The return to the spiritualism of the traditional cultural archetypes really means a return the biological origin of social behavior

Esoteric traditionalism advocates that all civilizations and peoples should return to the spiritualism of their traditional cultural archetypes—but that includes different forms of paganism, and not only the orthodox Christianity of the traditionalist Dugin or the Islam of Guénon. The biological origin of social behavior, and naturalism, is given short shift among the traditionalists, as well it might, because the biological origin of social behavior points toward the biological evolution of life toward a real living Godhood, and not a god which is attained only in the minds or hearts of men.

The highest possible degree of the spirituality in Traditionalism leads to the decline of the material body due to the Great Spiritual Blockade of life and the body with the Inward Path to the god-within. But the Half-Truth of the Inward Path can join the Half-Truth of the Outward Path to end the spiritual blockade of the Outward Path of material evolution toward real Godhood. We can bring survival and reproduction back to the sacred, after it has been largely exiled by Traditionalism due to its materialistic content which is considered inferior.

Traditionalism gave us hubristic authority beyond the material world, beyond the stars, and Traditionalism continues to supplant astronomy and biology with the exclusivity of the spiritual Inward Path. But life and beauty can be religiously exhumed from this material neglect. The Inner God is the Outer God we must evolve to. The Order of the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood brings the real return to the traditional cultural archetypes where reproduction and evolution to Godhood can be reaffirmed.

Defining real conservatism and ethnopluralism

I prefer to think of the official American hierarchy as a pyramid with the federal government on the bottom and the local states on the top, which seems to be what the Founders had in mind. Then the state hierarchies would have the state government on the bottom and the local towns and cities on the top. That is a federalism and subsidiarity that can work well with real human nature which remains primarily kin and group-centered. From there I see, perhaps with a few amendments, the gradual move toward making the states ethnostates, which many of them are, more or less, which again harmonizes with real human nature. The whole can be protected strongly, while not being isolated and trading with the world, and also protected with economic nationalism.

This is not "evil racism" it is recognizing the flat reality of human nature, which remains as it has always been, kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of successful selection, followed by individual selection. This worldview has the benefit of fitting in with traditional and renewed conservatism, and avoiding unworkable radicalism. What is evil are those who block this reality for selfish purposes.

Most importantly, this worldview also offers a good chance of real material evolution toward real Godhood, with real variety (see theological materialism). The old religion is included but transformed as the spiritual God is now seen as a super-material Godhood evolved to in the material and super-material world.

Nature has a different take on metaphysics than humans (reblog from Aug. 2014)

Nietzsche tried to show how metaphysics and logic were in service to survival, and that “truth” was not the first need in this. Logic equalized things that were not equal for its own requirements. Consciousness itself grew in relation to what was needed for security. Powerful people, lawmakers, made these things into law, and philosophers and artists created the various abstract categories---what they created was needed for their own survival even though they claimed it was for other things, usually without knowing the real source. The science of sociobiology couldn’t have said it better.

But then Nietzsche replaced the old metaphysics with a will-to-power which had no goal and no morality and no truth other than power, even immorality was accepted as a power source. But this was not a natural metaphysics, as Nietzsche thought it was, because nature has a goal, and that is to evolve life to the zenith of success in survival and reproduction, which is another clearer version of religious Godhood. This is where natural morality, or natural metaphysics needs to come from. Real “truth” this way can be harmonized with survival in a real way, which includes morality and religion. Abstractions and categories are put in their place as related or unrelated to real life, evolution, and the goals of real material evolution.

There is a kind of “faith” in the truth and in end-goals involved here, but it is a faith backed by truth more as applied in Michael Polanyi's terms, that is, something is true if it reveals deeper meaning, if it has potential for future discoveries or manifestations---and I would add if it has real long-term survival and reproductive value---and not merely because something could be true because it could be proven exactly with scientific methodology, or a logic redesigned by the biases of man, which are too limiting to be fully true. Truth has to get back to real objects and not mere definitions and abstractions. Godhood is more than the metaphysical, non-material, abstract definition of God, Godhood is a real supermaterial object, or objects, which we can evolve to become in the material world, if we follow nature's evolutionary course.

Immanentizing the Spiritual (reblog from Dec 2013)

The primacy of culture over politics in a world that now places politics over almost everything? How about the primacy of biology over culture and politics? This takes it deeper, although culture and biology are co-evolutionary. Turning around the old conservative cleverness, we in fact want to biologize the eschaton, contrary to Voegelin, since it is biology and evolution that take us to the end-goal of Godhood, rather than burying biology in wordy asceticism, which is where the great religions in reality are most comfortable. We can have both the Inward God within as well as the Outward Path of evolution to real Godhood. Religion needs to stop looking down its thin nose at the very evolution which brings us to Godhood---the Inward Path to the Father Within has only partially seen or symbolically experienced the real supermaterial Godhood reached through evolution in the Outward Path.

Good deeds in the world are revived in the Outward Path and devalued in the Inward Path

The gurus of the great religions tell us that the human body was given to us for the purpose of attaining God-realization, which is ironically accomplished by denying and blocking all the desires of the human body. But the gurus were referring to the Involutionary Inward Path to the Father Within only and not to the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood.

The gurus were not content in this way merely to devalue the material body and the material world, they defined the material world and all of creation as the domain of Satan, the negative power. Put bluntly this means that when one defends creation and the material world one is being Satanic. It certainly was a way to bring disciples to the gurus by applying the fear method, and it also was a way to elevate the master teachers of the God-realization over other actors in the fallen world.

The existence of the human body is primarily for the purpose of evolving to Godhood in the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Inward Path is secondary and points the way to the Outward Path. It is the Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution that leads to Godhood, the Inward Path is meant to give us a hint, blissful at it is, of what Godhood is like at the zenith of evolution.

In the Inward Path it is the spiritual practice of seeking the Father Within and not good deeds in the material world that bring us to God-realization. Doing good deeds is seen only as a test of how one can be in the world but not of the world. This is seen not only in the teachings of Jesus Christ but taught in the Bhagavad Gita of the East. The Paths have been transvalued in their emphasis and they need to be rebalanced. Good deeds in the world are revived in the Outward Path and devalued in the Inward Path.

Half Religions and the Zenith

Reducing ourselves down in ascetic training to the Soul or the Spirit-Will is a reduction which often ends by calling all else evil, or at least unimportant. This tends to be what the mystics of the great religions did, and still do, especially evident in the East. Only the essence seems perfect to them and one with God. This is not complete.

Godhood has Body with Spirit Within, just as we do but evolved to a supermaterial level. We cannot reduce this zenith of evolution down to experiencing only the essence of God or the Father Within, that is only half a religion. The Spirit-Will requires and therefore activates the material world to evolve to Godhood. Even so, the Twofold Path honors both the inward and outward paths.

The Spirit-Will-To-Godhood continually seeks the zenith of things in activating material life to Godhood, which is shaped by natural evolution, eventually evolving toward the zenith of thinking and being what is true, the zenith of sensing and being what is beautiful, and the zenith of wanting and being what is good, which is Godhood.

Awakening the Balancing Spirit-Will

The Spirit-Will is not like the Deutsche Geist in that it activates all people, all life, and is not applied to just one people. The Spirit-Will does not slay science as Kant, Schopenhauer and early Nietzsche (and Luther before them) attempted to do with the German Spirit. The Spirit-Will balances science and religion.

The Spirit-Will has been dormant for a very long time, but never entirely dormant since it activates life itself, which is then shaped by natural evolution. The Spirit-Will has been unconscious, or blocked in the “inaccessible abyss,” to adapt Nietzsche's term, which can be seen more clearly using the full term: the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood. The Spirit has been sought internally by the great religions, or is defined in a culturally nonreligious and nonscientific way by modern philosophy.

Religion blocked the material, and science blocked religion, but we need a balance of both. Modern philosophy went too far in attacking science and religion as the source of truth, and science went too far in attacking religion as the source of truth. The supermaterial Spirit-Will within life activates life toward Godhood, which is then shaped by evolution, and both religion and science can be applied to this sacred mission.  This Life Spirit pertains to all people, living in variety, in their home regions, and not just one people.

Evolution In Tradition

“Man is an ape that wants to be a god.” (Walter Kaufmann)

The Inward Path worships the God Within, or the Father Within, even to the point of idolatry, because it is not real Godhood. The Outward Path strives to become Godhood by perfecting life through evolution. The Twofold Path affirms both this idol worship and this perfection of evolution. One can aid the other.

We build on the religion we inherited to make the Inward Path comfortable with the Outward Path. We are part of the living tradition of Christianity, and the great religions, while remolding this grand house of religion which we inherited to make it more comfortable with science and evolution.

This is where the concepts and actions of Revitalized Conservatism come from, religion and politics are revitalized, the Father Within is the virtual mirror of the Godhood evolved to in the cosmos, and Ordered Evolution affirms conservative political change as we evolve on earth and out into the cosmos.

New Mysticism

Mysticism is the stage of development before greater precision is reached in defining God. The traditional mystical experience supposedly transcends the subject/object realm, but when the object is hypertrophied by evolution into Godhood then the object is seen as evolved to rather than transcended. This leads to a new materially-grounded mysticism.

The blocking of the material world along with desires by the Gnosticism inherent in all religious mysticism blocks real Godhood which is attained by the very thing Gnosticism rules out, material and supermaterial evolution.

Unlike Gnosticism, theological materialism does not block out the other side or call it evil, the Inward God or Father Within is affirmed and expanded outward to the Godhood evolved to in the cosmos. This means better seeing the previously ineffable object while always evolving to see better.

Finding the proper material-spiritual balance

The standard civilizing attitude is to move upward away from the beast instincts and toward the civilized neo-cortex. The problem with this is that the zenith of the beast-instincts contains the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, the most sacred drive of life, which essentially defines life itself.

One extreme imbalance is the total blocking of the material instincts by ascetics to attain the desire-free state of the Father-Within.

The proper balance is found in the Twofold Path, where the Father Within becomes an inward guide, a blissful glimpse of what real Godhood is like at the zenith of evolution, but the Father Within is not a place to permanently exist.

This means that there is much sacred work to do in our long cosmic evolution to Godhood, the goal of the Spirit-Will. The Great Spiritual Blockade against material evolution needs to be put in its proper place.

We want to civilize the beast, not kill it

“Instincts” are often thought of as uniformly bad in civilized societies in comparison to the control of the Neo-cortex. Even psychology has tended to paint the instincts, the Id, with one dark brush, not unlike religions often did.

Certainly we want to rid our societies of dangerous psychopaths, with their lack of a conscience and their unchecked instincts. But we don't want to block out the most sacred instinct of the Spirit-Will-To Godhood, which essentially defines the dynamic of life itself. That is what we retain of the beast.

Indeed, we can't eject this out of our beings, we can only block it--with great ascetic discipline--as the Inward Paths of the great religions advocated, in order to get a glimpse of the God-Within, or the Father-Within.

The Twofold Path does not want to reject the God-Within of the Involutionary Inward Path, which leads to the desire-free Soul. The Twofold Path includes the Inward Path as having been the first glimpse humanity had of the Godhood which can be reached in the Evolutionary Outward Path.  The sacred instinct to Godhood of the Spirit-Will activates life, and then life is shaped by evolution.  We want to civilize the beast, not kill it.

We need not be against the modern world

Mythology as well as gnosticism, the great religions, and much of modern psychology believe that the final truths are located in the depths of the Soul. But this is where half the truth resides, the other half exists beyond the Soul at the zenith of evolution, when Godhood is attained.

Rational religion based on science can enter the world, as it has been trying to do since at least the Enlightenment, but it should not replace priestcraft, it should work with and synthesize priestcraft. The Inward Path needs to be folded into the Outward Path.

Nietzsche's “eternal recurrence” does more or less occur, but that is not all that occurs, life also evolves to Godhood, while entropic life does fall back, but life has a recurring chance at evolving to Godhood. One is therefore not a hero only for hero's sake in a hopeless recurring world, as in Nietzsche, one is a hero in the mission of evolution to Godhood, a cause greater than eternal recurrence.

We need not be against the modern world, as is the Traditionalist School, gnostic psychology and existentialist philosophy, the modern scientific world can help us in evolving to Godhood in the cosmos, the Godhood first seen in the Inward Path to the Soul.

This defines the mission of the Twofold Path.

The Chief Force of the World

The Spirit-Will, which is the Will To Godhood, is the chief force of the world, not the abstract power of Nietzsche's philosophy, not fear and not worldly acquisition. The Spirit-Will may sometimes uses these other forces, or work with them, as it does with the outside shaping force of evolution.

This means that life has a sacred meaning and a goal, the kosmos has a goal, which is Godhood, the sacred evolutionary goal of the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood.

The world is crucified in the Involutionary Inward Path to the God-Within, the Father-Within, the world is reborn in the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood in the kosmos. Both Paths are affirmed in the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church.

Second and Third Birth in the Twofold Path

Evolutionary Christianity moves beyond the second birth of the Inward Path to the third birth of the Outward Path. This is the next meaning of being “born again.”

We join with the tradition of the Inward Path when we synthesize tradition with the Outward Path, which helps explain Revitalized Conservatism and Ordered Evolution.

The Inward Path can help us understand the goal of the Outward Path. The Inward Path says “I am,” the Outward Path says “I will become.” The second birth is a baptism by the calming waters of the Soul, the third birth is baptism by the activating fire of the Spirit-Will.

Ravi Ravindra said one needs to be prepared not only to understand truth but also to withstand truth.

The Inward Path helps to make the imperceptible Outward Path perceptible, much like art can do in Evolutionary Realism.

The Deep Optimism Of Evolutionary Christianity

Matter is not evil and matter is not blind to good and evil. Matter is activated by the Spirit-Within, or the Will to Godhood, and then evolution shapes matter from without. Matter does not always evolve, sometimes it devolves, sometimes life dies, but all life is defined by its activation to evolve to Godhood.

This might seem to show that evolution from without is blind to good (evolution) and evil (devolution) yet even here natural selection chooses what is successful in survival and reproduction. The supermateral Spirit and material evolution both move toward Godhood. Man can help or enhance the natural direction of matter to evolve to higher and higher forms, the material world on its own can devolve, stay the same, die out, or destroy itself in entropy, even when the general direction of life is evolving toward higher and higher consciousness.

This defines the deep optimism of Theovolutionary based on faith, hope, evolutionary hypothesis, and reason. After-all, life evolved from the simple to the complex and toward more and more intelligence before we existed to even think about helping it along its way to its sacred goal of Godhood.

Not “either” earth “or” heaven, one evolves to the other

The Twofold Path in Evolutionary Christianity (EC) offers faith and hope beyond the earth, beyond the human species, as we evolve to Godhood in the Kosmos. But this faith does not discard earth or humanity, which are the only vehicles we have to evolve to Godhood beyond the earth.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra wanted men to “remain faithful to the earth,” he thought faith and humanity should not look beyond the earth, heaven was a lie, we should develop man and superman on earth. Feuerbach (one of Hegel's disciples) said that Christianity prevents humanity from realizing the Absolute. But the solution to this is not to radically throw out Christianity but to incorporate the Twofold Path of Evolutionary Christianity.

It is not either earth or heaven, or either Christianity or atheism, it is earth and Christianity as the path of evolution to Godhood. In the Involutionary Inward Path of EC the Spirit is reached within, as a sacred reference to the Godhood of the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Absolute is reached through the natural world of evolution from the material to the supermaterial in the Evolutionary Outward Path. This is the Twofold Path..

And science is still involved in EC, future science can eventually define the Spirit and Godhood in supermaterial terms.

Redeeming The Material In Religion

Materialism has been barely tolerated by Religion, leaving materiality out of morality, except in a back door, contrary way of trying to deal with the devil.

What is not understood is that the rejection of materialism applies only to the Involutionary Inward Path that leads to the Soul and Spirit Within man, which all the Revealed Religion's seek. Various methods are used to see or experience the Soul and Spirit Within, which involve blocking out the senses and the material world. Religious morality derives essentially from this discipline.

But this technique does not apply to the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood, which is the other half of the Twofold Path in Evolutionary Christianity. In the Outward Path one reaches true and real Godhood through material evolution all the way to supermateriality. The Spirit Within contains great attributes of Godhood, since it came from Godhood, but it is not Godhood, and should not be the single goal of religion.

No Duality

The question of how we passover from unreality to reality is illegitimate. All is reality, and we evolve from lower reality to higher reality, from the material to the supermaterial. There is no duality. There is no passing from darkness to light, no passing from death to life. There is evolving from lower life to higher life, and eventually to eternal representation. This is the positive theology of Evolutionary Christianity.

Positive and Negative Theology

The social concerns of the Revealed Religions derive from a negative theology, which says that since material things do not, or should not matter, one should therefore not be greedy, warlike etc., what really matters are the unseen things that can only be reached by blocking out the material world and all its concerns. This is in fact seeking freedom from personal bondage, and the social concerns of Negative Theology are directly related to this way of defining bondage. This is Negative Theology.

The Positive Theology of the Evolutionary Christian Church admits the Negative Theology of the Revealed Religions, in the Involutionary Inward Path, as being the Path to the Kingdom of God Within, which indeed can be arrived at only by blocking out material life. But in the Twofold Path, the material and supermaterial Path of evolution to Godhood is accomplished through the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Kingdom of God Within of the Inward Path is seeing or experiencing the Soul or Spirit Within, which is only Half-Knowing God. The Outward Path relates to living in the world of pains and joys, and this Path evolves life to the Real Supreme Object Godhood, at the Zenith of Evolution in the Kosmos. This is Positive Theology.

On Augustine

Like the Eastern thinkers Augustine thought of lust as a big obstacle to enlightenment, calling it sin, which was the original sin in the Garden Of Eden. “From this concupiscence whatever comes into being by natural birth is bound by original sin.” If you must have sex learn to have it without lust (compare the Tantra way). In the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) this is the path of the Involutionary Inward Path to the God or Soul Within. In this path the material world, the senses, are blocked in a Great Spiritual Blockade which can give rise to the experience of the God Within.

Augustine thought men have limited freedom, they are free to choose in the sense of being “free to sin.” In EC freedom is limited, but to the paths we choose in the natural world, some lead to devolution others to evolution. We can find aid in our evolution with increased consciousness and through awareness of the activating power of the Spirit Within.

“Being saved” in ECC relates to evolution to Godhood through the Evolutionary Outward Path. If we do not evolve we may devolve to the Kosmic Center from which we can be “resurrected” with other chances to evolve. In this sense Augustine's “eternal torment” is not necessarily eternal.

“Revelation” as well as reason can be the source of truth, but the idealism of revelations tend to lead our knowledge. We would agree with Augustine in this.

There is perpetual struggle in the world but not between the spiritual and the material, as Augustine (and the East, and Plato) believed but between evolution and devolution. The flesh is not evil, it is the vehicle by which we evolve to Godhood.

In ECC the Soul, Spirit and body are all of the material and supermaterial world, and none are “evil,” they are either evolving or devolving. Augustine saw evil even in the Soul, yet alone the body.

Satan in ECC is not the maker of the flesh and the material world, as Augustine seems to suggest, Satan is both symbolically and literally the pull of entropy and devolution to the Kosmic Center.