On the Divine and the Demonic

The main theme of religions from ancient Iran and India to Hellenistic and Christian times is the separation of Divine Spirit (Light) from matter. In the Evolutionary Christian Church this creates the Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Godhood.

Since matter is the vehicle by which the Spirit Within activates the material world to evolve to Godhood, matter is not demonic. Blocking evolution to Godhood would better define demonic.

But rather than radically throw out one of the Twofold Paths to Godhood we include both the Inward Path to the Spirit Within and the Outward Path of material evolution to Godhood. The religious error was in the emphasis on the Spirit alone.

correction

The second to last paragraph of the last post should have read "the Indo-Europeans migrated in several waves back West and North and South "--not East...

Liquidating the Empire By Patrick J. Buchanan

...Liquidation of this empire should have begun with the end of the Cold War. Now it is being forced upon us by the deficit-debt crisis. Like GM, we can’t kick this can up the road any more, because we have come to the end of the road...(Essay here)

The Material Vehicle

An immense error in mystical philosophy says that life is in bondage to phenomena. This needs to be turned upside down.

Phenomena is bondaged to life. It is phenomena, the material world, which is the vehicle of the Spirit Within to evolve to Godhood.

Without the material vehicle of evolution there is no supermaterial Godhood, although the Spirit Within can be seen or experienced, it originally came from evolved Godhood.

The Task of the Spirit-Within

The Spirit Within is alive, supermaterial, and does have a “sound” or “vibration;” according to the old mystics this was from the “ether.” Some sought the “real sound” of the Gods and defined theses sounds as sacred language.

But the central task of the Spirit in the Evolutionary Christian Church is to activate material life to evolve to Godhood. The central task is not to seek the bliss of the sound, or the “emptiness” of the bliss of vibration. Our task is to understand the central activation of the Spirit, which seeks to travel with the life it activates in evolution all the way to Godhood.

We pursue the Spirit Within, of course, with the Involutionary Inward Path, but we don't stop there in the virtual bliss. The Evolutionary Outward Path is the other half of the Twofold Path in the religious life which seeks to evolve to Godhood.

What Nietzsche Should Have Said

Nietzsche more or less said that Christianity is life-denying and paganism is life-affirming. What he should have said was that concentrating exclusively on the Involutionary Inward Path, as the Revealed Religions do (not just Christianity), was the error.

When the Twofold Path adds the Evolutionary Outward Path, as the Evolutionary Christian Church does, then we have the life-affirming evolution of material life to the supermaterial life of Godhood, the life first seen or experienced as the Spirit Within or the God or Father Within in the Involutionary Inward Path.

That is, it was an error for Nietzsche, and his heirs, to extirpate all of Christianity and the Revealed Religions from philosophy and religion. Just as it was an error for religion to extirpate the material world and science from philosophy and religion.

Which God Is Dead?

God is not dead, the Platonist idea of God is dead, says Alexander Bard in speaking of Nietzsche. And Bard goes on to say that objectivity is dead too, and that all truths are subjective. We both agree and disagree.

The Platonist as well as the Eastern and Western "principle" of God may not be dead, but it needs to rearranged, including Zarathustra's God who was one of the forerunners of the Abrahamic Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul, (not Godhood). The Involutionary Inward Path leads to the Soul, the Father Within which we can pursue, but this is not Godhood. The Supreme Object God is the real life Supreme Goal of material evolution. God is an Object not merely a principle. Godhood, the Zenith of Evolution, is also Absolute Truth, Absolute Beauty and Absolute Goodness.

Evolution to Godhood is not merely a subjective truth, all of the cosmos is attempting to evolve to Godhood, with starts and stops and backward going along the way, and that is an objective truth as well as a subjective truth seen both within man and within nature.

Objects evolve first and then they know

I take the saying “the more one is, the more one knows” as an affirmation of the Object over the definition of the Object.

Objects evolve first and then they know, not the other way around. This way, Godhood contains Absolute Knowledge because Godhood is the evolved Supreme Object first.

All fields of learning and all material life leads in the end to Godhood, through evolution, although there are different levels of entropy, including the deepest entropy, slowing down the process.

Globalization Is Killing The Globe by Thom Hartmann

"Globalization is killing Europe, just as it's already wiped out much of the American middle class."...continue article here from "Economy In Crisis."

Cultivating Beauty

Cultivating the love of beauty not only refines the individual it evolves the individual and the species upward in evolution heading toward the Absolute Beauty of Godhood. In the Theoevolutionary  Church beauty is an object before it is a principle which defines beauty.

On freedom from ignorance

Freedom from ignorance does not alone call for gnosis or knowledge of God, and also does not alone call for Bhakt or love of God. The Gnostic and Bhakt movements of the East, West, and Middle East, need to be revitalized because they are limited mainly to only one of the Twofold Path, the Involutionary Inward Path.

We require the Evolutionary Outward Path to attain freedom from ignorance, the path of material-supermaterial evolution to Godhood. The Inward Path sees the Spirit Within, the Outward Path evolves to Godhood, where we attain the Absolutes (Truth, Beauty, Goodness) with the Supreme Object Godhood.

The Spirit-Will Activates, It Does Not Transcend Materiality

On Sacred Language

Is there a “universal language,” an “essential language” in which the “original language” of the Gods can be restored? Evola speaks of the tantric mantra representing the voice of the thing itself, speaking the cosmic language.

And several religious traditions claim to possess sacred and divine letters from a universal language, or language restored to its pristine state.

But then the doctrine goes on to say that the material world is only a manifestation of the transcendent world, the world of the universal language and universal sound.

This all needs to be transvalued. Sound or language is not the object in itself, it derives from the object, the object is not a manifestation of the language, the language is a manifestation of the object. The transcendent, or the world of word, meaning and sound, is a manifestation of the material world, or the supermaterial world at its highest evolution, not the other way around.

It is possible to say that the Spirit Within life speaks or vibrates a universal language, which mystics can with discipline understand or hear, but this is not Godhood. The Spirit-Will activates material life to evolve to Godhood, it does not "transcend" material life , unless you mean by transcendent the evolution of material life all the way to Godhood, which is more a transformation.

The Twofold Path seeks both the Inward God and the Outward God.

Process Philosophy And Upward Evolution

Process philosophy, begun with people like Heraclitus and Zarathustra (and perhaps continued with Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alfred N. Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze and the pragmatists and existentialists) is not devoid of morality, as Alexander Bard suggests in his excellent blog, that is, if process philosophy is updated with the essential process of evolution, activated by the Spirit Within, or the Will To Godhood. This view requires the vital idea of upward evolution, along with starts and stops and backward going, not totally random evolution, but evolution toward higher and higher consciousness and material excellence within material evolution, all the way to Godhood. This is the way God is reached, through upward evolution. We can also (rarely) reach the Spirit Within applying the Traditionalist Involutionary Inward Path, this is one of the Twofold Path in the Theoevolutionary Church, but this is not Godhood, which is reached through the Evolutionary Outward Path. And this process of upward evolution does require morality. With this great goal in mind we are affirming the Chrisitian and Beyondist virtues, ethics and morals of  the Theoevolutionary Church.

Exiled to a World of the Spirit

In the Revealed Religions and in Classical philosophy “evolution” is man unfolding toward the superior, but this is really involution not evolution.

Opposite or transvaluating the traditional perspective, man is a material being exiled to a world of Spirit where the Great Spiritual Blockade has prevented or greatly slowed evolution to Godhood.

Mystics found the Spirit Within through the Involutionary Inward Path but it was not Godhood attained. Godhood is attained through the Evolutionary Outward Path of material-spiritual evolution to Godhood. This is the Twofold Path in the Evolutionary Christian Church .

Godhood and the naming of God

It does not matter what the word is for God or which language is used. It does not matter even if sacred or divine words for God exists, they are still words (how's that for ecumenism).  The "word" is not God.

And it is not enough to evoke the power of God through images or mantras, this too is not God. With discipline the Spirit Within can be evoked, and the Spirit-Will also is not God it activates toward Godhood.

Godhood is the Supreme Supermaterial Object by any name. Godhood is reached not through naming, not through experiencing the power of the Spirit, Godhood is reached only by evolving materially-supermaterially to Godhood in the material world, from the simple material, to the supermaterial, to Godhood.

Smothering The Vehicle To Godhood

Indeed, as the Gnostics said, sparks of the Divine Light are buried in living matter, in the human body, but rather than “salvaging” the Light or Spirit by rejecting matter completely, which smothers if not kills the vehicle by which the Light can evolve to Godhood, we say the body is the temple of the Spirit and the Spirit activates matter to evolve to Godhood. We do not kill the vehicle that brings us to the golden goal. But we retain the Involutionary Inward Path of the Gnostics and the Revealed Religions, which can allow us to induce the Spirit Within, as we transform the Inward Path to the Evolutionary Outward Path.

The Virtual Experience Of Immortality

Primary and Secondary Goals of Religion

The experience of “living in the Spirit” is not really “sharing in immortality” as the Eastern mystics define it, this is a virtual (though rare) experience of immortality in the Soul not the Spirit.

The Spirit Within is the closest thing we have to Godhood because the Spirit seeks Godhood, it almost as the Seed of God, activating life throughout the Kosmos.

Experiencing fully the Soul, which is called the human experience of “nonbeing,” is not the Primary Goal of religion, it is the Secondary Goal of religion.

The Primary Goal of religion can be attained only through the Evolutionary Outward Path of material evolution to Godhood. The Secondary Goal of experiencing the Soul Within is obtained through the Involutionary Inward Path. This is the Twofold Path in the Evolutionary Christian Church.

The Decline of Serious Music

The Decline of Serious Music : A Review of “Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts,” from American Masters, (PBS Wed 4-08-09)

The musical decline of serious music since 1945 led us to Philip Glass, as music began to lack a sense of tone, key, centering, and lack a place to return to. (See “Can There Be Great Composers Any More" by Webster Young.)  Glass seems to be trying to bring tonal music back, but he has not.

Composers rejected the historical retelling of past ages. They said “to hell with the past.” This attitude is reflected in all revolutionary movements, including political movements. In revolutionary movements each person is on their own, they can't refine previous techniques. This is important because our present achievements are as much the result of past achievements as it is with personal genius. Mozart did not invent most of the features of his music, he improved on the work of past composers.

A conservative, classicist, or neoclassicist builds on the past. His work is a culmination of what went before. He does not need to create a mini-revolution and be innovative in all ways. The ancient classical ideals involved beauty and harmony, clarity of form, nobility of subject, and meaningfulness. Meaningless beauty is not classical. The concern that the work be only original rather than asking how beautiful the work is, has created mediocre works, because all past musical tradition has not been involved in the work.

The “new” is not rejected in neoclassical music, as the revolutionaries falsely claim to advance themselves, the old should have a grain of the new but not a whole field of untested grain. In modern music and modern art the new is a destruction of the old. So why would composers (or any kind of revolutionary) wish to destroy? Why not develop old forms rather than discard them? Why destroy old forms when destroying them only alienates audiences and ruins the economics of serious music?

We cannot really know the psychology of individual revolutionaries, but we can see patterns and general traits. The key to understanding Philip Glass seems to reside in his stated belief that if you don't like his music, don't listen to it, he could care less (bull). Glass is syncretistic, fusing widely different forms, he has attempted to combine the melody and rhythm of Hindu music with the melody and harmony of Western music; but he ends up rejecting Western harmony for a monotonous version of Eastern melody and rhythm.

Often individual modernists are simply not a part of the old classical culture. Often the modernists simply have no talent for classical music. Modernists have problems with authority in general.  Modernists are often egocentric, or megalomaniacal. Or modernists display all of these traits. Philip Glass is defined in all of these categories.

Certainly a return to classicism will one day be strongly fueled by the usurpation of this inferior clique. We need artists and real critics to begin to speak out against this usurpation by the ugly.

The Promethean In The Sacred Art Of the Theoevolutionary Church

Here is a post from Monday, February 09, 2009, which deserves its own category.

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 and super-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 without the Object.

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 Whole is the Supreme Object Godhood.

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 and supermaterial 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-supermaterial 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” immaterial spirituality.

Perfect Truth that is spiritual is fulfilled as well as defined in Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which is the zenith of material-supermaterial 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 EC, 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 and beyond to more evolved bodies.


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, or Kosmic Godhood, 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 and is the Spirit Within and is real as the Supreme SuperMaterial 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 Supreme 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 Theoevolutionary Church, unlike Traditional Sacred Art where clothing is “opposed to nakedness as the soul is opposed to the body.” (Schuon) In TC 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 the help of 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. What is culture? Arthur Verluis points out that the word itself comes from “cultus” or cult and has intrinsic religious dimensions. Culture, strictly speaking, refers to all the aspects of daily life that bear the imprint of society’s religious center: tools, architecture, clothing, as well as art, literature, and music. From this perspective, culture refers to the sanctification of daily life.  Perhaps we are speaking of Total Religion rather than total art or total culture?

Here is a quote from - Yellowtail.   "Even the dress that you wore every day had sacred meanings, and wherever you went or whatever you did, you were participating in a sacred life and you knew who you were and carried a sense of the sacred with you. All of the forms had meaning, even the tipi and the sacred circle of the entire camp. Of course the life was hard and difficult and not all Indians followed the rules. But the support of the traditional life and the presence of Nature everywhere brought great blessings on all the people." 

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
Posted by Kenneth Lloyd Anderson at 8:52 AM
Labels: Art and Religion

Contra Manicheaism

We do not believe, as the Manicheans and Gnostics, that the Spirit or Light is a “captive” of matter. The Spirit is the willing activator of matter, matter is the vehicle of the Spirit to evolve all the way to Godhood. Matter need not be considered “evil.”

“Redemption” is not separation of Spirit from matter, it is the evolution of matter, activated by the Spirit, or the Light, all the way to Godhood. The “Paradise of Light” is the Kosmic Summit of Godhood evolved to.

Therefore, the “regeneration” of “fallen man” is not when man separates from matter as a “man-god,” man evolves to God. Man can only align with the direction of upward evolution. This is the task of man.

To see the Spirit or Light Within is the discipline of the Involutionary Inward Path, which we do affirm, but there is a Twofold Path to Godhood, and the Evolutionary Outward Path should no longer be ignored or buried in what we have defined as the Great Spiritual Blockade.

Spirit Is Not “Exiled” To Matter

Spirit did not “draw into form,” Spirit activated form. The Spirit is not “exiled” to the world of matter, matter is the vehicle by which the Spirit evolves to Godhood.

The Spirit did not “Fall” into matter from a “Garden of Eden” defined as the Spiritual home in the ether. Spirit became matter and then Spirit activated matter from the beginning.

However, as we have often said, we do not reject the Involutionary Inward Path which pursues the Spirit Within exclusively, we see this as a brilliant ancient attempt to understand God through the Spirit Within, a Godhood we now see as attained through the Evolutionary Outward Path.

There Is No Kali Age

While the decadence of the present world is obvious, we reject the deep pessimism of the Traditionalist School, which was well represented by Rene Guenon in the early twentieth century.

Guenon followed Eastern occultism (after perhaps the unfair rejection of his work by French scholars) in proclaiming that the West was decadent beyond repair, that we are at the end of the Kali cycle, and a new cycle can begin only after the destruction of the present age.

This is solely based on the Involutionary Inward Path of Eastern religions (and more or less Western religions as well), although Guenon did not like the term “religion” preferring “Perennial Tradition.” In the Involutionary Inward Path, enlightenment is experienced only after the obliteration of the world of the senses and the blocking out of the material world. A series of hierarchical “states” beyond the human supposedly are sought and attained by the rare initiate in the disciplines of yoga.

The Theoevolutionary Church projects a series of actual evolutionary beings, not merely “states “ of being, leading upward in evolution to Godhood at the Zenith of material-spiritual evolution. This is the definition of the real “enlightenment,” and indeed, in this case, it is not humanly experienced, since life would have evolved beyond the human, although with human ancestry (assuming we evolve.)

Ours is a Positive Theology, no unreal pessimism is required. The cosmic cycles of the East are based exclusively on the Involutionary Inward Path, which sees the material world as illusion and even as evil, whereas we see the Spirit-Will as activating the material world to evolve to Godhood. We do not, as Guenon, proclaim that we have to wait for the destruction of the present world—or help along the destruction, as Evola might do. Indeed, evolution has the "cycles" of arising, becoming, and passing away, but this is based in the material world.

Never the less, the Theoevolutionary Church accepts the Involutionary Inward Path as part of the Twofold Path to Godhood, allowing us to see and experience the Soul and Spirit Within. Ours is a Revitalized Conservatism, we do not radically reject the past. But we also include the vital Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution to Godhood. Eastern and Western religions demand that we apply only the Involutionary Inward Path, which has led to the decadence of the world.

True decadence began with the Great Spiritual Blockade of material evolution by the mystics of the East and West. This was the true “Fall.”

Civilizing The Beast: Conservative Refinement Rather than Radical Release Of The Spirit

The task, transvalued from the Revealed Religions, is not the “release” of ones spiritual nature from the “bondage” of the instincts of the animal nature, this is far too radical and it grossly (and tragically) misplaces the Ideal Of The Instincts, and the goal of the Spirit Within material evolution to Godhood. This great error has led to The Great Spiritual Blockade.

The task is the refinement of the instincts, the Civilizing Of The Beast, and not the radical release of the Spirit from bondage of the instincts. The Spirit activates the instincts, the Spirit is not in bondage to the instincts. The instincts of the material world are the vehicle by which the Spirit attains It's goal at the Zenith of Evolution, which is Godhood.

Cooperating with the evolutionary process

Our task is to cooperate with the evolutionary process, initiated by the Spirit Within, or the Will to Godhood. This means that we try to get the intellect to understand the process. The Soul, which is the Zenith of the Mind, must understand the Spirit, which is the Zenith of the Soul. The Inward Path must understand the Outward Path.

Culture and civilization stem from this base, usually unconsciously. The goal of evolving to Godhood can be made conscious in culture. This is the base of religion, and religion is the base of all real cultures and civilizations.

Real and Unreal Nonduality

Matter is never “transcended,” the material world evolves to the supermaterial world and eventually to Godhood. Therefore mystics who define non initiates as suffering from “transcendental ignorance” are wrong, the non initiates are actually more on the right track. Godhood is the Zenith of the material evolution. A better term would be supermaterial ignorance rather than transcendental ignorance.

The Vedanta school this way achieves false “nondualism” by saying that the material world is illusory and the transcendent world is real. This is upside down. Real nondualism says that a transcended world is illusory and the world is on an evolving continuum from the material to the spiritual-material, or supermaterial, and finally to Godhood.

The Western version of false nondualism from science is achieved by saying that the supermaterial Gods do not exist. Science at least does not deny materiality.  The Evolutionary Christian Church is therefore a Western oriented school in describing a nondual supermaterialty, even as we unite the West and East in the Twofold Path.