The Spirit-Will Activates, It Does Not Transcend Materiality

On Sacred Language

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

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

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

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

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

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

Process Philosophy And Upward Evolution

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

Exiled to a World of the Spirit

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

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

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

Godhood and the naming of God

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

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

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

Smothering The Vehicle To Godhood

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

The Virtual Experience Of Immortality

Primary and Secondary Goals of Religion

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

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

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

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

The Decline of Serious Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Promethean In The Sacred Art Of the Theoevolutionary Church

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

The Promethean In The Sacred Art Of  The Theoevolutionary Church

A reply to “Art from the Sacred to the Profane,” by Frithjof Schuon

Sacred Art is informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path, and by the word made flesh of the Outward Path. Profane Art is not informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path. The profane artist himself takes the place of the Spirit Within or he uses art models with no connection to the sacred.

Art is not defined as profane because it transmits only man, it is profane because it ignores the sacred.

Beauty becomes vital in Sacred Art because Perfect Beauty is the Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution, which is the Seed seeking the Trinity of Perfect Truth (Father), Perfect Beauty (Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit).

The mission of Sacred Art is to transmit Perfect Truth, Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which then can expand the virtually abstract definition of Traditional Sacred Art. Attraction toward Beauty is attraction toward God. God is an Object not merely a definition.

Defining beauty as “Peace” is defining from the Father Aspect of the Trinity, which is Perfect Truth, and this truth does suggest peaceful repose. But the Trinity also suggests action, form, and power in evolution.

We can go back to, or go forward to, the Promethean, which was so demeaned by the Traditionalists. We are evolving to God in the Outward Path, and we must not be stunted by the Great Spiritual Blockade of Traditionalism that tends to pay attention “only” to the Perfect Truth of the Trinity while blocking the other two aspects of Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which must be materially and super-materially evolved to.

Traditional Religion virtually rejects the material world, although it does valiantly try to redeem the material world theologically in the works of the Church Fathers. The Greeks were more humanistic. The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) seeks to synthesize the art of the East and the West. The human body and materialism can be brought back to religious art, and formed by the evolutionary Beyondism of God, and moved by the Seed of Within, or the Holy Spirit.


Expanding Sacred Art

Frithjof Schuon said “In metaphysical truth there is neither here--below nor hereafter--everything is contained in it.” From this perspective comes the extreme forms of non-representative and abstract art of Traditional Sacred Art.

The Inward Path is contemplative, the Outward Path is active, and both must be inclined to Sacred Art, just as they must both be included in religion. Traditional spirituality limits itself to the Inward Path and to pursuing and affirming Perfect Truth without the Object.

God is the Perfect Truth of Traditional Spirituality defined as the Father, but God, as the Trinity, is also Perfect Beauty (the Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit). The Father as Perfect Idea defines the Son and Holy Spirit, which are the embodied Idea of the Father.  The Whole is the Supreme Object Godhood.

The Theoevolutionary Church affirms the Father (Perfect Truth) in our Involutionary Inward Path of seeing the Soul-Within, or the Kingdom Within, and TC affirms the Son and Holy Spirit (Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness) in the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolving the material world to God, the God first seen inwardly in the Involutionary Inward Path.

The Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Beauty, and the Action-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Goodness; these arrive at Perfect Truth through material and supermaterial evolution.

If one does not wish to copy nature but to “repeat” nature in its creative mode, as suggested by Schuon in Islamic Art, then one will, in fact, reflect evolution, contrary to Schuon. As Schuon put it, the sacred art of Perennial Spirituality “distrusts any materialization of religious subjects as if in fear that spiritual realities might become exhausted through an excess of sensory crystallization.”

TC can bring back a Center, a goal, a sacred material-supermaterial goal to art, rather than trying to avoid a Center in defining God only as universal spiritual truth, as is done in nonrepresentational Perennial spirituality.


Form Is Not Opposed to Essence

According to Schuon, form is necessarily opposed to essence, the latter being “universal inwardness” and the former “accidental outwardness.” This creates a problem. The “accidental” material is always disparaged in favor of “permanent” immaterial spirituality.

Perfect Truth that is spiritual is fulfilled as well as defined in Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which is the zenith of material-supermaterial evolution, as well as the completed Trinity.

With Form having once again taken its place in Godhood, Greek Art, which is too beautifully human to Schuon, can be exhumed and advanced once again. Perfect Beauty can be reflected in perfect human beauty. And since art contains evolution in EC, evolutionary beauty can also be explored. Perhaps we can even imagine beauty well beyond human beauty.

It is the idea of the “Extinction of Form in the Essence” which we do not affirm in religion or in art.

God does not resemble man or even superman---and traditional sacred art has been well aware of this. Schuon accuses Greek Art of no longer resembling God, but God resembling man. Traditionalists more or less reject Greek-Roman art as a deviation from Sacred Religious Art, but TC can affirm Greek-Roman art as an evolutionary art, pointing the way upward by symbolizing the evolution of man to Godhood through Beauty as well as through Truth.

The sacralizing element in Beauty relates to Godhood, not to the earth, but earthly beauty at it zenith is closer to the Divine and suggests the path to the Divine.

Traditional Sacred Art finds the symbol in the Soul Within and creates the style relating to the people, the culture, and the religion. TC finds in the Spirit Within the Seed and activation of the body to evolve to God and therefore the symbol can be brought back to the body and beyond to more evolved bodies.


The Body As Paragon

One could say that the marvels of Traditional Sacred Art, the Cathedrals, etc., are the exteriorizing of the Soul Within of the Involutionary Inward Path. In Traditional Sacred Art there is always a pull, or even a conflict between material virgin nature and the Soul Within, as if the body were too much contrary to the ways of the Spirit.

When the Soul Within is the “only” goal and not also the Spirit-Within-activation of material life, then material life can be demeaned. There can even be a split or conflict between them.

TC will bring Sacred Art back to the body since it is the body in material life that must evolve to Godhood. But we certainly do not forget about the Soul Within. The Spirit Within contains the Seed which is the Highest Element in material life and in our bodies. The Soul is the zenith of the mind in the Body, and the body is the Temple of the Spirit. The Body is the Temple of the “Order of the Outward Path.”

TC may bring man back to the “Golden Age” of Art by bringing man back to nature, back to virginal nature, back to materialism, as the ingredient with which to evolve to Godhood.

Traditional Sacred Art can be seen as showing the goal of Involution to the Soul Within, as symbolized in Temples, Mosques, Churches, Icons, and Rituals. This is certainly honored in TC as one of the Two Sacred Paths to God, that is, the Involutionary Inward Path.

TC revitalizes Traditional Sacred Art and the Involutionary Inward Path. The evolving body itself is the Temple and the material art of the Evolutionary Outward Path, including its goal of Godhood. What does God look like? This is the Mystery of the Outward Path.

In the Order of the Outward Path, the Sun and the Polar Star are superseded by the Kosmic Summit, or Kosmic Godhood, and the Kosmic Summit is indirectly related to the evolving body. The material earth is redeemed as the sacred ingredient in the evolution to God, and the body is the Paragon of Evolution.

The Two Arts of the Inward and Outward Paths do not conflict, they compliment one another. The Inner God is the Outer God we must evolve to.

What we have dreamed of is real, the symbol is in our deepest heart and is the Spirit Within and is real as the Supreme SuperMaterial Object of our evolution to Godhood.

The highest possible degree of material Beauty must be returned to and redeemed from the decline of the body due to the Great Spiritual Blockade. The Half-Truth of the Inward Path joins the Half-Truth of the Outward Path to end the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Outward Path by the Inward Path.

The body is the activation of the essence within and the form of the evolution to God.


The Body And Object In Art

The function of all the arts is to bring the lower back to the higher, to bring the Spirit Within back to God. The body represents becoming-being, object, as contrasted with thought, or abstract thought. When God is an Object, a Supreme Body, then the body can come forward as a Sacred Symbol.

When the Spirit is opposed to the Soul (Body) then the body is demeaned, just as nakedness is wrongly opposed to clothing. If we are opposed to animal nature, then we downplay animal nature. The classical nudes are redeemed in the Sacred Art of the Theoevolutionary Church, unlike Traditional Sacred Art where clothing is “opposed to nakedness as the soul is opposed to the body.” (Schuon) In TC the Soul is not opposed to the Body (Spirit) and the Priest is not opposed to the animal nature. Evolution is the process of Civilizing the Beast, the beast evolves to Godhood.

Perhaps like Traditional Christian and Buddhist art, the sacred art of TC will be centered on the bearer of evolution, the man-God, the superman. The ancient Greeks seemed to have used this subject matter, even if Schuon thinks this art was not enough informed by the sacred.

In TC we do not speak of the “resignation to the Will of God” but of the Assent of the Spirit to God. Inward art marks the descent to the Soul-Within, outward art the assent of the Spirit to Godhood.

God cannot be represented realistically because we do not know how God looks, and we probably will not know until we attain Godhood. But we can represent Beauty and Goodness and Truth in their highest human and superhuman forms and expressions.

When we “exteriorize a metaphysic” or show “an image of infinity,” we will not leave materialism out of the picture.


Positive and Negative Theology in the Arts

In the Arts, the Positive Theology of TC does not, as in Traditionalism and Negative Theology, search for or “recall” a lost Paradise of melancholy. Positive Theology is not about a lost Paradise but about a future Paradise at the end of evolution. The Spirit Within the Body does not mourn for a lost Paradise but anticipates the Paradise to come.

Indeed the Spirit “remembers” Paradise, as Plato suggested, as the Spirit is the Seed of Godhood. But it is not a lost Paradise but a future Paradise which helps activate material evolution.

Art should be ascending more than descending. The Inner Path descends to the Soul but then the Outer Path ascends to the destination of the Spirit, not within, but without, in the evolution to Godhood. Traditionalism “only” descends to the Soul, seeing no ascent through materialism.

“Greatness pre-exists in things” (Schuon), yet in Traditionalism greatness tends to stop there at the Soul Within. In Positive Theology the “Dance of Shiva” brings Atma back to Maya, not Maya back to Atma, as in negative theology. The inner is brought to the outer, the outer is only secondary to the inner.


Making an Idol of the Soul

We can bring Eros, survival, and reproduction back to the sacred, after it has been largely exiled (with a few Primordial exceptions) by Traditionalism due to its materialistic content, which is considered inferior.

The essence of survival and reproduction is the thirst for Heavenly Beauty. When this Sacred Goal is missing, sex and reproduction can be defined as profane.

Sacred Art follows this progress, or thirst for Heavenly Beauty, whereas profane art does not. The Spirit Within and the Soul-Within “recall” this beauty within but also help activate the thirst for the beauty without. Traditionalism tends to see and define only the recalling inner path, making an Idol of the Soul Within; Traditionalism then puts up a Great Spiritual Blockade against the thirst for beauty without.

Beauty can be exhumed from this neglect. “Eros with ethics” was the way someone defined advanced Paganism but this was lost in the spiritual abstractions of the Inward Path of Revealed Religions. The Order of the Outward Path of Evolution to God brings Eros back, reproduction and evolution to God can be affirmed. This can bring the Spirit of Beauty back to religion.

Life need not be thought of as “sinking” to scientific rationalism any more than it should sink to spiritualism. Both have been idol-worshiping at one time or another. In TC the balance between the Inward Path (Soul Within) and the Outward Path (Evolution to God) avoids both types of idol worship.

Traditionalism made an idol of the Soul Within even as it virtually rejected the earth and the material world calling these things idol worship. God is a Sacred Object in the world, not merely an equation outside the world defined as Perfect Truth, or the Father. Traditionalism gave us a hubristic authority beyond the world, beyond the stars, and Traditionalism continues to supplant astronomy and biology with the exclusivity of the Inward Path.


Religion and Art

The Form of God is the ultimate aim of art, religion and the evolution of life. Developing religion was, along with the help of Divine Grace, motivated by an innate need to create order and harmony, almost the way a composer composes a traditional symphony. Religion in this way, is related to art, whose purpose is to create a finite image of infinity.

But art cannot become a substitute for religion as it perhaps did in nineteenth century Romanticism, art should be an adjunct or an affirmation of religion. What is culture? Arthur Verluis points out that the word itself comes from “cultus” or cult and has intrinsic religious dimensions. Culture, strictly speaking, refers to all the aspects of daily life that bear the imprint of society’s religious center: tools, architecture, clothing, as well as art, literature, and music. From this perspective, culture refers to the sanctification of daily life.  Perhaps we are speaking of Total Religion rather than total art or total culture?

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

We hope we have shown here that we do not stand against Traditional Sacred Art, but against its exclusivity, its blocking out the evolution of the material world, as it reflects its Gnostic base of affirming the Soul and denying the material. The Traditionalists bemoan the decadence of the world but they make it virtually impossible for the world to narrow itself into their blocked spiritual world.

The Sacred Art of the Theoevolutionary Church has a Promethean and a Faustian quality, we stretch, we reach, we evolve to define the Highest Beauty, Truth and Goodness.

February 8, 2009
Kenneth Lloyd Anderson
Posted by Kenneth Lloyd Anderson at 8:52 AM
Labels: Art and Religion

Contra Manicheaism

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

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

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

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

Spirit Is Not “Exiled” To Matter

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

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

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

There Is No Kali Age

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cooperating with the evolutionary process

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

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

Real and Unreal Nonduality

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

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

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

On the exile of man

The old religious masters say something like “man is a spiritual being exiled to a world of matter.” We transform this into saying that man is a material being exiled to a religious world of the spirit.

This explains what we call the Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Godhood. However, rather than utterly rejecting the Inward Path (as religion essentially rejects the Outward Path) we retain the Involutionary Inward Path of the Revealed religions in the Twofold Path.

The Spiritual God seen from within in the Inward Path is the spiritual-material God we must evolve to with the Evolutionary Outward Path. This is why we transvalue the discipline and say that man must be released from the limitations imposed by the Spiritual Blockade, not by a material blockade.

Evolution and Christian Ethics

As we affirm free-enterprise restrained by Christian ethics (which would have prevented the latest financial bubble bursting), so we also affirm upward evolution restrained by Christian ethics. Although we include Beyondist ethics in  the Theoevolutionary Church , this makes us somewhat different than Cattell's Beyondism, which has moral constraints from science but not Christian constraints.

Conservatism, the middle way between reactionary and progressive, is the social template for this position. Radical change rarely works and usually does great damage. Christian ethics allow the stable societies in which evolution can take place. But evolution needs to be added to Christian ethics. The Inward Path of Christianity requires the Outward Path of  the Theoevolutionary Church

Redeeming Both the Spiritual and Material

Modern science built its theories minus the Spiritual world, and religion in essence builds its theories minus the material world. These need to be synthesized , and are, in the Twofold Path of  the Evolutionary Christian Church .

The Spirit Within, or Will, is not separated from the body, and is not autonomous from the body, but It does live beyond the individual body through procreation, and has lived in this way since the Beginning. The Great Spiritual Blockade of the body has been a great and tragic error.

This is why we cannot say as the East might say say that “ Everything is the Spirit” or “I am the Spirit.” The Spirit requires the the body to evolve to Godhood, therefore, we can more correctly say “Everything is Spirit and Body,” and “I am the Spirit and Body.”

How metaphysics and physics join religion

The Spirit Within, which is the only flux of being, both can and cannot be caught within its own being. It can be both in the flux of activating universal evolution, and yet otherwise exist within a form and can therefore be a firm object. This tells us how something in flux can appear as an object. And the Spirit also is substance but of a supermaterial nature. This defines being over time. This finally joins science and metaphysics and religion.

Genes, Epigenetic Markers, and Divine Law

We are told that epigenetic markers sitting atop the genes can turn on or off the genes, based on environmental pressures, but the genes themselves take far longer in natural selection to change.

In  the Evolutionary Christian Church  the genes themselves are thought of as determined in essence by the activation of the Spirit-Within which seeks to activate all life to evolve to Godhood, the Zenith of evolution in the Kosmos.

For us, natural law is determined by Divine Law, and natural law is like those epigenetic markers sitting atop Divine Law. Natural law may turn on or off Divine Law based on the needs or pressures of the natural world, but it cannot change the determinism of Divine Law.

The Problem With Latin Conservatism

Burke Or Maistre?

According to the write up in Wikipedia: “In contrast to Burkean Conservatism, which originated at about the same time, Latin Conservatism is uncompromising in its belief in the need for order. While Burke supported constitutionalism and some degree of democracy, Maistre, like Thomas Hobbes before him, though with a more religious tone, supported authoritarianism as the only means of avoiding violent disorder.”

Although it is a tempting solution to degeneration, the problem with Latin Conservatism is that it doesn't pay enough attention to the long running political and cultural traditions of a given state or locality that are almost as important as the Christian Catholic religious tradition, which the Latin version almost exclusively affirms. It is true that religion, or the cult, is the basis of civilizations, but Conservatism, Burkean Conservatism, also pays attention to the time and place. The United States Constitution is an excellent example. Conservatism stands in the middle between the reactionary and the progressive, and Latin Conservatism tends to be reactionary.

Here is a piece in the Cordelia For Lear blog that got me thinking about this subject.

Primary and Secondary Nonduality

Secondary nonduality is complete absorption in the Soul-Within. Primary nondualism is Godhood attained in evolution. Secondary nonduality is the goal of the Involutionary Inward Path of the Revealed Religions. Primary nonduality is the goal of the Evolutionary Outward Path, which works in conjunction with the Inward Path. This is the Twofold Path of the Evolutionary Christian Church.

Direction of evolution

Without knowledge of the direction and goal of the Spirit, evolution indeed looks random. And evolution can in fact go sideways or even go backward. Yet, even without knowledge of evolution and the Spirit, evolution has taken place in the pattern of moving from the simple to the complex and toward higher and higher consciousness, activated by the Spirit.

It is consciousness of the direction of evolution which has finally evolved in humans, and this knowledge can save us from backsliding or unconscious evolution. Ultimately this knowledge can save us from the Great Kosmic Center of Entropy, assuming we survive the earth, and bring us to the goal of the Kosmos: Godhood.

Transmuting Passions

Do we seek to transmute passions into compassion, like Buddhism? No. We want to make passions sacred rather than profane. We want to transmute passions into evolving to Godhood.

To the Buddha, and other mystic masters, all passions are profane. This is a Great Spiritual Blockade against material evolution to Godhood.

Rather than trying to destroy the other side, as they do the Outward Path, we affirm their Inward Path as the way to see the Spirit of Godhood. However, this is not Godhood. To reach the God first seen as the Spirit Within, the Evolutionary Outward Path is required. This defines the Twofold Path.

The Great Masters renounced the physical world and its illusions and they were defined as masters of wisdom. In this they are more correctly defined as masters of deceit, even if their deceit is often unintentional or mistaken.

The problem with religious asceticism

"The concupiscence of matter incessantly attracts a new form."
-John Mehung (from World Wisdom)

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) views the ascetic life as one of the Twofold Path in theology, but the ascetic life becomes a problem when it is the sole path, the sole life style. Then it can become a Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Godhood through material evolution.

Religious asceticism cares not for the material world, or differentiations in the world of any kind, which are considered negative bonds. This is not caring about differences like liberal democracy, this derives from not caring at all about material things.

“Purification” is sought in the ascetic life, but this is one of the Twofold Path in the theology of ECC. The ascetic life becomes a problem when it is the sole path, the sole life style. It can then become a Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to real Godhood by way of (the hated) material evolution.

It is the Soul and Spirit that is seen in Enlightenment, and it is understandable that the Spirit could be mistaken for Godhood, since the Spirit is virtually eternal. But it is Godhood the Spirit seeks, and not Itself alone. The material world was created for this reason, for this purpose, which is why the material world is vital to the Spirit, and not something acosmic or abhorrent.

Secondary and Primary Alchemy

Religion is more than a matter of internal adjustment

Traditional religions essentially say that “religion is solely a matter of internal adjustment.” We change this exclusivity of the Inward Path. We define the path of internal adjustment as only one of the Twin Paths of our theology. In terms of the alchemy of transmutations, the Inward Path is the Secondary Alchemy. The Outward Path of evolving matter is the Primary Alchemy transmuting the world through material evolution to Godhood, activated by the Inward Spirit, which is first glimpsed in the Inward Path.

Eternal war and dualism

There is not an eternal war between matter and spirit, there is a “war” between evolution and devolution. Matter is not the “eternal adversary” devolution is.

I am not speaking here of what has been called “radical dualism,” this is not like the “coeternal dualism” of the Gnostics and Plato. This is more like a “monarchian” form of “dualism,” where the Great kosmic Center of entropy is set in motion after the creation of the world from Godhood. So it is not really dualism.

The Paper Tiger War Between Spirit and Matter

Spirit is not at war with matter. The war is over, it never was a war, it was a virtual war created by mystics to try to explain the world.

Spirit very much requires matter, and matter requires Spirit, Spirit activates matter to evolve to Godhood. This process of evolution can be defined or denotated but the denotation cannot be elevated above the thing-in-itself, the Object.

Godhood is the Supreme Object first, and the Logos defines Godhood. Mystics called the definition God and then declared war on the Object defined. This seems diabolical since it has set up the Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Godhood.

The Deception of Interiorization

Reinstating the Outward Path

According to Mircea Eliade the earliest Vedic cosmogony was explained in biological terms, the cosmos was created from emanation and through burning asceticism. But then by the time of the Upanishads (the middle of the first millennium BCE ) the “interiorization” process had begun with people like Shankara, (788 CE - 820 CE) where the old biological terms are completely devalued as being “action” which can only bring negative karma. (This seems to me to be related to the original Indo-European split which led to the Iranian Zoroastrians)

With this interior perspective the only “freedom” can come from “gnosis" ((jnana), knowledge which can reveal the cosmic deception, where creation is seen as evil and gnosis is seen as delivering us from evil. Plato and the later Gnostics more or less continued this worldview, with the material body seen as the result of ignorance.

We say that this gradual interiorization process was the real deception. The older biological symbolism was closer to the truth. The mystics have set up an ancient spiritual blockade, which we call The Great Spiritual Blockade against our evolution to Godhood. However, the Twin Paths in the Evolutionary Christian Church  have a place for this traditional interiorization process, within the Involutionary Inward Path—this just should not be the sole path as it is with the Revealed Religions.

The Evolutionary Outward Path of material evolution needs to be reinstated, if we could call it that, since the old Vedic cosmogony is not exactly our cosmogony. This is the Universal Synthesis of  the Theoevolutionary Church.

Spirit As Avatar

“Avatars” don't descend temporarily into “matter” to redeem relapsed humanity, the Spirit Within is a constant and eternal Avatar within all life, activating life to Godhood. The origin of this idea of an Avatar temporarily descending into matter comes from the Gnostic hatred of matter where matter is thought of as far beneath the Avatar.

When Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita: “When virtue fails upon the earth, then I come forth,” we transpose this as really defining the Spirit Within all life which never left in the first place. Humanity may be ignorant of the workings of the Spirit, but it has not gone away.

The Spirit is always activating matter since matter is the vehicle of the Spirit to evolve to Godhood, therefore it cannot hate matter.

Preposterous dematerialization

Truth as an object rather than words

Intellectuals and scientists tend to think in words, when the truth may more often be an object, an actual object. Seeing this way, with truth as an object, is more like a religious way of seeing as a scientist. God can be seen this way, as a Supreme Object and the Truth.

Preposterous dematerialization

Thinking about the term dematerialization, which Evola uses to explain Yoga, seems like a preposterous term and is the main source of the Great Spiritual Blockade against material evolution to Godhood.

The guru has not dematerialized his mind or his body, he has achieved complete one-pointed actual awareness of “nothing,” all done within the human mind and body and not dematerialized. This is a blissful enough state to have encouraged thousands of years of adherents.

Even so, this state is acknowledged and respected in  the Evolutionary Christian Church as the goal of the Involutionary Inward Path of Tradition to contact the Soul and Spirit Within. But to attain the Supreme Object God, material evolution to Godhood is required, through the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Primary And Secondary Union

Eliade says (Guide To World Religions) that Plotinus made union of the Soul with the Universal Intellect the supreme goal of existence.

We would describe this union as the union of the Soul (Zenith of the Human Mind) with the Spirit (Zenith of the Soul). The Spirit can be described as the Universal Spirit which activates all life to evolve to Godhood.

But this definition of Plotinus, which perhaps originally derived from the Indo-Iranians, is not the Supreme Goal of existence although it can be called the Secondary Goal of Existence, which is attained through the Involutionary Inward Path.

The Primary or Supreme Goal of existence is to evolve materially-spiritually to Godhood. Which is attained through the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Defining the Secondarily Goal as the Primary Goal has led to the Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Godhood, which  the Evolutionary Christian Church  seeks to unblock.

The Spirit Itself Is Not Free

One may feel free of attachments when one finally reaches the Soul Within by applying the Involutionary Inward Path, but the Soul is not free from the body, and neither is the Spirit-Will which is Its vehicle to evolve to Godhood. Evolution works with the Spirit Within, so not even the Spirit is free.

It is the Great Error, the Great Trick to define the Second Birth, the Inward Enlightenment as Godhood, or Kinghood. One becomes satisfied floating in the bliss of the Spirit, but so can the addict floating in the bliss of his drug of choice.

We have been blind to the Real Path to Godhood as defined by the Evolutionary Outward Path, and we have grossly disparaged the material and supermaterial world, which evolves to Godhood over great time, the destination of the Spirit-Will.

Bringing Back The Giants

This is the Great Error and the Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Godhood: the Giants, or Titans, symbolizing the material world, or the Body, and Dionysus, symbolizing the Spirit, are not at war with one another, and it is time for the war to end. Could these giants have been small surviving groups of Neanderthal?

This transposes thousands of years of the occult perspective. The Giants or the material world, and the Spirit, are Twin Partners on the Twin Path to Godhood, the Involuntary Inward Path (the Soul and Spirit Within) and the Evolutionary Outward Path (Evolution to Godhood activated by the Spirit).

(Photo from here)

On Nonduality

In Tantric Hinduism, Shiva is the inactive principle (male) and Shakti is the active principle (female), which creates a false duality, and also turns gender symbolism upside down.

Their goal is to use Shakti—pure power-- to attain or awaken in oneself the main goal of Shiva—pure spirit-- which they claim then attains a nondual condition.

If this goal were not located within the human being the symbolism might work. According to Evola, in Hinduism (see Upanishads) nondualism, the atma, is located within the human being.

Nonduality is not located within the human being, which is the Great Error of Traditional religions. Nonduality is the evolutionary goal of the Body, Soul and Spirit as they seek to evolve to Godhood in the Kosmos, the Real Nonduality. This way Shakti seems to better symbolize the active male Spirit and Shiva the inactive female Soul. And these must work together in each body, in the evolution to Godhood, the Real Nonduality.

Why we need the world : religiously empowering not extirpating human nature

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) seeks to empower human nature, not as Nietzsche did trying to root out religion, and not as the Involutionary Inward Path religions did by extirpating human nature. We bring real power and religion back together again in defining the Spirit Within as the Will to Godhood (Shakti in the Tantra) and by adding to religions the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution. The Traditional Revealed Religions supply the grounds for Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism to stabilize upward evolution to God for all people and all states.

The way religion virtually jumps through hoops to stay in the world but not of the world is something to behold. Think of how the precept of nonviolence is lifted in the Bhagavad- Gita, or think of the Just War theory, which are outdone by the elaborate rationalizations of the Scholastics. This is not necessary.

The reality is that we need the world, we need the material world, to evolve to Godhood, the God first seen in the Inward Path, which is activated by the Spirit Within and guided by the Soul to Godhood in the Kosmos.

Message for the New Year: Positive Theology Ending Dualism

Dualism and the Ancient War Between Light and Dark

We do not see a legitimate war between light and dark, spirit and matter, we don't see a dualistic world.

Those who war against the world of matter, sometimes called the Suryas in occult teaching, are no better than the Asuryas who war against the spirit. Their sacred works say that one or the other must be utterly defeated, hurled into the abyss. (These entities were interestingly turned around and given opposite meanings in India and Iran--we have here used the Indian version)

We want to stop this war by affirming the Twofold Path which synthesizes the Suryas and Asuryas, spirit and matter, light and dark. The Two Paths, the Inward and Outward, work together. To use an old image, we have cut the Gordian Knot to open the Great Spiritual Blockade.

In the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) the Involutionary Inward Path relates to the Suryas, the light, which in EC is the Soul and Spirit but is not God. We also maintain that the Spirit is not at war with matter because matter is the vehicle by which the Soul and Spirit evolve to Godhood. Therefore, the light is not at war with the dark, the Suryas and Asuyas can join together. In painting, black paint plus white paint equals gray paint, you add black to the white until you reach your desired shade.

The Revealed Religions are virtually united in their dualism and rejection of the material world, but we think this is the basis for ecumenism between the world religions. They all affirm what we define as the Involutionary Inward Path. “Monism” or nondualism in the Revealed religions is not really monism since it affirms only the single Inward Path to the Soul or Spirit, while rejecting or extirpating the Outward Path with the Supreme Goal of evolving to Godhood.

It is the Evolutionary Outward Path of the Twofold Path that we have added to the Involutionary Inward Path of the Revealed Religions. This is the material world of evolving matter, the so-called world of the Asuryas. This Outward Path of evolution offers the variety and separateness necessary in evolution, for a world which can be otherwise united following the same Inward Path.

All people, all ethnic groups, all states are encouraged to evolve to Godhood since all men share the same Spirit Within, or Will To Godhood. All can be helped along by the Evolutionary Outward Path which affirms Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism in the Theoevolutionary Church.

The war is over. Dualists who insist on making war, be they Surya's or Asuryas, light or dark, spirit or matter, religion or science, will not draw us into their war, and we encourage them to join us in the Twofold Path to Godhood.

On Alfred Adler

(Toward Evolutionary Therapy—see below *)

“The striving for significance, this sense of yearning, always points out to us that all psychological phenomena contain a movement that starts from a feeling of inferiority and reach upward. The theory of Individual Psychology of psychological compensation states that the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the higher the goal for personal power.” (Alfred Adler)
Wikipedia

This is not only an interesting quote, but Adler was and is an interesting psychologist. Adler (who acknowledged Nietzsche) postulated a single drive, which we would transpose in the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) as the Spirit-Will, or the Will to Godhood, the activating force behind evolution and the Kosmos, but also, as Adler suggests, the most important force in individual psychology. This “striving for perfection” in TC is the Will to Godhood in evolution.

Rather than the “will to meaning” of Dr Viktor Frankl, or the “will to pleasure” (pleasure principle) of Freud, or the “will to power” of Nietzsche and Adlerian psychology, we say that the primary motivational force in man is the Will to Godhood, or the Spirit-Will.

The interesting psychology comes in relating this primary drive socially as well as individually. All men, all groups have this drive to perfection, and how do we integrate them? Our answer, unlike Adler's socialism, is the Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism of the Theoevolutionary Church.

Here is another Adler quote: “God who is eternally complete, who directs the stars, who is the master of fates, who elevates man from his lowliness to Himself, who speaks from the cosmos to every single human soul, is the most brilliant manifestation of the goal of perfection.”


*(From my essay) Theoevolutionary Church And Jungian Psychology

Evolutionary Therapy

...The Priest's role in the Theoevolutionary Church, especially in the Outward Path is to understand the intentionality of the Spirit-Will, which the person is often unable to clearly comprehend, whereas in Jungian psychology, the therapist's role is to represent the intentions of the psyche and to see or understand the “Self”. The Priest needs to take the side of the Spirit-Will, whereas the psychoanalyst takes the side of the Unconscious.

In “Evolutionary Therapy,” the Priest would need to mediate a deal or balance between the Spirit-Will and the soul which the parishioner can live with. “Befriending” the spirit-will may be a task which could involve politically incorrect insights. Egotistical human life and modern values may seem limited in the face of the long evolution of the spirit to Godhood, beyond man, beyond superman, beyond angels and gods, all the way to Godhood.

When the spirit is blocked, It turns away from its central path. The Priest's “art” in TC is to help “release” the spirit into the energy of the person and society, making the energy of the spirit available for the individual and for society---like the martial arts, we can learn to use or turn the powerful force of the spirit away from hurting ourselves into helping ourselves, and helping our societies evolve.

Meanwhile the soul, which is the Zenith of the Mind and the ego, must maintain its task to intelligently help guide or “ride the tiger” of the spirit, even as the Soul needs to stop blocking the spirit. This is the desired balance. We need to befriend, not only the unconscious, but the spirit which activates the unconscious, and we need to correctly define the spirit and its direction.

We are not merely looking for the opposite of the ego, the contrary elements of our psyche, because androgynous balance is not the goal. The great goal of the Spirit-Will is the goal, which lies beyond us, beyond the human unconscious, at the Zenith of Evolution to Godhood. Whatever parts of our psyche seem opposed to the direction of the spirit-will need to be synthesized and balanced...

Objective Reality

I can more or less affirm Objectivism's axioms of existence, in the sense of “that which has no attributes does not and cannot exist. Hence, the axiom of identity: a thing is what it is.” I can agree too that the mind cannot create reality, but rather, it is a means of discovering reality. And I think I can affirm "the primacy of existence", in opposition to the theory of "the primacy of consciousness.” But I do affirm the primacy of the activating Spirit Within, or the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood. The Evolutionary Christian Church can reject belief in every power alleged to transcend existence. But we hold that God is at the Zenith of Existence, and as natural objects in nature we can evolve to become Godhood. This is the theological materialism of future religion.

How yogic renunciation can be suicidal

Using Evolian and other interpretations of the Hindu theory, which say that every desire or craving found in people is caused by deprivation—the craving or passion to obtain something on which they eventually become dependent, they feel deprived and need something. This is then solved by renunciation, by ridding themselves of the desire for the object. This is not easy to do and very few people succeed in it.

We believe this is a suicidal approach to life and religion. It sets up the Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Godhood. Desires need to be sublimated, not extirpated or murdered, desires need to be placed on the sacred path of evolution to Godhood. Even the Tantric attempt to use the passions while not being dependent on them is only a variation of this desire to destroy desires.

Even so, in spite of this Great Error, the Evolutionary Christian Church has a place for this renunciation in the Involutionary Inward Path, which leads to the Soul Within, but not to Godhood. We can gain deep insights about God in the Inward Path to the Soul, but we need to see that the Spirit-Will is activating life to evolve to Godhood in material evolution through the Evolutionary Outward Path. This is the Twofold Path to Godhood.

Guenon's negative theology

We do not share the perspective of Rene Guenon, who Eliade called “the foremost representative of modern esotericism.” Guenon astutely examines the decadence of the present world but he less astutely declares the end of the world.

We disagree with the central idea of Geunon, which he derived from the East, that personal and kosmic renovation is not possible and that the West is irremediably lost in decadence and that only after the destruction of the present “kali-yuga” age can we begin a new cycle. This radical—not conservative-- perspective is grounded in the exclusively Involutionary Inward Path, which defines only the nonmaterial inward enlightenment. This is also the base of the Revealed Religions, East and West.

The God of the Inward Path is experienced after much disciplining of the passions and turning away from the world. This view ultimately rejects the material world and defines God as beyond the natural world. We consider this exoteric (formerly esoteric) Inward Path only one of the Twofold Path to Godhood. The Inward Path is the Second Force which arrives at the Spark of God within but does not reach the Supreme God of the Evolutionary Outward Path.

To attain Godhood we must evolve in the material world through the Evolutionary Outward Path, the First Force, which has been utterly rejected by Guenon and the Revealed Religions who follow only the Inward Path. We do not affirm the pessimistic view of Guenon. Out theology is positive theology, representing the evolutionary Will to Godhood of the Spirit.

We identify with the mind instead of the Spirit

Do we seek a balance between the Spirit, the Will of Heaven, and the Soul, the Will of Earth? It is a monarchian balance, with the Spirit activating, and the Soul helping to guide, as an engine with a sacred goal, plus a driver.

Our most essential nature is the positive Will to Godhood, or Spirit. We forget the Spirit and imagine the body, or the mind, or the Soul (Zenith of the Mind) to be the center, rather than the Spirit. This wrong identity gives rise to the misery of devolution and entropy.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You All

Free Will And Determinism

The Spirit-Will, or Will to Godhood, is pure power, but It is not chaotic or Dionysian. The Spirit-Will has a sacred goal, it is a determinism that is like a basic blueprint, not as precise in execution, given the vicissitudes of natural evolution.

To adapt E. O. Wilson's image, the determinism of the Spirit-Will is like a stone rolling down a mountain with the path not certain although the stone is certainly moving down the mountain. Or to adapt Evola's image, it is like having the freedom to eat food that is bad for your health.

Contrary to most religious traditions we cannot go beyond or “escape” determinism, dharma, or karma, because determinism applies all the way to Godhood in evolution. We don't escape matter when matter is the vehicle by which we evolve to God.

The central goal is to awaken the Spirit-Will in oneself, the Will to Godhood, and then to understand where It is going in evolution.

The Infinite Is Within The Kosmos

We don't ascend beyond the Kosmos to the Divine, the Divine is in the Kosmos, at the highest evolution of the Kosmos. God or the Supreme Object exists within the spatio-temporal sense. Time is without end in God but time still exists in God.

Finite life dies, infinite life does not die, but this does not automatically mean that the infinite does not exist in the world. The infinite is the Supreme Evolutionary Goal of finite life, and not merely a principle of infinity.

Life and being are not principles, principles can define life and being, but these are not Supreme Objects. We don't have to contrast life versus being, or Spirit versus God. Spirit is part of being, as the seed is part of the tree. Duality is not necessary here.

Literalist Ontology

A “principle” may exist in the human mind, and the Supreme Principles may exist in the Mind of God, but these principles do not exist outside the material object and have no potency in themselves outside the actual object. Definitions require the defining physical mind.

The world is therefore not Maya (illusion, see Vedanta) and not irrational power (see Nietzsche), the world is the Will to Godhood, the Spirit-Will, working within the living objects of the cosmos, which seek to evolve to Godhood.

Why The Twofold Path Is Needed

In the Bhagavad-Gita the God Krishna teaches Arjuna that its okay to go to war, even against friends and relatives, as long as the actions are done in an undetached way, which would then not generate karma (action). This is how the precept of nonviolence (animsa) was dealt with.

This relates somewhat to St. Paul's reluctant sanction of marriage, telling the unmarried widows (Corinthians vii 8-9) it is good for them if they abide even as he did, as a celibate, but it is better to marry than to burn.  St. Paul would have wanted the widows to be detached from the whole event, even beyond passions, as they nevertheless indulged.

The goal of Krishna and St. Paul was not to empower human nature, as a Nietzschian might do, but to block and stop human nature altogether so that the God-Within could be experienced.

This is the Way of the Inward Path, which taken alone as the sole religious discipline can lead to the death, or virtual death, of materialism. This is why the Twofold Path is needed. Taken alone the Inward Path becomes a Great Spiritual Blockade against our evolution to Godhood, which is the goal of the Outward Path in the Evolutionary Christian Church. The Inward God is an incomplete God, and not really a God but is the Soul Within or the virtual experience of God.

The Outward Path has the principle of not destroying life and passion, as the Inward Path does, but of directing life and passions toward evolving to Godhood. Reproduction has the ultimate sacred goal of evolving life to Godhood. It so happens that the Inward Traditional Christian and Outward Beyondist morals, ethics, values and virtues provide for Ordered Evolution, in a Revitalized Conservatism, for all people, races, states and religions.

New And Old Mythos

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) demythologizes the Involutionary Inward Path of Tradition in that the God Within is an intimation of (not illusion of ) the actual Supreme Object God, the Zenith of evolution in the cosmos.

Yet ECC adds its own mythos, the evolution of life to Godhood. There is nothing within material life to be saved from, other than material devolution, which takes us away from the goal of the Evolutionary Outward Path, the goal of the Spirit, that is, Godhood.

But the old mythos of the Involutionary Inward Path is not rejected in ECC, it is affirmed in the Twofold Path, the Inward and Outward Paths. The Inward Path gives us the God Within, the Great Intimation of God, the Outward Path gives us the Supreme God at the Zenith of Evolution.

Is God Beyond Good And Evil?

In response to the general Tantric outlook, Supreme Godhood is beyond all opposites, but not beyond good and evil, since God is defined as the Highest Good. “Evil” happens in God's creations in the Kosmos, but evil is always essentially related to the unevolved, and since God is the Supremely Evolved, God therefore contains no unevolved evil.

If you ask how can the Supremely Good create evil, the answer is the same, evil is on the continuum of not being God, not having evolved to Godhood. The usual religious or mystical problem in defining evil in relation to God derives from the Great Error and Great Spiritual Blockade of defining material life as essentially evil.

The Sphinx

Some have said that the Sphinx of ancient Egypt represented the Soul (head) trying to escape the body (animal), but I would transpose this and say that the Sphinx can be a symbol of Civilizing the Beast, man evolving from animal to God, activated by the Spirit. "Escape" is not the interpretation here, evolution is. The evolving body is the vehicle for the Spirit all the way to Godhood.

The Yogin Are Dulled To Godhood

According to Evola, some radical Buddhists and Hindu's say that even the Gods are enemies of the yogin, because as powers presiding over the natural order they attempt to block the path of those who want to become free and dominate it.

There is also a Buddha saying that the Gods may not experience liberation because they are “dulled” by heavenly pleasures. Brahma is even subordinate to Buddha in this regard.

While this is stunningly courageous thinking, our stunningly courageous answer to the yogin is that this is a Great Error, or the Great Spiritual Blockade. The truth is that it is the yogin who are dulled by the heavenly pleasures of their inward “liberation,” or moksha. Moksha, and their version of liberation, is not Godhood, which is the Real Liberation, it is, however, the goal of the Inward Path.

What keeps this Great Error from being defined as diabolical is that the goal they seek--moksha-- is affirmed as the Soul-Goal of the Involutionary Inward Path in the Evolutionary Christian Church. But we can only become truly liberated by attaining the Absolute Supreme Godhood through bio-spiritual evolution to the Supreme Object at the Zenith of Evolution. This is defined as the True Liberation which is attained through the Evolutionary Outward Path. This means that unevolved humanity, including the yogins, who are human, are not able to experience Godhood or True Liberation. And the yogin are thereby dulled to Godhood. The Twofold Path is needed, the Inward and Outward, not only the Inward Path.

The Soul and Spirit

The Involutionary Inward Path, the Second Path, has the Soul-Goal, whereby we can see the God-Within. The Evolutionary Outward Path, the First Path, has the Spirit-Goal, whereby we materially-spiritually evolve to God, the God first seen in the Inward Path. The Mind is the Zenith of the Body, the Soul is the Zenith of the Mind, the Spirit is the Zenith of the Soul.

The Kosmic activating force of the Spirit, or Will to Godhood, seems to be “contained” in the “unconscious,” but is not trapped there like a prisoner, as the Gnostics believe. Hating the material world, the exclusively involutionary mystics do not see the material world for what it is, or for what it can be, as the material vehicle required for evolution to Godhood, activated by the Spirit.

Someone called the Spirit “life's life.” The Upanishads talked of the Spirit as the “breathing spirit,” or prana, the universal life force. But these involutionary mystics certainly would not muddy their definition of the spirit with any kind of materialism. We would.

We think that the Spirit will one day be discovered by science as an activating material-spiritual force or element or substance. Meanwhile, the intuitive intellect helps define the Soul and Spirit, and the evolution of life to God.

Technology and Evolution

Technology need not move ahead faster than our ability to monitor it. As we have written before, science and technology are in fact subordinate to the activating needs of the Will to Godhood, or Spirit.

No doubt technological development will create problems in the future, creative engineers will demand total freedom to develop, with no moral constraints. But like artists, the total freedom of creative engineers should come only during the creative process and later their creations need to be judged as either evolutionary or devolutionary.

“Postbiological” superintelligence through technological devices will be used to counter politically incorrect developments, such as genetic engineering, (the earlier dreaded word was eugenics.). We must advance essentially through biological evolution and not merely, for example, with technical devices attached to our human bodies.

We would have technology move forward in accord with the purpose of the Kosmos, which is bio-spiritual evolution to Godhood, by applying the Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism of the Theoevolutionary Church, that is, according to the Traditional religious and Beyondist virtues of theTheoevolutionary Church.

When the cultural leash in America snaps back to human nature

Is the Media in America powerful enough to actually create the post-moral America it has been for so many years promoting? What the media has wanted is one, big, immoral, politically correct, conglomerate America. This powerful agenda does appear to be working, the person of morals is now almost always the bad guy, or often just the loser to an immoral hero, and there are fewer and fewer people of morals in America.

The one “religion” allowed and promoted by the media---especially in American colleges and universities--- is Political Correctness, which is a form of cultural Marxism, the fervent belief in the absolute equality of all people, places and things, and the desire to enforce equality throughout the land.

So are we in fact headed toward that big, immoral, politically correct, conglomerate America? Here is the problem with that nefarious dream.

Culture simply cannot move too far away from human nature, there are genetic constraints on where culture can go, nurture really has to conform or harmonize with nature, and the immoral media and political correctness have moved too far away from human nature. Human nature has time and again formed cultures of more or less traditional morality as the best means to survive and reproduce successfully over the long term.

Let us hope and work to see that true American federalism can contain the splitting of America when the cultural lease in America snaps back to human nature.

Ignorance, sin and evolution

Ideas or principles alone, no matter how elevated, are not enough to achieve the highest “purity,” “sin” is not purified by wisdom alone, unless sin is considered only ignorance, which is how Gnostic oriented religions tend to see it. The material world evolves to Godhood, the highest "purity," therefore sin can be seen as devolutionary (and not only seen as ignorance) where material life itself moves toward lower consciousness and less complexity. But we may not want to get caught up using the word sin.

God does contain Absolute Wisdom yet even this is an idea in the Mind of God, which is the Father aspect of the Trinity. God is the Supreme Material-Supermaterial Object and not an idea alone. Gnostic hopes of Godly wisdom for human beings will not be attained by human beings. We can at best claim to reach the God Within, the through the various involutionary paths of the revealed religions.

Philosophy alone cannot "restore the Spirit-Will to glory," only evolution can, with glory defined not only as supreme wisdom but as attaining the Supreme Object Godhood in the cosmos, the goal of the activating Spirit-Will within evolving life.

Karma As Evolution

“Karma” is more or less the eastern word for evolution, the laws of cause and effect and natural development.

We can suffer for the evolutionary mistakes of others who chose profane or devolutionary reproductive and survival actions.

Living well personally is important but this does not alone describe the laws of karma or evolution. We have not only many earth lives to pass through, we have many lives beyond the earth, beyond the human, to pass through before we finally evolve to Godhood.

On The Direction of the Spirit-Will or the Will To Godhood

Philosophy and religion should come under the direction of the Will To Godhood, or the Spirit-Will, which is a supreme substance and not merely a principle. This Spirit can be defined and seen with intellectual intuition, which is really superreason, or transrational, so far, science later, one hopes.

The Will to Godhood can be harmonized into what we think and know, and not the other way around which often forces the highest ideals of the Spirit-Will to conform to the fallible human mind. But this is not affirming irrationality, or power, since the Will to Godhood or Spirit-Will is superrational with the definite purpose and goal of evolving to Godhood.

Our freedom consists in harmonizing with the Spirit-Will or the Will to Godhood, which can follow the dialectical-like paths of evolution. There are many paths to Godhood, and most importantly the highest evolved can arrive at Godhood in the cosmos.

Philosophical Realism-plus

Perceptions are created by real objects (philosophical realism). But human perceptions are limited in what they can see or understand of real material objects beyond normal human perceptions.

Tradition has mistaken the Spirit for God. The Inward Spirit is difficult to see but it is very highly refined materiality. Science has yet to discover Spirit.

The Spirit is small though powerful, God is large and supremely powerful, as symbolically the seed is small, the body large. Spirit proceeds from the Supreme Object God and then evolves in the Kosmos along with the bodies It activates up from the simple to the complex, and toward higher and higher consciousness.

We also have trouble perceiving God, the Supreme Object, and we will continue to have problems perceiving God, as well as the Spirit, until we evolve higher, along with our perceptions, to higher beings.

Symbolically it is as if matter consumes the flame rather than the other way around of Tradition, which affirms the flame until it is a formless nothing, and then calls that God.

“Mere” Enlightenment

Human beings cannot create God in themselves by uniting Spirit (Shakti) and matter (Shiva) contrary to most mystics, only evolving to Godhood creates God. One can attain the God Within by uniting spirit and matter in the human, through the Involutionary Inward Path, but that is not God, that is “mere” Enlightenment with the Spirit Within.

When Spirit activates Its own matter to Godhood then Godhood is attained, and not before. This is the true union desired, beyond dualism.

Evola talked about the two points in time, the previous one, and the next following one which yearns unconsciously for the Absolute. We would say that “yearning unconsciously” defines the Spirit, or the Will to Godhood, which activates life in the Kosmos.

Comparison of the Theoevolutionary Church and Church Theology

If we examine some of the synchronic Councils, the theology and hermeneutics of the Church and compare them to our theology, in general we arrive at the following:

Jesus Christ was both divine and human, divine in having the Spirit of God Within (as we all do) and human in body. There is a difference between Jesus the Nazarene mystic and Christ or Christos, which means enlightenment. The name Gautama Buddha defined the same difference between Gautama the prince of northern India, and the Buddha, the enlightened. These terms are reserved for those who have realized Christ or Buddha within themselves. This same enlightenment is the goal of one of the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church (TC), that is, the Involutionary Inward Path. This goal gives a strong affirmation to ecumenism since all the involutionary religions have this same goal.

Regarding the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit do not share the same substance or energy since the Father “only” defines the Supreme Object God and is therefore Absolute Truth abstractly, and is not substance or energy. The Son represents the Supreme Body of God, and the Holy Spirit represents the Will or Seed Of God.

The Spirit is preexistent coming from God. The Soul is the Zenith of the material mind in life. The Spirit on the other hand is created through God and is passed on with the material reproduction of the parents—this is how we would interpret metensomatosis, or reincarnation.

In regarding “free will,” original sin would be the departure from the Will to Godhood or the Spirit Within, which activates life to evolve to God. “Good” conforms to the Divine Will to Godhood, “evil” does not. “Grace” can be helpful but not always necessary on the Path to Godhood.

The Theoevolutionary Church has joined (called the Twofold Path) the Evolutionary Outward Path to the Traditional Involutionary Inward Path of all the revealed religions. The God seen from Within by Plato, Christ, Buddha and others is the God we must evolve to, beginning with material evolution on up to attaining Godhood in the Kosmos. The Inward Path leads to ecumenical bonding, and the Outward Path allows the variety and separation necessary for evolution of all the people to Godhood. This can be enhanced through Federalism and Revitalized Conservatism.

God cannot be conceived by human beings or fully conceived until Godhood Itself is reached. Only the Mind of God knows Itself fully, no one else does.

God is the Object, the goal, the desire or attainment of all things.

All things have their origin in God and are connected to God by the Spirit Within which is the Seed, Spark or Will of God.

Contrary to Tradition it is not the First Thing born of God but the Last Thing Evolved toward Godhood that is the most like God.

We venerate God by evolving to God, it is a necessarily secondary thing to “understand” the Spirit of God Within, and therefore understanding alone is not the sole purpose of religion.

The whole world cannot be described as a divine object, the world contains objects trying to evolve to the Divine Object God with varying degrees of success.

The Soul is part of nature, as, for example, the Soul is the Zenith of the human mind. It is the Spirit that is suspended between nature and spirit, the Spirit is both immanent and transcendent. But the Spirit is not seeking to “escape” the body since it is the body that supplies the vehicle for the Spirit to evolve to Godhood. The Spirit is not “fallen,” the Spirit is not in exile.

The Spirit in man contains much knowledge but does not contain all knowledge, only God from whence the Spirit came contains all knowledge.

God is a Supreme Object first and Absolute Knowledge second since evolution of the object comes before knowledge of the object.

Everything in the world is not suffering although there is suffering in the world. Affirmation of the Spirit or Will to Godhood leads to the sacred desire behind evolution and the fulfillment of desire, not the suppression of desire. Profane desire is devolutionary and entropic.

Defining the Divine

There is no real power in definitions alone, the elements of an object do not derive from its definition, the definition derives from the elements and from the object.

Tradition has made a God of definition rather than making a God of the object, and what wrong paths this has taken.

The Spirit is first the Supreme Substance and second the Supreme Principle, which activates material life to evolve to Godhood.

We are, again, speaking of objects here, with evolution moving toward the Supreme Object God, we are not mainly talking about ideas, principles or even non-material wisdom.

The wisdom of Godhood may be beyond our comprehension at this time but it exists in the highest natural order and not outside the natural order.

Religion exists beyond the human mind

According to Eliade all religious systems map the human mind, which he says explains their similarities (I think Jung would agree). But religions are more than the human mind.

The Soul is the zenith of the human mind, and it is true that religions become systems here in the mind. But the Spirit Within transcends the Soul-Mind even as it is always immanent in the human body activating the body to evolve to Godhood.

Therefore, the religion of the Evolutionary Christian Church includes the structure of the human mind in regard to the Soul Mind, but the human body also contains the mysterious Spirit which activates the Soul Mind and body to evolve through material evolution to God.

This is how religion does more than map the human mind.

Thinking alone will not bring us to God

It is not attachment to qualities of life that “defiles” the Spirit, it is the human attachment to only to the Soul (the Inward Path) which damages the activation of life to Godhood by the Spirit-Will. This is a transvaluation of Tradition.  This was a Great Spiritual Blockade.

Thinking or meditating in the Involutionary Inward Path can bring deep knowledge of the Soul and Spirit Within, which are closest to Godhood, but this knowledge, or Enlightenment, is not God.

The world of God and man are separated by evolution first and knowledge second. Thinking alone will not bring us to God, material-spiritual evolution in the Evolutionary Outward Path will bring us to Godhood.

One with the Spirit

If we are one with the Spirit, the Will to Godhood, then everything will automatically, or mysteriously, or rationally turn out right. The question is how does one become one with the Spirit?

Courageously discovering how evolution works is one of the best ways to see how the life-activating Spirit works. Then we harmonize with evolution as best our knowledge can discover. We can also seek contact with the Spirit and the Soul within to see what wisdom they can bring of Godhood.

We can coordinate involution and evolution.