The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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3017Metaphysician
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

PoeticUniverse wrote: August 13th, 2021, 1:24 pm
JackDaydream wrote: August 13th, 2021, 11:36 am idea of archetypes
Hello Jack from another philosophy forum.

In Jungian theory’ archetype’ is a motif (image, ritual, legend, fear, etc.) that occurs in nearly all cultures in nearly all eras. Jung died before genetics matured into a major science, but today we would say that an archetype is a set of synapses programmed into our brains by evolution. It's a type of instinct. Since something that we have "known" since birth feels more true than anything we learn later through reasoning and learning, archetypes are powerful.

Many of them are survival behaviors that were passed down by natural selection since, for example, if an animal doesn't have the instinct to run away from a larger animal with both eyes in front of its face, it won't live long enough to mate and pass on its genes. But other archetypes may be accidental mutations that were lucky enough to be passed down through a genetic bottleneck or by genetic drift, and they may have no impact, or even a negative impact, on survival.

Junk DNA also contains a record of what we once were, as turned off, although many times evolution just overwrites or continues the older actions' basis with newer ones, such as in our embryonic stages even two primitive kidneys finally get replaced with the third, modern one. Fur also develops but then lessens.

The world is full of superstitions and pseudo science from so-called esoteric 'knowledge' that can't be shown. It's so bad that many even go on to preach it as true and even then layer a further full structure upon it—an intellectual dishonesty.
Hey PU!

I know you want to rain on the parade, and please don't take this the wrong way, but until you can show what it means for something to exist (in particular explain consciousness which is still a mystery and in question), I think it is you who is being apoplectic about your own intellectual dishonesty and/or frustrations.

I'm not going to give you a pass on that, And will gladly call you out on it.

Perhaps this might help with your concern:

Phenomena: a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question.

Non sequit that!
:P
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by PoeticUniverse »

3017Metaphysician wrote: August 13th, 2021, 1:35 pm Non sequit that!
I don't proclaim truth and fact about unknown maybe's such as many religious do, especially the misleading preachers who I am referring to.

Their ingrained beliefs the priests’ duly preach,
As if notions were truth and fact to teach.
Oh, cleric, repent; at least say, ‘Have faith’;
Since, of unknowns ne’er shown none can e’er reach.
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3017Metaphysician
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

PoeticUniverse wrote: August 13th, 2021, 1:45 pm
3017Metaphysician wrote: August 13th, 2021, 1:35 pm Non sequit that!
I don't proclaim truth and fact about unknown maybe's such as many religious do, especially the misleading preachers who I am referring to.

Their ingrained beliefs the priests’ duly preach,
As if notions were truth and fact to teach.
Oh, cleric, repent; at least say, ‘Have faith’;
Since, of unknowns ne’er shown none can e’er reach.
A phenomenon is a fact that can't be explained. Whether a preacher wants to embellish those facts is not only a shame, but shame in falling into the same trap along that path.

Man wonders, what do they see in me
They try so much, but cannot touch
My inner mystery

Now when I try to show them
They still cannot see
My truth to them
Is simply that, which is me
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by PoeticUniverse »

3017Metaphysician wrote: August 13th, 2021, 1:35 pm explain consciousness which is still a mystery and in question
Much can be observed about consciousness beyond the necessarily private aspects:

Consciousness is from the brain, either as a fundamental aspect of nature and brain or of the brain's own invented symbolic language.

No brain; no consciousness.

Anesthesia or a faint or a severe blow to the head; no consciousness.

Consciousness of something arrives after 300-500 milliseconds, the time it takes for the subconscious analysis to produce the something, plus a slighter time for the something to be structured into qualia and integrated with whatever else is present or in the environment plus the sticking of it into the ongoing conscious narrative. So, such as decision precede our conscious awareness of them, meaning that consciousness is ever showing what's already passed and thus cannot in itself make decisions. It is fine though that conscious results are then available for future reference as inputs to more decisions made subconsciously. These decisions are not 'free' of the will but depend on what one's fixed will has amounted to at the instant of usage. The will is dynamic, though, and can change, via learning if the person is not too stuck on what they hope for.

There is a lot more we've learned that I'll put in the next post.

Note: Not knowing all about everything doesn't mean 'God did it', plus positing a Larger question to answer a smaller question doesn't 'answer' anything but only begs the question. Yes, believers go to great lengths to try to have what they wish for. Yet, it never shows, and so they must retreat to the notion that 'God' does whatever nature does.
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by PoeticUniverse »

3017Metaphysician wrote: August 13th, 2021, 2:02 pm is
Supposition stated as truth, as I've identified.
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by PoeticUniverse »

3017Metaphysician wrote: August 13th, 2021, 2:02 pm phenomenon
As for consciousness, then, it can’t just float around independently, fully formed, nor can it be a Great First and Fundamental Complexity; consciousness is a brain process that has preceding parts and inputs.

Consciousness is

Intrinsic—My own, as independent;

Compositional—Structured with many phenomenological distinctions;

Informational—Particular and specific;

Integrated/Whole—Unified;

Exclusive—Definite content, no more no less.


Subjective Features:

Referral—The ‘projection’ of neural states with no perceiving of neural firings/states that only science can inform us of.

Mental Unity—Experienced as a unified field, whereas its sources are all over the brain.

Qualia—The subjectively experienced felt qualities of sensory consciousness.

Continuous—Seamless stitching of the ongoing changing contents, perhaps from short term memory.

Mental causation?—How can consciousness—an intangible, unobservable, and fully subjective entity—cause material neurons to direct behaviors that change the world? Subconscious brain analysis, taking 300-500 milliseconds to complete, is all done and finished in its result before consciousness gets hold of the product.


Uses/Advantages:

Flexibility of Reaction—We’re better able to react to conscious content, in our further subconscious decisions beyond just the automatic reflex-like responses triggered by non conscious content.

Focus—Selective attention allows the brain to focus its activity on what’s important, so that our subconscious decisions can attend to that foremost.

Evaluations—Feelings make one aware of what is good or bad. From emotions and logic both.

Survival Value—Complex decisions possible. Depth.

Behavioral Flexibility—Unlimited associate learning combines multiple cues into a single perception.

Discrimination—Small perceptual differences possible, such as between good and poisonous food.

Diversification of Species—Such as the Cambrian explosion and a kind of evolutionary arms race in finding new ways to avoid detection, spurring predators to become more sophisticated.

Beauty—Such as plants evolving colorful flowers to attract pollination.

Actionizing—Pondering of the consequences of scenarios before committing to action.


The brain interprets reality, and puts
A face on the waves of sound, light, color, touch,
And a sense on molecules’ smell and taste.
Consciousness is the brain’s perception of itself.

Consciousness mediates thoughts versus outcomes,
And is distributed all over the body,
From the nerve spindles to the spine to the brain—
A way to actionize without moving.

Physics describes well the extrinsic causes,
While consciousness exists just for itself,
As the intrinsic, compositional,
Informational, whole, and exclusive—

As the distinctions toward survival,
Though causing nothing except in itself,
As in ne’er doing but only as being,
Leaving intelligence for the doing.

The posterior cortex holds correlates,
For this is the only brain region that
Can’t be removed for one to still retain
Consciousness, it having feedback in it;

Thusly, it presents a unified Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
A process fundamental in nature,
Or it’s the brain’s own symbolic language.

The Whole can also be well spoken of
To communicate with others, as well as
Globally informing other brain states,
For nonconscious states know not what’s been formed.
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

PoeticUniverse wrote: August 13th, 2021, 2:11 pm
3017Metaphysician wrote: August 13th, 2021, 1:35 pm explain consciousness which is still a mystery and in question
Much can be observed about consciousness beyond the necessarily private aspects:

Consciousness is from the brain, either as a fundamental aspect of nature and brain or of the brain's own invented symbolic language.

No brain; no consciousness.

Anesthesia or a faint or a severe blow to the head; no consciousness.

Consciousness of something arrives after 300-500 milliseconds, the time it takes for the subconscious analysis to produce the something, plus a slighter time for the something to be structured into qualia and integrated with whatever else is present or in the environment plus the sticking of it into the ongoing conscious narrative. So, such as decision precede our conscious awareness of them, meaning that consciousness is ever showing what's already passed and thus cannot in itself make decisions. It is fine though that conscious results are then available for future reference as inputs to more decisions made subconsciously. These decisions are not 'free' of the will but depend on what one's fixed will has amounted to at the instant of usage. The will is dynamic, though, and can change, via learning if the person is not too stuck on what they hope for.

There is a lot more we've learned that I'll put in the next post.

Note: Not knowing all about everything doesn't mean 'God did it', plus positing a Larger question to answer a smaller question doesn't 'answer' anything but only begs the question. Yes, believers go to great lengths to try to have what they wish for. Yet, it never shows, and so they must retreat to the notion that 'God' does whatever nature does.

I think your projecting. No one said 'God did it'.

Material consciousness is just a material receiving device for self-awareness. Since you mentioned Qualia, parse this:

[Q]ualia are:
1.ineffable – they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any means other than direct experience.
2.intrinsic – they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience's relation to other things.
3.private – all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.
4.directly or immediately apprehensible by consciousness – to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.



Just an observation, just because you have had bad Fundy experiences, please don't project your acrimony on to us. Jack is talking about things that happen to people. Their own truth. For you to suggest they are not real, is tantamount to what you accused others as being "intellectually dishonest".

Anyway, we cross posted. Thanks for post. I'll have a lot more arguments....
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

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3017Metaphysician wrote: August 13th, 2021, 2:24 pm just because you have had bad Fundy experiences, please don't project your acrimony on to us. Jack is talking about things that happen to people. Their own truth. For you to suggest they are not real, is tantamount to what you accused others as being "intellectually dishonest".

Anyway, we cross posted. Thanks for post. I'll have a lot more arguments....
I don't have bad Fundy experiences; I live and let live, unless they ask, such as also here in forums. Fundies have to do what they do.

Nice try to use 'tantamount and 'acrimony''… I say that their suppositions don't have demonstration, and thus they can't honestly be claimed as fact.

I don't claim that there is no God; I'd be as guilty as the preachers if I did such. Anyway, there's no preaching allowed here.

I read your mind in the cross-post.
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

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3017Metaphysician wrote: August 13th, 2021, 2:02 pm Man wonders, what do they see in me
They try so much, but cannot touch
My inner mystery

Now when I try to show them
They still cannot see
My truth to them
Is simply that, which is me
?
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by JackDaydream »

@Stevie

It does seem that people are so different in the ways in which they perceive and think about life, death and everything in between. Some people make sense of with reference to science, some through mainstream religious perspectives and other are drawn to the esoteric. It is as if we are all wired a little differently. Of course, it is partly according to what makes sense in explanations. But, also some have visionary experiences, such as seeing angels, have premonitions and, some even have near death experiences. Of course, it can be problematic if all of these are taken at face value. The most obvious example of a problem is where a person follows the commands of voices with the worst possible consequences. Many experiences can be regarde as 'psychotic', but, on the other hand it may be a big mistake to label all unusual experiences in that way, as the unusual may be more common than often thought.

But, as I have said on posts previous to this on the thread, I do believe that Jung's ideas about the symbolic dimensions of experience are important, and it is useful to think about this when we read religious and esoteric texts. For example, when people read the Gospels in the Bible, it is important to be aware that they were written a long time after the death of Jesus, and are not believed by most Biblical scholars to have been written by the authors whose names are given to them. This makes historical accuracy hard to ascertain. Generally, it is probably useful to see beyond the literal interpretation of most sacred texts and view them as stories or as mythic truths.
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

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@PoeticUniverse


I was interested to find you here on this particular forum as well. Even though genetics and neuroscience have made great advances in understanding the causal nature of many aspects of human experience, I am not sure that they are able to grasp the source. However, here I may be going back to the mystery of existence. I would certainly not wish to dismiss the importance of science in mapping out these pathways of understanding. However, I do believe that some of the esoteric texts depict a more intuitive grasp, and are useful as well as the scientific descriptions and models of reality.
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

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JackDaydream wrote: August 13th, 2021, 4:29 pm I was interested to find you here on this particular forum as well. Even though genetics and neuroscience have made great advances in understanding the causal nature of many aspects of human experience, I am not sure that they are able to grasp the source. However, here I may be going back to the mystery of existence. I would certainly not wish to dismiss the importance of science in mapping out these pathways of understanding. However, I do believe that some of the esoteric texts depict a more intuitive grasp, and are useful as well as the scientific descriptions and models of reality.
Good to see you, too, as again trying to unravel Reality; it doesn't just serve up its greatest secrets on a silver platter for us, which tells us that it can't talk…?
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Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

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JackDaydream wrote: August 12th, 2021, 8:50 am …one strong influence has been the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, who wrote, 'The Hermetica.
The Corpus Hermeticum Investigated

A monk (speech in regular type, no quotes)
And a nun (speech in italic type, no quotes)
Talk a bit and then meet Hermes’ spirit
(Speech in regular type, in double quotes.)
 
I have read in the current ancient tome
That a man’s mind is God in human form
Though it does admit this idea is rough
And might not with normal logic conform.
 
So, like you and me, mind and God unite
Just as the sun is connected to light.
I am guessing this goes for women too
And need to ask you now if this is right?


What’s here now has to be as that long before,
Not new out of the blue, for there is no more;
So we and all are akin to what is,
Ne’er less—we're united beyond the door.

Why do we wander around in the dark,
In the middle of the night like this?

Well, if we knew the answer to that one,
We would have been home hours ago.

Whatever is eternal and is so well defined
Could never be as so, for it was never defined
In the first place, for that there never was
To define all that it forever did and does.


Every-thing, every order happens for a reason.
Yes, for the most part, for most seasons,
But not for the bottommost cause the first,
For there was nothing before it to reason it forth.


Hermes’s now arrived, full of energy.
“Hail to the All, philosophical clergy.
I’ve read your poems’ presents to the forum.
I a-rose from death, from fumes down the stems.”

The young nun now caught in the light that shined,
Stilled her racing heart and then searched her mind
For questions fit for resurrected Guides
To ask the Apparition by her side.
 
She hoped that in some miraculous ways
Her monk was included in the god’s gaze
But fearing that she might be all alone
She addressed the spirit in trembling tone.
 
Great Hermes, I have lately read your words
And have some questions you might find absurd
My abiding wish is to understand
And beg your patience with my learning bland.


I’m seeing, said her monk, his spectral form.
He’s moving, by Something, out of his norm.
We’ve stirred him from the underground city—
Of unity in multiplicity.
 
The spirit then turned as the world stood hushed,
Regarded the nun with her young face flushed,
“Your quest and your love are both holy pure
And deserve answers you are seeking for.
 
“All must at last to itself return One,
When each age of long existence is done.
Matter exists by reconstitution
And existence works by revolution.
 
“The One splits and breaks to diversity,
So becoming the All that you can see.
Humanity, twixt their birth and their death,
Is the turning point of this Holy Breath.
 
“All matter is chains of numbers composed,
Built into each entity’s science code.
That’s how Life keeps order within the change,
As One to All simply builds and erodes.
 
“This is the message so plain and so clear
That you two alone are given to hear,
The Will of each living self-conscious mind
Chooses animal death or spiritual bind.”
 
The Spirit, casting a gentle eye, smiles
As confusion grips the two neophiles.
“Come, I will show you through simpler means
How the Cosmos turns as wheels within wheels.”

The monk asks Herm, How did you figure some—
That Something is both the All and the One?
Why doesn’t stillness reign, in the solid One,
It thereby e’er inert—as its nature’s sum?

“I’ll soon have at that one, but first the move,
As I’ve not done much of that in the tomb.
See the flowers waved by the mixing airs?
Fluidity must be, and we’ll get there.”

“All that’s moved, is it not moved in something
And by something?” If it’s not the same thing.
“Mustn’t that in which it’s moved have greater aim
Than the moved?” Yes, if not one and the same.

“Mover has greater power than movable?”
If coterminous, not cosubstantial,
Yet then there’s still but One at work—4D,
Casting here its shadow in space 3D.


“The nature of that in which it is moved
Must differ from the nature of the moved?”
If there are two enfolded as the One.
“Is not this Cosmos so vast?” If none sum.

“And massive too, crammed with multitudes?”
Extravagance beyond measure, dude.
“Yet the Cosmos is a body, one that’s moved?”
Or ongoing continuation of IS.

“What size, then, be the space in which it’s moved;
What must be the nature of that so huge?”
It must be far vaster than the Cosmos,
In order to be able to find room.

Thrice-greatest one, it’s immensely vast.
Since your template’s used, then you must again,
But if it has only one usage, then…

“I’ll study anew—more’s known since back then.”
(Hermes may get back to us on the different natures.)

All from stardust begins and ends in thee.
The mighty wrecks of the elements are strewn
Across the universe, like chaff from the harvest,
Much of the Cosmos still a vast wasteland.


The timeless-formless contains every path,
Though as useless as a library of all books;
For its sum of information is zero,
But one of these possible avenues became ours.

As for more unneeded but curious whys
About all that must move in Cosmos’ skies,
Energy is not a quiet something;
Inside the Something, it is everything!


Newton noted motion moves if not stopped,
Continuing on its steady way, adept;
So there’s no force to constrict it in place,
Since there’s nothing beyond the Everything.

Ah, yes, movement’s natural, not stillness,
For sure, since we see it, and none the less.
You may have just identified a proof,
But no one needs that when we have the truth!


Well, we are all part and parcel of the IS,
And some may well call it the Great Wiz,
But I shan’t yet make Person upon it,
Yet ‘being’ here’s the same Being Everywhere—IT.

Being and all that it is not exhaust
All Possibility, as opposites,
And so they must form a duality,
For there’s no point to specify either.


Object and Subject are of what Man is made,
Qualia brightly floating in Nature’s shade
Of consciousness, and so then down through history
Duality’s track of steps is there to see.

The underwriter of the universal wave of matter
Covers all loss and liability,
Guaranteeing payment, by dipping into Possibility,
Issuing both the credit and the debit.


We do not just live and love; we are life and love.
They do not flee on, just ahead, unreachable,
Leaving us but to lean and drink their wind.
We are the universe turned around to view itself.

Zest, desire, caring, and other feelings sweet
Are our lightning feet for triumphant feats.
All manner of shapes haunt the wilds of the mind,
Just waiting and asking to be tamed as sane.


Thoughts fly in the mind like birds wing the wind;
Imagination is the atmosphere wherein ideas are born
And borne on the waves of the sea in which one sees,
Thereupon sprouting from the wings into actions seized.

“Aren’t we somethings the Something the same,
Not a part or apart, but the whole shebang?”
On this we agree, naming differently,
God’/All is inclusive of you and me.


What IS both must be, and it must be what it be
Not only temporally but also spatially.
For What IS to be across times is for it
To be ungenerated and deathless;

And for it to be what it is across times is for it to be ‘still’.
For What IS to be everywhere is for it to be whole.
For it to be what it is at every place is for it to be uniform;
And to be so everywhere is for it to be ‘complete’.

And for IS to be across times is to be ‘still’.
To be everywhere is for it to be whole.
To be what it is every place is to be uniform;
To be everywhere is to be ‘as whole’.

Altogether, IS is everlasting, immutable,
Internally invariant of uniform wholeness,
And invariant of being optimally shaped.
What IS is necessary and perfect.

We are as beings of the everlasting light dream,
As products time and time again by its means,
Of the eternal return, as baubles blown and burst,
Though frames of time that quench life’s thirst.


Time future, time present, and time past
Are all at once, with not a bit of it to last.
The glorious light flashes us into being shone,
As the light ‘eternal’ of all time to be known.

Life’s matters here are but significant
To themselves, which, all the same, grants,
For All is all, and so there is no more,
Just diverse realities through the doors.


Meaning’s not caused; All had no creation—
IT has no time or place of origin;
So the meaning’s ‘meaning’ is ‘experience’,
Which is a deduction, but it makes sense.

Sensing that Hermes was on their side
Angelina was prompted to confide
Her deepest ideas on the old book’s words
With the hope her ideas were not backwards.

 So taking a grip on monk Peter’s hand
And praying that Hermes would understand,
She took a step forward and raised her eyes
To gaze at the Spirit so old and wise.
 
 We read of your words to Asclepius.
The depth of talk was confusing to us
But, as a woman, I see through the dross,
So here’s my take, without all the gloss.
 
You’re trying to show us what God is not
By the differences in creation’s lot.
So we can gain some plain, simple idea
Of a state contrary to all that’s here.
 
God is not space, nor empty voids
And for God, movement is underemployed.
God's still and God’s nothing under the sun,
Neither of which exists in creation.
 
Creation by ‘somethingness’ is defined.
What looks empty is a trick of the mind.
And creation is in constant motion.
Molecules move despite static notions.

We must imagine the opposite plot
Of what we know and what we’ve got.
To understand just what God is about,
We must trust to ideas that reason doubts.

 
Hermes was trying to hide his surprise
At the words from the girl in young nun’s guise.
As he nodded and smiled, the nun was relieved
To think that the answer was as she believed.
 
Emboldened and flushed with this first success,
Our nun then, unwisely, sought to express
Her next thought on all that Hermes had said,
Concerning production of babies’ thread.
 
Great Hermes, she said, it just can’t be right,
That to die without child is grievous blight!
Your own words tell how creation is part
Of all that is manifest—God’s apart.

 
So God would not judge the content of soul
By children produced, but on spirit whole.
I fear (as a woman) this tale is told
To prompt the female to productive mould.


Fabuloso, J!
All gold and no dross.
The old guy has some catching up to do.
Or he may start fuming.
(Hey Hermes, “Happy Mother’s Day.”)

Our monk steadied himself, as the Soul groaned,
Of Brother, Sister, no child’s to be grown,
For we range far around the world, Hermes.
Plus, people abound, so no hers and me’s.

I have read of your ‘bodiless’ behind,
That matter bodies are not in kind,
But secondary, which they must all be,
And agree, since they’re definite forms, see;

But I note for spirit to move body,
Intangible affecting tangible,
That it must walk the walk of the matter,
And talk the talk, making it similar.

There have been advances since your old age—
Watch the new ‘Cosmos’ TV show’s voyage.
What is there in one dimension higher
Can at once touch all of the things here, sire.

I do enjoy your attempt to define
Something beyond, as undefinable,
Although this usually only tells us
What it isn’t, since ne’er definable.

For what hasn’t been established as known,
It’s then neither here nor there, but unknown,
So if one speaks its particulars first,
The proof becomes circular, at the worst.

Peter turns to view Angelina’s awe and woes,
Noting she’s already up on her toes.
Think I hear the evening dinner bell chimes;
Let us be off to our supper in time.


(What a relief!
Now I don’t have to translate ten more sections.
I have a few to put before your finale.)

Hermes runs after them, uninvited,
“Give me more; I’ll take it, unincited,
I’m of the mythic age, yet I am swayed,
To reexamine in the light of day.”

Stating genderless ends for the childless
Informs us you’re prone to greatly digress—
To the extremes of making stories up;
We might suspect pervasions fill your cup.


Human nature’s ranges of inclinations
Will, to no surprise, express themselves
Far and wide, as such they ought, regardless
Of that constitution being intended.

But especially if human recipe
Was thought out, planned, designed notably,
And so implemented accordingly,
Then the results will be just as they should be.

If mistakes crept into the formulas,
Then we’re still as made, outcomes expected,
So one’s own creation’s still respected.
Seems time to go back to that of the Same
For one and All, obviating all blame.

But you see, that we will do too, as made,
So we may often get stuck in our trade,
Until philosophers come out of the shade,
Wielding wise parries with light’s reason’s blade.


Ah, good; they have air-conditioning there,
Tennis courts, the net of evil to bear,
Or stay within the white lines, pool tables,
And a Bridge Club for the tricks playable.
PoeticUniverse
Posts: 638
Joined: April 4th, 2015, 7:25 pm

Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by PoeticUniverse »

JackDaydream wrote: August 12th, 2021, 8:50 am The roots of esoteric thought
So we just had Hermes visitation upon us, some of it esoteric.

This thread is not doing much today, so I'll put more…

Supernaturalism is a collection of archetypes and therefore almost certainly an instinct. Asking people to question their instincts and learn to override them is never easy and rarely successful. The instinctive thought arises and because they ‘thought of it’ it’s taken as gospel, time and time again as the same old story that can never attain demonstration.

Simplistic ‘great insights’ about life having to come from Higher Life abound from that same old self-destructing template of only one usage—and then, worse, they esoterically preach and/or write books about the truth and fact of it, dishonestly, even adding more to it in the same ungrounded manner, unethically, unto some great structure about it, blah, blah, blah, not to mention misleadingly begging the question.

All that then ever comes forth from the Universe is a Great Silence, but on Earth the din of war and nonsense reverberates loudly, such as recently with the Taliban enforcing the so-called will of Allah, as again the same old story of religious conquest.

I call upon a post of old from the great Fraggle Rocker:

The wars among the Christian nations have been the bloodiest in human history, although I would include the depredations of pagan Genghis Khan in that list. Christendom alone has wrought immeasurable evil on this planet, from the persecutions of Jews and followers of traditional Egyptian polytheistic religion when Emperor Constantine made Christianity Rome's official religion, to the institutionalization of violent antisemitism as almost the defining trait of European Christianity right up until its crowning achievement, the Holocaust. Along the way Christian armies obliterated two entire civilizations, even destroying their records (Aztec libraries, Inca art objects) in an attempt to erase them from history, terrorized an entire continent with the Inquisition, and fought cruelly among themselves over arcane doctrinal disagreements in the hundred years of non-stop warfare we euphemistically refer to as "the Enlightenment."

In modern times, the three primary Abrahamist communities (Jews, Christians and Muslims) appear determined to engulf the entire planet in a Nuclear Holy War.

Meanwhile the ‘peaceful’ Buddhists and Hindus spent a couple of decades murdering each other in Sri Lanka, the Muslims are killing each other over doctrinal disputes when they’re not busy trying to annihilate the Christians and Jews, the Christians on the Emerald Isle have only recently stopped killing each other over doctrinal disputes, and the Jews are paying the world back for the Holocaust by turning Palestine into one big concentration camp.

And please don’t give me the old ******** about how we are responsible for communism. The communist slogan, “To each according to his need, from each according to his ability,” is a reworking of Marx's favorite passage in the Book of Acts. Communism is an offshoot of Christianity; no other philosophy would suggest with a straight face that an economy can prosper if what a man takes from it does not have to correlate with what he puts back in.

If there is a Hell on Earth, it was brought to us by the religionists, especially the Children of Abraham.


Such does human nature get stuck, so deeply grooved on a wish and a hope, or on the whatnot of other problematic courses, which, of course, has to be accepted as really what happens, but a further sensible response is ever to have compassion for those who are stuck in any kind of way. We children of the Universe stumble blindly in the dark, with no help from above.

Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried,
Asking, “What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?”
And—“A blind understanding!” Heav’n replied.
— Omar

Yet there was no real ‘replied’, just ‘implied’, as even a stretch, born of sad lives on a monstrous Earth in many places so many times.

Earth could not answer; nor the Seas that mourn
In flowing Purple, of their Lord Forlorn;
Nor rolling Heaven, with all his Signs reveal’d
And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn.
— Omar

The recipe of ingredients poured into humans is what it is, as necessarily compromised in an individual sense for it to work best overall in a general sense. This is such that water is good, in general, but can become flood or drought, specifically.

Religious attendance is diminishing, though, as it ever has been since the days when everyone was religious, even in the once stable U.S. northeast; however, the world is now boiling over and on fire and full of the covid virus Greek alphabet variants. So long, cruel world! Ha, ha.
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JackDaydream
Posts: 3219
Joined: July 25th, 2021, 5:16 pm

Re: The Esoteric: Understanding Hidden Aspects of Religious and Spiritual Traditions

Post by JackDaydream »

@PoeticUniverse

I have read your poem on hermeticism and your discussion on the supernatural. I do intend to write a full reply to your entry and, a couple of others from Friday, but have some urgent matters which I am having to attend to over the weekend. I have not abandoned the thread and will look at any further entries on it and reply on Monday hopefully.
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