100% of Everything is Stupid

I suppose it comes back to Sturgeon's Law, that 90% of everything is crap.

Including Sturgeon's Law.

Oh? 

Yes, because everything is ninety-eight percent crap. 

Go on.

Strictly speaking, the figure is relative. For example, for a person with an IQ of 100, only half of everything is stupid. But just two standard deviations above the norm (130)  renders 97.8% everything stupid. This is one reason why it is so easy for an intelligent person to be an atheist, because most everything is so stupid.

But atheism is stupid.

Correct. And only an imbecile would say that IQ is everything. Just as reason unaware of its limitations becomes irrational, intelligence unaware of other critical variables, modes, dimensions, and degrees of consciousness renders himself an idiot.  

Moreover, crap is just worthless. What about an intelligence turned toward the diabolical?

I see what you mean. It's as if we need to supplement the standard Bell Curve with another one in a negative space, so to speak. 

Take an evil-doer with an above average IQ of, say, 130. Turned toward the diabolical end of things, we would say it is negative 130. Clearly, most of the real trouble in the world isn't caused by low IQ hordes but by high negative IQ types. 

That is correct. Low IQ is self limiting. Unless those with greater intelligence decide to unleash it upon us. Not that the people who run the Democrat party are geniuses, but they are certainly more intelligent than the street criminals they are foisting on us. 

Say what you want about George Soros, but he's more intelligent than George Floyd or Alvin Bragg or Kim Foxx. Antifa only exists because more (minus) intelligent people want it to.

With this in mind, let's get back to yesterday's subject: why religion is so stupid. Thanks to Petey's unusually voluble insights, we see that it is no longer a mystery: any idiot can see it. But the same idiot cannot see, let alone comprehend, Aquinas, or Schuon, or Garrigou-Lagrange, or any number of luminaries.

It's very much as if the person who sees that 97.8% of everything is stupid, doesn't see that 2.2% that surpasses him. (And please don't take any of these numbers literally -- I'm only using them for purposes of illustration.)

Now, God is not only infinitely intelligent, he is the very ground and possibility of both intelligence as such and of intelligibility. Therefore, if you're God -- assuming my math is correct -- then 100% of everything is stupid.

Recall Jesus' question, Why do you call me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. One could equally  ask, Why do you call me intelligent? No one is intelligent but God. Same vis-a-vis beauty and any other transcendental.

Why do you call me evil? No one is evil but...

I see where you're going there, but Satan can't literally be "one," since he is the very anti-principle of division, scattering, entropy, and chaos. 

And if your other insights are correct, then Satan must have the highest possible negative IQ conceivable, even if one is silly enough to believe he doesn't literally exist. Principles are principles. We only dwell in them.

Now we're in a better position to revisit yesterday's subject of why exoteric religion can at times appear so stupid. The question is no longer, How can that be?, but How could it not be?  

And as I've said previously on many occasions, one of the surprises of my life has been that the intellectual depth is right there on the surface, hiding in plain sight.

In the past I'ver used the analogy of a hybrid SACD, in which the CD layer is on the surface, but the SACD layer is deeper. In order to access the latter -- which encodes exponentially more information -- you need an SACD player. 

Same with scripture. Obviously. For example, I just finished reading Dennis Prager's line-by-line exegesis of Deuteronomy, which follows his previous stabs at Genesis and Exodus. And he's just one person. Imagine all the previous brilliant interpreters.

Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax -- YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT I'M LIVING IN THE FUCKING PAST!  

Speaking of which, I am told that the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is 115, which is to say, a standard deviation above the norm. I took statistics back in the 1980s, but if I remember correctly, this would mean that 84% of these Jews have above average intelligence, and that if I were one of them I could figure out exactly what percentage of them has an IQ >130, but it's a lot.

Why then are so many of them Democrats? 

Prager actually addresses this in the book, but suffice it to say that they're as Jewish as fucking Tevye, only displacing certain religioius categories and impulses to the secular dimension.  

So, what are you saying? When you turn progressive you turn in your library card? You get a new license? You stop being Jewish?

Don't ask me, I'm out of my depth. But maybe IQ goes from positive to negative: 

Much of modern Jewish history is a history of Jews abandoning God, the Torah, and the covenant andf replacing them with other gods, beliefs, and other "torahs." Whenever Jews did this... they created or joined new substitute religions: secular ones. Virtually every "-ism" of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century was a substitute for biblical religion. And nearly every one of them -- Marxism, communism, secular humanism, socialism, among others -- was founded and/or disproportionately led by secular Jews or non-Jewish descendents of Jews who abandoned Judaism (Prager).

For example, remember my secular Jewish uncle by marriage, the eminent University of Chicago historian? Red diaper baby. Nor, for that matter, did he ever stop being one... 

Suns, Planets, and Alternate Universes

We ended yesterday's post back at the beginning, with Schuon's observation that "to change one's religion is to change planets." While he doesn't say so, I believe he would have meant going from, say, Earth to Mars or Venus -- in other words, different planets but same solar system, let alone universe. For example, I very much enjoyed my recent trip to Planet Judaism, but then again, nothing increases one's faith so much as contact with the faithless.

One Schuon's central teachings is that the orthodox religions all orbit, as it were, around the same central sun. God is one by definition, and mankind is one as a consequence. However, on each planet the variables differ, e.g., heat, light, gravity, etc., and so too with religion. (I might add that in this analogy, some planets are by definition closer than others to the Sun.)

What are some of the important religious variables? Let's see, off the top of my head, God, heaven, grace, scripture, avatar, sacred, profane, sin, salvation, judgment, atonement, union... Even fictional religions such as Scientology or Mormonism partake of these in some form or fashion. (Different subject, but this goes to why even a made up religion can produce good people.)

Now, leftism isn't so much fictional as inverted. For this reason, it isn't so much a different planet as an alternate universe. To the extent that it shares the variables, the variables are upside down and inside out. For example, there are still avatars, but the vicious and petty kind, like an Obama or Carter (just wait until the latter croaks, and you will cringe at the nauseating paeans to this nasty specimen). 

Which is why it is becoming more of a struggle for a good person to exist on the left (assuming awareness of what the left is; many folks such as my mother-in-law have no earthly idea that this is not the party of JFK or even Clinton, rather, of Reverend Sharpton and Saint George Floyd).

To be sure, there are obnoxious religions, but I can't think of any that come right out celebrate falsehood (AKA relativism), ugliness, and amorality. And even then, the left only pretends at amoralism, since no one in American life is more puritanical and less tolerant than the modern wokester. 

But this is a boring subject, and besides, I'm preaching to the coonverted. Consider our trolls. Despite their superficial differences, they share one main characteristic: they are impervious to even low-level truth and fact, let alone, the stuff Bob dishes out on a daily basis. In this regard, I feel sorry for them, because they will never get the yoke, despite how easy it is.

At any rate, I'm going to change subjects to another essay that punched me right in the nous and made me see stars (in this universe), called Deficiencies in the World of Faith. Lot's of fine religious insultainment. Assuming he's not talking about us. 

And I'll be honest: I never quite know if I'm in on the joke or if he's snickering at me. It reminds me of the old problem of Protestantism (or of predestination, to be precise), of having no way of knowing whether or not one is among the saved. So one is always looking for clues in order to ameliorate the spiritual insecurity and ontological anxiety.

Are we among the Spiritual Elite? The trouble is, even if this were true, I certainly wouldn't say it out loud, but I can't even think it, knowing myself as I do. But are there spiritual elites? Of course: saints, doctors, and mystics. We don't confuse them with the central sun -- that would be cultism -- but they're closer to the sun than I am, thank God.

Having said that, try this on for size:

One may be astonished and even scandalized at the frequency, in religious climates, of more or less unintelligent opinions and attitudes, let it be said without euphemism.

Now, this is just true. The stupidity of exoteric religion is what kept me out of it for most of my life, and it is no less stupid today than it has ever been.  

In its favor, it is far less stupid than secular leftism, and let's not even revisit the ugliness and depravity of the latter. 

But why must exoteric religiosity be so unintelligent?

Because people are unintelligent. 

Bingo, apparently, albeit with many qualifications that we'll specify as we proceed, since there is a more or less infinite distance between the "unintelligent Intelligence" (so to speak) of tradition, and the stupid unintelligence of the left. The former are on my team, the latter warriors from a different universe.

The goal of any big-box religion "is to save the largest possible number of souls and not to satisfy the need for causal explanations of an intellectual elite." You have only to sit through a homily or sermon to know that they do not address intelligence as such:

In conformity with its end and with the capacity of the majority, the religious message is basically addressed to intuition, sentiment and imagination, and then to the will and to reason to the extent that the human condition requires it... 

The message still hits on all the important variables alluded to above, e.g., "the reality of God, the immortality of the soul and of [the] ensuing consequences for man, and... offers man the means of saving himself." 

This can't help sounding more than a bit condescending, but again, you know it's true, he whispered creepily. For this reason I never recommend the blog to everyday believers who are intellectually satisfied, let alone to the typical nonbeliever who is so intellectually negligible as to actually be satisfied by progressivism or scientism or secularism and all those other universes.

Has this gone on long enough already? Speaking only for myself, I would put it this way: yes, it's inevitably a bit cringeworthy what passes for religion. 

But it is even more cringeworthy to imagine that I am superior to the average believer. It's just that the majority is always going to be either disinterested in metaphysics or incapable of it, and while intelligence is far from everything, it has its rights. Nor do we need to look far to see that, for example,

In the Scriptures, intelligence -- or what appeals to it -- is found primarily in the symbolism, which offers all that the loftiest minds could need...

Moreover, if metaphysics is your thing, it's right there as well: for it is "necessarily found in the dogmas themselves inasmuch as they are universal symbols." 

I would never say that there exist "two truths," but I have become increasingly comfortable practicing my religion one way, and practicing the blog in another way, while knowing full well that both (to say nothing of one's prayer life) all circle the same sun. Put it this way: exoterism and esoterism are complementary, not opposites, let alone different universes. 

God does not ask for the submission of intelligence, but rather an intelligent submission.

Ultimate Reality is a Fractally Organized Motion Picture or Something

The following passing comment by Schuon caught my eye. It is in the context of a discussion of how the Pure Absolute necessarily takes on this or that form in a particular religion. 

I say "necessarily" because I don't see a loophole here, as comforting as it might be to believe one's own religion is the Pure Absolute. But even St. Thomas cautioned against this, what with his radical apophaticism. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he did say this:

This is the final human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know God.

Having said that, I don't think such an esoteric doctrine is appropriate for all and sundry. Rather, only for the pneumatic weirdo type discussed in yesterday's post, the "man-center" who is "determined by the intellect" as opposed to the "man-periphery, who is more or less accident." 

And by no means is Schuon trying to downgrade the practice of religion. I myself only practice one because Schuon says I must. And no, this doesn't mean that I only do so based on his authority. Not at all. Rather, it is because I see and understand his point entirely. I'm not a cultist. 

Ultimately it has to do with that distinction between the Pure Absolute, AKA Beyond-Being, and Being. Again, this is the First Line, and once seen it cannot be unseen, at least by me. For me it literally makes perfect nonsense, except now it is up to me to situate the "perfect sense" of religion into this necessary context. 

In practical terms it means I must situate Catholicism in this "deeper" context, which is bound to clash with anyone who thinks that Catholicism is already literally the deepest context. 

Well, the latter is also correct, so long as we're talking about the Being side of things. I've mentioned before that the deepest structure of deep structures must be a kind of eternally dynamic perichoresis between Beyond-Being and Being.  

I've also said that I suspect the Trinity is revealed to us precisely in order to help us get a handle on this deeeeep structure. I don't recall ever devoting an entire post to this subject, because I don't know that I've ever thought it through completely, nor if it is even entirely thinkable; surely not, although we can try, can we not?

For Christians the Trinity is revealed to us in the form of "Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit." At the same time, however, there is nothing about any Trinity per se in scripture, rather, it is something the early fathers had to piece together and infer from various clues left to us. 

The bottom and/or top line for us is that Ultimate Reality is at once radically one and more than one -- not quantitatively, of course, but qualitatively. 

I like to pull back and open the aperture of our lens as wide as humanly possible, to an f-stop of, say, plus or minus 1/∞, in order to allow for the maximum light. But apparently there are tradeoffs, because we also want the sharpest possible image and the greatest depth of field. Where is Robin Starfish when you need him?

Maybe the photography analogy is no good. Obviously it's a motion picture.

Is it obvious?

Good point. Is God -- or the Ultimate Real, AKA O -- really immutable? Or does O change? Or both -- even though that would seem to violate the law of noncontradiction?

In my opinion we have to say "both." Moreover, I believe this must be one of points of the revelation of the Trinity, since... there are many ways to put it, but the Son is always returning to the Father via the Spirit, and the number 3 itself implies the return to Unity... if I can find the reference... something to the effect that if 1 is Unity and Principle, 2 is duality and Manifestation, so 3 is the return to the Principle.

My blood sugar is a tad low at the moment, but I do vaguely recall an old post touching on the idea of considering the Father as a way of talking about "Beyond-Being" and the Son as "Being." By no means is this a perfect analogy, nor can it be perfectly harmonized with Christian metaphysics... unless we consider Beyond-Being and Being not as a duality, but indeed an always dynamic tri-complementarity. Then I think it works, at least if your blood sugar is low enough.  

Let's consider the following passage by Schuon, and see if we can't tweak it a bit: 

The “Father” is God as such, that is as metacosm; the “Son” is God insofar as He manifests Himself in the world, hence in the macrocosm; and the “Holy Spirit” is God insofar as He manifests Himself in the soul, hence in the microcosm.

That is a fruitful way of looking at it, but I doubt Schuon ever thought or even knew about fractals, and I believe that if we think of the Trinity as a single substance fractally organized, this helps us to grasp the idea that Being is always dialectically related to Beyond-Being, and vice versa. But it's not a dualistic photograph, rather, a trialistic motion picture.  

Elsewhere Schuon writes that  

The vertical perspective -- Beyond-Being, Being, Existence -- envisages the hypostases as “descending” from Unity or from the Absolute -- or from the Essence it could be said -- which means that it envisages the degrees of Reality. 

Except that Christianity specifically rules out such an emanationist metaphysic. Rather, it would horizontalize this scheme and say that all three are always involved as coequal branches of divine government.

I'm just about out of time, and I never even got to the passage mentioned in the first paragraph, which was that "to change one's religion is to change planets." Moreover, I had intended to write of how this applies to contemporary politics, i.e., what planet the left is from. It'll have to wait...

Surrounded by Accidental Humans

Life can be a tricksy business when you're not like the Others, because it's difficult to know whether one is better or worse, superior or inferior, sane or crazy. 

There's always a vertical scale, even -- or especially -- for those who deny it, for example, woke relativists who are the fastest to cancel those who differ from them. They never explain why My Truth can't be that men aren't women, or that two men playing house is not the same as "marriage," or that perverts who like to talk about sex to children is called a red flag.

I don't even like to use the word "superior," because it contradicts the very humility that is a prerequisite and marker of superiority. Claims to superiority are also often the result of reaction formation, the latter but a defense mechanism that transforms inferiority to superiority via projection. 

For example, think of the countless journalists and other Democrats who maintain a rigid denial of the Biden Lumber Company and project it into Trump, transforming his splinters into beams.  

To say that no one is better or worse than anyone else is among the Greatest Lies Ever Told, but it's also among the greatest temptations, so in judging others one must exercise the strictest objectivity and self-awareness.

When I was younger I used to assume my own inferiority. Later in life I covered this with an obnoxious mask of superiority. But this frankly adolescent phase only lasted until I was in my 40s.   

Speaking of masks, Schuon devotes an essay to just this subject in The Play of Masks. In fact, skimming the first paragraph is what prompted the above reflections. Let's reread it and consider it a little more closely.

By way of preface, when we look at man, we have to do so at the intersection of vertical and horizontal. If one man is superior to another, we mean in the sense of objective values, not, say, in wealth or physical strength. Nor can the former have only to do with intelligence, for we are surrounded and ruled by intelligent cretins (notwithstanding the multitude of merely cretinous cretins).

Here's how Schuon puts it: it is necessary for us 

to distinguish a priori between the man-center, who is determined by the intellect and is therefore rooted in the Immutable, and the man-periphery, who is more or less an accident.

You've no doubt never thought of it this way, but we all know Accidental and Necessary humans, and there are many more of the former than the latter. Moreover, one of the points of life -- if not the point -- is to transition from Accidental to Necessary. 

I don't known if "Necessary" is the best word.

Essential?

That's good.

Substantial?

Also good. I'm thinking too of how Washington is called the "indispensable man," because he is the Man Without Whom. But he couldn't have been the Man Without Whom in the absence of certain immutable traits that made him the Man With Whom, or Through Which.  

I keep this imposing photo of Schuon on my desk. I just now glanced at his eyes, and he communicated in so many words that I am correct in suspecting that he might be one of those necessary men of whom he speaks. He has certainly been necessary for me -- a Man Without Whom -- but let's stay on track.

Who are the Necessary Men of history? There aren't that many; or, on the other hand, perhaps there are many who fly under the radar of history. 

For that matter, the majority of men who make history are the peripheral type, for example Karl Marx: no substance whatsoever, since falsehood is not a substance, nor is envy. But not only did he regard himself as superior, but superior to every previous philosopher, especially those who were superior to him.  

Schuon almost never writes in the first person, but here and there he will present something that I suspect refers to himself. The following is an example: he speaks of the "pneumatic" or "central" man, who

is detached because he does not identify with the accidents; and he is good-willed because, for that very reason, he could be neither egoistic nor petty.

Superior humility. Just like me!

LOL.

Okay, humble brag. In any event,

his very superiority poses for him problems of adaptation, for on the one hand he must form part of the human ambiance, and on the other he cannot grasp immediately all its absurdity.

That's me in the spotlight, losing my irreligion, and it's been me for as long as I can remember. I've always thought the world is absurd, which, now that I think about it, is why I couldn't be seduced by the accidents. Everything was so stupid beyond belief that I just couldn't care less about it.

Perhaps if you had been more talented...

That's actually a good point. Given my mediocre gifts, I was never marked out for Most Likely to Succeed. It's not as if I had to narrow down my choices between neurosurgeon and Supreme Court justice. Rather, it came down to the choice between days or graveyard shift in the supermarket.    

This is not to say I ever fit into that ambiance either, because that is when my brain (or whatever it was) suddenly activated after about 23 years of slumber, which initially prompted the defensive superiority referenced above. It took a number of years to sort that out and try to figure out where I do fit in.

Based upon the number of comments, it would seem that I still don't fit in anywhere. Either that, or the world is so filled with members of the Man-Periphery that there's just no audience to or from Man Central:

The man-center is necessarily situated in an isolation from which he cannot but suffer "externally": feeling that every man is in a certain way like himself, he sincerely puts himself in their place, but it is far from the case that others put themselves in his. 

Well boo hoo.

You misunderstand. I'm not complaining. I like being weird, and I like to think that the blog helps other weirdos feel good about not being peripheral humans. 

Absolute Relative and Diabolical Relativism

The first and most consequential line is that between Absolute and Relative. We capitalize the latter in order to distinguish it from its prolongation herebelow, or in other words, to situate it solidly within Divinity itself, or within Celestial Central.

Why does this matter?   

Mainly because any other metaphysical conceptualization of the total Universe -- the Universe of which this universe is a more or less distant reflection -- annoys me to no end. I simply cannot pretend that illogic is logical or inconsistency is consistent, nor do I appreciate being told it is a Mystery -- whether a religious or scientistic one -- just when things start to get interesting. 

The very existence of the Intellect implies a right to know. And a responsibility to know it. 

Know what?

EVERYTHING.

Don't be an ass. No one can know everything, not even me.

Yes, but even you can know that in knowing this, you have touched the Absolute Mystery, and transcended the little annoying ones they try to throw in our path to mollify our curiosity. Of course Ultimate Reality is a Mystery -- an infinitely intelligible one. 

Now, what do you call a Mystery that never stops pouring out clues to itself?

Beats me. I don't think there is a name.

I do. I think it's called the Trinity, for who is the Father but the eternal self-giving self-revelation to the eternally receptive Son? True, it is a Mystery: the Mystery of the Eternal Radiance of Truth, Love, and Beauty from one Person to another and back. In this eternal spiral is the gorounding of Big Relativity. 

Not only is the Godhead Relative, there can be none more relative. All others are number four or higher.

With this in mind, let us return to Schuon's essay on the Prerogatives of the Human State, and reframe what he says in light of what we just threw out there above.

Human intelligence is, virtually and vocationally, certitude of the Absolute.

Again, this is where we begin and must begin. Or end. 

Literally. This is either the first line (i.e., distinction), or there are no lines, and we are thereby plunged into the eternal darkness and primordial slime of Prog World -- the very world from which God rescues us on page 1 of his bestselling mystery thriller, the Bible.

As it so happens, I'm just now reading Dennis Prager's thoroughly exoteric line-by-line exejewsis of Deuteronomy, and although he and I work in different vertical neighborhoods, we agree on the following: that in creating, the Creator's first creation is order itself:

The second verse of [Genesis] describes the world as being chaotic ("null and void"). God then brought [I would say brings] order through separations and distinctions in Genesis and throughout the Torah:

Night and day.

Land and water,

God and man.

God and nature.

Good and evil.

Human and animal.

Man and woman.

Holy and profane.

We have in the past characterized the left as the institutionalization of man's fall, but it is also the denial of every God-given distinction, or in other words, the reassertion of primordial Chaos.

Now, this Chaos is at once absolute relativism, but an inverse and perverse reflection of the Divine Relative, since it is detached from the Absolute pole which would render it meaningful. 

This is precisely how we end up living in a former civilization where it is considered the height of progressive sophistication to not only deny the distinction between man and woman, but to then assault the innocence of children by forcing them to endure Pervert Story Time. 

The deeper point is that relativism (like any other idolatrous ideological -ism) is a systematic denial of the Divine Relative:

The idea of the Absolute implies on the one hand that of the relative and on the other that of the relationships between the two, namely the prefiguration of the relative in the Absolute and the projection of the Absolute in the relative (Schuon).

Here is where I respectfully disagree with Schuon, but this is related to a more general question of Controlling Paradigm, his being Vedanta, mine being Trinitarian. The question is, which system is relative to which? 

Yesterday I mentioned to a reader that I had recently had a Meta-Cosmic brainwave that "perhaps each major religion outside Christianity expresses this or that person of the Trinity." He emailed back that 

I think there is a sense in which the spiritual raison d’être of the Trinity is captured by other faiths, albeit in diverse modes that are particular to their providentially unique perspectives. 

This can only be true, though, if different religions are, in fact, "willed" by God as the Pope has said (notwithstanding all the other difficulties with that man!). 

The question then remains as to whether the metaphysical (and salvific) "function" of the three persons is fully embodied in the Trinity alone, and thus only imperfectly reflected in non-Christian traditions (which, in other respects however, may have their own strengths).

Of course, my brainwave was just that -- a wave and not yet particulate. In order for it to become the latter, I need to write about it and see if it holds water molecules.

Let's start with Prager's commentary on Deuteronomy, since it is literally close at hand, and I am a lazy man. Supposing we start with our Trinitarian brainwave alluded to above, which aspect of it is reflected in Judaism, and how exactly, in that the whole point of Judaism -- like Islam -- is to preserve a radical monotheism seemingly at odds with any such distinctions in God?

This is a rather big subject to throw out at the end of a post. I think we can deal with the challenge, but we'll do so tomorrow.

Relative Intelligence and Absolute Stupidity

I haven't yet fully thought through the idea that if something can be demonstrated to be absolutely necessary and true on the metaphysical plane, then we must adjust our understanding of revelation accordingly. Again, since this is true of scientific truth, why not metaphysical truth? 

Because there are as many metaphysics as there are metaphysicians.

Yes and no. That's like saying there are as many writers as there are people who write. The former is a tiny fraction of the latter. In the case of metaphysics the fraction is even smaller. 

Which then leads to the problem of authority, which then circles back to the question of revelation, because God is of necessity the ultimate authority.

Whose God?

Yes, which circles back around to faith, i.e., belief in this or that version of God. 

Is there any way out of the circle?

Which one? There are two.

Yes, I forgot. We are always situated in two, one of them closed, the other open. This sounds paradoxical but it's not. 

Consider language, for example, or better, the alphabet. It is closed in order to be open. Or the rule of law: we need to have it in order to have liberty. 

"The truth shall set you free."

Yes, and sometimes the truth hurts. 

And freedom can be painful and frightening, hence feminized progressive statists.  

Let's circle back and find out exactly what the Catechism says about this question of truth. What is open and what is closed? The biblical canon, for example is closed. But language itself is always open. 

159 Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."

That seems clear enough.

I'm thinking that if theology is the queen of the sciences, and revelation the king, then perhaps metaphysics is the child, since it's always a product of both. Sophia. But if we're not careful, we end up with something as stupid as this:

https://bhp-public.oerproject.com/chapters/1#in-the-beginning or this: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-queen-of-the-sciences_b_2876470

Cosmolatry is no better than bibliolatry. In fact, it's considerably worse, since it reduces to vulgar pantheism. As if the cosmos is the Absolute!

And as if human intelligence is reducible to What Science Can Know!

No matter how big your scientistic cosmos, it is a tiny circle compared to the Absolute.

One of the keys to the understanding of our true nature and of our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world never measure up to the real range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or it is nothing (Schuon).

Nor can we help it if our intelligence so surpasses the range of these intelligent primates. For

Intelligence gives rise not only to discernment, but also -- ipso facto -- to the awareness of our superiority in relation to those who do not know how to discern; contrary to what many moralists think, this awareness is not in itself a fault, for we cannot help being aware of something that exists and is perceptible to us thanks to our intelligence, precisely (ibid.).

And what do we see that they do not see, precisely? That human intelligence is "the certitude of the Absolute," which in turn "implies the relative." And clearly, the latter must always be situated in the former. To invert this necessary relationship is --

Absolute stupidity?

Yes, that's a good way of putting it, except that it cannot be taken literally, since stupidity is necessarily relative to Intelligence. Which we say in all humility, since 

the same intelligence that makes us aware of a superiority, also makes us aware of the relativity of this superiority and, more than this, it makes us aware of all our limitations. This means that an essential function of intelligence is self-knowledge: hence the knowledge -- positive or negative according to the aspects in view -- of our own nature. 

Intelligence and humility covary. Truly, to call oneself a "human being" is simultaneously a boast and a confession. It is the ultimate humble brag, for we live in that ambiguous space between Image and Fall, or between the truly human, the all-too-human, and the infrahuman. 

And without the x-factor of grace we can never restore the first and will invariably end in the last:

It is only too evident that mental effort does not automatically give rise to the perception of the real; the most capable mind may be the vehicle of the grossest error. 

The paradoxical phenomenon of even a “brilliant” intelligence being the vehicle of error is explained first of all by the possibility of a mental operation that is exclusively “horizontal,” hence lacking all awareness of “vertical” relationships; however, the definition “intelligence” still applies, because there is still a discernment between something essential and something secondary, or between a cause and an effect. 

A decisive factor in the phenomenon of “intelligent error” is plainly the intervention of an extra-intellectual element, such as sentimentality or passion; the exclusivism of “horizontality” creates a void that the irrational necessarily comes to fill (ibid.).

Please Think Responsibly

You can't have cosmic rights without cosmic responsibilities. 

That's true. What are yours, besides meddling in these posts?

It depends on the situation and on your receptivity.  

Well, right now I'm feeling pretty receptive, since the melon is a little foggy and this is my short morning, so feel free to meddle away.

Speaking of openness and receptivity, this goes to one of our most lofty privileges: for to say that man is capable of objectivity

means that he possesses a subjectivity not closed in on itself, but open to others and unto Heaven (Schuon).

This is an exceedingly strange situation, for it's one thing to be an object, and another thing to be a subject (like any other animal). But it's another thing entirely for the subject to be capable of detaching itself from itself and considering oneself as an object from outside or above. 

This opens up the question of why leftists lack these gifts of self-awareness, self-possession, and objectivity. 

Yes, and they even tell us so. 

It's a bit early for the insultainment portion of our program, but we all know liberals who claim that "perception is reality," or "all politics is about power," or that there can exist such a thing as "my truth" without denying its very possibility. Each of these distortions or pathologies represents a metacosmic FAIL with respect to thinking responsibly and reaching one's telos.  

I remember discussing this with a tenured relative some two decades ago. He was insisting that objectivity was but a noble lie that was impossible in practice. So I asked him if that was true. I can't recall the name he called me, but he went straight to the ad hominem card.  

Childish?

No.

Vulgar?

Possibly. But everybody says that.

Puerile?

Warmer.

Jejune? 

That's a bingo!

This relative even wrote a book on the subject, and perhaps I should pull it from the shelf and reexamine it. I tried to tackle it once, but it is turgid beyond belief. 

Objectively turgid, or is that just your opinion? 

His bottom line is relatively clear: "I don't think the idea of historical objectivity is true or false, right or wrong: I find it not just essentially contested, but essentially confused. Many philosophical assumptions of the concept seem to me dubious."

To say objective is "to make an empty observation; to say something neither interesting nor useful." My uncle is "unimpressed by arguments of its defenders," but especially those of a particular nephew-in-law which are jejune beyond belief.

Are you going to take that sitting down? 

Yes. I'm a poor enough typist as it is.

Now, as powerful as the following arguments are, I don't expect them to change my uncle's mind. After all, he's been dead for at least a decade. Then again, perhaps now, released from the matrix of tenure, he has an expansive enough vista to appreciate them. 

Hell is a big place.

You said it, I didn't.  

As it so happens, I recently read a book that addresses just this subject in an exceedingly compact and pithy manner. I can't say I recommend it, because about halfway through it starts to get a little too Mohammedan for my taste, but the first chapter is entirely neutral. Objective, as it were.

Much of this has to do with the substance of intelligence, which is to say, what it actually is; and the substance of truth, which turns out to be of the same substance as intelligence.

But you can learn a lot about something by simply observing what people do as opposed to what they say. 

Anyone who has any judgment about anything and communicates it to others has already assumed that what he tells them will mean essentially the same thing to them, and that they will recognize the truth of his opinion, that is, they will have the same judgment.

For example, when Uncle Peter calls me jejune, I don't take him to mean sophisticated, or mature, or useful, rather, the opposite. 

If what one man says has a meaning that is accessible solely to him, and is true solely for him, why then would he even say it to others? 

For example, why write a 600+ page manifesto on the impossibility of objectivity. Isn't that a... what's the word...

Performative contradiction?

Yes. It's positively self-refuting, is it not? Granted, many history books properly belong in the fiction section, but that's because of the existence of nonfiction. Jejune as it might sound,

Unless one accepts that man is fundamentally objective, one quickly finds oneself in refutation of oneself.

One has to start with the self-evidence of objective truth. Any attempt to deny the self-evidence of truth -- or being, or reality, or absoluteness -- will be self defeating.  

Having said that, there are sophisticated and jejune ways of going about something as complex as history, where the objective and subjective are always intertwined. But even the ability to recognize this intertwining is already objective, or rather, something that can only be apprehended from a higher perspective. 

Let's put it this way: to even say history is to have already stepped outside it. The question is not whether transcendence is possible, but how it is possible, i.e., by virtue of what principle?

Or, you could turn it around and say that transcendence is reducible to history. But that would be jejune.

Your Meta-Cosmic Rights

The Play of Masks was Schuon's penultimate book, published in 1992, when he would have been about 85. It's also his most compact book, coming in at just 90 pages of text, but no less profound than the others. As with all of his works, the whole doctrine is in a sense present in each part, only here without so much as a wasted word. And Schuon never wasted words to begin with.

Aphoristic.

Yes, exactly. Let's examine some of them and see where it leads -- in the context of our ongoing preoccupation with lines and how they get that way. 

Distinctions.

Correct. To think is to distinguish, but it is also to -- 

Synthesize. 

Integrate what has been distinguished, at a higher and deeper level. Analysis-and-synthesis constitute the metabolism of thought.

Having said that, intellection operates on a different plane than standard thought -- almost as if it perceives first and explains later. In other words, logic and reason occur after the fact. Schuon will no doubt discuss this as we proceed.

Here's a modest opening blast:

metaphysics aims in the first place at the comprehension of the whole Universe...

For most human beings this would be a grandiose claim, but for Schuon it's all in a day's work. 

Note that Universe is capitalized. He doesn't bother to explain why, but it is clearly to distinguish it from our own little punyverse. It is to liberate our imagination and expand our horizons, such that we don't limit the Divine Creativity to something we can imagine or grasp. See yesterday's post for details.  

Come to think of it, it's even a safeguard against scientistic idolatry -- as if total knowledge of this universe would equate to a total knowledge of the divine mind! Please.

This real Universe

extends from the Divine Order to the terrestrial contingencies -- this is the reciprocity between Atma and Maya -- yet it offers in addition intellectually less demanding but humanly crucial openings; which is all the more important in that we live in a world wherein the abuse of intelligence replaces wisdom.

You can say that again.

Agreed. The world has always been an insult to intelligence, but in no other time has intelligence itself been subject to such unrelenting ridicule, abuse, and marginalization. 

Indeed, what is the retarded world of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion but a state-mandated ban on intelligence? It caps IQ at 100 or so, such that any intelligence surpassing the norm is effectively punished. 

In a world of borderline retards (IQ between 70 and 85; Karine Jean-Pierre springs to mind), the average schlub or schlubette is a genius. Not only are we ruled by such geniuses, the same geniuses fill the ranks of journalism, academia, popular culture.

And that's just common intelligence, not intellect as such. In other words, it would scarcely be preferable to be ruled by men of superior IQ devoid of intellect and wisdom. In many ways it would be worse, because to really fuck things up, stupidity isn't enough. Rather, it takes a real genius to do that.  

Back to the passage above: the "reciprocity between Atma and Maya" goes to that Great Circle-ation I'm always going on about, in this case between Reality and Appearance(s), for everything is always both, up to and including God. Which may sound hetero but I assure you is totally ortho.

In a way, man is the last word in Maya, but especially woman. This too is perfectly ortho, unless you are some kind of homo, in which case you're just compulsively projecting Maya onto the male form and calling it "liberation" or something. 

There's an old Buddhist saying.... 

Of all the forms of Maya, that of woman is supreme.

Bingo. The point is that Maya is a mirror pointing in two directions and thus a vehicle for our fall or our redemption, and thus reflecting those "humanly crucial openings." Now, what if those openings become congested, crystalized, or blocked?

For example what is scientism but a profoundly anti-intellectual crystallization of the phenomenal cosmos? That it reduces the total Universe to the mere universe is the least of its abuses, for it seals things at the top while allowing for plenty of movement to the south. In other words, the world is no longer a mirror of its creator, but nevertheless reflects what is below.

And what is below? For starters, all forms of reductionism, for example, metaphysical Darwinism. But remember, once we close ourselves to Intellection -- the perennial wisdom and eternal truth -- truly truly, all bets are off because we are in Satan's Casino.

You can throw out the Absolute with the pitchfork of tenure, but this hardly means you have eliminated his consort, the Relative. Rather, it means you shall have Queen Relative, good and hard, right in the brisket.

All the way down.

No, worse than that: all the way up. Karine Jean-Pierre comes to mind, but so too does the rest of that feminized low IQ mob. 

Truly truly, we are not only surrounded by stupid, but by stupid ex-wives from hell, many of whom are men in drag pretending to be women in order to get a seat at the table of power (formerly known as the children's table). 

Madness.

Anyway, since the upper vertical is closed for isness, we are still permitted movement -- they call it "freedom" -- but only in a downward direction. 

I could go on, but you get the point. Let's move on to the first essay, called Prerogatives of the Human State, which is a perfectly absurd title in an intellect-free world that denies the very upward movement that is our most important prerogative!

Total intelligence, free will, sentiment capable of disinterestedness; these are the prerogatives that place man at the summit of terrestrial creatures.  

Change my mind. Supposing such a thing were even possible, it would place you above the summit of terrestrial creatures, or in other words, make you a goddess. But at the same time, it would make you an absurd goddess and therefore no goddess at all. 

Back to our prerogatives, which means rights, privileges, and powers. As a brief aside, I hold Schuon to be one of the singular humanists, for who else defends and exalts our human rights to this extent? Here are just some of your rights:

You have the right to the intellection from which intelligence and reason flow. 

You have the right to vertical and horizontal freedom, the latter always a function of the former.

And you have the right to objectivity and to objective truth. 

If you do not have these rights, then you have no meaningful rights.  

Truth and Consequences

Creators gonna create, such that there is 

neither beginning nor end, which means that the Universe is conceived as a permanent cycle of impermanent "creations," or as a "coeternal" cycle of temporal worlds (Schuon).

No offense, but a little imagination, please. Get over yourcosmos! Limiting God to a single creation -- this one -- is insanely presumptuous. Just as God is beyond our conception, so too is the divine creativity. Thus, we need to adopt an apophatic approach to both terms. 

Which we already do in the form of God's infinitude, AKA the divine freedom or All-Possibility. 

Not that those other creations are any of our business. To say anything about what they might be like would be pure speculation -- like wondering what it's like to be a bat -- except to say that they would have to obey certain metacosmic rules that are in the nature of things. 

In short, in no cosmos is Impossibility a possibility. 

[C]osmic and coeternal manifestation is necessary because God is necessary, whereas "creation" is free because it is not "the manifestation" but "a manifestation." 

God is in fact free in His "modes of expression," but not in His "ways of being," so to speak, and this is the case since the perfection of freedom and the perfection of necessity must both be found in the divine Nature... (ibid.).

On the one hand this may sound sketchy or insolent. What's the word, Petey?

I believe the mot juste is lèse-majesté.

Thaaaat's right, Petey, that's the one. 

Again, our particular creation is simply caught up in the endless cycle of creation as such. It would be out of line to suggest that God engenders "Sons," but it's perfectly kosher to say that the Trinity itself is fruitful beyond our wildest and thensome. Who can put limits on God's creativity? Amateurs, that's who.

The physical world in which we live, the objectively observed universe around us, is only part of an inconceivably vast system of worlds (Steinsaltz).

That's interesting, man: system. These other worlds cannot be radically separate from us, only relatively so, since God is one, ie., the overarching principle of Unity itself. These diverse worlds would have to somehow reflect one another, but how? 

Persons?

That's gotta be it: a person is the thing that is both radically unique -- AKA the individual -- and yet the most radically related of all. Therefore, we must be on a micro scale what those other worlds are on a macro scale. Each of them is related to the Principle, so if we're on the right track, then these other universes are more like cousins than strangers.

You said you weren't going to speculate.

I'm not. Besides, we're done speculating. Let's stick with what we know about God and can know about God, first via reason and then revelation, bearing in mind that the latter transcends the former but can never negate it altogether.

For example, when it is said that "All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made," it is simply reiterating that reason is rooted in Reason, or language in Word, or thoughts in the Thinker.

A few posts back we mentioned a brainwave we had -- that if revelation can accommodate science, then how much more should it be capable of accommodating metaphysics, AKA the perennial wisdom that cannot not be? 

For example, if scripture reflects the view of common experience that the sun circles the earth but science proves otherwise, then it's not only acceptable to reinterpret scripture in light of heliocentrism, it is obligatory. So long as we are certain of the science.

I was about to say "absolutely certain" of the science, which, of course, would be a rʘʘkie mistake. Science can be absolutely certain of precisely zilch, except of its own relativity. Which is not nothing. Far from it! Falsifiability is a key principle in the philosophy of science, but falsifiability itself isn't falsifiable, nor empiricism empirically verifiable.

It all comes down to Truth and Consequences: 

To say that there is such a thing as truth is to speak in absolute terms. The notions of "being," "reality," "truth," and "absoluteness" are thus intrinsically related. Reason cannot prove them; on the contrary, it takes them for granted, that is to say, cannot function in their absence (Bina & Ziarani).

Truth --> Reality --> Being --> Absolute: these are all fungible into one another, in this or any other universe, or any other inhabitant of said universe, no? 

Correct: the isness of truth is objectively true here and everywhere, both in and "outside" God, in this or any other cosmos:

--Truth has its root in the notion of the Absolute. 

--Without this ultimate point of reference, every logical argument is devoid of a foundation. 

--Man cannot be certain of anything in the absence of this notion, because as soon as he becomes absolutely certain of anything without the implicit assumption of the notion of the Absolute, logically, he must let go of his certitude of it and start over again in a vicious circle of doubt (ibid).

Demonstration: "I am absolutely certain that God doesn't exist. Therefore God exists."

Really, it's just the law of noncontradiction writ large.

What's In a Circle? And Who?

Just as everything in the horizontal begins and ends before we think it does, everything in the vertical extends above and below where we think it does.

Is this to be today's subject?  

Not necessarily. Just throwing it out there. It has to do with the previous post about where to draw the line(s). Where, for example, does free will end and providence begin -- or my contribution and your paltry 2¢? 

Or, at what point does even Satan recoil at the civilizational descent of the left? He's happy to take responsibility for a great deal indeed -- more than you think -- but he draws a line at Miley Cyrus. Hell, he doesn't even watch the Oscars anymore.  

I see what you mean. We're a little overbooked this morning. We'll have to see if we can work in your generous 3¢. 

We were talking about the line between Creator and Creation (Creation as such, as opposed to such-and-such a creation), and put forth the proposition that the latter term must be a coeternal branch of the Godhead. 

We then situated this principle in none other than the Second Person of the Trinity, who is engendered, always being engendered, and always returning to the First Person via the Third whom they twogether engender threegether.  

Which, if we're on the right track, accounts for the circularity down here, AKA, the old exitus-reditus pattern of everything and anything. 

Now, a line is a geometrical concept. Nobody has ever seen one, since it has only one dimension. And it is connected by two points with no dimensions at all. So, it shouldn't be surprising that human beings don't easily see the analogous lines and points in vertical space. 

Agreed. I don't see your point at all.   

Let's begin with a circle, or rather, a series of concentric ones:

Now, the first circle defines the central point. Let's call this n-dimensional point the Absolute, to which all the concentric circles are relative. They are variously echoes, reflections, images, and fractals.

Each of these latter circles represents a world, for example, worlds of physics, biology, anthropology, psychology, economics, history, etc. These diverse disciplines appear so different from one another that perhaps this second circle is a better image:

There's the Absolute, in the center, in light blue. In reality, it would have to be analogous to pure white light that takes on this or that color down here in the prismhouse of existence. 

But in another sense, we could say that the blue of the Absolute is more or less reflected in different dimensions. 

Not far from the center is a lighter blueish (or maybe lavenderish) circle, and this would have to be the human one. 

Also, it's appropriate that this is bordered on the inside by black -- connoting the infinite distance between man and God -- and that the center point is surrounded by a luminous yellow, which goes to the radiance of the Good.

But guess what: everyone is unique, meaning that everyone gets his own color, and moreover, that everyone is more or less distant from the Principle, AKA the Absolute. 

There would also have to be families of colors, for example, say, the "family of intellect," which might be light blue at the periphery but take on a darker hue as we approach the center.

The same would be true of aesthetics: each particular art form is a different shade that becomes more saturated at the center, and at the periphery turns into Miley Cyrus. 

So, there are both persons and modes. My own mode has been a zigzag journey from the periphery toward the center. I was never content to simply circle around the center in a single orbit -- say, psychology. Rather, one thing leads to another, ultimately to God.

And every solid orbit is a living obit.

Which brings to mind another image, for all disciplines are immediately adjacent to others, such that the lines must be semipermeable: say, between psychology and neurology, or biology and chemistry, or physics and math, history and anthropology, etc.

Therefore, a better image might be the this last one below, since there are all sorts of walls, windows, doors, floors, ceilings, roofs, trapdoors, and secret passages between one level and another. 

Problem is, now we've lost the dots and the colors. Also not shown is the third dimension, to say nothing of the fourth, since the whole contraption is in eternal movement, like a kaleidoscope, or as Joyce put it, a colliderescape.

And if we examine this last image closely, we see that there are indeed escapes and inscapes from one level to another, and in particular, from the last semicircle to the center. 

We needn't bang our heads against the walls or knock on doors forever, especially since God himselves broke through the last -- or first -- or both, rather.

I guess you could call that the Good News, since the bad news is I have no pot to sell you.

Lines and How They Get That Way

This question of where to draw the line is more consequential than you might think, especially in a league game. Seriously, what even is a line, how can they exist, and who draws them?

Let's consider the existence of a particular line that has been both controversial and deeply troubling to western civilization for at least two weeks, that is, the line between the sexes. It is a line "in a manner of speaking," but a line nonetheless. Who drew it? How does it get here?

You're not wrong if you say "nature," or biology, or natural selection, and the only way to eliminate this line is to draw a different, impenetrable line between intellect and reality. But to paraphrase what Chesterton said about the rejection of God, folks who don't believe in science don't believe in nothing, rather, anything.

There are natural lines between man and woman, as there are between species. Last I checked, biologists aren't exactly clear on how it is possible for the impregnable lines between species to exist. 

I'm not here to argue with them, because I am not attracted to goats anyway, but I will say that the reason is not totally reducible to nature. As with the categories of male and female, these are prolongations of archetypal ideas and principles that go all the way up. 

For nature itself is supernatural, not just in some romantic or sentimental way, but literally. Put conversely, if nature isn't supernatural, then there can be no laws of nature, let alone a being who discovers and understands them.

But because these lines are above nature while immanent in it, they can appear vague. In the past we've used the example of a cloud in the sky. From a distance the difference between cloud and sky appears crisp and clear, but as one approaches it, the line grows blurry until it disappears altogether.  

Think of the millions of endarkened human beings who have no idea they are living in a cloud of tenure. Yet, they are precisely the people most responsible for excreting the crocktrine that no lines exist!

Now, the first line is God and world, or Creator and creation, Principle and manifestation, Absolute and relative, One and many, etc. While we're at it, let's totally demythologize and even deconceptualize this primordial distinction and just call it O <---> ( ). 

Whoever, wherever, or whenever you are, you cannot not make this distinction -- whether implicitly or explicitly -- and still be human. Put conversely, deny this line and you have basically cashed in your chimp and left the world of factsimians above and behind. 

I hear the objections: this primordial line needn't come from above! Science can fully explain it or any other distinction in the world.

OVER THE LINE! I'm sorry, that's a foul. Next paragraph. (Words of Walter in khaki.)

Science, of course, is predicated on the prior existence of a permeable and translucent line between intelligence and intelligibility. Just try to do science without it. We'll wait.

What is the first thing the Creator does in Genesis? Draw a line in the sand between the heavens and earth, which is to say, O and ( ), respectively. Horizontal and vertical. Transcendence and immanence.

I want to switch seers over to Schuon, to an essay called Creation as Divine Quality. In it he makes the startling-but-obvious-once-you-think-about-it claim that creation is coeternal with God. No, not this or any other creation, but rather, creation as such. Just as God can't help being good, nor can he help creating. 

Ironically, this shouldn't be the least bit surprising to a Christian, since the Father never stops begetting the Son, such that they are coeternal. Thus, you could say that this is literally the first line, the principial line of which any and every other line is a more or less distant reflection.

In case you were wondering. 

We're just getting started, but that's enough for one post.   

OVER THE LINE!

Creator Creating Creation, and Before

Yesterday we spoke of the evolutionary breakthrough of Christ consciousness or something. No doubt there are better and more accurate ways of putting it, but one of the points of this blog is to put it in such a way that modern ears perk up instead of shutting down. 

It's the opposite of all that spooky talk about, for example, being washed in the blood of the lamb, which speaks to exactly no one in the modern world and gives many people a bad case of the heebie Jeebus. 

The frame is not the painting, nor the stage the play. The old-time relingo is still there for those who prefer it, but I can't help thinking that the linguistic frame needs to be tweaked. 

Moreover, once you're in -- or, more to the point, it into you -- an x-factor begins to exert its influence, such that things that previously made no sense begin to add up. According to no less an authority than Martha and the Vandellas, love makes you do foolish things. As does truth.

Moreover, one becomes much more comfortable with ambiguity, and with not having cutandry answers to every last question. As faith slowly converts to understanding, one sees this very movement as a complementarity that proceeds in both directions, i.e., faith <---> understanding, such that understanding grows with faith and faith with understanding. Am I wrong?  

And how, exactly, is this different from science? As science answers questions, we have more faith in science. Which is fine on its own plane. 

Anyway, Torrell (in Thomas Aquinas Vol. II, Spiritual Master) writes that Christ "appears as the summit and crowning of a universe entirely ruled by the communication of the Divine Being." 

Christ is found, in fact, at the perfect intersection of the two orders of mediation, descending and ascending.

Recall what we said two or three posts back about those two dynamic circles -- vertical and horizontal -- and of how they bisect in Christ. This circularity "finds in Christ its most perfect and beautiful expression."

And now I want to careen the cosmic bus into a heretical direction. Don't worry, I'm sober (as in "sober intoxication," to be precise). We can always pull short of the abyss, or better yet, 

Faith is what allows us to wander into any idea without losing our way back (words of the Aphorist in purple from now on).

So, let's get lost! I promise to get you back before... lunch, anyway.

Some people say the universe had a beginning, even -- or especially -- the cool kids, what with the Big Bang and all. But I'm here to tell you with a creepy stage whisper that it's always been here.

No, not necessarily this creation, nor am I talking about the "multiverse," rather, creation as such, including the Cosmic Christ alluded to above. 

It's always best to begin before the beginning, but in this case we'll begin with the second best, which is to say, the beginning. 

What a ridiculously presumptuous word: "beginning"! For EVERYTHING and EVERYTHING and EVERYTHING itself begins before we think it begins and ends after where we think it ends.

Now, if this be the case, then if we are going to talk about the beginning, we have to start before we think it begins, and even then, the real beginning will be before that.

So, "where to begin" is not remotely self-evident. Therefore, I won't call this a beginning, just a... first stab, or initial approach.

Obviously, creation "comes from" an origin; not from a cosmic, hence "created" substance, but from a reality pertaining to the Creator... (Schuon).

Creator, Creating, Creation. Where's the line? There are several ways to look at this, for example

Creator / Creating Creation

Creator Creating / Creation

Creator / Creating / Creation  

Creator Creating Creation / 

And most mysteriously of all, 

/ Creator Creating Creation

But my blood sugar is too low to think this through, so, to be continued. Frankly, I could use a donut right about now:

God Plans and Man Scoffs

"So long as a thing possesses being," writes Thomas, then

God must be present in it, and in conformity with the way in which it possesses being.... We must, therefore, necessarily conclude from this that God is in all things in the most intimate way.

Agreed, but why then the Incarnation? If God is already present in us in the most intimate way, it would seem superfluous.

I can think of several reasons, beginning with our so-called fallenness. For reasons of expedience, this incident is presented to us in mythopoetic terms, but I've long believed it's past time for an update. 

It reminds me of Galileo, who turned out to be right about heliocentrism even though his reasons were all wrong. Analogously, the doctrine of original sin is correct even if it doesn't actually involve a talking serpent and a fruit tree. 

Thank you. The the whole snake thing is demeaning for a person of my position.

The imagery used to convey it notwithstanding, the lesson itself is vitally important to man's flourishing, and equally important, should give him pause before embarking on yet another one of his stupid ideological adventures. 

But in a scientistic, materialistic, and literalistic age of credentialed indoctrinees, few educated people have the interpretive chops to unpack the deeper meaning of archetypal mythology. Indeed, as we've said before, what is leftism but the institutionalization of man's fall? 

That's more like it.

As to the other reasons for the Incarnation, we mentioned one of them in yesterday's post, that is, God's goodness. In short, he just can't help being so darn helpful. 

Another big one has to do with the next evolutionary leap of the cosmos. We might say that Christ is to man as man is to animal. This is not to go all Teilhard on you. Don't worry, I'm not one of those evolutionary integralists or integral evolutionists, thy Wilber done. Big rabbit hole here, but it's perfectly orthodox, beginning with none other than Ratzinger, and let me see if I can remember how.

Help us Father Joseph!

The New Testament testimonies leave us no doubt that what happened in the Resurrection was utterly different. Jesus' Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life.... a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence.

It's redo, baby, a brand new cosmos. For it is 

not an isolated event that we could set aside as something limited to the past, but it constitutes an "evolutionary leap".... In Jesus' Resurrection a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for mankind.

Father Joseph may we buy some pot from you?  

Does that contradict science? Can there really only ever be what there has always been? Can there not be something unexpected, something unimaginable, something new? If there really is a God, is he not able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new dimension of reality altogether? Is not creation actually waiting for this last and highest "evolutionary leap," for the union of the finite with the infinite, for the union of man and God, for the conquest of death?

Hmm? Cannot we have nicenew things? We all agree that there were prior bangs of radical novelty, e.g., into existence, life, and persons. Why not into Christ consciousness? What kind of messiah were you expecting?

Speaking of the hominization of God, for Maximus the Confessor, "God is constantly becoming man in man, so that man may no less constantly become God." 

This is my shortmorn, so we'll end with this: Maximus

regards the created constitution of man as an ontological preparation for the eschatological mystery of theandrism.

In other words, we are but the (com)pliant (or not) material with which God is busy bringing about his next cosmic evolutionary leap: with his own hominization he initiates the possibility of our reciprocal divinization, thus engendering a terrestrial reflection of the whole cosmos from top to bottom, inside and out.

That's the plan, anyway

Maximus Slaximus, who in every icon is depicted posing before O:

Good News: God is Just, But Not Only Just

We're discussing the hominization of man -- AKA Incarnation -- which is a prerequisite for the possibility of our full divinization.

In its absence we could still scurry partway up the greasy pole of verticality, but there would be an unbridgeable chasm between man and God. We couldn't get there from here, for the simple reason that we cannot pull ourselves up by our own buddhastraps. 

As alluded to yesterpost, there are two ways to approach our cosmic predicament, one from the negative viewpoint of our fallenness, the other from the positive viewpoint of God's generosity, which cannot be "dependent" on something as contingent as what happened back then in the garden. 

If anyone is willing to let bygones be bygones it is God, for which reason we should be more like him and forgive our brother like 490 times. Temporal choices don't have eternal consequences, and besides, only God is eternal. (We will come back to this point later.)

Not to downplay the gravity of the offense, whatever it was and is, only to balance it, or rather, to frame it in the infinitely larger context of God's metacosmic magnanimity. There can be no pettiness in God, or so we have heard from the wise. Think twice before you appeal only to God's justice, for 

Our last hope is in God's injustice.

Ho! 

Anyway, on the west hand we the emphasis on a theology of redemption, or justification, or restitution, but on the easter hand one of theosis and divinization. Matter of fact, until I stumbled upon this latter bit of good news (euangelion) in... in 2002, I didn't see a bridge from east to east, that is, from yoga to Christianity.  

It was back then that a book called A Different Christianity: Early Christian Esoterism and Modern Thought fell into both hands. I no longer even know if I could recommend it. All I know is, it's what I needed at the time to get from where I was to where I am. I'm tempted to pull it down from the shelf for a bit of harmless gnostalgia, but perhaps some other time. 

To get back to Eckhart, he claims that "The first grace consists in a type of flowing, a departure from God" (this being Creation as such), while "the second consists in a type of flowing back, a return to God himself." McGinn adds that our "deification" (which is a participation in the flowing back)

takes place through the action of a grace that is rooted in the trinitarian "boiling" itself. Only by sharing in the inner activity of the three divine Persons can we attain our goal.

I keep meaning to show you that photograph of my map of the cosmos, and I will, but suffice it to say that it's not enough to simply have vertical and horizontal, because these two are not static. 

Rather, I want to say that the principle of horizontality is already situated in the trinity, so that if we want to picture it accurately, it is more like a horizontal circle bisected by a vertical one. "Salvation" is a consequence of the latter dynamic circle bisecting each moment of horizontality.

In other words, suppose there were only the horizontal line. No amount of progress or evolution could lift us one inch from it. 

Thus, primitive peoples imagined a kind of horizontal circle that could lead us back to paradise. In general, we could get back there if only we appeased the gods by sacrificing a sufficient number of human beings. 

In reality, we could sacrifice 70 times 7, or even 70 times 700, but it was never enough, because finitude never adds up to infinitude, nor time to eternity, so the chasm alluded to in the first paragraph couldn't be bridged. Sad! No good news for you!

I'm out of time, but here's a provocative pneumagraph:

The Hominization of God: Windy with a Chance of Flooding

The divinization of man -- AKA theosis, sanctity, and vertical ascent in general -- is rendered possible by the hominization of God; and of all the circles in existence, this is the most consequential. Truly truly, all other circles are number two or lower.    

Change my mind.

And although Christian doctrine traditionally frames this Great Circle in moralistic terms -- as a rescue mission from God to save us from the consequences of our own poor and stupid choices -- I like to think of it as an inevitability rooted in the nature of things. It exists not because we are bad but because God is good, and can't help from being so.

Having said that, there are perfectly good and providential reasons why the doctrine is presented the way it is, because people are people, and it doesn't get worse than that. Always and everywhere human beings are assouls, nor would Bob ever imply that he is exempt from the charge. It's just that this can't be the whole story.  

Only God is good, and seriously, He could indict a ham sandwich if He were so inclined. Certainly we all need to clean up our acts and tighten up that loose shit. But God isn't only good; he is also truth and beauty, so these latter provide equally legitimate and underutilized paths back up in the Great Cosmic Circle. 

Nevertheless, if we choose to trod these latter two paths, we will eventually be limited by our moral qualifications, so it is not as if we can be given a pass for our great intellect or awesome artistic ability. We will return to this subject as we proceed, but don't think you can slip through the narrow gate just because you're a gifted actor or even a tenured one. 

As alluded to above, our perspective is a reflection of the nature of things, but even if it weren't, we have venerable traditional backup, for example, in Maximus the Confessor, and excuse me while I pull out some references, beginning with Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of Maximus The Confessor, by Lars Thunburg. 

(As you know by now, my general approach is precisely backwards, in that most people presumably begin by immersing themselves in the authorized  sources, whereas I prefer to make it up from scratch and then check with the authorities to see if they stumbled upon the same recipe. To me, this gives my own blogulations extra credibility, because it suggests that the nonlocal attractors are objective and not just a product of my own imagination or indoctrination. Am I wrong? AM I WRONG?)

(By the way, have I written about the many times I bumped into Jeff Bridges at the metaphysical bookstore in Santa Monica? No, we never spoke, and now I wonder if it had to do with his preparation for the Role; certainly my being there had to do with preparation for this Role, the question being whether he is but a character in my movie or vice versa, or in other words, which of us is truly Maximus Leboskus in real -- and not just reel -- life?)

Back to Thunberg:

The Incarnation of the Logos, according to Maximus, is not motivated only by the fall into sin, but by man's position vis-a-vis God, by what we have called the divine-human reciprocity.

Or by what Bob calls the vertical winds of (↑↓).

Now, tradition holds that these winds blow where they will, and tradition isn't wrong.

Nor is meteorology wrong, in that wind is but a consequence of the flow from high to low pressure areas. 

Eh, what? 

Think about it.

Okay, I will, but I'm going to ask the Meister for a lil' help, because when the going gets weird, the weird get going. One of Eckhart's central metaphors is that of the "flow," and I don't think it matters if the flow involves water, wind, spirit, or --

Bob's bullshit?

Very funny. You just reminded me of a new feature on the blog, "Satan's words in blue." Don't tempt me.

Oh please. As if anyone couldn't tell the difference!

Exactly!

Back to high pressure, low pressure, and the Flow. For this, we'll flip over to Bernard McGinn's The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart, chapter 5, The Metaphysics of Flow: his whole vision is rooted in

the dynamic reciprocity of the "flowing-forth" of all things from the hidden ground of God, and the "flowing-back," or "breaking- through," of the universe into essential identity with this divine source.

Here we see another example of the Great Circle -- or circle² -- discussed in the previous post. Like Bob, Eckhart conceived of this as "the fundamental law of reality," but what are the actual mechanics of it?

I'm just spirit-ballin' here, but if wind flows from high to low pressure areas, how would this work analogously in us? This isn't really a difficult question, because it's right there in the manual of Christian life, the Jesus Sutras presented in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, becoming "poor in spirit" equates to bringing about a "low pressure area" in oneself, so to speak, so the divine winds flow down and in. "Humility" is literally the space to be filled by the grace of the Holy Spirit. 

Conversely, if you are a high-pressure area of egotism, narcissism, tenured grandiosity, progressive self-satisfaction, and ideological overflow, then you'll actually repel the spirit. 

That's enough for one day, and more than enough for a lifetime of putting into practice.