are you an atheist?

The heart of reality, when you are ushered past life and death, is purely about recognizing who you are, and being instructed as to how to love. That is why we die and live and incarnate. 2013-2014. Just so.

oops

strictly by virtue of living in the world, we produce the world. in a very literal sense. without, the world has no existence. whatsoever. I have confirmed this for myself. both on drugs and off.

there is no "world". just like there are no persons. but there is an experience playin out, based on vasanas. it is undilute consciousness, awareness appearing as "the world". there can never be a thing! there is only ever the awareness. Gaudapada was right.

The Ashtavakra Gita and Ribhu Gita and Advahuta Gita agree on this point, vehemently in fact. the world is pure awareness.

"There is no substance whatever which is by nature unlimited. There is no substance whatever which is of the nature of Reality. The very Self is the supreme Truth. There is neither injury nor non injury in It."

You are Parabrahman.

I'm too wishywashy to be that bald about it, like my ex is. He's of the "when you die you die, there is no soul, we're all atoms" persuasion, and I still have a smidge of "but what if...?" in me I guess. Not a god thing - more like a "hey how do we explain human thought and reason and collective unconcious and etc etc?" stuff.

Trayce's statement here kind of encapsulates what I feel about it all. Maybe I'm deluding myself but I'm agnostic not in the fence-sitting sense but in the how-can-we-really-know-anyway sense.

When people say "we're all atoms" they may be superficially correct, but most of them have no idea what an atom really is or have thought much, if any, about how that statement connects to anything else they believe they "know". If nothing else, the identity of mass and energy should engender a revolution in their thinking about their own identity and what is doing their thinking.

Responding to a couple of things Mordy sent me in response to my post upthread now. First, this: http://www.chabad.org/library/tanya/tanya_cdo/aid/1029167/jewish/Chapter-1.htm

And so it is with all created things in the world— their names in the Holy Tongue are the very "letters of speech" which descend, degree by degree, from the Ten Utterances recorded in the Torah, by means of substitutions and transpositions of letters through the "two hundred and thirty-one gates," until they reach and become invested in that particular created thing to give it life. [This descent is necessary] because individual creatures are not capable of receiving their life-force directly from the Ten Utterances of the Torah, for the life-force issuing directly from them is far greater than the capacity of the individual creatures. They can receive the life-force only when it descends and is progressively diminished, degree by degree, by means of substitutions and transpositions of the letters and by Gematriot, their numerical values, until the life-force can be condensed and enclothed and there can be brought forth from it a particular creature

OK - so the Ten Utterances are the Word of God, but are encrypted, recalibrated and recast into the stuff of life? I like this very much - but then it is somewhat ruined for me by the utterances being in the Torah - the mystery to be revealed, the Divine manifest and attainable. It strikes me that anything that can be written or understood immediately resigns from true divinity and permits itself to be deconstructed in the faulty world of matter in which resides the human mind. I would prefer it if the Torah was a ghost of God, an account of an unusually narrow brush with God or even a glimpse of what might have been God, than a positivist, entire guidebook to how we may complete our approach. For are we not imperfect? Is life not imperfect? How, then, may we complete any approach to what is infinite? Better to be the encryptions, the reflections of a cosmos which obeys laws unknown to itself, translates messages it does not itself know, and do so with as much elegance and efficiency as possible...

Of course, the Torah is not only a Holy Text but a work of poetry, of verse and of tradition. I think it serves to convey a pure awareness of the divine, as dell writes upthread, but is not the divine explained. Hence my frustration at the decryptions. Unless this is a very clever Jewish parable and the decrypted representations of God are themselves challenges to keep staring further, keep searching harder - tricks that in their very revelation imply without doubt further tricks, further layers...

Up next, Walter Benjamin. This'll be fun.

according to abraham joshua heschel there are two version of the torah. the torah on earth and the torah min shamayim (from heaven). the earth copy is a rough translation of the divine document - a distillation of non-corporality into human language. http://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Torah-Refracted-through-Generations/dp/0826418929

How, then, may we complete any approach to what is infinite?

Except through faith in the elegance of the divine to grant our participation in reality the same inclusivity & grace it grants everything else...as it is of us now, it will surely be of us forever...

Oh! Interesting notion, thanks :) and it backs up what I'd been hoping.

For some reason the concept grace hits home for me in a way that a lot of other religious language doesn't. I'm not stirred when people talk about God or the divine, but grace is a beautiful union of connotations: gratitude, graciousness and gracefulness. When Wettstein says, "The real question is one’s relation to God, the role God plays in one’s life, the character of one’s spiritual life", I feel like I can accept it all just by substituting grace for God.

That is because Grace is an Aesthetic rendering of the divine mandate, and thus the rendering we are best-equipped (imo) to approach :)

They fly towards Grace

I suppose im too much of a Calvinist (or "theocentric") at heart to get with such Romanticist notions of the Aesthetic, or any notion of synthesis really. I'd insist to the last that science and religion must be separated (and this is not to say they aren't "coupled" as I said above), and that any synthesis or totality founded on consciousness, intuition, or Imagination should be rejected as inadequate "anthropocentric" (and thus infinitely short of the divine) constructions. here's more from Blumenberg on cusa, which comes close to my own understanding of transcendence:

“Transcendence is no longer related to an objective topography, a cosmic ground plan. It appears precisely when man, in the manner of Scholasticism—as though upon the ladder of the hierarchical cosmos—wants to pursue his argumentation to a successful conclusion and in the process has an opportunity to experience the incomprehensibility of the world’s form, the infinity of the finite; transcendence is a mode of negation of definitiveness of theory.”

anyway that's gist of what i mean when say religious experience is a "premonition of form free of content." this is the sense in which theory begins and ends in contingency.

also it occurs to me regarding the "airplanes are truth" discussion above that heidegger's "question concerning technology" is apropos to thread.

I'm too wishywashy to be that bald about it, like my ex is. He's of the "when you die you die, there is no soul, we're all atoms" persuasion, and I still have a smidge of "but what if...?" in me I guess. Not a god thing - more like a "hey how do we explain human thought and reason and collective unconcious and etc etc?" stuff.

why does there have to be an explanation? just because we're capable of asking the question doesn't necessitate that there's an answer beyond the fact that we can ask the question.

Walter Benjamin: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/burt/chaucer'swake/LanguageofMan.pdf

I like the opening salvo. It paves (or at least, under my interpretation it paves) the way for a dissimulation of the Word of God from God itself, backing up what we've been discussing above.

And then -

Where mental being in its communication is language itself in its absolute wholeness, only there is the name, and only the name is there. Name as the heritage of human language therefore vouches for the fact that language as such is the mental being of man; and only for this reason is the mental being of man, alone among all mental entities, communicable with­out residue. On this is founded the difference between human language and the language of things. But because the mental being of man is language itself, he cannot communicate himself by it, but only in it. The quintessence of this intensive totality of language as the mental being of man is the name.

...in which the Word (i.e. the communicable element) of Man IS Man - self-conveying, linguistic in its manifestation within Awareness. How, then, to distinguish between Man and God? How strange an entity must God be, to be distinct from God's Word? Or is God the only truly unlinguistic quantity in the cosmos - incommunicable in itself, while yet uttering words that become holy text, planets, stars, living creatures and eventually through several processes of integration the words of humans, inexactly seeking to express the inexpressible while expressing the inexpressible's expression as exactly as it can?

God's creation is completed when things receive their names from man, from whom in name language alone speaks.

'Completed' is an interesting word here. Perhaps 'elaborated', 'adorned' or 'made more communicable to humans' would suffice better. Benjamin begins to lose me at around this point - he is very absolutist about the idea of a 'name'. Naming is all very well, but what if an object or an idea shifts imperceptibly to evade its name - does it automatically gain a new name with rapid and efficient perfection, or are the human processes of naming imperfect? I would say the latter, and that the idea of a name can be deconstructed quite easily. It's this delay to adapt, this imperfection, this waste of energy in transmission that ensures Man will never fully catch up with the subtle and not-quite-explicable self-namings of the mute and all-saying God (as Benjamin later says, only God names perfectly: The absolute relation of name to knowledge exists only in God; only there is name, because it is inwardly identical with the creative word, the pure medium of knowledge. This means that God made things knowable in their names. Man, however, names them according to knowledge.). Or is the attainment of Dell's 'pure awareness' possible, somehow, within the realm of consciousness? Can one reach a stage where the name of everything (and thus the name of God) is heard at once?

Benjamin appears to think so:

The highest mental region of religion is (in the concept of revelation) at the same time the only one that does not know the inexpressible. For it is addressed in the name and expresses itself as revela­tion.

...but then agrees with me:

The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytic in nature, in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word.

I suspect Benjamin and I still disagree as to whether man is the knower of God's language, despite being unable to speak it - I would say not exactly. We can guess. We can interpret. I say it would be a true shame to know, and impossible to boot. Or - we can never know why it was spoken, no matter how many of its sounds we catch.

I also suspect that Benjamin's ideas fall down right about here:

Of all beings, man is the only one who names his own kind

I think Benjamin is showing the prejudices of his time and his time's lack of knowledge (as I doubtless am in corresponding ways) - what are we to presume about other species? Gannets who mate for life and can pick out their mate's cry from among thousands according to infinitesimal differences in frequency and timbre - is this not a name, and a far more rigid, established name than the unwieldy things we bear - that change at marriage - that are lengthened, shortened, dispensed with altogether? Benjamin comes across as a fairly patriarchal and inflexible figure at this point - venerating the human name is a truly dangerous position.

Beginning to suspect I might be too pomo for this. Language may be intelligibility, Walter, but how much do you trust your intelligence?

The translation of the language of things into that of man is not only a translation of the mute into the sonic; it is also the translation of the nameless into name. It is therefore the translation of an imperfect language into a more perfect one, and cannot but add something to it, namely knowledge.

Starting to annoy me now; I would state that it is the precise opposite: a perfect language (that only the Divine can fully understand & speak) into the imperfect human approximation.

God gives each beast in turn a sign, whereupon they step before man to be named.

Fuck off. So arrogant.

Since the unspoken word in the existence of things falls infinitely short of the naming word in the knowledge of man, and since the latter in turn must fall short of the creative word of God

I thought the unspoken word WAS the creative word of God - which throws your little hierarchy into a spin, good sir. This extra 'word' is simply the communicability of things, is it not - and therefore far more powerful than any language devised?

But the abstract elements of lan­guage-we may perhaps surmise-are rooted in the word of judgment. The immediacy (which, however, is the linguistic root) of the communicability of abstraction resides in judgment. This immediacy in the communication of abstraction came into being as judgment, when, in the Fall, man aban­doned immediacy in the communication of the concrete-that is, name­ and fell into the abyss of the mediateness of all communication, of the word as means, of the empty word, into the abyss of prattle.

Are abstract particulars not themselves names of a more graceful, divine-seeking sort? Words are only empty if they are not understood. Prattle is only prattle if the prattler knows not the prattled. And is name itself not a judgement? I do not like the idea that God's word named everything on creation. I like the idea that the divine language speaks reality not as a name but as a story. Stories have morals, reasons, heroes, narratives. Names merely have irksome fixities that often obstruct the mutable natures of their possessors.

I do not think it is so tragic that humans use their own systems of translation to name things. I think our imperfectness is to be celebrated along with our effort to approach the fundamental reasons for the cosmos. I think human languages of all kinds - languages of judgement, abstraction, love, reason etc - are symbiotic and not worthy of any sort of melancholy at all - their failings are obvious and innate, but are as beautiful and as glorious as our corporeal forms.

Your move, Mordy!

Man, seriously, reading that is no different to me than reading, like, the Time Cube website.

why not create perfect language through computers?
i'm very disappointed that asimov's promise of technologically-aided theology (e.g. "9 bn names of god") has thus far only resulted in janky "bible code" software and white noise chakra iphone apps.

any synthesis or totality founded on consciousness, intuition, or Imagination should be rejected as inadequate "anthropocentric" (and thus infinitely short of the divine) constructions

Not sure you read me properly as I think I largely agree with you - of course transcendence is incomprehensible, beyond consciousness or imagination - we can merely attempt to approach it, perhaps even try to glimpse it (a moment of transcendence reaching down in momentary Revelation, deigning to decrypt). I am not arrogant enough to suggest any sort of anthropocentric attainment of transcendence! Far from it. We are a vibrant and thoughtful part of Consciousness, and we may, perhaps, reach far.

Were you thrown by my use of the word 'synthesis'? I do not mean to say that human consciousness is synthesised to the divine. The divine product is of everything, but its propulsion, ultimately, is too well hidden within everything - too synthesised - to submit to something so crude and inexact as consciousness.

my feel for what you're getting at is something more like immanence (even the "infinity" of immanence). maybe the best way to distinguish is that i want to keep peeling things apart, or to suggest a la cusa that theory has to be pushed to its limits by way of suggesting, indirectly, the outside of the theory, that the "divine" is not "too well hidden within everything" but without it.

but within IS without!

that's a synthesis i dont want to make! ;)

ha, fair enough! IMO, the divine is too elegant, too graceful, too integral to the universality of everything for consciousness to ever receive - consequently, the tenets of panentheism hold paradoxically true - there is a divine element in some transcendent plane, but that plane is a mirror - an infinitely reflective surface - which cannot see itself, only its 'each other'

would the divine being expressed as a simple mathematical equation not be allowed?

lol try me

the mathematica guy is fairly obsessed with finding simple rules that can reconstruct the whole of creation or some craziness. This is one that he likes a lot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30

^^^this is still determinative, even if its form is unpredictable to a limited consciousness. It obeys unchanging laws. I suspect that the divine is not determinative, and that part of its mystery & wonder is its bestowal of free will - a law of lawlessness which operates according to a sublime principle we shall never know

wow I am so lost. it's what I get for failing to check in regularly...

if indeterminacy can be simulated through deterministic processes, then you would reject all such things as not being divine then?

it's not a very good simulation. i prefer the theoretical notion that a divine pattern appears in the digits of pi - at least that isn't determinative

Evan I will get u up to speed:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l8ggnxMyBO1qz9qj5o1_400.jpg

would the divine being expressed as a simple mathematical equation not be allowed?

Gravity is pretty much the glue of the universe, I'd settle for that being God. It has an effortless grace to it that is given to everything created, living or inanimate. Unfortunately the definition we currently have for gravity doesn't seem to be universally scalable, hence the need for String Theory and Theoretical Physics.

I love all that stuff, but I'm not sure how serious it is taken by modern science. The only friend I have in the physics field thinks that stuff is a joke. I imagine if it were proven that there were multiple universes, possibly infinite in number, we could probably comb through them to find the one literally described in the OT.

we have formula for pi though... we can also rescale pi so it isn't an irrational number if you wanted?

Gravity is nothing compared to the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces, a fact easily discernible by jumping off a tall building and discovering at which point gravity ceases to be a factor.

The Big Bang is a better substitute, since all the aforementioned forces came from it. It has a singularity state too, which is convenient for theists.

You're right PN that pi is a very simple quantity when expressed non-numerically - much like the divine is doubtless simple when viewed - but we are incapable of viewing the divine in a metaphorically non-numerical fashion. I think it's a good analogy.

"God is in the tv" - M. Manson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW9dmpR94J0

hahaha is this a bit

these guys are working together

"Can u indicate on the doll where god touched u GD, because cmon mayne whats up ya"

what an incredibly stupid thing to say, given the Catholic scandal. luckily my mom snapped out of the spell of Catholocism and spared me the what would have been not-all-that-remote chance of this "jab" hitting lil too close to home.

God's balls

dg r u claiming that god (doesnt exist) has fondled children u should bring this str8 to the cops dont wait to reply

thanks for asking me to clarify, friend. No, I am not actually stating that. But instead that many of His appointed agents here on Earth have raped many children over many, and the supreme chief of all of these agents assisted in covering up these heinous crimes. You should apologize to all the victims for your callousness.

oh ok ur not. phew. thought we'd made a major discovery there but it was just that you can't read.

I can read, that is plainly obvious. What isn't so obvious, but I am willing to have you show evidence of to disprove me, is if you are intelligent enough to grasp the connection between priests/religion/God.

what if you had said your initial comment to a victim of rape by a priest? I would hope you would feel some degree of shame and regret.

lol I'm a v unlikely defendant and you a much less likely prosecutor here man

xp there you go again