Cloud of Unknowing
Plato offered us one of the greatest theories ever devised (discovered?)...that of the ideas, or more commonly, The Forms.
We are in the cave looking at the shadows on the wall....we are ignorant of true 'reality' ...the source...remains hid from our view.
Plotinus was a later Greek (about 250 AD)...he started Neo-Platonism, a mystical spiritualism more spiritual than any 'church-ianity'...
The 'One' is the prime source...from the one 'emanates' (contrast with 'evolves') 'Nous'...then the World Soul...nature is part of this, as are human souls, and matter. (Ex Deo...creation comes from the source, matter does not emerge from nothing, or Ex Nihilo) Ecstatic visions can bring us closer to the One. Contemplation becomes the method and goal of life...
Gnostics enjoyed a tortured relationship with the neoPlatonists and later mystics...
Kabbalah is a Jewish metaphysic...In the beginning, There was a primal unity...then, there was a rip in the unty of God....God contracted his light, to allow the creation of the material universe...(The Fall?) Between God and the creation, there is the Ein Sof (?)...infinite light. But there are ten powers or worlds between ours and the Ein Sof and God...(there are also four worlds involved in all this- i forget the real relation)...
From this idea, we ended up with Hasidic Judaism. The Hasidics were started around 1730 by Rabbi Israel ben Elieser, or Ba'al Shem Tov (The master of the universe).
Main ideas: Goal of human life is to bond with God...we can do this by communicating with him. How is this done? By seeing God within everything- God exists (literally) within all matter, yet God is beyond the world...we must rectify the populace...improve manners, cultivate joy. The creation has a divine destiny- providence moves us along, everything was meant to be...all will be redeemed in the end...
The Orthodox Christian church has a mystical tradition too- the Hesychasm.
One must withdraw the senses...repeating certain prayers, breathing exercises...the goal is Theosis...a form of deification of man.
Meme's are currently creating the Noosphere...Teilhard de Chardin in the 20th century spoke of a return to the source, via the expansion of mans intellect throughout the cosmos...Augustine: look inward, then up. The crucial question: are computers intimately related to all this?
We are in the cave looking at the shadows on the wall....we are ignorant of true 'reality' ...the source...remains hid from our view.
Plotinus was a later Greek (about 250 AD)...he started Neo-Platonism, a mystical spiritualism more spiritual than any 'church-ianity'...
The 'One' is the prime source...from the one 'emanates' (contrast with 'evolves') 'Nous'...then the World Soul...nature is part of this, as are human souls, and matter. (Ex Deo...creation comes from the source, matter does not emerge from nothing, or Ex Nihilo) Ecstatic visions can bring us closer to the One. Contemplation becomes the method and goal of life...
Gnostics enjoyed a tortured relationship with the neoPlatonists and later mystics...
Kabbalah is a Jewish metaphysic...In the beginning, There was a primal unity...then, there was a rip in the unty of God....God contracted his light, to allow the creation of the material universe...(The Fall?) Between God and the creation, there is the Ein Sof (?)...infinite light. But there are ten powers or worlds between ours and the Ein Sof and God...(there are also four worlds involved in all this- i forget the real relation)...
From this idea, we ended up with Hasidic Judaism. The Hasidics were started around 1730 by Rabbi Israel ben Elieser, or Ba'al Shem Tov (The master of the universe).
Main ideas: Goal of human life is to bond with God...we can do this by communicating with him. How is this done? By seeing God within everything- God exists (literally) within all matter, yet God is beyond the world...we must rectify the populace...improve manners, cultivate joy. The creation has a divine destiny- providence moves us along, everything was meant to be...all will be redeemed in the end...
The Orthodox Christian church has a mystical tradition too- the Hesychasm.
One must withdraw the senses...repeating certain prayers, breathing exercises...the goal is Theosis...a form of deification of man.
Meme's are currently creating the Noosphere...Teilhard de Chardin in the 20th century spoke of a return to the source, via the expansion of mans intellect throughout the cosmos...Augustine: look inward, then up. The crucial question: are computers intimately related to all this?
posted by Zero at 2:55 PM
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