Alex wrote:So, now you are defining what is 'the spiritual path'? I literally *roll my eyes* because no one, in all my reading here, has said much of anything with relevance to what I understand as spiritual life, or 'the spirit'.
This merits its own thread.
What is the spiritual path? What are the requirements of a spiritual life? And, above all, what is "the spirit"?
One place to look for a spiritual path is in the ancient documents left at Kucha, which were preserved for over 1000 years by the cold dry climate there. The ground is so cold and dry it made freeze dried mummies in much better condition than anything Egypt ever did.
The shrines for 22 religions have been found at Kucha, a few hundred miles WNW of the Jade Gate. For hundreds of years, it was like a college town, with Confucian, Zorastrian, Taoist, Buddhist, Tibetan, Manichean, and Vedic scholars. Whatever floats your boat, it was all there. The Kuchans translated sacred texts among 20 different languages.
I have a photographed copy of the "Maitreyasamiti Texts in Tocharian A" found at Kucha. the copy was written in the 5th century. Its a conversation between the Living Buddha and the Gautama, Queen of Kucha. All roads lead to Rome, but all spiritual paths led to Kucha.
Remember "The Magi came from the East"? Well, this is *THAT* East. Chinese tradition had it that the wise men, who they called the "Ma-ag" came from the West. And many of the words we associate with philosophy and spirituality come from there. In Tocharian, the way to say "Kharma path" is:"Kharmapath".
Alex Jacob wrote:The 'spirit', what an interesting question.
I would define "spirit" in the same way that I define "God". That is, it is absolutely everything - it is all things - and there is nothing that it is not.
And it follows that if ever you are not seeing spirit, you are deluding yourself with illusions.
For the majority of us, the veil is only lifted, partially, once or twice in a lifetime if we are lucky. And at other times in our life we may only have occasional hints or reminders of it.
Obviously, I don't care a great deal for philosophy per se, but I do have a great deal of love and respect for art. (snip) . . . Art transcends philosophy
The best philosophy has the form of art. Take Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" for example, or the Tao Te Ching, or the teachings of the Zen Master Hakuin.
The best philosophers, even using more regular language, such as Kierkegaard and Weininger, can transport you to realms of spirit way beyond the mere words.
In fact, all writing is a form of poetry, and an art - but some writers are better at it than others.
If a philosopher does not write from the spirit and transport his reader into the realms of the spirit, then he's not a real philosopher.
The spiritual path is the same as the path to truth. One only begins to lead a spiritual life when one dwells in truth. Till then one is simply striving for spirit.
David wrote:You're describing a particular kind of altered state here, one that I'm very familiar with. While such experiences can certainly be amazing and can provide some genuine insight into the nature of reality, it is still a fairly minor attainment in the greater scheme of things. Genuine wisdom is infinitely beyond such experiences.
How funny, You have focused on and commented on the joke that I added at the end, and as usual the content of what I wrote completely escaped you. I am on a list of semi-retards or Australian Neanderthals with girl-terror, and on top of that they have no 'organ for art'.
I think David was referring to all things you mentioned in your post (in the "Nietzsche against 'QRS'" thread).
A genuine thinker is necessarily artistic, but an artistic person is almost never a genuine thinker. You can spend a lifetime studying the works of all the most lauded artists (non-philosophers) all over the world, and at the end of it you'd be lucky to come out if it with half a dozen half-baked ideas.
Trevor Salyzyn wrote:What are the requirements of a spiritual life?
Suffering, lack of meaning, intelligence, strength.
There's no such thing as lack of meaning. There's only a lack of the delusion that meaning has objective reality. Suffering for the lack of that which doesn't exist is the sort of nonsense the French existentialists like Sartre and more especially Camus never got past. Intellectual outwardly, emotional god-botherers at heart.
Dan Rowden wrote:There's no such thing as lack of meaning.
In many people's lives there is, yes. And this seems to drive people to higher thought (the search for understanding).
Dan Rowden wrote:There's only a lack of the delusion that meaning has objective reality.
Huh?
Dan Rowden wrote:Suffering for the lack of that which doesn't exist is the sort of nonsense the French existentialists like Sartre and more especially Camus never got past. Intellectual outwardly, emotional god-botherers at heart.
Not suffering for that which doesn't exist seems equally as nonsensical.
"Mysticism", "ghosts and goblins", etc, are really henids (vague, barely conscious ideas) of spiritual truths.
"Philosophy is their clarification."
I suspect that what you seek, and what you think you have found, and that you suppose has a genuine solidity, is a sort f tower in the mind from which you view phenomena, not only in the surrounding world, that is, as objectivity, but through the inward gaze, into subjectivity. While I have no way to be certain about anyone else's experience, in any ultimate sense, I suspect that these concretized ideas about 'the nature of reality' or the nature of things, and the nature of ourselves in this odd universe of perception, is just another evidence of man's grotesque arrogance, a sort of smart-alec certainty that becomes a block to understanding of life and life's processes.
I think there is a false sense of power in 'clarification' and in 'clarity', the sort of clarity that philosophy strives for, and by that I mean the sort of philosophy so wedded to processes of mentation, to mere orderings of the mental structure, to the development of a rap, a shtick. It seems to me that knowledge and understanding is never a 'thing' that can be expressed objectively, as doctrine, and that the deeper forms of 'spiritual' understanding is more often than not, when someone achieves it, expressed in poetic terms, as allusions, or in symbolic terms, a sort of alchemical language. When the chatter seems to make all the sense in the world, it is likely evidence that it makes no sense, because life is something that is lived, not contained by reasonable sentences or a sort of armchair approach to life.
In my way of seeing things, the artists generally have some advantages over these philosophers, insofar as they give expression to the intangible and also to what is inexpressable. As I see things the most original perceptions (of mankind) are found in essentially artistic utterances like the early Vedas, which are statements of wonder, not doctrinaire encapsulations attempting to codify 'reality' and perception. They are hymns, the are prayers, they are declarations of wonder or longing, and in the final analysis they express an appreciation of beauty, and recognition of an infinite expressiveness of nature and of the cosmos that, somehow, we perceive. To me, that is why the story of CCs vision of a rag transformed into a mysterious creature, that the lumps-on-logs here can only reduce to insipidism, is a wonderful and multilayered allusion to a mystery about perception, and about being. It does not surprise me that no one gets it: there is a structure int he philistine mind that effectively 'chaces away' what is magnificent, what is 'spiritual', and it does so through these arrogant and heavy processes, the false idea that one can somehow order reality, explain manifestation, and inscribe it in some sort of doctrine. No no no no. That sort of view of things must be challenged, but the snarling dogs of doctrine will fight tooth and nail so that this doesn't happen! The 'high ground' (which is the lower rungs of perception) must be defended!
But it is not that there are no elements of truth in this idea that philosophy 'clarifies' a multitudinous perception, it does indeed do that, and so does the classic mind-frame, the Aristotelian mind-frame. It is immensely powerful, a Hercules, but it also has its limitations. The sort of mind that philosphy deals on, or augments, or is produced by, is simply amazing by any standard. But it is just one facet of what 'mind' (nous) is about, and those other aspects of mind, the visionary, the mind that comes in contact with the Divine, the mind that explores being and not merely the ordering of thoughts or suppositions about being, is a separate and special category.
To refer to 'henids' looks like an Aristotelian attempt at categorization; it has its place, a place, but in the end (I opine) our metal structures are sort of like little castles that we build or that get built, and all castles dissolve back into a sort of amorphous 'stuff'. It seems to me that humility arises when one knows something about this, and at least it leaves avenues open for expressions about---wonder, mystery, uncertainty.
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I, Alex Jacob, the Great *AShKeNaZ!*, appear in all my glory in the celestial vault over Australia and All Nations and shout my message to the uncoiffed beasties scrambling below! Cease your intragender masturbations and slide up to Zion with me on the slimey membranes of a Nubile Virgin! (Om and Selah!) Come, come ye out of Babylon! Lay down that flank of Kangaroo and your cheap beer! A Great Feast awaits! The Zionist Congregation has bought the ground under your feet, and the molecules of your mind, yet to Knowledge we will lead you, oh slobbering ones! At the Gate of Knowledge, a choice will be presented: death...or medication (and return to your Mama to live out your incarnation in ignorant bliss).
Be a Man and choose Death!
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Oct 15, 2007 2:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
You are wrong. The Philosophical framework is just a means to the end, the end being the movement beyond all mental framework, even the framework of logic. Consider the words of David Quinn:
I am a highly logical thinker who spends his days immersing himself in the Infinite. My aim in life is to awaken as many people as possible to this marvellous reality, which I sometimes call God or Tao. ~ David Quinn, from his website
"immersing himself in the Infinite....this marvelous reality" are the words of a shaman, an artist, a man who has transcended idea, and is merged with the One. Can't get any more spiritual than that.
However, little of that shows or is discussed on this site, mostly, I believe, because other than Quinn and a few others, this site is populated by beginners (and trolls). And, it is a public forum, which prevents the sort of intimacy and concentration necessary. Hence the board is about Philosophy, or logic and theory, and not about direct application to oneself, which would begin to take it into the spiritual realm.
And so, Alex, what use is there in berating Genius Forum for being what it is, given its limitations?
If something is relevant to me or you or anyone, there is always a way to talk about it, not really caring if someone is a beginner, a troll, or the Bal Shem Tov.
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Life has given me a decidedly strange angle with which I view these questions, but has taken away my body: I am just a brain located in a backroom of a research facility at Tel Aviv University, where I am bathed and kept alive by a constant stream of artificial blood! Yes, I am one of the brains that controls your world (and am in turn controlled by the Zionist Military Complex, Big Brother par excellance), the world taken over by the Zionist Putsch of 1948, but I am a brain that has developed a sort of melancholy attachment to my (our) subjects, that is to say *you* and I just want to be one of the guys! Oh please, please be nice to me!
You'll grow to like me, you really will, and I really do have many wonderful gifts, if you'll just let me reveal them!
Alex Jacob wrote:If something is relevant to me or you or anyone, there is always a way to talk about it, not really caring if someone is a beginner, a troll, or the Bal Shem Tov.
Not really caring? It behooves one to care.
By your response you show your own level of understanding.
Alex Jacob wrote:
I suspect that what you seek, and what you think you have found, and that you suppose has a genuine solidity, is a sort f tower in the mind from which you view phenomena, not only in the surrounding world, that is, as objectivity, but through the inward gaze, into subjectivity. While I have no way to be certain about anyone else's experience, in any ultimate sense, I suspect that these concretized ideas about 'the nature of reality' or the nature of things, and the nature of ourselves in this odd universe of perception, is just another evidence of man's grotesque arrogance, a sort of smart-alec certainty that becomes a block to understanding of life and life's processes.
Alex, why do you suspect arrogance here? It's not like we're talking about understanding all intricate aspects of specific causes and effects, many of which will still be possibly shocking, revealing, mind blowing, or whatever, if we ever find out.
The arrogance I see is when people, after having understood a bit about life and its processes, the phenomena, start treading around claiming all kinds of universals while knowing hardly anything about themselves, like headless chickens. That's true hubris, if you ask me.
The nature of reality, things, perception and consciousness is our nature and since we're defined by them, it's just a question of understanding oneself. Also the understanding that there's no tower to stand on. Our understanding becomes the towering itself.
Alex Jacob wrote:To refer to 'henids' looks like an Aristotelian attempt at categorization; it has its place, a place, but in the end (I opine) our metal structures are sort of like little castles that we build or that get built, and all castles dissolve back into a sort of amorphous 'stuff'. It seems to me that humility arises when one knows something about this, and at least it leaves avenues open for expressions about---wonder, mystery, uncertainty.
True humility would be knowing that it's all vanity. It's also true arrogance, in a way, to believe one possesses the knowledge that it's all vanity. But most of the times even that's borrowed and nothing more than an obscenity some colorful parrot screams from a tree; the one he earlier heard from another passer-by.
Hmmmm. Does 'life' care? The way I look at things, life is, while not just a process, it is just a process, something on-going, something that we are participating in for a little while. It has its own rules, its own mysteries, its own beginnings and ends. You either 'get with the program' or you don't, and I don't know if any of us should wait for a leg-up. Carpe diem. The people who have 'knowledge' usually just begin to state their case, and it doesn't matter when you come on, most of it will be restated at some point or other.
Anyway, in my own life, it has been only when I have been disarmed by pain, or even agony, that I was able to actually hear something another was saying to me---I mean the sort of 'useful advice' that can actually change one's life. I think that someone could state in a few sentences some really profound and extremely useful units of information about navigating life, but 'the multitudes' would not be able to *hear*. To get something, you already have to have, isn't that true?
But you guys are not being nice to an old brain with a great deal of free time on its hands! (they keep me going, with no sleep, 24/7/365, to rule this domain one must be ever vigilant).
I thought we were talking about spiritual life? Or are we waiting for Australia to wake up?
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Deibert wrote:
"The nature of reality, things, perception and consciousness is our nature and since we're defined by them, it's just a question of understanding oneself. Also the understanding that there's no tower to stand on. Our understanding becomes the towering itself."
Well, maybe I'm all mixed up. When you guys start talking like this, I feel I benefit. When people start talking in terms of absolutes, I generally interpret that as arrogance.
Anyway, in my own life, it has been only when I have been disarmed by pain, or even agony, that I was able to actually hear something another was saying to me
Dan Rowden wrote:There's no such thing as lack of meaning.
In many people's lives there is, yes. And this seems to drive people to higher thought (the search for understanding).
Meaning is an artifact of consciousness. For many people this is a terrible thing to discover because they cease to be able to engage reality more passively; they want to have the essential features of their lives more or less provided to them by Nature or God or whatever convenience they can manufacture. There are three basic possibilities available upon having found this truth: 1) desperately manufacture some sort of concept that retains the idea of an objective source for meaning (and purpose and morals etc); 2) wallow is self-pitying existential crisis; 3) will a self and a meaning and go for it.
Neil wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:There's only a lack of the delusion that meaning has objective reality.
Huh?
My intention is that there is no such thing as lack of meaning because we automatically bring meaning into the word via consciousness. Subjective meaning is the meaning we have.
Neil wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:Suffering for the lack of that which doesn't exist is the sort of nonsense the French existentialists like Sartre and more especially Camus never got past. Intellectual outwardly, emotional god-botherers at heart.
Not suffering for that which doesn't exist seems equally as nonsensical.
Only if there was a possibility that it could exist and in this instance there isn't.
