the more entrenched injustices of the world...

[Sapius]

Laird;

What do you think of this idea?

I just got back, and it may take a while before I actually settle back in... Soon though.

[Sapius]

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Okay, you've got the Caesar thing happening, how about you guys now turn your attention to God.

"He who does not leave his father, mother.... Caesar... so on and so forth...... and follow me.... cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."

So that ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, sounds contradictory.

On the other hand; there is no need to turn the attention once one knows what one is, and no other can actually know or judge that. If anyone likes to... please be my guest.

[sue hindmarsh]

Sapius,

The verse you mention comes from the bible - Luke.14:26:

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

There is no mention of Caesar.

You also wrote:

On the other hand; there is no need to turn the attention once one knows what one is, and no other can actually know or judge that. If anyone likes to... please be my guest.

It isn't at all clear what point you are trying to make.

[Alex Jacob]

Lucretius and this school regarded 'the gods' as very real, and yet unconcerned and uninvolved in the human world. They existed in their immortal forms but did not interact in the natural world with which Lucretius was certainly involved. Although his poem (de rerum natura) opens with an invocation of the Goddess, it is more about a Goddess similar in conception to our idea of 'Mother Nature'. One impressive thing about Lucretius and the Epicurean school is how opposed to 'the vatum' they were, that is, 'priests and poets'. They hated and opposed mythical, story-like superstition, and they hated the mental control priests and poets weilded over the simple-minded and the superstitious. The idea is of course still highly relevant, and in our day and age it is still the 'priests and the poets' who direct perception, at least for the great masses. If you remain captured and contained by a dogmatic definition of 'God', in a superstitious relationship, you have not really entered into a relationship with what 'God' in fact means. This is now and will always be the problem: it is a path of discovery and investigation, not in simply adapting oneself to 'received ideas'.

Brokenhead wrote:

"Wait a minute while I shove my finger down my throat and puke into the wastebasket...aaaaack!!!... ah. There. That's better. How old are you? Seven? "The Grandfather in the Sky?" You consider yourself a thinker - a philosopher, no less! - and that's the best you can do? If any of my suggestions about evidence for the existence of God (as opposed to a neat, tidy little proof, with some Powerpoint thrown in for effect) sounds naive and childish and moronic, how do you think this stuff sounds? It is so easy to reject things, and horribly more difficult to ponder them, don't you agree?"

It has never been addressed to date (these wise ones have very little self-critical capacity), but on numerous occassions I have pointed out that the QRS [to which we must add an H) are fundamentally illiterate people. Or rather, they are 'pre-literate'. Therefor, when you allude to a whole miriad of ways to perceive, represent and explain 'God' (which even within Christian theology is vast, simply huge, and non-mono-dimensional, and this does not at all include literary notions of God...), the idea cannot be received, and you can't even say it goes over their heads because that implies there would have to have been some preparation to receive the ideas and it was missed because of stupidity (they are not stupid people). They simply have never been exposed to these ideas, these ideas are completely new to them. And these ideas are completely irrelevant to their evangelical project. Hence, so easily rejected. [Just as it would be with almost any dyed-in-the-wool evangelical Christian in any peasant, pre-literary context].

If you look for example at Kevin Solways reading list you will see that it is exceedingly narrow, though the works cited are extraordinary each in their own way. How they could include Nietzsche---whose understanding requires a significant familiarity with the occidental tradition (which almost no one here has or is even concerned with)---is incomprehensible to me. Yet, they make an 'interpretation' of Nietzsche and can somehow include an understanding and appreciation of Nietzsche alongside Ramakrishna (!) which is almost unreal, certainly surreal. But there is no real literary or philological grasp of the movement of Western ideas, and 'they have no organ for appreciation of art' as Hesse once said of the Jungians. Art, as it is to evangelical Christians, is a frivolous activity that is rejected from the start.

In this sense, I think you will find, Sue is essentially arguing tendentious religious points from a very limited perspective, and her main points are more or less evangelical. To interchange with her, you have to accept her ideological position, which requires conversion. She is [excuse me for talking about you in the third person Sue] incapable of building a bridge to you and her (and their) technique involves battering down the walls of your own mental city, if you will permit me the metaphor. They tend to operate in a team toward this end. The same is pretty much true of all of the them (and this whole forum if I could come out and say it---it is a 'shared disease'), and this lack, as I see things, is detrimental to the ideas they wish to present [ideas that are not at all irrelevant or unimportant], in precisely the same way the religious-evangelical position makes itself detrimental to the communication of ideas, and can only 'preach to the choir'.

It is not a path that is involved in ideas. It involves itself in ideas expressly to remove itself from the world of ideas and to move toward a very narrow domain. What they do there is anyone's guess.

[I mean I cannot even begin to describe how superficial is their grasp of Kirkegaard and what Kirkegaard represents and what effect he has had on theology and ideas, but they will jump on me for being unfamilar with 'wisdom' for making this claim...]

The closest correspondence, I submit, these folks have [and many who write here] is to the protestant-evangelical type: where ideas become very, very narrow, and create a narrowing of the human spirit, leading to dry and brittle perception...

They are, in that sense, post-Calvinist (and this fits with an unlettered, Australian, country-bumpkin post-Christian protestantism, their basic cultural formation).

I have been trying to convert them back to the One True Religion given by God to man and guide them to the Promised Land, but with no success! I have even gone so far as to indicate new ways the Kookaburra's song can be listened to, which would open them mentally to whole new vistas of being, astounding and meaningful 'spiritual gumdrops of realization', but alas, the Kookaburra goes silent for them, he 'turns his back and stills his beak'.

It is really rather sad... :-(

[Unidian]

Hmm... interesting. Although they share little in common with Calvin doctrinally, the "flavor" does seem similar.

[Dan Rowden]

Oh, wonderful, more reams of hand waving. Listen, Alex, if you have a religious perspective to offer outside the narrow band of ideas you seem to think we engage (which of itself, frankly, proves your ignorance of how we deal with ideas) let's actually see them so we can do some analysis. If you can come up with one of your own, great, if not, name one that someone else did.

[Sapius]

Sapius,

The verse you mention comes from the bible - Luke.14:26:

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

There is no mention of Caesar.

Sue,

Which means he cannot eventually come to God. Or am I wrong?

I’m surprised you cannot see the significance of me adding “Caesar” in there? Basically what this verse means is, one cannot serve two masters, one being God, and the other being ‘worldly matters’. At least that is how I see it; and paying taxes to Caesar is a worldly matter, so ironically, Jesus has double standards so to speak, who also says “pay your taxes to Caesar”, so it is quite alright to indulge in worldly matters, but as long as pay your dues to GOD too, that is give enough attention to God too; as against his above quote which advocates total attention to God alone, and not necessarily to gain personal disciples. I don’t think Jesus had that big an Ego.

Sap: On the other hand; there is no need to turn the attention once one knows what one is, and no other can actually know or judge that. If anyone likes to... please be my guest.

Sue: It isn't at all clear what point you are trying to make.

I wish I were as good a speaker as you, Sue, but of course, I do not totally agree to your entire philosophy or philosophical approach, which kind of totally revolves around "femininity" and how you personally interpret or see it.

However, one can never ever have a true picture of the total perspective or operational mode of another mind, (unless of course, one believes there isn’t any other individual mind, which is a different story), and can only guess from bits and pieces of information, and that too have to necessarily be interpreted from ones own personal perspective and values. So I don’t mind or really care who has what opinion about me, and neither do I fully rely on my opinion of others and be outright judgmental in an ultimate sense.

Now, if God = Everything, (totality), (ask Kevin to explain that), then what isn’t “God”? And if one fully realizes that, then any action, word or deed, remains nothing but a conscious service in and of God, which actually IS God (totality) itself, so no personal “attention” TO God is then required, or exists.

I can only speak for myself, and I can never ever actually KNOW that about another, and that does not ultimately matter to me.

[Sapius]

Laird;

What do you think of this idea?

I just got back, and it may take a while before I actually settle back in... Soon though.

Laird, do you mind if I let this important topic mentally simmer for a while? I might also consult a few others that I know of, who can see the economical and commercial implications more clearly, and may be some other aspects too; if you don't mind that is. Most probably I will be on a longer trip to Europe in early April. In the mean while, if you could prepare a concise paper on the idea, then that will help explain a lot better. I'm not that good at such things.

[Laird]

Laird, do you mind if I let this important topic mentally simmer for a while?

That's fine Sap. I'm letting it simmer a bit too.

In the mean while, if you could prepare a concise paper on the idea, then that will help explain a lot better.

I'll see what I can do.

[Sapius]

Laird,

I'll see what I can do.

Don't see, just do, and let the rest follow its own course ;p

[Unidian]

Use the force, you must! There is no try. Only DO, there is.

Nah, forget Yoda. I want to be the Emperor. He gets to shoot lightning.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

.It has never been addressed to date (these wise ones have very little self-critical capacity), but on numerous occassions I have pointed out that the QRS [to which we must add an H) are fundamentally illiterate people. Or rather, they are 'pre-literate'.

There's some truth in there, that these people couldn't help to become anti-intellectual or at least deeply suspicious of any apparent word-weaving-for-the-sake-of-it, name dropping, appeal to authorities or any inability to be concise and sparse: the gift to be clear, which often but not always shows itself through breath-taking or offending simplicity in word or action, not necessarily a simple or primitive form in moronic sense.

It's quite easy to spot errors and lacks in words and action of any 'men of the infinite' though; in the end we're dealing with a different approach that could never become perfectly factual or knowledgeable, since the very things needed to achieve anything close to it would probably flush out the baby with the water.

The problem with the academic 'reality-based' community is that they're often so devoted to analyzing footprints and droppings of rare animals that they have become another species altogether, getting more removed from their subject than they were when they started.

The main difference in approach I see between an scholarly or intellectual approach and wilder thinkers is that the scholars start with the assumption a work is completely born out of the environment, genes and childhood traumas. Education and exposure explain a whole character that is analyzed and the whole body of work is seen under that stroboscopic light. What you call QRSH philosophy seems to go for 'eternal' types of wisdom or truth, in other words elements that are so universal, so married with the very workings of consciousness and mind that they shine through in words no matter which age or tradition they're embedded in, as long it's not too alien to us. It can shine through despite upbringing, culture, language, style or mental problems.

If you look for example at Kevin Solways reading list you will see that it is exceedingly narrow, though the works cited are extraordinary each in their own way. How they could include Nietzsche---whose understanding requires a significant familiarity with the occidental tradition (which almost no one here has or is even concerned with)---is incomprehensible to me. Yet, they make an 'interpretation' of Nietzsche and can somehow include an understanding and appreciation of Nietzsche alongside Ramakrishna (!) which is almost unreal, certainly surreal. But there is no real literary or philological grasp of the movement of Western ideas, and 'they have no organ for appreciation of art' as Hesse once said of the Jungians. Art, as it is to evangelical Christians, is a frivolous activity that is rejected from the start.

This is an interesting paragraph for several reasons. My interest in this forum started when I first arrived at this board in 2004 because I already reached the conclusion myself that Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and also Diogenes, Jesus and Siddhartha all expressed a rare depth and unique clarity standing out from the strangling stronghold of traditions that gave form to these geniuses and then tried to destroy their work by assimilating it into a popular version over the following centuries. But one cannot hide the lamp, only misinterpret the shadows.

Is it then all a philosophical Rorschach inkblot test or is there truly a wisdom tradition in Hermetic sense, seen by those who are 'initiated'? Here is where it indeed turns into a religion but one without specific scripture, figureheads or language. It's the leaping faith of a Kierkegaard I suppose after consistent thought brought one that far. It's a pure individual process and any thought of a Genius group or enlightened society missed the point bigtime.

In this sense, I think you will find, Sue is essentially arguing tendentious religious points from a very limited perspective, and her main points are more or less evangelical.

At a certain point you could come to the conclusion that being non-religious equals being perfectly enlightened. Just as well, one could define religion in a way it includes all forms of expression and conviction. A useful perspective is necessarily limited if one wants to retain focus and direction. A position of teaching becomes necessarily more or less evangelical. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this unless one has the perspective of a nihilist.

It is not a path that is involved in ideas. It involves itself in ideas expressly to remove itself from the world of ideas and to move toward a very narrow domain. What they do there is anyone's guess.

Yeah, it's ultimately beyond the intellectual. Ideas are only used to the extend they can assist in the destruction that is aimed for from the start. Destruction of the personal web of ideas and deeper thought-forms that rule our lives to enable better understanding of them.

[I mean I cannot even begin to describe how superficial is their grasp of Kirkegaard and what Kirkegaard represents and what effect he has had on theology and ideas, but they will jump on me for being unfamilar with 'wisdom' for making this claim...]

Your criticism would appear more convincing if you didn't misspell Kierkegaard's name so consistently ;-). But you might want to show off obscure knowledge of the name's origin. Also to allude to a superior understanding of the man's work by referring to unnamed or undisclosed authoritative analysis seems fishy.

Your deconstructing approach to philosophy ("what has caused this thought and what is it influence") has a limitation that it indeed might miss the point of a possible 'truth' factor that lies beyond the limitations of an author or his particular diseases. When one accepts this possibility the question becomes where to find the clearest manifestations in work and life of this truth-saying. And there appears to be some agreement between folks that works of at least Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weininger, Spinoza, Jesus, Siddhartha, Lao Tzu, Jesus and Hakuin contain a rare quality to its depth and overall pointedness, relevance and impact. It's like looking for the most extreme, the longest blade, the biggest dick, the most penetrating tool. After having found some one dismisses for that particular task all the other attempts, even when they might be providing great thoughts, research, art or just entertainment and relief for the rest of us, each in his own time-bubble. Some others just remain obscure and unheard - too much geared toward a specific audience perhaps.

The closest correspondence, I submit, these folks have [and many who write here] is to the protestant-evangelical type: where ideas become very, very narrow, and create a narrowing of the human spirit, leading to dry and brittle perception...

However, the Protestants made a brilliant move by reforming the Church because its imagery and theory was getting totally corrupted, close to decay. By bringing back focus, sobriety and seriousness they brought the Church back closer to its wisdom roots, forcing the Catholic church to adapt as well, to waken up.

They are, in that sense, post-Calvinist (and this fits with an unlettered, Australian, country-bumpkin post-Christian protestantism, their basic cultural formation).

Calvinism in the end was a double-edged sword and it splintered itself into irrelevancies. But it brought forward free-thinkers in the 19th century that shaped all things to come.

We're all reformers now...

[Carl G]

Pretty good post, Diebert. Thanks for taking the time to compose it.

Alex, what is the essential difference between the QRS approach and your own? I'm seeing them as more or less the same, except maybe you read more?

[Alex Jacob]

First, let's define the terms:

[Please click here for the Terms of Discourse].

If you accept, let us proceed! (If there is no agreement, there is no proceeding, that is a metaphysical fact).

Do you have the tools and apparatus required? Good! I knew I could count on you!

One that is sometimes lacking: ALCHEMICAL FIRE
_____________________________________________

In a previous tract I made mention of what I consider to be an important point: that you can only really discuss what is 'on the page' and sometimes what is there to be read 'between the lines'. But how can you really reveal your cards by referring to the meta-text or the ur-text---the sort of akashic text---that really provokes any desire to communicate at all?

And yet, we are always referencing what could never appear on a page, what is there to be read between the lines. So, let us give that a name, an shrouded allusion that refers to a metaphor:

NAME
NAME
NAME

(always good to work with sets of three).
_____________________________________________

Some alchemist somewhere, with all his test-tubes and frasks, also has a little vial containing the most mysterious spirit, the spirit that is the primary catalyst, both the beginning and the end of all experimentations: Mercurius.

Just by adding a little of the agent mercurious the whole dynamic shifts, the whole experiment takes form, and one moves through the cycles of creativity. Chasing mercurius, responding to the call of mercurious, we cover all sorts of territory that we never would have explored. But Mercurious will never, ever appear and explain Himself or His tactics. (He appears to grant wishes, though, so be prepared).

The storyteller is constrained by the very nature of storytelling, thank Heaven: to weave yarns, to take you on wild journeys within your own mind. If you get too analytical, mercurius disappears. Actually, you more of less kill the possibility of mercurius, which is the only possibility worth exploring. The best storyteller is also a sort of magician, and the best stories are always told at dusk, on the treshold of the world, of life, or perception and knowledge, when a 'mysterious crack appears between the worlds'.

[Carl G]

Alex,

You throw smoke bombs and appear/disappear in your robes. What else you got?

[Alex Jacob]

Ah, exegesis.
_____________________________________________

I know, I know Carl. We have been trained to think in the most literal terms, and when we want something, we seem always prepared to stamp our feet and get a pouty look until we dammed well get what we are certain we deserve! The more adult we become, the more we seem to end up acting like spolied brats. Mercurius therefor brings the message: to get anywhere, and certainly in 'wisdom', it is likely you have to get a little younger.

However, I submit to you that life never, ever makes itself known, and never understood, through 1) the technique of tantrum or 2) the medium of literalness.

If you were to use symbols, you yourself might say that the forum (the masculine mind) is logocentric, and has the rather peculiar belief that you could actually lay truth out on the line like laundry on the clothesline: one item, and then the next, and then another, and then you could stand back and look at the whole picture from a distance.

What else you got?

The thing that 'quickens' life and all of the processes of life, including the mental realm, the ideational realm, is a mysterious intelligence. For the love of Pete, Carl, there is included in the name of this forum the word-idea Genius, and these spiritual gumdrops I have thrown down, they are not enough?

What, you want that I should become like you-plural? The most boring and ineffective group of literalist grandpappies and moralists? Some calvinist grouches who refuse to dance? I make reference to the mysterious fire that moves through all admirable 'genius' and this...this...is not enough? Whatever might satisfy you, Carl?
_____________________________________________

Again, I repeat, we have to listen again & again & again to the call of the Kookaburra until we raise ourselves to being able to hear its message. You take this as a mere joke, and yet I am completely serious.

And anyway, I haven't even begun to answer Diebert's venerable post...

[Carl G]

I am a mage. I represent the highest truths. I am here to say that these truths cannot be imparted in words. Even what I say about this is not correct because it uses words. One must not only read between the lines but also divine what is being said by what is not said.

Anything you say about this is wrong because, again, the highest truths lay beyond words. The process of reaching them itself is beyond words, beyond concepts, and can only be hinted at, or pointed to, symbolically.

It is, however, useful to denigrate systems, like Genius, which do use words. And to use words to do it, periodically expending energy to carve and point in this cyber-stone, to share it with the people. It is important to say that what is spoken of here is far from ultimate truth (again, not being able to say what is this truth).

How to approach higher truths? It is necessary to penetrate gateways not known to exist, by changing perspective. If you are interested, for starters, listen to birds. For a few years, probably. Good luck.

[Alex Jacob]

This is not really chess and is more like checkers, Carl. Chess has a really peculiar elegance, and the strangest things can happen and happen fast. In checkers though, the winner is the one who makes the first move, and there are so very few moves and no elegance.

As a literalist, as someone who wants things spelled out, and who really seems to believe this is possible, you can force the issue, as you are, and keep pressing and pressing.

You are misinterpreting very broadly, though, because even if I am making assertions, or suggestions, they are couched in open-ended terms, even as visual images where pretty sophisticated intellectual ideas are represented through art in a way that bypasses the mind and produces change or movement in some other, more crucial area. Are you picking up on this Carl? What I am alluding to is not myself, Carl, but to a potential that exists for all of us, and I am mentioning this important and even crucial thing in a forum dedicated to 'genius'. Think about it. But this is unacceptable to you? Your option---the only one that seems available to you, the only one you seem able to access as a lever---is to translate every allusion into a 'literal term', and then analyse the term...until any possible message, and most meaning, evaporates. There is a great deal of consistancy in what I write, but yes, I completely resist coming down to the feild that you establish and appearing there in a battle under terms that you designed and control. You are seeing this, aren't you? And you do see, I hope, that this is one of the central games that are played in this environment and others like it, right? But you don't see your game as a game, do you?

What you have written---your parody of me---is a representation of your own material, but your material does not hold and cannot contain me. Similarly---to extend the use of the idea-possibility of 'mercurius'---your methods drive the spirit away. I submit that you can see this in this brief exchange. This is one of the activities of a logo-centric mind, and I further submit that what this logo-centric mind requires, needs desperately, is all that can be connoted by the mysterious feminine, that complimentary to the power of Mercurius. Hence, the reference to alchemy, hence the brilliant images from alchemical art, and no less the clear reference I have always made to the importance of Art, and to conserving the artist's spirit as we approach...everything...but very certainly the works of genius, the possibility of genius, the doing of genius.

You use the word 'denigrate' to describe my activities? Strong criticism is not necessarily denigration, Carl. And to use that term also implies that you think I am not being creative in my efforts, or that I have ill-will or bad faith; that is, lack of compassion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So, generally, your paraphrase, your parody, you mercilless mistress!, does not at all describe what I am up to nor what I endeavor to communicate.

Your doctrines lead...to shipwreck...whereas my doctrines lead to smooth sailing on the wings of spirit-birds to happy kingdoms of the sky!
____________________________________________

As an added bonus I include Seven Vital Emblems. Just read them and allow them to enter [what you call] your subconscious:

Emblem 1. A pregnant man stands, his hands and head emitting currents of wind, cloud or smoke. Within his belly we see a child beginning to form.
Emblem 2. A woman with the globe of the Earth around her body, nourishes an infant held in her left arm at her breast. With her right hand she gestures to the ground below, where a goat on the left suckles a child and a wolf on the right suckles two children.
Emblem 3. On a furnace on the left water is being heated in a great vessel. On the right a woman pours water into a large wooded vessel of steaming water. From a tap at the bottom some of this is drawn off into a small bucket. The presence of some cloth lying in the foreground suggests she may be about to wash clothes.
Emblem 4. A man and a woman embrace and kiss. On the right a man stands and offers them a chalice or cup. At his feet is a jug or vessel.
Emblem 5. A man approaches a woman and holds a toad or frog to suckle at her breast.
Emblem 6. A man is scattering or sowing seed with his right hand from a basket that he holds with his left.
Emblem 7. On the summit of a high mountain over a town a bird sits upon a nest. Another bird is just about to fly off.
____________________________________________

Stay with me Carl! The road will get a little rocky from here on out, but I will not abandon you nor the forum!

[Carl G]

Alex,

Thanks for being a little more honest than usual and a little less elaborate and obtuse. Your symbolic gyrations only help if they are absorbed by others, otherwise they are simply you spinning fancies in the air. That is why I thank you for being a little more front and center.

FYI I think and operate a lot like you do. Your "read" of me is surprisingly off for a mage such as yourself.

[Unidian]

Alex is a mage? Sweet.

Can you cast magic missile?

[Carl G]

Mage, sage, toilet brush, c'mon, Nat.

[Unidian]

But still, can he cast magic missile or what? My cleric is about to die.

[Philosophaster]

http://www.starterupsteve.com/swf/8bitDandD.html

[Unidian]

I'm getting drunk! Are there any girls there? Roll the dice to see if I'm getting drunk!! If there's any girls there I wanna doooo them!

[Philosophaster]

I'm attacking the darkness! Hehehehehe...