GENIUS FORUMS

As a final point Kevin this excert from Provocations will I think explain all for you. re the knowledge thing. Please note Kierkergaard believed in Christ not Christianity

"Although the scribes could say where the Messiah should be
born, they remained quite unperturbed in Jerusalem. They did
not accompany the Wise Men to seek him. Similarly one may
know the whole of Christianity, yet make no movement. What a
difference! The three kings had only a rumor to go by. But it
moved them to make that long journey. The scribes were much
better informed. They sat and studied the Scriptures like so
many scholars, but it did not make them move. Who had more
truth? The three kings who followed a rumor, or the scribes
who remained sitting with all their knowledge?"

Natan wrote:

No Faith is required in what you believe to be true

To know something absolutely that cannot be known is delusion (ie suicide bombers) . To believe in something that cannot be known is Faith..........There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

Its a leap of FAITH not a leap based on knowledge.Knowledge doesnt leap as you imply....it crawls on its belly..where there is ground.whwre there is no ground it stops in fear of ridicule/self doubts etc

How do you break it down? How do you determine the balance between knowedge and doubt which best stimulates faith? Would it be, say, 99% knowledge and 1% doubt? Or 80% knowledge and 20% doubt? Or 50%-50%? What do you think?

If we want to make faith a function of intellectual doubt, then all sorts of absurd scenarios immediately come into play. For example, the idea that God is the "act of repeatedly stabbing oneself in the foot" is surely a lot more doubtful than, say, the idea that God is "the totality of all there is", and therefore would require a lot more faith to believe in.

Are we really going to say that the man who believes his salvation lies in repeatedly stabbing his foot is a far superior man of faith than he who gives himself over to the Totality?

There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

This doesn't make any sense at all. It is like saying that the man who doesn't really know where a buried treasure is has more chance of finding it than the man who knows exactly where it is.

Its a leap of FAITH not a leap based on knowledge.Knowledge doesnt leap as you imply....it crawls on its belly..where there is ground.whwre there is no ground it stops in fear of ridicule/self doubts etc

It is true that the spiritual person has to exercise faith in order to overcome doubts, but these doubts aren't intellectual in nature. They have nothing to do with his knowledge of God. As Kevin rightly says, the spiritual man knows already knows exactly what God is, so that isn't the issue.

Instead, the issue revolves around the seemingly inhuman degree of devotion which God requires from us. The doubts that the spiritual person has to confront concern, not his intellectual understanding, but his character, moral courage and love of God.

We can see this issue being addressed by Jesus all throughout the Gospels. For example:

- Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.


- Those who want to be my disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for me will find it.


- No one can be a slave to two masters.


- What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.


- If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.


- No one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.


- Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.


- Blessed is he who is not offended.

The path to God is infinitely extreme and utterly beyond all normal worldly sense, and it is here, in this dynamic, that the real tussle between faith and doubt occurs. The intellectual exercise of working out the nature of God has been resolved by the spiritual person long ago. He now confronts a far greater challenge, and one that is a lot scarier.

Kierkegaard also focused a lot of his attention upon this issue:

- When one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers "he is
mad", know then this signifies that there are considerable elements of truth in
his preaching. But perhaps he is not pressing hard enough, either by his oral
preaching or by the preaching of his life. But when one preaches
Christianity in such a way that the echo answers "Away with that man from
the earth, he does not deserve to live", know then that this is the Christianity of
the New Testament.


- To have faith is really to advance along the way where all human road signs
point: back, back, back.


- Man has the natural tendency to think that if he only makes an effort he will
be victorious. Christianity says that downfall is being victorious. Know this -
if you manage to reach merely a modest degree of perfection, your downfall is
certain; and the more you succeed, the more certain your downfall. To turn
over thoughts like these for only one hour is more exhausting than enormous
efforts in the hope of being victorious.
It is just as if Christianity would kill all courage, all delight, every hope in a
man. Yes, all spontaneous courage and delight and hope - this is called dying
to the world.


- It is out of love that suffering befalls you. Blessed is he who is not offended
by it. "Blessed is the man who does not fall away, on account of me".


- Most men never reach faith at all. They live a long time in immediacy or
spontaneity, finally they advance to some reflection, and then they die. The
exceptions begin the other way around; dialectical from childhood, that is,
without immediacy, they begin with the dialectical, with reflection, and they
go on living this way year after year (about as long as others live in sheer
immediacy) and then, at a more mature age, faiths possibility presents itself to
them. For faith is immediacy or spontaneity after reflection.
Naturally, the exceptions have a very unhappy childhood and youth, for to
be essentially reflective at that age, which by nature is spontaneous or
immediate, is the most profound melancholy. But there is a return. Most
people drift on in such a way they never become spirit; all their many happy
years of immediacy tend towards spiritual retardation and therefore they never
become spirit. But the unhappy childhood and youth of the exceptions are
transfigured into spirit.



- Voluntariness is the highest form of religiousness and is therefore to be
recognized by the fact that here God is most rigorous. Religiousness is
classified according to ascending rigor.
I myself recognize that I have too mild a conception of God (a
"grandfather"). This is the reason I have not ventured the voluntary and why I
have never used authority. And yet the tiny bit of the voluntary, if I may say
so, which my life evidences is still too high for most people. So far has
Christianity retrogressed.


- God can involve himself with the human race on one of two conditions,
either in such a way that individuals are found who are willing to venture out
so far in hating themselves that God can use them as apostles, or in such a way
that the true situation is honestly and unconditionally admitted. The latter is
my primitivity.
As far as the former is concerned, this is certainly the instruction of the New
Testament. But with respect to venturing out so far, the following must be
noted. This is something so dreadful for a human being that it is permissible
to say: I dare not.

Notice that Kierkegaard specifically links faith with "voluntariness" and "increasing rigor". The man of faith is someone who voluntarily pushes along the extreme path to God with increasing rigor.

-

Natan wrote:

I said
The Tao that can be known is not the Tao

KS Said
Only those who know the Tao can say that. And since you don't, you can't say it.

Forgive my ignorance kevin, what is the Tao then? Please define it for me

"The Tao" and "God" are synonyms for what I have mentioned throughout several posts, namely the All, the Infiinite, the Totality, Reality, Truth, the One.

However, this is not something that can be known or understood simply by reading a few words. It is a knowledge that requires huge sacrifice.

The scribes were much better informed. They sat and studied the Scriptures like so many scholars, but it did not make them move.

In this story, it is clear that the three wise men knew something that the scholars did not know. And it is that which the wise men knew that made them move. So, in fact, the three wise men were better informed than the scholars who remained immersed in their books, without understanding.

It is the same message as I gave above.

A person can read and memorize that "The Tao and God are synonyms for the All, the Infinite, etc", but this is not the same as really knowing it from first-hand experience. It is not the same as having become God oneself. The latter is real knowledge and the former is nothing.

Some personal thoughts about Kierkegaard, from a philosophical angle. (blogged here)

Truth is strange. In the majority of philosophical tomes of thought, the treatment of truth seems to stained with self-disgust, an aversion to itself. I see the truth is always “just about to be,” but it never actually coincides with itself in the text. While reflecting, I arrive at an unhappy position - entirely of my own choosing – where I find the “state of philosophy” in tattered decrepitude. This thought of agony drains the world of color, and leaves behind naught but splotches of grey. The bland walls of tedium threaten to envelope me. This seems the revenge of life against my efforts of looking too deeply, and far too long into the abyss…

For Kierkegaard, each step taken in reflection is a step backwards from immediacy. This pronouncement seems to carry the implication that reflection cannot ever spur anyone to scale the mountain and find enlightenment at its peak.

To Kierkegaard’s credit, his original genius was the transformation of pedantic philosophy into a problem of writing and bequeathing a host of rich categories for existentialism (anxiety, dread, absurdity).

There was an incident in Constantinus’ Repetition that changed the author’s life, where a speck of dust (an eyelash?)in the eye was enough to collapse his entire world view. Once the speck irritated Constantinus’ eye, he went to pieces and fell into the “abyss of despair.” The Christian will immediately notice the allusion to the Gospel of Matthew. However, for Kierkegaard, the worldview is Hegel’s systematic metaphysics.

In the early 19th century, philosophy cunningly outsmarted itself in the excessive rhetoric of Fichte, Schelling, and most importantly, the tortured language of Hegel. Despite this, Hegel was crowned as the king of all philosophy. Kierkegaard became intimately familiar with Hegel’s works, and he also knew that the keystone of Hegel’s entire historical system of logic, the Aufhebung was the great dragon he must overcome. Aufhebung is translated into English as “sublation,” meaning that the contradictions in history are always overcome at once, but at the same time, also preserved by the elevation to a higher plane of thought.

I can hear the objection: feh, this Aufhebung doesn’t seem so dangerous and nasty. I can't, for the life of me, see why Kierkegaard found it utterly dangerous.

Kierkegaard cleverly showed that Hegel’s philosophy, despite its omnivorous power, or perhaps because of it, overlooks the “unsurpassable opaqueness” of the lived experience. In his book Search for a Method the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, did not object to this. He also noted that Hegel was very absolute in his optimism, and admittedly, too much so. Hegel, given the chance, would insist that the tragic experience of a single person – the suffering that lasted until death – is easily absorbed and sublated by the system in its passage towards the genuine historical absolute.

However, despite such unflagging optimism, Kierkegaard thought that the specifically real was primal, both above and beyond thought. The real cannot be exhausted by thought, and it cannot be reduced or compartmentalized into spic and span system of philosophy. The supra-individual system glosses over the speck in one’s eye, for it is an existential coloration of mood. In other words, one’s subjective life can never be turned into the object of formally abstract knowledge.

Kierkegaard shows us the contradictions of the individual in the agonizing choices that he or she makes, but they are never “surpassed.” At this, Hegel would smile and dismisses such private agonies as the “romantic unhappy conscience”, merely a moment already known in essence and thereby surpassed in the process. However, Kierkegaard’s irreducible subjectivity has a “magical transcendence” up his sleeve, a mystical going beyond to God. This “going beyond” is not to be confused with the traditional religious sense of leap “up” to God, but a free fall into subjective inwardness of infinite depth. Kierkegaard places the individual on the very brink of the absurd, the abyss, and the problem is that the falling is inevitable.

In order to win god, in order to believe, one must lose one’s understanding.
Sartre called this a sacrificial transcendence, a last suicidally absurd insurrection against Hegel’s “science” of philosophy. Hegel would’ve objected to the narrow paradox, and say that his aufhebung is the better alternative, for it promises the enrichment of the objectivity of all people.


Kierkegaard’s “fallenness” into absurd faith is indeed, a quasi-suicidal transcendence, and a clever rhetorical move, some would say desperate, against the systematizing Hegelian process. Hegel’s blatant optimism in the priority of philosophy over experience gnawed at Kierkegaard. Hegel knew philosophy, as a science, had no use for the relative question of the individual experience in the real movement of history. Outrageous, says, Kierkegaard. Then there is nothing to such “science” but to make a scandal of faith and turn Christianity into a faithlessly rationalist regime.

Christendom is the pejorative term Kierkegaard calls the society that is Christian in name only, but virtually atheist through and through. This society has institutionalized its own reason for being Christian. Hegel is correct, in this sense – the genuine experience of faith has already been bypassed for historical reasons of state. That means faith has no room to go, except Kierkegaard’s self-elected absurdity. Sartre himself is probably incorrect when he dismisses Kierkegaard for not being a philosopher, and that Hegel is the superior thinker.

In a nutshell, Kierkegaard has lured the reader into the depths of subjectivity, only to pull the rug out under us and reveal that without God, unhappiness is ubiquitous. Kierkegaard was the first post-Christian who realized that Christianity has become a mockery of the Evangelical ideal, and that it is no longer a given belief, but nonexistent unless testified by faith in it.

I wrote:

No Faith is required in what you believe to be true

To know something absolutely that cannot be known is delusion (ie suicide bombers) . To believe in something that cannot be known is Faith..........There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

Its a leap of FAITH not a leap based on knowledge.Knowledge doesnt leap as you imply....it crawls on its belly..where there is ground.whwre there is no ground it stops in fear of ridicule/self doubts etc

DQ
How do you break it down? How do you determine the balance between knowedge and doubt which best stimulates faith? Would it be, say, 99% knowledge and 1% doubt? Or 80% knowledge and 20% doubt? Or 50%-50%? What do you think?

If we want to make faith a function of intellectual doubt, then all sorts of absurd scenarios immediately come into play. For example, the idea that God is the "act of repeatedly stabbing oneself in the foot" is surely a lot more doubtful than, say, the idea that God is "the totality of all there is", and therefore would require a lot more faith to believe in.

Are we really going to say that the man who believes his salvation lies in repeatedly stabbing his foot is a far superior man of faith than he who gives himself over to the Totality?

I am not saying this. I am saying that the leap of Faith is beyond knowledge but the leaper has a grain of doubt. His leap is a sign he overcomes that doubt


I said Quote:
There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

This doesn't make any sense at all. It is like saying that the man who doesn't really know where a buried treasure is has more chance of finding it than the man who knows exactly where it is.

But the Tao that can be known is not the Tao......God that can be known is not God........and this idea of "The Totality of all Things" is a pleasant anesthetic to take away the pain. You committ in old parlance a blasphemy when you claim to know GOD.You leap to God. What you find there is beyond what you are looking for. Your analogy twists things, its a twist of logic. Lets re-phrase it. Two men are seeking treasure, one knows exactly what he seeks and finds it. The other has a good idea what it is he seeks, but doubts his worthiness to find it ....The first becomes self-satisfied in his find and squanders it , the second is ever in awe of it, remembering how his doubt was overcome

DQ wrote
Its a leap of FAITH not a leap based on knowledge.Knowledge doesnt leap as you imply....it crawls on its belly..where there is ground.whwre there is no ground it stops in fear of ridicule/self doubts etc

It is true that the spiritual person has to exercise faith in order to overcome doubts, but these doubts aren't intellectual in nature. They have nothing to do with his knowledge of God. As Kevin rightly says, the spiritual man knows already knows exactly what God is, so that isn't the issue.

Yes I know this and I never said they were intellectual in Nature It is your friend KS that keeps using the word "knowledge and knowing

Instead, the issue revolves around the seemingly inhuman degree of devotion which God requires from us. The doubts that the spiritual person has to confront concern, not his intellectual understanding, but his character, moral courage and love of God.

We can see this issue being addressed by Jesus all throughout the Gospels. For example:

Quote:
- Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.


- Those who want to be my disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for me will find it.


- No one can be a slave to two masters.


- What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.


- If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.


- No one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.


- Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.


- Blessed is he who is not offended.


The path to God is infinitely extreme and utterly beyond all normal worldly sense, and it is here, in this dynamic, that the real tussle between faith and doubt occurs. The intellectual exercise of working out the nature of God has been resolved by the spiritual person long ago. He now confronts a far greater challenge, and one that is a lot scarier.

Kierkegaard also focused a lot of his attention upon this issue:

Quote:
- When one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers "he is
mad", know then this signifies that there are considerable elements of truth in
his preaching. But perhaps he is not pressing hard enough, either by his oral
preaching or by the preaching of his life. But when one preaches
Christianity in such a way that the echo answers "Away with that man from
the earth, he does not deserve to live", know then that this is the Christianity of
the New Testament.


- To have faith is really to advance along the way where all human road signs
point: back, back, back.


- Man has the natural tendency to think that if he only makes an effort he will
be victorious. Christianity says that downfall is being victorious. Know this -
if you manage to reach merely a modest degree of perfection, your downfall is
certain; and the more you succeed, the more certain your downfall. To turn
over thoughts like these for only one hour is more exhausting than enormous
efforts in the hope of being victorious.
It is just as if Christianity would kill all courage, all delight, every hope in a
man. Yes, all spontaneous courage and delight and hope - this is called dying
to the world.


- It is out of love that suffering befalls you. Blessed is he who is not offended
by it. "Blessed is the man who does not fall away, on account of me".


- Most men never reach faith at all. They live a long time in immediacy or
spontaneity, finally they advance to some reflection, and then they die. The
exceptions begin the other way around; dialectical from childhood, that is,
without immediacy, they begin with the dialectical, with reflection, and they
go on living this way year after year (about as long as others live in sheer
immediacy) and then, at a more mature age, faiths possibility presents itself to
them. For faith is immediacy or spontaneity after reflection.
Naturally, the exceptions have a very unhappy childhood and youth, for to
be essentially reflective at that age, which by nature is spontaneous or
immediate, is the most profound melancholy. But there is a return. Most
people drift on in such a way they never become spirit; all their many happy
years of immediacy tend towards spiritual retardation and therefore they never
become spirit. But the unhappy childhood and youth of the exceptions are
transfigured into spirit.



- Voluntariness is the highest form of religiousness and is therefore to be
recognized by the fact that here God is most rigorous. Religiousness is
classified according to ascending rigor.
I myself recognize that I have too mild a conception of God (a
"grandfather"). This is the reason I have not ventured the voluntary and why I
have never used authority. And yet the tiny bit of the voluntary, if I may say
so, which my life evidences is still too high for most people. So far has
Christianity retrogressed.


- God can involve himself with the human race on one of two conditions,
either in such a way that individuals are found who are willing to venture out
so far in hating themselves that God can use them as apostles, or in such a way
that the true situation is honestly and unconditionally admitted. The latter is
my primitivity.
As far as the former is concerned, this is certainly the instruction of the New
Testament. But with respect to venturing out so far, the following must be
noted. This is something so dreadful for a human being that it is permissible
to say: I dare not.


Notice that Kierkegaard specifically links faith with "voluntariness" and "increasing rigor". The man of faith is someone who voluntarily pushes along the extreme path to God with increasing rigor.

Do you think I do not know all this, all the above. Do you think I'm idly showing off my knowledge? or arguing semantics . Do you think I'm not standing at the edge ready to leap, my knees trembling, feeling sick about to jump!! Jumping to a place that is beyond knowledge or human understanding
The seed of doubt is my own doubt and the only thing that can overcome doubt is not knowledge, nor understanding nor logic ..........but leaping, the act of leaping .

I've leapt and am now ready to do what must be done.to tear down the walls of hypocrisy, to be offending (kierkergaards word) in the name of God to suffer all ridicule, to die to the world, to only serve one master

Now I have a puzzle for you. Taoists and Buddhists, those that believe in the Totality of all Things like you and Kevin, would not feel as I do. They would be small, quiet to the world and understand..................Have I leapt to the wrong place David?
Why do I need to ask you? Please answer!

Natan wrote:But the Tao that can be known is not the Tao......God that can be known is not God

Since you know neither God nor the Tao, by your own admission, you are not qualified to be saying such things.

and this idea of "The Totality of all Things" is a pleasant anesthetic to take away the pain.

I presume you think that the Totality, the All, the Infinite, is not real. In what way is it not real? Or are you speaking without knowledge again?

Two men are seeking treasure, one knows exactly what he seeks and finds it. The other has a good idea what it is he seeks, but doubts his worthiness to find it ....The first becomes self-satisfied in his find and squanders it , the second is ever in awe of it

Rather, the first one does not doubt his worthiness to find the treasure. He says, "I am the son, and God is my father, therefore I have a right to God's riches." And he is right.

The second one is like one who regards himself to be an adopted child, and not a true part of the family. The family home is never his home because of a fault from his own side. The Kingdom of God is not his.

Taoists and Buddhists, those that believe in the Totality of all Things like you and Kevin,

Which Taoists and Buddhists are you talking about?

I will assume you mean people like the Buddha himself, Lao Tzu, Huang-Po, and Hakuin.

. . . would not feel as I do. They would be small, quiet to the world and understand

These great men I mentioned weren't small and quiet to the world were they? They resound immortal throughout the Universe.

..................Have I leapt to the wrong place David?
Why do I need to ask you? Please answer!

Hopefully David will respond differently to myself. :-)


[minor edit]

.

Kevin writes:

One can only have complete trust (faith) in those things one knows with certainty to be absolutely true.

I don't mind at all knowing what one means by a word; elseways I cannot know what is meant by one at all.

Trust has always struck me as a passive word. It requires a preposition ("in") to place it somewhere, to hand-it-off, if you will, again implying no full possession of something, regardless of how one modifies it with "complete."

and Kevin's-quote:

The reason we have so few geniuses is because people do not have faith in what they know to be true.

Don't like this one myself. Any run-of-the-mill fundamentalist can claim to occupy this space.

In spite of these details, you've made clear how you hold all this together, whether I find it cohesive or not.

p.s. Jamesh, enjoyed your materialist take on faith. It is always bemusing -- and not without consideration -- to watch a materialist gather things up in mechanisms like this. It's like the authority of numbers assumed, without knowing the surety of the principles behind them; interesting nonetheless.

.

Pye wrote:Trust has always struck me as a passive word. It requires a preposition ("in") to place it somewhere, to hand-it-off, if you will, again implying no full possession of something, regardless of how one modifies it with "complete."

I've always had a very different spin on it, since I've never felt I can trust anybody. Feeling trust in others is not a part of my universe.

The only person you can trust is yourself. So, in this sense trust is something active - it is a belief in yourself, and in your own mind.

and Kevin's-quote:

The reason we have so few geniuses is because people do not have faith in what they know to be true.

Don't like this one myself. Any run-of-the-mill fundamentalist can claim to occupy this space.

A fundamentalist would be unlikely to claim to be a genius.

It's true that fundamentalists have faith in what they know to be true, but that in itself is not a guarantee of being a genius, since, obviously, they can be mistaken in their knowledge.

My statement is still true in itself. That is, if people do not have faith in what they know to be true, they will not become a genius.

Absolutist thinking can result in both fundamentalism and genius.

Postmodernism is the result of running away from absolutist thinking. It doesn't entirely curb fundamentalism because you still have fundamentalist postmodernists. Postmodernism, however, is the perfect environment for freedom from genius. A postmodernist environment is like the landscape at the south pole. Nothing at all, and nothing grows.

I should add, that I find listening to a fundamentalist more interesting than listening to a postmodernist.

For example, take Kenneth Copeland, an old-school fundamentalist American preacher, compared to a modern Anglican priest.

For every, say, three hundred things Copeland says, one of them will make quite good sense. But you could listen to virtually any Anglican priest for ten years and he'll never say anything sensible at all. Your mind would turn to mush before the first day is over.

Natan,

N: There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

DQ: This doesn't make any sense at all. It is like saying that the man who doesn't really know where a buried treasure is has more chance of finding it than the man who knows exactly where it is.

N: Your analogy twists things, its a twist of logic. Lets re-phrase it. Two men are seeking treasure, one knows exactly what he seeks and finds it. The other has a good idea what it is he seeks, but doubts his worthiness to find it ....The first becomes self-satisfied in his find and squanders it , the second is ever in awe of it, remembering how his doubt was overcome.

Or alternatively, the first person's knowledge and experience of God is pure, and thus he effortlessly perceives God's infinite majesty and rejoices in it.

The second person is still caught up in his own egotism and vanity, and his preoccupied mind is turned away from God. The "awe" he experiences is really just his own ego singing in triumph.

But the Tao that can be known is not the Tao......God that can be known is not God........and this idea of "The Totality of all Things" is a pleasant anesthetic to take away the pain.

And why would you say that?

You committ in old parlance a blasphemy when you claim to know GOD.You leap to God. What you find there is beyond what you are looking for.

See below.

DQ: It is true that the spiritual person has to exercise faith in order to overcome doubts, but these doubts aren't intellectual in nature. They have nothing to do with his knowledge of God. As Kevin rightly says, the spiritual man knows already knows exactly what God is, so that isn't the issue.

N: Yes I know this and I never said they were intellectual in Nature It is your friend KS that keeps using the word "knowledge and knowing

If that is the case, then why did you say to me above: "You committ in old parlance a blasphemy when you claim to know GOD"?

Are you affirming the idea that the spiritual person knows exactly what God is, or disagreeing with it?

Do you think I do not know all this, all the above. Do you think I'm idly showing off my knowledge? or arguing semantics . Do you think I'm not standing at the edge ready to leap, my knees trembling, feeling sick about to jump!! Jumping to a place that is beyond knowledge or human understanding
The seed of doubt is my own doubt and the only thing that can overcome doubt is not knowledge, nor understanding nor logic ..........but leaping, the act of leaping .

I've leapt and am now ready to do what must be done.to tear down the walls of hypocrisy, to be offending (kierkergaards word) in the name of God to suffer all ridicule, to die to the world, to only serve one master

Your family?

Now I have a puzzle for you. Taoists and Buddhists, those that believe in the Totality of all Things like you and Kevin, would not feel as I do. They would be small, quiet to the world and understand..................Have I leapt to the wrong place David?

I have no idea. It depends on where you were trying to leap to in the first place.

I have to say, though, that your writing, for the most part, is almost incoherent. One can barely make sense of anything you say. This indicates to me that you haven't really resolved any of these issues in your own mind, and that you are still relying on bluff and bluster, and emotional hand-wringing, and the vague support of scripture to muddle your way through.

I think you are deliberately hiding behind a confused mindset, and hence it is very much in your interests to keep beefing up the concept of "faith" and downplaying the role of reason and intellectual knowledge.

-

What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd around the poet and say to him, "Sing for us soon again"—which is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music, is delightful."
- Either/Or

What is a poet? Kiekegaard is a poet. He is describing himself here that is as "The Underground Man".

KS wrote
Since you know neither God nor the Tao, by your own admission, you are not qualified to be saying such things.

Your postings clearly reveal, Kevin, that you know neither. The only thing you know is the level of your "knowledge" and that stops well short of discussing GOD.

I said
and this idea of "The Totality of all Things" is a pleasant anesthetic to take away the pain.

KS
I presume you think that the Totality, the All, the Infinite, is not real. In what way is it not real? Or are you speaking without knowledge again?

No, you are speaking again with your limited knowledge. You "know" that God is the "Totality of All Things" How do you not "know" that God is not God as described in the Old and New Testament.....possibly because you do not have the courage to accept that and would rather hide behind some vague affirmation as "The Totality"

I said
Two men are seeking treasure, one knows exactly what he seeks and finds it. The other has a good idea what it is he seeks, but doubts his worthiness to find it ....The first becomes self-satisfied in his find and squanders it , the second is ever in awe of it


Rather, the first one does not doubt his worthiness to find the treasure. He says, "I am the son, and God is my father, therefore I have a right to God's riches." And he is right.

The second one is like one who regards himself to be an adopted child, and not a true part of the family. The family home is never his home because of a fault from his own side. The Kingdom of God is not his.

The meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek shall inherit the earth. You are neither meek nor right here...........To doubt but to leap anyway is the only way to GOD. Imagine Abraham knew GOD would change his mind at the last moment....This would not be a leap of Faith would it?.It would be a farce, like your arguments
No he must have had doubt a sickness in his stomach as what was to happen.

I said
Taoists and Buddhists, those that believe in the Totality of all Things like you and Kevin,


Which Taoists and Buddhists are you talking about?

I will assume you mean people like the Buddha himself, Lao Tzu, Huang-Po, and Hakuin.

Oh a game of smart arses....What about Chuang Tzu then

I said
. . . would not feel as I do. They would be small, quiet to the world and understand

KS
These great men I mentioned weren't small and quiet to the world were they? They resound immortal throughout the Universe.

They teach to be quiet to the world. Don't you see the conflict that I face.............Tao vs Kierkegaards God...which to follow. No you don't see do you because there is no God, cos you "Know"

DQ wrote
Natan,

Quote:
N: There has to be the tiniest grain of doubt with which the believer leaps.........or else he leaps to the wrong place

DQ: This doesn't make any sense at all. It is like saying that the man who doesn't really know where a buried treasure is has more chance of finding it than the man who knows exactly where it is.

N: Your analogy twists things, its a twist of logic. Lets re-phrase it. Two men are seeking treasure, one knows exactly what he seeks and finds it. The other has a good idea what it is he seeks, but doubts his worthiness to find it ....The first becomes self-satisfied in his find and squanders it , the second is ever in awe of it, remembering how his doubt was overcome.

Or alternatively, the first person's knowledge and experience of God is pure, and thus he effortlessly perceives God's infinite majesty and rejoices in it.

The second person is still caught up in his own egotism and vanity, and his preoccupied mind is turned away from God. The "awe" he experiences is really just his own ego singing in triumph.

So the first person's knowledge and experience of God is pure ........Re-read my example what I wrote ....."then he goes and squanders it.......... and I don't even know what your second example means!

I said
But the Tao that can be known is not the Tao......God that can be known is not God........and this idea of "The Totality of all Things" is a pleasant anesthetic to take away the pain.

DQ
And why would you say that?

Because it is . It requires an individual to do nothing to leap to GOD..its just meaningless drivel

Quote:
DQ: It is true that the spiritual person has to exercise faith in order to overcome doubts, but these doubts aren't intellectual in nature. They have nothing to do with his knowledge of God. As Kevin rightly says, the spiritual man knows already knows exactly what God is, so that isn't the issue.

N: Yes I know this and I never said they were intellectual in Nature It is your friend KS that keeps using the word "knowledge and knowing

If that is the case, then why did you say to me above: "You committ in old parlance a blasphemy when you claim to know GOD"?
Are you affirming the idea that the spiritual person knows exactly what God is, or disagreeing with it?

You aren't spiritual are you?. You use intellect "to have knowledge of GOD"........this is the blasphemy! God is beyond your knowledge , your reason...........What have you sacrificed to be with GOD? The arrogance you and Kevin seem to possess indicate to me you havebn't even taken one step, except maybe to read long dead philosophers, do a bit of thinking and read a bit of the Tao. What have you suffered on your journey?

Quote:
Do you think I do not know all this, all the above. Do you think I'm idly showing off my knowledge? or arguing semantics . Do you think I'm not standing at the edge ready to leap, my knees trembling, feeling sick about to jump!! Jumping to a place that is beyond knowledge or human understanding
The seed of doubt is my own doubt and the only thing that can overcome doubt is not knowledge, nor understanding nor logic ..........but leaping, the act of leaping .

I've leapt and am now ready to do what must be done.to tear down the walls of hypocrisy, to be offending (kierkergaards word) in the name of God to suffer all ridicule, to die to the world, to only serve one master

Your family?

To do whatever is required of me, only as you can see I do not know what I have to do and this is what I am asking you. Your answer here ie "Your family" may be very insightful



I wrote :
Now I have a puzzle for you. Taoists and Buddhists, those that believe in the Totality of all Things like you and Kevin, would not feel as I do. They would be small, quiet to the world and understand..................Have I leapt to the wrong place David?

DQ
I have no idea. It depends on where you were trying to leap to in the first place.

To GOD, David, to GOD. A Rabbi would show me one way, A priest another, A Buddhist a third way and a very intelligent man like yourself another way . Is GOD in the eye of the beholder, do we find what we seek, regardless? How do we know we have found GOD (and I don't mean some temporal enlightenment crap that lasts a few days/months/years) Thats why I joked "why am I asking you" because no-one person can really show the way can they ? Kierkegaard comes close I guess

DQ wrote
I have to say, though, that your writing, for the most part, is almost incoherent. One can barely make sense of anything you say. This indicates to me that you haven't really resolved any of these issues in your own mind, and that you are still relying on bluff and bluster, and emotional hand-wringing, and the vague support of scripture to muddle your way through.

I think you are deliberately hiding behind a confused mindset, and hence it is very much in your interests to keep beefing up the concept of "faith" and downplaying the role of reason and intellectual knowledge.

You don't have to say this and it shows that whilst you are an excellent logician etc you cannot see the inner conflict in a person you communicate with. Therefore you miss much. I'm not hiding, I'm not using scripture to back up my arguments, I'm not trying to resolve issue I'm trying to find GOD and I do not accept all this mamby-pamby Totality thing.

I guess what I really am asking is "How do you know that GOD is a vague concept (like the Totality or The Tao) and not the GOD of Abraham and of Jesus.
If GOD is the Tao I should be quiet and still minding my own business, I will have found GOD
If GOD is the GOD of Abraham/Jesus/Kierkegaard it is my duty to destroy (to offend) the hypocrisy I see around me

Where do I leap . I thought this was a forum on enlightenment?
In which case where do I leap

Natan wrote:Your postings clearly reveal, Kevin, that you know neither. The only thing you know is the level of your "knowledge" and that stops well short of discussing GOD.

How do you know this when you claim not to have knowledge of such matters?

You "know" that God is the "Totality of All Things" How do you not "know" that God is not God as described in the Old and New Testament.

I personally define "God" to be the Totality of all things, the Infinite.

If "God" doesn't mean this then it means effectively nothing, by logical necessity. [Edit: Since that which is not the Infinite is necessarily only a part of the Infinite, and therefore insignificant by comparison.]

....possibly because you do not have the courage to accept that and would rather hide behind some vague affirmation as "The Totality"

The Totality is certainly not "vague". It is very definite. Are you confused as to exactly what it is?

Something that is not defined, such as your "God", is vague.

The meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek shall inherit the earth.

"Meek" means people who have no ego.

Jesus said that he was the Son of God. Was that "meek"?

That is the kind of meekness that is found in people who inherit the Kingdom of God.

Imagine Abraham knew GOD would change his mind at the last moment....This would not be a leap of Faith would it?

You have misunderstood the story of Abraham. You take it too literally.

Imagine that "God" told Abraham to fly several airliners, loaded with un-consenting passengers, into large occupied buildings in New York city. Do you think that Abraham should do it purely on faith? That is, on the say-so of someone other than himself? . . without knowing exactly why he was doing it or what the consequences would be? Without knowledge?

Such a faith is madness and nonsense.

Don't you see the conflict that I face.............Tao vs Kierkegaards God...which to follow. No you don't see do you because there is no God, cos you "Know"

That's right. I don't see a conflict because I don't see a conflict between Christianity and Taoism.

You must be aware that there is something called "Gnostic Christianity". This is the Christianity of first-hand knowledge, and is the only correct form of Christianity.

Natan: So KS what did Kierkegaard mean by God?

Kevin: I read him to be meaning Reality, or Truth. The Infinite.

Natan: Kierkegaard believed in a Judao-Christian type of God

Kevin: There are two different understandings of God within the Judao-Christian tradition: the exoteric and the esoteric.

My understanding is the esoteric one, and I reject the exoteric. Kierkegaard's understanding was also of the esoteric variety.

How come Kierkegaard never came out and explicitly defined what God is? Or Jesus? Or Socrates? Or Lao-Tzu? Or the Buddha? Or anybody? Why is there no mention of "the Totality" anywhere if that's what they meant? It seems to me that it would be a simple thing to just come out and say it and would have been immensely beneficial.

Matt Gregory wrote:How come Kierkegaard never came out and explicitly defined what God is? Or Jesus? Or Socrates? Or Lao-Tzu? Or the Buddha? Or anybody? Why is there no mention of "the Totality" anywhere if that's what they meant? It seems to me that it would be a simple thing to just come out and say it and would have been immensely beneficial.

Of course you're right - especially in the case of Kierkegaard. It was a weakness on his part, and he knew it. He was too much of a poet. He begged not to be become what he called "an apostle", because as an apostle he would have to talk directly - and he wasn't strong enough for that.

But the traditional God is described as all-powerful, and all-present, all-seeing, and eternal, the creator of all things. And there's only one thing that meets those criteria. The Totality. So it's saying the same thing, only using different words.

Advaita Vedanta talks about the "non-dual", and there's only one thing that meets that criteria.

In the case of the Buddha, he talks of the "unborn", that which is without beginning or end, etc, which later comes to be called "emptiness". That which is beyond the cycle of life and death, which is beyond change. And there's only one thing that meets those criteria.

Ramakrishna equates God with "the Infinite", and says "There is no Infinite apart from finite things."

The Tao is called "eternal", which "flows everywhere", "nourishes everything", yet "has no aim". Again, there's only one thing that meets those criteria.

In Zen, a student asks "What is the Buddha?", and the Master replies "What do you suppose is not the Buddha? Point it out to me!" The student says, "Is there anything in the world more marvellous than the forces of Nature?", and the Master replies, "There is - the power of comprehending those natural forces."

Personally, I think there are two main reasons that the Truth has not been explained absolutely clearly. Some people who know the Truth are too weak to explain it clearly, such as Kierkegaard - and there's no shame in that, since he was still a blindingly great man. Such men go in tight circles around the Truth, married to it, but are afraid to go any further. Others, possibly like the Buddha, and Jesus, probably did explain it clearly, but their best teachings were not recorded.

Students don't want to hear the Truth. They want to hear something poetic, mysterious, beautiful, benign. . . . Something they can't understand. . . . And it is that watered-down drivel that becomes recorded for posterity.

It's a miracle that any truth at all can be extracted from historical religious teachings. And when it can, it is more by accident than by design. Any truth that still remains in those teachings are only there because the religious followers can't understand it. If the followers had any inkling of what those teachings meant, those teachings would be promptly removed and forgotten.

For example, the most wise of the gospels, the gospel of Thomas, was left out of the Bible.

77) Jesus said, "It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the All. From me did the All come forth, & unto me did the All come forth, & unto me did the All extend. Split a piece of wood, & I am there. Lift up the stone, & you will find me there."

KS wrote

You must be aware that there is something called "Gnostic Christianity". This is the Christianity of first-hand knowledge, and is the only correct form of Christianity.

Thank you Kevin. This sentence means much to me. Yes I am familiar with Gnosticism, though I forgot its essence when I began on Kierkegaard.
To find the Truth we often have to go back to the beginning and when we feel lost we "have to return to the simple. Historically we have to go back as far as we can to find the Truth

Jesus was an Essene and thus to understand him more we have to read The Essene Bible (ah but who wrote it?) and the Lost Gospels a la Nag Hammadi

The conflict I have just surpassed was between Kierkergaards idea of GOD and a sort of Taoist variety..but yes Gosticism holds the key....Also for Islam perhaps Sufism has the answers

BTW When I have said I don't know please explain.it was tongue in cheek, but your last posting restored my faith in humanity , in a way and now I am no more confused.

Kind Regards Lionel Natan

It's a miracle that any truth at all can be extracted from historical religious teachings. And when it can, it is more by accident than by design. Any truth that still remains in those teachings are only there because the religious followers can't understand it. If the followers had any inkling of what those teachings meant, those teachings would be promptly removed and forgotten.

For example, the most wise of the gospels, the gospel of Thomas, was left out of the Bible.

This is so true and yet I think we are all able to root out what rings untrue (using heart not head)