The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

Pam, do you really see much of a point in exchanging ideas? The stuff you come up with, the stuff that you are involved in, just doesn't fit with my interests or focus. It is wise just to see that and, I think, let it be. I assume what I write seems also from some other galaxy of concerns? Down from out of the froth and madness of purely human concerns? ;-)
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Pam Seeback »

Alex: I think Christian Science
Here it is..speculation. What has this to do with what is true of oneself?

Can you not see that "I think" brings the movement of one's spirit "to do" to a halt?

Saw your post when I previewed my post. I'm leaving it as it is, take it or leave it.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

It is not a question of either taking it or leaving it, Pam. 'It' makes no sense to me, I have nothing in me to share with you that would satisfy you or even that you could reflect on. Do you see this? I have written in the last days all sort of different things---ideas, thoughts, speculations, opinions---and there is no part of this that interests you! You seem to have 'resonated' with something I wrote a few pages back but, to all appearances, there is no way for us to delve any deeper into that.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Pam Seeback »

I agree.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

To restate: the 'metaphysical dream of the world' that each of us 'dreams'---and yet the word 'dream' is not quite the right one, and 'imagines' is the better one---induces if not forces each one to arrive at a whole group of decisions-conclusions about: How the world is composed and how it came into being and for what end, how we shall live, what is important and valuable in life, how we shall use our time here, how we relate to other people, and everything else. I started the thread on this note, and with all the typical pokes and jabs at both the founders and the denizens, which even without them will always and forever land me in the hot seat.

What I can say that is positive about the QRS effort is that it takes a stand and arrives at a praxis. It seems an incontestable fact that for so many their 'life' is just a process of drifting along, pushed along by whatever force that is dominant. Not to define one's 'metaphysical dream' is in a way a way to still define it: by failure to do so. Also, there is the bizarre problem of being strung 'between realities' or between narratives, or partially gripped by one and partially gripped by another: entrapment within a polarization.

Still another danger: rushing out of the gate with a partially formed concept or 'dream'. Literally being half-baked!

It is a bit strange that a given person might live his existence in his sole, unique and even idiosyncratic 'imagined world' right next to another person living in a quite different one.

But then there is a more close-to-home question: what in reality---not necessarily in declaration or assertion---is the 'metaphysical dream of the world' of the founders of the Genius Forum? And what is the process of learning to see 'the world' according to that vision? Dennis teaches us that it is a 'direct vision' or experience of nature, and Diebert quotes David in saying just about as much. But when we are encouraged to 'trust our mind', what exactly does this mean? Isn't it that we gain knowledge of the world by repeated lookings and in this sense, through interpretation, construct a model of the world? And don't we, then, construct a 'shared vision' if only by and among those who delve deeply into the question and who can form one? Shared in the sense of 'corroborated'? But the model, we must admit, it seems, will never be 'perfect', and yet what alternative do we have, really?

Are these my questions and concerns merely juvenile? Is there someone who will offer an intelligible and immediate contrary answer?

The more that I think about this space and the ideas presented, the more I see myself as 'simply' interested in differing aspects of the general Question proposed (if one can speak of it like a question posed). But I do think that one must accept, as Laird pointed out, a pretty highly coercive or 'insistent' or 'declarative' system for viewing reality that is presented here. It says 'It is like this!' and to function within this system one has to internalize its tenets...or catch endless hell! There is a very serious (a 'bloody') game that is proposed and played here. It is built into the central Vision that guides the philosophy and the spiritual-religious system. I don't really have an argument against that, in fact I appreciate it.

Without having a specific plan I hope to be able to continue developing these and similar ideas. I will not venture off of this thread so you may think of me as a well-trained virus, or irrelevancy as you may prefer, or 'resident victim of samsara'. But it would be appreciated if instead of just nipping little posts to derail or divert the focus, that the over-all idea might be responded to, if possible.
Richard M. Weaver wrote:When a man chooses to follow something which is arbitrary as far as the uses of the world go, he is performing a feat of abstraction; he is recognizing the noumenal, and it is this, and not that self-flattery which takes the form of a study of his own achievements, that dignifies him.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Are these my questions and concerns merely juvenile? Is there someone who will offer an intelligible and immediate contrary answer?
Yes.
It's as clear as a bell.
Your paradigm is post-modernist.
Your absolute is there is no absolute.

The caper is shonky because you're allowed to have one and we're not.

It looks like a serious deficit in intellectual development in one so old.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Richard M. Weaver in 'Ideas Have Consequences wrote:That culture is sentiment refined and measured by intellect becomes clear as we turn our attention to a kind of barbarism appearing in our midst and carrying unmistakable power to degenerate. This threat is best described as the desire for immediacy for its aim is to dissolve the formal aspects of everything and to get at the suppositious reality behind them. It is characteristic of the barbarian, whether he appears in a precultural stage or emerges from below into the waning day of a civilization, to insist upon seeing a thing ‘as it is’. The desire testifies that he has nothing in himself with which to spiritualize it; the relation is one of thing to thing without the intersession of imagination. Impatient of the veiling with which the man of higher type gives the world of imaginative meaning, the barbarian and the Philistine, who is the barbarian living amid culture, demands the access of immediacy. Where the former wishes representation, the latter insist upon starkness of materiality, suspecting rightly that forms will mean restraint.
An interesting thing about your presence in this 'conversation' is that you are totally incapable of participating in it! You seem not to be able to understand even the general concepts offered up. I wonder sometimes if you could, I mean if you were to actually read with some care, maybe even study a little. You are somewhat useful here, though, because you illustrate with your unthought-through utterances almost exactly what I am critiquing in the praxis of QRSism; what it leads directly to. I honestly do not know what more to say to you!
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dennis Mahar »

let's take a look at 'profound experience of nature'.
there's a bike in the shed against the wall.
we know it was cobbled together out of pieces/parts.
at that point there is no possibility of 'bikeness' as a condition for that bike.
'bikeness' shows up when I am riding the bike and realising the profound experience of 'bikeness'
'bikeness' is and isn't depending on an array of causes most notably a being on the bike experiencing a spirit 'bikeness'.

You're shagging a chick and experiencing a possibility in that chick for 'girlfriendness'
for that 'girlfriendness' in that chick to show up as a possibility for you depends on whispering sweet nothings copiously and a steady drip feed of cash
otherwise the 'profound experience of girlfriendness disappears in that girl for you.
'girlfriendness' in that girl is and isn't a possibility that depends.

A spirit in all things beyond the limits of language.

causality lies around as a necessary piece of machinery at all times.
if you know it only as languaged entity, you don't know it.

when a profound experience of causality is realised,
it's a radical transformation.
'causalityness' is a possibilty for an experiencer experiencing.

We get your paradigm
it's the ravings of a lunatic.
do you understand?

if you don't.
get on your bike.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

V. Nabokov in 'A Russian Beauty' wrote:That's all. Of course there may be some sort of sequel, but it is not known to me. In such cases, instead of getting bogged down in guesswork, I repeat the words of the merry king in my favorite fairy tale. Which arrow flies forever? The one that has hit its mark.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Lost and found by trial and error.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

We must reject, or certainly deeply question and challenge, the barbarian understanding and use of both 'logic' and 'reason' as well as their declarations about ratiocination. And we must equally scrutinize in painful detail their barbaric and tendentious conclusions, admonitions, ethical pronouncements; and finally, but crucially, their definition of man, of person and personality, and most critically their brutalizing definition of 'woman' which is so foregrounded in their philosophy and so central to it.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dan Rowden »

So, who said that and about whom were they speaking? It must be from something rather obscure because Google doesn't like it much.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Robert »

I think it was that 'moralising slut' Madonna in her role as Abbie, a woman who decides to have a baby with her gay best friend, in the film The Next Best Thing (2000) directed by John Schlesinger. Five years after the kid was born, Abbie wants to shack up with some hetero dude and take Sam, the kid, with her. Robert, the guy guy, isn't too happy about that and so a custody battles ensues. I'm not sure who Abbie is referring to in that quote, the movie's it's a bit too high brow for me.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Watch it now, don't insult our baby genius! Don't spoil his painful scrutinizing exploration of the cradle. He might need a diaper change soon though. Smelly!
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

Arthur Lovejoy in 'The Great Chain of Being' wrote:By 'otherworldliness', then---in the sense in which the term, I suggest, is an indispensable one for distinguishing the primary antithesis in philosophical or religious tendencies---I mean the belief that both the genuinely 'real' and the truly good are radically antithetic in their essential characteristics to anything to be found in man's natural life, in the ordinary course of human experience, however normal, however intelligent, however fortunate. The world we now and here know---various, mutable, a perpetual flux of states and relations of things, or an ever-shifitng phantasmagoria of thoughts and sensations, each of them lapsing into nonentity in the very moment of its birth---seems to the otherworldly mind to have no substance in it; the objects of sense and even of empirical scientific knowledge are unstable, contingent, forever breaking down logically into mere relations to other things which when scrutinized prove equally relative and elusive. Our judgments concerning them have seemed to many philosophers of many races and ages to lead us inevitable into mere quagmires of confusion and contradiction. And---the theme is of the tritest---the joys of the natural life are evanescent and delusive, as age if not youth discovers. But the human will, as conceived by the otherworldly philosophers, not only seeks but is capable of finding some fixed, immutable, intrinsic, perfectly satisfying good, as the human reason seeks, and can find, some stable, definitive, coherent, self-contained, and self-explanatory object or objects for contemplation. Not, however, in this world is either to be found, but only in a 'higher' realm of being differing in its essential nature, and not merely in degree or detail, from the lower. That other realm, though to those enmeshed in matter, occupied with things of sense, busy with plans of action, or absorbed in personal affections, it appears cold and tenuous and barren of interest and delight, is, to those who have been emancipated through reflection or emotional disillusionment, the final goal of the philosophic quest and the sole region in which either the intellect or of the heart of man, ceasing, even in this present life, to pursue shadows, can find rest.
Robert, I think if you go back and watch that movie another few times you will discover a subtle, spiritual current running though it. Pay attention to a wide group of objects foregrounded in every instance when Abbie holds forth with a unique puzzled but sincerely deprecating attitude. Also, I might recommend a couple of viewings without the vibrating butt-plug. See if that helps!

Diebert 'Bossy-Boots' van Rhijn: I fully recognize that not only had you, so very long ago, explored the crib, the area around it, the city and countryside, the planetary system and indeed the Cosmos---all worlds without and within---but had also organized your reduction of it to fit into a perfectly composed post, containable and expressible in all that is not said. It is a hard act to follow but you are indeed 'the best of the best'. Obeisances I humbly offer! What other option is there, really?

Yet 'instruct me, for thou know'st ... what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support' ... but only when the Spirit moves you to generosity!
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

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Dennis wrote:are these dependent origination,
conditional.
And here we come back to value. You seem to suggest that "dependently originated" experiences are not valuable, and yet is not your "experience of emptiness" in the same boat? Is it not, too, dependent on the right circumstances arising for you to have it as an experience?
Diebert quoting Kierkegaard wrote:Coming close to God brings catastrophe. Everyone whose life does not bring relative catastrophe has never even once turned as a single individual to God; it is just as impossible as it is to touch the conductors of a generator without getting a shock
OK, so, tell me about the catastrophe(s) in your life, Diebert.
Diebert wrote:classic debate between Samadhi and David Quinn
I think I missed that debate at the time. Very interesting. It's interesting in the context of the topic of this thread that this debate is very much about the world-view of the house philosophy, and in particular about the implications (ideas have consequences) of that world-view. It seems that samadhi was questioning, sure, you can assert the truth of causation if you want to, but what's the point unless that assertion has implications on one's life? David didn't engage much with this question, but he did almost tangentially mention a few implications of causation on one's life:

"Being conscious of causation is wiser than being unconscious of it. The latter means being taken in by the ego with its belief in free-will, which creates needless suffering in terms of pride, greed, ignorance, violence, etc. We don’t have to participate in needless suffering if we don’t want to."

"And yes, it goes without saying that someone who fully understands causation ceases to blame others or recognize credit for himself. He sees that God is ultimately responsible for everything that happens."

Informed readers can judge for themselves whether David, Dan and Kevin truly embody those implications.

As samadhi pointed out, this "truth" need not have positive implications: it might equally be used to justify immorality, as in, "I am caused to do [and therefore can't be held responsible for] whatever I want to do: to blame and to credit, to indulge in pride, greed, ignorance and violence". Here, I think the role of values raises its head again: rather than choosing the one path of ego indulgence - justifying any and all behaviour through causation - the house philosophers (ostensibly) choose the other path of egolessness, of eliminating emotions and behaviour inconsistent with causation. They do this presumably because of their valuing of consistency and moral behaviour, and, potentially, out of valuing self-preservation, because to take the position that anything (immoral) that they do they were caused to do, and thus can't be held responsible for, means that anything other people do to them can equally be justified in this manner by causation - "what's good for the goose is good for the gander".

I think, then, that this debate only consolidates the fact that values are integral to the forging of the house philosophy. In the context of the topic of this thread, I suggest that values are an integral part of one's world-view - in fact, that values, world-view and philosophy are difficult to separate. Alex notes the drive towards naturalism and away from transcendentalism, whereas Diebert seems to suggest, as in this quote, that the transcendent has been or can be disproved:
Diebert wrote:Just by surrendering to, acknowledging the truth of it on all levels: all concepts about and beliefs in gods, spirits, self, destiny, consciousness, truths, falsehoods, spiritual healths or diseases are eaten away by this "acidic poison" of surrender.
I don't see how that could possibly be the case, and I see the tendency to deny the transcendent as in part due to a lack of valuing of that transcendent. It is "archaic", "medieval", "magical thinking", "woo" etc etc. Perhaps, though, Diebert can explain how he thinks causation disproves the transcendent (if he would even include that word in his list).

By the way, I note samadhi's perplexity at the apparent (and I use that term advisedly) inconsistency between belief in causation and belief in the ability to make decisions, but I won't take this opportunity to advance a defence of free will, because it would be a rehash of previous posts. I will suggest, though, that belief in a transcendental reality makes belief in free will more plausible.

David had this to say on surrender in that debate:

"As for surrendering, the only kind of surrendering that I recognize as being valid is the surrender to truth. This involves recognizing what truth is, such as the truth of causation, and allowing it to transform your whole being. It is a case of allowing God to take over your whole life. And that requires dissolving one’s self in the sea of causation which makes up the body of God."

I find that especially vague and non-specific: "dissolving one's self in the sea of causation which makes up the body of God" is great as poetic rhetoric, but what does it mean on the ground? What, practically, changes in one's life? Is it anything beyond what I quoted above from the debate? (And I'm aware that nobody is obliged to defend or explain David's own words, but perhaps some brave soul will risk it)
Alex wrote:David at least seeks association with a Gnostic Christianity which does not strictly depend on the notion of resurrection (et cetera) and is heretical to standard Christianity in that sense. But is it non-Christian? [..] I tend to believe that ideas, even an idea about 'resurrection' and 'salvation', does not have to function literally but sublimates into a kind of symbolism and yet moves in unusual ways. QRStianity has more in common, I think, through its cultural matrix, with Christianity than it does with anything else, including Zen or Buddhism.
To be honest, Alex, I'm not so sure you're completely on target here, but it is an interesting idea that resurrection and salvation might function subliminally in QRStianity.

In any case, I'm not sure I'll participate much more in this thread - there seem to be bad feelings on all sides, and I'm not sure under those conditions that the discussion is worth it.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

Kierkegaard wrote:Coming close to God brings catastrophe. Everyone whose life does not bring relative catastrophe has never even once turned as a single individual to God; it is just as impossible as it is to touch the conductors of a generator without getting a shock.
This all depends on 'what sort of God one is defining' before one sets out to 'come close to God'. The quote from Lovejoy proposes a sort of division between the 'otherworldly' and the 'this-worldly' religious and philosophical ideas. I quoted it because, in this specific sense, QRStianity, by and large, comes under the heading of 'otherworldly' insofar as it seems to hinge on some radical, 'absolute' inner shift that substantially removes one from 'this world'. In Lovejoy's view this is perhaps the core division in all possible religious stances: how do we define our relationship to this present 'world' in which we live?

I would suggest here that it is quite possible to 'come close to God' in a way that does not undermine one's stance or platform in life lived, in fact it might very much provide a support to the 'sane living of life' in this plane and even the *enjoyment* of it. In a substantial sense this is a modern issue: we are now moving from an 'otherworldly'-influenced religious position to one of stark 'presence' in this world. We have the material means to make of life what once was for almost all people an experience of constant suffering a period relatively free of deep pain. We now have the means to live lives relatively free of overt and constant physical pain and ailment (as life was during, say, the pre-medicinal era, or the pre-dentistry era!) and so the *present* as a possibility of enjoyable experience has opened up for quite large numbers of people. It seems to me that this represents a notable shift: not so long ago, for a majority, life was a constant physical suffering, and thus an escape was desired, a longing for rest and freedom from pain.

I would also mention another interesting idea from Lovejoy: that of 'metaphysical pathos', a sort of sentiment or mood that is attached to a particular organization of metaphysics. Take for example the 'mood' of some desert mystic who can only experience God in a sentimental relationship of self-inflicted suffering, and a kind of masochistic *enjoyment* or in any case sense of 'rightness' in torturing the body to gain approval of God. I suggest that there is a quite defined 'metaphysical pathos' attached to the 'world' that QRS define and that the world seen IS NOT in any sense a necessarily 'true' world as they claim---the one true and incontestable Vision of this world that is possible through the exercise of reason [sic]---but is a group of choices made about what is seen and what is defined. The peculiar thing is that no one does now nor will they ever fully inhabit the 'world' that is proposed by QRS! It is an utterly idealistic world where one *appears* to reside. But as we all know we do in fact, all of us, live in the present structure of the world from which there is no escape. (I oftentimes think on this when, for example, I read MovingAlways's ceaseless abstract delving.)

I have a strong suspicion that there is a very basic aesthetical element operating in the QRS vision. They are able to note it in others but cannot, it seems, note it in themselves. And to this is connected their peculiar Metaphysical Pathos. There is much there: fear of the actual world. Fear of residing in it. Fear or avoidance of a 'God' that is comfortable incarnated. Fear of the body. Fear of 'woman'. An inner need to establish a platform---something utterly unique, radical---from which to approach other people. One cannot merely dismiss this nor its psychological implications.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

guest_of_logic wrote:
Diebert quoting Kierkegaard wrote:Coming close to God brings catastrophe. Everyone whose life does not bring relative catastrophe has never even once turned as a single individual to God; it is just as impossible as it is to touch the conductors of a generator without getting a shock
OK, so, tell me about the catastrophe(s) in your life, Diebert.
That's a bizarre question from my point of view. What would you learn or understand from those? Emotionally I guess it would be equal to everyone and thing you know and love being murdered or disappearing mysteriously. It's what happens when everything stands on its head and the only thing left is undergoing it, figuring out what happened: giving it hand and feet over time. It's not just mystical experience or social alienation although they can become part of it. The real catastrophe is your own world, your own idiot cosmos collapsing. And only when that catastrophe is taking place one first realized that this cosmos was even there: collapsible!
It seems that samadhi was questioning, sure, you can assert the truth of causation if you want to, but what's the point unless that assertion has implications on one's life? David didn't engage much with this question...
It's a false dilemma, this whole question of "effects" of philosophical assertions. The assertion is itself effect just as much as cause of anything. Especially assertions on causality! To understand how it "works" one needs to understand all the observable causes and effects in place. A never ending wild goose hunt....for those who like such never ending chases!

It's interesting though that you distill this all from Samadhi's point of view because you are one of the few as far as I know who has some information about the potential implication of his rather serious confusion with regard to Sam's very own life [and his long history of schizophrenic participation and incarnations here]. As your own experiences might confirm: thinking without surrendering to its very anchor will lead to very serious suffering and delusion over time. G.K. Chesterton didn't get the whole picture when he wrote: "a madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason". But the true madman is the one who has not lost everything but hangs on to one thing or the other. They can manifest as an idea, belief, theory but underneath is attachment, an emotional memory, an unspoken unfulfilled desire, frozen and crystallized in a labyrinth of thoughts and feelings.
Diebert wrote:Just by surrendering to, acknowledging the truth of it on all levels: all concepts about and beliefs in gods, spirits, self, destiny, consciousness, truths, falsehoods, spiritual healths or diseases are eaten away by this "acidic poison" of surrender.
I don't see how that could possibly be the case, and I see the tendency to deny the transcendent as in part due to a lack of valuing of that transcendent. It is "archaic", "medieval", "magical thinking", "woo" etc etc.
Everything what has been conceived as "world" by people has been magical thinking. Not just any fundamental belief in gods, the inherent, the I as fixed entity, etc.
I find that especially vague and non-specific: "dissolving one's self in the sea of causation which makes up the body of God" is great as poetic rhetoric, but what does it mean on the ground? What, practically, changes in one's life?
Obviously life happens before and after dissolution of that false sense of self. It's impossible to describe exactly what will change beyond the logical assumption that one stops promoting false ideas about ones self and might even start undermining them actively at times. But it doesn't matter: if liberation and reason was valued above all, then this has then been achieved or approached enough to know where you're at. Why desiring more "changes" now suddenly? Wasn't truth the most desired love?
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dan Rowden »

Alex Jacob wrote:The peculiar thing is that no one does now nor will they ever fully inhabit the 'world' that is proposed by QRS! It is an utterly idealistic world where one *appears* to reside. But as we all know we do in fact, all of us, live in the present structure of the world from which there is no escape. (I oftentimes think on this when, for example, I read MovingAlways's ceaseless abstract delving.)
You have officially taken the mantle from Pincho as the stupidest person in this place. Congrats.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

Why thank you, Dan. It is doubtful that you understand much of what I say but I do appreciate the thought. If I am not mistaken you echo largely the opinion that Diebert outlined, above. A 'Pincho-like neurosis', et cetera, et cetera.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dan Rowden »

What you say is easy enough to understand. Stop flattering yourself. The issue is that what you say has nothing to do with anything QRStianess at any level beyond that of the superficially of wordplay. You understand nothing at any depth and have no interest in doing so. You've as much as openly declared this. Given that, your continual attempts to fit our "philosophy" into your various pseudo-scholastic tapestries, your attempts to analyse and critique such, are simultaneously foolish and insulting. But, as I've said to Pincho, have fun. There are worse things you could be doing, like, I dunno, thinking.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Alex Jacob »

A couple of things. One is an interesting fact. Tell me what you think. Genius Forum, at a basic level, lives by and in a sense thrives on 'insult'. My theory is that when there exists no means to value persons, and when it is only about 'ideas', or gaming with ideas, or fronting, or god-knows-what, it must always lead to a sheer dysfunction. Let's see: Jehu is 'certifiably insane' (when he is really only thoroughly absent and obsessively meticulous!), but he is told that by Leyla who loses in every precipitated argument and with each embarrassing display but who claims Victory! anyway. John can label anything at all 'delusional' and thereby sever connectedness. (I have totally given up trying to figure out Dennis). I am 'neurotic', at an infant level intellectually and spiritually. And 'stupid' to boot. Dan, you are aware that all these namings originate, by and large, 'on your side'? That it is part-and-parcel of the 'system' that has been established here. What you see displayed here, or what it reduces to, derives from the ideas that have been assembled here, from the 'content' in the widest sense. It seems an inescapable fact to me at least. The people that disagree with 'you' become real enemies! In a conversation with David once he told me, in so many words, that I was the delusive force incarnate.

You have this idea, you have installed it at such a basic level, that if you say something with enough force, with emotional force even, that you have made it true. It is a characteristic of you. It is as if you say "In this you are absolutely wrong!" and you suppose that the other person must appease you, or prove themselves to you. Diebert, though more sophisticated or perhaps 'subtle' has the same configuration. Y'all suffer from some real flaws but you just can't see them.

You suppose that 'you' (Quinn, Solway and yourself), what, do not represent a philosophy and so 'philosophy' is an absurd term? What the fuck? That means, of course, that your philosophy is not a group of ideas or selections or choices but the One True Vision of Reality. End of story. For you, this is 'self-evident' and you wear this idea like armor. And clobber whomever you wish. But the way I look at things, and some part of this comes from what I have learned here, is that 'you' are, your ideas are, just one group of outcomes in a greater world of ideas. You CAN apply analysis, you can recur to the history of ideas, historical sources, comparative religion to look at what you are proposing. In fact, to move beyond the static and the BS which is presented in some aspects one needs to do this. But y'all do an efficient job of making sure that analysis doesn't happen.

And it is not foolish, it is actually one the opposite end of what 'foolish' means. If it is 'insulting' to you then I suggest reading a little more closely. Insults and slaps are part-and-parcel of presence on this forum, and they very often come from you. But so what? In point of fact I suggest that 'you' will not allow any bridges to be built by those who do not share your predicates even if those bridges move in your direction. You come out like a swarm of hornets and deal with any threat.

There is a world of 'scholarly thought', people who dedicate their lives to looking into certain areas or subjects. Some of the people I have mentioned on this thread for example. Incredible resources. Except for y'all who sit in the cat bird's seat, who shoot down whatever you like when you like, any structure of idea that you don't like.

You telling ME that I am not thinking? As you can imagine I can't take you at all seriously though I suppose you actually mean to be taken seriously. I don't have any idea what Pincho Paxton is up to. I don't really read his posts because I don't see how they are related to *any of this*. But comparing me to him is just...well, you can guess! But of course your point and your endeavor is the derail the possibility for any line of idea that you do not manage.
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SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Dan, how does "QRS" differ from teachings Gautama Buddha gave? Or what is unique about it that it can be jokingly described as "QRStianity“? I am not sure where the three of you have put your writings save for gf.

Also we were talking about suffering, I experienced some this morning, a generally negative feeling, I then took a seat on the sand by a lake and experienced meditation which involved non attachment to worldly forms and 'self' experience, during there was no suffering, only Serenity, there was also none afterward. As attachment 'returns' so too does some suffering.
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Dan Rowden
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Dan Rowden »

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:Dan, how does "QRS" differ from teachings Gautama Buddha gave?
That's for you and each individual to judge. I could say it doesn't differ in any important detail, but then that would generate a zillion individual interpretations. It's best to just look at the ideas.
Or what is unique about it that it can be jokingly described as "QRStianity“? I am not sure where the three of you have put your writings save for gf.
Um, Google "Poison for the Heart". That's Kevin's major work, written some time back. Also his website "The Absolute" is full of great material.

http://www.theabsolute.net/
Also we were talking about suffering, I experienced some this morning, a generally negative feeling, I then took a seat on the sand by a lake and experienced meditation which involved non attachment to worldly forms and 'self' experience, during there was no suffering, only Serenity, there was also none afterward. As attachment 'returns' so too does some suffering.
That's because the ego is still present and Samara is alive and functioning. That will always be the case if your only recourse is to artificially escape from this via things like meditation and solitude.
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Re: The Metaphysical Dream of the World

Post by Leyla Shen »

Words are all just a series of sounds echoing in your head aren't they, Alex? You like the way they sound; a full bodied symphony of meaningless nothings whispered in your ever dissatisfied fuck-me-sweetheart ear, amplified in the hollows of your empty skull. Of course, to you, Jehu is indeed a master conductor...
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