The Will to Godhood (Tirips) manifests itself through evolution

The Will to Godhood (Tirips) manifests itself through evolution, and its goal is the ongoing realization of perfected being, physically, intellectually and morally. The-will-to-evolve-toward-Godhood, or Tirips, is an inward, purely physical, activation working along with the shaping of outside evolution and selection. But even without acknowledging this inward purpose we can see that evolution has been moving toward more efficient forms, more complexity, with occasional stops and side-turnings along the way.

What is the best way to reach these goals?​ Bonding with a religion of theological materialism. Theological materialism (and the projected Theoevolutionary Church) will affirm the mission and path of the Third Covenant, the Cosmic Covenant of the Evolutionary Outward Path, which revitalizes Primordial Tradition, Christianity, Hinduism etc. by once again affirming the First Covenant of genetic and biological qualities within our material evolution to supermaterial Godhood as applied to the Outward Path of material evolution to supermaterial Godhood, yet also, as in the Second Covenant, this is applied to all people, all nations, all races, all people, preferably living in their own protected states or ethnostates with access to knowledge of the material evolution to Godhood. That is the synthesis of the Three Covenants in theological materialism.

I have written of the Three Covenants explaining how in the First Covenant of Primordial Tradition the Spirit and Soul of the Inward Path were understood as existing in the blood, that is, as being passed on only racially and tribally to a chosen eg. (Jewish) or noble (Aryan) people, etc.. Then Jesus Christ (and Eastern masters) brought the knowledge that the spirit and Soul-Within need not be understood and affirmed only racially or tribally but could be understood and followed by any race, any people, universally, provided they were taught the proper way to see or experience the God Within; Christianity said we were “Chosen” through faith in Christ not chosen by blood. That was the Second Covenant.

The Third Covenant acknowledges the biological origin of our social behavior which can end the intellectual separation between political ideologies and religious covenants, pointing toward the religious/political/cultural solution of the ethnopluralism hypothesis, often written about here. It is a conservative transformation---not revolution---that can bring about an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, which is the sociopolitical or political/cultural structure most in harmony with kin-centered and ethnocentric real human nature which evolved many thousands of years ago and remains with us today. Each ethnostate, each ethnic group, each race, can have access to knowledge of our sacred material evolution to supermaterial Godhood, and can pursue that sacred evolution in their own way in their own protected states, in the variety that is conducive to evolution, perhaps aided by nonpartisan international sociobiological research centers, as Raymond Cattell suggested.

The forced imperialism, supremacism, and multiculturalism of the world will give way to an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, in line with real kin and ethnic-centered human nature. I think the real debate in the U.S. should be over how we can conservatively adapt the Constitutional separation of of powers and states to an ethnopluralism of ethnostates. Cooperative competition between small ethnostates and regions, protected internally and externally from imperialism, supremacism, and multiculturalism by some sort of federalism can bring the variety and creativity that evolution prefers, as we all materially evolve toward Godhood.

There is a way to reconcile and synthesize the endless battles for First Things

 In the battles between the right and the left, the replacement the spiritual by the material, the group by the individual, the will to power versus reason, Nietzsche against Aristotle, there is a way to reconcile and synthesize these things: Godhood is evolved to in the material world. It is the material will to Godhood that replaces the will to power and the spiritual drive.

The “first cause” is the material activation within life, Tirips, or the will-to-Godhood activating material life, and then life is shaped by the vagaries of natural selection and evolution. There is endless evolution toward higher and higher truth, intelligence, beauty, and goodness, that is, continually evolving ascending Godhoods are reached. Life can also fall back in devolution, new cosmos are formed again, always giving life another chance to evolve to Godhood.

We can conservatively keep the old ascetic inward path to the "god" within in the Twofold Path, but only as a symbolic glimpse of the real Godhood reached in the outward path of material evolution to real Godhood. The Twofold Path can make room for the traditional, non-object-idea-only definitions of the God-Within, or even the bliss feelings of Father-Within of the Inward Path of the great religions---this is included but transformed in the Outward Path to Godhood in the theological materialism of the projected Theoevolutionary Church.

And evolutionary conservatism believes that if real kin and ethnic-centered human nature was allowed to be what it is, it would naturally lead to regionalism, localism, general conservative values, eventually ethnostates, and finally an ethnopluralism of ethnostates for all groups, black, white, brown, yellow, or red, with each ethnostate protected from marauding imperialists, global businesses, supremacists, Marxists, etc., and defended by a defensive federalism. An ethnopluralism of ethnostates could be established legally in the United States with our constitutional separation of powers and states.

Intellectuals of the old far right and the new far right (from the archive

Intellectuals of the old far right had respect for Western science, men like Raymond Cattell, Richard Lynn, Roger Pearson, John Baker, and Wilmot Robertson respected the Enlightenment. But in the last several years the far right has seen the rise of the Traditionalist School and the works of Julius Evola and Rene Guenon who rejected rationalism and materialism in favor of a Vedic-Hindu, neo-Platonist worldview that disparaged Darwinist material evolution and downplayed the biological origin of social behavior in favor of spiritualism over naturalism.

Was it the deep desire for an all encompassing religion missing from Western science that drew the new Alt-right away from the science-oriented intellectuals of the old far right, or did the Traditionalist School de-emphasizing of race and genetics appeal to the new Alt-right as a way to escape the hatred of racism across the media-driven culture? It was probably some of both.

The new intellectual far right seems to have ignored or is unaware of work of research psychologist Raymond Cattell and his religion from science, Beyondism, or my religious development of theological materialism.

Theological materialism is thoroughly Western and proud of it, following the Western path in centering on science and reason. But unlike the Enlightenment, theological materialism affirms religious tradition transformed rather than rejected.

It is difficult to find ecumenical commonality between the ethnocentric proto-Indo-European pagan religion and the traditional Judea-Christian religions. Rather than getting lost in comparing the symbols of lost spiritualism it is better for us to return to the material world and find our religious connections that way.

The eastern experience of Buddhist nirvana, and the beatific experience of heaven, or the Father Within of Christ, were just that, a peak experience in the physical mind after much ascetic discipline in blocking or overcoming material desires. We can conservatively retain that preliminary Inward Path experience of the God Within, but it needs to be transformed in the Outward Path of material evolution to real Godhood.

We can look beneath thoughts and feelings and find the multifarious processes of the instincts activating life to evolve toward the supreme survival success of Godhood. This activation exists within material life and is never separate from it, and adapts and evolves within the environments life finds itself living in---there is no spiritual/material duality here. The activation of material life toward evolving to Godhood is the unchanging constant as natural selection and evolution make new discoveries and present new challenges as we evolve toward ascending levels of Godhood.

While I respect some of the conclusions of the Traditionalist School (Guénon and Evola---and now Aleksandr Dugin) the Traditionalist School does not find science (a jewel of the West) nearly as important as Eastern spiritualism (a jewel of the East) and they reject and want to destroy the Western world (and its great genetic potential?) due to its gross materialism. Among American followers of Dugin, patriotism seems unfairly lost in seeing only the flaws of the West, which are redeemable. For example, an ethnopluralism of ethnostates or regions could be established, legally, in the United States with our constitutional separation of powers and states, protected from marauding imperialists, supremacists, Marxists, chosenites, and money grubbers, by a defensive federalism.

Theological materialism presents an all-inclusive total religion

 Politics, economics, and religion were one in the embedded religions of ancient times, like the Greek and Roman religion or Mesopotamian and Northern European religions, and even in the middle ages with Catholic scholasticism. Then came the specialties which split the total world view and made the renaissance man and the total world view obsolete.

Theological materialism presents an all-inclusive total religion more or less placed in the worldview of philosophical naturalism with the difference being that philosophical naturalism is generally irreligious, and theological materialism is religious in seeing Godhood as the goal of material evolution, first mirrored in the Father-Within of traditional religion.

God or Godhood can also be defined by physics and philosophical naturalism. Causality is part of science, but causality is also part of religion in that physical events have prior causes that can be explained by the same thing in religion or science. An organism obeys the laws of physics. Life, consciousnesses, motivations, etc. can be explained both scientifically and religiously as caused by the same activation of the material/supermaterial drive within life, which I have called Tirips, which works along with outside natural selection and evolution---religion can join science and science can join religion.

The deepest reading of the Revealed Religions centers on an Inward God not an Outward God, which is limiting. The Inward God is the image or blissful experience of the Outward God (opposite Plato), and outward Godhood can exist as a supreme supermaterial living object, or objects, evolved to in material nature. Both Paths are contained within the Twofold Path of theological materialism.  Godhood is not an immaterial entity, as it is with Aristotle, Aquinas and even Darwin.

This means that nature encompasses the activity of Tirips and Godhood, as well as everything that exists in space and time, and all of this consists of natural elements, including ideas and mathematics---and they all operate by the laws of physics, discovered and yet to be discovered. Ascending levels of Godhood are in nature, Godhood can be evolved to at the zenith of evolved nature. Godhood is not immaterial but is supermaterial.

We may gradually realize the reality that multicultural multi-ethnic societies just don't work. The coming century could be the century of the rise of ethnostatism. The kindness, mercy, compassion, or humaneness of ethnostates will be understood as being in harmony with the biological origin of social behavior, and in accord with human nature, which is biologically kin-centered and ethnic-centered, even xenophobic, as well as being genetically gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual, marriage-making, hierarchical, and religious-making, with group-selection and ethnic selection as the primary unit of successful selection, followed by individual selection.

Although now just rising, identity politics will continue to ascend, re-identifying with ethnicity, nationality, race, culture and faith is the world's future. People will see that racial and ethnic diversity within the same state is not our greatest strength but is our weakness. A true natural rights or civil rights movement would promote an ethnopluralism of ethnostates for all groups, black, white, brown, yellow, or red, with each ethnostate protected from marauding imperialists, global businesses, supremacists, Marxists, etc., and defended by a defensive federalism. An ethnopluralism of ethnostates could be established legally in the United States with our constitutional separation of powers and states.

Then we can all get on with evolving toward Godhood.

Making peace in the evolutionary outward path

The dark irony of the Christians, the Revealed Religions, and the Kabbalistic and Secret Societies, is that they are not seeking separate goals. They seek the same Soul-Mind within the Involutionary Inward Path, although they have different methods to attain that end.

Even the Kabbalah joins their two paths in the Sephirot to the Unnamed Inward God, which is not nearly enough since it blocks the material evolution to real Godhood. The Masonic and Thelemic wings and the New Age are just “new” religions based on the old traditional Involutionary Inward Path.

Blavatsky claimed to unite the eastern and western occult traditions but she too tried to unite only the Inward Paths, and that was not nearly enough. Dugin's present Russian Eurasianism could be at least tangentially connected to the traditionalist occult of Shambhala, and the West tangentially connected to the Atlantis-Kabbalah occult, but both compete for the same truncated Inward God.

Theological materialism does not join the endless feuds between the Involutionary Religions. Theological materialism asks the Involutionary Religions to see and acknowledge their togetherness regarding the inward path so that ecumenism can prevail between them. Then let the Evolutionary Outward Path affirm and create the separate evolutionary development of all distinct people in the Evolutionary Outward Path of material evolution to real supermaterial Godhood, availing themselves of international evolutionary sociobiological research centers, as suggested by Cattell.

Moses owes many of his ethical ideals to Zarathustra

According to J.M. Chaterjee (“The Ethical Conceptions of The Gathas,1934), when the Jews were taken in conquest into the court of Nebuchadnezzar, they reformed their religion along Zoroastrian lines. Jews spent two generations among Zoroastrians and returned with most of the material for the Old Testament. Some people have even thought that Abraham was Zarathustra. 

Moses seems to owe many of his ethical ideals to Zarathustra. Joshua reformed the community from Egypt to the older religion of Zarathustra. When Moses led his people out of Egypt in the 13^th century BC into Palestine Zarathustra was already seen in inscriptions of the 14^th century. Worship of God at Sinai follows the train of Zarathustra. 

The Jews learned from the Iranian religion of Zarathustra the idea of the celestial hierarch, the idea of duality, temptation by the devil, the concept of non-idolatry, non-symbolical image worship, or the good-evil nature of deity, Resurrection, the concept of heaven and hell, and the evil spirit. 

The Iranian religion of Zarathustra continues the same since its founding with no abrupt change or breach with the past. Zarathustra largely agrees with the ancient Proto-Indo-European classics since the Rig Veda. 

Christianity developed from this Zoroastrian/Jewish history. I think Buddhism too might have influenced the Jewish sect of the Essenes concerning piety, celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money; Simon J. Joseph said the influence of Essenes can be detected in the pages of the New Testament.

Future transformations of religion

To bring about better feelings among the religions I wish Christians and other religion's would understand that "monotheism" was pan-monotheism, as Schuon pointed out, and not only Judaic-Christian. The East probably initiated the One-God conception in the Vedas, and before that Shamanistic peoples were really monotheists even as they had lesser Gods in the mix.

Following that, we can move on to understanding the Twofold Path and the nature of the virtually exclusive Inward God of traditional religions, which was seen or experienced after ascetic discipline applied to first stopping the desires of the flesh, which was the foundation of Christ's (and Buddha's) teachings.

Then we can move on to the Outward Path which transforms the Inward Path experience or symbol of Godhood into the material evolution of life to supermaterial Godhood. 

These I believe are the future transformation required as seen in theological materialism.

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For fun, but perhaps also to help bring about positive or ecumenical feelings among competing ethnic groups, here is a very loose racial reinterpretation of Schuon's poetic ideas on the four points, directions, and colors in primordial Shamanism:

Mongoloid, Yellow, East---light, knowledge, peace

Red (proto and Native American), Red, West---fertilizing, water, revelation

Negro, Black, South---warmth, life, happiness

White, White, North---Cool, purity, strength

We can let ethnic groups be as they are and as they have been for millenniums, and let them evolve forward toward Godhood with their own qualities, in ethnic regions protected by federalism. Poetic, yes, but also realism in relation to the powerful group-selection in real human nature.

A Future Culture Where Aristotle and Aquinas Include Darwin

When St. Thomas Aquinas encountered Aristotle he approached it the way a traditional conservative approaches new things---although Aristotle was older than Christianity. Aquinas was tasked with trying to fit Aristotle, who he greatly respected, into Christianity, the “new” into the old. This meant taking an ascetic internal philosophy and adding to it a largely external social philosophy.

The Christian cross is a symbol of dying to oneself so that one can follow the Inward Path to the Father Within. The old self is crucified. The way of Christ, in some ways like the way of Hindus and Buddhists, is the path to the God Within. As Ravi Ravindra put it, Christ is the way, but Jesus is a way---many religious mystics have sought and found the God Within. All the desires of the flesh and body need to be unattached from, or blocked, to truly experience the God Within. The values and morals of Christianity were mainly concerned with attaining the God Within.

Aquinas had to develop the intellectual machinery to fit Christianity in with Aristotle or Aristotle with Christianity. Aristotle was concerned with the best life for humans to live in communities and small cities, which would provide an environment where people could live virtuously while pursing the commercial, recreational and religious things that fit well with human nature. Aristotle assumed that people would live together with kin and ethnic group, where the best bonding would be possible. Ridding the body of all desires to experience the God Within was not a top priority for Aristotle, some desires were more noble than other desires.

Aristotle and Aquinas did not have Darwinism to consider when they considered human nature and natural law. But we do. It turns out that the conservative tradition follows, more or less, Darwinian descriptions of human nature, especially with the discoveries of sociobiology. Human nature has been affirmed throughout human history as being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

Theological materialism, reflected upon here, can fit Darwin and sociobiology in with traditional conservatism and Christianity, but to do so we need to get back to defining the original Christianity of the Involutionary Inward Path. The intellectual machinery which tried to fit Aristotle with Christianity took Christianity too far away from Jesus and his central concern of the Inward Path to the Father Within.

The Inward Path was the first symbolic glimpse of the Godhood which can be reached in the Outward Path of evolution. Theological materialism adds to Christianity and the Involutionary Inward Path the Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution to real Godhood. This is the Twofold Path of theTheoevolutionary Church which can bring the evolving knowledge of real human nature, natural law, and conservative tradition within Christianity without the twisting metamorphosis of Thomistic theology.

Future culture, future cities, can follow the order of tradition but include also the sacred evolution of life to Godhood. Monasteries can remain for those who follow the Inward Path, and sociobiological and genetic research centers can exists for those who follow the Outward Path, which transforms the Inward Path to the Outward Path of evolution to real Godhood. Churches can bond these sacred things, there can be Masses for both the Inward and Outward Paths, or one new Mass containing both. Culture and communities can live in harmony with real human nature, with kin and ethnic group, with an ethnopluralism of small states protected by a light federalism. Aristotle and Aquinas can include Darwin in this way, as we all get on with the sacred mission of evolving toward Godhood.

Pluralism and Authority in Religion and Science

When the “Authority”of God or of great sages is seen in religion as the main foundation of faith, then religion tends to conflict with science. I would rather look at religious versions of ontology and epistemology as another kind of hypothesis or theory which will one day more or less be affirmed by science, and likewise think of science as one day gaining new knowledge from religion. I don't see a real conflict here.

As to the problems of pluralism in religion---with one religion claiming to be the only truth over all the others---this too can be resolved in the Twofold Path. The Father Within of the Inward Path, in all the great religions, is a symbolic experience of the Godhood reached in material-supermaterial evolution in the Outward Path. The Outward Path allows for the differences and variety that are actually good for evolution, while the Inward Path is the basis for ecumenism.

Acknowledging ethnopluralism in political philosophy, protected by some kind of light federalism, can also help harmonize these many differences in pluralism and authority. This means too that the struggle against Nature and human nature, as often seen in both religion and political philosophy, needs to change toward harmonizing with human nature, which has been generally or basically affirmed throughout human history as being kin-centered, gender defined, age-grading, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

Some things I like about the pagans

The Spirit can communicate with pagan individuals not filtered through the central Church authority. Revelations aren't abandoned or closed (see Gus Dizerega). Perhaps this freedom to interpret was related somehow to the freedom and distance between northern pagans, even though the religious rituals were much the same. This independence seems to have carried over to the Protestant Reformation. Authority and secrecy in both the pagan and monotheistic religions seems not so much to do with “secrecy” as it is levels of knowledge which naturally separate those who understand from those still learning.

The Gods are part of this world for the pagans, and so evil and suffering is part of the world of the Gods, the divine is not required to be washed clean of all suffering and evil, or of all life, which has caused so much explanation, interpretation, and splitting of hairs in the monotheistic religions. The pagan view is not optimistic or pessimistic, it is both, or it is more stoic.

In looking at the Great Mystery of cosmogony the pagans don't seem to see the world as previously perfect, no Fall takes place, no Fall seems necessary unless you think the simplest unicellular androgynous life is perfect. The world issues from the Primal Material, activated from within by the Spirit, and then the world evolves to the complex world we know, with all its joys and sorrows. There seems to be no more proof from religious revelations or from science of a one time beginning to the world than there is proof of an endless world with no beginning. The new revelation is that we evolve toward perfection, toward Godhood, we don't seem to derive from perfection.

Attuning Religions

Using the image of tuning a radio to a frequency that exits with many other frequencies we may then see that pagan and monotheistic religions are connected in the wider spectrum. The Traditionalist School isn't usually thought of as reviving pagan tradition but it does in many ways---in this case it leans heavily on the non-dual pagan Hindu religion of India, as do many monotheistic religions.

Religions gradually moved inward in human history, the earlier pagans had more interest in the outer world, seeing a spirit in all things, as native Americans did, and respecting all life for that reason. Gradually the material world began to be thought of as “evil” or at least far inferior to the God Within or the Father Within, which could be reached only by a Great Spiritual Blockade against material life and evolution and all the desires of the flesh.

The Twofold Path of the Evolutionary Christian Church seeks to correct this imbalance by unblocking the Great Spiritual Blockade and aiding or harmonizing life in the material and supermaterial evolution of life to real Godhood in the cosmos. This does not negate the Inward God, the Father Within, which is a symbolic-experience of Godhood, it revitalizes and transforms the God Within by attuning life toward evolving to real Godhood in the outside world. This affirms a linear view of history, seen in monotheism, without negating the cyclic view of history seen in paganism---life evolves and devolves, but life always seeks Godhood at the zenith of evolution.

Bringing Godhood back within the world

 I like the way the Pagan religions have divinity manifested within the world as part of the world. The world was largely desacralized when religion placed God outside the world. But religion can bring Godhood back into the world. The God or Father-Within which was, and is, seen in the Inward Path of the great religions  needs to be seen as a symbol-experience of the real Godhood only reached through material-supermaterial evolution.

The revelations which have been said to derive from God outside the world were coming from the God Within, the Father Within, that is, from the Soul, which is in the world at the zenith of the mind.  Real Godhood is found only symbolically in the God Within, and reached only by evolving to Godhood.

Religion this way can be seen as a force of nature, which can bring the ancient pagan religions as well as new sources of religious knowledge together with the great religions of the revelations (the Bible, the Qur’an, etc) in an all-encompassing worldview within the world and within the cosmos. With evolution religiously central, science too can enter the religious world.  The evolution of  the world needs to be praised, not blocked.

The basis for ecumenism and beyond

Christianity teaches that Jesus is God. Judaism and Islam deny it. Hinduism says there are many incarnations of the divine, many mystics have seen, united with, and become one with God. Hinduism is more right in their view. This does not take away power from Jesus, it brings him within an ecumenism of a very ancient religious tradition.

It was not because of “original sin” that we have lost sight of the God Within, it is ignorance. Ignorance may not help us live better lives but it is not a sin. Jesus died because he brought knowledge of the Father Within to the West, which was knowledge already experienced in the East. Jesus died for this reason as a martyr, not because of our original sins.

As to the differences between the trinitarian God of Christianity, the unitary God of Judaism, or Krishna of Hinduism, they are all defining the same God Within, the same Father Within, which means their differences in this regard fall away. Every religion is a genuine response to the God Within and each have their methods of reaching and speaking about the God Within. This is the solid ground of ecumenism.

The real difference in religions is seen between the God Within and the Godhood reached through materiel and supermaterial evolution. It is here where the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) moves beyond the God Within or the Father Within of the great religions. It is in the Evolutionary Outward Path where variety is encouraged. Variety and cooperative competition are helpful in the upward evolution of all groups toward Godhood in the cosmos. In this sense pluralism is the way to proceed among religions, the same as among different political states.

We need to transform the Inward God, the Father Within, experienced by many great masters, and convert this incomplete God into the real Godhood reached by material and supermaterial evolution. This is the Twofold Path. Real Godhood is independent of our experience of the God Within, which is only a blissful symbolic experience (a beatific vision) of the Godhood reached by evolution, and first seen in the Inward Path of the great religions.

We will not correctly define Godhood, Absolute Truth, or the Real until we have actually evolved to Godhood. At this time our mission is to improve our minds and bodies through upward evolution toward Godhood. This can complete and fulfill the earlier revelations of the great religions, not reject them.

Sameness in the Inward Path can aid in the differences in the Outward Path

The terms and parables defining the God-Within may be somewhat different in each religion but there is a definite ecumenism suggested between the religions, with similar ascetic ways to reach or experience the God Within or the Light Within, all involving blocking the desires of the flesh. Masters such as Ravindra, Bebe Griffiths, Maharaj Singh and many others have pointed out that the term “Son of God” does not mean only one son of God. This has not been suggested merely to elevate one religion or devalue another, it is done to bring forward the truth seen by all saints. For example, the gospel of Jesus Christ was written years after his crucifixion often by those who did not know him and phrases could be easily transposed, a few word-changes can make a big difference. It is vital to see that the Inward God has been known and experienced by great masters from all the great religions West and East. The teachings of Jesus Christ regarding the God Within or the Father Within are much the same as the teachings of all the Saints of all the religions.

Once the ecumenical nature of the great religions is understood then we can move on to the next stage of the Twofold Path, where we may recognize that the God Within is a symbol or metaphor for the God Without, which is reached by material and supermaterial evolution---not by blocking material desires but by refining desires in higher evolution toward Godhood. Here the general ecumenism of the great religions can be helpful in establishing cooperative competition between different groups, as we evolve toward Godhood in the Outward Path---differences may be recognized and affirmed as evolution moves in its natural way, with variety, toward Godhood in the cosmos. The Twofold Path and the theological materialism of the Evolutionary Christian Church have the added value of bringing religion and science, the spiritual and material together, after being separated and at odds for so long.

The Twofold Path and the Flowering of Religion

“True art is the moment of emergence of the classic from the folk.” ( “The Folk and the Classic” by Frederick Turner )

To adapt Turner's images, religions or philosophies which attempt to liberate modern man from tradition lose the roots of human culture. But when religion denies new ideas it is like having the root only without the flowering. Even so, new ideas without the roots of tradition is like cutting the flower off from its roots.

Modern life has increasingly lost touch with religion (and traditional art) and the question is how to get it back? The Twofold Path in the religious philosophy of the the Theoevolutionary Church brings the spiritual to the material, religion to science, it is the emergence of classic religion out of folk religion, a flowering from the roots.  

We are evolving in the Outward Path of material life to the Godhood first seen and mirrored as the Father within in the Inward Path of traditional religion. Art, philosophy and culture follow after from the same root.

The Miracle Metaphors

Miracles are a way of metaphorically speaking about great transformations in the Scriptures, making the imperceptible perceptible. Often even the disciples of Jesus did not understand the teachings. Jesus needs to be understood internally rather than externally.

Great spiritual transformations from the old self to the new self are seen in the metaphor of Lazarus rising from the dead, water changing into wine, spiritual blindness healed. The bread Jesus fed to the masses was his own teachings, his own self. Original sin is the human ignorance of the Father Within. Jesus as the Son of God relates to the God of the Spirit. As Ravi Ravinda points out in his excellent book on the Gospel of John, when Jesus said he and the Father were one he could have said “ The Father and you are one.”

The cross is the symbol of dying to oneself so that one can follow the Inward Path to the Father Within. The old self is crucified. Ravindra said Jesus was a crucifier of his materialistic self before his own actual crucifixion.

The way of Christ, like the way of the Hindus, the Buddhist and other Revealed Religions, is the way to the God Within, the Father Within. As Ravindra said, Christ is the way but Jesus is a way. This is the ancient way of the Involutionary Inward Path. The Inward Path gives an undeniable ecumenical connection to the Revealed Religions even if they apply different methods to the same goal.

The Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church moves beyond the Involutionary Inward Path to the Evolutionary Outward Path, while still including the Inward Path. The Father Within of the Inward Path seen in the Soul is a mirror of Godhood, a metaphor, for the Godhood reached in the Outward Path of evolution. In the Evolutionary Outward Path, the Spirit-Will activates material and supermaterial life, later shaped by evolution, to evolve to Real Godhood in cosmos.

The central concept of ecumenism

The Father Within is the central concept of ecumenism not only for all Christian Churches but Eastern Religions as well, all contain this knowledge of the Father Within, or God Within, given in various ways. This concept of the Father Within brings religions together in the world.  As Ravi Ravinda said,  "Christ is the way, but Jesus is a way." 

Then Godhood-Without, the Godhood of evolution, forms the natural separations that evolution and human nature do best with, and prefer. Small states, or ethnostates, with the lightest possible federalism, with each state affirming the Inward Path to the Father Within of all religions, and each affirming the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood, as in the Theoevolutionary Church. This Twofold Path, chosen voluntarily and freely, allows for a more harmonious world, with a sacred goal worthy of the evolutionary cosmos.

Ecumenism and the Twofold Path

My view of ecumenism, a view of unity among all the religions, relates to the Involutionary Inward Path which all the religions hold in common, although they may have different methods to this goal. The competitive battles in reality come from the natural activations of evolution to Godhood in the cosmos. This is described as the Twofold Path in the Evolutionary Christian Church.

Problems between religions and people and the often deadly charges of heresy hurled back and forth are not valid, in view of sharing the same Inward Path to the God-Within.

It is in the Evolutionary Outward Path where natural competition of religions and people take place, natural competition between those who have glimpsed the same Inward God, which is a virtual image of Real Godhood evolved to in the cosmos.

Sociopolitical ways can be found to allow natural differences and variety to aid in our evolution to Godhood, such as small states, or ethnostates, protected in their independence by a light federalism, where all people, all races, are guided voluntarily by the Church and science in accord.

When it is seen that the Evolutionary Outward Path activated by the Spirit-Will is the method nature uses to bring life to Godhood, then cooperative competition seems more likely, given the ecumenical connection between religions and people in the Inward Path to the God-Within. Indeed it can be seen that life must survive on earth first if it is to evolve to Godhood in the cosmos. 

Revitalized Tradition the Third Revelation

If we separate history into the “religious traditional,” from about 400 BC, to the nineteenth century “modern scientific,” we see how tradition has been fighting the modern, and the modern has been trying to bury tradition, with tradition losing much ground and nearly fading away.

But rather than struggling, pinch-faced and hopeless, to avoid and block the modern world, tradition needs to face and affirm the Third Revelation of the Theoevolutionary Church. 

When we look to the Great Books of Western Tradition we no longer need to close the door to the Enlightenment. Revitalized Tradition includes the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood, the Third Revelation, which includes and emerges from the first two Revelations of tradition.  

The First Revelation was the tribal interpretations of God. The Second Revelation was the universal interpretation of God of Jesus Christ. The Third Revelation includes both the tribal and universal God of the Inward Path, who is evolved to in the cosmos through the Outward Path. Religion meets science, the spiritual meets the supermaterial.

Again, if we are to survive, prosper and evolve to Godhood, we need to face and affirm the Third Revelation of the Twofold Path.

Orthodox Judaism, Sociobiology and the Theoevolutionary Church

Some traditional fundamentalist Christians criticize Orthodox Judaism for preferring the ancient oral teachings, written down in the Mishnah, and the Babylonian Talmud, to the written text of the Bible. Moses is thought by the Jews to have left both written and oral teachings, with the more occult oral tradition of the Mishnah having precedence over the Biblical text. For example, the Christians say the written text of the Bible prophesied Jesus Christ as the Messiah whereas the oral teachings of Judaism sharply criticize Jesus as not being the Messiah. The malleability and interpretive skills of the rabbis are therefore criticized as being loop-hole finders and hairsplitters regarding the written text rather than proper followers of the written text. It is also said that Judaism both religiously and biologically promotes Jewish racism, preferring the Jews exclusively as chosen over every other people.

However, Orthodox Judaism and the studious leadership of the rabbis is in natural harmony with sociobiology in all but one important area. By promoting its own people, Judaism is completely natural and healthy, and underlines basic ideas of sociobiology, which suggest that religion has been a way to help people survive and reproduce more successfully in the world, better than they would have without religion. The problem with religio-biological supremacy, or chosenness, is that it creates great resentment by those who are denigrated or dominated by supremacy and imperialistic behavior, which can then in reaction lead to pogroms---although pograms against the Jews were also caused by sheer jealousy of a successful people, and by Christian imperialism.

All ethnic groups are naturally and sociobiologically correct in promoting their own survival and success, the problem comes when one ethnic group is thought supreme and becomes imperialistic. Then variety ceases, which is so important to evolution, and a uniform mediocrity can develop. Successful survival therefore calls for cooperative competition, which can help in preventing wars that are almost always negative and dysgenic for all.

Ethnic solidarity and altruism toward ones own is a central and enduring part of human nature, and should not and cannot be suppressed for long, but this does not mean that other ethnic groups should be denigrated or destroyed. The Theoevolutionary Church affirms geopolitical variety, which can grow in the form of global ethnostates, protected by a light federalism. In this rational structure, chosenness-supremacy and imperialistic-hegemony will damage the successful survival of the human species.

We are all evolving to Godhood along our own paths in our own environments and we need to affirm this sacred and natural dynamic. There is even a strong basis for ecumenism between all the Revealed Religions in that they all affirm the same God-Within seen by way of the same Involutionary Inward Path, more or less.  Natural differences in religion and ethnicity can be affirmed and even championed in the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution to Godhood, which is the Path to Real Godhood, the God first seen, and mirrored, in the Involutionary Inward Path to the God Within. This is the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church.