Was Judas the first Liberal?

[Nick_A]

Sy

The soul, as far as I can tell, is a particular archetype. As an example, in all areas of life there will be a primary dominant or a small number of dominants. Jupiter and the giant plants. A giant redwood. An alpha bull elephant seal. Xi Jingping. A sports coach. Whatever the grouping, someone or something will have more influence than others. Jung's archetypes made sense to me, although far simpler than reality and anthropocentric.

Since I appreciate that human beings are a tripartite soul, Man is not unity but rather a plurality. Within this plurality rests the seed or potential for a soul. For the dog which has evolved to fit the needs of the earth, it adapts to blend with earthly changes as does animal Man. The lower or mortal parts of the human organism are mortal and animal as Plato describes in the chariot analogy.

However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above. The tension between above and below creates the contradictions of the collective human condition.

The soul of Man is what reconciles the human condition or how these two qualities can function together as an organic whole

The Christ in the form of Jesus came into the world as a baby. His life and death represents what is necessary for the resurrection or the results for the human soul. The seed of Man can consciously evolve to become what we cannot imagine.

Is there a higher purpose to anything? If it is higher than us, then how could we know?

We don’t learn revelation; we remember it by the process of anamnesis

• According to Socrates and Plato, the most important forms of knowledge come not from instruction, but by a re-awakening of already existing dormant or latent knowledge. This is called anamnesis (an- = un-, amnesis = forgetting, as in amnesia; ).
• Anamnesis comes in the form of "aha!" experiences -- insights, moments of unusual clarity, peak experiences, etc.

Our normal fascination with fragmentation prevents the experience of anamnesis and since less is remembered, more is forgotten and Man becomes increasingly motivated by the appetites of his lower parts. This is all a part of the natural repeating cycle culminating in war and peace described in Ecclesiastes 3.

[Nick_A]

Soul is longing for what it can't define. Nick is attempting to define what soul longs for, and this can lead to religious dogmas, and trouble.

I am not defining what a soul needs. I am describing why it exists only as a potential and this is open to personal verification by making conscious efforts to "Know Thyself" or to have the conscious experience of oneself.

Matthew: 16:26

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Anyone with a sincere interest in philosophy or religion would have this question and seek an answer beyond blind belief or blind denial which allows the experience of "meaning." Unfortunately they are rare and few and far between

[Sy Borg]

Sy

The soul, as far as I can tell, is a particular archetype. As an example, in all areas of life there will be a primary dominant or a small number of dominants. Jupiter and the giant plants. A giant redwood. An alpha bull elephant seal. Xi Jingping. A sports coach. Whatever the grouping, someone or something will have more influence than others. Jung's archetypes made sense to me, although far simpler than reality and anthropocentric.

Since I appreciate that human beings are a tripartite soul, Man is not unity but rather a plurality.

Of course each type is a plurality, and not just three. Of, say, 8 billion humans there are hardly 8 billion archetypes. There are numerous personalities out there, not so different from each of ours.

However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

What do you mean by "above"? Where, or what, is it? On a scale where X is above and we are here, what is below? What the nature of this scale?

Our normal fascination with fragmentation prevents the experience of anamnesis and since less is remembered, more is forgotten and Man becomes increasingly motivated by the appetites of his lower parts. This is all a part of the natural repeating cycle culminating in war and peace described in Ecclesiastes 3.

One does not need to recall past lives or refer to ancient documents to be acutely aware that reality consists of cycles of war and peace. History makes this clear.

[Belindi]

Nick wrote:

However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

I hope you are not stopping at mankind. "The higher parts" of all conscious beings are "descended from above". Your inner Descartes is showing, Nick,

[Nick_A]

Nick wrote:

However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

I hope you are not stopping at mankind. "The higher parts" of all conscious beings are "descended from above". Your inner Descartes is showing, Nick,

Conscious life descends from above There is no conscious animal life on earth that arose from the earth. Animal life is a creature of reaction like a machine reacting to external and internal influences. Consciusness is not necessary for animal life to perform its function. Only the ability to react is. Man has the potential for consciousness but normally lives and dies a creature of reaction.

[Nick_A]

Sy

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:18 am
However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

What do you mean by "above"? Where, or what, is it? On a scale where X is above and we are here, what is below? What the nature of this scale?

This is the great stumbling block between us. Even Hermes Emerald tablet and the axiom "as above, so below" seems absurd to you.

"Being" for you seems to refer to existence. If it exists, it has being . If it doesn't then there is no being. However I believe in the relativity of being as expressed in the Great Chain of Being. The scale of being which connects the lowest or dead matter with the highest or our source explains a great deal about the purpose of existence. and the transition between animal and conscious Man. It may be nonsense for you but may be meaningful to another reading this thread so I'll post a link.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/en ... n_of_Being

The Great Chain of Being or scala naturæ is a classical conception of the metaphysical order of the universe in which all beings from the most basic up to the very highest and most perfect being are hierarchically linked to form one interconnected whole. Although this notion was viewed in various ways from antiquity and throughout the medieval period, its philosophical formulation can perhaps best be seen beginning with Aristotle, moving through the Neoplatonists, and culminating in the theological vision of the scholastics..............................

The process of involution is the process of creation along the Great chain of being within the lawful levels of reality. It is vertical movement away from the Source. The process of evolution is the process of returning to the Source. Taken together some in the East recognize it as the cyclical Breath of Brahma

[Sy Borg]

Sy

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:18 am
However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

What do you mean by "above"? Where, or what, is it? On a scale where X is above and we are here, what is below? What the nature of this scale?

This is the great stumbling block between us. Even Hermes Emerald tablet and the axiom "as above, so below" seems absurd to you.

You should stick to speaking of what you are know instead of making guesses about what I know. As before, you are wrong, although I awat acknowledgement of this.

In fact, "as above, so below" has been part of my schema for decades. In fact, I had already spoken of how dynamics of an interstellar disc are reflective of life, including human society - and in all areas where things come together you have the formation of concentrations, degradation of zones beyond the concentration, all facilitated by dominant entities and the dominated, catalysts and destroyers, in-group and fringe players, and so forth. Basic archetypes. We see repeated fractals in branches, sponges, the cosmic web, electric arcs etc.

However, you did not use "above" in a way that was reflective of the quasi-fractal nature of reality, rather just simple metaphysics - "God is up there". I could have criticised that position but I was being polite. Thus, I asked you to explain your position rather than arrogantly assuming what you know and don't know - unlike some (ahem).

And you failed to explain what - in your mind, never mind me - and failed to identify what is "above" in the Great Chain of Being and what is below. I have to assume that you don't mean actual angels and devils, as such beliefs are obviously childish superstition, at best, perhaps extremely loosely symbolic (eg. casting out noxious bacteria/demons).

[Nick_A]

Sy

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:18 am
However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

What do you mean by "above"? Where, or what, is it? On a scale where X is above and we are here, what is below? What the nature of this scale?

This is the great stumbling block between us. Even Hermes Emerald tablet and the axiom "as above, so below" seems absurd to you.

You should stick to speaking of what you are know instead of making guesses about what I know. As before, you are wrong, although I awat acknowledgement of this.

In fact, "as above, so below" has been part of my schema for decades. In fact, I had already spoken of how dynamics of an interstellar disc are reflective of life, including human society - and in all areas where things come together you have the formation of concentrations, degradation of zones beyond the concentration, all facilitated by dominant entities and the dominated, catalysts and destroyers, in-group and fringe players, and so forth. Basic archetypes. We see repeated fractals in branches, sponges, the cosmic web, electric arcs etc.

However, you did not use "above" in a way that was reflective of the quasi-fractal nature of reality, rather just simple metaphysics - "God is up there". I could have criticised that position but I was being polite. Thus, I asked you to explain your position rather than arrogantly assuming what you know and don't know - unlike some (ahem).

And you failed to explain what - in your mind, never mind me - and failed to identify what is "above" in the Great Chain of Being and what is below. I have to assume that you don't mean actual angels and devils, as such beliefs are obviously childish superstition, at best, perhaps extremely loosely symbolic (eg. casting out noxious bacteria/demons).

What is "being?" How do you define it? If "being" is relative, what is the being of a mineral and how does it compare to the being of a vegetable, and of an invertebrate? Have you contemplated this question?

[Sy Borg]

Sy

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:18 am
However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

What do you mean by "above"? Where, or what, is it? On a scale where X is above and we are here, what is below? What the nature of this scale?

This is the great stumbling block between us. Even Hermes Emerald tablet and the axiom "as above, so below" seems absurd to you.

You should stick to speaking of what you are know instead of making guesses about what I know. As before, you are wrong, although I awat acknowledgement of this.

In fact, "as above, so below" has been part of my schema for decades. In fact, I had already spoken of how dynamics of an interstellar disc are reflective of life, including human society - and in all areas where things come together you have the formation of concentrations, degradation of zones beyond the concentration, all facilitated by dominant entities and the dominated, catalysts and destroyers, in-group and fringe players, and so forth. Basic archetypes. We see repeated fractals in branches, sponges, the cosmic web, electric arcs etc.

However, you did not use "above" in a way that was reflective of the quasi-fractal nature of reality, rather just simple metaphysics - "God is up there". I could have criticised that position but I was being polite. Thus, I asked you to explain your position rather than arrogantly assuming what you know and don't know - unlike some (ahem).

And you failed to explain what - in your mind, never mind me - and failed to identify what is "above" in the Great Chain of Being and what is below. I have to assume that you don't mean actual angels and devils, as such beliefs are obviously childish superstition, at best, perhaps extremely loosely symbolic (eg. casting out noxious bacteria/demons).

What is "being?" How do you define it? If "being" is relative, what is the being of a mineral and how does it compare to the being of a vegetable, and of an invertebrate? Have you contemplated this question?

Actually, it's my main focus on the forum in recent months. Other members and I have considered this intensively. I am not committed to the usual brain-centric ideas of being, and think that to be a bacterium does feel like something, that it's phenomenal consciousness is not the same as a rock.

Okay, so you are looking at a hierarchy of being, and "above" refers to higher form of consciousness, God. The great chain of being also includes angels above humans, which requires some 'splainin' in the 21st century.

I can imagine minds greater than humans' (the competition mostly not being great) evolving in other regions of the universe, but immaterial beings - cherubim, seraphim and the like? Do you consider these informational beings, that roam around, impacting the structure of all they encounter? If so, as per your esoteric source material, how is it believed that such entities can hold their information together in lieu of matter?

[Nick_A]

The hierarchy of being includes levels of consciousness. The earth for example was created by the demiurge.

Demiurge (from the Greek δημιουργός dēmiourgós, meaning "artisan" or "craftsman") is a term for a creator deity or divine artisan responsible for the creation of the physical universe.

The word was first introduced in this sense by Plato in his Timaeus, 41a (ca. 360 B.C.E.). It subsequently appears in a number of different religious and philosophical systems of Late Antiquity, most notably in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism.

Three separate meanings of the term may be distinguished. For Plato, the Demiurge was a benevolent creator of the laws, heaven, or the world. Plotinus identified the Demiurge as nous (divine reason), the first emanation of "the One" (see monad). In Gnosticism, the material universe is seen as evil, and the Demiurge is the creator of this evil world, either out of ignorance or by evil design.

I am not a gnostic so do not accept their duality of good and evil. I am more a Platonic Christian so the idea of the Demiurge as the artisans or craftsman of the universe makes perfect sense to me.

The chain of being includes Man but divides them into conscious and animal Man as well as the quality between them. This is very politically incorrect but those consciously aware of their source express a higher quality of being and the energy associated with it.

The twelve apostles are not a random number but refer to the twelve human types. Of course Judas represented the type that cannot evolve. But the fact that Man can consciously evolve along the great chain of being brings meaning to human existence. The world cannot understand their awakening influence which is why they have always killed them when possible as it did with Jesus and Socrates.

[Sy Borg]

Demiurges sound like black holes, stars, planets and moons. While not being religious, I am in awe of cosmic entities.

But I am not so awed that I would embrace the corruption and blinkered views of right wing politics :) Then again, I don't care for the preciousness and wilful blindness of the left either. However, I do support the pragmatism and blunt realism of right wing politics at its best, just as I support the long term thinking, logic and care found in the left at its best. Judas doesn't represent the left. He was just a dick. Alas, dicks happen, regardless of political persuasion.

Now, back to metaphysics, which is much more enjoyable - I just felt I'd best address that aspect of the thread.

I'm not a fan of the "twelve types" trope, not in western, Christian or Chinese astrology, nor Jungian archetypes. Too many unsupported claims and too many "holes". My view of them tends to be "nice try, no cigar". After all, "types" certainly exist and, judging by the various astrological and psychological models, there is no agreement as to the most effective way to model the tendencies towards various bundles of relational dynamics.

The main problem with them all is anthropocentrism. Types of things pre-existed humans, who have merely tried to classify them and, of course, complexified the situation. I have been very slowly aiming for clarity to work out a model based on the dynamics of the protoplanetary disc as it changed from relative homogeneity into a hierarchic system of planets, moons, comets and asteroids, surrounded by vast tracts of space.

That dynamic appears to be happening on the Earth as the relative homogeneity of the wild gives way to dense city states, surrounded by vast deserts.

[Belindi]

Nick wrote:

However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

I hope you are not stopping at mankind. "The higher parts" of all conscious beings are "descended from above". Your inner Descartes is showing, Nick,

Conscious life descends from above There is no conscious animal life on earth that arose from the earth. Animal life is a creature of reaction like a machine reacting to external and internal influences. Consciusness is not necessary for animal life to perform its function. Only the ability to react is. Man has the potential for consciousness but normally lives and dies a creature of reaction.

That's an eccentric usage of 'consciousness'. Consciousness means being aware of something or some event.

You contrast reaction with consciousness as though the two are mutually exclusive. In actual fact we are conscious of reactions almost as soon as the reactions happen.

We are not usually conscious of reactions that are governed by the parasympathetic system, such as digestion and blood pressure.
We are aware ( i.e. conscious of)when we have had a spinal reflex reaction such as eye blink or knee jerk.

Perhaps you confuse consciousness with insight. For instance sometimes a person may be unaware that they are under the control of an emotion to the extent that their rational judgement is suspended.

[Steve3007]

I'm not a fan of the "twelve types" trope, not in western, Christian or Chinese astrology, nor Jungian archetypes. Too many unsupported claims and too many "holes".

I think the fetishizing of particular numbers is an interesting psychological, if not philosophical, subject in its own right. The number 3 has been covered a bit. But the number 12 is perhaps an even more important one.

It seems clear that the underlying reason why 12 has been adopted as significant by different cultures around the world stems from the simple physical fact of how long it takes the moon to orbit the earth relative to how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun, combined with the mathematical fact that it's divisible by several other numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 6). The combination of those physical and mathematical facts means that, from the viewpoint of the surface of the earth, since the era of ancient Babylon and before, it has seemed natural to divide the background stars which happen to cluster around the plane of the ecliptic into 12 distinct zones. And from there, our human talent for pattern recognition naturally led on to the creation of 12 mythical figures, later promoted to the status of gods, represented by those patterns. And from there, it's natural enough to move on to the concept of 12 types of personality, represented by those figures, and so on.

I think the philosophically/psychologically interesting part is the fact that all of this extrapolation and profound influence on human culture, and all of our human convictions that we're talking about profound truths, stem from the way the solar system happened to form, and specifically the orbits of the moon and earth, combined with the fact that we evolved to be able to process complex visual information by recognizing patterns, and particularly patterns that might represent living things (particularly human living things). Hence, an arbitrary alignment in the night sky of a few stars from a particular vantage point, with no real relationship to each other, conjures up images of mighty warriors, beautiful maidens and scary creatures - the kinds of things that interest humans.

If electric lighting had been invented earlier, or if the night sky was less visible for some other reason, presumably all of this extrapolation, including imaginations of "12 human types" would be different.

Also, things would presumably be different if the moon happened to have formed slightly differently, so that instead of orbiting the earth roughly 12 times in the time it takes the earth to orbit the sun, it was, say, 5 or 17 times. If it was nowhere near a usefully divisible number like 12, so those ancient peoples didn't feel as justified in rounding it off to such a number, I wonder how all of this culture would have evolved then. No doubt a whole different mythology, fetishizing different numbers, would have arisen.

[Steve3007]

I suppose it's also worth noting that when the moon first formed it did in fact take a very different amount of time to orbit the earth, relative to the amount of time it takes the earth to orbit the sun. It just happens that at the point in earth's history when homo sapiens emerged and started to look with interest and curiosity at the sky, it had slowed to about 12. So I guess it's also interesting to consider how things would have gone if we'd evolved earlier or later.

[Nick_A]

Nick wrote:

However the higher parts of Man are immortal and didn’t evolve from the earth but rather descended from above.

I hope you are not stopping at mankind. "The higher parts" of all conscious beings are "descended from above". Your inner Descartes is showing, Nick,

Conscious life descends from above There is no conscious animal life on earth that arose from the earth. Animal life is a creature of reaction like a machine reacting to external and internal influences. Consciusness is not necessary for animal life to perform its function. Only the ability to react is. Man has the potential for consciousness but normally lives and dies a creature of reaction.

That's an eccentric usage of 'consciousness'. Consciousness means being aware of something or some event.

You contrast reaction with consciousness as though the two are mutually exclusive. In actual fact we are conscious of reactions almost as soon as the reactions happen.

We are not usually conscious of reactions that are governed by the parasympathetic system, such as digestion and blood pressure.
We are aware ( i.e. conscious of)when we have had a spinal reflex reaction such as eye blink or knee jerk.

Perhaps you confuse consciousness with insight. For instance sometimes a person may be unaware that they are under the control of an emotion to the extent that their rational judgement is suspended.

You have described animal reactive consciousness very well. But what is human consciousness and what is the difference? Human consciousness is self awareness as we react to life. We are self consciousness for brief intervals. It is an indication of a human potential but as of now, we are not conscious and live by animal reactive consciousness.

Ouspensky provides an experiment to verify the limits of consciousness

I shall try to explain how consciousness can be studied. Take a watch and look at the second hand, trying to be aware of yourself, and concentrating on the thought, 'I am Peter Ouspensky,' 'I am now here.' Try not to think about anything else, simply follow the movements of the second hand and be aware of yourself, your name, your existence and the place where you are. Keep all other thoughts away.

You will, if you are persistent, be able to do this for two minutes. This is the limit of your consciousness. And if you try to repeat the experiment soon after, you will find it more difficult than the first time.

This experiment shows that a man, in his natural state, can with great effort be conscious of one subject (himself) for two minutes or less.

The most important deduction one can make after making this experiment in the right way is that man is not conscious of himself. The illusion of his being conscious of himself is created by memory and thought processes.....................

Would a mob be possible if its people were self aware; if they saw themselves reacting like a mob?