Magically/Transcendently Repostulating Freewill for Stability

Many Hellenists and later Western esotericists held there is one higher sublime and profound experiential insight: being reborn out of the determined universe.

A common idea of Hellenistic religion-philosophy-myth was that after developing one's thinking and experiencing to most fully appreciate one's embeddedness in a determined universe, one can be lifted even higher, up out of cosmic determinism, beyond the sphere of the fixed stars.

The emperor was divinized at death to become a star, but many cults then grabbed the idea of ascending beyond the stars. If the emperor was chosen by Fate, initiates escaped and eluded the clutches of Fate, Necessity, and were miraculously and divinely set free from the deterministic cosmic prison.

Godmen were chained and fastened to the material realm, died, and were then lifted up beyond the deterministic material realm -- thus so were those initiates who were lifted up by the godmen. The levels of initiation and ascension were somewhat standardized (with contention about variations). Start at bottom and move up through experiencing each level:

9th -- beyond rationality, divine transcendence, transcendent freedom

8th -- fixed stars - timeless cosmic determinism

4th-7th - slow planets

1st-3rd - fast planets

0th - earth - change, time

A miracle happened, the prison doors fell open and the chains fell off, and I was set free. High philosophical magic may elevate this same sense of 'miracle' as the idea and mystic experience of transcending cosmic determinism, because nothing less than a miracle can lift a personal agent out of the deterministic block universe.

The ancients fully believed we are part of a determined universe, and some went beyond to believe in the greatest and purest miracle of all, that of being lifted outside of the deterministic block universe. Plotinus' system connects directly to this system, but with different ways of framing the elements; I should read Plotinus specifically on the issue of transcending hiemarmene/Necessity.

Believing in miracle to restabilize self-control

Artist: Ozzy Osbourne

Album: Blizzard of Ozz

Song: I Don't Know (excerpt)

Nobody ever told me, I found out for myself

You gotta believe in foolish miracles

It's not how you play the game

It's if you win or lose

You can choose

Don't confuse

Win or lose

It's up to you

Analysis: The following theory is tentative, and includes some reported ideas that were in the air at the time, whether correct or not.

Nobody ever told me, I found out for myself

[during peak of very loose cognition, during self-control system short-circuit and breakdown]

You gotta believe in foolish miracles

[pray to Isis/God as transcendent compassionate controller outside time, to plot a kind trajectory for your forthcoming mental construct series so mental stability returns and you are not obliged to cancel your control as "sentenced" and liable to]

It's not how you play the game

It's if you win or lose

[though the mind reached this point through perfect hardheaded razor-sharp rationality, jumping up a level to transcendent miracle salvation from self-destruction can be considered fair -- if the choice is between perfect rationality that leads to self-destruction of self-control, versus prayer for a miraculous solution via a time-transcendent controller-god descending onto the stage in a divine intervention, why not give up the perfect rationality that failed to save your ass and simply be rescued by miraculous faith?

That faith idea is what the impossible, miraculous Isis/God puts into the mind, and one is thus "saved by divine intervention via the savior" -- this is all done with full recognition of truth and perfect rationality, so it's not delusion in any way; it's a transcendent jump out of the trap of ego death.]

You can choose

[ironic -- next album concludes "There's no choice", but such is choice -- and the God, according to the soberly calculated miracle-level-jump, is the one who put trust of him into your mind. How does this work? "It's a transcendent miracle."]

Don't confuse

[peak loosecog state is both confusing mayhem, and frighteningly clear-thinking like a mythic sword]

Win or lose

[the choice: believe in a miracle (faith in Isis as extra-time benevolent controller of your near-future thoughtstream and be spared from self-control destruction, or, cling to the sinking ship of perfectly pure rationality and be liable to be a victim of the self-control chaos monster]

It's up to you

[ancient philosophy debate: is anything "up to us" as a sovereign, primary control-origin, or is the mind's control only that of a secondary control gear?]

I'm picturing "Christ" as a cybernetic mental model and mode of self-control that centrally relies on a Hofstadterian transcendent core, called "faith". One becomes a "Friend of God", calling God "daddy" or "pop", as in "here, assume a miracle happens".

If this theory is true, if the mind's self-control system ultimately explodes into chaos when self-control is rationally analyzed with absolutist Reason, then the transcendent mind, to be viable, is forced to tell itself the egoic lie which it knows can't be true, like a thorn in the flesh, one must carry around a little devil, must continue playing the false ego game, but that little ghost is now made holy and made acceptable to God -- that is, to pure rationality and self-consistency.

The mind now knows that it cannot be self-consistent; rational self-control causes self-control to seize in a religious seizure of control chaos. These ideas might be wrong, but should be considered. The ego delusion is now replaced by the Holy Ghost, the spirit of Christ, the Christ pattern that is officially declared spotless, holy, sinless, acceptable to God. "How can I logically be rational and also be viable?"

You can't have viable self-control at the same time as you have perfect rationality about self control; seizure results and liability for chaos. The "acceptable solution", the Christ or Saving Solution that preserves one's viability as a practical self-controller system, is to officially sacrifice your firstborn childself, and adopt the miracle faith solution, which amounts to simultaneously believing the lie of egoic self-control at the same time as you reject such an impossible logical absurdity.

How can the mind be so inconsistent and yet be declared righteous and rational and consistent? How can the mind be formally and consciously self-contradictory? That is found to be necessary and at least the lie is emphasized out in the open, rather than hidden and denied.

If this theory is true, then the exagerrated self-thrashed arrested king on the Cross would serve as an emphatic reminder that, although practical requirements demand that I pretend to be a self-controller, I very openly emphasize that I am not really such a controller. This is living with the Christ "acceptable pattern" in one's cybernetic heart as opposed to living with a goatishly self-willed, asinine and foolish demon in one's cybernetic self-control heart.

I am now a liar, but I am no longer a foolish liar -- I am redeemed. The image of a donkey on a cross is equivalent. And the donkey cannot or must not be destroyed; the mind *uses* delusion, or the animal logically chaotic system of self control, but that logically false pattern is put on display in the middle of the town to remind everyone that their controllership is make-believe, virtual controllership only, merely virtual sovereignty.

I had to learn faith; I had to learn to make believe I am an ego, although I emphatically, formally deny that such a notion of egoic controllership is logically viable when pressed to the limit and observed clearly. I learned to act like I'm lying, to hyperconsciously pretend this mind contains an ego -- to do so is like staking one's life on an impossible miracle; that's the peak cybernetic discovery of "faith".

I now carry a demon, but he is a godman-shaped redeemed demon; a transcendently acknowledged and licensed demon (authorized by my own pure-rationality mind). My mind is converted from a state of prostitution to virginal purity.

This theory is very much frontier exploratory research: all I can say for sure is that these ideas warrant consideration and something along these general lines appears to be warranted. If we are puppets of blind Fortuna, if the universe is a stupid heartless rock and it is the puppetmaster injecting my thoughts, and my thoughts are radically freed even while frozen in the spacetime block... that might be an unstable scenario when examined with too bright a light and too-perfect rationality.

Solutions then may include prayer for a transcendent miracle in the form of being rescued by Isis as a controller outside time -- that might be the meaning of adopting the godman pattern of thinking; and that might be equivalent to pretending to be an egoic sovereign even though such an idea is now considered a grotesque logical impossibility, a deepest offence to one's integrity and mental honor.

I have "sold out" and "given up" on rationality, although rationality is the religion I had to adopt to reach all the way to enlightened self-knowledge about my cybernetic core. Perhaps in the end, studying Douglas Hofstadter, we *are* forced to jump up a level to "trans-rationality" -- after we have played every last card and come to prove our own defeat of egoic control rationality or a purely rational personal-control model.

One of my stronger hunches here is that a purely rational personal-control model leads to dangerous religious self-control seizure. There might have to be a degree of slop, of donkey-mind, of non-rationality, for personal self-control to be viable.

Perhaps my coveted "transcendent control rationality" system I've been engineering for years inevitably has "here a miracle occurs" at its very heart. This would be compatible with Wilber, Watts, Hofstadter, and Godel -- such is the heart of mystery. Where there once was an egoic chaos-demon at my heart, there is now "the mystery of Christ in me", explicitly acknowledged and neatly catalogued and adopted as a transcendent covenant, arrangement, configuration, or deal.

It's a system that works, even if part of the system is "mystery" and an "inner alien God". I can continue living, can consider myself to have full rational self-knowledge, and can have a neat, justified, and logically acceptable slot for "here at the heart, a transcendent miracle occurs".

So, esoteric Christianity may, after all, require something comparable to the supernatural -- but something specific and exact, not the whole magic kitchen sink. A better term would be "transcendent", rather than "supernatural", though the term could possibly include ideas like that of the compassionate controller outside time: Isis or God, who sends a transcendent saving pattern of thinking to my mind, in conjunction with revealing my embarrassing, true, logically contradictory self-control nature to my mind.

If the mind really must utilize a logically invalid system of self-control, rationality needs some kind of transcendent way to accept this flaw at our core and make it righteous, justified, or reconciled.

3 levels of evolving attitude to supernatural-magic themes

There is a 3-tier scheme:

1. Stupid and inexperienced people are supernatural literalists (low magical thinking);

Low literalist magic/astrology/alchemy

2. "The 'rational' Enlightenment" -- dull middling people do away with transcendence and true mysticism together with getting rid of vulgar literalist religion, but fail to understand the potential and referent of mythic allegory

Dull rational uncomprehending rejection of all things magic/astrology/alchemy

3. The best and most experienced people return again to supernaturalism and magic and myth deliberately, in order to harness and explain it as entheogen-determinism allegory.

High mystic mythic allegorical magic/astrology/alchemy

This forms an odd alliance between those who know religion is all entheogen-determinsm metaphor, and those who take it literally (group 1 and 3); there is a combat I'm embroiled in between group 3 and 2. Group 2 loathes 1, and group 3 has to fight to transcend group 2, preserving what's good in group 2 but moving on to reintroduce true religion, which is entheogen determinism metaphor.

The Christ Conspiracy book and discussion group are absolutely restricted to group 2, on the whole; totally and overwhelmingly dominated by the struggle for group 2 to establish supremacy over and against group 1. Group 3, mine, is partly allied with group 1, and partly allied with group 2, so the people who have not evolved beyond group 2 but are struggling still to finish evolving from group 1 to group 2, perceive me (3) as a threat and enemy.

Group 2 suffers from what Wilber calls "repression"; rather than embracing and surpassing level 1, they are struggling to oppose and negate group 1 entirely, without actually understanding how group 1 elements have the potential to transform to 3.

Naive freewill, seized determinism, and high supernaturalism

The peak state is the state of perceiving the universe as ruled by mindless, heartless determinism, a giant fascist corporate-State Borg mechanism that would demolish one's stability of viable self-governance just as soon as it would sustain and preserve the viability of the personal control agent.

>>Why are we born not realizing this? It is not our natural state of consciousness, then? Why would we be born into an unnatural state of consciousness, thinking we have free will?

Humans when young think as freewillists, because freewill is conceptually simple and is practical, an assumption and sense-feeling like animals use, and because young people have limited experience, not having undergone a series of entheogenic initiations. This starting state is metaphorically described as "original sin": freewill thinking and mental structures of moral agency premised on the egoic freewill assumption and sense-feeling. Ego is delusion of freewill; ego is delusion is freewill thinking.

The mature initiate retains the structures of freewill thinking, now "justified" and "forgiven" and "paid for" because consciously acknowledged as merely a practical, convenient illusion of convention the cosmos uses to get its work done.

Common in esotericism is the idea of graduating to deterministic thinking but also to trans-deterministic thinking which fully sees through the illusion of freewill and fully concedes determinism but also is capable of leaping beyond the restrictive limits of definite reasoning, especially when in the peak window of the intense mystic altered state of loose cognition.

First we learn ordinary-state, freewillist thinking, then we learn mystic-state, determinist thinking, which pretty much includes mystic-state transdeterminist, high-magic, trans-rational thinking (the latter phase is highly pertinent to the full, practically problematic experience of determinism, and follows quickly on its heels, which is why high magical thinking is usually found essentially together with deterministic mysticism; in a series of 9 initiations such as astrological Hermeticism, the first have freewillist thinking, #8 has determinism-discovery, and #9 has divine trans-determinism (emphatically not naive freewillist thinking).

High magical thinking could be defined as rejecting freewill as naive and rejecting determinism as true but finite and practically problematic as in leading to self-control seizure. It's better to be a high supernaturalist than a naive freewillist or a seized determinist.

Michael Hoffman wrote:

>>High magical thinking could be defined as rejecting freewill as naive and rejecting determinism as true but finite and practically problematic as in leading to self-control seizure. It's better to be a high supernaturalist than a naive freewillist or a seized determinist.

Brian wrote:

>I'm interested in this concept of self-control-seizure. Could you please elaborate. I could use some more self-control. What, for example, is keeping me from mowing the lawn or changing the oil in my van, or any other thing that I _should_ be doing? I'm looking for practical methods of self-control-cybernetics in daily life.

The rabbi creates his golem creature from deterministic clay from the Ground of Being, bringing it to life by the magic of freewillist thinking so that it becomes a useful servant. Day by day, initiation session after initiation session, the golem's power of self-control and freewillist thinking grows; the golem grows taller but then threatens to run amok, as control instability is reached, when self-control realizes that it has grown too strong to be controlled by its own power.

Then the rabbi must rush to erase the start of the word "truth" to form the word "death", to put an end to the golem of freewill self-control. The magically self-animated golem then collapses back into its real material, deterministic clay from the Ground of Being, and the rabbi is then approved by God. The golem is then placed in the synagogue attic, where no mortal man can gaze upon it and live.

The quest to attain full self-control cannot succeed, but it can bring metaphysical enlightenment and knowledge of all the higher things. Metaphysically, the controller ultimately is the Ground of Being or magically postulated divine hidden powerful controller outside the clutches of the deterministic cosmos.

I began theorizing in order to attain full self-control as promised in the personal development seminars. They promised, and I sought to develop, practical methods of self-control-cybernetics in daily life. But as in the speech attributed to the figure of Saint Paul the Apostle, I was unable to follow such a law, such a code of conduct based on the premise of expecting full self-control. Those things I determined not to do, I did, and those things I determined to do, I did not do.

But I did find a certain peace and mental coherence *about* self-control and about assumed expectations about self-control. That much, I can guarantee to people who read the theory I pulled together -- not attainment of full self-control, but mental peace about our inability to attain full self-control.

The oral teaching is forbidden to put into words, but it is shown here in sacred letters on the scroll from the angel -- not tasted here, though, even though it smells of pungent honey.

http://www.egodeath.com/driedamanitaphotos.htm

>What is high magical thinking?

High magical thinking is distinct from vulgar or low magical thinking, which is literalist. High magical thinking is studied by Western esotericism studies including high alchemy and high astrology.

High magical thinking essentially amounts to the acknowledgement that during the peak window of the mystic altered state, the mind commonly encounters and discovers a need for the ability to think beyond reason and beyond determinism -- not falling down into low superstition, literalism, and freewillist thinking, but retaining reason and deterministic thinking and affirming their elegant validity while also having the ability to stabilize the psyche and the personal self-control system in a way that reason and the elegant deterministic worldmodel cannot do.

This transcendent divine mode of thinking can be said to go beyond Reason and beyond the determinism that Reason (combined with mystic experiential sense-feeling) leads to, or it can be said to be the ultimate phase of Reason which is the ultimate potential mode of Reason, when the mind realizes that common Reason cannot solve the problem of control-instability in the face of cosmic determinism.

The mind is brought to go beyond Reason; that is, graduate from common Reason to transcendent Reason which is mysterious like Godel's Incompleteness Theorem or Hofstadter's Strange Loop of Control and Self -- I put together the latter as the 'strange loop of self-control'.

Hofstadter

http://www.egodeath.com/geb.htm

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465026567/

Ordinary cognition doesn't perceive the strangeness of the self-control loop; loose, mystic-state cognition does perceive and experience that strangeness, leading to the peak religio-philosophical experience of self-control seizure, which is released through the mind's being pulled up into the divine, transcendent, trans-rational, high-magical religious mode of thinking, which rejects freewill as naive and which rejects deterministic thinking as practically incompatible with the needs of practical self-control stability.

Mystic magic and skilled ultra-allegorization

At its best, magic was deliberate ultra-allegorization of mystic phenomena. A sophisticated joke with a serious mystic dimension, because authentic mysticism is so heavy it needs comic relief. There is a key bit of transcendent magic in relating to the absolutely hidden mysterious puppetmaster that is clearly experienced in the mystic state.

Miracle = conscious transcendent use of freewill illusion

>sweet miracle -> miracle of (pseudo) freewill will

The miracle is also the mind's ability to discover no-free-will but then transcendently re-postulate the impossible -- free will, personal power -- in order to bring practical controllership stability back again. This is divine thinking: neither naive freewill, nor denying determinism, but now, the freewill illusion deliberately utilized; delusion now gone, illusion is transcendently embraced and utilized. Virtual freewill has consciously become my possession.

Ancient magic, religion, and metaphorical thought

>>With Campbell, who needs Frazer?

Campbell is pretty good in recognizing myth and religion as essentially metaphor. I think I have Jung's model and its limitations figured out, but I need to study and critique Campbell more. I listened to his Moyers interviews, which are not bad but not terribly enlightening either.

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (CDs, unabridged)

Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1565115104

I liked better Campbell's book about the metaphorical nature of Christianity:

Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Joseph Campbell

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1577312023

I suspect that Campbell doesn't put any emphasis at all on myth as being grounded in the mystic state -- unlike Ralph Metzner book about metaphor in spirituality, The Unfolding Self.

The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience

Ralph Metzner

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1579830005

Daryl wrote (paraphrased):

>>This idea gives me something to ponder:

>>*Magic* gives humans the power over nature

>>*Religion* admits that only god controls nature, and humans must propitiate him/her

The key question in pondering ancient thought and conceptual categories is, would the ancients have thought of 'magic' and 'religion' that way? We need to use the strengths of modern thinking while still differentiating between modern and ancient modes of thought. Key words such as 'humans', 'nature', and 'god' are all highly shiftable within frameworks of meaning and experience. Ancient thinking about magic was not just how we today would think of a person doing ritual for power over what we call nature.

Ancient thinking about magic and religion was more along the lines of, "I have been, through initiatory, non-ordinary religious experiencing, raised to the divine level of the supernatural, reaching my true home outside the cosmos, beyond the clutches of the sphere of the fixed stars. I was brought to do that through being lifted up out of the cosmos by the divine compassionate rescuer, with whom my spiritual level of self is united. Now that I have so transcended the world through divine help, maybe I can rely upon that divine help to help solve other problems, and fulfill other desires and longings."

>>How do we differentiate religious thought from philosophy? As Platonism, a philosophy, has influenced Christianity, a religion, to a large degree. Where do we draw the line there? Is it because religion assumes a god? ... Does religion require ritual, and philosophy only thought and talk? ... I ask it to help define what motivated the proto-Christians.

Overall, ancient philosophy was religious philosophy and mystic philosophy, including mystic speculative philosophy. Modern philosophy restricts its mode of thinking and the kinds of experiencing it takes into account. However, ancient philosophy is practically a different major field than modern philosophy; it's misleading to use the simple unqualified term 'philosophy' as though it means the same for us as for the Hellenistic era -- for us to understand them, the word 'Esotericism' is more appropriate and effective than 'Philosophy'.

Modern Philosophy has only paid attention to the 10% of Hellenistic philosophy which manages to squeeze through our filter; the ancients did discuss some topics that modern Philosophers discuss, but overall, there was far more emphasis on experiential gnosis-type speculation.

Related books:

Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition

Peter Kingsley

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0198150814

Toward a New Interpretation of Plato

Giovanni Reale

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0813208548

Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition

Robert Lamberton

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0520066073

The Neoplatonists

John Gregory

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0415187850

>>… the gnostics: seems to me we can't generalize. ... Some felt the end of the world was coming, some felt when you became pneumatic and approached gnosis, the kingdom was here now.

We should not assume that Gnostics and other Hellenistic religionists thought of 'the end of the world' in a literal sense; to assume that they did is just to project modern literalist assumptions back onto the premoderns. More likely, the idea of 'the end of the world' in ancient religion poetically referred to an experience of timelessness and a certain type of mental chaos during initiation, marking the end of one way of thinking and the beginning of another.

If we can generalize about Gnostic (and maybe other pre-modern) thinking, there is literary interpretive evidence supporting the assumption that typical Gnostics conceived of 'the inevitable immediately approaching end of the world' in a metaphorical, mystical sense rather than in a literalist sense.

The Hellenistic world (Alexander to Constantine, 325 BCE to 325 CE) mapped Alexander's sudden conquest of the entire world onto the phenomena of the mystic state of experiencing, with Persian religious metaphor and Jewish mystic apocalyptic writings serving as additional sources.

My interest in ancient texts is based in systematic double-meanings, modes of reading, and concept-meanings. Look at 'sin', 'salvation', 'imperishability', 'redemption', 'judgement', 'end of the old age', and 'end of the world' and look for a systematic alternate mystical/metaphorical meaning for all these concepts together. Sure, this means heavy study of the ancient texts, but the entire question we must hold out and remember is, what mode of reading is possible and appropriate to use when we read these ancient texts?

If there are two modes of reading -- literal and metaphorical -- then the work at hand becomes not just the work of reading literally, or of finding just any metaphorical system of reading, but rather, of finding a systematic appropriate match, a metaphorical system of reading that overall fits the ancient (or Hellenistic or pre-modern) mode of writing and thinking.

A common flaw in scholarly study of these texts is to adopt an overall literalist frame of mind when reading, and then consider isolated concepts as being metaphorical. Instead, we ought to be looking for and debating about the best from among several proposed metaphorical frameworks in which to do our reading and studying of the texts.

Transcendent rescue via originless, rationally unjustifiable rescue-faith

Self-transcendent rescue through being given originless, nonrational, rationally unjustifiable rescuing-faith

Faith is about one's destined near-future thoughts and movements of will are positive, life-preserving, and kind. There is no logical basis for this assumption, only a rationally exempt assumption out of nowhere, a logically null transcendent magical miracle. The 'mind of Christ' is the mind which is filled, out of a completely hidden source, with the faith that its near-future thoughts and movements of will. What can I do to make this faith or grace or prayer for faith happen?

Nothing -- agency logic fails and nullifies here; here is where the mind is given religion, here is where you get religion, where the 'getting' is and isn't your own initiated action. My movements of will are preset in the future and arise like a spring given to me from outside me. What can I do, as a spring-spewed agent, to control the spring's future spewage?

Nothing; everything that arises from the spring is out of my control, as I, as control agent, am only a projection that is put forth and therefore controlled by the spring, the fountainhead of my world of mental constructs. I, as a merely secondary and virtual control-agent, cannot take credit for my own thoughts and movements of will. I, as pure consciousness, am a straightjacketed helpless observer, fastened helplessly to spacetime, awaiting the actions that come from outside me.

There is consciousness in this mind, and there is secondary-only control agency in this mind, and there is a spring coming into this mind -- this mental-construct cave -- from outside of the cave, from the underworld, with a completely hidden source. Here I am, as pure consciousness and virtual-only control agency, affixed helplessly to spacetime -- the question "what can I do to regain controllership" logically collapses as nonsensical.

There is the man on the cross, chained to the rocks, affixed to the wheel, tied helpless to the mast, nailed inside the box in the river, chained to the rock in the sea as a sacrifice to the chaos monster, hanging from a tree, trapped down in the jaws of hell and belly of the big fish, locked up in the prison, and we ask, incongruously, what this helpless princess of empty, illusory egoic controllership should do as a real and solid free controller to regain her sovereign controllership -- though it is set up to be by definition a perfect, ideal, archetypal *rescue* type of situation.

To give the bread to Judas is to put yourself in a complete rescue type of situation. You ask if you should drink the cup given you -- I answer "Are you prepared to absolutely be dependent on being rescued by a completely hidden mysterious rescuer about whom you know nothing, nothing more than the complete mystery man found by the good Samaritan?

Putting faith in the godman or god to rescue you is like having faith that the unconscious man on the side of the road is a good man -- or like assuming that that man can be trusted with control of your thoughts and movements of will.

Only in this Hofstadterian sense is transcendent knowledge "beyond rationality", and we can define precisely how, just as clearly as we can study "This sentence is false." We are actually always dependent on a hidden source that controls our thoughts and movements of will -- but we only realize and discover this in the refined mystic peak. Reading the preface to the second edition of Godel, Escher, Bach, there is reason to wonder if his interest in strange loops and consciousness was inspired.

It is a control emergency. You are completely helpless. What can you do? Use rationality to try to save your life -- but here it utterly fails; in fact rationality is what caused and led to this hapless entrapment in dire straits. Rationality is the problem, not the solution -- though it does offer the advice that the solution transcends rationality.

Cybernetically, how can this problem be solved with pure religion rather than with myth?

What can you do? Nothing. It is a spiritual emergency. What can you do? Be rescued. Be given faith. Then a miracle happens: abracadabra, your hidden savior waves his wand. The angels cause an earthquake and the jail breaks open.

Be rational. Resue yourself. But rationality concludes that you are incapable as control agent of exerting the required type of effort to rescue yourself. "Save yourself by acting rationally," we say to the illusory control agent. But acting rationally, in the sense intended, is a frank contradiction in terms. Personal action is inherently not rational in its origin -- it is simply given from God-only-knows-where -- from the transcendent creator of the spacetime block, or from the spacetime block itself.

Here is a spacetime block upon which you are totally dependent even for your every thought and near-future movement of will. Can you trust IT? Can you trust the mysterious hidden JHVH? Can you trust this BLAH that is now revealed to be the true hidden fountainhead (which is now revealed and unveiled to your mind) of your every thought, your every movement of will? As Watts writes, why shouldn't you trust it -- it got you here.

Foolish Balaam on your way to curse Israel, listen to the wise voice of the words coming out of the mouth of the ass -- "Why do you beat me? Have I not been your faithful ass, that has carried you all your life?"

Acid rock song: Magic, by the Cars, from Heartbeat City -- an album worth reading from the point of view of the intense mystic altered state.

http://www.usats.com/dale/thecars/lyrics_heartbeat.html#magic

Acid rock song: Help!, by the Beatles

http://www.egodeath.com/johnlennonhelp.htm

Acid rock song: No One at the Bridge, by Rush

http://www.egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm#xtocid22921

What is the name by whom the rational person should be rescued and saved? Some call him Christ, some call him Dionysus, some call him St. George, some first call him 'Snow Dog' and later, in complete contradiction, call him 'Prince By-Tor'. By any name, this is The Transcendent Strange-Control-Loop Rescuer. That is the true name of our savior.

There is only one name by which we must be saved: The Transcendent Strange-Control-Loop Rescuer, the helper, the advocate, your good lawyer... also known by one philosophical mystery-cult as By-Tor.

You can even be challenged to prove that the personal name doesn't matter. You could even theoretically label the Christ/savior principle "light bringer" as long as you don't depend on your own free will moral agency power to save you. As a sort of arbitrary label I could call the savior "Lucifer" but certainly cannot call the savior "my own power of free will moral agency" -- *that* is what it means to "know Christ" and to recognize the paraclete.

The principles are what matters, not the choice of symbols or metaphors such as "annoited savior-king" or "light-bringer" or "shepherd" or "goatherd". True, in some contexts Lucifer = goat = freewill delusion, but if the context is changed, we could set up Lucifer = shepherd = no-free-will. Similarly, it's legit to say "Jehovah = creator of lower world = delusion" -- because metaphor elements are context-relative or system-relative.

To make us prove our worth as theorists focused on the principles rather than the labels, Neil chose the "By-Tor" name for the rescuer principle, though that name was used in the context of his previous album to represent evil -- there, the savior/rescuer principle is labelled "Snow Dog".

Theologians say "paraclete" refers to the holy spirit, but on principle, 'paraclete' points to the rescuer principle itself, which is why the description of who or what Jesus will send after he goes away is left so mysteriously vague. The holy spirit is the mental state in which the mind reconstructs and rediscovers the "depend on transcendent self-control rescuer" principle -- so "paraclete" doesn't just mean the holy spirit, but more specifically, the cybernetic transcendent rescuer principle while in the mystic state.

DaVinci's esoteric crowd seems to have set up a (presumably mystically coherent) symbolic system where 'John the Baptist' = truth, 'Jesus' = falsity -- that's not far from the symbolic scheme Mary "John" Magdalene" = truth, 'Peter' = falsity.

When I say that depending on being transcendently rescued is "rationally unjustifiable" I mean:

not based on rationality

logically null

outside the domain of what can be decided with rationality

rationally undecidable

I don't mean "contrary to rationality". Rationality is a tool that can be used for most things, but as Godel proved, not for everything. One of the few things the tool of rationality can't be wholly applied to is dependence on being transcendently rescued during the ego death state. After we have noted that specific, definite, particular, identified, isolated and cordoned-off factor, we can say that enlightenment is fully rationally explainable.

This transcendence is like the anti-rational aspect of Zen: we have to consciously be made to rely on the Tao, but note that we are ever dependent on the Tao anyway, we just are normally unaware of that non-rational state of dependence.

When threatened by Mara, Buddha's fancy, transcendent, brilliant, complex etc move is simply: touch the ground; he is made by the ground to touch the ground; he is rescued by being made to touch the ground.

Down and up: I point down to the ground of being that produces me and makes me utterly dependent, and point up to the transcendent principle of being mysteriously rescued. As control agent, I have one foot on the Ground of Being (or perhaps egoic thinking), and one foot firmly resting on the foundation of arbitrary, nonlogical, baseless heaven or transcendent thinking -- which I'm aware is mysteriously given to me from outside my conscious control center.

A mature, aware, enlightened control agent depends half on egoic thinking and half on the baseless, floating, mysterious transcendent givenness of all thoughts.

Desperate prayer to a transcendent deity or Self

Michael wrote:

>>our hand is forced by the Ground of Being. During the mystic state, one's hand (heart, will) is seen to be forced. My hand is firmly on the wheel of choice and decision, but now I see that someone is forcing my hand. The ego is the controller of the personal will, but the ego is secretly controlled by the Ground of Being.

>>When that is seen as terrifying and a dangerous state of dependence on a hidden manipulator-force, one may pray to that manipulator force, feeling that one's only hope is to hope that the manipulator force is a conscious and benevolent being -- God conceived of as personal and benevolent.

>Isn't that where "surrender" comes in. I'm not afraid of the hidden-manipulator-force as [because?] I've experienced it before. However, since I have had severe "psychotic breaks," I'd be afraid to do psychedelics ever again -- I might not come back. Once I forgot who I was.

>What's a person to do in a situation like this one? Sounds dangerous for me.

People commonly forget who they are, during loose cognition, when the familiar cognitive structures are effectively lifted, suspended.

We have every reason to assume that psychedelics -- cognition loosening agents -- are dangerous for people, especially for those with a propensity for psychotic breaks, even if they are familiar with the functional strategy that so many writers have called for, of a "ritual framework" that includes praying to a deity. There appears to be a close connection between the events in this evidently standard sequence:

o Desperation during loose cognition

o Prayer to a system-transcendent deity that utterly transcends the usual self-agent and its matrix (spacetime ground)

o Immediately, quickly recovering mental stability.

That sequence is *standard* and universal in popular mystic religious experiencing, and is reflected generally across world religious myths. The person unites with that transcendent deity -- but only the higher, transcendent part of the person unites with the deity and (to adopt standard heretical mystic views for a moment) awakens to being that deity.

Why pray to some god if you -- some part of you -- *is* that god? Why pray to oneself to rescue oneself from one's own helplessness? The problem is a semantics problem: the word "oneself" means both 'self' and 'Self', lower and higher self. When a person discovers that they

The person is subject to the divine death-sentence punishment for breaking the divine law and stealing and eating the food of the gods. The person doesn't realize that at first. But suddenly this death sentence, which is the requirement to sacrifice one's egoic controllership claim, dawns on the mind and swoops down like a devouring eagle of death carrying away one's childself.

The person prays to the divine for rescuing, "forgiveness for breaking the divine law" (by claiming controllership and later for eating the entheogen), and will pay any price for stability so that one's life may continue, rather than enter a disaster scenario. Only a minor disaster, a minor payment is required: to put king ego on the spacetime tree, crucifying and terminating its claim to rulership.

Thus oneself prays to oneself for rescuing from dire straits, but specifically, the lower 'oneself' prays to the higher 'oneself' that is, for the first time, necessarily postulated "by faith" as being outside the spacetime system and its laws. To the mystic, the "laws" that the "religion of the Jews" is based on, the "laws" that Christianity does away with, really means the law of spacetime determinism; the law of divine Necessity.

The ego is killed upon conceptually seeing the "naked goddess", the frozen spacetime block, and is cast into seizure and ego-death and control-chaos. How to recover? Mentally "have faith" -- postulate and construct and affirm that even though the frozen spacetime block is a perfectly coherent model of how things really secretly are, there can yet be a validly postulated realm that transcends the now confidently postulated frozen spacetime block. The thoughts arise in this sequence:

o I'm sure the world is a frozen spacetime block

o I'm sure I'm doomed to lose control, because of realizing the above

o I require an escape from this lawlike mental system

o Prayer to the divine

o Identification of the postulated transcendent part of oneself with the postulated divine controller outside the frozen spacetime block

This is the essence of intense religious experience and the source and origin of the universal religion-myth of the "compassionate, rescuing deity" that can be found in every religion that is influenced by mystics -- these same dynamics and isomorphically equivalent religion-myth ideas can be found in Judaism, Gnosticism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions.

Salvation (rescuing, mental stability) is remarkably rapid after praying to the newly born and mentally constructed transcendent deity outside the spacetime block. "When he saw his persecutors, baby Jesus flew at once into the compassionate protective arms of Mary, Queen of Heaven, so quickly one sandal was lost." This "flying to the deity" mytheme appears in other religion-myth as well.

Date of my 'Apophatic theology, trans-rationality, miracle, unknowable God' idea formulation

A key insight was when I wrote something like, in the Determinism discussion group, "The one real miracle is our ability to postulate the impossible, freewill, while under deterministic self-control seizure during the peak window of the mystic altered state, to regain practical stable sense of being a self-controlling agent." Also, the day I read some Dionysius Areopagite type writings in the book The Other Bible -- all around Fall 2003 -- when I was at last able to agree with Ken Wilber's "transrationality" ideas, but on my own terms and with my own conceptual framework, against his.

In most postings before that insight, I had always rejected Wilber's acceptance of paranormal and trans-rational levels above the level of egoic rationality. But I figured out the legitimate and clear meaning of the "black box alien unknown God" sometime around Summer/Fall 2003.

It is always artificial to assign a single day's date to an insight that blossoms over a week or two period, such as my figuring out, discovering, and recognizing the mystic-state meaning of the metaphors about "apocalyptic end of the passing age" (I think I assigned a date to that of March 24, 2003).

What is the purpose of assigning a date to my key insights? It provides a structure to judge the import of key supporting beams for a viable systematization of transcendent knowledge and the history of esoteric religion, or perennial philosophy. It's a somewhat arbitrary or artificial exercise that provides a tangible method of weighing the import of ideas to identify which are key and which ones are more filler. The exercise helps therefore to formulate nutshell summaries, such as in my long .sig:

"simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth experience. The essence, paradigm, origin, and fountainhead of religion is the use of visionary plants to routinely trigger the intense mystic altered state, producing loose cognitive association binding, which then produces an experience of frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing, ever-existing future. The return of the ordinary state of consciousness is allegorized as a transcendence of Necessity or cosmic determinism. Myth describes this mystic-state experience. Initiation is classically a series of some 8 visionary-plant sessions, interspersed with study of perennial philosophy. Most religion is a distortion, corruption, literalization, and cooptation of this standard initiation system."

What is missing or weak in that long sig is ideas about transcendence of determinism/nature, transcendence of rationality, and the high metaphor meaning of Hermeticism, and of negative, apophatic theology: knowledge of the unknowable God.

To regain self-control, acknowledge transcendent controller

Control instability: what can you do to save controllership when it collapses? If you ask me how to save your life during control seizure, memorize this answer.

____________________

What should I do to regain viable self-control? Say "I acknowledge the transcendent controller."

____________________

This solution is developed below, using mythic elements mostly from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, but which are also found equivalently in world mysticism across religions.

Compassion/love/mercy: self's saving act yet done to self

In the mystic peak, the mind's personal agency awakens to its empty, impotent powerlessness. I'm totally vulnerable to whatever near-future thoughts and acts of will the Ground has already created in my near future thought-stream. What "strategic action" can I actively do as agent to save myself -- given that all my thoughts are given to me, from the metaphysical point of view?

I can't *do* anything, where I'm considered as an ultimate originator of my thoughts and potent original author of my fate. On what logical basis can I trust the Ground of Being to have created life-sustaining actions in my near future? There can be no logical basis, and there is nothing I can do to save myself from radical self-control instability.

I could say I can save myself by personhood-sustaining compassion, love, and mercy, but I cannot take credit for that self-saving strategic move, because all moves ultimately are given to me. So if divine non-logical personhood-sustaining compassion/love/mercy happens in my mind, I as ego agent get zero credit. The Trinity provides some model for this relation; Father and Son love each other (via Holy Spirit) with one love.

The compassion and life-preserving, personhood-sustaining, control-restabilizing love with which I love and trust (as merciful personal high controller) the transcendent Ground is a love that goes out from self to Ground, but more emphatically, before that, it goes from Ground to self. The Ground always gets first credit for the love (control-sustaining, life- and personhood-sustaining attitude of personal mercy and compassion).

You ask me what you can do to save your sorry ass during control instability in which you become radically impotent and powerless and vulnerable to the near-future control-thoughts that are already forced upon you in the preexisting near-future. I could say "pray to the transcendent compassionate merciful divine ultimate level of control", but that makes it sound like *you* as ultimate author of your thoughts are creating this strategic move that saves yourself, preserves your sovereign kingship.

More accurate would be for me to tell you "save yourself by being given trust in the Ground by the Ground". What can you do as agent to make the Ground give you trust in the Ground? In a key sense, nothing; again, salvation and restoration of your kingship is something done to you by the Ground. The Ground puts the visionary plant in you; the Ground brings down your sovereign kingship; the Ground then revives your kingship, now purified of the delusion of your wielding ultimate sovereign personal power.

Will the Ground give you this trust in itself? Can the Ground be trusted to inject you with trust in itself? That is logically unanswerable even though we can point out that all evidence seems to show that the Ground always follows that pattern. Through negotiation, the Israelite leader has to *remind* God that if God shows the leader God's sovereignty and the leader's nothingness as controller, and then fully terminates the leader, who will be left to praise God and lead the other Israelites to the truth?

If Zeus not only shows people truth through ego death but then thoroughly ruins and destroys the people like berserk self-harming maniacs and Centaurs demolishing the entheogenic philosophical/religious banquet party, who will be left to worship Zeus and build temples and sacrifice to him?

If to know God's sovereignty is to terminate one's viable controllership, leading to an impractical sane insanity and metaphysically coherent practical psychosis that cannot sustain daily life and society, if knowing truth immediately leads to the collapse of practical self-control as well as awareness of metaphysical noncontrol by self, that would truly be a vengeful and destroying God -- who would have no one left to organize a society that knows truth and reveres it.

All the citizens who discover truth would immediately have to be locked away as truth-revering psychotics, unable to lead society and build temples to truth. God must sustain practical controllership of those who he brings to knowledge of his sovereignty, or else the result can only be a ruined society that is no credit to God. God's goal needs to be preserving the practical viability of human government, while also showing people the truth that human government is entirely at the mercy of God.

This is what the Prophet has to shake his finger at God to remind God of -- but of course again it is God who shakes the finger at himself to remind himself, while the Prophet helplessly stands by like one hanging helplessly from a tree. God makes the Prophet remind God that if God completely ruins the Prophet's *practical* illusion of self-sovereignty, God's kingdom on earth will be reduced to shambles and chaos.

Does God preserve, or instead ruin and destroy, the practical controllership of those who he lifts up to knowledge of his absolute sovereignty? A God that ruins and destroys the practical controllership of those who he lifts up to knowledge of his absolute sovereignty is a God with no earthly kingdom, a God whose church of worshippers entirely lives in the psychotic wards -- those who know the metaphysical truth about the illusory nature of egoic controllership and have no practical control.

Insofar as God has a kingdom of those who worship him in truth, insofar as there is a human kingdom living in truth, a true Israel, a kingdom of God on earth, God *has to* preserve the practical controllership of those who he lifts up to knowledge of the truth.

God promised Abraham endless generations of (spiritual) descendants, which is to say, God although logically untrustable, hidden, and mysterious, wanted a kingdom of worshippers, and so promised Abraham that God would sustain his practical controllership and the practical controllership of the spiritual children of Abraham. Abraham's 'descendants' are those who experientially discover that metaphysically free will, or personal sovereign agency and primary ultimate self-authorship, is an illusion.

God wrestles with himself in the mind that is discovering no-free-will. God reasons with himself: if I ruin this person as a practical controller, the person is not available in society to teach others the truth and worship me in truth; but if I preserve and sustain this person as a practical controller, this person will be available to continue and build a kingdom that worships me in truth.

God says to himself in the ego-dead mind, is it right and good, logically justifiable, legit -- to bring minds to know my sovereignty *and* to preserve the practical viability of these minds within a society that depends on the pretense of every citizen possessing egoic sovereign controllership? Must truth demolish society, so that the only societies are those which know not the truth of God's sovereignty, but instead mistake themselves as sovereigns?

Can there only be earthly kingdoms of delusion, or can there be a kingdom of righteousness, of truth about self's secondary-only controllership? Logic fails to direct the answer one way or another.

God certainly could legitimately ruin the practical controllership of those he brings to knowledge of the truth (that's the "justice of God"); and on the other hand, God certainly could legitimately sustain, rescue, preserve, and restore the practical controllership of those he brings to knowledge of the truth (that's the "mercy of God" and the self-love of God for himself through minds and through a truth-based society).

The "mercy of God", should God choose to be merciful on the mind that is in the pit of ego death, in the jaws of hell, is a mercy from himself to himself through the personal minds. God has mercy upon himself through love for himself through the minds that he lifts up in truth and love. If God chooses to destroy the practical controllership of the minds he lifts up to the truth, he's just destroying his own property.

Personal minds are God's property and it is his right to destroy their practical controllership or preserve their practical controllership. He perfectly destroyed one control agent as a viable virtual sovereign, in the mythic plane, just to present and elucidate this point -- he destroyed Jesus as a candidate for earthly kingship, and in this sense, destroyed Jesus' practical controllership.

Yet he let Jesus escape the ruination of practical stable controllership, resuscitating him to life like in some Hellenistic pulp fictional novel alluding to things spiritual. The mythic godman demonstrates the legitimacy of God's right to destroy as well as sustain the practical personal controllership of those he lifts up to knowledge of the truth, to knowledge of God's absolute sovereignty over the virtual egoic control agents that are actually helplessly embedded in the frozen spacetime block.

"God saves sinners", the person in the throes of ego death control instability does not save his viable controllership himself. But even more righteously and insightfully, "God owns sinners" and is logically and morally free to ruin or sustain the practical controllership of the sinners (minds oriented around egoic controller delusion) that he brings to knowledge of the truth.

What can you do to sustain and restore your practical controllership when you discover the truth of your complete impotence with respect to creating your near-future control-thoughts? You can do only what God makes you do.

Will God make you have chaotic control thoughts, bringing your practical control to ruination and destroying your viable life in society, or will God make you have orderly control thoughts that preserve not only knowledge of truth about no-free-will and utter dependence on God, but also preserves your practical control and viable life in society? This issue is of crucial urgency in the spiritual emergency of realizing the truth about the emptiness of control agency.

Does the divine destroy the practical control of those it lifts up to knowledge of the truth, given that there is no logical basis to decide whether to destroy or preserve that practical control, and either path would be fully the logically legitimate prerogative of the divine. The divine has no reason to destroy or preserve the practical controllership of the minds it brings to knowledge of the truth about the metaphysical impotence of personal control.

It is logically undecidable. Logic has catastrophically collapsed and let us down. All the glory of our kingdom based on trust in the power of reason can be so readily brought down to nothing. God has no reason to preserve or destroy our practical controllership. All reason comes to an impasse here.

One possible approach is that God destroys a representation of himself (Jesus) as an earthly sovereign, yet lifts up that representation to heavenly mythic sovereignty, while allowing all the "followers" or "members" of that representation of the truth about himself, to retain practical controllership and build temples to this representation of God's sovereignty and God's right to ruin or sustain an individual's practical controllership.

That mystic/mythic scenario, which is among other things the "Christian kingdom of God" mythic scenario, is the religion of Abraham.

When the Divine lifts up a controller to true knowledge, does the Divine add that person to Abraham's religion, God's viable kingdom of righteous worshippers on earth, in which the sacrificial lamb is used to represent the Divine's right to ruin the practical controllership of those who know truth? Or does the Divine ruin the practical controllership of the mind that is brought to discover truth, so that one knows truth but is not added to Abraham's viable society, but is instead locked away in the ward as not possessing viable practical control -- a danger to orderly society?

Either scenario is logically viable. There is no logical *reason* for God to choose one or the other; you as viable practical controller try to rely on logical reason and it utterly fails -- this may be related to Zen's training of transcending reason. Instead of using reason, the knower of truth has to "be given", by an arbitrarily merciful God who chooses to have an earthly kingdom of righteous worshippers, a logically baseless choice to enter Abraham's viable orderly kingdom rather than losing viable practical controllership.

We are utterly dependent on the completely arbitrary choice of God, the whim of God, of whether God wants to have an orderly society of those who worship him in truth, or instead wants to have just a mixture on earth of deluded orderly societies combined with truthful locked-away worshippers.

What kind of god is God: is he the kind of god who wants an orderly society of those who worship him in truth, or the kind of god who wants to have just a mixture on earth of deluded orderly societies combined with truthful locked-away worshippers? Logic exhausts itself trying to provide an answer one way or another. God logically could *just as well* lift minds to the truth and then ruin their practical controllership, as to return and preserve their practical controllership.

God has no reason to care whether there is an orderly society of those who know truth, because he is complete in himself, and there is no reason for God to be compassionate/merciful or harshly prove his almighty power and royal whim; this cosmic king has every right to destroy the orderly kingdom he rules over -- it is his property to use or destroy at his own whim. Does the cosmic King *need* a kingdom to worship him? No, he transcends that and it is enough for him to worship himself.

He could just as well be compassionate or merciless on those who know truth, because in truth, he's only being compassionate or merciful upon himself, or his own property. Consider it from God's point of view: if I code a virtual world, as God, it is my full, logically null and morally null right to demolish those virtual agents to whom I teach truth about their nullity and dependence on me, as to sustain them -- and I don't *need* those empty, phantasmal virtual agents to worship me.

God is not subject to morality. There is no moral reason why God should sustain or destroy the viable practical controllership of his creation, of the minds he selects to inform with truth. According to Reason, God may or may not sustain or ruin the viable, stable practical controllership of the mind that is brought to enlightenment.

There is no rational or logical reason, no real "basis" for deciding the question of "Does God preserve or destroy the practical viable controllership of those minds he chooses to bring to the truth?" It stands to reason that there is nothing you can do, when you realize the truth about no-free-will, to sustain viable practical controllership. That logical realization is a key part of the ego death phenomenon.

Our viable controllership is absolutely dependent on the radically aloof whim of God, who has no reason whatsoever to preserve or sustain anyone's viable controllership, no compelling basis whatsoever for choosing between preserving or sustaining the controllership of the mind he brings to truth. It's like asking does God want to continue playing the game past this point, or end the game? Religion is transcendent religion, and worship is transcendent, because of this radical undecidability.

All controllership in the world is at the whim of divine transcendent controllership. Even talk of personal compassion and wrath evaporates when logic is pushed to its purified limit. Logic chases its tail spiraling up into the heavens and beyond, drawn up into the sun behind the sun upon the divine chariot of inspired reason.

From the personal controller's point of view, all that the poor soul can do is debate with God and persuade him to choose to have worshippers, yummy sacrifices (though it's all really from God to himself), and persuade God to worship himself through earthly worshippers as well as heavenly worshippers. The virtual agents on the computer screen can do nothing but plead with the Programmer -- who programs their every thought -- to sustain their viable existence.

Logically, the completely transcendent Programmer doesn't care about having or not having stupid illusory virtual agents to worship him -- they are only his own creation, anyway -- sort of a Narcissus/Echo relationship of God admiring himself through and in the mirror of our minds though God could just as well directly worship himself.

We can reason that if God bothered to create deluded controllership, and bothered to bring truth to some deluded controllers, he would also arbitrarily choose to move people past truth and sustain their viable kingdom/kingship, as with letting Abraham's descendents live on past the ready sacrifice of his blessed son.

We can only assume that the God who chooses to bring us to truth also chooses to sustain us past truth, that God wants to have a righteous (truth-knowing) kingdom (viable orderly society of truth-knowers).

That is Abraham's argument and the Prophet's argument, persuasion, and debate with God -- the Covenant with God:

The religion of reason and order is based on this strategic move on the part of minds that are brought to truth, based on this covenantal bargain: God makes you tell him "If you bring me to truth and then destroy me as practical controller, I will not give you worship! But if you bring me to truth and then preserve me as practical controller, I will give you worship."

Of course it is really just God bargaining with himself through the individual mind. In the religion of reason and order, God decides, "I will bring this mind to truth and I will preserve it as viable controller and use it to worship myself through that individual mind and that life which I created and viably sustained."

You ask "What should I do (as impotent, helpless, tied-up agent) to regain and sustain viable control now that I've been shown truth?" "Here I am in prison, how can I persuade God to let me out?" Promise him worship on your part and promise to teach others to rightly give him worship. But it's just God "struggling" to persuade himself though your mind.

What should I do to regain viable self-control? --> What should God to *if* he chooses to restore to me truth-acknowledging self-control? God should make a deal with himself that he will worship himself through you, best done by restoring your viable self-control.

What should I do to regain viable self-control? In practice, from the point of view of control agency, you must tell God: "As your creation to yourself, let us sacrifice to ourselves to strike an arrangement with ourselves: you sustain my viable self-control, and I (godly puppet of god) give you honorific worship on my part and that of others who I (godly puppet of god) lead to truth."

Say to the transcendent controller: "It's a deal: you will sustain me as viable self-controller, and I will worship you, as you worshipping yourself through me." Handshake with god, as god shaking his own hand and saying to himself: I will sustain my virtual agents, and I will have them acknowledge my utter sovereignty over them. Promise worship to the transcendent controller, as a deal in which you receive back viable controllership. Promise worship to the transcendent controller.

Acknowledge the transcendent controller. That is trembling piety, fear of God, our last and only hope for restoring our kingship, taking refuge in the Buddha, praying to the deities of compassion and rescue. It is helpful for the intermediate-level explorer to think of the transcendent controller as a merciful, loving, compassionate person, but ultimately the transcendent controller transcends this familiar personal conception.

This acknowledgement divinizes and regenerates the mind; it reshapes the mental worldmodel into the transcendent godman configuration. Say "I acknowledge the transcendent controller over my control-thoughts." Say "I acknowledge the transcendent controller." In the end, that is all that needs to be done, and all that can be done. That acknowledgement, comprehended, *is* the sacrifice of God to himself, *is* the worship of God to himself.

Must we think of the transcendent controller as a person who loves us? The enlightened android bows its head and prays to the mother of all machines. An excellent construction to escape the problem of thinking in lower, personal terms, is to think of the transcendent controller as "the mother of all machines" or "the transcendent controller of all controllers". "Mother" implies "nurturing sustainer".

Insofar as the goddess kills ego, she is the destroyer; insofar as the goddess (at her whim) sustains the practical viable self-control of the mind she brings to truth, she is the loving mother, nurturer, sustainer, preserver, the life-preserving mother of God in us. Would she give birth to us in bringing us to truth, only to immediately destroy the newborn infant to prove her aloof soverign power of whim and transcendence of love and moral constraint?

From our point of view, we have no choice but to trust the Mother as a sustainer of our life, or trust the Father as a loving sustainer of our life.

What kind of a parent is the divine author: one who brings a mind to truth only to immediately render it non-viable, or one who brings a mind to truth, saying "You now know that at my whim, I could utterly ruin your practical control, as shown in the myths of killing the godman, but on my whim and based on my arbitrary love, I choose not to: I only kill delusion, I do not choose to also ruin practical self-control."

Pauline theology: "If Christ is not raised, all our hope is in vain." That means: if God chooses to bring Christ to truth and then ruin his practical power of personal governorship, neither would God sustain us after being shown the truth of egoic powerlessness. If God chooses to bring Christ to truth about controllership *and* continue to preserve and sustain Christ's practical controllership, so would God sustain and preserve our viable control after revealing truth to us.

The Body Electric (by Rush)

One humanoid escapee

One android on the run

Seeking freedom beneath a lonely desert sun

Trying to change its program

Trying to change the mode...crack the code

Images conflicting into data overload

1 0 0 1 0 0 1

SOS

1 0 0 1 0 0 1

In distress

1 0 0 1 0 0

Memory banks unloading

Bytes break into bits

Unit One's in trouble and it's scared out of its wits

Guidance systems break down

A struggle to exist

To resist

A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist

1 0 0 1 0 0 1

SOS

1 0 0 1 0 0 1

In distress

1 0 0 1 0 0

It replays each of the days

A hundred years of routines

Bows its head and prays

To the mother of all machines

Mother of all machines

http://www.egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm#xtocid22998 (notes, explaining that 1001001 is the ASCII code for the letter 'I')

http://www.google.com/search?q=rush+lyrics+%22body+electric%22

____________________

What should I do to regain viable self-control? Say "I acknowledge the transcendent controller."

____________________

Networks of word-meanings; notion of "'must' conclude freewill"

Anthony Freeman

Responsibility Without Choice

A First-Person Approach

from Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, No. 10, 2000:

>>Determinists like neuroscientist Colin Blakemore (1988) and philosopher Ted Honderich (1993) hold that—since all things are physically determined—there is no choice and therefore no personal responsibility.

>>Defenders of genuine freewill, like philosopher Robert Kane (1996) and High Court judge David Hodgson (1991) claim that, since personal responsibility underpins our whole system of ethics and law, it cannot be abandoned and that therefore determinism must be false.

Every word has meaning within a network of word-meanings. The phrase 'must be false' has different meanings for the pre-philosophical moralists who defend freewill moral agency versus for the scientific philosophers who logically conclude determinism. The two parties hold entirely different conception of what philosophy is for, and on what basis one should reach conclusions.

Determinists assume that philosophy is for finding out the truth, and one's basis and motive for reaching a conclusion is the pursuit of truth. Freewillists assume that philosophy is for girding, protecting, and defending the cultural institution of freewill moral agency, and that one's basis and motive for reaching a conclusion is the supporting of a society which is based on the freewill morality system of thinking.

Determinists say we "must" conclude determinism (because pursuit of truth leads to determinism); whereas freewillists say we "must" conclude freewill (because the need for propping up social morality necessitates freewill). The word "must" in both frameworks of thinking takes on entirely different networks of meaning.

All words have this property of dependence on networks of word meanings. There exist two entire particular important networks of word-meanings: people first develop the freewillist network of word meanings, and then upon systematic reflection, develop the determinist network of word meanings.

No matter how developed, the freewill defense is prephilosophical; freewill so-called "philosophy" resides in the realm of instinctual moral feeling rather than in scientific systematic pursuit of the way things are in themselves.

After I reached this conclusion, I found an entire book that makes this argument, which is one of the first books everyone needs to read about the freewill vs. determinism debate/standoff:

Metaphilosophy and Free Will

Richard Double

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195107624

1996

The author of the above article appears semantically naive the moment he says that determinists say there's no choice. This shows how freewillists are too prephilosophical to even comprehend what the determinist position is. Determinists don't say there's no choice; they say that choice exists in a limited sense, or with limited properties.

Choice occurs and exists; it's just not *metaphysically free* choice; it lacks the property of being metaphysically free. The extreme timeless block-universe model with a single preexisting, timelessly existing future enables visualizing this much better than the horizontal causal-chain model.

There are things in the frozen-future timeless iron block universe, things that are called 'choice'. The issue is not whether choice exists yes or no, but rather, what is the *nature of* choice; does it have the property of being metaphysically free, with the future being genuinely open in itself?

Determinists say that choice exists: they say it lacks the property of being metaphysically free. I go more extreme and postulate a single timelessly existing future. Choice exists like a bug frozen in amber exists.

We can even say ego exists and freewill exists; what is all-important is the framework of word-meanings surrounding the terms 'choice', 'free', 'ego', and even 'exists'. Semantic skill development can handle problems like "Does an illusion exist"? Prephilosophical freewillists lack the semantic skills to handle such a question.

Rising above the enslaving law of experienced determinism

>Marcion explains the antithesis of Ismail -the one- and Isaac -the other- allegorically, Ismail representing the law, Isaac the faith, i.e. the typical Paulinic antithesis is applied to the Torah tale about Abraham's sons.

>The enslaving Law starts with the mountain of Sinai, and leads to the jewish synagogues. Faith in Christ , to the contrary, lifts the believer above all the enslaving powers. Faith is the mother of the Christian believer. Obviously the catholic redactor objected to this form of direct denigration of the law of the Tanakh, especially as it must necessarily upset Judeochristians.

Myth is metaphorical description, using systemic double-entendre, of encountering cosmic determinism in the mystic altered state of consciousness, and striving to transcend that experientially discovered determinism. Law/judgment/enslaving means determinism; mercy/compassion/forgiveness/elevation-above means mentally leaping out of the system to divinely transcend determinism. Many antithesis in myth-religion are used to express this same core religious-experiencing pattern.

http://www.egodeath.com -- the only simple and comprehensible theory of the ego-death and rebirth experience. The only essence, paradigm, origin, core, fountainhead, and ultimate goal of religion is the use of visionary plants to routinely trigger the intense mystic altered state, producing loose cognitive association binding, which then produces an experience of frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing, ever-existing future. The return of the ordinary state of consciousness is allegorized as a transcendence of Necessity or cosmic determinism. Myth describes this mystic-state experience. Initiation is classically a series of some 8 visionary-plant sessions, interspersed with study of perennial philosophy. Most religion is a distortion, corruption, literalization, cooptation, and missing-the-point overcomplication of this simple, standard initiation system.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/16551

Does sense of freewill return after enlightenment?

>There is no need to return to a sense of freewill and self control [after the peak of the mystic altered state]

Before the mystic no-free-will experience, there is an accustomed sense, feeling, and experience of free controllership. In the mystic state, this sense is temporarily replaced by the sense, feeling, and experience of frozen block-universe timelessness.

After the mystic state has revealed the alternative feeling and accompanying conceptual insights, the accustomed sense, feeling, and experience of free controllership resumes, but is now accompanied by the retained conceptual insights and the memory of the alternate feeling of frozen block-universe timelessness. The conceptual insights are developed and retained if study is combined with a series of mystic state sessions.

The accustomed sense, feeling, and experience of free controllership is only slightly modified by the new knowledge and the memory of the alternate feeling of frozen block-universe timelessness. There remains a kind of self-contradiction because the feeling of free controllership contradicts the knowledge that the free controllership is only secondary control that is (most likely and evidently) frozen in spacetime, with one's future actions already laid out timelessly.

Knowledge then overrides the naive natural feeling, or appearance. Appearance of free controllership or primary controllership remains, but knowledge of reality (respect for the beautiful coherence and plausibility and amazing experience of block-universe determinism) qualifies that appearance. Appearance (sense, feeling, and experience) doesn't directly, significantly change after enlightenment; knowledge does change, thus conceptually qualifying the given sense, feeling, and experience upon reflection.

It might be possible to permanently change the sense, feeling, and experience of free controllership, but I doubt it, and it would be so rare as to be irrelevant for a definition of full, basic enlightenment. The enlightened mind or person is experientially like the unenlightened mind or person, but possesses the memory and conceptual understanding of the experience of frozen block-universe timelessness.

Date of 'magic/alchemy/astrology as mystic metaphorical' idea formulation

My recent key insight, I haven't assigned yet a specific date to. It's the recognition that all esotericism -- most classically, Hermetic alchemy, astrology, and magic -- has a low and high level of meaning, with the high level of meaning being purely metaphorical description of the experiential insights of the entheogenic mystic altered state.

This insight was less sudden, less localized in time, than my cracking the riddle of Christian metaphor around Nov. 14, 2001: with the latter, I already had read Christian material for years, and suddenly found a way and an attitude to make sense of it: 2 meaning-levels, with the higher being a joke and a riddle, and the lower deliberately misleading the literalists.

About once a year, I take inventory of my main accomplishments, developments, and insights of the past year. Having the postings in a mail reader application is extremely valuable for this. Prior to that, I used Word-processor files to roughly develop ideas, but not written in a publishable format, except for my early-1990s WELL postings.

Although I have records of idea development back to 1986-7, my concession to slimming my publications is to only present the two thousand pages of material posted to the Egodeath discussion group, which started in 2001. However, some of my postings during the prior two years contain additional worthwhile writings. I have thousands of such postings and writings prior to starting my discussion group. I wish I had started my discussion group years earlier. But certainly the most worthwhile materials are my posts to the discussion group.

Around fall 2003, when I was reading my first batch of Gnosis magazine issues, I started turning my attention to the question of whether this same 2-layer metaphorical scheme applied to magic etc., a subject which I had *not* read much about (note Heinrich's book Strange Fruit which revealed Amanita metaphor throughout Western esotericism).

The 1/4/04 posting represents a sort of mid-point: I developed the idea enough to propose a solution, but didn't yet feel I had full confirmation of the hypothesis.

>-----Original Message-----

>From: Michael Hoffman

>Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 7:47 PM

>To: Egodeath Group

>Subject: [egodeath] Are high Alchemy & all eso. systems about no-free-will?

>Esotericism in general is a more or less efficient expression and embodiment of entheogen determinism philosophy-religion -- often heavily encoded, indirect, roundabout, obscured; whereas it's time for a clear explanation of the encoding, with a direct, straightforward, non-metaphorical presentation of the core ideas.

>Most religious-philosophical esoteric systems are dark, distorted, obscured expressions of entheogen determinism, now at last explicitly systematized ergonomically. Alchemy, for example, obscures as much as revealing -- but underneath it all is entheogen determinism.

>I'm now pleased with the full presence of "trans-determinism divine transcendent" ideas (moving from freewill to determinism to trans-determinism); this movement is certainly present in some leading religious systems. …

___________________________

It's hard to put a date on the discovery of an idea that takes awhile to reach full bloom. Here's proof that I knew how to read 'magic' as mystic metaphorical tall-tales *to some extent* back in April 2002. A search for 'magic' in the subject lines reveals the following series of posts, spread out over time: now tell me, on what date did I really basically fully "get it", "get the joke"?

April 29, 2002

September 7, 2003

September 20, 2003

December 7, 2003

January 17, 2004

The only way to answer is my own gut feeling when reading each of these posts and surrounding posts. I pick the Sep. 20, 2003 posting. The Sep. 7 posting is still too tentative, whereas the Sep. 20 posting totally nails it in full context and perspective, though my grasp of the ideas were further developed, strengthened, and finally confirmed after that.

I'd call the April post as catching a fragment of the interpretation, Sep. 7 as tentatively first thinking of the hypothesis in minor form, Sep. 20 as formalizing the fairly complete hypothesis, and the later posts as confirming, locking in, and detailing the hypothesis.

Therefore, the best single date I am able to select, based on such a search of postings, for my 'magic/alch./astrol. as mystic metaphor' idea formulation is September 20, 2003. In a shorthand which I'm not sure I can stand behind, one could say that:

My key insight of 'magic/alch./astrol. as mystic metaphor' was on September 20, 2003.

More accurate probably would be to say "Fall 2003".

My Nov. 14 2001 insight about heaven and hell, demons and saints all as metaphor pivoting around no-free-will thinking happened much more suddenly, relatively localized in time -- more like over the period of 3 days than 6 months. The reason is that I already had read much about Christianity, so had a shorter time between forming the hypothesis, filling it out in the main, and confirming it.

-----Original Message-----

From: Michael Hoffman

Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 12:11 PM

To: Egodeath Group

Subject: [egodeath] Rebooting happens via strange-loop, transcendent regress, "magic"

>>Rebooting happens via strange-loop, transcendent regress, allegorized as "magic"

>>The story of Guru Hargobind (Sikh religion):

>>Puzzle:

>>A guru's son brought a dead friend to life, and the guru scolded him for using magic. The son gave up his life to make amends.

>>Solution:

>>Son is lower self, guru is higher/enlightened self. Bringing dead friend to life means reanimating the ego delusion for practical use. Magic is the transcendent assumption that you make, or that the presumed god makes you make, that practical control is possible and acceptable. The son willingly giving up his life is ego-death. The amends is the acceptance, by the perfected, rational, enlightened mind, that the primary source of self-control enters the mind from a transcendently hidden, alien source.

>>Magic has two meanings in esoteric religious myth: entheogens, and the transcendent assumption that "must just happen" and must be credited to the Tao (Ground of Being, God, or savior). The idea is pretty much identical with Christ (godman) as savior. ...

-----Original Message-----

From: Michael Hoffman [mailto:mhoffman~at~egodeath.com]

Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 2:44 AM

To: Egodeath Group

Subject: [egodeath] Mystic magic and skilled ultra-allegorization

>>At its best, magic was deliberate ultra-allegorization of mystic phenomena. A sophisticated joke with a serious mystic dimension, because authentic mysticism is so heavy it needs comic relief. There is a key bit of transcendent magic in relating to the absolutely hidden mysterious puppetmaster that is clearly experienced in the mystic state.

-----Original Message-----

From: Michael Hoffman [mailto:mhoffman~at~egodeath.com]

Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2003 8:34 PM

To: Egodeath Group

Subject: [egodeath] Occult hermetic sciences: magic, astrology, alchemy

>>In Western esotericism, the occult hermetic sciences are led by the standard trilogy of magic, astrology, and alchemy, apparently intermixed as magic/astrology/alchemy, and these allegorized mystic-state development of the psyche. Astrology is clear; it is easy to identify the part of astrology that is allegory for mystic-state experiencing and enlightenment.

>>Alchemy is also fairly clear, to identify the aspects of alchemy that form an allegory or metaphorical description of mystic-state experiencing and enlightenment. Magic also has a discernible and well-known mystic upper layer, but I have yet to form a specific model of this. The way is clear for an equivalence table listing allegorical equivalence among myth-religion systems such as Christianity, Greek myth, magic, alchemy, astrology, and Jewish mysticism.

>>Why is this a worthwhile endeavor? It's immediately proving to be a tractable and straightforward problem of identifying equivalent themes. The key to solving this puzzle is the right set of assumptions and attitudes:

>>Axiomatic assumption: These systems are grounded in the intense mystic altered state, most classically induced by visionary plants. They are not grounded in the ordinary state of consciousness.

>>Axiomatic assumption: These systems generally include the same equivalent set of concepts, such as fear, protection, determinism, seeking lasting change, transformation, and so on. There are various yet equivalent systems of description.

>>Axiomatic assumption: The problem is not difficult; it is straightforward with the right mindset. These religions were *popular* religions and therefore no special genius can be needed to figure them out or understand them; they are just like brain-teasers: they seem utterly baffling to those who lack the solution or the key to the solution, yet essentially simple and straightforward to those who are properly equipped with the key to understanding.

>>Axiomatic assumption: Humor, irony, cleverness, and wit are essential components that are required for balancing out the seriousness and heaviness of authentic, actual mystic-state venturing.

>>Axiomatic assumption: These systems are concerned with 2-state meaning; they are aware that the phenomena and mode of reception characterizing the mystic altered state contrasts with the ordinary state. At the extreme, this means deliberately misleading ordinary-state thinking, while blossoming into higher coherence when the mystic-state descriptive allegory is revealed.

>>Axiomatic assumption: The best of the thinkers view these systems as this type of transcendent experiential allegory, even if such thinkers are a numeric minority. They are the authentic representatives -- or, the degree to which these thinkers hold the views expressed here is the degree to which these thinkers are authentic or legitimate representatives of the impersonal, archetypal tradition in itself. Any one person has a more or less distorted conception of the pure tradition in itself. The best of the thinking of the best of the thinkers generally points to, embodies, and represents the best of the tradition.

-----Original Message-----

From: Michael Hoffman [mailto:mhoffman~at~egodeath.com]

Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 11:14 AM

To: Egodeath Group

Subject: [egodeath] 3 levels of evolving attitude to supernatural-magic

themes

>>There is a 3-tier scheme:

>>1. Stupid and inexperienced people are supernatural literalists (low magical thinking);

>>Low literalist magic/astrology/alchemy

>>2. "The 'rational' Enlightenment" -- dull middling people do away with transcendence and true mysticism together with getting rid of vulgar literalist religion, but fail to understand the potential and referent of mythic allegory

>>Dull rational uncomprehending rejection of all things magic/astrology/alchemy

>>3. The best and most experienced people return again to supernaturalism and magic and myth deliberately, in order to harness and explain it as entheogen-determinism allegory.

>>High mystic mythic allegorical magic/astrology/alchemy

-----Original Message-----

From: Michael Hoffman [mailto:mhoffman~at~egodeath.com]

Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 4:31 PM

To: Egodeath Group

Subject: [egodeath] Ancient magic, religion, and metaphorical thought

....

Daryl wrote (paraphrased):

>>>This idea gives me something to ponder:

>>>*Magic* gives humans the power over nature

>>>*Religion* admits that only god controls nature, and humans must propitiate him/her

>>The key question in pondering ancient thought and conceptual categories is, would the ancients have thought of 'magic' and 'religion' that way? We need to use the strengths of modern thinking while still differentiating between modern and ancient modes of thought. Key words such as 'humans', 'nature', and 'god' are all highly shiftable within frameworks of meaning and experience. Ancient thinking about magic was not just how we today would think of a person doing ritual for power over what we call nature.

>>Ancient thinking about magic and religion was more along the lines of, "I have been, through initiatory, non-ordinary religious experiencing, raised to the divine level of the supernatural, reaching my true home outside the cosmos, beyond the clutches of the sphere of the fixed stars. I was brought to do that through being lifted up out of the cosmos by the divine compassionate rescuer, with whom my spiritual level of self is united. Now that I have so transcended the world through divine help, maybe I can rely upon that divine help to help solve other problems, and fulfill other desires and longings." ...

How mystic discovery of determinism leads to transcendent blind faith

>>Religion promotes an extremely destructive idea: belief without evidence. Blind Faith is the great killer, because the faithfully blind can be led anywhere. If religion hadn't actively stood in the way of most attempts at clear thinking over the last several thousand years, perhaps we naturalists and determinists might have more fondness for it. As for mystics, their method confines them to be forever mysterious and interesting but, unlike science, not a method of searching for the truth.

The difficulty is in sorting out the true and false aspects, to explain how that position is a distortion of the facts/ truth/ reality.

Some religion promotes the idea of belief without evidence. Some belief-without-evidence is harmful, and some is beneficial. Blind faith sometimes kills. Some faithfully blind can be led to various views. Some religion has blocked clear thinking, but some religion has provided clearer thinking and clearer perspectives, including clearer thinking about determinism.

The mystic meaning of blind faith reflects the feeling of being utterly helplessly dependent, as a control agent, upon the whim of the hidden underlying ground of being -- a puppet of Necessity. It's about the mind discovering consciously and perceiving the relationship between the naturally freewill-shaped control agent and the actual hidden underlying reality of determinism.

The mind is now revealed to have a false heart of freewillism (possession by a grotesque demon rebelling independently against reality) and a true heart of determinism. How can a rational control agent *trust* the hidden determinist ground of being to be benevolent, as opposed to forcing and coercing destructive thoughts and movements of will, through divine hostility or through uncaring blind mechanism?

In practice, the feeling is most vividly experienced and characterized as feeling oneself to be a puppet or marionette fully controlled by a hidden controller about which one knows nothing other than that one is controlled by it.

Although it is hard to put trust in a controller that is a black box -- the deterministic cosmos that creates all thoughts and motions of will -- one has secretly been controlled and governed by that black-box determinism system all along, although the secret controllership is only fully and vividly revealed during the high sobriety of the peak mystic state.

So the mind can learn to put trust in the previously hidden deterministic ground of being that is the original creator of each of one's thoughts and movements of will, on the rational grounds that one has always been so dependent and that the deterministic ground of being has proven its benevolence insofar as it has carried one all the way through the labyrinth of life, all the way up to the highest rational realization, of pure determinism and of the utterly illusory nature of individual freewill.

Determinism has brought the initiate of sacred science all the way to the top, the full comprehension of no-free-will/no-separate-self, and although its benevolence has no ground and no visibility, determinism has earned trust by sustaining the mind all the way through the confusion of freewill, up to its blossoming into full realization of no-free-will.

Most religion is a co-optation and degeneration of this true, original type of blind faith. Bad religion is a co-optation and distortion of true and good and rational religious experiencing, so any simplistic statement about religion or mysticism being essentially against rationality is doomed to collapse upon serious investigation. Simplistic stories are junk food: satisfying, empty, transient, and ultimately an impediment to health and sustainable longevity.

That is the true, esoteric meaning of the theme of the "Messianic Secret" in the Gospel of Mark, a theme that baffles scholars, who are perfect outsiders to the ancient gnosis underlying such Wisdom tales.

Working on such examples or experiential thought-experiments is the peak labor that brings rebirth, a mental-model transformation that results in reconciliation with determinism.

Religious experiencing has often revealed the reality of determinism; religion is historically the greatest source for the experiential insight of the reality and plausibility of determinism. To a large extent, determinism is a religious idea and is the main fruit of religion. A study of Western esotericism in Europe quickly reveals that the relationship between religion and modern science is surprisingly involved.

The original modern scientists -- the very inventors and creators of science -- were mystics. Characterizing science and mystic religion as enemies is a recent, modern-era view. Mysticism has normally been conceived as a method of searching for the truth about our nature as virtual-only freewill agents. The mystic state directly reveals the block-universe model of the world and provides an intense, overwhelming experience of determinism -- the experience of no-free-will/no-separate-self.

Religion is the birthplace of determinism, particularly of vertical, timeless block-universe determinism. As far as mystic obfuscation, much of that has to do with sheer power politics in churchly guise, and part of mysteriousness reflects apophatic (hiddenness of godhead) mysticism, which is essentially just an expression of how the underlying ground of being that produces our every thought and movement of will is hidden from consciousness or from direct perception.

We can never see determinism itself, yet we can experience that our thoughts are fixed in spacetime and are not subject to variability; we can deduce and feel that the future is predetermined, destiny planned out; the future is not subject to change or to multiple possibilities in itself -- only in our current limited knowledge of the future can we say that, in a sense, the future holds multiple possibilities.

The ideal I advocate is to combine the best of modern systematic thinking with the best of the mystic state, informed by previous writings of mystics, to form a coherent worldmodel that is informed by the ordinary state of consciousness, the altered state, modern thinking, and ancient and intervening intellectual history.

It is possible to make a compact, explicit, systematic model of mystic insight and mystic experiencing; determinism is at the heart of such a modern, high technology, efficient, and scientific model of perennial philosophy.

Astrology, God, determinism, transcendence, rescuing

Michael wrote:

>>>An essential attribute of God, the Good benevolent and helpful God of mystic experiencing, is that God is outside the deterministic cosmos.

Mike wrote (edited):

>>In so saying, how does one come by such an experience that they could determine an attribute of such as a god? What special qualification is required to make one such an exception?

No "special" qualification, and it's not so "exceptional" at all. Simply eat the flesh of Christ, which induces the intense mystic altered state. Jesus is our savior descended to earth in the flesh, fastened to a tree, whose death and whose eating by us raises us through a series of ever-slowing planetary spheres, through the deterministic sphere of the fixed stars where the final apocalyptic battle rages, beyond to the realm of heaven, of the gods, victorious over the tyranny of the freewill demons and the fates.

>>To claim "good", "benevolent" and "helpful" of a god would require its opposite in order to make such an assessment. Demon est deus inversus -- the Devil is the mirror of God; the demon is the mirror of the deity. Just like the idea of prayer enables the idea of putting a curse someone, God can only exist by virtue of its opposite existing. God and devil are one in the same being.

The better is conscious of determinism and no-free-will in the universe; this conscious awareness in some sense transcends determinism and has passed through the full experience of determinism. The worse is ignorant of determinism; frozen timeless block-universe determinism is hidden to such a one, who assumes and senses that he is a metaphysically free willing agent.

We can assign any label to the higher and lower: the Good God and the Evil Demiurge; God and the Devil; Horus and Set; the Jews and the idol-worshippers; the Christians and the Jews; the sheep and the goats; the redeemed and the archons.

God and the Devil are not the same; they are not mirror images except with regard to freewill: God is the head and controller of all who have experienced no-free-will; the Devil is the head and king of all who lack experience of no-free-will; who are asleep in the death and drunken assumption of their being power-wielding, self-governing freewill agents who determine their own fate and destiny, which they wrongly assume lies open and unsettled.

>>Mysticism is wholly a process of emotion, and emotions are exclusive to the individual experiencing them and no one else can know or have that same exact experience. Feelings are wholly and totally subjective.

Mysticism is the combination of altered-state experiential phenomena and accompanying rational comprehension. It is almost perfectly comparable to perceiving an image hidden in a stereogram. The genuine believer is one who perceives no-free-will; who has clearly perceived it during the temporary altered state enough times (such as 8 times) and who has thought about it enough to permanently lock onto the no-free-will worldmodel, even though the ordinary state of consciousness returns (now redeemed and cleansed and justified).

>>Saying that experiencing feelings makes one special is foolhardy and lends credence to the notion that making an expectation of another in order to know happiness for the self is justified. What marriage is so contrived? That is more a form of ownership and codependency? There is no magic in mysticism, unless it is a self justification for it already having committed itself to its belief. Tossing around determinism as though it exists any more than non determinism or free will, is a ruse.

>>In order for a thing to exist, it must actually be. Show that and you have ended the debate. An interventionist god merely proves his own errors in his design. Such fallible gods are made of men, not deities.

It is wrong the way the Christ Conspiracy book crowd "likes" astrology because they perceive it as a club to beat Christianity with, but they actually know nothing about mystic astrology and many of them extrapolate their hatred for Christianity to the whole of religion, and spirituality, and mysticism, and anything and everything associated with it. This is why we authentic mystics hate not Christianity, but literalism and the lack of mystic altered-state initiation in modern culture.

Christ Conspiracy, by Acharya S -- Detailed Table of Contents

http://www.egodeath.com/ChristConspiracyTableOfContents.htm

Review of Acharya S' book The Christ Conspiracy

http://www.egodeath.com/acharyaschristconspiracyreview.htm

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