The Self or Undifferentiated Being of Mysticism Is Not Godhood

The goal of reaching the Self, Absolute or undifferentiated Being in Traditionalism, is however the goal of reaching the Soul existing deep within the mind. This is not Godhood and this is not the goal of the Evolutionary Outward Path in Evolutionary Christianity. This goal of the Self, which is the goal of the Involutionary Inward Path, can even be a Great Spiritual Blockade against attaining Real Godhood at the Zenith of Evolution, if it is seen as the only path, rather than as one of the Twofold Path.

The Inward Path may be a glorious experience but it is the Path to the Soul and not the Spirit, and it is not Godhood. Godhood must be evolved to in the Kosmos. We “become” Godhood which does not happen in human form, it happens after the highest evolution in the Kosmos has been attained through evolution, which is the mission of the Evolutionary Outward Path. It is the Spirit or Will To Godhood that exists at the Zenith of the Soul, it is not the Soul, which guides and activates us to Godhood in evolution.

Intuition And Intellect Are Not At Odds

It is not “anti-intellectual" to affirm intuition. There seems to be a hierarchy within in which intuition is the deepest part of intelligence, not opposed to the intellect.

Is intellect-intuition rational? When rational is not defined as static, mathematical, nonliving form then intellect-intuition can be rational, because evolution moves, it is not stationary, the reason of evolution is attached to living, evolving objects which can then define logic.

Reason probably takes place in the mind-soul and intuition in the Spirit-Will, but since Spirit is at the Zenith of the mind-soul they are part of a whole.

Instinct-intuition is not “prelogical” it is logic itself prior to the intellect seeing it.

Even Socrates exalted reason yet still paid attention to the “daemon” voice inside which he thought was beyond reason. So did Nietzsche---too much.

A Grand Synthesis

"The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." - Romans, 1: 20

Our brain-mind structure originated in survival and reproductive drives, and when man creates or intuits religion and philosophy which become abstract beyond this survival origin it can be unhealthy and unbalanced.

But beneath the brain-mind at the Zenith of the brain-mind is the Soul, and deeper still at the Zenith of the Soul is the Spirit, and this Spirit or Will is the deepest essence or beginning of the origin of our survival and reproductive drives, which activates life to evolve to Godhood.

Evolutionary Christianity (EC) is the only religious and philosophical way I know of combing the survival and reproductive drives defined by science and evolution, with the traditional, religious Soul and Spirit defined as activating life to evolve to Godhood. This answers the separation of mind from body, and the separation of biology from the Spirit.

Some may think that Evolutionary Christianity is an illusory perception, or myth-making to coax the wayward intellect back to natural instincts, and that is okay with me as far as it goes, but EC believes we can evolve to Godhood and are in fact designed to do so.

Unlike Bergson's “elan vital” which does not see the future as predetermined, the Spirit or Will to Godhood does have a determined goal, which is Godhood, although the path of evolution has unforeseeable variety and undetermined paths.

Balancing Intellect-Soul With Instinct-Spirit

Religious formation seems to be the work of intuition, which essentially is instinct, and intuition-instinct seems often to be working against the intellect. Myth and religion are the Spirit-Will (instinct-intuition) calling out to or influencing the Soul (mind), which can be unbalanced or lost to the Spirit-Will instinct. The Soul is the Zenith of the Mind and the Spirit is the Zenith of the Soul.     

A Total Religion is the religion which has balanced intellect and instinct. Religions have moved away from the dynamic, causal, “animistic” instincts and toward the more static intellect, and even beyond the intellect, or so they hope, which has unbalanced religion. The idea is not to return to instincts alone but to put the instincts and intellect in balance.    

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) has defined the Inward Path as the way of the Mind-Soul, and the Outward Path as the way of the Instinct-Spirit, or the Will to Godhood in evolution. Evolution has helped bring religion back to its sources.  The mission of the ECC is to civilize and evolve the beast, not to suppress the beast, the ECC seeks to break the Great Spiritual Blockade which tries to prevent the material world from evolving to the supermaterial world, and Godhood.     

Season's Greetings and a Sacred New Year

The Love Of Concepts And The Fear Of Determinism

It seems to be the general view among phenomenologists, psychologists, existentialists and post-moderns that it is the individualized concepts through which we see the world that matter most in reading human behavior. I find this view sophistical and driven by a general fear of determinism, among other things

This general fear of determinism seems to run through the escape from the sociobiological imperatives of human nature. Viewing the world sociobiologically does not mean that we must view the world as an emotionless robot, emotions and personal differences are certainly included. Sociobiology is far from reading only the “appearances” of the world as is claimed.

When sociobiology seeks to bring the humanities into sociobiology this does not create merely a reductionist worldview. It grounds culture in its own real causes and emotions. It is not sociobiology which “depersonalizes” the world, it is existentialism which dehumanizes the world by more or less rejecting or at least underplaying the biological base and activations behind human nature.

Sociobiology does not inevitably lead to Marx, Spengler or Goebbels, this is a scare tactic. Because progress can be affirmed through evolution does not mean that one does not believe in the past or in traditions. Human beings can chew gum and walk at the same time.

Evolutionary religion adds a religious element to sociobiology, bringing in a new intellectual intuition and faith, which is also far from affirming a cold robotic world. It is our belief that humanity and all life is activated by the Spirit Within and shaped by evolution from without. This is not something to fear but something to try to understand, and even celebrate.

"Create Millions of Secure Jobs and Restore U.S. Manufacturing Without Deficit Spending"

"...We should make balanced trade the law-of-the-land and enforce it by permitting total annual imports only to match our exports. Import Certificates ("ICs") would be issued by the U.S. and offered to all comers in an open trading market..."  ( more here from Economy In Crises

Working hypothesis combining ontology and epistemology

"I am that I am," Exodus 3:14

As John Caputo nicely put it, Kant was interested in what knowledge is, and Aristotle was interested in Being, but I work with the idea that being and knowledge are of the same object, and so the object of knowledge, which is the interest of epistemology, is essentially the same as ontology, what Being is.

The subject is mind, the object is body, and the mind dwells in the object-body, so both are of the object-body.

We can only partially know the object ourselves, but evolution can increase our consciousness of the object, and we can project full consciousness of the Object at the Zenith of Evolution, which is Godhood.

Heidegger asked if the “real” is Being then what “is” validity? I say validity is what the real mind does within the real body, the mind validates the body as best it can, and does this with increasing accuracy as evolution continues. Validity does not exist on its own outside the object body of Being.

There is no real dualism here between Being (the object) and Ideal (the mind of the object).

Even the Spirit, or Will To Godhood, is of our bodies, made of the substance of the body, only it is a supermaterial substance at the Zenith of our Soul, and the Soul is at the Zenith of our Minds.

Defining the term “thing-in-itself,” I present the “thing” as the mind-spirit, and the “itself” is the body. The Supreme Thing-In-Itself is the Mind and Body of God as One.

Idealistic Realism: Seeing Form and Following Intuition

The idea or form of Godhood at the zenith of evolution is an idea, an intellectual intuition, but it is also a Supreme Evolved Object, and so we return to the old problem of unchanging idealistic form versus realistic moving evolution.

Godhood is more than an idea or an unchanging form, Godhood takes place in time with the evolution of moving bodies, otherwise it is only an equation, a form.

For me, real objects exist and we can usually see only part of them consciously, although, tapping into the Spirit Within, we can intellectually intuit what they are and where they are going. We can also intuit evolution evolving total consciousness to fully know reality, when Godhood is attained.

The religious philosopher's job is not to distinguish only the real from the symbolic, as science does, but to distinguish both the real and symbolic. This avoids the extremes of science (only what's real) and religion ( what's unreal.)

Republicanism As Meritocracy

I support meritocracy, change from the top, through the Republicanism of our Constitution, representative government, not through monarchism or fascism.

But Republicanism it is also populist, change from the bottom, since people vote for their representatives. This is better than the tyrannical populism of Marxism.

Republicanism in America is already a tradition which only needs revitalization and not a new revolution.

Will demographic changes alter our Constitution? If so it's over for America. Our way to cope with the demographic changes coming is to uphold virtually independent states, with a very light federalism protecting the variety.

And no culture has arisen or lasted without being grounded in religion, so religion and politics needs to understand and affirm this future, even as it upholds past traditions.

The False Despair Of Postmodernism

The main reason why Postmodernism finds only despair and irony in the world, after having rejected all the religious and philosophical “narratives” that people live by, is because they could not, or would not, face the real narrative of human biological evolution.

It is understandable that the tyranny and great suffering of the Second World War would scare people away from the subject of human sociobiology. The racial nationalism of that era was an imperialistic and supremacist misreading of how to live with the biological drives of all people, all races, all states. Sociobiology instead points toward thousands of small, evolving states protected by a light federalism, with no single noble or chosen race, as the best way to survive in the crowded world of competition.

Postmodernism, and science, have not looked deep enough into biology to see the Spirit or Will To Godhood activating biology from within, and evolution shaping biology from without. Evolutionary Christianity taps into the real world of evolution and finds sacred meaning for all people in evolution toward the Godhood first seen in Traditional religion.

What Marx Missed

Marx essentially limited materialism to human material society. When we spiritualize materialism we arrive at evolutionary supermaterialism and not the non-material spiritualism of Hegel. The Spirit is supermaterial.

Marx missed this deeper form of materialism-spiritualism, which would have synthesized “materialism” with “spiritualism,” science with religion.

We evolve materially to supermateriality and finally to Godhood. This is affirmed in the Twofold Path of Evolutionary Christianity (EC).

If Marx had made this connection to Traditional religion, Marxian theory might not have led to tyranny and collapse, as it did.

History can move with Ordered Evolution, not with radical revolution. The Revitalized Conservatism of EC affirms this Ordered Evolution.

Human genetic variation

From top to bottom: East Eurasians, West Eurasians, Australo-Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans.

A fascinating article at Dieneke's anthropology blog on human genetic variation.

Artificial Life And Real Life

We can assume Relativity is true if we assume we can travel near the speed of light, which may or may not be possible. These are mathematical assumptions, equations, denotations. My problem is not with the math, my problem is making a God out of artificial definitions over the real living object.

Is this anti-intellectual? No, it is anti making a God of artificial numbers. Since I have not seen the Godhood I affirm why is not my definition as imaginary as the thought experiments proving Relativity? The difference may seem small but it is vital. I insist on the real living, material-supermaterial object Godhood and not the artificial mathematics or metaphysics of God, I even admit the term “idealistic realism” or theological materialism, to indicate the involvement of faith in the unknown..

This is not a rejection of mathematics or of artificial life, it is a rejection of the worship of artificial life over real life. These values have consequences regarding technology and machines used to advance ourselves, and the idea of “singularity, when men and machines are equal in intelligence. We do not want to become machines. The living object, the body is sacred, it is the material vehicle by which we evolve to Godhood.

Theological Materialism: History Beyond Hegel And Marx

Marx thought he had set Hegel on his feet in saying that human history and society is driven by material and not spiritual forces.

Digging deeper than the material feet of Marx into the biological body, here I find the Spirit of Hegel as the activating force of material evolution, but I don't see it as "spiritual."

History and evolution are moving toward Godhood, beyond the ideal state defined by Marx, and not toward the non-material Spirit of Hegel, but toward supermaterial Godhood at the Zenith of Evolution.

In the Twofold Path, the Spirit Within of religion reflects and adds the Godhood Without of evolution. This rescues Tradition from radicalism as the inward path is transformed but retained, adding the Spirit of religion to materialism and evolution.

No Duality Between Catholic Intellect and Protestant Will

I resolve the differences between the Catholic way of the intellect and the Protestant way of the will by declaring that the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood is higher than both.  In this sense instinct is will, intellect, and intuition. I see the Spirit-Will like a Super-Id directing evolution from the inside while being shaped by evolution from the outside.

The question: how can intellectual intuition define itself, the Soul, and the Spirit-Will in a scientific or materialist way? I think science will one day find the supermaterial substance of these things.

No duality here.

Reason, instinct and intuition

As Bergson more or less said, all is instinct. When we think we have multiple choice we think we have freedom, and when we have only one choice we think we are not free. But neither one is complete freedom. Bergson also brilliantly described instinct as intuition.

Can reason discover instinct-intuition? I describe the Spirit-Will as at the base of instinct, which is may also be the highest human reason, so in this sense there is no duality between reason, instinct and intuition.

Intellectual intuition exists at the highest level of the brain-mind, or the Will-Spirit, that is, the  Will-Spirit is at the zenith of the brain and cerebral process, where intellectual intuition dwells.The "Soul" is the seeing or experiencing of what is seen inwardly.

But if we take intellectual intuition deeper than the Soul, at the Zenith of the Soul is the Will-Spirit, or the Will To Godhood.

It is the Spirit or Will to Godhood which activates us to evolve toward the complete freedom and highest consciousness of Godhood.

The Lower and Higher Holy Grail

It does seem that the “Holy Grail” might be defined as the goal of searching for your higher consciousness, or seeking the the God Within. But this can be and has been a Great Spiritual Blockade when it is considered the end-goal of all religion.

The Lower Holy Grail is the God Within of the Involutionary Inward Path, but it is the Evolutionary Outward Path which seeks to evolve in the material world to the Higher Holy Grail of Actual Godhood in the supermaterial world. The Lower Grail is the Soul-Within, but it is the the Spirit-Will which activates evolution to the Higher Grail of Godhood.

Both Grails are retained in the Twofold Path of Evolutionary Christianity.

The Most Virtuous Acts

The most virtuous act is to recognize the Spirit-Within all created things as the Will To Godhood activating natural and supermaterial evolution to Godhood. The second most virtuous act is to recognize the Soul- Within as an inward mirror of Godhood. The first is the revelation of the Evolutionary Christian Church, the second  is the revelation of  Traditional Religion. Both Paths are affirmed in the Twofold Path of Evolutionary Christianity.

Idealistic Realism

The common sense approach I will take to the debate on Realism in philosophy is that what we see with our senses is real but incomplete. Science can sometimes help us see more of reality with it's increasingly sophisticated technology.

I enter into Idealism by applying intellectual intuition in seeing evolution gradually advancing our abilities to see what is real, and then I project this same evolution, which moves from the simple to the complex, and from unconscious to conscious, into higher and higher beings who can perceive more and more of reality. Finally, perhaps all or most of Reality can be seen and known when life evolves in the cosmos all the way to Godhood, where at this Zenith of Evolution all of Reality is seen and known, but not until then.

Modern philosophy has been blocked in paying too much attention to the methods and phenomenon of seeing reality, and this has overcomplicated the problem.  This is not unlike the Great Spiritual Blockade of evolving theological materialism.

The Evolutionary Christian Church combines the Realism of Catholicism with an idealistic and scientific evolutionary perspective.

Transformations and intuition

Definitions of God tend to be fixed concepts taken from moving, evolving reality, and this is a problem. Religions have tended to make God a fixed concept rather than a live Godhood.

Even Godhood transforms, transforming Godhood to higher and higher Godhoods, with some gods sinking back in the next cosmos.

As Bergson said, it is intuition that can better see moving things than rational immobile analysis.

All Is Causal

Science has said an event causes another event because there is a law connecting them. Theological Materialism says the primordial law causing other laws is the activating Will To Godhood, or the Holy Spirit-Will within all life, which works within the laws of natural evolution. The Will to Godhood activates life from within, evolution shapes life from without. This does not mean that the Spirit-Will is "Being," as Nietzsche seems to have thought with his Will To Power, because the desire of the Spirit-Will requires the material vehicle to evolve to Godhood.

Neither theology nor philosophy lifts human action out of the causal, as it has often claimed, even if science has not yet defined Godhood and the Spirit-Will. All is causal and it has been a great illusion to think that Godhood exists outside of the world. Godhood is not “less” because It shares causes and substances with us. Godhood is the Zenith of Evolution and the final destination of the activating Spirit-Will within life. Nothing is outside of nature, but Godhood is the Zenith of Nature.

Nothing stands outside it's causes

The following, for me, answers Heidegger's concerns (see Caputo's “Heidegger and Aquinas,” 1982) with who is defining or who is “sending” the Being, in relation to the thing sent, or what was defined.

Nothing stands outside it's causes, not even Godhood, which contains the Spirit that activates life to evolve to Godhood, including the life that became Godhood through evolution.

This is why essence, often defined as idea, does not stand outside of existence, or outside the thing or idea converted into reality. Essence for me is defined as the material Inward Dynamics or Spirit-Will, and existence is the material and supermaterial Body activated by that Inward Dynamics or Spirit-Will, with no real separation between them. Even Spirit is a supermaterial substance not yet identified by science.

Contrary to what Heidegger said, possibility is not more important than actuality, possibility is encased in actuality, in the way I have just mentioned, that is, the possibilities of the activating Spirit-Will within lies within actual life.

On Courage

It has always seemed to me that courage is the key to great philosophy perhaps more than anything else.  Seeing the truth has been difficult through the ages because truth requires courage to see in the history of ideas, and also amid the knowledge of ones time, which can often be not truthful.  With courage comes clearness, less complication, whereas lack of courage brings obfuscation.

Unfortunately it is often timid men who become intellectuals and their writings often reflect their timidity. There are exceptions but not many. This seems to be why folk culture often seems more truthful, courageous men don't seem to become intellectuals. This also explains why high culture needs to be the superstructure built over the structure of folk culture.

Aung Kyi said it's not power that corrupts but fear. One can be born with natural courage or one can cultivate courage by refusing to let fear dictate ones actions. The philosophers and writers I like all seem to be, at least, courageous.

Freedom and Determinism

It is not a matter of losing freedom when subject “surrenders” to object (Roger Scruton), because there never was such freedom in the first place to surrender. We are surrendering only the illusion of freedom.

I see the problem of “freedom” as compared to the brain-mind relationship to the body, with the brain being the subject and the body the object.

The brain (subject) is not free of the body (object), it is that simple, and this to me means the object controls the subject, even though the subject (brain) also controls the object (body), as the brain is the control center of the body.

The desperate attempt in philosophy to demand “freedom” probably stems from the fear of lack of control over ones life and existence. But the subject is encased in the object, and we have little freedom.

This dilemma was taken all the way to definitions of God, where it was hoped that at least God could be free. But I believe that even Godhood, in our likeness, has a Supreme Mind and Supreme Body, as subject and object, and God's Mind is not “free” from God's Body.

I think that we must accept that we are naturally and supernaturally evolving to Godhood as a determined goal in the cosmos, although we have some freedom in the paths taken to this determined goal. It is healthiest for us in general when we get in harmony with and accept this kind of determinism.

Concealing Being

According to John Caputo (“Heidegger and Aquinas,” 1982) Heidegger said that the difference between Being and being has been concealed by philosophy. It seems to me that this was not concealment because I see little difference between Being and being. However, later Heidegger became more interested in who was defining Being (the sender) than in Being.

I think that in standard ontology, Being (big B) is the definition or denotation only of being (small b) as when the brain defines the body. Even in Godhood Being is the mind of God (being). Being depends on being and being depends on Being.

This suggest to me that the being of ontology deserves the large B of Being because the overall total being is superior in its totality to the Mind or Being. Being is never separate from being. Being never “emerges” away from being on its own. Being or Godhood simply exists as a supermaterial object who knows itself fully as it exists.

This relates to what I see as the false separation between “essence” and “existence.” The essence, or idea, is never separate from the existence of the object in the same way that Being is not separate from being.

Aquinas, the central philosopher of Catholicism, sees Being as act, to be is to act, and this I can agree with. But Being also exists as a living being that has evolved to Godhood, which is the potential of all other objects in the Kosmos. Being then transforms, as other lesser objects transform, into the next Kosmos.

There is no It, or Being, left behind when being emerges from being, or Godhood. Only the Holy Spirit remains as the offspring of Godhood activating the next Kosmos.

It should be understood (it may be obvious) that my thinking on Being and being, like Aquinas, is ultimately mystical, “ratio” knows its place. I conceptualize a mystical view of Godhood (intellectual intuition) and consider conceptualization a lesser instrument than knowing or being the total Object Itself.

This leads to the ground of the Evolutionary Christian Church, which I call Theological Materialism.

Ending the war between the physical and the moral

The war between the physical and moral needs to end. This war seems to have been initiated by religions and philosophies which confounded God with form only, with the moral only, and not as a physical-superphysical Object. This war can cease when we realize that the physical seeks to evolve to the superphysical Godhood. The moral can then join and harmonize with the physical, and the physical with the moral.

Even so, the Traditional God of form and morality can be retained in seeking the Spirit-Will-Within through the Involutionary Inward Path. But this Spirit Within must not be confounded with God. Physical and supermaterial Godhood needs to be added so that we may evolve to true and real Godhood by way of the Evolutionary Outward Path.