The Qualities of a Divinely Inclined Person.....

[Dennis Mahar]

It is absolutely NOT irrelevant.

Now there's an Absolute. Make up your mind you Absolutist.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

But when we ponder we enter a no-man's zone, or a zone of unknowing, and I suppose we are either *optimistic* in respect to *it* or *paranoid*, isn't this so?

That's an interesting pair of options. I wonder if the right combination of paranoid optimism would lead one to believe that they have the power to control the Reality that surrounds them؟ Maybe it's a human thing.

And so, in my way of seeing things, we require a New Gnosticism, and such Gnosticism, in fact, does not really believe ANYTHING, any story, any narrative, any 'truth', any Potion sold, any Mission served, and yet allows the fluid of ideas to wash over us, to experience the inner essence, and yet we remain stoic, unconvinced, ironical perhaps؟

Is there a different motive at play here? Does Alexis Jacobi, the Talking Ass, have himself some different reasons for communication؟ (Damn I love the ironicon.)

[Alexis Jacobi]

Does Alexis Jacobi, the Talking Ass, have himself some different reasons for communication؟

As many as 22 different reasons have been identified so far. However, I am myself only cognizant of seven.

I wonder if the right combination of paranoid optimism would lead one to believe that they have the power to control the Reality that surrounds them؟

That's a good ؟ question. I'll have to think about it. In the meantime, I wonder if just the right combination of surrounding reality could provide the pessimistic optimism that one might control oneself؟

Can you dig it؟

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Okay, I admit it. I laughed.

[Dennis Mahar]

You're full of excuses Alex.
Get organised.

Jesus said one thing. Buddha said one thing.

Who are you being?

It's the only always/already Context.

There is no other fuckin' context.

[Bobo]

I consider anyone to be my equal who no longer think in terms of equal, superior or inferior.

-

How is this not a contradiction? Are you saying that you are not equal to yourself?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I don't think we have yet exhausted the topic, this Divenely Inclined Person. While moving still along that Way, I have been struggling to interpret this song.

[Dennis Mahar]

Just in case you didn't dig it.

I did pick up on your careless use of absolutely and jumped in with the Absolutist joke.
You've missed my irony, took it at face value.
I did dig it.
You just didn't dig my joke.

I still stand that someone jeering at others as absolutists has implicit in the background an absolute that has them jeering from.

Dig it?

[Trevor Salyzyn]

I don't think we have yet exhausted the topic, this Divenely Inclined Person.

Okay, I'll exhaust some more possibilities with my brand of Existential Alchemy.

You summarized your views with that speech last page. Normal people without a taste for the divine aren't concerned with existential problems; normalcy avoids difficult thoughts; there is the appearance of madness in deep thought; one who does enter the realm of thought can be optimistic or paranoid in regards to the divine; paranoia turns one into a snake-oil salesman; optimism leads to a gnosticism that paradoxically doesn't hold to anything.

I added to this my analysis that paranoia and optimism (hope excited by fear) leads to magical thinking, by the broad definition of "belief that one can control reality".

I laboured under the impression that the end result often reveals original motive (and, of course, that all language-based thought is similar). Thus, adding in my earlier reasoning, mind itself is the child of whatever the noun for "paranoid optimism" is. It's what makes us believe in the power of language, the power of intelligence, the power of ourselves, and our own omnipotence. It's the motive for belief in causality.

As well, you wondered (ironically) if someone can be both pessimistic and optimistic. I don't see why not. Optimistically, maybe a pessimistic optimist is a divinely inclined person. Pessimistically, it's a contradiction and thus doesn't fit into a language-based worldview. Pessimistically and optimistically, it logically can't be a contradiction because that itself would be a contradiction due to the fact that I just did both. Proof by counter-example.

Of course, you're not going to drink this Potion. I wouldn't either. Ick.

While moving still along that Way, I have been struggling to interpret this song.

Is that an Irish accent? Maybe it's a call to arms.

[David Quinn]

It is absolutely NOT irrelevant. The point is, you see, that you extract the Jesus you wish him to be and you deny the context. Ah right, I forgot: you don't care about context.

I care very much about context. But the context, always, has to be reality and wisdom. Otherwise, it remains in the realm of meaningless relativity.

It doesn't matter how many historical documents you care to study, or how meticulously your piece together the "historical narrative", there comes at time when it all has to be grounded in ultimate reality. Otherwise, it remains in the realm of meaningless relativity.

First seek the Kingdom of God, then do the studies. Attempting to do the studies first will get you nowhere.

Which is also part of my point. Like John and this branch of early Christians who fashioned this Christology, you similarly fashion a unique and VERY tendentious religious praxis. But, you can't do this on your own so you 'borrow back' from other traditions, and seek justification in them for what YOU do (which is radically different than what 'they' recommend).

Haha. Nice try.

Because you don't know what it means to break free of all social contexts and ground your mind in ultimate reality, you can only ever judge my actions in terms of historical narratives and social contexts and the like. Yet in doing this, you misread everything that I do. It is why you still have no understanding of my words, even though you have been reading them for years. You lack the context to understand them.

You can do whatever you want of course---you could make Popeye and Brutus to work for you if you really wanted them to, or some sort of enlightenment-take on the Wizard of Oz or even Casablanca or Night of the Living Dead.

If there is any wisdom in them, then sure.

But no matter how you chop it, the Jewish-Christian context is one intimately involved with a strict humanitarianism (an incomprehensible and sinful term for you) a focus on human beings and human life. You have utterly and decisively severed away all that is human and you seek to remove man (a man, yourself, your followers) from a human context. I have no other way to describe it except that you want them and yourself to (somehow) disappear from the human plane of existence. I have never seen or heard of anything quite like it except among cults.

And Jesus too, of course. He was even more extreme and inhuman than I am.

-

[David Quinn]

I consider anyone to be my equal who no longer think in terms of equal, superior or inferior.

How is this not a contradiction? Are you saying that you are not equal to yourself?

It was just a bit of logical humour. Not worth fretting over. It was another way of saying that I no longer think of myself in terms of equal, superior or inferior.

-

[jupiviv]

Ah but Jupi: now write a poem about something that actually MATTERS to you

All language is poetry. Even the language of science and mathematics. What matters is that the things you say contain truth in them.

That's why it doesn't matter whether Jesus actually lived or not, or which of the gospels were actually derived from his teachings. If some of the words that are attributed to him appear to possess wisdom, then they are valuable in an of themselves.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Because you don't know what it means to break free of all social contexts and ground your mind in ultimate reality, you can only ever judge my actions in terms of historical narratives and social contexts and the like. Yet in doing this, you misread everything that I do. It is why you still have no understanding of my words, even though you have been reading them for years. You lack the context to understand them.

I regard your choices and your praxis as being driven, on some or certain levels, by neurotic impulses, is more of an accurate description. I don't blame you exactly for this, and I suppose that what I 'ask' is that you become more conscious of your own self, but I know that you can't receive this 'recommendation' because, in your own eyes, you are consciousness incarnate, you have a divinely-ordained mission, take on and defeat all comers, etc. This use of the term 'Ultimate Reality' seems to me the neurotic foil behind which you 'hide', since it is really an unassailable territory: only you 'know' it, you hold and control the definition of it, it is a term that you uniquely possess, and it is the central term that your followers latch onto and incorporate into their discourse. I will grant you that it appears to have the same resonance and 'sense' as the use of similar terms have in the mouths and discourses of the Ramakrishnas of the world, and perhaps even of the Kabalists---in short all those traditions that hang so much on a mysterious nomenclature. However, the difference I note, and the reason I designate you and your mission as being principally neurotic, has to do with the severity of your ruthlessness in shearing-off from your own human self. (And even in your last post you *once again* refer to an imagined 'Jesus', essentially a hypothetical or fantasy 'Jesus', in such a way that justifies your choices). That shearing-off is the dead givaway, in my view. It is the 'conscious attitude' as-against reality, and what that means is the reality of ourselves as human persons, as human organisms, with emotional selves, community selves, and a whole understructure of unconscious self and being which, I assert---and it seems undeniably obvious---your mental and 'logical' system essentially denies.

To a certain extent I pay attention to who is attracted to your 'teachings' and I gather a great deal as I watch them attempt to imitate your 'certainty' about this strangely fantasy-like and abstract thing called 'Ultimate Reality'. (It is analogous to mental games like Dungeons & Dragons and attracts kids who like to play in these imagined, mental worlds). I watch them begin to perform the same cutting-off operation, and it is on one level 'merely' a language game and a charade carried out on an internet forum, but I am also aware, or believe I am aware, that all these ideas must have consequences, that is to say consequences in the life lived.

So, I came into this space (the GF) as a researcher (if you will), and also as a 'subject': I came in, allowed these strange medicines to operate on me, discovered within the fibres of my self what it all FELT like, and set my soul to work to come up with a cure for the cure.

• Now the rainman gave me two cures
  Then he said, "Jump right in"
  The one was Texas medicine
  The other was just railroad gin
  And like a fool I mixed them
  And it strangled up my mind
  And now, people just get uglier
  And I have no sense of time

This commitment, on my part, has involved numerous years of willingness to stay engaged. It has involved a great deal of reading too, a going back over ideas that are part of 'our traditions', and it also involved a research-project into the origins of Christianity (and I repeat that you are, unconsciously and to some extend unwillingly, a crypto-Christian, and you are (*ouch!*) that part of Christianity that must be surmounted in both the Freudian and Nietzschean sense). You see, you like everyone else, like all of us, are just as utterly confused about what this life means, about who we are, about what is real and unreal, about what we have to do or not do. You are just as mystified, just as lonely and broken, and just as much as anyone sitting right on the edge of psychosis: for that is what human life (now? always?) means. And like anyone, you plunge around for an easy cure, sometimes just to stay alive, just to keep from being turned under the wheel of an onrushing (and rather mad) machinery of present and future. You see, David, it is all very, very serious and it has deep implications for the individual, that is to say for the person.

But no part of this can you acknowledge, nor can your followers. And so many who come here do so because it is an opportunity to rehearse their private neuroses. The real conversation, the only conversation that has value and meaning, is the conversation in which the whole person appears. Not some neurotic 'logical' actor, but a real, living, sensate, emotional person in relational existence to other real, living, sensate, emotional persons who are doing the best they can, against enormously destructive forces, to stay alive.

(Even your most trusted and capable henchmen, the accomplished GF Apologists, have abandoned the field and can no longer even pretend to contrive excuses. This fabulous and unassailable intellectualism is seen as...en empty shell. And yes, Diebert, I refer principally to you).

Now, the issue of 'historical context' (a sinful term for you) is indeed relevant, because it is within those traditions and contexts that we can see mapped out all kinds of different organizations of perceptions and interpretations of life, and we can see them played out in time and space, and we can see them as 'fruits', as achievements, or as their opposites. In the best and most relevent sense, human intellectual, artistic, scientific, religious and psychological endeavor must be, as in Jewish and Protestant traditions, intimately linked to the notion that 'intellectual work should be directed toward the relief of man's estate', and that desire or tendency is certainly perceptible, as is also a tendency that operates in precisely the opposite direction: toward annihilation and self-destruction. The only place to get a sense of that terrible tension, and the tension that defines our relationship to our own selves, is in historical context. If you had even the most minimal education such a lecture would not have to be shoved at you.

There is no 'breaking free of all social contexts', this is the primary neurotic justification for your Mission among the Benighted. I suggest that the truth of the statement I make, and the lie of your own, is immediately and intuitively recognizable. Such that it hardly requires explanation. The phrasing is neurotic, it indicates precisely an unhealthy and self-destructive shearing off from self that, I suggest, cannot end well. Social systems and systems of constraint (or perhaps repression) can be looked at, analysed, weighed and considered, but all that lives in a human being, and so much that we would quite simply rather imagine does not exist, must be recognized, made a part of the dialectical relationship, and never severed-away from.

The idea of Zion is intimately linked with human life, and cannot be separated from it. The context of 'Zion' (since you referred to it) is contextual to those who use the term. See Psalm 147. Zion Train.

Life is too short to waste going down blind alleys in the pursuit of mirages.

Amen to that! Preach it, brother, PREACH IT!

[Alexis Jacobi]

You summarized your views with that speech last page. Normal people without a taste for the divine aren't concerned with existential problems; normalcy avoids difficult thoughts; there is the appearance of madness in deep thought; one who does enter the realm of thought can be optimistic or paranoid in regards to the divine; paranoia turns one into a snake-oil salesman; optimism leads to a gnosticism that paradoxically doesn't hold to anything.

Is that what I said? ;-)

I would say: most people seem to me trained to accept the flow of reality (mostly the one presented through media systems since almost no one lives outside of that), do not think about 'the nature of the reality we exist in'. Where does one locate the origin of that kind of questioning? and the desire to find some tools that can be used to manipulate, direct, change reality? Possibly, it all comes from the religious impulse.

'Normalcy', as I would define it, is media-mediated attitude. The desired normalcy is simply to accept what is as what is, to exist within (the) system, to buy, to sell, to live and to die. My sense is that 'the system' in general encourages non-questioning: cooperation, acquiescence, surrender.

I don't think I would say that 'there is the appearance of madness in deep thought' and I'm not sure where you extracted it because it doesn't sound like my statement. What I would say is that deep thought seems to require a guide, because it can surely bring us into difficult and dangerous territories. It seems to me that 'Western thought' often straddles an area or territory that seems to conceal or expose
'madness'. I don't get the sense that the same 'madness' arose for deep thinkers, say, in the Hindu tradition (vedas). I tend to see that our traditions, our trajectory, pushes us toward both liberation and madness: an extreme madness, the realization of the ultimate death-wish. Also, I would say that as I see things, there are hundreds and thousands if not millions of people---minds, souls, hearts, whatever you'd wish to call them---who suffer tremendously in isolation and darkness, who are lost and have no clue as to where a road 'home' might be found. It seems likely that there, in that loneliness and pain, one indeed touches 'madness'. But this does not at all mean that deep thought is the same as madness.

Some people enter 'the divine' with an almost childlike sincerity and, withough really asking too many difficult questions, rely on some kind of intuitive faith that, to all appearances, serves them well. I mean, keeps them safe and sane. Some people's religion seems not much more than the exteriorization of neurosis in the classic, Freudian sense. They use their religion to build walls around themselves, to keep 'reality' out. Other people use 'religion' as a sort of psychological 'tool' of self-exploration and knowledge-gaining. There is indeed a paranoid aspect to religion: for example to view that this whole realm is controlled by demonic forces, that life itself is out to get you, and that you need some tool or capability to outsmart it. (The so-called Manichean metaphysic encapsulates this view). The religious impulse seems to move back and forth between 'paranoia' and 'optimism'.

Paranoia can turn into a snake-oil salesman, but so can 'optimism'.

When I speak of a 'New Gnosticism' it is of course a little tongue-in-cheek. But not altogether. I think we need gnosis to interpret almost everything in our world, and certainly all texts. We are engaged, everyday, in an extraordinarily demanding interpretive struggle. If we can't interpret right, the consequences are high indeed. But, I am also speaking of literary 'gnosis' as well as existential 'gnosis'. And I do not mean that this gnosticism doesn't 'hold anything'. What I said is that we are forced to allow so many different 'things' (ideas, emotions, impulses, commands) to enter us (wash over us) that I believe we need to be able to hold to a state of strength or fortitude in respect to what comes at us. I believe that part of the 'gnosis' I am referring to is about becoming strong enough to resist...anything...and remain intact.

The part about 'holding to' interests me. What should we definitely 'hold to'? I am certainly interested in hearing.

[Dennis Mahar]

Your problem is flawed reasoning Alex.
It centres around your misunderstanding of the hermenuetical circle of interpretation.
The circle is not a tool or licence to interpret wildly, fancifully, generate silly predicates, create 'new' meanings etc...

The hermenuetical circle of interpretation means exactly this:

The World has already been interpreted for you.
You exist existentially inside the hermenuetical circle of interpretation.
You are inside the Herd. You are the Herd.
Embedded.
The circle is a condition.

You think the way out is to come up with new interpretation.
You think that would be enlightenment.
Danger! Warning!
Go back boyo.
Enlightenment is the other way.

Enlightenment is de-Worlding.

As David says: Shedding illusion.

Bring Herd meaning up to Truth Conditions, ie, True or False.

Are you American?...False...Herd fiction.

Neti Neti....not that, not that.

It gets tough.
Are you a Father, Son, Brother?
Are theses fictions?
Herd roles interpreted for you?

What do you think Jesus meant when he said something like cleave Mother from Son etc...

It's empty and meaningless.

and

It's empty and meaningless
that
It's empty and meaningless.

Dwell in the infinite.

[David Quinn]

You see, you like everyone else, like all of us, are just as utterly confused about what this life means, about who we are, about what is real and unreal, about what we have to do or not do.

This is pure ignorance, but it is understandable that you think it. Indeed, you have to think it, for to do otheriwse would mean stepping outside the realm of "social contexts" and that is something you dare not do. Your entire world-view would collapse.

It's interesting, though, that your "social-contexts" world-view cannnot help but lead you to dismiss not only me, but Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Huang Po, Nagarjuna, Hakuin and all the other men who have proclaimed authentic understanding of ultimate reality. That's a very big call to make. Are you really prepared to make such a call, that these men were simply neurotics? Does little old Alex from Panama really have the knowledge and wisdom to make such a call?

Also interesting to note, the desire you have to reduce everything down to "social contexts" is in itself, according to your own criteria, indicative of neurotic behaviour....

There is no 'breaking free of all social contexts', this is the primary neurotic justification for your Mission among the Benighted.

Again, you have to think this because otherwise your entire world-view goes down the toilet.

When you die, none of your "social contexts" will be coming with you. It will be just you and reality, nothing else. How are you going to face that?

What is enlightenment? It is returning to what you were before the earth was created.

-

[Dennis Mahar]

As David, Dan and Kevin point out.
A=A.
The thing is itself.
Don't make it B.
Face the brutal facts.
The path of Reason.
An appearance whooshes up.
Subject it to the Truth Conditions. True or False.

Nature produces people like apple trees produce apples.
They fall from the tree, ripen, rot and decay.
Herd people say:
'I'm pregnant'
'It's my baby'
'It's my Life'
'I choose'

What is this 'I'?

The Herd is like a locomotive...young minds are coupled to it like carraiges are coupled together to make up the train which chugs uphill under immense strain.
An event of infinite suffering and confusion.
They have to get politicians, cops, lawyers, psychologists doin' 3 shifts around the clock to keep it on the tracks.

The human race is like a bunch of crows strung out along a telegraph wire, twittering away, saying 'what shit can we make today'.

[Blair]

I, prince.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Social systems and systems of constraint (or perhaps repression) can be looked at, analysed, weighed and considered, but all that lives in a human being, and so much that we would quite simply rather imagine does not exist, must be recognized, made a part of the dialectical relationship, and never severed-away from.

One has to take into the account the rather obvious link between any social system of "constraint or repression" and the types of analysis made available through certain linguistic tools by that very system and even more importantly the idea of what it is to be human as defined through the linguistics and ideology of any contemporary culture.

For example the modern industrial culture defines "human" increasingly as an economical creature: in terms of participation and production, in terms of loss and profit, in terms of "functioning". Perhaps the whole psycho-analytic vocabulary grew out of the dregs of the booming age of mechanization!

Therefore its worthwhile to question the definition of "human": to think of the qualities, if any, which could lift the idea of human beyond the animal, beyond the position of another replaceable keg in the living machine. When talking about true humanitarian thought and act, this question needs to be answered. Animals are caring for their herd or their young by whatever means which are available, so to boil down humanism and compassion to another version of some hand-selected animal instincts remains closer to barbarism wrapped in modern multi-color-coats than it has anything to do with principled love for the human as a higher aspiration, as a mode of being more in tune with the in- or transhuman and the invariable: roughly the infinite.

[Alexis Jacobi]

One has to take into the account the rather obvious link between any social system of "constraint or repression" and the types of analysis made available through certain linguistic tools by that very system and even more importantly the idea of what it is to be human as defined through the linguistics and ideology of any contemporary culture.

No doubt about that. I would take this (placed, as it is, in a specific context in this 'conversation') to mean that we are free to examine and entertain, or even to embody, notions of being human, of living or acting within life, such that might come to us through 'Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Huang Po, Nagarjuna, Hakuin and all the other men who have proclaimed authentic understanding of ultimate reality'. I think it should be pointed out that we are the products and outcomes of an enormous 'receiving', opening up to, coming under the influence of, of quite radical ideas and possibilities about 'what it means to be human'. I don't see how it is possible to disregard (and this is a reference to 'context') what occurred in our cultures through the Sixties Movement(s). 'The Sixties' as: post-war radicalism, radical breaks with accepted continuity, accepted authority, turning against fathers and mothers, using strictly humanistic ideas and tools in an attempt to create a new relationship to life. I don't think that one could exhaust the importance of the recognition of the dynamism of this radical attempt to redefine 'reality'. I think one of the points to consider is that, significantly, this is what we are all doing: redefining our relationship to our selves and our context. It is a creative process. At the same time there are many dangers, not the least of which is 'cult alternatives'. When ideas are used in a way that leads to the closing-off of the individual from 'reality'. When radical attempts to redefine an individual's relationship to life, turn into an enterprize that cuts them off or harms them psychologically. It has happened too many times to name. It is a real danger.

For example the modern industrial culture defines "human" increasingly as an economical creature: in terms of participation and production, in terms of loss and profit, in terms of "functioning". Perhaps the whole psycho-analytic vocabulary grew out of the dregs of the booming age of mechanization!

And here we are: you have so nicely narrowed-in on precisely the essence of a specific radical challenge to social, cultural and economic forces that mechanize life, reduce man to a commodity, isolate and alienate him, which is to say (essentially) do him harm; disregard him, deny him, fail to recognize and to hold him as the thing of essential value. If what you say is true, we seem to be bound to discover and propose alternatives, to apply our intellectual skills toward the relief of man's estate. You, here, obviously refer to Marxian ideas. I had been working an angle with some Freudian concepts. We are in a conversation that (supposedly) deals on The Qualities of a Divenely Inclined Person on a forum which (supposedly) sets itself up as asking the most radical questions possible, invites conversation and exploration on this. And it offers an almost monolithic 'solution' to the vast problems that we have stumbled into as we examine the questions you yourself have outlined above.

Therefore its worthwhile to question the definition of "human": to think of the qualities, if any, which could lift the idea of human beyond the animal, beyond the position of another replaceable keg in the living machine. When talking about true humanitarian thought and act, this question needs to be answered. Animals are caring for their herd or their young by whatever means which are available, so to boil down humanism and compassion to another version of some hand-selected animal instincts remains closer to barbarism wrapped in modern multi-color-coats than it has anything to do with principled love for the human as a higher aspiration, as a mode of being more in tune with the in- or transhuman and the invariable: roughly the infinite.

If the first of your paragraphs were steps in a staircase of thought, with the third you seem to have dived right off. To where? I ask. I suggest a certain 'mystification' is expressed here. In any case, it is an area that can and should be explored. It is not settled. But the truth is I don't quite follow you, or if I follow you I can't be sure where you are going. Human beings care for their young in certain ways. I get that. But the next part seems to suggest that a definition of 'humanism' and 'compassion', if expressed 'instintually', is or can remain 'barbaric'. And something which values or expresses a 'principaled love' for human beings as a 'higher aspiration' therefore has good reasons to 'sever-off' from this instintual selfness(?) And then---shazzam!---there we are again in 'the infinite'. Perhaps you should linger over your broad steps, Diebert. Something is not quite right here. It sounds to me like a routine Nietzschean phrasing, some longing for dramatic transvaluations, for superman emergence. It appear as a hop, a skip, and then a leap into something too grand to even be conversed intelligently. I suppose that at that point one invokes 'David, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Huang Po, Nagarjuna, Hakuin', installs the notion of Ultimate Reality in one's vocabulary, and begins a radical project of shearing off? I am going to suggest that it is right here, within this manoeuvre, that we locate what I refer to as 'neurosis'. Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't. The point is free examination. (And not all that is neurotic is necessarily 'bad' either, but it does tend to indicate resistance to an invisible agent, that is to say 'unconscious pressure').

A thought-provoking essay on 'Sixties personalism' can be found in the introduction to The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Post-War Radicalism.

What is enlightenment?

The question is very good. But how a man answers it is his own responsibility, his own discovery, his own relationship. The problem---or in any case 'a' problem---with your view is that you have made it into a monolith. You serve this giant monolith in a similar way that you serve your fantasy Jesus: it is a mirror into which you stare. I conclude, unwillingly, that your core mental structure is not much different from, or in any case is similar to, Dennis's: a simple, binary mechanism that you use to confront all onslaughts. The advantage: in your own mind you will always 'win'.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

we are free to examine and entertain, or even to embody, notions of being human, of living or acting within life, such that might come to us through 'Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Huang Po, Nagarjuna, Hakuin and all the other men who have proclaimed authentic understanding of ultimate reality'.

They appear to have in common a form of aiming beyond the notion of "human" in each and every delivery. Humans here solely appear as parable of being, of existence or as the wise finding out about existence. Which is philosophically correct: human perceives human through thought, ergo he needs to address thought to progress and not "human being".

At the same time there are many dangers, not the least of which is 'cult alternatives'. When ideas are used in a way that leads to the closing-off of the individual from 'reality'. When radical attempts to redefine an individual's relationship to life, turn into an enterprize that cuts them off or harms them psychologically. It has happened too many times to name. It is a real danger.

A cult can only threaten other cults and its members, but never the wise individual. This is because a cult addresses the cultic tendendancies already operating in us. Like a herd connects with our active herd instincts.

We are in a conversation that (supposedly) deals on The Qualities of a Divenely Inclined Person on a forum which (supposedly) sets itself up as asking the most radical questions possible, invites conversation and exploration on this. And it offers an almost monolithic 'solution' to the vast problems that we have stumbled into as we examine the questions you yourself have outlined above.

I don't think it offers "solutions" at all and for sure the conversation so far contains too many viewpoints and substantially differing qualities to entertain this thought. What it could offer is the possibility of asking a different question which does not change the presence of challenges and changes coming and going.

Human beings care for their young in certain ways. I get that. But the next part seems to suggest that a definition of 'humanism' and 'compassion', if expressed 'instinctively', is or can remain 'barbaric'.

The main gist of the above had to do with the tendency of the civilized human to wrap up the shallow, the instinctive, and the animal drive as something having actually some "higher" purpose or origin or at least a "moral" compass: a shadow of divinity denied. But it's one of these very instincts, damaged or not, which make us tart it up in the first place. This is of course a very Nietzschean observation but once it's seen one also realizes it always has been seen by all "seers", by all court jesters. So far nihilism but it does clear the way in some sense.

[Dennis Mahar]

I conclude, unwillingly, that your core mental structure is not much different from, or in any case is similar to, Dennis's: a simple, binary mechanism that you use to confront all onslaughts. The advantage: in your own mind you will always 'win'.

It's not about winning.
It just takes direct confrontation to break through.
With your giftedness for expression Alex, the infinite has the possibility of a brilliant spokesperson in you, for it.

You can get in to World building of roles, practices, values later. Building a World that inspires human being rather than humiliates him.

After all, Buddha built his Sangha and Jesus his Church.
They got fucked up by deranged interpreters. Wouldn't you know it.

Human being has essence plus existence or existentiality.
Another form such as tomato plant has just essence. It sits in soil, soaking up sunshine, absorbing water and that's it...produces tomato's.
Human being too has essence, ie, instincts.
It has existentiality as well, or possibilities for existence, possibilities for World building and possibilities for the tasks required to build Worlds, like plumbers, carpenters, doctors, philosophers, scientists, ethicists, environmentalists...
Human being produces Worlds like tomato plants produce tomato's. That's its thing thinging.


When we talk about human being we talk about that aspect of human being as philosophers.

What distinguishes human being is it's concern for it's being.
For human being, it's being matters to it.
It's something human being shows up as caring a great deal about.
You Alex, show up as a human displaying an extraordinary care for human being. That's well and good, very healthy.

What GF is getting at is what gave rise to any of this anyway.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

The part about 'holding to' interests me. What should we definitely 'hold to'? I am certainly interested in hearing.

You used the vocabulary of "holding to" in your own reply, and in very close proximity to this question. In this example, what you hold to is "strength... fortitude... remain[ing] intact." I don't think you can avoid some structural element.

[Alexis Jacobi]

They appear to have in common a form of aiming beyond the notion of "human" in each and every delivery. Humans here solely appear as parable of being, of existence or as the wise finding out about existence. Which is philosophically correct: human perceives human through thought, ergo he needs to address thought to progress and not "human being".

Emphatically, you would have to excise 'Jesus' from the list, that much I am almost certain of. No matter how you cut it, it is impossible to make the Gospel figure of Jesus (though there are at least 5 different persons there, maybe more) into some sort of Zen monk merging with the forest and spouting koans.

But I would agree with you, pretty much, about the other names. Still, this much I am certain of: those traditions arose within a social and cultural context, and they fit into that cultural and social context, and they nourished the cultural and social context. These temples, these practices, the philosophy, did certainly flow back into the cultural matrix against which, as you seem to imply, they were in resistance. I tried to look around for some information on this subject but I don't know where to find it. I don't really have the time for it. But I would argue that there is a HUGE difference in the way this psuedo-Zen (whatever David et al means when 'Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Huang Po, Nagarjuna, Hakuin and all the other men who have proclaimed authentic understanding of ultimate reality' is referred to) and those actual Zen practitioners. And though I think it is obvious, the True Believer dullards who write on these pages do not seem capable or interested in using their discernment much. What I mostly hear on these pages, and what I see David recommending, is (for example) breaking apart relationships or marriages. Preaching a complete separation---something radical, desperate and extreme---from the cultural matrix. Also, a privelaging of a vague (and I use the word neurotic) 'ultimate reality' as a sort of 'thing' to be referred to (like Dennis imagines a person could become a 'spokesman' for)(and you know how these political games are played, how the 'teams' of Infinite Men work together to defeat their Rhetorical Adversaries)...a thing that is referred to as a substitute for the substance of a life. Ah and let us not forget the virulent woman-contempt, this nearly erotic esprit de corp with a barely submerged phallicism that is played out here constantly. Was that a game the Buddha played too, Diebert? And 'Jesus, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Huang Po, Nagarjuna, Hakuin and all the other men who have proclaimed authentic understanding of ultimate reality'? It is a good question to ask, don't you think? You see, Diebert, you give evidence of never really hearing just why a critique is put forth. You only hear what you allow yourself to hear, quite a bit like David and the QRS-tian crowd. In your case, no matter how careful and nuanced a critique may be, you deflect it every time and never address the meat of it. Y'all sound like neurotics defending your abstractions, teaming up and defending yourselves, so to be able to carry on in a Dungeons & Dragon fantasy world. (That is of course a little over the top. I do recognize that, despite the GFers, many different layers of conversation manage to take place).

I think one of the issues, as I begin to understand it, has to do with the fact that Zen and Taoism are not our own traditions. So that if we practice it, or study it, or drink it in, we become Wsterners or post-Christian or post-Jews (and God aren't there tons of those within Buddhism?) And the issue or problem of this grafting-on to our trunk the leaves of a very distinct, very old tradition that has a very peculiar and distinct root, entails very real dangers. Do you ever, ever talk about this? Do you even SEE any of this stuff, Diebert?

I think that one has an opportunity to observe, here, some of this 'pathology' on these pages. I know (indeed I know...) that the way your-plural minds work is to visualize a tradition (Zen, Buddhism, Tao, whatever) as if it is a mathematic or geometric treatise, the record of perception, or some sort of 'ultimate philosophical key' (THE ultimate key) and imagine that it is just a question of 'seeing things that way', of getting it to percolate down into one, or perhaps putting on some Zen-like clothes, or shaving your head like Kelly and decorating your hovel in the Zen style and acting convincingly. Bingo! Zen practitioner, Zen tradition. It just doesn't work that way though. I am not saying this and speaking from no experience at all. My own parents did almost exactly what I am critiquing here. I lived it. And I know that you find it contemptuous that I mention personal experience, but it is significantly what my opinions and ideas expressed here are based in.

A cult can only threaten other cults and its members, but never the wise individual. This is because a cult addresses the cultic tendendancies already operating in us. Like a herd connects with our active herd instincts.

Sorry, your 'wise individual' is an abstraction. You indeed may not be this 'wise individual'. You might be...someone who is fooling yourself...someone who has gotten trapped in certain ideas that hold and even control you. It is because such things happen, such things are going on right now, that no one of us can say we are immune. So, your 'wise individual' is a dangerous arrogance (and this chippy arrogance is one of the main features of GFerism. Even a bad reader can discern it. Shall I name names?) No, Diebert, cult thinking is far more dangerous than you allow. I assert that it runs significantly though the ideas presented on this forum, and the main players are 'unconsciously infected' by such ideas. And that is not the end of the world, either. It happens to all people, especialy in this trecherous present. To be 'wise' is to know that one is vulnerable.

Get those rhetorical engines primed and revving, Diebert. I know I ain't heard the last from you.

[David Quinn]

My own parents did almost exactly what I am critiquing here. I lived it. And I know that you find it contemptuous that I mention personal experience, but it is significantly what my opinions and ideas expressed here are based in.

And are coloured by.

I think we are getting to the heart of the matter here....

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