Conservatives and Libertarians

In “Redeeming The Time,” Russell Kirk said that libertarians live by one simple principle, the notion of personal freedom as the whole end of the civil order, and even of human existence.

They carry the 19^th century abstractions of John Stuart Mill on liberty to absurdity.

The only thing true conservatives share with libertarians is a detestation of collectivism, and they share nothing else.

There is no great gulf between libertarianism and libertinism.

The final emancipation for religion, convention, custom and order is annihilation.

Liberty and justice are established only after order is secured, without the state man's life work would be brutal and short.

The three imaginations

Of the three imaginations defined by Russell Kirk, who was often referring to Edmund Burke, that is, the moral imagination, idyllic imagination and diabolic imagination, only the moral imagination is affirmed by Kirk and the paleoconservatives. But we can affirm all three.

We have not lost the transcendent end goal, which would define decadence. But our end goal is the Zenith of Evolution, where true Godhood is attained in material-supermaterial evolution. This is where we apply our “moral imagination.” Whereas the transcendent moral goal of traditionalism, at least esoterically, where it really matters, is the Father Within, the Soul, reached through the Involutionary Inward Path, by ridding the body of all material desires.

But our “idyllic imagination” relates to the Zenith of Material-Supermaterial Evolution, which must not be mistaken for mere humanism or idealism, it is a transcendent moral order that brings us to Godhood in evolution.

Our “diabolic imagination” relates to civilizing the beast of materialism into the great goal of Godhood. The material-supermaterial world has been defined as an evil beast by the Inward Path when it is in fact the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood.

Having the use of all three imaginations gives us an expanded imagination. Both the Inward and Outward Path are affirmed in the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church.

The Leveler

President Obama and the democrats are mainly levelers, as Russell Kirk defined them in “Redeeming The Time,” always trying to pull down the prosperous classes through crushing taxation to pay for “entitlements” for an abstraction called the poor. This hurts the poor most by causing oppression of industry and commerce.

Things seem to be moving toward the bread and circuses Roman emperor who united with the mob to pull down the propertied classes with taxation until the ancient economy collapsed---the frontiers could not even be defended.

Many wealthy people are paying almost half their income on taxes. It is a struggle between the forces of individual achievement and the forces of equality.

Eric Voegelin said a tolerably just society is one where aspiring natures are free to exercise their talents, but the large majority of people, who desire merely a quiet life, are secured against oppression by the aspiring natures.

Are we headed for a Latin American brand of democracy---with class against class, with the economy periodically ruined by inflation---and with a semblance of order restored from time to time by the military?  Better to have our original constitutional vision of small independent states protected by a light federalism, and with economic nationalism.

We can know the object on a shifting evolutionary scale

Rather than saying we can only see with our senses and can never fully know the object, it would have been better for Kant to say we can know the object on a shifting evolutionary scale, from the simple senses to the super senses. Then, with enough evolution of the senses, the “object” can eventually be fully known by the senses, that is, known exactly for what the object is in all its Absolute Truth. But this can be known only by the highest evolved object, or objects, in the cosmos, Godhood, who can see the Absolute Truth of all Objects, as nearly as possible.

It was an illusion to think that there ever could be something other than the senses seeing the object or the super-senses seeing the super-object. Ideas exists in the body and in the mind and not outside the body and the mind. Godhood Itself is a Body and a Mind, Godhood is not an idea outside of the Body and the Mind.

Essence, such as the Spirit-Will, is a living object and can be super-material and is never not material. Existence is material and super-material. So let us not look for essences that are immaterial or not connected to the senses or the super-senses of the body or the super-body. We see other objects with less or more clarity with our senses or super-senses depending on our level of evolution, and we never see more than that, and in this sense there is no more than what we see with our senses or super-senses.

Godhood is a Supreme Living Object, not an immaterial idea or immaterial essence, and only Godhood can see Absolute Truth because Godhood has evolved Absolute Senses within an Absolute Body, and we have yet to do so, so we see less of the truth of an object than Godhood does.

Is complexity better than simplicity in evolution?

Is complexity better than simplicity in evolution, as Teilhard De Chardin suggests? The question should be is higher evolution better than lower evolution? Higher evolution can be complex or simple. Higher evolution is defined as higher intelligence, consciousness, beauty, goodness and power, among other things.  Often these things are more complex than simple, but simplicity sometimes refines and civilizes complexity, which can become slow, difficult, even decayed.

Aristotle thought “motion” was caused by incomplete entities striving for completion, moving from diversity to simplicity and arriving at a completely simple, motionless state. An interesting precursor dynamic to Evolutionary Christianity, but the the motionless goal seems to have been more of an idea than a living object.  Godhood as a goal is not the end of motion, the Great Union of Godhood results in the Great Motion of the Transformation of Godhood into a new Kosmic Godhood whose beings then strive back to Godhood, activated from within by the Spirit-Will and shaped from without by evolution.

The Acts That Bring being Forth

(To Aquinas and Heidegger)

“Being,” or Godhood is not the act that brings being forth, that is the mission, drive, or activation of the Spirit-Will. But Being is an Object, a Supreme Object or Objects which like all life are activated by the Spirit-Will-Godhood.

The Spirit-Will, for all intents and purposes, is what brings beings forth, but the Spirit-Will activates life for the purpose of activating life to evolve to Godhood, which means that the Spirit-Will is not Godhood, the Spirit-Will seeks Godhood, this explains Its purpose and life's purpose.

It is the the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, which is material or supermaterial, that activates rather than "brings forth" the new cosmos.

Absolute Truth, Beauty and Goodness define Being or Godhood. Perhaps only Godhood has the Mind-Soul, Spirit-Will and Body to see the Absolutes. We must evolve to higher and higher levels to not only understand the Absolutes but to Become the Absolutes, when and if the Supreme Object Godhood is attained in evolution.

Absolute Truth therefore does not "stand outside of Being" or Godhood, It exists in the Mind-Soul Of Godhood, and the Mind-Soul of Godhood stands within the Supreme Body of Godhood, and the Absolute Spirit-Will also stands within the Supreme Body of Godhood. Truth is a property of objects of Being, Being is not a property of Truth, and Being is a Supreme Object, or Objects evolved to.

Godhood is a Supreme Object or Objects containing all these things. Human beings also contain these things, body, mind-soul and spirit-will, but at a far lower level of evolution. This is what I think is meant by human's being the likeness of God.

What is history?

I disagree with Spengler that World history is the biography of the rise and fall of civilizations (The Decline of the West). History is the biography of the evolution of life to Godhood. Life rises, life falls, life advances, but the overall thrust of history, not only on earth but in the Kosmos, is the evolution to Godhood. This is the sacred view of history, seeing only human history can be a truncated or even profane view of history.

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.

On The Twofold Path

It's not the will of God it is the Will to God that is the more accurate phrase. We evolve to Godhood, the Will is the Spirit-Will within, which activates life to evolve to Godhood, working along with natural selection. Let's not mistake the Spirit-Will for Godhood.

The evolution to Godhood is the concern of the Evolutionary Outward Path. Jesus Christ, and traditional religions, were concerned with the Involutionary Inward Path to the Father Within, the Soul State, which is nevertheless not Godhood, it gives the desire-free virtual bliss of Godhood as a reminder of the great goal of desire-fulfilled Godhood.

The importance of the Inward Path has to be measured with the future Godhood of the Outward Path. One must not get in the way of the other. The “innovations” of the Outward Path don't change the importance of the conservative, permanent, inward things.  But then nothing is more permanent than the Spirit-Will which activates life to Godhood, and this too must be conserved as a permanent thing.

Religion has been too separate from the earth, too separate from material things, and this has had much to do with the slow decline of religion, perhaps with the exception of fundamentalists who nevertheless seem closed to the Outward Path. Rather than strict humanitarianism, which denies the divine and declares humans as all there is, Evolutionary Christianity affirms the divine goal of Godhood in evolution. The Twofold Path addresses this concern, it can save religion by including the real world, and teleological evolution.  But most importantly, it can open up the spiritual blockade against evolving to Godhood.

No Phenomenal-noumenal distinction

I don't see a phenomenal-noumenal distinctions, there is only material and supermaterial. This means there is no duality in metaphysics. This should also end the separation between science and religion, and perhaps between reason and faith.

Esoteric “concealment” is more the inability to discern the supermaterial, which is therefore confounded with non-material and spiritual. The supermaterial is there, we just don't see it.

There is also no reason to esoterically separate the phenomenal and the noumenal into genders, as both the East and West does. This usually disparages the material world and lowers one of the genders metaphysically, which then affects human gender.

Evolving male and female life is not dualistic, their union is a lower form of monotheism, leading to more gender and more unions evolving all the way to the supermaterial Godhood.

Murdoch's claim to be conservative is a sham

I find myself more irritated by the media than I usually am watching Murdoch's destruction of the 168 year old newspaper, “News of the World,” even if the paper was vulgar. Hacking into the private lives of citizens to sell more newspapers would not have happened if we had not lost the two principle that Russell Kirk said the West depends upon, archiac as they may sound: the spirit of the gentleman and religion. The rise of Murdach and his ilk has happened along with the destruction of these Western values.

Murdoch's claim to be conservative is a sham, the neoconservatism of Fox News isn't conservatism. True conservatism subordinates economics to higher ends, economics is only a means to the development and well-being of the community. Murdoch and his media empire are busy reshaping and modifying the public mind against traditional economic nationalism into a global monster of decadence and destruction.

Can we recover? T. S. Eliot said there is no such thing as a lost cause, defeat and dismay can be a preface to our eventual victory. Some people say we should welcome the fall of the West so that a new healthy culture can rise. Some men advocate totalitarian racialism, seeking to exclusively save the people of the West. But there are too many people, to many cultures, too many races on earth to expect exclusive rights for any one people. We need to shrink back to small, independent states, virtual ethnostates, for all people, all races, protected with a light federalism. Nothing else seems realistic.

Involution and Outvolution

Ends or goals in teleology can be seen as natural principles and as a central explanation for life in the Kosmos. Life and the Kosmos are purposive. The Zenith of Evolution relates to everything in the Kosmos.

Ethics has a teleological ethos in Evolutionary Christianity (EC). Right and wrong relate to evolution and devolution. The vitalistic activation of biology by the Spirit-Will is teleological. Evolution and natural selection shape life from without, and the Spirit-Will activates life from within.

But as science developed it rejected teleological explanations. Science will not agree to a teleological or vitalistic element in evolution, it rejects the activation of life finding its way through evolution from the simple to the complex all the way to Godhood.

Even tough it may sound awkward at first, I think I will introduce the word “Outvolution” to include teleology and vitalism which the word “evolution” rejects. The word Outvolution also balances better with Involution. The outward going Evolutionary Outward Path, and the inward going Involutionary Inward Path are then affirmed in the Twofold Path in EC.

The Gordian Knot of Ontology

To many philosophers, Being is thinking. That is, at least definitions, principles and equations first seem to require the mind to see and know. But this is not Being.

Others seem to prefer a principle as Being which is mindless, or existing without a mind or body.

Being defined as Godhood has a Mind and Body, as we do, but far more evolved at the Zenith of Evolution. This means that only the Mind of Godhood can accurately define the Mind and Body of Godhood with Absolute Truth.

Taking the mind only as Being, or taking a principle as Being, is less than half a God. Minds and principles are incomplete without a body. The bias against the material in favor of the non-material is strong in philosophy and theology.

It often seems that thinkers prefer the dazzle of complication to unadorned simplicity. Perhaps philosophy, like other things, reaches a stage of overcomplexity until the complexity becomes an impediment to truth, than it reverts back to simplicity.

Theological materialism defines a supermaterial Godhood which is evolved to from the material to the supermaterial. Perhaps this is more like cutting the Gordian Knot than disentangling ontology.

Reinterpreting Hinduism

I reinterpret the Hindu “Prakriti” as all there is. “Purusha” is then the offspring of Prakriti. These can be seen as “substance” and “essence” and of the same materiality as the rest of the material world, but at different levels of supermaterial evolution.

The Supreme Gods and Goddesses of Prakriti unite in creating Godhood at the Zenith of Evolution. Godhood can then be defined as “Universal Being” but this definition or principle is not Godhood, the Supreme Object of the Great Union is Godhood.

The doctrine of Universal Being or non-duality attempts to define God but defines only the principle or denotation of God and this is not the Supreme Object Godhood.

Only Godhood can accurately define Godhood, no human mystic can, Godhood must be evolved to far beyond the human mystic mind.

The principle of non-duality in Vedanta is really the human Soul-State free of material desires and is not Godhood.

The world does not evolve from matter to spirit and then stop there at Nothing, the world evolves from supermateriality to materiality then back to supermateriality again, endlessly, with Godhood occasionally attained at the Zenith Of Evolution. Only a principle or definition can be a nothing, or no-object.

Vedanta, like the Revealed Religions, affirms only the Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul Within and it does not contain the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution to Godhood. Evolutionary Christianity contains both paths in the Twofold Path. Call it a Western yoga, requiring Western knowledge and wisdom, as well as Eastern knowledge and wisdom, and also future knowledge and wisdom yet to come.

No Unbridgeable Gap

Religion has insisted on an unbridgeable gap between the spiritual and materiel, between God and man. Religion has insisted that men cannot reach God by way of material life.

Religion has said that man can be filled with God by emptying himself of all material desires. This symbolizes and identifies with God but this is not Godhood. Involution to the Soul-Within is this way confused with evolution to Godhood.

Man has blocked his evolution to Godhood by insisting that God cannot be reached by material means. This theological error needs to be corrected so that the true destiny of life in the Kosmos can be fulfilled by evolving to Godhood.

There is no real gap between the spiritual and material when the spiritual is understood to be supermaterial. Then the theological materialism of Evolutionary Christianity may be understood.

Kosmogonia

Adapting and changing Teilhard's terms to the philosophy of the Theoevolutionary Church, the “primal point” would be the beginning of a new cosmos, which then begin the long evolutionary path to Godhood. The “omega point” would be Godhood. And the “alpha point” would be the stopping of evolution in such things as great black holes, where life leftover from an older cosmos eventually has another chance to evolve to Godhood. Godhood needs to be independent of entropy, the collapse of all forces. A new kind of cosmic Godhood emerges. Godhood transcends many of the building blocks that composed It.

This cosmogony, or to use the more graphic Greek word, Kosmogonia, is not like Teilhard's cosmogony. Teilhard's omega point resembles more the destination of  involution to the Soul-Within than evolution outward to Godhood. The outward goal of Godhood is confounded with the inward path to the Soul-Within, evolution is twisted to resemble involution. Both paths, the Inward and Outward Paths are necessary in the Twofold Path. One without the other makes an incomplete religion.

The evolution to Godhood relates not merely to individual men, or individual mystics, but to groups, small states, ethnostates, moving at their own pace.  Evolution takes place most vitally at the group level. No one group has exclusive rights to evolve. Imperialism is stopped in favor of creative, independent, evolving states, with light federalism protecting their independence and evolution over time, bonded by religion, without which no real culture or civilization can rise or last for long.

Being and beings

Thinking belongs to Being and in some cases being, it is part of Being and being, but thinking is not itself alone Being or being.

Philosophers and theologians have often virtually defined thinking as a Being in itself, and this takes thinkers away from the living object, which can lose the object in abstractions.

Thinking is not required to bring Being or being into presence, Being and being are present and exists without thinking about them.

However, the fullness of truth and thought, the "absolute" about Being, can only be seen and known by Godhood at the zenith of evolution, lesser beings must evolve to higher gradations of truth to know what Godhood knows.

Being derives from being, in an ongoing birth and evolution of various cosmos, and there appears to be no beginning and no end. The Spirit-Will is the activating engine from within working with evolution from without. Since the Spirit-Will seeks Godhood by riding the vehicle of material life in evolution, the Spirit-Will is not Godhood.

There seems to be an eternal balancing of the dyad, the penultimate Gods and Goddesses, the Spirit Will and the Primal Material, which are never separate.

The Third Birth

The movement from the natural material self to the spiritual self has been called the second birth. The Evolutionary Outward Path in Evolutionary Christianity defines the third birth, that is, when the Spirit-Will is recognized and affirmed as the activating force of evolution to Godhood.

The third birth is really part of the natural first birth and is symbolically called the third birth to distinguish from the first and second births.

The second birth can blind men to the Spirit-Will by blocking all the material desires, as we attempt to attain the bliss of the Soul-State, which is not the destination of the Outward Path. The second birth Soul-State is a virtual and symbolic reminder and identification with what Godhood will be like when Godhood is attained in evolution,

The Garden of Eden is the story of the second birth of the immaterial Soul-State, when men woke up to their material desires. This is transvalued in the third birth of the Outward Path. Here material life is not seen as evil but as the vehicle by which we evolve to Godhood. In the Outward Path the devolution and stagnation of evolution is evil.

But the two births are included in the Twofold Path of Evolutionary Christianity. One without the other, that is, turning ones back on the past, present or future makes an incomplete religion. The future is built on the past and present in the Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism of Evolutionary Christianity.

The battle between God and the Devil, the world and the word, the material and the spiritual is civilized and synthesized in Evolutionary Christianity; we need to continue our evolution to Godhood. As in Evolutionary Realism in art, the imperceptible needs to be made perceptible.

How Anthropology Is Theology

The Church is literally the “body” in that we evolve in the material and supermaterial world to Godhood as evolving physical objects.

Anthropology is theology in the sense that living objects evolve to supermaterial Godhood. This is why sociobiologists, physicists and various engineers are included in the Outward Path of the Theoevolutionary Church.

The Church needs to know where it is going with futurism as eschatology, not so much of end times as the Zenith of Evolution, and then of ongoing new Kosmic Godhood.

Teilhard's Biggest Error

Even though he made a valiant attempt to include evolution in Christianity, the biggest error of  Teilhard De Chardin was in confounding involution with evolution. Modern evolutionary theologians make the same mistake.

Christ is not evolved to, Christ is involved to, by way of the Inward Path. The Christ-State, or the Father-Within, is attained inwardly by blocking all material desires, and by arriving at the Soul, which, at least symbolically, exists at the Zenith of the Mind.

Evolution is the work of the Spirit-Will, not the Soul-State, which exists, at least symbolically, at the Zenith of the Soul. The Spirit-Will activates material life to evolve to supermaterial Godhood, by way of the Outward Path.

It is not Christ but Godhood which is reached at the real “Omega Point” of evolution in the entire Kosmos. The Christ-State is a virtual or symbolic state of identification with Godhood, relating to that great time when evolution is fulfilled, not denied. To stop at the Christ-State is to die to the world, as Christ (and Buddha and others) asked us to do. Never-the-less, both Paths are affirmed in the Twofold Path of Evolutionary Christianity.

There can be freedom in the determinism of evolving life, as man cooperates with or harmonizes with the evolutionary process. Research in this process is an ongoing need, as we are transformed through evolution. (see Raymond Cattell regarding preliminary research in sociobiology)

Political philosophy matters, and Teilhard's involutionary and convergent religious view leads to collectivism and centralization, whereas the evolutionary and divergent religious view of Evolutionary Christianity leads to de-centralization and divergence, with only a light federalism to protect the divergence and de-centralization, and most importantly, to protect evolution in its long path to Godhood.