Yes, they do say something very close to that and it seems our sciences and social structures do too.
Session 20 October 1994:
Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation - Pauline Christianity = PaleoChristianity
- Thread starter Approaching Infinity
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Yes, they do say something very close to that and it seems our sciences and social structures do too.
Session 20 October 1994:
This strongly reminds me of Roger Scruton's take on the fall and our existence. (His book "Soul of the World" is a good summary of his philosophy.) He posits a"cognitive dualism" where the realm of human experience, what he calls "Lebenswelt", is very real, and sort of runs in parallel to the physical world. It is the world of reasons, of accountability, and it shines through the physical world just like the human face can show the soul via a body part, or just like music can contain movements even though nothing really moves and it's just pitches of sounds in the physical world. Scruton's whole project is to rescue the importance of the "Lebenswelt" from attempts to cast it aside, which he identifies as the fall - a view of everything as mere physical objects. In other words, Scruton wants us to see the subtleties of the non-physical realm, and in that realm - the realm of reasons and so on - the ultimate reason, the ultimate goal, the ultimate justification, is God. It's always fascinating to see different thinkers come to similar conclusions via a totally different path.
Thanks everyone for sharing all these insightful comments.
You are gonna love this book.
It seems to me that Paul was most definitely channeling in some sense, or communicating with higher realms. The way that Ashworth unpacks it is just a glorious revelation, too. It's so hard over such a span of time, but he did it. And it's pretty darn certain that Paul was NOT preaching a Jewish messiah who was of the Jews, for the Jews, and only coming to save them and put everyone else in subjection to them as the Zealot Christians of Jerusalem were preaching on their way to their war.
Some "experts" have said that Paul maybe didn't write 1 Corinthians 13, but after reading Ashworth, it seems to me certain that he did.
The role of esoteric mirror in the liberation process; it involves a painful realization that one's previous life has been a kind of slavery, though it had not been perceived as such. The blindness to our present state has to shift, the veil has to be lifted. Once our current state has been seen for all its emptiness and horror, a way opens up for a true change to take place.
What one does with this feedback/mirror takes different forms, such as acceptance or resistance:
What one does with this feedback/mirror takes different forms, such as acceptance or resistance:
Absolution as talked of in this work has more to do with recognition than forgiveness. The problem he's describing as what Paul was getting at is the amnesia that comes from total absorption in 3rd Density STS. It seems to be the reason for the somewhat strange title; 'Paul's Necessary Sin' However, it's a bit of a catch 22. One doesn't really recognize the state for what it is until liberation into the new state of awareness in 'Christ,' which reveals the former state for what it is, occurs. A state of limitation essentially self imposed. This brings to mind a few things; The C's having said that when one begins to recognize the futility of third density existence, one is preparing for the next level. And that next level is 'unlimited.' We've also been told that the 'Wizard of Oz' was 6th density inspired. The option to go 'home' was always there. "There's no place like home."
To name just a couple.
To name just a couple.
And that is pretty much what is described in de Salzmann's "The First Initiation."
Exactly what Gurdjieff talked about and what we, ourselves, have seen and experienced on this forum!
Pretty amazing, isn't it?
It also reminds one of what Gurdjieff wrote about in reference to the awakening of conscience. And that, of course, only can come about after "The First Initiation."
I see a lot of films and most of them are just Hollywood cr*p, mostly mindless entertainment. But tonight I saw one of the best films; a real film, and the subject matter couldn't have been more apropos for this threads discussion, I don't think. It's called 'A Hidden Life:'
If you can find a way to see it, do. The filmography is gorgeous, and subject matter deep and stirring. What is the right thing to do in such a situation? "There is something inside me that forbids me from doing what I know is wrong," says Franz.
If you can find a way to see it, do. The filmography is gorgeous, and subject matter deep and stirring. What is the right thing to do in such a situation? "There is something inside me that forbids me from doing what I know is wrong," says Franz.
@genero81 I just watched the trailer, it looks really good. It reminds me of another called Hacksaw Ridge where a man that is drafted into the US army refuses to carry or use weapons. He is beat up as a coward by members of his platoon, but ultimately is sent out on to the battle field without weapons. Instead of fighting, he puts himself at great risk to save the wounded and to get him through the horror he keeps repeating to himself 'Please Lord, help me get one more'.
John G
The Living Force
Sometimes it seems like acceptance can bring a crushing guilt that could actually get in the way of transformation.
Breo
The Living Force
@genero81, yes, for me too, Franz Jägerstätter lived a life in the Paulene sense.
I have not seen this new film but followed for long the biography of the main character Jägerstätter, who openly refused to take the Hitler oath and was a man of lived conscience.
The Austrians for long not only ignored his upright life that led to his death by the Nazis but also refused to acknowledge a pension for his wife.
It took another 50 years when the catholic church declared him in a beatification a martyr - while during his life when " he began to examine the morality of the war and even proceeded to discuss this with his bishop, emerged from the conversation saddened that the episcopate seemed afraid to confront the issues."
Wikipedia:
I have not seen this new film but followed for long the biography of the main character Jägerstätter, who openly refused to take the Hitler oath and was a man of lived conscience.
The Austrians for long not only ignored his upright life that led to his death by the Nazis but also refused to acknowledge a pension for his wife.
It took another 50 years when the catholic church declared him in a beatification a martyr - while during his life when " he began to examine the morality of the war and even proceeded to discuss this with his bishop, emerged from the conversation saddened that the episcopate seemed afraid to confront the issues."
Wikipedia:
Started it yesterday, and I agree with many comments here - it's one of those books where the light bulbs go on all over the place.
Some thoughts about the relationship between "law" and "faith" worth pondering IMO:
The background of Paul's view on the "law" seems to be a religious society where some kind of moral/religious law is more or less upheld (along the lines of the 10 commandments), and it can lead to righteous action. His concept of "faith" then goes way beyond that - it points towards a communion with Christ/the spiritual world, where the entire structure of our goals and motivations change and God becomes active through us. Moreover, a direct guidance by God/the spirit world may be established. For that to happen, we first need to be "crucified" - the old self needs to die, a deep realization of our sinful nature (and therefore sinful past) needs to kick in (i.e. First Initiation).
Now, in our present society, perhaps not unlike the late Roman times (?), our starting point is different - we don't live under anything resembling "religious law" or even "moral law". We live in an evil society on the brink of collapse.
I came across an interesting thought somewhere (perhaps in Scruton's work) that you will always have people at the bottom who somewhat rebel against the established moral order, and you will always have somewhat hypocritical "patricians"/elites. This is unavoidable. But as long as the moral standards (or religious laws) are still upheld, are still considered the ideal, societies can tolerate these transgressions, because people still consider them as transgressions, rebellions and hypocritical elites not withstanding.
But what precedes a true collapse is this: the patricians themselves actively promote unmorality. It's not just that some of them, or even many, are hypocritical; they actively corrupt society from the top - they actively fight the "law". That's when the end is nigh for a civilization.
What I'm getting at is that perhaps in our day, after the "First Initiation", we often need to get to the stage of law-abiding citizens first, that is to say we need to strictly follow a moral code or religious law. Only then (or in combination with it) a deeper communion with the spirit becomes possible where we can develop our own compass and live "in Christ", leaving the sphere of mere law-following.
In the present, I guess the idea of following the law would be something along the lines of becoming a decent conservative à la Jordan Peterson or Roger Scruton. Gurdjieff's "good obyvatel" also comes to mind, someone who has established a decent baseline on top of which can be built. There is much variation on this path though I think.
Now, the conservative view (as spelled out by Edmund Burke for example) is that you can't trust individual human reason all that much. Rather, we should look at the wisdom contained in tradition, which helps people make "virtue a habit" and that we abandon at our peril. Once these ingrained patterns and structures are removed and man left to reason alone, something like the French Revolution happens - people impose their purely intellectual fancies on society, based on some kind of apriori philosophy à la Rousseau (as opposed to the American Revolution that was more about preserving established folkways than imposing some kind of radical new philosophy).
Perhaps we should understand "the law" in that sense - accumulated practical wisdom. It seems that Paul was very aware of the dangers of removing this and proclaiming the "Christ spirit within" or "God's word" as the higher authority. This would explain why so much in Paul's letters is about practical guidance of the community, because people tend to come to all kinds of rationalizations of bad behavior once left to reason alone. It would also explain the ambiguity about the "law" and all the confusion in interpreting the relationship between faith and law - Paul doesn't condemn the "law" outright as wrong, and seems to want to preserve it in a sense, perhaps realizing that it is still necessary in a way for many people, even Christians, before "true love"/"God's word within"/"the awakened conscience" can replace it?
Last comment: the distortion in the translations of the bible are really astonishing. I checked a few passages in the German catholic standard translation, and it's crazy how the translators have imposed church doctrine on the text. For example, "God's word" is often rendered "proclamation" (Verkündigung), which is associated with "Jesus proclaiming the gospels" - reading that, it's impossible to interpret it as something coming from within that animates a person once he has the Christ spirit. Maybe it took a Quaker to figure it out, because the Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" already primes one to that kind of interpretation?
Some thoughts about the relationship between "law" and "faith" worth pondering IMO:
The background of Paul's view on the "law" seems to be a religious society where some kind of moral/religious law is more or less upheld (along the lines of the 10 commandments), and it can lead to righteous action. His concept of "faith" then goes way beyond that - it points towards a communion with Christ/the spiritual world, where the entire structure of our goals and motivations change and God becomes active through us. Moreover, a direct guidance by God/the spirit world may be established. For that to happen, we first need to be "crucified" - the old self needs to die, a deep realization of our sinful nature (and therefore sinful past) needs to kick in (i.e. First Initiation).
Now, in our present society, perhaps not unlike the late Roman times (?), our starting point is different - we don't live under anything resembling "religious law" or even "moral law". We live in an evil society on the brink of collapse.
I came across an interesting thought somewhere (perhaps in Scruton's work) that you will always have people at the bottom who somewhat rebel against the established moral order, and you will always have somewhat hypocritical "patricians"/elites. This is unavoidable. But as long as the moral standards (or religious laws) are still upheld, are still considered the ideal, societies can tolerate these transgressions, because people still consider them as transgressions, rebellions and hypocritical elites not withstanding.
But what precedes a true collapse is this: the patricians themselves actively promote unmorality. It's not just that some of them, or even many, are hypocritical; they actively corrupt society from the top - they actively fight the "law". That's when the end is nigh for a civilization.
What I'm getting at is that perhaps in our day, after the "First Initiation", we often need to get to the stage of law-abiding citizens first, that is to say we need to strictly follow a moral code or religious law. Only then (or in combination with it) a deeper communion with the spirit becomes possible where we can develop our own compass and live "in Christ", leaving the sphere of mere law-following.
In the present, I guess the idea of following the law would be something along the lines of becoming a decent conservative à la Jordan Peterson or Roger Scruton. Gurdjieff's "good obyvatel" also comes to mind, someone who has established a decent baseline on top of which can be built. There is much variation on this path though I think.
Now, the conservative view (as spelled out by Edmund Burke for example) is that you can't trust individual human reason all that much. Rather, we should look at the wisdom contained in tradition, which helps people make "virtue a habit" and that we abandon at our peril. Once these ingrained patterns and structures are removed and man left to reason alone, something like the French Revolution happens - people impose their purely intellectual fancies on society, based on some kind of apriori philosophy à la Rousseau (as opposed to the American Revolution that was more about preserving established folkways than imposing some kind of radical new philosophy).
Perhaps we should understand "the law" in that sense - accumulated practical wisdom. It seems that Paul was very aware of the dangers of removing this and proclaiming the "Christ spirit within" or "God's word" as the higher authority. This would explain why so much in Paul's letters is about practical guidance of the community, because people tend to come to all kinds of rationalizations of bad behavior once left to reason alone. It would also explain the ambiguity about the "law" and all the confusion in interpreting the relationship between faith and law - Paul doesn't condemn the "law" outright as wrong, and seems to want to preserve it in a sense, perhaps realizing that it is still necessary in a way for many people, even Christians, before "true love"/"God's word within"/"the awakened conscience" can replace it?
Last comment: the distortion in the translations of the bible are really astonishing. I checked a few passages in the German catholic standard translation, and it's crazy how the translators have imposed church doctrine on the text. For example, "God's word" is often rendered "proclamation" (Verkündigung), which is associated with "Jesus proclaiming the gospels" - reading that, it's impossible to interpret it as something coming from within that animates a person once he has the Christ spirit. Maybe it took a Quaker to figure it out, because the Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" already primes one to that kind of interpretation?
Brilliant summation, Luc. I knew you would get your teeth into this one.
As we well know, there are many, many individuals who will never make even the "First Initiation"... at least not in a single lifetime. And they NEED a moral yardstick, a "child-minder", as Ashworth describes it.
At one point Ashworth mentions such as being "protective" of human society. When I read that, I immediately thought that religious systems impose protective restraint on societies which would otherwise run amok and bring cosmic disaster down on their own heads by creating severe imbalances in the Cosmic Information system.
And that appears to be what Rome did (good comparison and quite apt) and what is happening today.
As we well know, there are many, many individuals who will never make even the "First Initiation"... at least not in a single lifetime. And they NEED a moral yardstick, a "child-minder", as Ashworth describes it.
At one point Ashworth mentions such as being "protective" of human society. When I read that, I immediately thought that religious systems impose protective restraint on societies which would otherwise run amok and bring cosmic disaster down on their own heads by creating severe imbalances in the Cosmic Information system.
And that appears to be what Rome did (good comparison and quite apt) and what is happening today.
Да уж, как сказали бы у нас: объяснил на пальцах.
Translation
Yes, as we would say: explained on the fingers.
Thank you for recommendation of this book on Paul. I ordered copy from local retailer and hopefully it will arrive soon. Couple of days ago I received also book written by R. Carrier, on Historicity of Jesus, and I started to read through few chapters yesterday before falling asleep, but it crossed my mind that, perhaps, it might be better to read first Paul's Unnecessary Sin for better perspective. What do you think?
