Loki wrote:How do you know something is a delusion?
By falling for it, to name one way. An example would be something like romantic love or job security. If you fall for these things enough times, you can be reasonably sure that when they present themselves again, if you take them as something permanent that you can count on, you are deluding yourself.
But I suspect you are asking me for answer to a question which you have already answered for yourself to your own satisfaction. So I'm curious: how do
you know something is a delusion?
Ok, so do you imagine that God exists somewhere in between the totality and this world?
Not at all. I am thoroughly uncomfortable with the concept of the Totality as it is used at GF. Unlike terms such as "infinity," the Totality by its very usage here cannot be defined. Therefore, it is illogical to use it in any logical statement. All discussions of it have no more validity than any discussion which follows a premise such as "If you
could fly a spaceship into a black hole without being killed..." Since the Totality cannot be a concept in any meaningful way, trying to say anything about it is nonsensical by definition. To say, for example, that the Totality is "utterly everything" implies there is a difference between "everything" and "utterly everything." This makes as much logical sense as saying "there are utterly six sides to a cube."
Philosophers are keen to tell you what philosophy is not, namely mathematics or science. This is understandable, since math and science are not identical either. However, the scientific method holds the rigor of the mathematical argument as an ideal, and as often as possible, finds its expression through math. Anyone who is fairly well-versed in relatively advanced mathematics understands that rigor is the
sine qua non of math. Mathematical symbols are devised and utilized as an abstraction of human language. Once a theorem is proved, it cannot then be disproved.
I believe if something can be proved in a rigorous manner, it must be able to be expressed symbolically, however abstractly. There must be agreement between at least two minds or a thing is not proved. A philosophical or metaphysical statement using the word-symbol "Totality" therefore cannot be part of any proof, as it cannot stand for a concept, by definition. A statement cannot be proved unless it is true with regards to the system in which the theorems are simply true statements. (Any true statement in a formal system is a theorem, although convention often classifies them into theorems and corollaries.)
The word-symbol "Totality" thus can convey no information if its definition is "utterly everything."
For this reason, and only this reason, I reject the usage of the term Totality because it is self-contradictory.
Now the question you asked invloved the word-symbol "God." I suspect I am not alone in having difficulty with this term as well. To equate it with "Totality" renders it just as absurd and useless.
Simply because it enables me to conceive of something as opposed to nothing, I prefer the dual idea of the Godhead and everything else. Kevin would say that this is like a photon and the Totality minus one photon, in that they would then cause each other.
I say the causation goes one way. The Ultimate Source and Center is by definition the first cause and is uncaused.
There can be no concept of an uncaused Totality, because there can be no concept of Totality,
period. Yet I can conceive of an Ultimate Source and Center and everything else because it is dual. Furthermore, I can conceive of this Source as being conscious, because while "everything else" contains countless consciousnesses, it also contains things which are not conscious.
To me, it is curious why Kevin et al reject such a view. Yes, it contains the Godhead which is uncaused, except insofar as the Eternal Son and Universal Spirit are caused by the First Cause yet are parts of the Godhead. (The Kabbalah, among other esoteric disciplines, isolate the Godhead with a so-called "ring-pass-not." Understanding this requires faith, I would think.) But the Totality as viewed by their philosophy also must be uncaused. I reject it because it is not a "thing," that is, one cannot make true statements about it.
There is doubtless the strongest possible objection to viewing consciousness as primal, that is, consciousness as Consciousness. For one thing, it is invisible. For another, it resists empirical enquiry. While consciousness investigates, it is notably difficult to investigate. Yet QM shows that consciousness is inseparable from that which it sets out to study.
So that is my view of things, Loki. There is God and everything that is not God. Everything that is not God results from God's voluntary stepping Himself down into, among other things, the worlds of space and time. We only have a glimpse of his material creation, and yet vast as it is, it is not identical to "everything else." If you want to call the physical heavens a manifestation of God, go ahead. That is merely semantics, IMO. But God also stepped Himself down into other divine beings, some purely spiritual, some sheathed in material bodies, and some in between. Everything God does, he chooses to do through what and whom he has created or caused, including man.
I understand that this is my view and is not necessarily shared by you or anyone else. That's intentional, no offense. I have to make sense out of what I have experienced and learned and the World as I see it as objectively as I know how to do. I see myself as unbiased, that is, without an agenda except what I believe is the truth. I call this being unaffiliated. I see Kevin as being particularly unaffiliated, which is why I came to this forum. I came here to discuss the truth.
