Esoteric Christianity so called

[Nick_A]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Hi Nick —


Curious ... I have referenced chapter and verse, unlike yourself.


Does it ever occur, I wonder, that my blindness is in fact your own? That where you assume a void and darkness, I see as luminous? That my theology is in fact the higher esoteric apophatic theology, whilst yours is earthbound cosmological speculation ... relative, contingent, and riddled with error ... again as I have demonstrated more than once?

How would you know? How could you?


Indeed it is. I experience Christ, you experience your little psychological cave.


I am not interested in cosmology primarily, nor is any Christian ... cosmology is worldy, we seek Him directly (Mystery), not Him-in-things (Cosmology — much as I enjoy it).


Nonsense, God cannot be verified through empirical method, nor through sentimentalism implied by 'vulnerable' ... this is your faith, and it is truly blind.

You really should give "Meditations on the Tarot" a try, I think it's right up your street, and you'll find more than you ever dreamed of.

+++

This line of argument you pursue, with myself and others, which rests on the a priori assumption that you are right, and everyone else is wrong, is pointless, and I shall pursue it no further.

Let me be clear, as long as you assume:
a) that you are beyond question, therefore infallible;
b) that your ideas should be received as doctrine because they are yours;
c) that every other idea is wrong, and a sign of ignorance;
d) that blind allegiance to your ideas is required...

I shall ignore you.

Until you offer substantial evidence, that is materials other than your own opinions and interpretations, I shall regard you as an 'empty vessel'.

Thomas

Stick your nose up in the air all you like but you finally hit on the essence of our differences.

Indeed it is. I experience Christ, you experience your little psychological cave.

This is why you cannot understand the importance of:

"Do You wish to know God? Learn first to know yourself" -ABBA EVAGRIUS, FOURTH CENTURY

Or from the Gospel of Thomas:

(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

One doesn't experience Christianity by looking up in egotism but by looking down at the human condition that defines our "being." As Simone said: "Purity is the power to contemplate corruption." You prefer to justify selective corruption.

That is why the church is a power trip for you but Christianity refers to the advantage of abandoning power for the greater good. To each his own.

[Nick_A]

Food for thought pertaining to esoteric Christianity:

The fideist theory (N.B. fideism is the view that any affirmation of the mind does not come from reason, but from feeling): one believes something because one wants to believe it; belief in certain things becomes an obligation. Fideism is a view very well suited to all forms of spiritual tyranny; fideism always ends up in the subordination of thought to a social myth.
But the fact that doubt is possible shows that fideism is false. What is more, whenver one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.
- Simone Weil, Lectures in philosophy (Leçons de philosophie)
translated by Hugh Price (Cambridge University Press 1959, 1978) p 103 One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love--to serve the loved one without his knowing it--is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.
- Simone Weil, First and last notebooks (last notebook 1942)
(Oxford University Press 1970) p 84

[Thomas]

One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love--to serve the loved one without his knowing it

The trouble is, that can be love, or infatuation, or erotic fixation ... it really depends on why serve another without his knowing it?

Ask any woman, indeed anyone, who's ever been the object of anonymous fixation, and see what they think of your 'love' then ...

The only valid answer is that by so doing, the other benefits more than if he had known. A perfect example is the relationship between Pip and his benefactor in Dickens' Great Expectations. He assumes it's Miss Havisham, when in fact it was the escaped criminal Abel Magwich. Magwich keeps his identity secret, because he knows Pip would never accept his money.

So how can man benefit more from not knowing the love of God? He can't ... there is nothing that can take the place of the Beatific Vision.

How can any good benefit man more than the Good Itself?

And how can man benefit himself, by refusing the good?
He can't.
Any good he chooses will bve less than what he might have chosen, less than what God wants for him.

Sorry ... that one falls flat. It works in a secular contxt, but not in a supernatural one.

Now —

No doubt you will offer me your standard blind faith/Plato's cave response, but really I'm not interested in that empty jargoning ... can you explain how any lesser good is more good than the Absolute Good ... that's all you have to do?

Thomas

[Nick_A]

Originally Posted by Thomas

The trouble is, that can be love, or infatuation, or erotic fixation ... it really depends on why serve another without his knowing it?

Ask any woman, indeed anyone, who's ever been the object of anonymous fixation, and see what they think of your 'love' then ...

The only valid answer is that by so doing, the other benefits more than if he had known. A perfect example is the relationship between Pip and his benefactor in Dickens' Great Expectations. He assumes it's Miss Havisham, when in fact it was the escaped criminal Abel Magwich. Magwich keeps his identity secret, because he knows Pip would never accept his money.

So how can man benefit more from not knowing the love of God? He can't ... there is nothing that can take the place of the Beatific Vision.

How can any good benefit man more than the Good Itself?

And how can man benefit himself, by refusing the good?
He can't.
Any good he chooses will bve less than what he might have chosen, less than what God wants for him.

Sorry ... that one falls flat. It works in a secular contxt, but not in a supernatural one.

Now —

No doubt you will offer me your standard blind faith/Plato's cave response, but really I'm not interested in that empty jargoning ... can you explain how any lesser good is more good than the Absolute Good ... that's all you have to do?

Thomas

The reason you cannot understand Simone is that you don't understand what Jacob Needleman refers to a "Acornology." The "good" of ones personality is not necessarily the good of ones budding soul.

Acornology

I began my lecture that morning from just this point. There is an innate element in human nature, I argued that can grow and develop only through impressions of truth received in the organism like a special nourishing energy. To this innate element I gave a name - perhaps not a very good name - the "higher unconscious." My aim was to draw an extremely sharp distinction between the unconscious that Freud had identified and the unconscious referred to (though not by that name) in the Christian tradition.

Imagine, I said, that you are a scientist and you have before you the object known as the acorn. Let us further imagine that you have never before seen such an object and that you certainly do not know that it can grow into an oak. You carefully observe these acorns day after day and soon you notice that after a while they crack open and die. Pity! How to improve the acorn? So that it will live longer. You make careful, exquisitely precise chemical analyses of the material inside the acorn and, after much effort, you succeed in isolating the substance that controls the condition of the shell. Lo and behold, you are now in the position to produce acorns which will last far longer than the others, acorns whose shells will perhaps never crack. Beautiful!

The question before us, therefore, is whether or not modern psychology is only a version of acornology.

The acorn is analogous to Man in that the living kernel within is capable of re-birth, becoming an oak. The shell just protects and nourishes the kernel of life until it is ready but is strictly an artificial creation without higher life.

The secular church that you are attached to values the shell of the acorn (appearance) and desires to improve it. What may be legitimate higher experiences become interpreted into beliefs acceptable to our personailty. Esoteric Christianity is concerned with the living kernel of life within the shell and provides the means by which it can free itself from the dominance of the shell (appearance). Christianity seeks to to crack the egg as was done during Easter so the chick, our soul, can emerge.

What Simone is saying that even though our personality has been conditioned to secularism, it can express the need to understand but just tries to do it exclusively from worldly logic. This search for truth is pleasing to the above even though the atheist doesn't recognize it. The search for truth then is far superior then basking in self justifying imagination.

[Thomas]

Hi Nick —

Originally Posted by Nick_A

The "good" of ones personality is not necessarily the good of ones budding soul.

OK ... we all know that. This is true only on the condition that what the personality seeks as a "good" differs from the "good" of the soul.

Originally Posted by Nick_A

This search for truth is pleasing to the above even though the atheist doesn't recognize it.

No, assuming there is a God, then the atheist is searching for a good that is other than the good of the soul. The atheist, by definition, does not seek The Truth beyond himself, but a truth which conforms to himself. Therefore the atheist is neither searching for the good, nor pleasing the above.

What I can accept is some seek the good without knowledge of the terms by which it is expressed, and furthermore by knowledge of the Revelation by which the Above communicates itself to the below.

Originally Posted by Nick_A

The search for truth then is far superior then basking in self justifying imagination.

That's why I refute 'esoteric Christianity' as it is presented, as it is evident that what the authors assume Christianity to be is born of nothing other than their own imaginations, and bears little or no resemblance to the truth or the actuality, and you have provided no evidence to the contrary — you simply quote more people who believe in what I already believe to be false.

In short, you're missing the essence of the point under discussion.

Let me repeat:
How can a lesser good be better than a greater good — or put in a religious context, how can a transient and illusory good — which any philosophy will inform you is false and ephemeral, for all its glamour, be better than The Absolute Good, which is Real, True, and Beautiful?

How can, if God exists, being wrong (an atheist) be better than being right?

Bearing in mind that God cannot be proved — then even your philosophy rests on faith, either you believe there is a God, or you do not, but you cannot know for sure. All you have is the evidence that lights your way.

My point is that Needleman is doing with Christianity exactly what his scientist is doing with the acorn.

Thomas

[Nick_A]

Thomas

That's why I refute 'esoteric Christianity' as it is presented, as it is evident that what the authors assume Christianity to be is born of nothing other than their own imaginations, and bears little or no resemblance to the truth or the actuality, and you have provided no evidence to the contrary — you simply quote more people who believe in what I already believe to be false.

This is what I cannot get across to you. You have your beliefs and I believe they miss the essential purpose of Christianity.

That is why St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have received a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to these mysteries when they have no right at all to do so. That is why such people need a purification of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism and incredulity constitute an equivalent of such a purification.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 418

What I see happening is precisely this. The atheist sees through the BS so rightly questions it. This questioning is good for cleaning house. You refer to lesser or greater goods but what if this subjective perception of a greater good is just fantasy? Then the lesser good is greater.

This is one of the advantages of esoteric Christianity in that it allows one to see through the BS through self knowledge rather than cling to blind faith.