how can it be beat?

This is not rocket science!  

Science has spent 400 years trying to rationalize our consciousness.  

It is no closer than it was at the beginning.  

Folks who think that chatbots will be taking over the world are more than a little misguided.  

Their failure to do so would, you’d think, give scientists some pause in their materialist quest.

I’m afraid, however, that they will hardly blink as they move on to quantum computers.  

I’m presently not aware of anything that a quantum computer might do that could not be done on a normal chatty computer.  

There are special cases where quantum computing will provide exponential speed ups, but it is far from clear that this would have any impact on the the problem of general intelligence.  

Deploying common sense is not a speed problem.  

Understanding the seminal word is not a speed problem.

ChatGPT might do very well in the writing of term papers, but general intelligence is not dependent on the size of the database.  



(cont……..)

I spent more time perusing quantum computing.

My initial judgement remains intact.

LLM computing may well have a significant economic impact……. but its failure to impact on the mind-brain problem…….. will be noteworthy to the AI crowd…….. from the NYT……

In The New York Review of Books, Jessica Riskin assessed the limits of a new kind of student shortcut: “My teaching assistants and I became expert at sniffing out A.I.-generated essays by their flat, featureless feel, the literary equivalent of fluorescent lighting.”

……….



I recall when Internet companies used to refer to the problem of the ‘last mile’ of connectivity.

Connectivity has mostly had a technological fix.  

However, getting beyond the uncanny valley is going to be a show stopper for the AI crowd.

It will be at least as obvious as the difference between canned tuna and fresh tuna .  

I believe that we will get beyond the initial hype, sooner than later.  

And this failure will only be, perhaps, the most obvious of the accumulating failures of scientific materialism/secular humanism.  

I’m not entirely opposed to the speculations surrounding the notion of a quantum mind.

Yes, I believe there are connections between consciousness and the quantum……. but that these connections proceed almost entirely from us to it……. and not the other way as the quantum speculators are wont to propose.  

It would be very useful for me find a catch phrase or analogy for the unidirectionality of the mind >> quantum connection.  



(cont……..)

As the water dries up, new deserts form, as crops fail, as the oceans die, as the air is polluted and remaining water poisoned, their errors will be on display for all.

We destroyed the earth before our technology could save us I think.

Our politics have failed.

Our media has failed.

Our religions have failed.

No one understands our financial system.

Seems dark, darkest yes before the dawn.

We are insane.

Our world is utterly absurd.

But still, smelly has not lost hope in love.

In the midst of all this, we reach for each other.

The political insanity of the US could it seems, lead to civil war.

Will it be a hot or cold one?

I dunno.

Nothing can match the anger of the baby boomers.

Anger lives.

It tempts us to hate one another.

Jesus would be pissed at the church today.

Chivo,

Ok, you have hope in love.

Am I being too presumptuous to presume that your hope has a cosmic, transcendental, transpersonal dimension that is sometimes captured by Agape?

Do keep in mind that my take on the transpersonal would better be described as Ultra-personal.  
………


Jesus p*ssed………?

The jguy was reputed to have been angry at the money changers at the Temple.  

I suspect he is at least equally angry with the Trumpian politics that proceeds from far too many pulpits, today.

The money changing was only a matter of laziness.

The touting of a streak of political jingoism is far more evil than any matter of mere convenience.  

Is jingoism personally evil?  

No, it is a matter of the cosmic confusion that must ultimately be assigned to the Alpha and Omega.  

Yes, our atheism and egoism are an essential feature of the Katechon, which, in its turn, is an essential feature of the prophetic tradition.  

The Lord must love fools, otherwise she would not have created so many of us!



(cont……..)

“Am I being too presumptuous to presume that your hope has a cosmic, transcendental, transpersonal dimension that is sometimes captured by Agape?”

No. Right on.

But I am also totally committed to living out the best life possible where we are too.

The righteous anger that rises in me just can’t believe how the evangelicals have been taken over by the Plutocracy.

There is a large plot by lunatic Christian nationalists, well funded by the ones who bought the Supreme Court, to infiltrate every area of government and congress and destroy our institutions from the inside.

Where do they get so much motivation to destroy?

Fear and greed I guess.

These muppets really steam me up.

It’s astonishing.

I’ve been wading into Christian Nationalist content on the interwebs and it’s unbelievably disgusting with no idea who Jesus was.

Hate your neighbor?!

Their agenda is literal hatred of the other.

Maybe that will speed up the collapse.

It’s bad, but good in the end.

As I feel All Shall be Saved; I have mostly hope and love for us.

I can’t say I feel as close to god or intimately connected as Brother Lawrence.

I don’t think of god so aware of us.

But god damn, does god love fool muppets.

Oh well, I just have to ignore all the drama I guess, it’s so damn boring and predictable.

Me me me, get over yourselves America

Chivo,

Are you less well read than I like to suppose…….

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.  
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.

But, yes, I do have a soft spot in my heart for our not so manifest destiny.  

Anyone would find it hard to find our potential anywhere else in this crazy world.  

Is America closer to God?  

Well, America, despite everything, and, Lord, even because of everything, remains an unparalleled launch pad.  

Mark my words.  



(cont……..)

All empires fall.

We are rotten to the core.

Because the Christians have chosen to hate their neighbor, America is done.

Timber.

The noble lies are done.

Now they lie for sport and cruelty.

Watch what they do, not what they say.

Follow the money.

The elite think all the rest unworthy, which makes them unworthy.

Harvard and Stanford folks resigning because they lied in their research.

Rotten to the core I tell ya.

But there is no rot here.

Oh no.

There is blazing

“All empires fall.”

Yes, indeed.

That’s why there will be a last empire.

The elite think all the rest unworthy, which makes them unworthy.

The financial elite is fearful for its future…… with its paranoia, it is mainly just playing defense.

No where else is the playing field quite so level.

Of course, it’s not level…… but tell us where it is more so.



(cont……..)

Absolute immanence and transcendence then?

Some rabbis feel god can have no attributes, no participation, no mind.

But I don’t feel this way.

…

I’m trying to stay engaged and open minded about our current path to dissolution.

Been reading…

- End Times https://a.co/d/gygw8Kc

- And The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End https://a.co/d/0TSCB02

The UFO pathology is related to our ongoing meltdown.

A lot of interesting insights and I think these books are painting the picture pretty well.

This seems like a mini cycle of the Kali Yuga.

We are going through the meltdown and disintegration phase.

If historians or eschatologists could tell the future, they would be better paid.

Economists suck at predictions too and that’s their job partly.

We now face “ekpyrosis,” an idea from the Stoic philosophers’ idea that the universe periodically destroys and rebuilds itself.

From the 4th turning. It’s funny to see the boomers rate the book on Amazon with one star because they don’t like being called out for their extremism. Priceless.

“Boomers, prone to “scorched-earth politics” and the “language of ultimatums and catastrophe” will embrace a “new ethic of decline and death” and also tax everything in sight.“

“Only the Nomads of Gen X can moderate the death-wish zeal of the “Boomer priest-warriors” and prevent “some righteous old Aquarian” from “turning the world’s lights out.”

I’m Gen X.

We are the in betweeners. We lived through analog to digital move.

The Boomers and right wing have become a death cult.

They want to burn everything down.

They have stupid ideas and hate their neighbor and anyone else not t like them.

Their zeal for death is not shared by the Millennials, Gen X, or Gen Z.

Some prognosticators say we have 10 years before the crisis point.

From End Times.

“To Mr. Turchin, empires and great powers are “metronomes swinging between integrative and disintegrative phases.” He sees only “two great cycles” of political polarization in American history. The first ran from 1830 to 1930; it peaked with the Civil War and the labor disturbances around 1920, and was resolved by the “Great Compression” that reduced the wealth gap between 1930 and 1970. The second polarization began in 1970, when the wealth gap began to widen again, and will peak soon. The wealth gap widens because the wealthy and well-connected turn on the “wealth pump” for their own benefit. Sociologists call it the “iron law of oligarchy.” This leads to declining public trust, exploding public debt, decline in the value of real wages, and intense competition for patronage.

That competition arms the mechanism of revolution: “elite over-production,” the “overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees.” The French and Russian revolutions show that the “truly dangerous revolutionaries” are “frustrated elite aspirants,” especially lawyers. America’s “growing proportion of credentialed youth” are “doomed to become the educated precariat.” They have “nothing to lose but their precarity,” and they will not “check their privilege” quietly.”

The sky is falling, and even Ron gets a mention:

https://washingtonspectator.org/spaceship-of-fools/

Good article.

Put everything out there.

My view, just a bunch of propaganda and intelligence Ops mixed in with some grifters.

This is all about seeking the patronage of the elite.

Smelly remains skeptical.

Left and right hate their neighbors and want to burn everything down

Libertarians are the creators

The rest are pyro maniacs

Gary,

Thanks for the Spectator article.

It doesn’t hurt to get the dirty linen out in public.

It all helps to keep folks distracted by churning the pot.



(cont……..)

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the Mighty One.”

Maybe behind every atomic bomb flash is the face of God.

Comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time.

The flash ends it.

What if there was a cult that believed only in atomic fire could we be saved and they worked as hard as they could to bring that about.

Hey, that might make a damn good book.

Dan, we are about to see the core story be told in a House Oversight committee hearing. I am very interested in your thoughts on this event, given the 20 plus year effort going back to Henry K. and all.

Gary,  

Sorry, I have no such information.

But let us know what you have.  
………..


I’ve spent the last couple of days perusing teleo-semantics.  

These are ideas put forward by materialists to provide a physical basis for mental content.  

They admit that progress has been very slow, but they are not giving up.  

They mainly rely on the notion of biological functionalism to provide a basis for semantics.

Bio-semantics generally relies upon aeons of time span to produce a genetic basis for a functional semantics.

It is the main action, currently, in the philosophy of mind.



(cont……..)

Haha, he’s a cagey ole bird

Gary,

I know of only one ‘core’ story.  

It involved historical visitations.

There was only a minimal discussion, and it may have been entirely on this blog.

I only vaguely recall any mention of Kissinger.

However, if this is the story that is being investigated, we are getting close to disclosure.
………


As far as teleo-semantics is concerned, this is about as close as academics get to discussing consciousness.  

It deals with the content, if any, of the mind.  

I’m having a visual impression of a dog .

If someone were to then ask me if I saw a dog, I would respond positively.  

Is there anything in that occurrence that could distinguish me from an electronic pattern recognition machine?  

The only difference would be my subjective experience.

But I have no way of demonstrating that I actually had such an experience.  

It’s like with Max Headroom……. there is no one there, there…… just clever machinery.  

A  dyed in the wool behaviorist could say there was no difference.

They could say that a thermostat was conscious, just by definition.  

Most behaviorists have died off.  

Let’s go back to the dog experience…… now thinking of a prehistoric wolf experience.

The materialist might insist that I was not having a wolf experience, but was only having a particular fright experience…… the fright being programmed genetically.



(cont……..)