..."So if only a fraction of the planet will be habitable, how will our vast population survive? Some, like Lovelock, are less than optimistic. "Humans are in a pretty difficult position and I don't think they are clever enough to handle what's ahead. I think they'll survive as a species all right, but the cull during this century is going to be huge," he says. "The number remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less."
John Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany is more hopeful. The 4 °C warmer world would be a huge challenge, he says, but one we could rise to. "Would we be able to live within our resources, in this world? I think it could work with a new division of land and production..."
essay here from New Scientist
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Production Will Elevate Us from the Downward Spiral
..."The easiest and most efficient way to pull ourselves out of the current recession is to produce, produce and produce some more. Manufacturing creates the wealth that could replace all that has been lost over the past year. Failure to recognize that will only prolong the recession. We must recognize that it is impossible to import and spend our way out of such dire economic circumstances..."
article here from Economy In Crisis
article here from Economy In Crisis
Perfecting human nature?
Culture can be seen as instinctive, assuming ones culture is affirming human nature, and human nature is essentially conservative, preferring home, family, kin, localism, monogamy between man and woman, nationalism, and religion's that affirm these things. Anti human laws and values follow from cultures that do not follow human nature, as with Leftist organizations.
When Aristotle said that human nature needs to be perfected by society he did not have all the knowledge of human nature that sociobiology has later provided, which affirms that human nature works best in small conservative states, even ethnostates, perhaps working together in a federation.
The true perfection of human nature moves upward in biological evolution reaching its zenith in Godhood, and this long term evolution works best in stable ethnostates where positive mutations can gradually take root and advance---this is the essence of Revitalized Conservatism.
When Aristotle said that human nature needs to be perfected by society he did not have all the knowledge of human nature that sociobiology has later provided, which affirms that human nature works best in small conservative states, even ethnostates, perhaps working together in a federation.
The true perfection of human nature moves upward in biological evolution reaching its zenith in Godhood, and this long term evolution works best in stable ethnostates where positive mutations can gradually take root and advance---this is the essence of Revitalized Conservatism.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Confusing the map with the territory
..."Structuralism has been valuable in drawing our attention to the importance of relations. However, the cardinal sin of structuralist thought– and these assumptions still remain pervasive today –lies in its tendency to, as Bateson would put it, confuse the map with the territory. That is, the structuralist makes a map of relations among nodes in a network, but then treats this map as if it were itself a real and abiding thing such that these relations are abiding and eternal. The entities inhabiting the network then get treated as epiphenomena of this map of relations, such that it is the structure that is real and the entities populating the network that are illusions. This is a specifically Platonic tendency within structuralist thought"...
Essay here,from Larval Subjects.
Essay here,from Larval Subjects.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Singularity avoids political incorrectness
Ray Kurzweil's Singularity, predicting that humans and machines will merge around 2045, during an era of conscious machines, when human genes merge with artificial molecular robots, which might seem politically incorrect but is really another dazzling way to avoid far more politically incorrect genetic engineering and human selection.
Singularity needs to be adjusted to the pattern of evolution, respecting the millions of years of natural selection of life that is wiser than we are. Molecular robots and such, which can be used in positive ways, need not be done at the expense of genetic engineering patterned after natural evolution. We want to avoid the great blowback monster Golem destroying all life and evolution.
Singularity needs to be adjusted to the pattern of evolution, respecting the millions of years of natural selection of life that is wiser than we are. Molecular robots and such, which can be used in positive ways, need not be done at the expense of genetic engineering patterned after natural evolution. We want to avoid the great blowback monster Golem destroying all life and evolution.
Friday, February 20, 2009
To define is not to know, to be is to know
The definition is the mirror of the object, the object is not the mirror of the definition. The image on the cave wall is not the object and is not reality.
To define is not to know, to be is to know. To be or not to be is indeed the question. We seek to be or attain Godhood through evolution applying the Outward Path, and not “merely” to know God through the mirror of definition applying the Inward Path.
To define is not to know, to be is to know. To be or not to be is indeed the question. We seek to be or attain Godhood through evolution applying the Outward Path, and not “merely” to know God through the mirror of definition applying the Inward Path.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Know thyself
"We tend to engage in “a pre-conceived, self-confirming journey for validation, rather than a quest for knowledge.” ... “We must catch ourselves in the act of trying to verify our own preconceptions.”...This is a problem for armchair scientists long on theory and short on experimentation.... “The distinction between true believers and skeptics comes at the point of interpretation of phenomena, and attributions of source of events or perceptions.” Iona Miller
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Regarding purpose in evolution
Here is how Raymond Cattell put it regarding purpose in evolution, which I agree with. Evolution has so far had a discernible direction—in spite of stagnation and retreat—to higher, more effective, living forms.
Creation does seem to imply a Creator, however, what we can see is an ongoing process of organic and inorganic evolution. The Theoevolutionary Church seeks to be one with the evolutionary process, as did Cattell's Beyondism (which remains politically incorrect at this time)
Meanwhile, our minds are not yet fit to handle such questions as “ What happened to time before time began?” But we can grasp a meaningful pattern which is little more than the evolutionary process, and we can follow that pattern, until our minds can answer such questions.
The Theoevolutionary Church moves forward from Cattell to views on God, evolution, the Trinity etc.
Creation does seem to imply a Creator, however, what we can see is an ongoing process of organic and inorganic evolution. The Theoevolutionary Church seeks to be one with the evolutionary process, as did Cattell's Beyondism (which remains politically incorrect at this time)
Meanwhile, our minds are not yet fit to handle such questions as “ What happened to time before time began?” But we can grasp a meaningful pattern which is little more than the evolutionary process, and we can follow that pattern, until our minds can answer such questions.
The Theoevolutionary Church moves forward from Cattell to views on God, evolution, the Trinity etc.
Art and evolution
The idea in art philosophy is, as mentioned above, that art can at least grasp a meaningful pattern toward higher living forms, and if one defines these ultimately as Perfect Beauty, etc. art can symbolize these. It seems less profane when you see God as a Beautiful Object rather than a spiritual definition which therefore sees object-art as profane.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
He is within all things
We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four-legged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as He intends.
- Black Elk
from World Wisdom
- Black Elk
from World Wisdom
Friday, February 13, 2009
On religious, racial and political infighting
How does the Theoevolutionary Church deal with the ancient problem of religious and racial infighting? (A) By correctly and courageously defining the Revealed Religions as coming from the same Involutionary Perennial Religion/Philosophy. This allows the supreme religious ecumenism, not religious supremacy. And (B) by revealing the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood, which affirms biological evolution to God, in harmony with the Traditional Involutionary Perennial Religion/Philosophy. This affirms racial differences, not racial supremacy.
In turn this leads to (B), Revitalized Conservatism. Revolutionaries (religious, racial or political) believe that the given civilization has to fall before the hoped for civilization can rise again, as something new. But Conservative principles of order and tradition are also a solid base for evolution. The Inward Path works in synthesis and harmony with the Outward Path. In America, we seek to return to the genius of the American Constitution, which affirms strong independent states within a strong nation, but not imperial supremacy. The Theoevolutionary Church supplies the universal bond and future of religion, at the service of the world.
In turn this leads to (B), Revitalized Conservatism. Revolutionaries (religious, racial or political) believe that the given civilization has to fall before the hoped for civilization can rise again, as something new. But Conservative principles of order and tradition are also a solid base for evolution. The Inward Path works in synthesis and harmony with the Outward Path. In America, we seek to return to the genius of the American Constitution, which affirms strong independent states within a strong nation, but not imperial supremacy. The Theoevolutionary Church supplies the universal bond and future of religion, at the service of the world.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
About us
The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) has a symbolist, ritualist, and inspirational association with Traditional Christianity and Perennial Philosophy. We use the term “Catholic” to mean “Universal,” and religion is no longer Catholic in this sense. Our task is to unite the Inward Path of these revealed religions in a true ecumenism with the Outward Path of Evolution. Sciences such as Sociobiology, and the religion from science called Beyondism, also play an important part. The members are a mix of many religions and those interested in occult movements and futurism. There are no official connections with traditional church, occult orders or scientific organizations. ECC maintains this Internet presence covering many topics.
A child should understand epistemology
God exists as you and I exist, not merely as your “idea” of me. The abstract is the abstract. Definition is not real, it is the shadow of the form, under the shade of the tree of form.
A child should understand epistemology. There is too much noise, too much complication, too much verbiage in philosophy. And theology is no better. Nietzsche got it right when he talked about the will to power of most priests and philosophers. They like to dazzle the hell out of us. But the truth is what we want. And the truth is a real object, and not merely a definition.
A child should understand epistemology. There is too much noise, too much complication, too much verbiage in philosophy. And theology is no better. Nietzsche got it right when he talked about the will to power of most priests and philosophers. They like to dazzle the hell out of us. But the truth is what we want. And the truth is a real object, and not merely a definition.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Buchanan: "Buy American or Bye-Bye America"
..."We may be at a turning point in history. For we are about to choose
whether to fully and finally cast our lot with globalism, or to
become again a nation and people who put Americans first..."
Patrick J. Buchanan's column here
whether to fully and finally cast our lot with globalism, or to
become again a nation and people who put Americans first..."
Patrick J. Buchanan's column here
Monday, February 09, 2009
The Promethean In The Sacred Art Of The Theoevolutionary Church
A reply to “Art from the Sacred to the Profane,” by Frithjof Schuon
Sacred Art is informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path, and by the word made flesh of the Outward Path. Profane Art is not informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path. The profane artist himself takes the place of the Spirit Within or he uses art models with no connection to the sacred.
Art is not defined as profane because it transmits only man, it is profane because it ignores the sacred.
Beauty becomes vital in Sacred Art because Perfect Beauty is the Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution, which is the Seed seeking the Trinity of Perfect Truth (Father), Perfect Beauty (Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit).
The mission of Sacred Art is to transmit Perfect Truth, Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which then can expand the virtually abstract definition of Traditional Sacred Art. Attraction toward Beauty is attraction toward God. God is an Object not merely a definition.
Defining beauty as “Peace” is defining from the Father Aspect of the Trinity, which is Perfect Truth, and this truth does suggest peaceful repose. But the Trinity also suggests action, form, and power in evolution.
We can go back to, or go forward to, the Promethean, which was so demeaned by the Traditionalists. We are evolving to God in the Outward Path, and we must not be stunted by the Great Spiritual Blockade of Traditionalism that tends to pay attention “only” to the Perfect Truth of the Trinity while blocking the other two aspects of Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which must be materially evolved to.
Traditional Religion virtually rejects the material world, although it does valiantly try to redeem the material world theologically in the works of the Church Fathers. The Greeks were more humanistic. The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) seeks to synthesize the art of the East and the West. The human body and materialism can be brought back to religious art and formed by the evolutionary Beyondism of God, and moved by the Seed of Within, or the Holy Spirit.
Expanding Sacred Art
Frithjof Schuon said “In metaphysical truth there is neither here--below nor hereafter--everything is contained in it.” From this perspective comes the extreme forms of non representative and abstract art of Traditional Sacred Art.
The Inward Path is contemplative, the Outward Path is active, and both must be inclined to Sacred Art, just as they must both be included in religion. Traditional spirituality limits itself to the Inward Path and to pursuing and affirming Perfect Truth.
God is the Perfect Truth of Traditional Spirituality defined as the Father, but God, as the Trinity, is also Perfect Beauty (the Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit). The Father as Perfect Idea defines the Son and Holy Spirit, which are the embodied Idea of the Father.
The Theoevolutionary Church affirms the Father (Perfect Truth) in our Involutionary Inward Path of seeing the Soul-Within, or the Kingdom Within, and TC affirms the Son and Holy Spirit (Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness) in the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolving the material world to God, the God first seen inwardly in the Involutionary Inward Path.
The Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Beauty, and the Action-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Goodness; these arrive at Perfect Truth through material evolution.
If one does not wish to copy nature but to “repeat” nature in its creative mode, as suggested by Schuon in Islamic Art, then one will, in fact, reflect evolution, contrary to Schuon. As Schuon put it, the sacred art of Perennial Spirituality “distrusts any materialization of religious subjects as if in fear that spiritual realities might become exhausted through an excess of sensory crystallization.”
TC can bring back a Center, a goal, a sacred material goal to art, rather than trying to avoid a Center in defining God only as universal spiritual truth, as is done in nonrepresentational Perennial spirituality.
Form Is Not Opposed to Essence
According to Schuon, form is necessarily opposed to essence, the latter being “universal inwardness” and the former “accidental outwardness.” This creates a problem. The “accidental” material is always disparaged in favor of “permanent” spirituality.
Perfect Truth that is spiritual is fulfilled as well as defined in Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which is the zenith of material evolution, as well as the completed Trinity.
With Form having once again taken its place in Godhood, Greek Art, which is too beautifully human to Schuon, can be exhumed and advanced once again. Perfect Beauty can be reflected in perfect human beauty. And since art contains evolution in TC, evolutionary beauty can also be explored. Perhaps we can even imagine beauty well beyond human beauty.
It is the idea of the “Extinction of Form in the Essence” which we do not affirm in religion or in art.
God does not resemble man or even superman---and traditional sacred art has been well aware of this. Schuon accuses Greek Art of no longer resembling God, but God resembling man. Traditionalists more or less reject Greek-Roman art as a deviation from Sacred Religious Art, but TC can affirm Greek-Roman art as an evolutionary art, pointing the way upward by symbolizing the evolution of man to Godhood through Beauty as well as through Truth.
The sacralizing element in Beauty relates to Godhood, not to the earth, but earthly beauty at it zenith is closer to the Divine and suggests the path to the Divine.
Traditional Sacred Art finds the symbol in the Soul Within and creates the style relating to the people, the culture, and the religion. TC finds in the Spirit Within the Seed and activation of the body to evolve to God and therefore the symbol can be brought back to the body.
The Body As Paragon
One could say that the marvels of Traditional Sacred Art, the Cathedrals, etc., are the exteriorizing of the Soul Within of the Involutionary Inward Path. In Traditional Sacred Art there is always a pull, or even a conflict between material virgin nature and the Soul Within, as if the body were too much contrary to the ways of the Spirit.
When the Soul Within is the “only” goal and not also the Spirit-Within-activation of material life, then material life can be demeaned. There can even be a split or conflict between them.
TC will bring Sacred Art back to the body since it is the body in material life that must evolve to Godhood. But we certainly do not forget about the Soul Within. The Spirit Within contains the Seed which is the Highest Element in material life and in our bodies. The Soul is the zenith of the mind in the Body, and the body is the Temple of the Spirit. The Body is the Temple of the “Order of the Outward Path.”
TC may bring man back to the “Golden Age” of Art by bringing man back to nature, back to virginal nature, back to materialism, as the ingredient with which to evolve to Godhood.
Traditional Sacred Art can be seen as showing the goal of Involution to the Soul Within, as symbolized in Temples, Mosques, Churches, Icons, and Rituals. This is certainly honored in TC as one of the Two Sacred Paths to God, that is, the Involutionary Inward Path.
TC revitalizes Traditional Sacred Art and the Involutionary Inward Path. The evolving body itself is the Temple and the material art of the Evolutionary Outward Path, including its goal of Godhood. What does God look like? This is the Mystery of the Outward Path.
In the Order of the Outward Path, the Sun and the Polar Star are superseded by the Kosmic Summit, and the Kosmic Summit is indirectly related to the evolving body. The material earth is redeemed as the sacred ingredient in the evolution to God, and the body is the Paragon of Evolution.
The Two Arts of the Inward and Outward Paths do not conflict, they compliment one another. The Inner God is the Outer God we must evolve to.
What we have dreamed of is real, the symbol is in our deepest heart is the Spirit Within and is real as the Supreme Material Object of our evolution to Godhood.
The highest possible degree of material Beauty must be returned to and redeemed from the decline of the body due to the Great Spiritual Blockade. The Half-Truth of the Inward Path joins the Half-Truth of the Outward Path to end the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Outward Path by the Inward Path.
The body is the activation of the essence within and the form of the evolution to God.
The Body And Object In Art
The function of all the arts is to bring the lower back to the higher, to bring the Spirit Within back to God. The body represents becoming-being, object, as contrasted with thought, or abstract thought. When God is an Object, a Body, then the body can come forward as a Sacred Symbol.
When the Spirit is opposed to the Soul (Body) then the body is demeaned, just as nakedness is wrongly opposed to clothing. If we are opposed to animal nature, then we downplay animal nature. The classical nudes are redeemed in the Sacred Art of the Evolutionary Christian Church, unlike Traditional Sacred Art where clothing is “opposed to nakedness as the soul is opposed to the body.” (Schuon) In EC the Soul is not opposed to the Body (Spirit) and the Priest is not opposed to the animal nature. Evolution is the process of Civilizing the Beast, the beast evolves to Godhood.
Perhaps like Traditional Christian and Buddhist art, the sacred art of TC will be centered on the bearer of evolution, the man-God, the superman. The ancient Greeks seemed to have used this subject matter, even if Schuon thinks this art was not enough informed by the sacred.
In TC we do not speak of the “resignation to the Will of God” but of the Assent of the Spirit to God. Inward art marks the descent to the Soul-Within, outward art the assent of the Spirit to Godhood.
God cannot be represented realistically because we do not know how God looks, and we probably will not know until we attain Godhood. But we can represent Beauty and Goodness and Truth in their highest human and superhuman forms and expressions.
When we “exteriorize a metaphysic” or show “an image of infinity,” we will not leave materialism out of the picture.
Positive and Negative Theology in the Arts
In the Arts, the Positive Theology of TC does not, as in Traditionalism and Negative Theology, search for or “recall” a lost Paradise of melancholy. Positive Theology is not about a lost Paradise but about a future Paradise at the end of evolution. The Spirit Within the Body does not mourn for a lost Paradise but anticipates the Paradise to come.
Indeed the Spirit “remembers” Paradise, as Plato suggested, as the Spirit is the Seed of Godhood. But it is not a lost Paradise but a future Paradise which helps activate material evolution.
Art should be ascending more than descending. The Inner Path descends to the Soul but then the Outer Path ascends to the destination of the Spirit, not within, but without, in the evolution to Godhood. Traditionalism “only” descends to the Soul, seeing no ascent through materialism.
“Greatness pre-exists in things” (Schuon), yet in Traditionalism greatness tends to stop there at the Soul Within. In Positive Theology the “Dance of Shiva” brings Atma back to Maya, not Maya back to Atma, as in negative theology. The inner is brought to the outer, the outer is only secondary to the inner.
Making an Idol of the Soul
We can bring Eros, survival, and reproduction back to the sacred, after it has been largely exiled (with a few Primordial exceptions) by Traditionalism due to its materialistic content, which is considered inferior.
The essence of survival and reproduction is the thirst for Heavenly Beauty. When this Sacred Goal is missing, sex and reproduction can be defined as profane.
Sacred Art follows this progress, or thirst for Heavenly Beauty, whereas profane art does not. The Spirit Within and the Soul-Within “recall” this beauty within but also help activate the thirst for the beauty without. Traditionalism tends to see and define only the recalling inner path, making an Idol of the Soul Within; Traditionalism then puts up a Great Spiritual Blockade against the thirst for beauty without.
Beauty can be exhumed from this neglect. “Eros with ethics” was the way someone defined advanced Paganism but this was lost in the spiritual abstractions of the Inward Path of Revealed Religions. The Order of the Outward Path of Evolution to God brings Eros back, reproduction and evolution to God can be affirmed. This can bring the Spirit of Beauty back to religion.
Life need not be thought of as “sinking” to scientific rationalism any more than it should sink to spiritualism. Both have been idol-worshiping at one time or another. In TC the balance between the Inward Path (Soul Within) and the Outward Path (Evolution to God) avoids both types of idol worship.
Traditionalism made an idol of the Soul Within even as it virtually rejected the earth and the material world calling these things idol worship. God is a Sacred Object in the world, not merely an equation outside the world defined as Perfect Truth, or the Father. Traditionalism gave us a hubristic authority beyond the world, beyond the stars, and Traditionalism continues to supplant astronomy and biology with the exclusivity of the Inward Path.
Religion and Art
The Form of God is the ultimate aim of art, religion and the evolution of life. Developing religion was, along with Divine Grace, motivated by an innate need to create order and harmony, almost the way a composer composes a traditional symphony. Religion in this way, is related to art, whose purpose is to create a finite image of infinity.
But art cannot become a substitute for religion as it perhaps did in nineteenth century Romanticism, art should be an adjunct or an affirmation of religion.
We hope we have shown here that we do not stand against Traditional Sacred Art, but against its exclusivity, its blocking out the evolution of the material world, as it reflects its Gnostic base of affirming the Soul and denying the material. The Traditionalists bemoan the decadence of the world but they make it virtually impossible for the world to narrow itself into their blocked spiritual world.
The Sacred Art of the Theoevolutionary Church has a Promethean and a Faustian quality, we stretch, we reach, we evolve to define the Highest Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
February 8, 2009
Kenneth Lloyd Anderson
Sacred Art is informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path, and by the word made flesh of the Outward Path. Profane Art is not informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path. The profane artist himself takes the place of the Spirit Within or he uses art models with no connection to the sacred.
Art is not defined as profane because it transmits only man, it is profane because it ignores the sacred.
Beauty becomes vital in Sacred Art because Perfect Beauty is the Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution, which is the Seed seeking the Trinity of Perfect Truth (Father), Perfect Beauty (Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit).
The mission of Sacred Art is to transmit Perfect Truth, Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which then can expand the virtually abstract definition of Traditional Sacred Art. Attraction toward Beauty is attraction toward God. God is an Object not merely a definition.
Defining beauty as “Peace” is defining from the Father Aspect of the Trinity, which is Perfect Truth, and this truth does suggest peaceful repose. But the Trinity also suggests action, form, and power in evolution.
We can go back to, or go forward to, the Promethean, which was so demeaned by the Traditionalists. We are evolving to God in the Outward Path, and we must not be stunted by the Great Spiritual Blockade of Traditionalism that tends to pay attention “only” to the Perfect Truth of the Trinity while blocking the other two aspects of Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which must be materially evolved to.
Traditional Religion virtually rejects the material world, although it does valiantly try to redeem the material world theologically in the works of the Church Fathers. The Greeks were more humanistic. The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) seeks to synthesize the art of the East and the West. The human body and materialism can be brought back to religious art and formed by the evolutionary Beyondism of God, and moved by the Seed of Within, or the Holy Spirit.
Expanding Sacred Art
Frithjof Schuon said “In metaphysical truth there is neither here--below nor hereafter--everything is contained in it.” From this perspective comes the extreme forms of non representative and abstract art of Traditional Sacred Art.
The Inward Path is contemplative, the Outward Path is active, and both must be inclined to Sacred Art, just as they must both be included in religion. Traditional spirituality limits itself to the Inward Path and to pursuing and affirming Perfect Truth.
God is the Perfect Truth of Traditional Spirituality defined as the Father, but God, as the Trinity, is also Perfect Beauty (the Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit). The Father as Perfect Idea defines the Son and Holy Spirit, which are the embodied Idea of the Father.
The Theoevolutionary Church affirms the Father (Perfect Truth) in our Involutionary Inward Path of seeing the Soul-Within, or the Kingdom Within, and TC affirms the Son and Holy Spirit (Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness) in the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolving the material world to God, the God first seen inwardly in the Involutionary Inward Path.
The Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Beauty, and the Action-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Goodness; these arrive at Perfect Truth through material evolution.
If one does not wish to copy nature but to “repeat” nature in its creative mode, as suggested by Schuon in Islamic Art, then one will, in fact, reflect evolution, contrary to Schuon. As Schuon put it, the sacred art of Perennial Spirituality “distrusts any materialization of religious subjects as if in fear that spiritual realities might become exhausted through an excess of sensory crystallization.”
TC can bring back a Center, a goal, a sacred material goal to art, rather than trying to avoid a Center in defining God only as universal spiritual truth, as is done in nonrepresentational Perennial spirituality.
Form Is Not Opposed to Essence
According to Schuon, form is necessarily opposed to essence, the latter being “universal inwardness” and the former “accidental outwardness.” This creates a problem. The “accidental” material is always disparaged in favor of “permanent” spirituality.
Perfect Truth that is spiritual is fulfilled as well as defined in Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which is the zenith of material evolution, as well as the completed Trinity.
With Form having once again taken its place in Godhood, Greek Art, which is too beautifully human to Schuon, can be exhumed and advanced once again. Perfect Beauty can be reflected in perfect human beauty. And since art contains evolution in TC, evolutionary beauty can also be explored. Perhaps we can even imagine beauty well beyond human beauty.
It is the idea of the “Extinction of Form in the Essence” which we do not affirm in religion or in art.
God does not resemble man or even superman---and traditional sacred art has been well aware of this. Schuon accuses Greek Art of no longer resembling God, but God resembling man. Traditionalists more or less reject Greek-Roman art as a deviation from Sacred Religious Art, but TC can affirm Greek-Roman art as an evolutionary art, pointing the way upward by symbolizing the evolution of man to Godhood through Beauty as well as through Truth.
The sacralizing element in Beauty relates to Godhood, not to the earth, but earthly beauty at it zenith is closer to the Divine and suggests the path to the Divine.
Traditional Sacred Art finds the symbol in the Soul Within and creates the style relating to the people, the culture, and the religion. TC finds in the Spirit Within the Seed and activation of the body to evolve to God and therefore the symbol can be brought back to the body.
The Body As Paragon
One could say that the marvels of Traditional Sacred Art, the Cathedrals, etc., are the exteriorizing of the Soul Within of the Involutionary Inward Path. In Traditional Sacred Art there is always a pull, or even a conflict between material virgin nature and the Soul Within, as if the body were too much contrary to the ways of the Spirit.
When the Soul Within is the “only” goal and not also the Spirit-Within-activation of material life, then material life can be demeaned. There can even be a split or conflict between them.
TC will bring Sacred Art back to the body since it is the body in material life that must evolve to Godhood. But we certainly do not forget about the Soul Within. The Spirit Within contains the Seed which is the Highest Element in material life and in our bodies. The Soul is the zenith of the mind in the Body, and the body is the Temple of the Spirit. The Body is the Temple of the “Order of the Outward Path.”
TC may bring man back to the “Golden Age” of Art by bringing man back to nature, back to virginal nature, back to materialism, as the ingredient with which to evolve to Godhood.
Traditional Sacred Art can be seen as showing the goal of Involution to the Soul Within, as symbolized in Temples, Mosques, Churches, Icons, and Rituals. This is certainly honored in TC as one of the Two Sacred Paths to God, that is, the Involutionary Inward Path.
TC revitalizes Traditional Sacred Art and the Involutionary Inward Path. The evolving body itself is the Temple and the material art of the Evolutionary Outward Path, including its goal of Godhood. What does God look like? This is the Mystery of the Outward Path.
In the Order of the Outward Path, the Sun and the Polar Star are superseded by the Kosmic Summit, and the Kosmic Summit is indirectly related to the evolving body. The material earth is redeemed as the sacred ingredient in the evolution to God, and the body is the Paragon of Evolution.
The Two Arts of the Inward and Outward Paths do not conflict, they compliment one another. The Inner God is the Outer God we must evolve to.
What we have dreamed of is real, the symbol is in our deepest heart is the Spirit Within and is real as the Supreme Material Object of our evolution to Godhood.
The highest possible degree of material Beauty must be returned to and redeemed from the decline of the body due to the Great Spiritual Blockade. The Half-Truth of the Inward Path joins the Half-Truth of the Outward Path to end the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Outward Path by the Inward Path.
The body is the activation of the essence within and the form of the evolution to God.
The Body And Object In Art
The function of all the arts is to bring the lower back to the higher, to bring the Spirit Within back to God. The body represents becoming-being, object, as contrasted with thought, or abstract thought. When God is an Object, a Body, then the body can come forward as a Sacred Symbol.
When the Spirit is opposed to the Soul (Body) then the body is demeaned, just as nakedness is wrongly opposed to clothing. If we are opposed to animal nature, then we downplay animal nature. The classical nudes are redeemed in the Sacred Art of the Evolutionary Christian Church, unlike Traditional Sacred Art where clothing is “opposed to nakedness as the soul is opposed to the body.” (Schuon) In EC the Soul is not opposed to the Body (Spirit) and the Priest is not opposed to the animal nature. Evolution is the process of Civilizing the Beast, the beast evolves to Godhood.
Perhaps like Traditional Christian and Buddhist art, the sacred art of TC will be centered on the bearer of evolution, the man-God, the superman. The ancient Greeks seemed to have used this subject matter, even if Schuon thinks this art was not enough informed by the sacred.
In TC we do not speak of the “resignation to the Will of God” but of the Assent of the Spirit to God. Inward art marks the descent to the Soul-Within, outward art the assent of the Spirit to Godhood.
God cannot be represented realistically because we do not know how God looks, and we probably will not know until we attain Godhood. But we can represent Beauty and Goodness and Truth in their highest human and superhuman forms and expressions.
When we “exteriorize a metaphysic” or show “an image of infinity,” we will not leave materialism out of the picture.
Positive and Negative Theology in the Arts
In the Arts, the Positive Theology of TC does not, as in Traditionalism and Negative Theology, search for or “recall” a lost Paradise of melancholy. Positive Theology is not about a lost Paradise but about a future Paradise at the end of evolution. The Spirit Within the Body does not mourn for a lost Paradise but anticipates the Paradise to come.
Indeed the Spirit “remembers” Paradise, as Plato suggested, as the Spirit is the Seed of Godhood. But it is not a lost Paradise but a future Paradise which helps activate material evolution.
Art should be ascending more than descending. The Inner Path descends to the Soul but then the Outer Path ascends to the destination of the Spirit, not within, but without, in the evolution to Godhood. Traditionalism “only” descends to the Soul, seeing no ascent through materialism.
“Greatness pre-exists in things” (Schuon), yet in Traditionalism greatness tends to stop there at the Soul Within. In Positive Theology the “Dance of Shiva” brings Atma back to Maya, not Maya back to Atma, as in negative theology. The inner is brought to the outer, the outer is only secondary to the inner.
Making an Idol of the Soul
We can bring Eros, survival, and reproduction back to the sacred, after it has been largely exiled (with a few Primordial exceptions) by Traditionalism due to its materialistic content, which is considered inferior.
The essence of survival and reproduction is the thirst for Heavenly Beauty. When this Sacred Goal is missing, sex and reproduction can be defined as profane.
Sacred Art follows this progress, or thirst for Heavenly Beauty, whereas profane art does not. The Spirit Within and the Soul-Within “recall” this beauty within but also help activate the thirst for the beauty without. Traditionalism tends to see and define only the recalling inner path, making an Idol of the Soul Within; Traditionalism then puts up a Great Spiritual Blockade against the thirst for beauty without.
Beauty can be exhumed from this neglect. “Eros with ethics” was the way someone defined advanced Paganism but this was lost in the spiritual abstractions of the Inward Path of Revealed Religions. The Order of the Outward Path of Evolution to God brings Eros back, reproduction and evolution to God can be affirmed. This can bring the Spirit of Beauty back to religion.
Life need not be thought of as “sinking” to scientific rationalism any more than it should sink to spiritualism. Both have been idol-worshiping at one time or another. In TC the balance between the Inward Path (Soul Within) and the Outward Path (Evolution to God) avoids both types of idol worship.
Traditionalism made an idol of the Soul Within even as it virtually rejected the earth and the material world calling these things idol worship. God is a Sacred Object in the world, not merely an equation outside the world defined as Perfect Truth, or the Father. Traditionalism gave us a hubristic authority beyond the world, beyond the stars, and Traditionalism continues to supplant astronomy and biology with the exclusivity of the Inward Path.
Religion and Art
The Form of God is the ultimate aim of art, religion and the evolution of life. Developing religion was, along with Divine Grace, motivated by an innate need to create order and harmony, almost the way a composer composes a traditional symphony. Religion in this way, is related to art, whose purpose is to create a finite image of infinity.
But art cannot become a substitute for religion as it perhaps did in nineteenth century Romanticism, art should be an adjunct or an affirmation of religion.
We hope we have shown here that we do not stand against Traditional Sacred Art, but against its exclusivity, its blocking out the evolution of the material world, as it reflects its Gnostic base of affirming the Soul and denying the material. The Traditionalists bemoan the decadence of the world but they make it virtually impossible for the world to narrow itself into their blocked spiritual world.
The Sacred Art of the Theoevolutionary Church has a Promethean and a Faustian quality, we stretch, we reach, we evolve to define the Highest Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
February 8, 2009
Kenneth Lloyd Anderson
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Friday, February 06, 2009
The True is the Splendor of the Beautiful
Frithjof Schuon said "The Beautiful is the Splendor of the True," and metaphysicians like Shankara, Plato, Plotinus and Meister Eckhart seem to agree with him.
It is not a minor point to say rather that the True is the Splendor of the Beautiful. The True is the defining Father Aspect of the Trinity, which in this case defines the Beautiful. If one makes of God “only” the Perfect Truth one appears to be rejecting the Trinity and the Perfect Object of God, which is more fully defined as the Trinity: Perfect Beauty (Son), Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit) and Perfect Truth (Father).
It is not a minor point to say rather that the True is the Splendor of the Beautiful. The True is the defining Father Aspect of the Trinity, which in this case defines the Beautiful. If one makes of God “only” the Perfect Truth one appears to be rejecting the Trinity and the Perfect Object of God, which is more fully defined as the Trinity: Perfect Beauty (Son), Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit) and Perfect Truth (Father).
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
The spiritual is essentially on the material continuum
Both the “material” and the “spiritual” are real, as the spiritual is essentially on the material continuum, which is really the supermaterial. The sages who said and still say that the material is unreal—perhaps beginning with the Hyperboreans and continuing through the East and West—have it wrong. The simple people were right, there is an actual heaven, perhaps not resting on a turtle, but actual, but it is related to materially evolving to the highest life.
The sensual world and the spiritual world are on the same continuum, evolution brings us from the sensual to the spiritual or the supermaterial. The spiritual is connected to the phenomenal world, although it is the highest evolved aspect of the material world and it is “spiritual” in that sense. Strictly speaking, Spirit is supermaterial. Idea is spiritual. Idea “defines” material objects. The Body contains the Soul, the Spirit is within the Body helping to activate the Soul to Godhood.
The sensual world and the spiritual world are on the same continuum, evolution brings us from the sensual to the spiritual or the supermaterial. The spiritual is connected to the phenomenal world, although it is the highest evolved aspect of the material world and it is “spiritual” in that sense. Strictly speaking, Spirit is supermaterial. Idea is spiritual. Idea “defines” material objects. The Body contains the Soul, the Spirit is within the Body helping to activate the Soul to Godhood.
The Theoevolutionary Church reaffirms women as sacred
The Theoevolutionary Church reaffirms women as sacred, overturning centuries of the Dark Denial of Women. The Dark Denial was and is the Traditional and Orthodox denial of women as the sacred partner in the Outward Path of breeding toward Godhood. Beauty breeds toward Godhood, which is Perfect Beauty. The Great Spiritual Blockade was largely blocking “material” women from “spiritual” men. Perhaps the present revival of Goddess worship relates to this Dark Denial of Women.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
About ontological proof (Schuon)
“To be able to accept the ontological proof of God, which deduces from the existence of an innate concept the existence of the objective reality corresponding thereto, one must begin by realising that the truth does not depend on reasoning – obviously it is not reason that has created it... In every act of assent by the intellect there is an element which escapes the thinking process, rather as light and colour elude the grasp of geometry, which can, none the less, symbolise them indirectly and remotely. There is no such thing as “pure proof”; every proof presupposes the knowledge of certain data. The ontological proof, formulated by Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm, carries weight for the person who already has at his disposal some initial certainties, but it has no effect upon the willfully and systematically superficial mind... Some of the Scholastic philosophers were too Aristotelian to be able to accept the usefulness of the ontological proof; reason was considered by them as leading to a certainty that was in some way new, rather than to Platonic “reminiscence.”
(Logic and Transcendence, 1984, p.59) - Frithjof Schuon
Publicat de dhruva la 07:50 from Frithjof Schuon
Comment on the above: And yet...the Perfect Truth of Godhood seems to be a concept, a definition, known most fully by the objective reality of the real object or objects of Godhood.
(Logic and Transcendence, 1984, p.59) - Frithjof Schuon
Publicat de dhruva la 07:50 from Frithjof Schuon
Comment on the above: And yet...the Perfect Truth of Godhood seems to be a concept, a definition, known most fully by the objective reality of the real object or objects of Godhood.
Monday, February 02, 2009
The Inward Ouroboros
The Ouroboros symbol indicates the exclusively Inward Path of Traditionalism, which also requires working in harmony with the Outward Path of the Theoevolutionary Church.
"if in the rejected heathenism there are any values"
“But in the unconscious is everything that has been rejected by consciousness, and the more Christian one’s consciousness is, the more heathenishly does the unconscious conduct itself, if in the rejected heathenism there are any values that are important for life - if, that is to say, the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, as so often happens. The unconscious does not isolate or differentiate its objects as consciousness does.”
(Carl Jung, Answer to Job, p 100)
from danae sinclair
(Carl Jung, Answer to Job, p 100)
from danae sinclair
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Nietzsche, "We are Hyperboreans"
“Let us face ourselves. We are Hyperboreans; we know very well how far off we live. "Neither by land nor by sea will you find the way to the Hyperboreans"—Pindar already knew this about us. Beyond the north, ice, and death—our life, our happiness. We have discovered happiness, we know the way, we have found the exit out of the labyrinth of thousands of years. Who else has found it? Modern man perhaps? "I have got lost; I am everything that has got lost," sighs modern man.
This modernity was our sickness: lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous uncleanliness of the modern Yes and No. This tolerance and largeur of the heart, which "forgives" all because it "understands" all, is sirocco for us. Rather live in the ice than among modern virtues and other south winds!
We were intrepid enough, we spared neither ourselves nor others; but for a long time we did not know where to turn with our intrepidity. We became gloomy, we were called fatalists. Our fatum—the abundance, the tension, the damming of strength. We thirsted for lightning and deeds and were most remote from the happiness of the weakling, "resignation." In our atmosphere was a thunderstorm; the nature we are became dark—for we saw no way. Formula for our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.”
from “The Anti-Christ” by Friedrich Nietzsche
This modernity was our sickness: lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous uncleanliness of the modern Yes and No. This tolerance and largeur of the heart, which "forgives" all because it "understands" all, is sirocco for us. Rather live in the ice than among modern virtues and other south winds!
We were intrepid enough, we spared neither ourselves nor others; but for a long time we did not know where to turn with our intrepidity. We became gloomy, we were called fatalists. Our fatum—the abundance, the tension, the damming of strength. We thirsted for lightning and deeds and were most remote from the happiness of the weakling, "resignation." In our atmosphere was a thunderstorm; the nature we are became dark—for we saw no way. Formula for our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.”
from “The Anti-Christ” by Friedrich Nietzsche
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