Posted on 03/12/2011 2:58:25 PM PST by betty boop
Immediately after this passage (from your linked article, "Placing a Call to the Nonlocal ʘperators Above Our Praygrade"), Gagdad Bob continues:
This is useful, because it does not posit "three gods," but three modes of the one God. There is the inconceivable God-beyond being, the ain sof of Kabbala. There is the "conception" of God, the Word — a word which can be recognized, read, and comprehended. And then there is the "Holy Spirit," which is the comprehension itself. Only Truth can recognize Truth.Nothing like a little humor to make a point.... :^)
Elsewhere Schuon writes that "The Trinity can be envisaged according to a 'vertical' perspective or according to either of two 'horizontal' perspectives, one of them being supreme and the other not. The vertical perspective — Beyond-Being, Being, Existence — envisages the hypostases as 'descending' from Unity or from the Absolute — or from the Essence it could be said — which means that it envisages the degrees of Reality."
Again, the very idea of God implies hierarchy; but also, the very recognition of hierarchy leads inevitably to God. Unless one just arbitrarily stops halfway up the mountain, as do the tenebrous, the tendentious, and the tenured — or the dark, the twisted, and the opaque.
Gagdad Bob's description of "one God in three modes" strongly recalls Thomas Aquinas' view to my mind....
Gagdad Bob concludes with this moving observation — and astute conclusion:
Running out of time here, but Pope Benedict writes that "The present 'world' has to disappear; it must be changed into God's world. That is precisely what Jesus' mission is, into which the disciples are taken up: leading 'the world' away from the condition of man's alienation from God and from himself, so that it can become God's world once more and so that man can become fully himself again by becoming one with God."It seems "modern science" can easily get to the latter; but not to the former....
Bottom line: this is an analogue, continuous cosmos, not a digital and discontinuous one.
I just love this guy, dear Matchett-PI! Thanks so much for the link to another wonderful article by Gagdad Bob/Dr. Robert Godwin!
I’d imagine it is if certain buzz words are being used that you recognize.
You are welcome!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Thx
LOL dearest sister in Christ!
Well, it seems we're working the same problems. Plus it seems we both refer to a whole lot of the same sources....
Anyhoot, I find his ideas very interesting!
Thank you so much for writing, dearest sister!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm???
Please share your thoughts dear brother in Christ!
GREAT LINES:
Again, the very idea of God implies hierarchy; but also, the very recognition of hierarchy leads inevitably to God. Unless one just arbitrarily stops halfway up the mountain, as do the tenebrous, the tendentious, and the tenured — or the dark, the twisted, and the opaque.
I agree with your points, BB . . . don’t have a lot to add.
Preoccupied with a different list of things. Sorry.
Thanks for your kind msg.
There is so much wrong in this original post, it’s untrue..
It basically has the premise that comparison or connection between spiritual traditions is wrong (which conflicts with the Qu’ran for instance, which states that all the spiritual teachings clarify the older ones).
1. Identifying fourth way schools of Gurdjieff as emotional - this completely misunderstands such schools, as Gurdjieff’s groups work on the basis that there are many people who are imbalanced - such as emotionally - and who need to learn NOT to base their religion only on the emotional.
2. The link of the UN to the groups mentioned is extraordinarily tenuous, and although it is by all means possible, there isn’t any info to suggest this given in the text.
3. A lot of Christian groups are NOT based on balanced thinking but are purely emotional.
4. To understand Beelzebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff writes that you have to read all three books of the series. The purpose is written at the very front of the book, not merely in chapter 3 or wherever.
5. Alice Bailey, Annie Besant were not the first to state they had contact with Masters.. there was Blavatsky for a start.. And more to the point, contact with Masters is a basic tenet of Buddhism which is over 1,000 years old. Not to mention that this can occur in Christianity too (Saints, Angels).
6. Good and Evil as relative is not an idea made by Gurdjieff. It is in the story of Moses & Gabriel, when Moses is told not to question the Angel’s actions even though they might seem evil to him.
That’s all for now.
If you're going to reactivate a thread that's been inactive for nine months or more you need to ping at least one of the participants otherwise your comment would likely go un-noticed.I just happened to see it scrolling through the front page.
I've pinged some of those who posted.
Enjoy your stay.
bb, someone is taking exception to your thread.
Perhaps you’d be the best one to address it.
Thanks and God bless.
For instance, despite your claim about Moses, there is no ambiguity about good and evil or any other spiritual truth in the words of God.
Bottom line, mortals cannot know spiritual truth by sensory perception and reasoning because we are part of the observation.
Only God the Creator can observe from outside the Creation.
Only God the Creator can see "all that there is" all at once. He alone knows objective truth. He alone speaks objective truth.
Indeed, He is Truth. A thing is true because He says it.
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. - Psalms 33:6
For he spake, and it was [done]; he commanded, and it stood fast. - Psalms 33:9
But not everyone can hear what He says. The ones Jesus is addressing below physically heard His words (sound or pressure waves) but they could not spiritually hear Him:
Give us this day our daily bread. – Matt 6:11
I am that bread of life. – John 6:48
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life. – John 6:63
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. - I Cor 2:6-16
bttt
Welcome to FR, Newbie DeniseMilani! I find it interesting that you should arrive at a conservative website — which is "an online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web ... working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America" — and the first article you find worthy of comment is an obscure piece in the Religion Forum (itself pretty obscure at FR), which was originally posted well over a year ago, and "went to crickets" shortly thereafter....
Yet you did take the time to write that "there is so much wrong in this original post, it's untrue." Since I am the author of this post, I thought it would be interesting to find out why you think/feel that way.
I gather you are interested in "spiritual traditions." Well it happens, so am I. Yet I'm really not clear on your point: Do you believe it is "wrong" to compare them? If so, why?
Evidently you cite the Q'uran as evidence of the "wrongness" of making comparisons; for you allege that it "states that all the spiritual teachings clarify the older ones." Am I to infer from this comment that you believe Qu'ran holds that "spiritual insights" occurring later on the historical timeline are better than those which occurred earlier? That human "progress" is always to be found, not in the past, but only in the future? If so, this would suggest to me that you have imbibed a theory of "evolutionary progress" from somewhere. (Darwin???) Perhaps you aren't even aware that you may have this attitude.
But there is no historical support that I can find for this "attitude." Case in point: the Q'uran first appeared circa seventh century A.D. It does not appear in any way shape or form as an "evolution" to a superior state of human spiritual development from its predecessors in the West, principally the Holy Scriptures — a book Islam claims to revere, but that needs further tinkering with (which the Prophet Mohammed provided).
It appears to me that, if anything, Islam is a retrograde religion — one that cancels out the idea of a Creator God of truth, love, and justice, Who formed Man in His Image; i.e., as a creature possessing reason and — above all — free will.
On the Christian view, Man is, by God's creative Will, a creature destined for Liberty. Man must be free in order to exercise choice — ultimately the choice for or against God and His Truth — and his choices in this life will be judged by God on Judgement Day.
Allah, on the other hand, is a God who demands human submission, NOW, at the point of a gun if necessary. He is a God seeking to enslave men, not liberate them.
On this basis, could Allah represent the more "progressive" spiritual tradition than does Christianity or orthodox Judaism? If so, you must think that human progress depends on submitting to a condition of slavery, where the "masters" decide everything for one. The funny thing is, it seems a whole lot of Left Progressive ideologues would agree with you in this.
And this is an example of why I aver that comparisons of religious/spiritual traditions are to be freely engaged, not deplored in principle.
We can even compare Eastern spiritual traditions — Hinduism, Buddhism — with Judeo-Christianity. The Eastern traditions are not about human slavery per se; they are all about release from the suffering of human life. And the key to this release is the basic awareness that the real world, as it presents itself to our minds and our senses, is Maya, pure illusion. (And then Alice Bailey came along to further differentiate this fundamental illusion as "glamour" — illusion involving active self-deception.) The upshot of such teachings: We humans cannot ever be free of suffering until we realize that the world in which we actually have our existence is lying to us all the time.
No wonder science could never arise in a Buddhist/Hindu spiritual context....
You wrote:
Identifying fourth way schools of Gurdjieff as emotional — this completely misunderstands such schools, as Gurdjieff’s groups work on the basis that there are many people who are imbalanced — such as emotionally — and who need to learn NOT to base their religion only on the emotional.Gurdjieff's "groups?" Who know (or have been instructed) that people are "unbalanced emotionally" — and this because they hold to spiritual truths of ancient vintage?
Who's criteria are being used to decide who is "unbalanced emotionally?" Gurdjeff's, by chance?
Indeed, how do "his" people even define what an emotion is? Let alone know how it is to be "balanced?" May I ask, what are the criteria of "balance" in the first place? And how it is to be realized in future moments?
I gather we must ask Gurdjieff; but he is no longer here to answer for himself.
So what do we know about Gurdjieff? I discovered him through the works of P.D. Ouspensky, a Russian mathematician, philosopher, and student of spiritual traditions, whose works I was reading in my twenty-somethings, someone I truly admire, then as now. He wrote a book on "the fourth way" fairly late in his career, published under that title. I didn't like it very much. But then, I had already read his A New Model of the Universe and Tertiam Ornanum by then. I was very deeply impressed by these two works at the time, and still enjoy reading them to this day.
Anyhoot, in time Ouspensky became a "student" of G. I. Gurdjieff. We're talking turn of the last (20th) century here.
Gurdjieff was an amazingly charismatic itinerant spiritual teacher, whose comprehensive knowledge of Eastern spiritual traditions was rarely matched in his time.
He evidently also was a most penetrating psychologist — the likes of which I have not seen since Plato. But I just don't trust him.
He lived like a gypsy, criss-crossing all of Asia in his progress. Eventually he landed in London, becoming a regular visitor to the great theosophist Madama Helena Blavatsky's famous salon, to which such American notables as Henry Ford and Frank Lloyd Wright were drawn, along with a huge bunch of the-then European intelligentsia....
Once upon a time, I (inadvertently) split a fifth of Dewars with the great spiritual "master," Benjamin Creme — a disciple of Alice Bailey, and main promoter of the imminent return of the Lord Maitreya, the "true" Christ.
Funny thing was, once he learned that I was a political conservative, all "spiritual talk" went right out the window. Creme is first and foremost a British Socialist of Fabian school. All he wanted to talk about was "progressive politics," and the total, abject "evil" of the capitalist system of free human development, and how "evil" I was to defend it. His "better world" is not organized according to logic, reason, let alone human experience accumulated over the ages; but under some fuzzy, indistinct concept designated as "Goodwill."
Whose Goodwill? the Tyrant's? or the Citizen's?
The "Fourth-Way"-ers have absolutely no clue to engage problems like this.
Must close, have run on too long and didn't even get a chance to answer all questions raised in your last. Will summarize my "findings" as follows:
Meditation of Gurdjieff evokes a strong association in my mind with the sophists of ancient Greece. They were "masters" who made their "living" by "cultivating" students — youth (or their families) who were seeking the knowledge and manners it would take for a scion of the family to "succeed" in political society. The "master" gains a student, who thereafter gains power, who then (hopefully) will remember what you taught him....
Anyhoot, Gurdjieff is definitely a phenom that too few people have ever heard about. And believe it or not, dear DeniseMilani, I did read past Chapter 3 of the three-volume Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. [Did you?]
I really have more to say on these questions. But I'm out of time here.
Thanks to anyone who has read so far — for your wonderful patience!
p.s.:
The info I have regarding Lucis Trust/United Nations ties is posted on Lucis Trusts' website....
Whew, thought you’d never get to the punch line ... ‘I don’t trust him.’
Thanks for the beep!
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