GENIUS FORUMS

jupiviv wrote:To me the "kingdom of God" just means "Reality", so all things, whether conscious or unconscious, are already in the kingdom of God. It's just that the deluded person is not aware of it, while the enlightened person is.

I prefer to say, along with Nietzsche, that the "kingdom of God" (or Heaven) is a "state of the heart" or an "experience of the heart."

And I would add that it's only those relatively few finely-formed, highly-sensitive, and highly-refined and/or purified human beings who attain to such a state or experience in a "secure and continuous" manner, to use the worlds of Huxley.

"God is love, and there are blessed moments when even to unregenerate human beings it is granted to know Him as love. But it is only in the saints that their knowledge becomes secure and continuous." (Aldous Huxley)

Bob Michael wrote:

jupiviv wrote:Radicals who gain any sort of influence over people, and who also point out the faults of other people with influence, generally get killed or jailed, either by governments or by other groups within a society - any society.

A 'radical' who is truly wise does not engage in controversy with or try to change the established order of things, as he's clearly aware of the utter futility of such an endeavor. Instead, he quietly goes his own way and builds his own fellowship, commune, or City of Light.

You don't have to engage in controversy to get into trouble with people. An enlightened person would inevitably be at odds with the unconsciousness of the world, and would try to get rid of it in order to bring in more consciousness. There is always a chance that, in doing so, he will offend people beyond a certain limit, and get into trouble.

jupiviv wrote:You didn't understand what I was saying. Neither the external nor the internal world inherently prevents any one from becoming enlightened. That would be logically impossible. If people are ignorant, then it only means that they are ignorant. Nothing more. They could become enlightened the very next moment, given the right conditions. So the idea denying someone the truth because they are in the "majority" makes no sense.

Both Jesus and the Buddha understood this, otherwise we would never have heard of their religions.

I believe you are mistaken. In this very same thread Bob reminds us of the idea that "many are called but few are chosen."

And that the gate to destruction is wide, while Heaven's Gate is narrow.

Jup I have difficulty figuring you out at times. You appear to be extremely logical - how then do you miss the overwhelming evidence all around you? If there is "nothing" preventing each and every person on the planet from becoming a "radical," then each and every person would be a radical.

cousinbasil wrote:If there is "nothing" preventing each and every person on the planet from becoming a "radical," then each and every person would be a radical.

I said there is nothing that inherently prevents them, which is what elitists like Bob believe. The something that prevents them from becoming radical(or anything else for that matter) in one moment, may change into something that allows them to become radical in the next moment.

There is no rule that says enlightenment must always necessarily be a rare phenomenon. It is unfortunate that it is and has been so in the case of humanity. The only reason why people would believe that is if they want to feel special and unique by being part of a very small minority, or at least possess knowledge of something which most other people don't know about.

From Sex and Character:

I regret having to operate constantly with this word “genius,” which strictly separates the “geniuses” as a speci¤c caste from those who are not at all meant to be “geniuses,” just as only people above a certain annual income have to pay a speci¤c tax to the state. Perhaps the name “genius” was invented precisely by a man who himself only deserved it to a very small degree. Greater men probably considered “being a genius” too much as a matter of course, and they probably took too long to realize that it is also possible not to “have genius.” As Pascal remarks most aptly: the more original a man is, the more original he also thinks the others to be. And compare this with Goethe’s saying that perhaps only a genius can understand a genius. There are perhaps very few people who have never had a moment of “genius” in their entire lives. If there are, perhaps they only lacked the opportunity, such as a great passion or a great pain. Although the capacity for experience is initially marked by subjectivity, all they would have needed was to experience something intensively enough once, in order to have had genius, at least temporarily. Writing poetry during one’s ¤rst love is a case in point. And true love is entirely a matter of chance.

Finally one must not overlook the fact that quite ordinary people in a state of great excitement, such as anger over some wickedness, find words of which one would never have thought them capable. Most of what is commonly called “expression,” in the arts as in prosaic speech, however, is based (if one recalls what was said earlier about the process of clarification) on a more endowed individual exhibiting clarified, structured contents at a time when in another, less highly endowed, individual they are still at the henid stage or close to it. The process of clarification is greatly abbreviated by an expression that some other person has managed to coin, and that is why we feel pleasure even when we see others finding a “good expression.” If two unequally endowed people experience the same thing, in the more endowed person the intensity will be great enough to reach the “speech threshold.” In the other person, however, this will only facilitate the process of clarification.

If, as popular opinion has it, the genius were separated from the man without genius by a thick wall that did not allow any sounds to penetrate from one realm to the other, the non-genius would be totally precluded from any understanding of the achievements of the genius, whose works would be unable to produce the slightest impression on him. Any cultural hopes therefore can only be founded on the demand that this not be so. Nor is it. The difference lies in the lesser intensity of consciousness: it is a quantitative, rather than fundamental or qualitative, one.

As to the parable: the robbers are the demonic forces that operate in our world which, I gather, we all acknowledge each in his distinct manner. Each living human being has been captured beaten and wounded and is lying in a ditch by the side of the road (the Greek reads 'is being captured and beaten', in the present tense) . The road to Jericho, you will note, goes downward, which is to say into greater levels of density. As Dr King so aptly pointed out, one starts out at 2000 feet above sea level and ends up over a thousand feet below sea level. 'To get a friend out of a ditch you have to be willing to get dirty', says Jewish wisdom. The message is far-reaching. The priest and the 'Levite' are David and Dan who, try as they might, cannot even see, much less have any relatedness with, any human being who will not sever connectedness with humankind. It is not that they wouldn't---indeed David recognizes that there should be 'no distinctions' between people (a most superficial and rather bovine reading), but that they are constitutionally incapable, possibly through Bob's notion of a dead heart, of helping another human being, the most difficult undertaking. So, they must 'pass him by'. For even if they came close they would only stare coldly for there can be no compassion and no empathy as these are moods of the unenlightened. Now, the Samaritan is, in fact, the personalist aspect of the Godhead. He is also our idealism, a wish and a desire to undertake for another what is, in truth, so devilishly difficult and dangerous. And he is our own relationship to our own selves, if we understand those terrifying forces that have had their way with us, that have mangled us, incapacitated us...to get the message of this life and act right. Obviously, the 'Inn' is any human being's attempt, while in this woeful dimension, to give form to idealism and to construct something, while here, that might possibly benefit and help humankind, meaning ourselves, but it also has 5 distinct levels of mystic meaning only 2 of which I am allowed to touch on here. In one aspect, this Inn is a peculiar edifice of consciousness into which any of us may enter. Meaning, it 'exists' and has been established on a peculiar, non-physical layer. Let us call it a Spiritual Hospital for the Very Wounded. Now, I want you to step inside and get to know the Nursemaids. They will, if you don't bite, give you suck with 'the milk of human kindness'. And lo! you enter therein and are amazed, and you look over to the window that gives out over a fruitful field with stonework and trellises wherefrom clumps of purple grape hang. And the light is supernal and golden and the bee doth buzz happily, and wonder of wonders! you see an Ass munching on dandylions and mint who looks like a giant asinineTinkerbell and---Behold!---you finally recognize Him as the stoppers have finally been removed from your ears and the blindfold from your eyes! And you see His lips moving and He is speaking to you, and He says: “Blessed are those who have not seen or heard and who yet believe, and do."

Alexis Jacobi wrote:I have more or less come to the conclusion that there is almost nothing we can know about Jesus the man. There is almost nothing historical (in the sense we now define it) in the group of stories we have about him.

If one walks a good distance in Christ's footsteps, and then of necessity goes beyond him, he'll thoroughly understand the man and his message. Though it must all begin with a complete dying to the known (or an entering into that 'valley of the shadow of death') and thereby being reborn to the new; which is a complete psychic change or a radical reawakening to a total renewing of the conscience or the mind and the heart.

jupiviv wrote:You don't have to engage in controversy to get into trouble with people. An enlightened person would inevitably be at odds with the unconsciousness of the world, and would try to get rid of it in order to bring in more consciousness. There is always a chance that, in doing so, he will offend people beyond a certain limit, and get into trouble.

Getting into trouble and getting killed are two different things. I've made a lot of 'enemies' over the years with my sharing at A A meetings. But rarely have any of them turned and attacked me. If they have, chances are good that I came across too arrogant or condescending. Then too it might be a sign for me to move on to bigger and better things. So in either case my 'enemies' then become my 'friends', at least for the moment. And all remains well and dandy.

Regarding Jesus getting hung, I feel he brought it upon himself by his arrogance and lack of wisdom. Which puts me on the same page again with Nietzsche in that Christ died for his own sins and not for the sins of humanity, as Christendom would have us believe.

An enlightened being strives not so much to "bring in more consciousness," but to be a fully living embodiment of right or harmonious action. And in so doing lies his joy, well-being, security, and peace of mind.

Alexis Jacobi wrote:Could you---it would be interesting---offer your divination of the Parable of the Good Samaritan? (And, to push David's metaphor, everyone please free to take a whack at it, or with it...Jupi? Diebert?)

For the parable, any parable, to have any relevance in terms of wisdom beyond contemporary ethics, it must be read in the most universal way as possible: as description of existence, consciousness or as in this case as description of the state of the "fallen" human being, ignorant, robbed in this case, from grace, from his "way", which is a symbol of ignorance, the fallen state. The priest represents all forms of religious practice and worship: he is avoiding the problem just as the Levite, who would represent law in our age, or "the professional approach".

The Samaritan represents the Christ figure, the moving wisdom, not (really) belonging to the traditions of the audience, despised as outsider, also because of the Samaritans "own divination" of the script. Pouring oil and wine represents spirit and truth. He sets the man on his own animal: the fallen man now becoming the rider, becoming Christ the moment he is lifted up.

In the end the call is to move beyond all faith, beyond all letter or tradition and connect with something deeper to be able to address our state of being toward "salvation".

[posting error]

Alexis, excellent analysis of everything you spoke upon. I do not, however, include your statements concerning David & Dan when I say this.

I do not see demons forces at work as you do in your interpretation of the parable. I see the individual man recognizing the shadowed reflections of his dual personality. How his set beliefs in those things which are metaphorical materialistic conclusions of his thought, to be the tangible matter returning to him after he has casted his bread upon the waters of reciprocity.

The parable, to myself, represent the lying and killing, wounding, deceit, as well as the righteous, merciful and compassion displayed are the inner roads of man's journey. The mentality of the Levite and the priest represent the mentality of the prodical son. Starting from above sea level of high human integrity of consciousness. The robbers mentality also represents that of the prodical son and his decline below sea level. The ditch is the view the prodical takes to the right and left side of the road traveled meanderingly between the good of the bad, and bad of the good. Each view taken by the prodical is his high and low point of origin in time, space, distant, and matter because he has left the high road and became a by-products of the universe which he has bowed down in worship.

The victim is the one caught up between two worlds. Believing he is neutural, he is, however subject to the mental elements of both for there is none innocent He has casted his bread upon the waters of both worlds, and thus becomes the subject victim of his own returning thoughts.

The samaritan is always of a different ethnic mentality than those described above. The road he travels is that of Spirit integrity which is beyond the mind of selfishness and deterministic humanism. This person had no other choice but to right a wrong wheresoever he sees it. Not to do so he realized these words: "How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!" apply to him.

The inn is the bosom of the samaritan's he would take the victim into. The innkeeper pay to care for the victim was compassion and mercy. And the pure love of obedience to righteousness displayed to the innkeeper was the assurance should further pay be an issue upon his return, the touching of their Spirit upon Spirit was the excellency reward, which belonged to God, would be of his reward.

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa

Diebert wrote: For the parable, any parable, to have any relevance in terms of wisdom beyond contemporary ethics, it must be read in the most universal way as possible: as description of existence, consciousness or as in this case as description of the state of the "fallen" human being, ignorant, robbed in this case, from grace, from his "way", which is a symbol of ignorance, the fallen state.

However, the very notion of having 'fallen' is not universal, or is it? I've seen cosmologies in which the myth described emerging upwards, from a darker, underground world into a brighter, better world. And your reading is certainly 'post-Christian', as is mine. And while it is true that a parable can be read 'universally', it has also to be considered 'locally' and specifically.

It is interesting, and of course unavoidable, that we divinate backwards into our own selves when we face a text, stand in its 'radiance', and bring forward the result of our divination, our kerusso (κηρύσσω), which is our proclamation, announcement, and our preaching to the nations.

These were solid beliefs, solid facts, for many people for a long, long time:

• The Age of Fulfillment has dawned, the "latter days" foretold by the prophets.
• This has taken place through the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
• By virtue of the resurrection, Jesus has been exalted at the right hand of God as Messianic head of the new Israel.
• The Holy Spirit in the church is the sign of Christ's present power and glory.
• The Messianic Age will reach its consummation in the return of Christ.
• An appeal is made for repentance with the offer of forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, and salvation.

I would cordially suggest that this desire and need to proclaim is uniquely 'determined' by our Christian culture.

Here is another parable, a rather terrible parable. Curious to hear what your reactions shall be:

• BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper on guard. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. "It is possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment." Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: "If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him." These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: "I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything." During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness, he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insatiable." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."
  
  ---Franz Kafka, 'Before the Law'

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PS: Jufa, I certainly like to joke around and so I threw Dan and David in to my interpretive enterprise as a kind of joke, but to show too that we have no choice but to interpret from our present. And yet, in my view, it is still a serious critique. I know they see it differently (or perhaps not...), but their salvation of man is a slaughtering of man.

Yeah, well, people do like to project all sorts of meanings onto things, particularly poetic/religious texts. That is their right, of course, but even so I rather doubt that Jesus was a kind of medieval theologian who absorbed himself in convoluted metaphysical soap-operas and analogies.

He was more like the Buddhas of old who "seized dung-shovels to rid themselves of all such rubbish as metaphysics and sophistry". That's what comes across to me from the Gospels, that Jesus was down-to-earth, direct, practical and entirely devoid of theosophy.

Given that he lived in a world that was rife with religious sectarianism (attachment to "conventional distinctions"), he was simply trying to open people's minds to the folly of such attachments. To enlargen their perspective on things, to stimulate them into "loving your neighbour as your self" .

And as Diebert adds, even the lowly Samaritan (automatically despised in conventional circles as being unworthy) who enlarges his perspective in this way is, according to Jesus, superior to the well-respected sectarian leaders.

There is really nothing more to the parable than that.

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David Quinn wrote: And as Diebert adds, even the lowly Samaritan (automatically despised in conventional circles as being unworthy) who enlarges his perspective in this way is, according to Jesus, superior to the well-respected sectarian leaders.

There is really nothing more to the parable than that.

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An interpretation is an interpretation based on fragment knowledge of relativism. And in most case, deterministic relativism. Nonetheless

Yeah, well, people do like to project all sorts of meanings onto things, particularly poetic/religious texts. That is their right, of course, but even so I rather doubt that Jesus was a kind of medieval theologian who absorbed himself in convoluted metaphysical soap-operas and analogies.

which is soap opera dialogue scripted not on any truth, only an "I rather doubt" non-evidentiary opinion as all written interpretions herein presented.

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa

Nothing needed to happen in order for us to be here because it's not a produced experience, also things needed to happen in order for us to be in the way that we are...
Xianity is an identity configuration, nothing more and nothing less, a Persona to adopt with a certain set of practices to act out, a plastic, fake way of being that looks like a winning formula to the unenlightened...an access to the possibility for power and control over others if one is into that sort of rubbish.

Fascinating!

• "There is really nothing more to the parable than that."
  
  "Xianity is an identity configuration, nothing more and nothing less."

I draw to your attention the following: Argumentation Theory. Also, there is an article on it in today's NY Times.

See, I have this idea that the emergence of Christianity, which could not at that time really have been called any such thing, because it did not really know what it 'wanted' to be or intended to be, arose to 'win an argument' against a very stubborn adversary. Where there is, if you will permit me, the 'will to win', it hardly matters if one has sound reasonings or not, because one will make oneself win (which is quite in evidence here in the 'rational' center of the universe, GF!) In this sense---and we'll get to another possible reading of the Samartitan parable in a moment---Christianity is a willfull misreading of Judaism.

• "Also, argumentation scholars study the post hoc rationalizations by which organizational actors try to justify decisions they have made irrationally."

Keep in mind that, at that early point, this 'Christianity' is entirely a Jewish contrivance, a dispute between members of the same family. And though there is abundant evidence of this personal battle---one senses interior power struggles at every juncture---no one is admitting to the fact, and so the battle takes place on this supposed 'rationalistic' dimension, which is all about a willful misreading of Jewish texts and a deliberate 'push comes to shove' on God himself. By that I mean: the 'Age of Fulfillment' that is predicted in Isaiah, etc. So, at a crucial juncture, some zealous men forced the issue, that is to say forced God's hand, and insisted that the Age of Fulfilment is now. Perhaps that was expressed weakly and meekly at the beginning, with uncertainty and doubt. But then, like a devilishly attractive argument with which one can engage with one's whole being (GF again, and certainly David), it begins to gain momentum. True, this took quite some time, and the Gospels as we know them are (I am supposing) somewhat similar to our divinations as to the meaning of the parable. There had to have been moments of silence and reflection when, Mark say, sat with a group of potential meanings layed out in front of him, and divinated backwards both into himself (his own will and desire), but also back into this sense of the Age of Fulfilment, but also chanelled against these extremely stubborn stewards of a uniquely polemical religion, that is (among so many things) an expression of one people's desire and ability (an intentionality) of going against the grain. In this sense, to be a Jew is to hold to a desire to go against the grain (of history, of culture). So, Mark stood before the 'radiance' of some ideas, perhaps just some phrases, and wilfully divinated into existence a Story. He (and so many others) 'possessed' the meaning in the texts, claimed them, wielded them, as we all do so obviously. (The Parable of the Good Samaritan only appears in Luke but I am speaking much more broadly of the origin, at least on one level, of 'Christianity').

So, here is another divination of this Parable of the Good Samaritan. But before jumping into that, allow me to throw up into the air an odd word that arises from the context of Greek divination: 'kledon' (κλεδον). "In ancient Greece there was usually a statue of the God Hermes in the market place. If you needed an oracle, you could put a coin in the statues hands, whisper your question to it, and cover your ears. Once you uncovered your ears the first words you happened to hear were the answer to your question/guidance in the matter." We could put this kledon in another context and perhaps make some (non-) sense of it: suppose one day you take your daughter on a trip to your house near the outskirts of the town, say to a small house you own near the crossroads. It is a normal day, nothing unusual. But when she runs out into the yard she exclaims, as children will, 'Finger lickin' good, Finger lickin' good!' You think: she must have been watching teevee, or she heard it at school. But then, a year later, it turns out that a devoper had bought the land on the other side of the crossroads and is going to build a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and then this incident comes back to you.

This kledon: Is it unintended utterance that, somehow, prefigures the future? Is it a premonition of what is to come, who knows how? Or is it, at some level, a declaration of Will that we make come true?

The Robbers are the random, unconscious forces that operate in the world, but they are people who operate 'outside the law', or to whom the law had not reached. In an expanded sense, and from a Jewish perspective, they are Gentile culture: the sea of the uncircumcised, Pagan culture. These robbers are emblematic of a situation therefor. And the man walking on the road to Jehrico is Everyman, or Universal man, which is to say the man that was not really considerable to Jews, to Judean culture, and to the (strict) mission of the Jews. The priest and the Levite are Jewish self-sufficiency, that noted Jewish preoccupation with Jewish 'self': culture and mission. At this juncture, Judaism was not and could not be a universal religion or ethic, and yet, at some inner, hidden dimension, it needed and wanted to become this. It needed and wanted to make real the promise of the Age of Fulfilment, but it couldn't do it in the existing robes, as it were. The Samartitan is, really, an idealization of a Jew---a New Jew. A Jew that emerged from a kind of shell. But also a transformation of a closed religion to a more open and universal religion. Hence, the 'Samaritan' is an expression of a 'divination' (kledon) that became...the Catholic Church...which is expressed in the place of the Inn.

David wrote: Yeah, well, people do like to project all sorts of meanings onto things, particularly poetic/religious texts. That is their right, of course, but even so I rather doubt that Jesus was a kind of medieval theologian who absorbed himself in convoluted metaphysical soap-operas and analogies.

Sure, but Jesus did not write the Gospels! Which is really the crux of the problem, and so difficult to get clear about: Just who was this Yeshua? The Gospel of Mark was said to have been written about AD 60, but already it is a murky sea of 'metaphysical soap-operas and analogies'!

David Quinn wrote:Yeah, well, people do like to project all sorts of meanings onto things, particularly poetic/religious texts. That is their right, of course, but even so I rather doubt that Jesus was a kind of medieval theologian who absorbed himself in convoluted metaphysical soap-operas and analogies.

He was more like the Buddhas of old who "seized dung-shovels to rid themselves of all such rubbish as metaphysics and sophistry". That's what comes across to me from the Gospels, that Jesus was down-to-earth, direct, practical and entirely devoid of theosophy.

I highly suspect that Christ, like J. Krishnamurti (who's life's experiences and times is very factually known about compared to those of the 'ancient' Christ and Buddhas), never lived in the conventional down-to-earth, practical, self-responsible manner (i.e. marriage, job, raising children, etc.) that the bulk of their listeners were entangled in. And this, along with the resultant lacking of a thorough and deeply penetrating self-knowledge and self-understanding, were the key factors in their failures to be effective in the liberation of any of their fellows.

An inclination for excessive metaphysical inquiry and discussion and sophistry (or what I call 'aboutism') is a trait or tendancy of especially those with malformed or damaged brains or consciences. Though the same thing is true of many of those who have sound but maligned or malfunctioning brains and consciences. And the overwhelming prevalence of the resulting "convoluted metaphysical soap-operas and analogies" 'everywhere' in life is a clear sign that the human species has 'fallen' or deteriorated biologically or structurally in such a manner that the bulk of the species live in their heads (i.e. on the surface of life) rather than in their hearts (i.e. from their total being and to their fullest potential). Which is really no life at all. Hence, as Thoreau observed some 150 years ago, it continues on that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

From my perspective, it doesn't really matter what sort of man Jesus was. I couldn't care less about him.

I only take an interest in him and the Gospels because a lot of people I meet, both here on the forum and elsewhere, regard him to be important. Their conception of him forms an influential force in their minds, which in turn creates an opportunity for someone like me to become an influence in their minds. By manipulating that force, playing around with it, riffing off of it, twisting it into different contexts, etc, one has a powerful tool for turning their minds in the direction of wisdom. Which is the All-Important-Thing, of course. Not the historical stuff. Not the theological stuff.

It is why I hardly talk about Ramakrishna, for example, even though Ramakrishna's words have just as much wisdom as the Gospels, if not more. Very few people value Ramakrishna, at least in the West.

In any case, the interesting thing about parables (from the wise perspective) is they are meant to illustrate or flesh out the simple, profound, hard-to-grasp truths of life. They are designed to help those without "the ears to hear" to get a handle on these truths. So to use these already convoluted parables to flesh out an even more convoluted series of thoughts, in the belief that they must be illustrating a very elaborate metaphysical system indeed, completely misses the point.

But maybe this relates to a weakness or flaw in Jesus, as Bob suggests (or in the writers of the Gospels, as Alex suggests). Perhaps he shouldn't have doled out these parables to begin with, given that people in general love nothing more than to hide away from the simplicity of truth and take refuge in conceptual complexities. He should have kept it pure, both to his disciples and to the wider world.

But then again, if he did that, we probably would never have heard of him.

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David wrote: I only take an interest in him and the Gospels because a lot of people I meet, both here on the forum and elsewhere, regard him to be important. Their conception of him forms an influential force in their minds, which in turn creates an opportunity for someone like me to become an influence in their minds. By manipulating that force, playing around with it, riffing off of it, twisting it into different contexts, etc, one has a powerful tool for turning their minds in the direction of wisdom. Which is the All-Important-Thing, of course. Not the historical stuff. Not the theological stuff.

Well, what actually happens---please forgive me---is that you make a fool of yourself. It is unfortunate, really unfortunate. How for example could one use Kierkegaard as a 'preaching tool' if one did not understand the Christianity that informed him and all he writes? Categorically: One cannot. Yet you do. But, you do not see the absurdity of it.

You simply do not have a sufficient grasp of the basic outline of the world of ideas to be able to use it or refer to it. And yet you do. Mercillessly. But you can say: 'I refer to this because I want to steer people's minds in the direction of wisdom' but your 'wisdom' has no context. This 'wisdom' is an abstraction you handle, it is yours, you own it.

And when you create artistic and philosophical discourse it is so totally without regard to existing structures (which you reject prima facia) that your discourse (about or in reference to existing structures) is ridiculous, laughable. But you do not see this and you will not see this. Ridiculousness compounded.

Would like to extend Alexis last statement by saying when dealing with the human perspective, that which men speak upon is always subjective because of the objectivity of personal bias of that which has been indoctrinated into man's human minds by the prattling interpreters of idealism.

All human wisdom, logic, reasoning and analytical thoughts are founded upon man's self-righteous egos, which is believed to be a divided ego of the human mind's thought process stabilized in the soul of man's 'id'. The 'id' is man's animalistic nature which is limited to the heighs, depths, and length of a solid circled parenthesis sealed in the mortar of its own interpretations which anchors man to his own law of carnal commandents. It is this 'id' which splits man mentality and binds man to the good and evil consciousness of its own interpretations, and firmly holds man in the pains and pleasures of the illusionary birth and death of matter.

All men are bound to their split personalities. Personalities which look ignorantly for idols like unto the forms of themselves or imaginary to worship as a God of objective objectiveness which they cannot fathom, understand, or realize through their intellectual dualism of thinking. Why? because their dual thoughts patterns go no further than the depth of the earth which they were form from and which covers them in the shallowness of a shadow which can been seen but has no composition.

All forms in the realm of matter are brought to life on imaginary false conditions. All men are manipulated by the illusion of the conditions issued forth by an allegory tree with the nature of good and evil, which fruits are the objectiveness of the influence of subjective thinking. This influence makes man a manipulator of himself because it is his outer objective vision and inner subjective feeling he has come to believe in, build upon and exist as. Therefore all men sanction their lives by the manipulation of their own house built upon their belief and activity of following the structure and framework of the blueprint which they exist within.

Experts men have become in manipulating the conditions of their lives; in not accepting their responsibility to love their fellow brothers, sisters, children, mothers and fathers as they themselves would be loved. Deceitfully self-righteous is man's mainspring as they manipulate through the maze of the non-composing shadows they have casted, Men have yet to learn and therefore do not realize "a shadow does not exist where it does not fall, nor does a shadow exist where it does fall."

So the reality of living in the illusional world of matter does not truly matter. Neither does it matter how high one has climbed to reach the mountain top of intellectual materialism. Nor does it matter which rungs of the ladder one has place their feet upon; nor what beliefs men hold to, religion or non-religion men tender, or race, or color of the earth's texture men wear as flesh, or their abilities or lack thereof. If men have not stopped seeing God as a thought, concept, idea, opinion, word, picture, of image in time, space, distance and matter, nor broke through the "solid circled parenthesis sealed in the mortar of their own interpretations which anchors them to their own law of carnal commandments," they have not went through their human mind to get beyond their human mind. And so in their arrogance of believing they can empower themselves with wisdom to influence other minds, but nary principle or pattern of the function of the elements of life itself, men will never come to comprehend or understand they are the chief manipulator and divider of the garment of their life of living.

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa

Alexis Jacobi wrote: your 'wisdom' has no context.

Wisdom is THE context, to which everything else should be related. Otherwise, it all just becomes trivial entertainment and academic hand-waving.

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Mankind seeks the wisdom of its own intellectual past for answers of fulfillment within itself. There are no answers, for the only questions are from the metaphors, symbols, myth, and intellect of the shaman, witch-doctors, priest, gurus, philosophers, and intuitive persons who live and die as all others.

So what is wisdom?

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa

I would think that Ramakrishna is infinitely more useful to you, David, than Jesus Christ, his Jewish and Prophetic context, and the whole structure of humanistically-oriented thinking. Ramakrishna would be infinitely more delightful and useful to you because you would indeed be able to bend and twist him to support any a priori of yours, plus he is exotic enough to the self of the West that your readers could drink him down, smash their way out of their social context, abandon kith and kin, and take up residence in 'Wisdom', the 'only real context'.

And yet it seems to me that anyone would agree: to be engaged in life and in the human world is a very different thing and requires a radically different orientation. The principal 'argument' I have against your doctrines is not that I do not accept you having them, but rather that (I feel that) you cannot make any historical or intellectual figure you see fit conform to your will, and serve your project.

Whatever your project is, it is your own.

I read what you write Jufa (frankly, 3-4 times and as closely as I can) and, as always, I believe I grasp what you are getting at. It's a great deal of words to mean only: We can only operate from our subjective context. Who could argue?

But, after one has read you, and after one has accepted your doctrines (to put it that way...), What then?

Your context Alex is not any genuine feeling for Xianity or wisdom.
Your context is that you will use anything that lies around in the margins to use as a weapon to invalidate David and GF.
Who you are being is the context where enlightenment shows up.
Warmonger is not who you really are, it's just something you got into that you can give up at any time when conditions are so.

David and my interchanges are simply part of David an my interchanges, Dennis. I think both David and I understand them.

Can you write about your thoughts on Christianity? What are your 'genuine feelings' about it?

Alexis states:

"I read what you write Jufa (frankly, 3-4 times and as closely as I can) and, as always, I believe I grasp what you are getting at. It's a great deal of words to mean only: We can only operate from our subjective context. Who could argue?

But, after one has read you, and after one has accepted your doctrines (to put it that way...), What then?"

You do not get my message Alexis, nor do most who read my words because of the attempt to subjectify the unknown of specifics intellectual philosophy into generalization of interpretations which deal only in assumptions. The lack of understanding comes to bear because in this subjective theorm there is no object of consciousness to bring the breath of life to reasoning and unrealistic solids for there is no object of its causation to give it a heartbeat beyond the man. Man dies.

To go only to the subject can only subject one to the subject. But what then? Nothing but speculation, conceptual idealism, and a brick wall which always bring the question you ask "What then?" The subject dies, but life continues in the Object.

What then is the gateway of inquiry as to what is the causation of the conscious object which makes subjective living and intellectualization. In other words, it takes one into the invisibility of themself, beyond their fear of the unknown to deal with the effect of the invisivle cause of the subjective self and its elements. To go beyond the mind to the object, which is the breath of life for its child subjective, is the liberation of the will from being the subject victim of its own ignorance and fears of the belief it cannot ascend to exist in the Object cause which is its life. You can stay in this imprisonment. That is until the object of consciousness says you weary me, I withdraw my Spirit from you, and the subjective human intellectual heart dies, for it cannot sustain itself without the breath of the parent's life of cause.

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa