Speculations On Eros and Agape

“Eros” is the urge toward God, “agape” is God's love coming into one, and they meet in the Spirit Within and the Soul. These are terms used by St. Gregory of Nyssa. In the Evolutionary Christian Church, eros, the urge toward God, would relate to the Evolutionary Outward Path, and agape, God's love coming into one, relates to the Involutionary Inward Path.

The Spirit of eros is the capacity for evolution to God but is not God. God is implicit in agape and the Soul and explicit in eros and the Spirit-Within. The explicit is unfolding, the implicit is enfolding. Eros is Transcendent, agape is Immanent.

The Soul of agape and the Spirit of eros spring from God as an overflow of abundance and love—not as a Fall as the Gnostic's would have it. This is evolution, Spirit and matter working in nature forming new species, new organization. As matter evolves matter becomes conscious in humans, perhaps through contact with the Soul Within.

The Laws of Spiritual Matter

Conventional matter is evolving along with Soul of the body and the Spirit ultimately to God, Who is the creator of the Kosmos with the highest consciousness and intelligence. We can see these different levels of Spiritual/Material Matter both inwardly and outwardly in the Involutionary Inward Path with the various levels of material evolution.

But “as below so above,” and we evolve using the Evolutionary Outward Path, through the various levels of matter/soul/spirit to Godhood, the highest Spiritual/Material Matter. We are in this sense the “image of our Father.”

Spiritual Matter is subject to the laws of Spiritual Matter. This does not mean that Spiritual Matter is no longer subject to the laws of Material Matter but to a far more subtle level of laws that science is still discovering, and which mystics have examined for many ages.
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(Biophysicist Deno Kazanis has inspired this way of looking at God as Spiritual Matter.)

Contra Gnostics

It would seem that in knowing the Soul we cannot know God completely, because the Soul is "only" the zenith of the body, powerful as it is. This would counter Gnosticism (and Plato) which seems to think we can know all of God from the Soul-Within. We must evolve to the Material-Supermaterial Object Body of Godhood to fully know God.

No Revolution

We stand reformed from traditional Involutionary Christianity, not against them, by adding Evolutionary Christianity. This is certainly not a revolution against the Church.

Kirk's Tilt

Russell Kirk was a great writer and a great historical mind, yet it seems to me that he under emphasized the importance of the Enlightenment in the thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States in developing our Constitution, and he overemphasized the importance of the “Grand Tradition,” ie. Judaic-Christian and Greek influences. This may be what we should do, but is not exactly what the Founding Fathers did.

Courageous truth is vitally important. If we bias the foundation even very slightly, the building will eventually tilt more than slightly. In the case of American Conservatism, science was eventually under emphasized as a result of the Kirk's tilt against the Enlightenment.

Good And Evil Genius

Fashion and Tradition

There is good and evil genius, which is why it is easy to be taken in or even seduced by evil geniuses. Evil genius in fact has genius, and genius is magical, mysterious and even godly.

Usually we hear that Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx were evil geniuses, St Thomas Aquinas and T.S. Eliot were good geniuses. There seems to be less dazzle and more noble depth in good geniuses, but it's not clearly understood..

With their tendency to dazzle, evil geniuses tend to dominate popular culture, they are perhaps at the origin of fashion. Good geniuses tend to ride the dynamics of tradition rather than fashion, they are perhaps at the origin of history. The trick is to know which is which and choose the good geniuses.

 

Horror in foreign policy

The latest move from the now nearly criminal neoconservatives who continue to manipulate the idiotic Bush administration--- with Russia saying its response to the further development of a U.S. missile shield in Poland will go beyond diplomacy---is truly taking things too far. Congress does nothing even though they were elected this time to stop this sort of behavior, the Lobbies again control them. Are there no men of courage and morality and statesmanship and historical wisdom in Washington? Now is the time for big deal actions, resignations from major players, impeachments, outrage! But we get nothing. Only Pat Buchanan ( Who Started Cold WarII?) is trying to avert this horror in foreign policy.

The One In The Many: Two Meanings

The first meaning of the term “One In The Many” defines God, the second meaning defines the worship of the same God in different forms.

The Involutionary Inward Path reveals the same God for all religions (also called the perennial philosophy or the Traditionalist School.) The Evolutionary Outward Path of the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) leads to God through evolution.

TC can have a calming effect on the hostilities arising between religions, even in the midst of competitive evolution. The religious order of the Theoevolutionary Church can be the common ground for knowledge and wisdom on how to evolve to the God all religions have seen inwardly.

At Last A Western Yoga

Two Necessary Paths to Godhood

Experiencing the Soul-Within, the goal of religious tradition, is not really devolutionary but more an involutionary activity. Experiencing Atman or Brahman or Nirvana, Heaven, or the Godhead, requires the discipline and strong efforts developed by the religious traditions, which are slightly different from one another, but pointing in the same direction. The Involutionary Inward Path leads to one of two central goals in the Theoevolutionary Church (TC), whereas it is the single goal of other religious traditions.

The Godhead, seen by a select few with the Involutionary Inward Path, is not Godhood Itself, which must be fully attained by another path that is really the First Path, and this is the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Involutionary Inward Path is called the Second Path in TC and not considered the only path or the exclusive path to God.

The God-Within seen by the Soul and Spirit is not God Himself but is a Blissful Aspect Of God, so glorious that It is wrongly experienced as Blissful Godhood Itself. We must not stop here, because here lies the Great Spiritual Blockade. Here we must take up the First Path, the Evolutionary Outward Path, which is Evolution from the Kosmic Beginning to the Person of Godhood in the Kosmos.

We do not consider the Involutionary Inward Path of traditional religion as a Gordian Knot of distracting complication which must be simply cut so that we may concentrate on the Evolutionary Outward Path. The traditional Inward Path is a very important way for us to see who and what God is, to see and be guided to our Ultimate Goal, even to gain actual contact with God. The Evolutionary Outward Path can apply all of our best present and future science, sciences such as the sociobiologically-oriented Beyondism of Raymond Cattell, who unfortunately seems to have rejected the Involutionary Inward Path of traditional religion as if it were a Gordian Knot to cut and no longer necessary. Conservatism in TC is called for along with change.

In very ancient terms, we don't separate Spirit from Matter, Skyfather from Earthmother, both evolve together to Godhood. Science arose from religion...the two will meet again on a higher level.

Anglican Communion ending

Here from "The Catholic Knight" : the Anglican Communion comes to an end.

A Spectrum of Matter

Deno Kazanis seems to have developed the term “Spiritual Matter” as being like uncharged atoms in relation to Material Matter with three-dimensional charged atoms. We like the phrase spiritual matter, but will probably interpret It as the following:

Evolution moves or transmutes both Spiritual and Material Matter, back to the Godhood of the Trinity.

We like the idea of a Spectrum of Matter rather than the "spectrum of consciousness” of, say, Wilber and other mystics.

Abstaining And Sustaining

The Involutionary Inward Path says abstain to find God within, the Evolutionary Outward Path says sustain to find God without.

Interesting that Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, was said to have remarked, “All philosophy lies in two words, 'sustain' and 'abstain.'” However, Evolution makes the Will of God less hopelessly fixed and more dynamic in human affairs than the Stoics seem to have described It.

Universal force versus local morality

We don't need the "man on horseback."

It has been said that if the lust for power is not restrained by religious morality then it will eventually be restrained by dictators with force. The presumption is made in this pattern that a universal rather than a local means is the only solution to disorder or anarchy unrestrained by religious morality.

We have to build back local religious morality rather than calling for big government force. Localism is both the best long and short term solution to this pattern. Applying universal force to stop disorder or anarchy is like cutting off ones arms or legs to save ones eyes. In modern terms, we need a Ron Paul rather than a Barack Obama, but the nation seems to be in the mood for a “man on horseback” at the price of local freedom.

Of course, Obama is too moderate to really qualify as the “man on horseback,” but when moderate force doesn't create order, the pattern always moves from moderate to radical horseman.

Inner and outer space

Eastern religions consider the exploration of inner space more important than the exploration of outer space, and the Western secular world consider it just the opposite. Ultimate Reality is more than even the deepest level of inner consciousness. Inner consciousness is the inward mirror of outward Ultimate Reality. The Evolutionary Christian Church values both. Attaining Godhood more directly includes the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Physical consciousness?

Pure intuition is not "beyond" the senses, contrary to Eastern sages. God is not human so their experience of nirvana or ultimate reality is not Godhood.

The split between spirit and matter has wrongly degraded the Material. God is the zenith of the spiritual-material at the end of evolution and God has not yet been correctly defined by science or religion.

(Here is an excellent essay, "Is Consciousness Physical" by David and Andrea Lane)

Where Western Christianity Is Different From Eastern Religions

Eastern religions see history and time in cycles, whereas Christianity sees time moving toward an actual end. Also, as Bede Griffith has pointed out, in Christianity matter is taken up into God, transmuted in Christ's Resurrection. Matter is finally transformed and spiritualized after billions of years of evolution.

Both of these ideas harmonize well with the bio-spiritual evolution of God as affirmed in the Evolutionary Christian Church.

Brideshead Mediocre

When Sebastian Flyte first appeared as very effeminate I knew we were in for a painful interpretation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Waugh said that the theme of Brideshead was the operation of the Grace of God in the lives of these characters, but this movie could be easily seen, from beginning to end, as an affirmation of atheism. The only scene that gave a slightly overt nod to Christianity was the last scene in the little chapel at Brideshead, and this was cut to a very light symbolism. Since no great civilization has ever risen or lasted without being based in religion, the question of how to revive religion in a decadent world remains unanswered, both by Waugh and by this movie. Bottom line, the movie and its theme were not up to the challenge. The book wasn't either.

Science and Religion See Reality from Opposite Sides

Science and Religion look at Reality from opposite sides. Both talk about “mediation” through the senses and through reason as letting us see only partial reality.

Science says that what we see through our senses and through reason is all we can accept, that this is reality, and anything outside this is virtually an illusion. Religion says what we do not see through the senses and through reason, is reality, and that what we see through the senses is illusion (hypothesizing that intellectual intuition lies beyond the normal senses.)

The Evolutionary Christian Church affirms both what we see through the senses and through reason and what we do not see through the senses and through reason. It is the world of the material senses that evolves to the world of bio-spiritual Godhood.