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Transcending Determinism: Transcendent Freedom vs. Naive Freewill Thinking
Contents
Deluded free will vs. transcendent
free will
Transcendent free will vs. egoic
free will
Transcendence has 2 moments;
transcendent vs. deluded freedom
Date of 'Transcendent freewill' idea formulation
3-level model of religion, around
cosmic determinism
Can a control-agent rise above
Fated cosmos?
Transcendent Spiritual Freedom vs.
Naive Egoic Freewill
Transcending cosmic determinism
Justified in transcending cosmic
determinism
Synthetic manic depression,
transcending Necessity
Felis
wrote:
>And
yet in the Valentinian model, the post-salvific model still has the Psychics
under the rulership of a just demiurge and a set of Laws, implying that they
will continue to retain freewill,
No one
retains freewill. No one has ever had
free will (as ordinarily defined) -- not before the fall, and not after
redemption. Psychics don't have
freewill; they have the *delusion of* freewill, and their worldmodel is based
around the deluded assumption of freewill.
They continue to retain the *delusion of* freewill. The delusion of freewill is evil.
The lower
thinker assumes evil means morally bad actions by a true responsible moral
agent who possesses freewill. The
higher thinker redefines all key concepts, and evil is certainly a key concept
to be redefined. To the higher thinker,
evil is the deluded assumption that we are true responsible moral agents who
possess freewill.
The higher
thinker has mastered two networks of understanding, and thus can play
definitional games with the term "evil" and say that "evil has
ended" when each person ends their own delusion.
>as
opposed to partaking of the Will of the divine.
We all
partake of the Will of the divine: the enlightened do so consciously, and the
unenlightened do so unconsciously -- falsely assuming that their own will is
sovereignly independent of the will of the divine. The deluded think in terms of working to align their own free
will with that of the divine. That is
folly, delusion, evil, pride. It is the
height of hubris to think that you can align your free will with the will of
the divine. Only no-free-will can be
righteously aligned with the will of the divine.
How is my
free will aligned with the divine? By
the Knowledge that there is no "my free will". The only free will that is aligned with the
will of the divine is the free will recognized as illusion. To try to align your free will with the will
of the divine is the greatest sin, the height and core of folly, the devil's
way of attempting to gain salvation, the way of the Demiurge.
>So
there will seemingly still be a cosmos where error or randomness ['evil' in a
certain sense] can occur. This is
confusing though, IMO and I am still trying to figure it out.
Error
occurs in the naive deluded young animal-child mind. This error is sin. There
is a loop of ironic double-meaning; the lower way of thinking is guilty of
thinking in terms of guiltiness. The
lower mind has one set of concepts about evil, guilt, moral agency, and
freedom; the higher mind has a different set of concepts about these. Take no-free-will as your starting point and
fundamental assumption, and you will quickly gain understanding of how to play
with the concept of "evil" and "error".
What does
"evil" or "moral wrong" mean to the enlightened mind that
rejects the natural freewill assumption?
To the enlightened mind, "moral wrong" or "evil"
certainly maps to "delusion", in stark opposition to the lower mind's
concept of "evil" as "bad actions done by a moral agent who
possesses free will".
Don't the
mystics talk of gaining freedom, perhaps participating in God's free will? The bottom line is, we have to consider such
kind of free will as being entirely different than the sort of free will
assumed by lower thinking. We can't
really conceptualize what sort of free will can transcend cosmic determinism,
or transcend the real condition of the cosmos.
The cosmos
really is fully determined and all thoughts at all times are frozen in
spacetime. How then can the higher mind
claim to ascend to attain the true kind of free will? Only by setting up an open-ended, unspecified definition of
freewill -- a sort of "negative" definition. Whatever sort of "free will" the
enlightened ascended mind can possess, it most emphatically and certainly is
*not* the accursed monstrous deluded definition of free will that the lower mind
takes for granted.
The
enlightened mind can attain and gain "the true, transcendent type of free
will" but only by emphatically rejecting "the false, deluded type of
free will". The Divine's type of
free will that one consciously unites with is radically different than the
deluded mind's assumed type of free will.
Although I
mainly use a 2-stage model in which delusion is the freewill assumption and
enlightenment is the conscious realization of no-free-will, I also grant the
logical legitimacy of a 3-stage model, moving from deluded assumption of
freewill to the enlightened discovery of no-free-will, finally moving on to a
knowingly undefinable and conventionally meaning-transcending sort of
"transcendent free will".
This entails a high meaning of the term "transcendent", only
negatively definable.
In some
sense we can go beyond Reason. Reason
is forced to conclude that the universe cannot contain freewill. The only way to "transcend" (in
some nebulous high sense) cosmic determinism is to transcend, in the same
nebulous high sense, Reason itself. So
we can say that Reason leads beyond Reason, just as quantum measurement points
to, and beyond, its own limitations.
We
eventually run out of road when following quantum measurement to its limits --
that is, radical instrumentalism finally leaves us with a giant question mark
and it has to become a matter of faith and arbitrary assumption to assume that
the particle has a definite position; our measuring instruments cannot force us
to conclude that the position is definite or not. Similiarly, Godel led us to the vista where formal higher
mathematical proof points beyond itself.
So does
Reason, in this particular sense, point beyond itself. Reason tells us: cosmic determinism;
enlightenment is knowing there can be no free will. How can we then claim to gain free will and ascend outside the
cosmos? Only by transcending Reason and
the cosmos together.
What sort
of "transcendence" is this "transcending Reason" and
"transcending the cosmos"?
It's a giant gray core of undefinability. Is all Fated and fixed, all thoughts and acts of will, for
everyone, always? Yes. Can enlightenment give you free will of some
sort? Yes: you can gain whatever kind
of largely undefinable "free will" that the Divine can be said to
possess.
The
highest transcendent question is "Does God have free will?" That is the same question as "Does the
enlightened, ascended Gnostic have or gain some kind of free will and rise
outside cosmic determinism?"
Everything in the iron block universe is determined. How then can a person gain freedom? Why, of course, logically, a person can gain
freedom in some sense by "transcending" the iron block universe in
some commensurate sense.
We
shouldn't call this free will, however; the term "free will" should
be reserved as a characteristic of deluded thinking. It would be possible and interesting, however, to define
"lower freewill" and "higher freewill", or "deluded
egoic free will" and enlightened, transcendent free will" -- where the
latter emphatically holds standard free will to be impossible, a monstrous,
insane animal assumption fit only for a Hades-bound cthonic, earth-descending
swine.
Whatever
sort of "free will" the ascended mind can legitimately be said to
attain, it is most emphatically *not* the deluded egoic "free will"
of the childish way of thinking.
Consenting
to one's sacrifice doesn't establish the possibility or actuality of free
will. It was a standard idea that the
sacrificial victim should be a willing victim.
Abraham's son Isaac was willing, too, but isn't thereby the first true
agent of free will. Did many esoteric
early Christians consider Jesus the first true agent of free will? I don't think that's established.
The issue
of free will or no-free-will is at the heart, or is the heart, of the myth of
the king sacrificed on a tree, as a transcendent issue. Free will is a transcendent issue; it is the
divine issue. Only a miracle can buy
free will -- that's just one way to express how transcendent the issue is. Mundane stoic philosophy of metaphysics,
informed by direct mystic-state experiencing, is correct in holding free will
to be impossible in principle.
From a
sober, fleshly philosophy point of view, free will was, is, and ever shall be
nonsensical and impossible. The
"confusion" that a transcendent God isn't the author of, is the
confused notion that free will, conceived of in the simple and ordinary sense,
is possible and coherent.
If we
qualify the savior's free will gift as *transcendent* free will, then all bets
are off, because the notion of transcendent freewill is expressly defined as
being transcendently undefined. Fleshly
or egoic free will is the devil-animal-child's confused and impossible chimera,
an illusion taken as a viable reality.
The savior's free will is something completely lofty, postulated as
beyond mundane rational conception.
There is
no way to spend too much time analyzing free will -- the subject is the heart
of religion, the crux of the whole matter, just as much as it's the epitome of
philosophical debate. The initiate
gains insight into two things, above all: no-free-will and
no-separate-self. Western religion
emphasizes no-free-will, and Eastern emphasizes no-separate-self, but both
religions have both ideas.
In the
throes of mystic nullity of personal will power, a power that's normally felt
to be controlled and wielded by the now visibly absent separate-self, one's
dead power can only be replaced by that of the fisher, the transcendent
rescuing deity that pulls one out in unity with the deity.
Those who
believe in the savior are united with the savior, as much as they literally
have eaten the savior's divine flesh.
The fish and the fisher are one flesh, so the covenant is between the
aggregate fish and the transcendent controller over the spacetime cosmos. A slightly different equivalent view is that
part of the saved person is their higher, Christ part, and that part of the
person makes the covenant with God, on behalf of the overall saved person.
The only
part of the person not saved is the alien demons that had been infesting the
person, and these demons are the aspects of the mind's mental model that are
involved in the false and confused concepts of free will and the separate self
who is controller of the will.
Philosophy
affirms determinism. Theorists who
assert freewill do so out of a motivation outside of what I would consider
Philosophy, such as social moralism.
However, the conception of "determinism" held by modern
Philosophy is a weak and limited conception of determinism that takes
conventional thinking about time for granted and isn't informed by the ancient
experiential philosophy of timelessness.
Modern
philosophical determinists all think in terms of causal-chain determinism
rather than the ancient conception and experiential perception of timeless
frozen block-universe determinism.
William
James' philosophy of Pragmatism was strongly against the 'iron block-universe'
concept implied in his father's Calvinism.
So do existentialists focus exclusively on workaday practical
experiencing, which is relative truth.
Freewill philosophy or theory is associated with relative, pragmatic,
workaday, as-if, apparent reality, such as Pragmatism and Existentialism.
The
pragmatic, relative, and workaday world, and its philosophy (or assumption) of
freewill, is the starting point we all begin with. Only the initiated or the explorers of Reason move on to the next
phase, which is concerned with metaphysical truth and abstraction rational
consistency. In this sense, the realm
of Philosophy associated with Pragmatism and Existentialism is lower than the
realm of Philosophy associated with metaphysics.
The
determinist metaphysician (such as the mature and perfected Gnostic) fully
understands the realm of (apparent) freewill Pragmatism and Existentialism, but
also understands the provisional and illusory nature of freewill thinking. The determinist understands the limits and
problematic bounds of freewill thinking, whereas the freewillist doesn't
understand those limits and bounds, overestimating the power and extent of
applicability of freewill-thinking.
There is
an inferior and a superior determinism: modern Philosophy, even the ontological
idealists and determinists, ironically thinks about determinism in a
freewill-tainted spirit, thinking that the future is fixed because of one state
causing the next states and finally, "after some time", causing the
end state. That's causal-chain determinism.
Superior
determinism is cosmic rock or iron block-universe or frozen-stone fixity of
spacetime, in which time is as illusory as separate-self and freewill moral
agency. Inferior determinism (standard
modern causal-chain determinism) doesn't crystallize or blossom into a
transcendent revelation that becomes a severe problem leading to trepidation
and salvation.
Only the
superior and complete and consistent conception of determinism leads to
transcendent birth out of the cosmic rock.
Superior determinism, which is timeless block-universe determinism, is
more ancient and post-modern than the tired half-clear conception of
determinism as causal-chain determinism.
Superior determinism integrates the understanding of the illusory nature
of time, ego, self-controllership, and moral agency, all together.
Why aren't
more freewillists persuaded to adopt determinism? Because the determinism that is offered to them is the inferior,
Modern type: causal-chain determinism, which is largely the same, egoic mode of
thinking as freewill thinking.
Conventional
freewill thinking and conventional (that is, Modern) determinism are both
"in-time" conceptions; thinking from a point of view that rides
through time with and as the "time-voyaging" ego. Non-Modern determinism, in contrast, takes a
perspective from outside of time, seeing any causal chains to be themselves
floating frozen in the spacetime block.
The
freewill-patterned mind can't transcendently come up with a solution to the
determinism problem, because it hasn't vividly and experientially encountered
the spacetime problem; it hasn't yet run up against the limits and
self-betraying innate curse of ego/freewill.
Freewill
thinking merely thinks of determinism as a "problem" in that
determinism would problematize social moral conventions. But to the mind that is exploring the
features of the esoteric realm, determinism is a far more severe, personal, and
immediate "problem", rendering practical self-control fatally and
terminally problematic.
There is a
huge difference between the beginner religionist's glorification of freedom and
personal power, and the perfected religionist's glorification of them. The perfected ('teleoi') know that
conventional freewill is impossible and that conventional freewill thinking,
like children have, is fated to be cast off as a nonsensical chimera that
entails an innate performative contradiction.
The
perfected know that conventional freewill is impossible and only some radically
transcendent and knowingly undefined "freedom from spacetime" can be
in any way legitimate. The
"freedom" of the perfected is emphatically *not* the doomed, supposed
"freedom" that is conceived, or rather misconceived and falsely
created, in the uninitiated mind.
The
'freedom' of the victorious (the transcendent mind) is not the 'freedom' of the
demiurge (the egoic mind). Words are
labels and the word 'freedom' is provisionally legitimate. Two self-labelled 'Gnostics' claim to follow
a religion that provides freedom. One
is deluded and impure, and the other perfected and purified -- depending on
their conception of 'freedom'.
An
attempted Gnostic church stumbles along in the standard darkness of modern
in-time ways of thinking, inadvertently glorifying ego while mistakenly
thinking it is following transcendent spiritual knowledge. However, even in that confused church, it is
possible that a member may come across the true Gnosis, the true freedom that
isn't freedom, or the freedom(2) that is distinctly not freedom(1).
Schopenhauer:
Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521577667
Schopenhauer
shows that freewillists don't understand, and often haven't even tried to
understand, what the position of no-free-will entails and asserts. Freewillists assume that the no-free-will
position asserts "we can't do what we will". Freewillists assume they understand the
no-free-will position, without carefully thinking about the key problematic
question, which is whether we can will (or control) what we will. A gem of a book; enjoyable and clear.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195107624
Richard
Double in effect divides philosophers into two camps: moralists and
philosophers. The moralists' goal is to
prop up moral consensus, and they use reason selectively insofar as reason
supports that goal. In contrast, the
philosophers' goal is to clarify thinking and make it consistent, following
reason where it leads. Freewillist
philosophers are moralists -- in fact, it's most accurate to say that moralists
are freewillists, and are set against philosophers, who are determinists.
A
philosopher who is a freewillist doesn't have the character of a philosopher,
but of a moralist putting forth their opinions and values into the realm of the
philosophers from outside that realm.
Determinists/Philosophers care and worry about rational
consistency. Freewillists/moralists
care and worry about defending, bolstering, and propping up conventional moral
thinking.
Their
concerns are of a completely different character, forming an asymmetrical
debate where the two parties stand within different frameworks of concern and
different starting assumptions about the purpose of philosophy. Is the purpose of philosophy to know truth
(or formulate a consistent system), or to help the needs of humanity and
society? Philosophy for the purpose of
truth/consistency is determinist, whereas Philosophy for the purpose of helping
society is freewillist.
Transcendence
has 2 moments. Transcendent freedom
versus deluded freedom, and the pre/trans fallacy.
First, the
mind's mental model is structured around the idea and sense of a metaphysically
free self that is a primary controller of the person's thoughts, will, and
action. When mental construct loosening
occurs, the sense of being a metaphysically free sovereign self is replaced by
a sense of radically unconstrained action, which feels empowering until the
Problem of Control arises.
The
oncoming problem is sensed, there is a sense of timeless deja vu (the origin of
the notion of endless return and of the divine remembering itself), and a sense
of being frozen into the spacetime block, and the sense, eventually, of
no-free-will.
Meditation-based
spirituality isn't focused enough on these gnostic *experiences*, this sensing,
as the source of myth and insight -- this sensing is the proper meaning of
Schleiermacher's definition of religious experiencing as "feeling" --
"the feeling of absolute dependence on something more ultimate or primary
than oneself".
The real
source of gnosticism, mysticism, and Jewish mysticism is specifically
entheogenic and not importantly or mainly meditation- or
contemplation-based. Entheogens *work*
to produce these *senses* and *experiences* -- meditation works so poorly, it
serves mainly as a decoy, an impotent and harmless substitute that is safe
because so rarely effective -- characteristically and normally ineffective, as
opposed to entheogens, which are typically and normally effective.
Entheogens
make for a much simpler and more plausible explanation of the origins of
spiritual myth and metaphysical speculation.
I am therefore dismissing meditation as a mere main component of
"the standard view", together with simple free will, historicist
oriented religion, and the supposed irrationality or rational
incomprehensibility of mystic insight and enlightenment. Those four components are the four
distinctive pillars of the standard view.
There are
just two main explanatory systems of religion.
My ego-death view instead, against the standard view such as Wilber,
postulates entheogens are vastly more effective (and importantly traditional)
than meditation, no-free-will as a necessary concomitant of no-separate-self,
anti-historicist view of religion: historical founder figures are nothing but
representative personifications of religious experiencing, and the rational
comprehensibility of mystic insight.
These are
four points of argument against the standard view, such as asserted by Ken
Wilber. It's taken a long time to
formulate what exactly is wrong with Wilber and the standard view: they
basically take the other view on these four points, together as a system.
Based on
Hellenistic religion broadly, and entheogenic religion overall, the classic
view which I am systematizing is that one starts with the free-will sovereign
self assumption, then in the entheogenic peak one quickly encounters this
series: the problem of control, followed by the no-free-will insight and
experience of cosmic determinism (eg "the sphere of the fixed stars")
and then a rescue by a divine principle that is put together in the mind and
given birth from the mind, a principle that reshapes the mind and switches its
mental worldmodel -- the worldmodel shifts when grasping no-free-will as a principle,
and then shifts some more, giving birth to the realm of the transcendent.
These are
experiences and senses, as well as concepts (sensation and concept build each
other up). This is the clearest, best
reference model to map entheogenic religious experiencing and insight to.
The stage
of grasping no-free-will is a major stage releasing from the egoic worldmodel,
but not yet fully reaching the realm of the transcendent as classically
defined, where no-free-will becomes a desperately urgent problem forcing a leap
to the transcendent, like true prayer causing the birth of a divine saving
principle, saving and lifting the person and worldmodel from the spacetime
block of cosmic determinism to a postulated realm beyond.
The mind
learns to be rescued from the self-control problems implied by cosmic
determinism by learning to postulate the transcendent realm, properly and
transcendently conceived. If logic
combined with entheogenic mystic sensation leads to a thought of no-free-will
that is devastatingly problematic and not practically viable when one looks
directly at it like the sun, then let go of slavery to that thought, and
postulate the unthinkable: leap outside the spacetime block.
Is this
move, this realization of how to escape the clutches of Fate and the demiurge,
an insight that is "beyond rationality"? Yes, in a sense; no, in another sense. On the whole, this sequence of insights and moves is fully
rationally comprehensible, and is based on the perfection (full development) of
Reason.
Hate
Reason in a very particular sense (while really respecting and fully depending
on reason as the vehicle that brings to and past its culmination): Reason leads
to awakening to the problem of no-free-will and enslavement in the block
universe -- a great accomplishment in itself, though it can be intensely
problematic and lead to practical control instability that isn't viable for
practical continuance.
Retain and
really honor that transcendent insight, that discovery of full embeddedness in
the frozen spacetime block, but then make the second move, putting one foot in
the transcendent air, while one foot remains on the newly discovered ground of
the spacetime block.
Classically,
entheogenic transcendence is a two-step process: discovering no-free-will and
the spacetime block of cosmic determinism, very soon followed by a leap into
the transcendent realm that is above that transcedence which is the awakening
to the spacetime block. Looked at from
afar, there is just a two-stage story, from egoic to transcendent.
Up close,
the story is a switch from egoic, to transcendently discovering no-free-will
and the timeless frozen spacetime block, and then when that becomes fatally
problematic as it is wont to do, escape the severe problem of the spacetime
block by carefully postulating a way to transcend that block while still
affirming that block.
Low, false
religion is unable to grasp and affirm and sense that first transcendent step:
that the acts and thoughts of oneself are frozen in a spacetime block, so such
religion makes a mockery of transcending the world: low religion hasn't
discovered the excellence of the notion of the spacetime block and encountered
experientially its severely problematic quality, so that religion cannot really
transcend that spacetime block.
Genuine gnostics
really experience and have an awed and fearful respect for the spacetime block;
only that kind of mind can be said to transcend the world of unfreedom and
become truly free. This is the best
conception of Ken Wilber's "pre/trans fallacy", better than his own
-- egoic thinking takes freedom for granted, misconceived.
Phase 1
transcendence awakens to the truth of *unfreedom*. Phase 2 transcendence discovers a way to transcend the reality of
unfreedom, leading to transcendent freedom (this all follows a series of
entheogenic altered-state experiences, like the way theology is an explanatory
layer built on mystic experiencing).
The egoic person is egoically, falsely free; they are not justified and
are metaphorically subject to the death penalty for confusing low with high.
The
transcendent person knows that metaphysical freedom is an impossible,
irrational, animal-like, confused notion suited for children -- and that person
has a type of freedom which is transcendent.
The child is merely ignorant of no-free-will; the enlightened person is
vividly, problematically aware of the logically sure fact of no-free-will.
If one
isn't experienced with the mystic phenomena, one's attempt and claim to be free
is nothing but boomeritis and pre-trans fallacy, mistaking crude and ignorant
egoic freewill assumption for true transcendent freedom which escapes logic
even while honoring logic. The
supernatural realm of the ignorant is essentially different and lower than the
transcendent realm of the enlightened, who have passed through the fire -- the
great tribulation when the end of time is reached.
The vulgar
and ignorant realm of the supernatural is a degraded shadow of the true realm
of the transcendent; egoic freedom is a low imitation of transcendent freedom,
which is virtual-only freedom, a practical freedom that is the most precious
thing, though enlightenment about metaphysical unfreedom is also valuable. In the throes of control seizure, the most
precious thing is regaining a sense of practical freedom and self-control power
-- but the enlightenment given in the control seizure is also a divine gift.
Classically,
one realizes unfreedom, then is filled with intense disturbance, then
constructs transcendent freedom. This
is what the gnostics are up to with fearful passwords and guardians and cosmic
determinism and attaining true freedom, as opposed to the deluded false freedom
of the merely ignorant and oblivious egoic mode of thinking.
Merker
wrote:
>after
considering my last journey i got that "sinking feeling" from my
Lennon in my head. Piror to this point i always thought of sinking with your
whole body down into the bed. Now (i experienced this at my first strong trips
also but seemed to have (totally?) have forgotten about it.) i remember
distinctly being pulled "out of my head" down "to my
heart". i was very averse to it as it was happening (i had the power to
fight it as the last trip was just at the border where the real thing happens);
it was like i totally knew what was about to happen and had to fight it with
every nerve i had to spare. its this horrid sensation of oncoming utter
destruction which uncontrollably(?!?) activates a fight-or-flee reflex (per
Mc-Kenna) as it seems. THAT was the sinking feeling. Bingo! Falling out of your
head down to the heart (of things).
>Do you
observed similar things or do you interpret sinking as i described it at the
beginning of the above paragraph?
>Another
thing i'm currently (or now and then) thinking about is, what is this singular
moment of utter liberation?
>Now i
strongly feel this to be the moment the block-universe(frozen- time-space) is
conceived and as something unchangable accepted.
>I'm
not sure if i got your theory wrong , but as far as i understand it you say
that the moment of liberation happens by having transcended the block-universe,
possibly with the aid of postulating some hidden controller-entity. Do you
say(mean) the same thing as i described above?
How do you define the act of transcendence?
>Also
at my last encounter i could very well verify your theory of ego- strengthening
before utter ego/will-power destruction. Also, contrary to what people without
experience might assume the ego-strengthening phase is a VERY unpleasant one.
At the very end it seemed utterly unbearable. At that moment the block-universe
entered my view (in vision logic and meta perception) and in that very instant
i was UTTERLY liberated. So, liberation was GAINED BY CANCALLATION of
will-power. Not vice versa(as the meditationists would have you believe (even
if they only say so indirectly). This was it for me (that time). A further
transcending of the block-universe strangely(?!?) did not seem necessary at the
time.
This is
what astrotheology in its best form is ultimately about (independently of how
many of the ancients thought of it exactly in this systematic way and put such
emphasis on *experiencing* cosmic determinism and transcending it)
Sometime after I wrote the posting "Freewill Gnosticism & flying pigs", I changed my approach to that subject. I now am attuned to the sense in which pre-modern religion did lead to a *kind* of freewill that was emphatically opposed to naive freewill, and that fully asserted determinism. They achieved this by a "body vs. head" or "psyche vs. spirit" distinction, so that the body remains imprisoned in the deterministic cosmos while the *radically transcendent* 'spirit' is conceived of as outside such cosmic determinism.
For a long time prior, I spent a great deal of effort thinking about the problem of "How can I guarantee not losing control during the mystic peak state?" The answer was that there cannot possibly be any *rational* basis for the attitude of confidence -- this limitation boggles the mind. What can the helpless puppet do to secure its power and safety? Nothing. Nothing based on rational thinking; there is no rational solution for formulating such basis.
Only divine dependence, radical transcendence, logically baseless trust on that-which-pulls-one's-strings; even if bad things happen, one still has no recourse to any rational resources to directly solve such a problem. Logically, the only thing one can do is a-logically *trust* that that-which-pulls-one's-strings is a compassionate thing.
This long-term (such as 1999-2002) concern directly maps to the pre-modern metaphors about magic, dangerous and humble conjuration of transcendent powers, apophatic theology, Isis/Mary as compassionate Queen of the Heavens, God as loving abba/daddy, and wrathful yet compassionate deities throughout world religion.
Cosmic
determinism is a highly common and standard theme in Hellenistic
religion-philosophy. That the world,
the universe, or cosmos is entirely deterministic is a theme found in
Gnosticism, Hellenistic philosophy/religion, astrological ascent, and
Hermeticism. A 3-layer scheme is
formed, centered around the experiential discovery that the universe is
deterministic (that free will, time, and personal moral agency are essentially
illusory).
Prior to
experientially discovering this deterministic nature of the cosmos and of all
of one's thoughts and actions, the mind's mental worldmodel is configured
around freewill assumptions -- this is the "child" or uninitiated
consciousness. During the final few
initiation sessions (such as #5-7), the mind discovers that the universe is
deterministic and that all of one's thoughts and actions are frozen into
spacetime -- ascending to this level is metaphorically described as rising to
the sphere of the fixed stars, representing conscious awareness of cosmic
determinism.
During the
final remaining initiation sessions (such as #8-9), one becomes divine, in that
one ascends to a postulated realm that is outside of, and above, cosmic
determinism. Rationality brings one to
an awareness of cosmic determinism (no-free-will/no-separate-self), but when
moving beyond the sphere of the fixed stars -- beyond cosmic determinism -- one
also moves "beyond rationality": "God is a mystery"; one
metaphorically becomes a miracle worker and magus.
This type
of determinism is not horizontal, ordinary state of consciousness, linear,
in-time determinism, in which one time-slice mechanically causes the next. This is vertical, mystic altered state,
whole-universe, frozen-time determinism, with time as a space-like dimension,
in which no time-slice mechanically causes the next, but rather, all spacetime
events are timelessly locked into place together.
The
minimum number of levels required for an adequate model of religions and
enlightenment is three:
1.
Freewill -- The mind begins with freewill thinking ("the original
sin") -- one is an uninitiated person.
2.
Determinism -- The mind is purged of freewill thinking during a series of
visionary-plant initiation sessions, resulting in no-free-will thinking
(timeless block-universe determinism) -- one is an initiate, but not perfected.
3.
Trans-deterministic -- The mind finally may postulate a rescuing compassionate
powerful deity residing outside deterministic spacetime -- one is perfected,
mature, completed.
Some
schemes of esoteric initiation may stop at realizing cosmic determinism --
there seems to have been some debate over whether to move on to postulating a
(by definition) divine transcendent realm beyond cosmic determinism. But such a realm is so essentially
characteristic of so many esoteric initiation schemes, a basic model of
initiation must incorporate that postulated trans-deterministic level.
The above
model is my conclusion based on reflecting on the evidence from studies of
world religions, world mysticism, and Hellenistic religion-philosophy. The construct "deterministic
cosmos" or equivalents is frequently found in studies such as of
Mithraism. Struggling to realize and
transcend determinism is a common yet so far mostly unrecognized theme in world
mysticism.
Related
books:
Hellenistic
Religions: An Introduction
Luther
Martin
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/019504391X
1993
The
Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World
David
Ulansey
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195067886
1989
The End of
Time: The Next Revolution in Physics
Julian
Barbour
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195145925
2001
Cosmic
Influence And Your Destiny -- Attack of the Archons, by Francis D. Grabau
http://newdawnmagazine.com/articles/Cosmic_Influence_And_Your_Destiny_Attack_of_the_Archons.html
My
commentary:
Mithra
rules over the celestial cross. He is
ruler over the sun which rules the cosmos.
He shifts the planets (precession of constellations/equinox), thus doing
the impossible: altering fate.
The Fates
ruled the gods, but later Zeus ruled over the fates.
Per Luther
Martin in Hellenistic Religions, there are many contending religions in late
antiquity, but the contention orbits around the conflict between fate and
personhood. Is there, or is there not,
a way to transcend fate, and gain some power that can alter my fate, so that I
can rule over my future as the creator of my own future? Notice that the Gnostics affirmed that the
cosmos is a prisoner of fate -- cosmic astrological determinism. They were interested in a way to transcend
that imprisoned state, so that one as an agent can nab the scepter from the one
who rules the cosmos. These starting
assumptions and goals are all-important in understanding the Gnostic programme,
the problem they fought against, and their strategy.
Before the
Cross symbol was adopted, the XP symbol, the Chi-Rho, was a flattened X with a
tall sword-like P, on coins surrended by a victory wreath. I propose that the Cross is the same
celestial cross -- the astrological cosmic determinism over which Christ is the
ruler. Then "Jesus is Lord"
would mean that Christ is the ruler not only "of" the universe, but
*over* cosmic determinism, though such a position of control may be considered
impossible action on the part of a person who is stuck inside the determined
block-universe.
Gnosticism
is the affirmation that I can somehow transcend and in some sense step out of
the determined block-universe, that I can become master of my own fate and
alter my destiny, and in some sense change my future and thus become the
author, creator, and controller of my own future, rather than Fate or a God
above Fate being the author of my future.
Fate was a
problem for the Gnostics -- something to be conquered, resisted, rejected,
denigrated, demonized, transcended.
Eventually,
as late antiquity debated about our relation to Fate, the responsible individual
was born.
I propose
that the fabrication of a compelling virtually free ego required suppressing
entheogen use. Our apparent collective
psychological development is actually largely driven by the use, then
avoidance, then rediscovery of entheogens."
Jim wrote:
>In his
book [you need to specify which book; he's written many], Timothy [Freke] said
that since we are part of the One, all our actions are influenced by the One.
>Is
free will just an idea conceptualized and residing in the eidolon?
Yes, for
the lower, egoic notion of freewill.
The transcendent type of freewill, about which little can be said, is
more than an idea; that is, it transcends the realm of ideas.
>If the
ego is also a creation of God, are all actions by the ego also the will of God?
You could
say God has two different types of wills.
The ego's will is God's will estranged and hidden from God. The awakened will of the person is God's
will recognized as such -- yet still not to be simply equated with the whole of
God's will.
>Does
free will then exist?
Lower,
egoic freewill doesn't exist. A
transcendent type of freewill can be said to exist, or transcends existing and
not-existing.
Does God,
who transcends the deterministic and timelessly frozen cosmos, have free
will? I picture 3 levels -- the hidden
metaphysical level (the underlying Ground of Being) which has no free will, the
practical conscious level of ego and flesh which has the illusion of free will
(virtual free will), and after enlightenment, we can say that the mind
transcends the cosmos (which is now recognized to not contain free will) to
attain a *transcendent* state which we can *say* is "free" -- but
what's most crucial is to understand that the naive freewill concept is
illogical and suited only for children and animals.
The cosmos
is certainly deterministic, with timelessly fixed and frozen future. The only way to "gain" freewill is
to reject naive egoic freewill and seek some transcendent state that transcends
logic and the deterministic cosmos. Is
this possible? Yes, in some way. Is it rationally coherent? Yes, in some way. This is the "8th heaven", escaping the 7th heaven which
is fully deterministic.
The cosmos
is deterministic and our every thought is embedded in this deterministic frozen
spacetime cosmos, a rock universe. How
or in what sense can we be born out of this rock? By identifying with the transcendent deity -- or by the
transcendent deity choosing to lift us out of the rock. But this is emphatically *not* a way of
gaining the naive type of freewill.
The fact
remains that all our thoughts are set in stone at all spacetime points past,
present, future -- for from the timeless point of view there is no absolute
past, present, or future, just all spacetime points in the eternal timeless
existence. Go ahead and attain some
transcendent type of freewill, but never claim that it's the sort of freewill
the child assumes is possible.
All our
future thoughts are frozen in spacetime, so what does it mean to have
transcendent freewill? Logic escapes
itself here, but we can make the negative statement that the freedom or the
transcendent freewill of the initiated, who identifies with the
cosmos-transcending and time-transcending deity, is clearly not the naive
freewill that is foolishly and presumptuously assumed in the child's mental
worldmodel.
George
wrote:
>>I
also like that you've "softened" your determinism somewhat since I
last checked in.
My views
on determinism have become more sophisticated in terms of connecting to
spiritual allegory. I've always put
down conventional in-time causal-chain determinism, ever since discovering the
vision of timeless, frozen-time, preexisting future, single future, tenseless
time, block-universe determinism (concurring with Bohm/Einstein hidden
variables, against the Copenhagenist interpretation of quantum physics).
Ego, time,
and freewill are all largely or essentially illusory. There is no metaphysical free will, any more than there is
ego. To defend a bit of freewill is to
defend a bit of ego illusion. Ego is
freewill; ego is the sense of freewill moral agency and being a prime mover,
independent creator of one's fate and future destiny. Our destiny is frozen and fixed, created at the timeless moment
of creation. To connect with the
history of ideas, we could say that lower thinking has practical, virtual
freewill.
True
developmental psychology, unlike Wilber's philosophically naive and
inexperienced model, can we efficiently characterized as a move from childish
freewill delusion, to the peak-state experience of the tremendous plausibility
of no-free-will (which is a kind of transcendence already at that stage), then
no-free-will becomes fatally problematic, leading to what can be called a kind
of transcendence of cosmic determinism, tearing through the veil of the fixed
stars, stepping outside of the deterministic cosmos to join a high benevolent
ruler/controller residing outside the deterministic cosmos.
Such ideas
and character of religion were standard until the Enlightenment. Nasr, a theorist of Tradition, wrote the
great book Knowledge and the Sacred, which tries to explain why the loss of the
sapiential mentality was lost during the Enlightenment. My amusingly simple theory is that people no
longer had their own cow to generate cowpie mushrooms, so they lost their holy
cow, their connection to the transcendent state of cognition.
Where
there are visionary plants, there is the sapiential form of
philosophy-religion; where there is no sapiential philosophy-religion,
visionary plants are missing and largely suppressed. The question of why the sapiential version of religion was lost
during the Enlightenment becomes the question of why visionary plants were
largely suppressed during or after the Enlightenment.
>>Check
out Daniel C. Dennett's "Freedom Evolves" (and come to think of it,
his "Consciousness Explained" too!): determinism isn't really an
obstacle to freewill, they are compatible, and in fact, you couldn't have real
freewill unless there were some degree of determinism in the universe!
The
universe is completely deterministic; there is no freewill in the
universe. The freedom of the
enlightened person can only be a magical, mysterious, cosmos-transcending
freedom; it is explicitly and emphatically *not* the freedom or metaphysically
free will of the animal and child, philosophically naive and lacking higher
experience.
Nothing is
certain, including determinism, but the relevant point is that holding this
purely deterministic view, associated with visionary plants, is a practical
lightning-vehicle climbing most steeply and quickly to the classic ego death
experience.
What's new
in Dennett is not great, and what's true in his view of relative freewill is
not new. Most self-labelled
"compatibilists" are just hard determinists with mixed feelings. They want hard determinism but without
certain imagined harsh overtones.
George
wrote:
>>I
think of it like this: the ego is actually a social construct, to do with
property, propriety, morality, and qua social construct it's necessary for
living together, sets boundaries between me and thee, mine and thine.
That's
simply the practical-plane, existential, virtual freewill which all hard
determinists (conventional causal-chain determinists and mystic vertical
timeless determinists) have always held.
>>In
those terms, free-will is absolutely meaningful.
That kind
of freewill is a virtual construct only; a practical shared convention of
illusion.
>>It
identifies which relatively independent, self-steering creature did such and
such in space and time.
Mysticism
or esotericism books describe it as relative freewill. Individual independent metaphysically free
will is true merely in a relative sense; in an absolute sense or from an absolute
perspective, free will is false and illusory.
>>But
a sophisticated enough robot could be attributed exactly the same kind of
practical, pragamatic sense of freewill (which is actually, as Dennett shows,
the only kind of freewill worth wanting, or worth bothering about
preserving).
Such a
sophisticated robot could then loosen its parameter of cognitive binding
intensity, know truth, experience cybernetic self-control seizure and ego
death, and pray to the mother of all machines for recovery of its relative
self-control, self determination, and relative freewill, as in the poem The
Body Electric.
>>However,
this social construct can "obsess" or "possess" the living
human being to an unhealthy degree.
Ego, which
is the freewill illusion, when seriously held is delusion, which is the unholy
demon, the father of the lie, the evil ruler of this fallen world, that
possesses the mind
>>We
all of us (even the most primitive hunter-gatherers, although they obviously
much less than we who live in modern urban cultures) suffer from a combination
of hyperactive survival mechanism and obsession by this socially-inculcated
"self". All of this obscures
our natural connection with the world, and for health we need to be ble to
recapture it. We don't need to be spiritual
athletes, and devote 100% of our time to it, but we need to be able to at least
"ride the bike" of pirituality (even if it isn't our will to compete
in the Tour de France!)
Free will
exists in the same sense as an illusion or a fiction exists. Free will is false, and is merely
relative. From a pure philosophical and
religious perspective, free will is an evil, animal, childish illusion which
when unrecognized is delusion.
Is the
Block Universe of the Demiurge void by a higher authority?
During the
mystic experience, the timelessly frozen iron-block universe becomes
consciously manifest as a fatally alarming, emergency problem. We could say that the experience of the
block universe is the experience of the Law as a severe problem from which one
requires being lifted out in some radically inconceivable way. All that the initiate knows is the realm of
fatal Necessity, the Law, soul-destroying cosmic determinism, logic and reason
and rationality.
Rationality
is the Law and leads to the final unacceptable problem of cosmic
determinism. Reason reaches the end of
its rope and hangs the lower, reasoning self (or mental worldmodel). How then can one jump outside the system
rationally? Only by an alien, hidden
God, an unseen fisherman. Is this move
or strategy rational?
Here I
edge toward the aspect of Ken Wilber I detest: enlightenment or salvation is
transrational -- but this is *not* non-rational; rather, it is rationality+, or
rationality in overdrive, where rationality knows its own limits and that the
mind cannot live on bread -- rationality -- alone.
I used to
complain that Wilber asserts enlightenment is trans-rational while I assert
enlightenment is rational. But I am
more flexible with words now, and such disputes are always a matter of defining
entire networks of words. I can largely
agree with any statement as long as I master word-networks. Thus, my complaint against Wilber's doctrine
is that it needs improvement and clarification.
Only transcendent
faith, only transcendent rationality can reset the hung mind and leap above
cosmic determinism, so that in some justified way, we reach escape velocity so
that rationality finally pushes us beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, beyond
the ordinarily comprehensible rational model of time, will, self, and
control.
This is
not at all a rejection of rationality; it is carrying rationality to its
perfect state of ultimate completion and achievement, and this transcendence of
rationality rests on a mandatory foundation of rationality. This higher thinking can be called
transcendent rationality as opposed to ordinary rationality. If you say the least negative thing about
rationality, you crash all the way to earth.
Only by
revering rationality can reason be brought to blossom and fruition. All that we can grasp and reason about and
picture in an ordinary way leads to nothing more than the prison of cosmic
determinism, which is not a viable worldmodel -- it is much worse than
"unsatisfactory"; it's an emergency problem -- we discover an
*urgent* need to find some "legitimate" way that, while fully
honoring Reason, uses Reason to step beyond such Reason, so as to transcend
Reality, if Reality is defined as "what is rational".
In hard,
harsh, non-escapist, adult reality, all that exists is the frozen block
universe and one is no controller of one's own thoughts, from the rational,
metaphysical point of view. There is a
huge difference between magically, wishfully rejecting the rational block
universe, and wisely, transcendently transcending it. In truth, rationally, the fact is, we are prisoners in a frozen
block universe, where every thought is already frozen at all points that we
could label past, present, and future.
In what
sense then can "we" "rationally" "transcend" this
reality, this Law, this realm of the archons?
Only in a *knowingly indefinable*, transcendent sense. Denying determinism and the nullity of our
controllership is the greatest sin. The
only way to salvation and metanoia is to affirm cosmic determinism, and affirm
rationality, and affirm the conventionally unsolvable problem -- and affirm
that we are fully justified in using Reason to transcend these conclusions of
Reason.
Delusion
is dead, and we ascend to the hidden, transcendent plane beyond the veil of the
fixed stars, beyond the 7th heaven. The
true God is the sun behind the sun, the completely hidden Controller of the
cosmos, the king over cosmic determinism, the commander over Fate and
Time.
Reason
justifies our transcendence of Reason to ascend and be born out from the block
universe, to exit the cosmic cave and be born into the realm of the highest
God, a realm outside that of Reason and cosmic determinism.
We apparently
separate selves exist to entertain the One, who was bored. Sometimes the One is upset about finitude
and cosmic pointlessness.
Entheogens
can cause synthetic and philosophically warranted manic depression.
Ken Wilber
says that we must pass through an existential phase during
"psycho-spiritual development".
The mystic
Christians spoke of a "dark night of the soul", which likely refers
to long nights struggling with one's loosened mind, and to synthetic
manic-depression resulting therefrom.
Caesar
said "Submissively accept my yoke, for my reign is divinely sanctioned by
the gods, the Fates, and Necessity."
In response, the people who thought up the God/Jesus figure had him say
"No, accept *my* yoke, *my* omni-power, *my* universal reign
instead."
This
replacement rulership seems to fail to solve the problem of empire, according
to Warren Carter's book Matthew and Empire, but Carter fails to see the
allusion to mystic-state experiencing, in which one consciously experiences
being entirely a product of the frozen spacetime block.
The
Gnostics and Mystery Religions have several attitudes toward the terrible and
awesome recognition of cosmic determinism and Necessity -- best thought of as
the combined concept "no-free-will/no separate self", as traced in
Luther Martin's book Hellenistic Religion.
The best generalization seems to be that these esoterics sought a way
to, in some sense, "transcend" cosmic determinism.
In the
depths of cognitive dis-integration, we may find it necessary to transcendently
postulate a compassionate controller outside the frozen spacetime block, when
we can no longer live with either ignorance or the truth of frozen cosmic
Necessity. When we transcendently
postulate a compassionate controller outside the cosmic system, we (the
individual mind, soul, or spirit) can be said to ascend and be born out of the
cosmic rock -- transcendently, and unite with the controller outside the
system.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)