Philosophy Now Forum

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 11:20 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 8:11 pm

promethean75 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 6:13 pmmmhm, you're one of those new age Christian doctrine cherry pickers who keeps the things he still hopes are true and discards the things he clearly knows aren't true.

but that's still a step in the right direction on your journey to recovery, Alexis of Jacobi.

Hmmmm. I'll go to work on trying to classify and categorize what sort of a religious or spiritual sort I am -- and report back!

But no, I do not think I am a 'New Age Christian' since, in fact, I was not raised in the religion. I made a conscious decision to immerse myself in it (that is, in European Catholicism of the old school) out of solidarity with the Occident and its traditions. Note that in the Occident today (in our world) there is a great deal of reaction against 'elite globalization'. There is a great deal of distress and existential angst that tears into people in bizarre ways. The sense of having the ground ripped out from under them. It leads to a crisis as you well know and we describe that as 'nihilism'. But in that state people must seek 'anchors'. Psychologically, socially, as a being living on Earth, you require anchors, framework, a sense of connection, a sense of continuity. People do really weird things when you remove their sense of anchor from them.

For example, you-plural had mentioned Hermann Hesse and with him I cannot think of a more perfect post-Christian example. If you read Siddhartha correctly (at least as I interpret it) you will realize that he is a post-Christian man projecting his own situation back into an imagined scenario. It is people like Hesse who have, odd though this is to say, extended Christian notions into modernity. Nietzsche, Hesse, Freud, Jung -- these men are emblems or heralds of immense changes in perception of what we are, who and where we are. Yet certainly you know this . . .

But I am really happy that you brought up the idea of 'recovery' -- getting better, coming back to oneself, coming back to reality. We must be realistic, mustn't we? There is a curious thing though which I have mentioned before. Once, becoming a Christian was understood as 'taking the Christian cure'. The 'temporal modality' of that time (say the first and following early centuries) were understood to be pathological. There had to have been a profound sense that *something was not right*. To 'take the Christian cure' was to put oneself under the guidance & protection of a Spirit that would take one to health. And quite literally 'health' would ultimately be defined as strengthening or empowering the soul in such a way that it would endure death itself.

Is that not the core metaphor of Christianity? That death shall have no dominion?

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

What I can say, and with some certainty, is that the relationship to the metaphors never seems to be cut entirely. But there is that pesky word 'meta' again. Metaphorical, meta-logical, meta-semiotical, metaphysical.

Perhaps you do really see me as one 'recovering' (since most of what you write is tongue in cheek it is hard to say exactly where you stand) but I might suggest that I have a sense that you are not really at all recovered yourself. What I mean is outside or beyond the pathologies of our time, those pathologies that resulted when 'the horizon was erased'. You are just as much (and likely more) post-Christian than I am! You seem not so much in control as controlled by . . .

But the whole point of our having lost metaphysical ground? That to all appearances we are involved -- against our will -- in redefining metaphysics. It's a maddening, grinding struggle.

Did you ever read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda? You know, it is the quintessential California text that gave birth to the California New Age which extended in all directions. But then so many others built on it. Or what I mean is built on the notion of Fantastic Tales that were then channeled into Myth Structures that could then capture, inspire and stimulate many generations. Consider another California phenomenon, Carlos Castaneda.

Did you ever read On The Road by Jack Kerouac? I would say that he is a good example (or perhaps I mean Neal Cassidy) of a combination of immense power & energy combined with a tendency to come under the influence of enormous *hallucinations*. You see, when the horizon is wiped away and the ground underfoot lost it still leaves a man with the need (that cannot be denied or negated) to build and create with whatever one has at one's disposal. Can you think of any other possibility?

The other thing is to examine the origins of the Pentecostal movement: California around 1900. What was set in motion there has, literally, raged throughout the whole world.

I am aware that I am a product of California. But I am not tied down into any particular Story. But I do recognize the power of Story. And I know that at some point or other a person -- you perhaps? -- will have no choice but to explain the world.

I sort of direct this to Belinda because she mentioned the resurrection of Jesus. This is part of the story of the resurrection of Paramahansa Yogananda's guru (Sri Yukteswar) not long after his death:

“Lord Krishna!” The glorious form of the avatar appeared in a shimmering blaze as I sat in my room at the Regent Hotel in Bombay. Shining over the roof of a high building across the street, the ineffable vision had suddenly burst on my sight as I gazed out of my long open third-story window.

The divine figure waved to me, smiling and nodding in greeting. When I could not understand the exact message of Lord Krishna, he departed with a gesture of blessing. Wondrously uplifted, I felt that some spiritual event was presaged.

My Western voyage had, for the time being, been cancelled. I was scheduled for several public addresses in Bombay before leaving on a return visit to Bengal.

Sitting on my bed in the Bombay hotel at three o’clock in the afternoon of June 19, 1936—one week after the vision of Krishna—I was roused from my meditation by a beatific light. Before my open and astonished eyes, the whole room was transformed into a strange world, the sunlight transmuted into supernal splendor.

Waves of rapture engulfed me as I beheld the flesh and blood form of Sri Yukteswar!

“My son!” Master spoke tenderly, on his face an angel-bewitching smile.

For the first time in my life I did not kneel at his feet in greeting but instantly advanced to gather him hungrily in my arms. Moment of moments! The anguish of past months was toll I counted weightless against the torrential bliss now descending.

“Master mine, beloved of my heart, why did you leave me?” I was incoherent in an excess of joy. “Why did you let me go to the Kumbha Mela? How bitterly have I blamed myself for leaving you!”

“I did not want to interfere with your happy anticipation of seeing the pilgrimage spot where first I met Babaji. I left you only for a little while; am I not with you again?”

“But is it you, Master, the same Lion of God? Are you wearing a body like the one I buried beneath the cruel Puri sands?”

“Yes, my child, I am the same. This is a flesh and blood body. Though I see it as ethereal, to your sight it is physical. From the cosmic atoms I created an entirely new body, exactly like that cosmic-dream physical body which you laid beneath the dream-sands at Puri in your dream-world. I am in truth resurrected—not on earth but on an astral planet. Its inhabitants are better able than earthly humanity to meet my lofty standards. There you and your exalted loved ones shall someday come to be with me.”

But some hallucinations are unpleasant, dangerous, and scary.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 9:54 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 11:20 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 8:11 pm
Hmmmm. I'll go to work on trying to classify and categorize what sort of a religious or spiritual sort I am -- and report back!

But no, I do not think I am a 'New Age Christian' since, in fact, I was not raised in the religion. I made a conscious decision to immerse myself in it (that is, in European Catholicism of the old school) out of solidarity with the Occident and its traditions. Note that in the Occident today (in our world) there is a great deal of reaction against 'elite globalization'. There is a great deal of distress and existential angst that tears into people in bizarre ways. The sense of having the ground ripped out from under them. It leads to a crisis as you well know and we describe that as 'nihilism'. But in that state people must seek 'anchors'. Psychologically, socially, as a being living on Earth, you require anchors, framework, a sense of connection, a sense of continuity. People do really weird things when you remove their sense of anchor from them.

For example, you-plural had mentioned Hermann Hesse and with him I cannot think of a more perfect post-Christian example. If you read Siddhartha correctly (at least as I interpret it) you will realize that he is a post-Christian man projecting his own situation back into an imagined scenario. It is people like Hesse who have, odd though this is to say, extended Christian notions into modernity. Nietzsche, Hesse, Freud, Jung -- these men are emblems or heralds of immense changes in perception of what we are, who and where we are. Yet certainly you know this . . .

But I am really happy that you brought up the idea of 'recovery' -- getting better, coming back to oneself, coming back to reality. We must be realistic, mustn't we? There is a curious thing though which I have mentioned before. Once, becoming a Christian was understood as 'taking the Christian cure'. The 'temporal modality' of that time (say the first and following early centuries) were understood to be pathological. There had to have been a profound sense that *something was not right*. To 'take the Christian cure' was to put oneself under the guidance & protection of a Spirit that would take one to health. And quite literally 'health' would ultimately be defined as strengthening or empowering the soul in such a way that it would endure death itself.

Is that not the core metaphor of Christianity? That death shall have no dominion?



What I can say, and with some certainty, is that the relationship to the metaphors never seems to be cut entirely. But there is that pesky word 'meta' again. Metaphorical, meta-logical, meta-semiotical, metaphysical.

Perhaps you do really see me as one 'recovering' (since most of what you write is tongue in cheek it is hard to say exactly where you stand) but I might suggest that I have a sense that you are not really at all recovered yourself. What I mean is outside or beyond the pathologies of our time, those pathologies that resulted when 'the horizon was erased'. You are just as much (and likely more) post-Christian than I am! You seem not so much in control as controlled by . . .

But the whole point of our having lost metaphysical ground? That to all appearances we are involved -- against our will -- in redefining metaphysics. It's a maddening, grinding struggle.

Did you ever read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda? You know, it is the quintessential California text that gave birth to the California New Age which extended in all directions. But then so many others built on it. Or what I mean is built on the notion of Fantastic Tales that were then channeled into Myth Structures that could then capture, inspire and stimulate many generations. Consider another California phenomenon, Carlos Castaneda.

Did you ever read On The Road by Jack Kerouac? I would say that he is a good example (or perhaps I mean Neal Cassidy) of a combination of immense power & energy combined with a tendency to come under the influence of enormous *hallucinations*. You see, when the horizon is wiped away and the ground underfoot lost it still leaves a man with the need (that cannot be denied or negated) to build and create with whatever one has at one's disposal. Can you think of any other possibility?

The other thing is to examine the origins of the Pentecostal movement: California around 1900. What was set in motion there has, literally, raged throughout the whole world.

I am aware that I am a product of California. But I am not tied down into any particular Story. But I do recognize the power of Story. And I know that at some point or other a person -- you perhaps? -- will have no choice but to explain the world.

I sort of direct this to Belinda because she mentioned the resurrection of Jesus. This is part of the story of the resurrection of Paramahansa Yogananda's guru (Sri Yukteswar) not long after his death:

But some hallucinations are unpleasant, dangerous, and scary.

What makes you certain that these accounts are hallucinations? IF there is a God (omnipotent to at least our perceivable reality), that is indeed projecting, lovely, scary, dangerous...whatever to ones qualia sensory input, then it is NOT a hallucination (imo).

btw. Great post Alexis, and I apologise for earlier crap thrown your way.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 10:44 amWhile hallucinating during bereavement is common and should be allowed to be normal and beneficial, certain other hallucinations are harmful and unpleasant. I refer particularly to schizophrenia.(Some religionists still believe in actual possession by demons or devils). If there is any historical truth in The Bible then the story of the appearance of Jesus after his death to a mourner is an example of beneficial hallucination. Although they are not Biblical, the several accounts by peasant girls of the appearance of the Virgin Mary are probably hallucinations i.e. perceptions of euphoria plus some natural events that together are interpreted as real Marian phenomena.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 2:17 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 10:44 amWhile hallucinating during bereavement is common and should be allowed to be normal and beneficial, certain other hallucinations are harmful and unpleasant. I refer particularly to schizophrenia.(Some religionists still believe in actual possession by demons or devils). If there is any historical truth in The Bible then the story of the appearance of Jesus after his death to a mourner is an example of beneficial hallucination. Although they are not Biblical, the several accounts by peasant girls of the appearance of the Virgin Mary are probably hallucinations i.e. perceptions of euphoria plus some natural events that together are interpreted as real Marian phenomena.

Frankly I have no idea at all how to regard the many & varied reports & stories about spiritual visitations and the entire domain of phenomena of that sort. You ask if the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth could be taken as a mass-hallucination. Who could say? How would it ever be settled? Yet it is clear that the validity of the Christian faith has always depended on taking the Resurrection as completely and 100% and absolutely real.

Taking it in any other way is to turn it into a metaphor and an anecdote. Yet it is impossible for moderns to take it any other way unless they choose to turn against their own way of seeing and understanding reality and to *allow for* the miraculous and the impossible.

But here is the deal: if the resurrection is undermined the wind in the sails of Christianity drops off. That sailboat no longer can be propelled. Or if it propels itself along it is by *invented and willed wind*.

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:35 am In more recent times the Resurrection event has been interpreted as both hallucinatory, and metaphorical.

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:35 amThe hallucinatory interpretation is trivial but the metaphorical interpretation is true of the enormous historical influence of the life and work of Jesus after his death. This influence is no more "miraculous and impossible" than the various influences of Descartes, Abraham Lincoln, or William the Conqueror.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:53 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:35 am In more recent times the Resurrection event has been interpreted as both hallucinatory, and metaphorical.

Who cares? Those of little to no faith can interpret such accounts that appear contrary to nomal reality as much as they like, God certainly won't bother changing their minds!

Over the years of my gnosis I have truly come to respect why Christ stated "Oh ye of little faith.." to his disciples and continually insisting they believe in the ultimate power over reality this God has. (in words of the time I am sure)

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:35 amThe hallucinatory interpretation is trivial but the metaphorical interpretation is true of the enormous historical influence of the life and work of Jesus after his death. This influence is no more "miraculous and impossible" than the various influences of Descartes, Abraham Lincoln, or William the Conqueror.

Nah. I don't see magnificent stained glass Cathedrals across the corners of the Earth, erected by the men of faith for those other chaps.
And now, such as a time of mourning, in what way do those three, or any other man in history provide ANY solace to billions of people - in these Churches and Cathedrals...where with some faith, can consider 'hey, there truly could be more to this existence, this reality'?

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:58 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:53 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:35 am In more recent times the Resurrection event has been interpreted as both hallucinatory, and metaphorical.

Who cares? Those of little to no faith can interpret such accounts that appear contrary to nomal reality as much as they like, God certainly won't bother changing their minds!

Over the years of my gnosis I have truly come to respect why Christ stated "Oh ye of little faith.." to his disciples and continually insisting they believe in the ultimate power over reality this God has. (in words of the time I am sure)

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:35 amThe hallucinatory interpretation is trivial but the metaphorical interpretation is true of the enormous historical influence of the life and work of Jesus after his death. This influence is no more "miraculous and impossible" than the various influences of Descartes, Abraham Lincoln, or William the Conqueror.

Nah. I don't see magnificent stained glass Cathedrals across the corners of the Earth, erected by the men of faith for those other chaps.
And now, such as a time of mourning, in what way do those three, or any other man in history provide ANY solace to billions of people - in these Churches and Cathedrals...where with some faith, can consider 'hey, there truly could be more to this existence, this reality'?

Which would you rather have: solace on the one hand, or respect for reason of the other hand?

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 10:03 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:58 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:53 am

Who cares? Those of little to no faith can interpret such accounts that appear contrary to nomal reality as much as they like, God certainly won't bother changing their minds!

Over the years of my gnosis I have truly come to respect why Christ stated "Oh ye of little faith.." to his disciples and continually insisting they believe in the ultimate power over reality this God has. (in words of the time I am sure)




Nah. I don't see magnificent stained glass Cathedrals across the corners of the Earth, erected by the men of faith for those other chaps.
And now, such as a time of mourning, in what way do those three, or any other man in history provide ANY solace to billions of people - in these Churches and Cathedrals...where with some faith, can consider 'hey, there truly could be more to this existence, this reality'?

Which would you rather have: solace on the one hand, or respect for reason of the other hand?

The question would only require an answer if the two were mutually exclusive, as it stands - just daft really!

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 3:33 pm

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 10:03 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 9:58 am

Which would you rather have: solace on the one hand, or respect for reason of the other hand?

The question would only require an answer if the two were mutually exclusive, as it stands - just daft really!

Are you an optimist or what?

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 3:33 pm Do you really think the Almighty cares like a mammalian mother cares?

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 3:54 pm ...what have you now to say of that absurd thing "FAITH"?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 4:43 pm

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 3:54 pm ...what have you now to say of that absurd thing "FAITH"?

There is no "absurdity" in faith, except for those who fail to know what it is, and thus misunderstand it to be something like "wishful thinking," or "refusal to question," and pillory it accordingly. But of course, were it related at all to those things, then it would be "absurd."

To anybody who understands the concept, it's no alien thing at all.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 4:51 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 4:43 pm

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 3:54 pm ...what have you now to say of that absurd thing "FAITH"?

There is no "absurdity" in faith, except for those who fail to know what it is, and thus misunderstand it to be something like "wishful thinking," or "refusal to question," and pillory it accordingly. But of course, were it related at all to those things, then it would be "absurd."

To anybody who understands the concept, it's no alien thing at all.

...oh please, do acknowledge that you under_stand I was being facetious.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 4:43 pm To anybody who understands the concept, it's no alien thing at all.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 5:03 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 4:43 pm To anybody who understands the concept, it's no alien thing at all.

Actually, it can be an alien thing. I got into an exchange, let's call it, with a man on another forum a few months ago, about his belief that the human race is descended from ancient aliens who visited the earth thousands on years ago. His belief is unshakable, and supported by the evidence of many ancient artifacts of an incredibly unconvincing nature.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 5:20 pm
And yet, that is not what "faith," Biblically construed, means at all. That's exactly the sort of misunderstanding I'm taking effort to point out.