Jesus, Nietzsche, and Simone

[Nick_A]

What is the evolutionary potential for an individual? Jesus was capable of the highest form of conscious evolution which was why he could consciously experience the Crucifixion and the purity of his experience could lead to the Resurrection.

However, there was a choice. Is it better to serve in heaven or rule in hell? Naturally for the Atheist or secularist that is earthbound, the priority is the earth. But Jesus was not an Atheist.

Matthew 4:

8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

10Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'[d]"

11Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

So Jesus chose to serve the Father rather than be served by Man. Naturally for the Atheist or secularist, this goes over like a lead balloon. Our goal in the world is "prestige" and the ability to exert power for our own benefit. It appears ludicrous that one capable of doing so would intentionally avoid it.

Nietzsche apparently felt that the Overman was king of the world. Such a person is not bothered by fears and inabilities that stifle the normal person. The Overman is the ultimate human machine that can manipulate the world to serve its purposes. But it requires shedding all sorts of illusory fears that enable a person find satisfaction in mediocrity:

http://www.pitt.edu/~wbcurry/nietzsche/nuber.html

Notice that the Overman is "the meaning of the Earth." It is its highest evolution

"What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.

The hour when you say, 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself."

So mediocre, "wretched contentment" humanity for the Overman is an abomination. The most highly developed ego with the ability to gratify it would be a normal attribute for the Overman. So he creates the new ego.

But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred "Yes" is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world.

But is the Overman the highest form of Man or just the beginning of a higher possibility that can come through sacrificing itself or what the Devil was willing to provide Jesus. So where Nietzsche seeks to develop the will to power, Christianity seeks the sacrifice of the attachments of earthly power for the sake of the higher good.

Simone Weil had such deep experiential understanding that her writings on such profound subjects would sometimes become high art. The following IMO is such an example. Here she allows us to rise above the domain of the Overman that serves it to experience the mechanics of its existence and its trivial nature as compared to human potential:

“The sea is not less beautiful to our eye because we know that sometimes ships sink in it. On the contrary, it is more beautiful still. If the sea modified the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a being possessing discernment and choice, and not this fluid that is perfectly obedient to all external pressures. It is this perfect obedience that is its beauty.”

“All the horrors that are produced in this world are like the folds imprinted on the waves by gravity. This is why they contain beauty. Sometimes a poem, like the Iliad, renders this beauty.”

“Man can never escape obedience to God. A creature cannot not obey. The only choice offered to man as an intelligent and free creature, is to desire obedience or not to desire it. If he does not desire it, he perpetually obeys nevertheless, as a thing subject to mechanical necessity. If he does desire obedience, he remains subject to mechanical necessity, but a new necessity is added on, a necessity constituted by the laws that are proper to supernatural things. Certain actions become impossible for him, while others happen through him, sometimes despite him.”

Excerpt from: Thoughts without order concerning the love of God, in an essay entitled L'amour de Dieu et le malheur (The Love of God and affliction). Simone Weil

Startling! From this perspective the Overman is nothing but the best working machine in blind reaction to the results of the interactions of God's laws. Simone touches on consciousness or this latent possibility we have that allows us to serve a higher more conscious purpose rather than that of the usual collective man that functions on the level Plato described as the "Great Beast" Functioning at the level of the Great Beast we become caught up in and defend all sorts of perceived "right and wrong" which from the higher perspective is neither one but simply what happens. Christianity through the Holy Spirit can experientially reveal this higher perspective psychologically and allow man to become in touch with the level of being where man can achieve what he was created for.

It was the intent of the Christ to go through this process of change, the Resurrection, to create the path that leads to the Way. The opening of the path invites the help of the Holy Spirit for direction.

Man can then serve mechanically and unconsciously the necessity that all organic life serves but has the possibility through re-birth to serve a different quality of necessity the Overman described by Nietzsche is oblivious of and unconcerned with from its limited mechanical earthbound perspective.

Do I want to serve in heaven or be content to strive to rule in my portion of hell? Can I sacrifice it? Could the rich man sacrifice his wealth to follow Jesus? I guess it's what separates the men from the boys.

 

[seattlegal]

This probably belongs over on the Belief and Spirituality board, rather than the Christianity board, imo.

 

[Quahom1]

This probably belongs over on the Belief and Spirituality board, rather than the Christianity board, imo.

No, quite accurately placed in the Christianity forum, as it is by definition, what a Christian is supposed to be.

Thanks.

v/r

Q

 

[Eclectic Mystic]

As a person raised Christian I insist this remain in the forum it was intended to.

8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

Timothy Leary got his approach from Jesus;

I remember when Nancy Reagan was on her Just Say No to Drugs campaign. Our kids should be better mannered than that! We should tell them, Just say, ‘No, thank you.’ Any blanket ‘Just say no’ is a negative approach to life, which is typical of the Reagan administration.”

But is the Overman the highest form of Man or just the beginning of a higher possibility that can come through sacrificing itself or what the Devil was willing to provide Jesus.

Jesus told us to eat his flesh and blood, almost as a celebration. When Christ came He claimed to be the living bread from Heaven, even though bread has typically been a symbol of earthly abundance and sustenance. This might help others understand why Hindus believe the cow to be holy.

Man can never escape obedience to God.

And God was never a despot. "God is dead" is a mistranslation and in English should in fact read: "God has withdrawn." Jesus was born of a virgin meaning that he had to agree to whatever properties his own Father would have, should his Father actually exist.

 

[Nick_A]

Hi E M

And God was never a despot. "God is dead" is a mistranslation and in English should in fact read: "God has withdrawn." Jesus was born of a virgin meaning that he had to agree to whatever properties his own Father would have, should his Father actually exist.

This idea of "withdrawn" is a deep topic in itself. When it is understood, it answers a lot of questions as to why evil is in the world etc. When I read in my books Simone's ideas on "absence" or "withdrawn," it put a new wrinkle on my own cosmological conceptions of creation. From Wiki

Absence is the key image for her metaphysics, cosmology, cosmogeny, and theodicy. She believed that God created by an act of self-delimitation--in other words, because God is conceived as a kind of utter fullness, a perfect being, no creature could exist except where God was not. Thus creation occurred only when God withdrew in part.

It is a very deep idea as to how God produced fractions of himself through withdrawl. Pondering these things will either kill or cure you.

 

[Netti-Netti]

No, quite accurately placed in the Christianity forum, as it is by definition, what a Christian is supposed to be.

Thanks.

What is it?

 

[Eclectic Mystic]

I say "it" is a person who attempts to be more evolved even if he considers himself to be fit.

 

[Dream]

What is it?

Is it perhaps the Overman concept he referred to? If so, that is similar to the death of ego idea popular in mysticism. In saying that the purpose of the earth is the Overman, he goes with the 'Evolution of the soul' people. Its a major impulse in Christianity today, and I hear in his opinion about God's withdrawal from the world a rewording of the contractions of the soul spheres of Kabbalah. The idea is not so much the absence of God but the creation of a world that is too fragile for God's full presence. Knowing very little of mysticism doesn't keep us from recognizing its overall structure.

I'm inclined to agree that it could be in the wrong forum but how many people actually read this stuff, anyway? I guess it could be relevant to Christians. It relates to some of the divisive questions of the churches in our time. The coldly non-mystical conservative minority wonder how it is that telepathic or super-cognitive events randomly occur! A more charismatic segment is taught that all New Age is a satanic influence yet is itself extremely mystical. Liberal Christians pray and take yoga but are unsure about the tenacity of scripture. A new clergy questions its own existence. Underlying it all: Is the death of the ego and evolution of the spirit our goal? Are we mystics? Are we fundamentalists? Is our scripture relevant? Are we abandoned children? Has tradition failed us?

Here in the modern times we are faced with ancient questions!