I've been thinking about this myself a lot, recently, since I've been doing a lot of research on destabilizing elements of various chemicals in food, medication, tap water, so on and so forth, and their effects, as well as other phenomenon, such as how magnetic pulses applied to the right parts of a brain can, in effect, lobotomize the patient and shut down certain faculties. Hilariously enough, the article mentions that the procedure can "alter religious and political inclinations", and says outright that feelings towards immigrants increase and conviction in an omnipotent god decreases. Funny questions to be asking the patients - I'm sure the doctors involved were just curious and had no ulterior motives. But it did leave me thinking - if they can reduce you to the worst caricature of a mid-wit redditor Funko-American by just... turning off parts of your brain, essentially, or alter your emotional state by flooding it with hormones, or, in some cases, even send people into a berserker frenzy or induce audio-visual hallucinations with infrasound, yeah, you're right, it really begs the question, who are you REALLY? It's not all that much fun to consider.
But, ultimately - and I have no real evidence of this outside of some gut feeling - that we're all our own little trinities; a body, a mind, and a spiritual component, all of which don't really seem to get along all that well, or even communicate much, if at all. I compared it to three people locked in separate but adjoining rooms, who can only really bang on the walls and yell at one another and hope the others might hear them. For instance, a surplus of carbs in a diet can throw one's gut flora out of balance, encouraging the rapid growth of one type of bacteria over all the others. This, obviously, isn't good. An excess of carbs and certain bacteria in the gut has been directly linked to mental health, namely depression and anxiety. It would be great if your body could just talk to your mind and say, "Hey, man, maybe chill with the carbs," but, since it can't, the best it seems to be able to do is trigger a sense of mental malaise through hormones and shutting off certain chemical receptors in the brain as a sort of alarm system, which I'm becoming increasingly convinced is the functional purpose of (most) forms of depression. Basically, your body makes you emotionally miserable in hopes that you'll make the conscious decision to start doing something else and regain homeostasis.
Sounds a bit weird, I know, so I hope it makes sense. All in all, I think we, in our totality, are these three facets constantly wrestling with one another, almost like three totally different creatures with different, often times conflicting desires, working in (dis)harmony as best it can.
Great article, though. Really enjoying reading some of your backlog at the moment.
Thanks for the comment, Yakubian. I agree with everything you've written here. You know, part of the reason why our body/mind/soul are in such misalignment is due to the neolithic agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. Our instincts are and remain hardwired for a small hunter gatherer society where everyone knew each other and which was relatively egalitarian. The Dunbar number states we can only maintain relationships with a maximum of 150 people, which fits that style of living. Anyway, everything was thrown into chaos when humans invented agriculture and became sedentary in towns and cities; our instincts and our conscious thoughts became wildly misaligned. You may like this particular post on the topic if it interests you: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-10000-year-explosion-rapid-selection
Do things (experiences,books,ideas etc) change us or do they provide the illusion of doing so? A predetermined natal path which is traversed, coupled with a perceived force of free will, providing the idea of autonomy crucial to our development and survival as a species and as individuals? Morphic field theories come to mind here, where things grow into their shapes as determined by their morphic fields. Could it be possible that this may include not just our atomic matter forms but to our ‘souls’ as well? With most people simply filling out their fields NPC style while others possibly able to sense,connect, shift and steer them. Through sensitivity,sheer will or by other means forgotten and/or removed from modern history. Ancient shamanesque techniques and alike to enable moving from our ‘planetary path’ into ‘new lanes’ to the point where we ourselves begin to manifest happenings and in turn influence the planetary path, the very planets themselves? I am using the word planets but I feel it has more to do with the Birkeland currents and their connection to everything.
Interfering with the morphic field form with say surgery, accidents(poker in the head), tumour or drugs etc may in turn alter the field to which we grow, body and soul. But surely such a field would maintain it’s integrity over some missing or anomalous bits of atomic matter, but maybe not. The theory that the universe is mostly plasma in all its forms makes our earthly atomic matter relatively rare so maybe altering our atomic structures has more impact in shaping things than we’d imagine. But then what comes first the field or the egg!
And what of ‘good and evil’ so many thoughts and not enough time today!
Thanks for this article you’ve set my mind ablaze in a way I very much needed, where I actually started writing which I haven’t done for a long time hence the unrefined rambling 😬
I really liked this response, thanks Forrest. Astrology, energy fields, shamanesque techniques to open our minds, this stuff is all fascinating and has been frowned upon in the West for hundreds of years or more. For some reason your post reminded me of the story of Royal Rife, who apparently used frequency waves to destroy cancer cells and which you may appreciate: https://educate-yourself.org/cn/morrisfishbein05feb02.shtml
Also, for whatever it's worth, I've had some astrology sessions with a fantastic Indian astrologer and her position is that the planets merely influence our actions (based on our inherited karma from past lives), and that we do retain free will to make decisions...
Forrest, do you have any books you recommend on morphic field theories, planetary paths and Birkeland currents? These are topics I have interest in delving into further. Thank you...
I really liked Robert Temple’s book A New Science Of Heaven. Great read, well researched with a website for the bibliography, lots of worthwhile further reading listed throughout the book and on the website. I’m very interested in these kordylewski clouds, absolutely fascinating. Fun fact: I asked someone I follow on twitter for their thoughts on the kordylewski clouds in a direct message and had my account locked! Also Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance theories sit well with me. I’ll have a look through my notes for some more of the more obscure ones and get back to you.
I am fond of the Eliphas Levi quote, Science is the unification of reason and faith. By Science he meant magic, occult studies and modern science. I have faith in my soul, I have faith I have been here many times before, I am here in this incarnation to learn, to expand my consciousness and to strengthen and "evolve" my soul.
This was fascinating, thought provoking and disturbing. Spent the entire morning pondering over different points in my mind and how it applies to my life. Discussed certain sections with my husband, too.
It was uncomfortable and yet reassuring at the same time, because I do believe there is a God, and that He desires us to know Him.
If there is evil (And I think most can agree to that, especially given the insanity of the past few decades. Certainly after reading your footnote about The Tavistock Institute! Or looking at mankind’s history.), then there must also be good. For me the scriptures of the Old & New Testaments have given the clearest path to seeking the good and rejecting the evil.
I know personally I don’t come off well in the scales a lot of times. Even if it’s not glaringly apparent to those around me. And that is where the grace of God comes into play. Yet there is tension in that idea as well. The book of Romans delves deep into those waters. While it’s one of my favorite books of the Bible, it is one that offers no easy answers and can be comforting and painful in turn, and often ratchets up my inner tension between the now and the not yet to unbearable levels. Much like your piece. And I mean that as a compliment.
Thank you for sharing the George Strait song. I was never much for country music growing up or for most of my adult years as it was not a genre I was exposed too in my family. But as I’ve aged I find it resonates very strongly in me. Hubby says it’s because of the storyteller aspect of country music. I think he’s onto something there. The George Strait song was a good story.
Thank you NanaW for the really nice comment. I agree with you - the purpose of this post was not to try to convince the reader of anything, but rather to attempt to stimulate one's thoughts so that one hopefully become a more thoughtful, more considered person on one's own life journey. I don't have all the answers and I don't think anyone does -- the best we can do is to listen to our intuition inside of each of us and try to follow it, to drown out the noise of media, governmental and social programming demanding conformity... I think it's great how your takeaway from this post was to deepen and hopefully enrich your own understanding of faith. I wish you continued success on deepening it further...
Thanks for the engagement. I do appreciate your efforts to encourage wading into the deep waters very much, and personally think if we as a society were more contemplative we’d all be a lot better off.
But modern life is all about distraction, and I suspect a lot of that has been deliberate to prevent just such a contemplative mindset.
Should some of the big booms/black swan type of events occur, while it will be incredibly awful for most of humanity, I think contemplation will experience a resurgence as a result. Of course I’m praying that the horse will come before the cart, God willing.
Nice. You are asking the rigbt questions. "Who am I?" Is at the core of everything. If we foccus on this alone, with all our attention, we are on the path to peace. Self-enquiry can be a powerful tool if it suits you.
Hi Ma Mu, "who am I" is a good question, but I think "why are we here?" is just as relevant. We so strongly seek meaning in this world, while at the same time science shows the universe as enormous, cold, and utterly indifferent. This has created a situation akin to schizophrenia in humanity, according to Richard Tarnas in The Passion of the Western Mind...
Aug 19, 2023·edited Aug 19, 2023Liked by Neoliberal Feudalism
Have you read Richard Tarnas's second magnum opus, Cosmos and Pyche? I think you'd appreciate it. I'm in the process of reading it right now. I think he's brilliant, but I take issue with some of what he says, or rather with what he appears to be ignorant of. It would require a long post to elucidate what I mean by that and I can't write that long disquisition at the moment.
Hi Truthbird, great question, it arrived recently and I have it in my queue of books to read. It looks super dense and technical, so I am somewhat intimidated, but I am pre-inclined to agree with the thesis that the movements of the planets impact our personalities and the developments on earth. If you decide to do a writeup on it / review of it I would be interested in reading it. Meanwhile I'll be doing a full post on The Passion of the Western Mind in the not too distant future...
Aug 19, 2023·edited Aug 19, 2023Liked by Neoliberal Feudalism
Psyche and Cosmos is written in a scholarly, erudite style, which demands focus and sustained attention, but I wouldn't say it's "dense." Nor would I say it's "technical," unless you find his descriptions of astrological phenomena difficult to understand. Despite my frustration with it I intend to read the entire book. (I'm about a third of the way through it now. I'm a slow reader, so it'll take me a while.) I'm definitely looking forward to reading your upcoming post on The Passion of the Western Mind. I have that book in my library but haven't read it yet.
Why - questions concern body-mind, cause and effect in the world of manifestations. Why questions can give short-lived ever changing answers to how the universe works. Short-lived because there is layer upon layer of knowledge. No lasting truth can be found with a why question.
There are billions of questions and each answer leads to more questions. It is an unsatisfying endless quest.
Who am I, aims right at the source of all manifestations, the Absolute. There is no positive answer to it. Whatever you come up with, whatever you point to is wrong. The fact that you point to something that you are makes it an object and yourself a subject. It is imposdible to see who you are. You can only be it. The centre of all looking and knowing.
However, it is enough to know what you are not. That is the task of self-enquiry. Am I this person with this name and this age? Of course not. Because it is vulnerable to change. What you are, your soul, has to be unchangable and still. It is the eye of tbe storm. Everything else moves but not you.
Are you this body? Are you these thoughts? Are you these emotions? If it moves it is not you because you see the movement. It is a Gestalt. To be able to perceive movement it needs a still background against which all movement happens. By discarting all things moving and changing as not you, you eventually reach still beingness. This is called the Neti Neti way. You can't know your true being. You can only be it. Thete is a knowing when you reach that point that tells you that you reached it. But it is not conceptual.
In short: Whatever you perceive or conceive can't be you because you are perceiving and conceiving it. Meditate on that and good luck.
PS: If you know "Who you are", the "Why are we here?" Question will dissolve together with all other question and problems. Questions and problems only exist for an illusionary separated ego entity. I know this sounds unbelievable and incomprehensible. Just one awakening experience - if only for a few seconds - will change Every thing. It very profound. It can't be unseen - ever.
I spent many years as an agnostic, but now think there IS more than the materialism currently destroying the souls of humanity.
We here, are proof. Our will is free to choose our course, (within the bounds of reality). Ethics exist to aid in our choosing. Think of the investment in all ethical systems. Why would any of that exist in the absents of free will, or if the universe were strictly materialistic.
Consciousness exists. To assume the opposite is self contradictory.
Conciseness exist, and the will is free to choose within the bounds of reality.
Our soul is the totality of our consciousness over time. We are closer to a movie than a snapshot. (Think of Billy Pilgrim, being 'unstuck in time).
Materialism can never answer the questions metaphysical causes. We humans can infer them but cannot, in this life, know them.
I do not know if there is a loving God, that takes a personal interest in my soul. But I think we were given consciousness and a will, to do with as we choose. We are all souls navigating the sea of reality. Some with more direction than others, and we each set our course.
Hi Broken, I agree with you that materialism cannot answer the deeper questions about why things are the way they are as opposed to how they are the way they are. I think it is difficult to discuss consciousness without defining what it is exactly, which has proven challenging. When could AI be considered conscious, for example?
The concept of free will is, to me, at odds with the idea of a God outside of space and time that created all the matter of the universe, who would therefore be everywhere, everywhen, and omniscient. Omniscience means that free will is merely an illusion. But your guess is as good as mine...
If free will is an illusion, then to what end? It would have been created that way, but why? To trick us into thinking we have choice? That makes no sense to me.
If God , outside of space and time, exists, he is at the end, and the beginning, and all things would be known, as you say. Again, why would he do that?
On the other hand if God is the first cause, the Creator of matter and order, and then is more or less hands off, then the will is free, ethics need to be defined, and good and evil exist. God watches, and sits in judgement.
I've kind of been going down a rabbit hole on this subject for a while now. Mostly I've been reading the works of David Bentley Hart, more so on the problem of evil rather than of the soul. He wrote an interesting essay that caught my attention, titled Tremors of Doubt (https://archive.is/D5CKL) in the aftermath of that tsunami in the early 2000s that killed something like a quarter million people.
His major point seems to be (he wrote a book on the subject as well, The Doors of the Sea, which I read a week or two ago but need to read again to get a better understanding) that this cosmos is a fallen one, something that resulted from an "atemporal fall" that took place before time and before the universe itself came into existence, and that as long as we're here we are subject to all the suffering and misery that is intrinsic to it.
On the topic of the soul, I know he's thought about this problem in the same way - I read one of this essays in Theological Territories where he criticizes the idea of eternal damnation for, among other reasons, the idea of it being ridiculous that we would be tortured for eternity as a result of the decisions we make while shackled to a body subject to so many biological impulses, or how living a virtuous life would be easier or harder depending on how ones bodily gifts allows them to succeed or fail in the given circumstances of a society.
I was also listening to a podcast interview of him where the topic of consciousness was being discussed. He brings up the materialist description - that everything in consciousness has a 1:1 correlate with some kind of biochemical process in the brain. He mocked the idea and insinuated it was ridiculous because, if that were so, why would consciousness even exist as a phenomenon? At least I think that was his point.
I haven't dug too deep into his stuff yet so I can't present his arguments with perfect form, but the above are some things I've read of his that were interesting to me.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Will. I actually have that David Bentley Hart book queued up for reading, and I really liked his 2003 article about Nietzsche and nihilism here: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/10/christ-and-nothing . It takes a strong religious writer to address Nietzsche's criticisms head-on without dissembly.
I'll be doing a post on Orthodox Christianity in the not too distant future, mostly about Timothy Ware's book "The Orthodox Church", but with some other analysis, which I think you might appreciate...
Not really a problem at all -- like in Pascal's Wager, just operate under the assumption that you have a soul. Operating under an adopted (or revealed) belief in the soul, however, is not at all the same as disregarding the fact that changes in age, health, hormones, nutritional status, general physical fitness, etc., can expose that soul to substantial 'lane changes'. I'd say, in fact, that paying close and sustained attention to those different lane-changing factors is an excellent way to improve the nature of the assumed personal soul, and maintain immunity to the influences of those who are more careless of others (and themselves).
Hi Larry, I understand the argument for Pascal's Wager, but what do you think the nature of the soul to be if age, health, hormones, nutritional status, general physical fitness have such a 'lane change' effect on it?
To borrow an answer -- the nature of the soul is still and always exactly what was behind each of our faces before we were born. That doesn't change at all by any lane changes, but attending well to the things named -- among others -- we can more effectively carry out our soul's business in this post-birth world. Otherwise -- we're just randomly wandering ghosts while still alive. Lot of that going on these days -- mostly by hungry ghosts, in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost.
Probably would have been clearer if I had written, "before we were conceived" rather than "before we were born". The original source uses "before our parents were born" to get to the same point of meaning. The Asian tradition referenced holds that soul = "true self"; i.e., way down there where all the turtles are (a T. Pratchett reference)...
Regarding the soul: many religions call for fasting or other hardship as part of serious prayer. Why such unpleasantness? Possible answer: what overrides the urges of the flesh but the spirit?
As for the problems of evil and the afterlife, according to the Bible we are supposed to envision the Creator as a father figure. Read Proverbs for what was considered fatherly love. It was the love of a good drill sergeant or sensei.
The Roman Catholic description of the afterlife is rather different from what is in the Bible. Devout Christians who meet a high enough standard of excellence are to come back to life and live here on planet Earth, and form a government. Only after the thousand year reign of Jesus here on earth are the rest of humanity to be resurrected and judged.
Hi Fabius, I agree with you that materialism and spirituality have an inverse correlation, which leads some credence to the dualism perspective that matter is infused in metaphysical "evil" and spirituality is "good". The Cathars believed that man would reincarnate until he spiritually ascended enough to connect with the Source, and that the God of matter is the Demiurge/Satan,who holds total sway over matter. With respect to the Second Coming, Christians in the era of Christ fervently believed that it would happen in their lifetimes: "Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." They kept pushing it out, generation by generation, each one expecting this would finally be the time of Judgment...
That being said, I'm still not sure what the soul is supposed to be, exactly...
The material is not evil; it is animal, albeit intelligent animal in the case of humans.
I'm speculating a bit, but I suspect what Immanuel Kant meant when he wrote that a self-interested act was not moral, I think he was thinking moral vs. amoral, not moral vs. immoral. That is, the vandal is more wicked than the burglar. The former does evil for the purpose of evil. The latter does evil for material gain.
Being spiritual does not necessarily make you a better person. It could make you a worse person. The point is that what you do as spirit is what you will be judged upon. (But if you let your animal self stay in control, then you might just meet the fate of animals. No crowns in the Kingdom, but perhaps limited punishment. The Science isn't settled.)
Many of Jesus' teachings accepted that our spirit is "asleep" much of the time (in the sense that G.I. Gurdjieff talked about "sleep"). That's where the Total Quality Management passages in the gospels make sense. "If your right hand causes you to fall into sin, cut it off..." That is, when consciousness is strong, take the meta actions to prevent your animal self from sinning.
In modern terms, if you are fat, don't have a box of doughnuts in the house. Don't expect to resist temptation 24/7. Use your peaks in willpower to prevent bad actions when the will is weak. The Flesh is weak. Act accordingly when the Spirit is strong.
I've been thinking about this myself a lot, recently, since I've been doing a lot of research on destabilizing elements of various chemicals in food, medication, tap water, so on and so forth, and their effects, as well as other phenomenon, such as how magnetic pulses applied to the right parts of a brain can, in effect, lobotomize the patient and shut down certain faculties. Hilariously enough, the article mentions that the procedure can "alter religious and political inclinations", and says outright that feelings towards immigrants increase and conviction in an omnipotent god decreases. Funny questions to be asking the patients - I'm sure the doctors involved were just curious and had no ulterior motives. But it did leave me thinking - if they can reduce you to the worst caricature of a mid-wit redditor Funko-American by just... turning off parts of your brain, essentially, or alter your emotional state by flooding it with hormones, or, in some cases, even send people into a berserker frenzy or induce audio-visual hallucinations with infrasound, yeah, you're right, it really begs the question, who are you REALLY? It's not all that much fun to consider.
But, ultimately - and I have no real evidence of this outside of some gut feeling - that we're all our own little trinities; a body, a mind, and a spiritual component, all of which don't really seem to get along all that well, or even communicate much, if at all. I compared it to three people locked in separate but adjoining rooms, who can only really bang on the walls and yell at one another and hope the others might hear them. For instance, a surplus of carbs in a diet can throw one's gut flora out of balance, encouraging the rapid growth of one type of bacteria over all the others. This, obviously, isn't good. An excess of carbs and certain bacteria in the gut has been directly linked to mental health, namely depression and anxiety. It would be great if your body could just talk to your mind and say, "Hey, man, maybe chill with the carbs," but, since it can't, the best it seems to be able to do is trigger a sense of mental malaise through hormones and shutting off certain chemical receptors in the brain as a sort of alarm system, which I'm becoming increasingly convinced is the functional purpose of (most) forms of depression. Basically, your body makes you emotionally miserable in hopes that you'll make the conscious decision to start doing something else and regain homeostasis.
Sounds a bit weird, I know, so I hope it makes sense. All in all, I think we, in our totality, are these three facets constantly wrestling with one another, almost like three totally different creatures with different, often times conflicting desires, working in (dis)harmony as best it can.
Great article, though. Really enjoying reading some of your backlog at the moment.
Thanks for the comment, Yakubian. I agree with everything you've written here. You know, part of the reason why our body/mind/soul are in such misalignment is due to the neolithic agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. Our instincts are and remain hardwired for a small hunter gatherer society where everyone knew each other and which was relatively egalitarian. The Dunbar number states we can only maintain relationships with a maximum of 150 people, which fits that style of living. Anyway, everything was thrown into chaos when humans invented agriculture and became sedentary in towns and cities; our instincts and our conscious thoughts became wildly misaligned. You may like this particular post on the topic if it interests you: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-10000-year-explosion-rapid-selection
Do things (experiences,books,ideas etc) change us or do they provide the illusion of doing so? A predetermined natal path which is traversed, coupled with a perceived force of free will, providing the idea of autonomy crucial to our development and survival as a species and as individuals? Morphic field theories come to mind here, where things grow into their shapes as determined by their morphic fields. Could it be possible that this may include not just our atomic matter forms but to our ‘souls’ as well? With most people simply filling out their fields NPC style while others possibly able to sense,connect, shift and steer them. Through sensitivity,sheer will or by other means forgotten and/or removed from modern history. Ancient shamanesque techniques and alike to enable moving from our ‘planetary path’ into ‘new lanes’ to the point where we ourselves begin to manifest happenings and in turn influence the planetary path, the very planets themselves? I am using the word planets but I feel it has more to do with the Birkeland currents and their connection to everything.
Interfering with the morphic field form with say surgery, accidents(poker in the head), tumour or drugs etc may in turn alter the field to which we grow, body and soul. But surely such a field would maintain it’s integrity over some missing or anomalous bits of atomic matter, but maybe not. The theory that the universe is mostly plasma in all its forms makes our earthly atomic matter relatively rare so maybe altering our atomic structures has more impact in shaping things than we’d imagine. But then what comes first the field or the egg!
And what of ‘good and evil’ so many thoughts and not enough time today!
Thanks for this article you’ve set my mind ablaze in a way I very much needed, where I actually started writing which I haven’t done for a long time hence the unrefined rambling 😬
Many thanks for this and all your work.
I really liked this response, thanks Forrest. Astrology, energy fields, shamanesque techniques to open our minds, this stuff is all fascinating and has been frowned upon in the West for hundreds of years or more. For some reason your post reminded me of the story of Royal Rife, who apparently used frequency waves to destroy cancer cells and which you may appreciate: https://educate-yourself.org/cn/morrisfishbein05feb02.shtml
Also, for whatever it's worth, I've had some astrology sessions with a fantastic Indian astrologer and her position is that the planets merely influence our actions (based on our inherited karma from past lives), and that we do retain free will to make decisions...
Forrest, do you have any books you recommend on morphic field theories, planetary paths and Birkeland currents? These are topics I have interest in delving into further. Thank you...
I really liked Robert Temple’s book A New Science Of Heaven. Great read, well researched with a website for the bibliography, lots of worthwhile further reading listed throughout the book and on the website. I’m very interested in these kordylewski clouds, absolutely fascinating. Fun fact: I asked someone I follow on twitter for their thoughts on the kordylewski clouds in a direct message and had my account locked! Also Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance theories sit well with me. I’ll have a look through my notes for some more of the more obscure ones and get back to you.
Thank you, both of these look interesting, I will check them out...
I am fond of the Eliphas Levi quote, Science is the unification of reason and faith. By Science he meant magic, occult studies and modern science. I have faith in my soul, I have faith I have been here many times before, I am here in this incarnation to learn, to expand my consciousness and to strengthen and "evolve" my soul.
This was fascinating, thought provoking and disturbing. Spent the entire morning pondering over different points in my mind and how it applies to my life. Discussed certain sections with my husband, too.
It was uncomfortable and yet reassuring at the same time, because I do believe there is a God, and that He desires us to know Him.
If there is evil (And I think most can agree to that, especially given the insanity of the past few decades. Certainly after reading your footnote about The Tavistock Institute! Or looking at mankind’s history.), then there must also be good. For me the scriptures of the Old & New Testaments have given the clearest path to seeking the good and rejecting the evil.
I know personally I don’t come off well in the scales a lot of times. Even if it’s not glaringly apparent to those around me. And that is where the grace of God comes into play. Yet there is tension in that idea as well. The book of Romans delves deep into those waters. While it’s one of my favorite books of the Bible, it is one that offers no easy answers and can be comforting and painful in turn, and often ratchets up my inner tension between the now and the not yet to unbearable levels. Much like your piece. And I mean that as a compliment.
Thank you for sharing the George Strait song. I was never much for country music growing up or for most of my adult years as it was not a genre I was exposed too in my family. But as I’ve aged I find it resonates very strongly in me. Hubby says it’s because of the storyteller aspect of country music. I think he’s onto something there. The George Strait song was a good story.
Thank you NanaW for the really nice comment. I agree with you - the purpose of this post was not to try to convince the reader of anything, but rather to attempt to stimulate one's thoughts so that one hopefully become a more thoughtful, more considered person on one's own life journey. I don't have all the answers and I don't think anyone does -- the best we can do is to listen to our intuition inside of each of us and try to follow it, to drown out the noise of media, governmental and social programming demanding conformity... I think it's great how your takeaway from this post was to deepen and hopefully enrich your own understanding of faith. I wish you continued success on deepening it further...
Thanks for the engagement. I do appreciate your efforts to encourage wading into the deep waters very much, and personally think if we as a society were more contemplative we’d all be a lot better off.
But modern life is all about distraction, and I suspect a lot of that has been deliberate to prevent just such a contemplative mindset.
Should some of the big booms/black swan type of events occur, while it will be incredibly awful for most of humanity, I think contemplation will experience a resurgence as a result. Of course I’m praying that the horse will come before the cart, God willing.
Nice. You are asking the rigbt questions. "Who am I?" Is at the core of everything. If we foccus on this alone, with all our attention, we are on the path to peace. Self-enquiry can be a powerful tool if it suits you.
Hi Ma Mu, "who am I" is a good question, but I think "why are we here?" is just as relevant. We so strongly seek meaning in this world, while at the same time science shows the universe as enormous, cold, and utterly indifferent. This has created a situation akin to schizophrenia in humanity, according to Richard Tarnas in The Passion of the Western Mind...
Have you read Richard Tarnas's second magnum opus, Cosmos and Pyche? I think you'd appreciate it. I'm in the process of reading it right now. I think he's brilliant, but I take issue with some of what he says, or rather with what he appears to be ignorant of. It would require a long post to elucidate what I mean by that and I can't write that long disquisition at the moment.
Hi Truthbird, great question, it arrived recently and I have it in my queue of books to read. It looks super dense and technical, so I am somewhat intimidated, but I am pre-inclined to agree with the thesis that the movements of the planets impact our personalities and the developments on earth. If you decide to do a writeup on it / review of it I would be interested in reading it. Meanwhile I'll be doing a full post on The Passion of the Western Mind in the not too distant future...
Psyche and Cosmos is written in a scholarly, erudite style, which demands focus and sustained attention, but I wouldn't say it's "dense." Nor would I say it's "technical," unless you find his descriptions of astrological phenomena difficult to understand. Despite my frustration with it I intend to read the entire book. (I'm about a third of the way through it now. I'm a slow reader, so it'll take me a while.) I'm definitely looking forward to reading your upcoming post on The Passion of the Western Mind. I have that book in my library but haven't read it yet.
Why - questions concern body-mind, cause and effect in the world of manifestations. Why questions can give short-lived ever changing answers to how the universe works. Short-lived because there is layer upon layer of knowledge. No lasting truth can be found with a why question.
There are billions of questions and each answer leads to more questions. It is an unsatisfying endless quest.
Who am I, aims right at the source of all manifestations, the Absolute. There is no positive answer to it. Whatever you come up with, whatever you point to is wrong. The fact that you point to something that you are makes it an object and yourself a subject. It is imposdible to see who you are. You can only be it. The centre of all looking and knowing.
However, it is enough to know what you are not. That is the task of self-enquiry. Am I this person with this name and this age? Of course not. Because it is vulnerable to change. What you are, your soul, has to be unchangable and still. It is the eye of tbe storm. Everything else moves but not you.
Are you this body? Are you these thoughts? Are you these emotions? If it moves it is not you because you see the movement. It is a Gestalt. To be able to perceive movement it needs a still background against which all movement happens. By discarting all things moving and changing as not you, you eventually reach still beingness. This is called the Neti Neti way. You can't know your true being. You can only be it. Thete is a knowing when you reach that point that tells you that you reached it. But it is not conceptual.
In short: Whatever you perceive or conceive can't be you because you are perceiving and conceiving it. Meditate on that and good luck.
With a little luck an intentional guided psychedelic session can give you a life-altering taste that puts you into the right direction.
PS: If you know "Who you are", the "Why are we here?" Question will dissolve together with all other question and problems. Questions and problems only exist for an illusionary separated ego entity. I know this sounds unbelievable and incomprehensible. Just one awakening experience - if only for a few seconds - will change Every thing. It very profound. It can't be unseen - ever.
My take.
I spent many years as an agnostic, but now think there IS more than the materialism currently destroying the souls of humanity.
We here, are proof. Our will is free to choose our course, (within the bounds of reality). Ethics exist to aid in our choosing. Think of the investment in all ethical systems. Why would any of that exist in the absents of free will, or if the universe were strictly materialistic.
Consciousness exists. To assume the opposite is self contradictory.
Conciseness exist, and the will is free to choose within the bounds of reality.
Our soul is the totality of our consciousness over time. We are closer to a movie than a snapshot. (Think of Billy Pilgrim, being 'unstuck in time).
Materialism can never answer the questions metaphysical causes. We humans can infer them but cannot, in this life, know them.
I do not know if there is a loving God, that takes a personal interest in my soul. But I think we were given consciousness and a will, to do with as we choose. We are all souls navigating the sea of reality. Some with more direction than others, and we each set our course.
Hi Broken, I agree with you that materialism cannot answer the deeper questions about why things are the way they are as opposed to how they are the way they are. I think it is difficult to discuss consciousness without defining what it is exactly, which has proven challenging. When could AI be considered conscious, for example?
The concept of free will is, to me, at odds with the idea of a God outside of space and time that created all the matter of the universe, who would therefore be everywhere, everywhen, and omniscient. Omniscience means that free will is merely an illusion. But your guess is as good as mine...
If free will is an illusion, then to what end? It would have been created that way, but why? To trick us into thinking we have choice? That makes no sense to me.
If God , outside of space and time, exists, he is at the end, and the beginning, and all things would be known, as you say. Again, why would he do that?
On the other hand if God is the first cause, the Creator of matter and order, and then is more or less hands off, then the will is free, ethics need to be defined, and good and evil exist. God watches, and sits in judgement.
Your analogy about souls being films as opposed to snapshots, does remind me of the concept of a hyperobject.
The idea there exists objects that occupy higher dimensional spaces whose pieces are distributed across time.
I've kind of been going down a rabbit hole on this subject for a while now. Mostly I've been reading the works of David Bentley Hart, more so on the problem of evil rather than of the soul. He wrote an interesting essay that caught my attention, titled Tremors of Doubt (https://archive.is/D5CKL) in the aftermath of that tsunami in the early 2000s that killed something like a quarter million people.
His major point seems to be (he wrote a book on the subject as well, The Doors of the Sea, which I read a week or two ago but need to read again to get a better understanding) that this cosmos is a fallen one, something that resulted from an "atemporal fall" that took place before time and before the universe itself came into existence, and that as long as we're here we are subject to all the suffering and misery that is intrinsic to it.
On the topic of the soul, I know he's thought about this problem in the same way - I read one of this essays in Theological Territories where he criticizes the idea of eternal damnation for, among other reasons, the idea of it being ridiculous that we would be tortured for eternity as a result of the decisions we make while shackled to a body subject to so many biological impulses, or how living a virtuous life would be easier or harder depending on how ones bodily gifts allows them to succeed or fail in the given circumstances of a society.
I was also listening to a podcast interview of him where the topic of consciousness was being discussed. He brings up the materialist description - that everything in consciousness has a 1:1 correlate with some kind of biochemical process in the brain. He mocked the idea and insinuated it was ridiculous because, if that were so, why would consciousness even exist as a phenomenon? At least I think that was his point.
I haven't dug too deep into his stuff yet so I can't present his arguments with perfect form, but the above are some things I've read of his that were interesting to me.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Will. I actually have that David Bentley Hart book queued up for reading, and I really liked his 2003 article about Nietzsche and nihilism here: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/10/christ-and-nothing . It takes a strong religious writer to address Nietzsche's criticisms head-on without dissembly.
Re: the question about why would consciousness exist as a phenomenon, that's one of the core questions that Brett Andersen tries to address in his Youtube series and Substack. https://www.youtube.com/@BrettPAndersen/videos , https://brettandersen.substack.com/ He approaches things from a purely naturalist perspective (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy) ), but he does it in a very educational manner, even if one ultimately doesn't agree with all of his conclusions.
I'll be doing a post on Orthodox Christianity in the not too distant future, mostly about Timothy Ware's book "The Orthodox Church", but with some other analysis, which I think you might appreciate...
Not really a problem at all -- like in Pascal's Wager, just operate under the assumption that you have a soul. Operating under an adopted (or revealed) belief in the soul, however, is not at all the same as disregarding the fact that changes in age, health, hormones, nutritional status, general physical fitness, etc., can expose that soul to substantial 'lane changes'. I'd say, in fact, that paying close and sustained attention to those different lane-changing factors is an excellent way to improve the nature of the assumed personal soul, and maintain immunity to the influences of those who are more careless of others (and themselves).
Hi Larry, I understand the argument for Pascal's Wager, but what do you think the nature of the soul to be if age, health, hormones, nutritional status, general physical fitness have such a 'lane change' effect on it?
To borrow an answer -- the nature of the soul is still and always exactly what was behind each of our faces before we were born. That doesn't change at all by any lane changes, but attending well to the things named -- among others -- we can more effectively carry out our soul's business in this post-birth world. Otherwise -- we're just randomly wandering ghosts while still alive. Lot of that going on these days -- mostly by hungry ghosts, in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost.
Probably would have been clearer if I had written, "before we were conceived" rather than "before we were born". The original source uses "before our parents were born" to get to the same point of meaning. The Asian tradition referenced holds that soul = "true self"; i.e., way down there where all the turtles are (a T. Pratchett reference)...
Regarding the soul: many religions call for fasting or other hardship as part of serious prayer. Why such unpleasantness? Possible answer: what overrides the urges of the flesh but the spirit?
As for the problems of evil and the afterlife, according to the Bible we are supposed to envision the Creator as a father figure. Read Proverbs for what was considered fatherly love. It was the love of a good drill sergeant or sensei.
The Roman Catholic description of the afterlife is rather different from what is in the Bible. Devout Christians who meet a high enough standard of excellence are to come back to life and live here on planet Earth, and form a government. Only after the thousand year reign of Jesus here on earth are the rest of humanity to be resurrected and judged.
Citations here: https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/an-afterlife-a-nerd-can-believe-in
Hi Fabius, I agree with you that materialism and spirituality have an inverse correlation, which leads some credence to the dualism perspective that matter is infused in metaphysical "evil" and spirituality is "good". The Cathars believed that man would reincarnate until he spiritually ascended enough to connect with the Source, and that the God of matter is the Demiurge/Satan,who holds total sway over matter. With respect to the Second Coming, Christians in the era of Christ fervently believed that it would happen in their lifetimes: "Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." They kept pushing it out, generation by generation, each one expecting this would finally be the time of Judgment...
That being said, I'm still not sure what the soul is supposed to be, exactly...
The material is not evil; it is animal, albeit intelligent animal in the case of humans.
I'm speculating a bit, but I suspect what Immanuel Kant meant when he wrote that a self-interested act was not moral, I think he was thinking moral vs. amoral, not moral vs. immoral. That is, the vandal is more wicked than the burglar. The former does evil for the purpose of evil. The latter does evil for material gain.
Being spiritual does not necessarily make you a better person. It could make you a worse person. The point is that what you do as spirit is what you will be judged upon. (But if you let your animal self stay in control, then you might just meet the fate of animals. No crowns in the Kingdom, but perhaps limited punishment. The Science isn't settled.)
Many of Jesus' teachings accepted that our spirit is "asleep" much of the time (in the sense that G.I. Gurdjieff talked about "sleep"). That's where the Total Quality Management passages in the gospels make sense. "If your right hand causes you to fall into sin, cut it off..." That is, when consciousness is strong, take the meta actions to prevent your animal self from sinning.
In modern terms, if you are fat, don't have a box of doughnuts in the house. Don't expect to resist temptation 24/7. Use your peaks in willpower to prevent bad actions when the will is weak. The Flesh is weak. Act accordingly when the Spirit is strong.
Or in my case, I should cut back on the coffee...