seeds wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:14 pmEveryone keeps getting lured into playing Mr. Con's game of trying to get you to focus on his strawman...
The way I look at it (and of course I have said this a dozen times) is quite simply that Immanuel is locked into his conceptual system and it has no wiggle room. I intuit that you and I -- and others here -- who do (still) have a conception of divinity do indeed have, and indeed must have, far more *wiggle room*.
So for example I say that if it happens that the soul is immortal, and has a post-this-world existence (I cannot verify this and, it also seems to me, that it is left unverified) then I propose the good sense of, even the necessity for any number of different avenues and ways-and-means by which the Supreme Intelligence helps that soul to *realize* and *understand*. So I have said (I have proposed it as possible) that at the moment of death any given soul, and let's say one with a heavy burden or a debt that must be paid, or a sentence (punishment, consequence) that must be served, could experience in a virtual sort of way entire sequences of events in a dream-realm, that nontheless would be to that individual just as real as this life is, any number of different episodes that would bring that person to a realm of higher understanding. And that, to me, is through learning about the consequences of what we do (and do not do). If we grant to god all-intelligence, and if we see life as (excuse the tacky term) a journey of the soul (into incarnation, into this world, this loka) then it seems that anything is possible.
I cannot tell you how many dreams I have had that were entire episodes through which elaborate circumstances were dealt with. I am of the opinion that we are not (fully) aware of the depth of what goes on inside of us and, sometimes, outside and beyond our conscious awareness. We do not really know our *location* therefore: what sort of life this is, what we are doing here, nor where it tends in the longest of long runs.
To make this assertion is a natural product of the way I see Life operating
here and now. When I say *Life* I mean the sphere that we are offered (this space into which we come, this loka to use a Vedic term):
loka, (Sanskrit: “world”) in the cosmography of Hinduism, the universe or any particular division of it. The most common division of the universe is the tri-loka, or three worlds (heaven, earth, atmosphere; later, heaven, world, netherworld), each of which is divided into seven regions. Sometimes 14 worlds are enumerated: 7 above earth and 7 below. The various divisions illustrate the Hindu concept of innumerable hierarchically ordered worlds. Lokas are often associated with particular divinities, a linkage that is also found in Buddhism, with the deities replaced by buddhas or bodhisattvas.
And I also mean
the soul's content, and the way the soul or psyche functions within the experienced life (the perception, the grasp, the understanding) of the individual person. The soul must have a wide range of content otherwise the experience of life would not be intelligible. It is I think really the person him or herself which must be the focus of our inquiry because it is within the person that divinity has a seat and to put it another way a
purchase (one's hold or position in a perceptual sense). I am fairly certain that this is why, in those ancient systems more of the East than the West, that the entire being, the body included, had to be cultivated and worked with in order for *realization* to occur. So, and I think this is very clear, the presence of a person with a higher realization actually can have the effect of stimulating awareness, awakening, desire for growth, etc., in another person.
Now, in the course of this *conversation* (I am referring to pseudo-conversation with Immanuel) I have been forced to see that the entire conceptual system that he operates under is simply too limited and restrictive. It is not that I think it is absolutely or completely wrong but rather that it is a diagram that limits understanding because, I gather, allegiance to its tenets is
demanded. Immanuel cannot, and will not, sacrifice any of the pillars that uphold this restrictive system. Yet it is possible to expand the system, to stretch it, to see it in a wider sense, and not to lose sight of what is valid and valuable in it. The problem, as I have said, is in Hebrew Idea-Imperialism. The core assertion that to be *good* and to be *favored by god* one must make oneself
an enemy of different ways of seeing and explaining.
This defines what Immanuel does here. This is in fact all that he does. Once it is seen it is really quite simple.
Immanuel criticizes other conceptual modes, other 'metaphysical dreams', and must attack and destroy them. I think this is a real mistake. No other one can be left standing when Yahweh/Jesus is the tyrant/overlord. There are alternatives.
I have
overcome Immanuel. Immanuel is now not much more than an object of study. Meaning that one has to examine him and try to understand why someone wishes to, or must, live in such a reductive conceptual structure.
To every strawman,
a flame . . .
Hilarously slanted asking, Biggie. I can't answer that question in the bigoted form in which it's raised.