IC please clarify for us

[Alexis Jacobi]

(Esteemed IC, please note that I continue to talk to you as if you were a normal, thoughtful, positively-minded man who is operating in good faith).

It is more productive I think to consider the idea in juxtaposition to the Christian idea that a decision by a Primeval Couple caused man’s fall and also afflicted the entire world. Somehow, for reasons difficult to fathom — here I speak for a religiously conceived viewpoint, not our scientific viewpoint — that God made and, let’s say, is responsible for the world and cosmos as it is.

I do indeed suggest that the admonition is sober and realistic. I would also say that the Christian idea is based in a fairy-story and because it is unreal or a fantasy (the Genesis version in any case) that it is not realistic. Certainly not sufficient for the age we are in. And because the framing Story is unbelievable, it is abandoned because it lacks “explanatory value”.

That does not mean that it slips my mind that the metaphysics of the Indian subcontinent is also ensconced within a Medieval world-picture. The overall “picture” is still mediated through symbolic images. As much as is the Hebrew conception.

But any of this, and what is dealt on in the Gita, does indeed propose ways and means — perhaps strategies is the right word — for spiritual progress despite the way this world is.

[Immanuel Can]

It is more productive ...

It would be productive for you to answer my question. But you're not going to. So I'm not going to continue to try to get you to do so.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It is more productive ...

It would be productive for you to answer my question. But you're not going to. So I'm not going to continue to try to get you to do so.

I think you have made a really smart decision there IC! I support you 100% in it.

However, I do think that what you really are saying is: “Because I am not getting my way, I will refuse to participate further.”

I mean honestly isn’t that a fair description?

[Immanuel Can]

It is more productive ...

It would be productive for you to answer my question. But you're not going to. So I'm not going to continue to try to get you to do so.

I think you have made a really smart decision there IC! I support you 100% in it.

However, I do think that what you really are saying is: “Because I am not getting my way, I will refuse to participate further.”

Well, you seem to think a lot of things for which there's no evidence. You certainly don't produce any.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well, you seem to think a lot of things for which there's no evidence. You certainly don't produce any.

Remember: I will continue to talk to you as if you are a normal man, genuinely concerned for the most important existential questions, and a man who operates in good faith.

People complain about you (okay, I get it) and perhaps you for them are useless (?) For me though, you are a treasure.

I had other things needing doing but I have not forgotten the topic of my conversation with you. I define that topic since you cannot and frankly do not understand it except remotely: The realization of having our existence in a bizarre circumstance (Nature and our body: God’s creation and being) and being unable to reconcile the conflict this produces with the intuited possibility of a far higher (spiritual) existence.

[Immanuel Can]

Well, you seem to think a lot of things for which there's no evidence. You certainly don't produce any.

Remember: I will continue to talk to you...

You mean "talk AT..." But you're non-responsive in conversation, and you endlessly distract from the main point. So you may keep talking, but you're not talking TO anybody, far less WITH anybody. You're just preening.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I define that topic since you cannot and frankly do not understand it except remotely: The realization of having our existence in a bizarre circumstance (Nature and our body: God’s creation and being) and being unable to reconcile the conflict this produces with the intuited possibility of a far higher (spiritual) existence.

AJ responds: If you have anything at all to say in response, and if you proceed as (or at least as if) you are a normal man interested in such questions, I am certainly interested in hearing your thoughts. (Maybe others will be, too).

[Alexis Jacobi]

See, I really think that when we examine “the world” and “life” and literally “kosmos” as a pre-established zone or place (we use the term ‘reality’) to refer to all that; that we easily see that ‘it’ (Nature) is totally free of “ethics”. The nature of Existence, the very stuff it, the platform, is bizarrely immoral. This is where we are, and we come into all of it with a profound sense of dissatisfaction that it is so, and that we have no choice but 1) to be a part of it and 2) to necessarily participate in what it is.

Can I suggest that the battle-field (Kurukshetra in the Gita) is just such a place described through eyes of realism. That is where we are, Oh Immanuel of Much Argumentation!

So then, in relation to “that” is the initial outline of Arjuna’s predicament: And the cause of his dejection. He sees it, he cannot understand it, and he definitely does not desire to participate in it, and (in the Narrative) “Divinity” is there as his guide.

And thus a detailed enactment unfolds. A “conversation” between a representative Man and a Picture, if you will, of God outside and beyond the phenomena of our world.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Just as the World (the Universe, Nature) can at any moment rise up and wipe out the planet and civilization, it is in this sense that God — the creator of all this in all its horror and wonder — can be seen as Arjuna saw one aspect of God: as a giant “maw” as you put it once. That is really what the World and the Kosmos are. Giant, crushing furnaces.