Real and Ideal

The world embodies concepts and ideas, but they need to be seen as secondary to the objects they define, no matter how beautiful the concepts or ideas are. Not to do so can take us beyond life itself.

Many thinkers, such as the ancient Vedic thinkers, and Plato, and their numerous followers, see “ultimate reality” as concepts, ideas or numbers.

Following in this line of idealism are less formal ideals, such as imaginative intuition, or mystic inward experiences of bliss, like those experienced when the desires of the flesh are curbed, as advocated by Christ and Buddha.

The way to describe the ideal and the real is to define ideal concepts, ideas and numbers---as well as the more informal experiences of bliss yet to be experienced---as secondary to real living objects that concepts and numbers may or may not define. Material reality is like the sun, concepts and ideas are like an imagined moon.

 

The pursuit of artificial intelligence in our time can be seen as pursuing ideals, concepts---or X's and O's---and bypassing or even blocking the reality of the evolution of real life.

This means we should not worship concepts ideas or numbers, as Plato and the mystical Kabbalah tend to do, or worship inward experiences of bliss, as many religious founders did. Only the real living material or supermaterial object is worthy of worship, but here worship is too strong a word for anything other than Godhood.

Worship in the highest sense pertains not to concepts, ideas, numbers, or experiences, but to Godhood, that is, the actual object, or objects, of Godhood evolved to in the material and supermaterial world.

We don't need to reject inward ideals or experiences in the Twofold Path of theological materialism. The concepts and experiences of the Inward Path are conservatively retained but transformed in the Outward Path of material evolution toward the zenith of evolution, which is Godhood---the real Godhood that is only secondarily defined as the concept of Godhood.