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One Love
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   Posted 4/6/2007 6:23 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
This may sound weird as an analogy.
 
Necessary Existence = Human being
Divine Soul = Brain
Human Soul = An "individual" Neuron
 
 
I don't know...
 
Just a thought...


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

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Similitude
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   Posted 4/7/2007 11:18 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Hey, D. By "human being = necessary existence," are you saying that creation was not a volitionally free act?
 


 

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Tom
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   Posted 4/7/2007 12:19 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I know what you mean, but you can't say it like this.

Look, D, "necessary existence = human existence" logically entails "humans exist necessarily," and you don't want to say that!

You're so into unity and wanting to affirm it that the diversity and contingency are getting lost (in my opinion).

More later. Gotta go color eggs with my kids!

Tom


 

Post Edited (TGB) : 4/7/2007 1:05:48 PM (GMT-5)

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One Love
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   Posted 4/7/2007 3:18 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
"All things are one in their being and origin, one in their general law of existence, one in their interdependence and universal pattern of their relations; but each realises this unity of purpose and being on its own lines and has its own law of variation by which it enriches the universal existence."
--Sri Aurobindo


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

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Tom
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   Posted 4/7/2007 3:58 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Nice Hinduism there bro!

T


 

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One Love
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   Posted 4/7/2007 10:07 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
All truth is God's truth...n'est pas?

:-)


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

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PotOnWheel
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   Posted 4/7/2007 10:33 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
One said...
"All things are one in their being and origin, one in their general law of existence, one in their interdependence and universal pattern of their relations; but each realises this unity of purpose and being on its own lines and has its own law of variation by which it enriches the universal existence."
--Sri Aurobindo
Where it says "one in their being and origin" THAT does not fit when one person is human and one is one of the Trinity.
 
Where it says "one in their general law of existence" THAT does not fit when one person is human and one is one of the Trinity.
 
Where it says "one in their interdependence and universal pattern of their relations" THAT does not fit when one person is human and one is one of the Trinity.
 
 
 


(o)

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 7:07 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
B,

If we are talking a bi-polar relational unity between necessary existence and contingent expressive existence, then everything said is true.

Insofar as all things are forms of dispositional reality that emerge from what Necessary Existence is, then all things are "one in their being and origin.

Insofar as everything is organized and circumscribed by the Logos, they are one in their general law of existence.

Insofar as the Logos and Spirit are the organizing "principles" of all interdependency and universal becoming in Creation, the realities in Creation are one in their interdependence and universal pattern of their relations.

What's the problem?


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Post Edited (One) : 4/8/2007 7:47:31 AM (GMT-5)

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 7:48 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
The power of the separative ego...the Matrix has us...
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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 7:56 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.

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Tom
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   Posted 4/8/2007 7:58 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I'll play the devil's advocate...

One: What's the problem?

Tom: Pantheism. And the accusation that this is just pantheism isn't to be poo-poo'd lightly. What's the DIFFERENCE between your monotheistic God expressing himself contingently and the pantheist's everything is God? The pantheist will agree that you, or the tree, or whatever are contingente instantiations of the divine, but they're still God. Or do you just agree with the Hindu that all things ARE God in the sense he believes but add the uniqueness of Jesus to it?

Tom


 

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Tom
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   Posted 4/8/2007 8:01 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I can make a Mobius strip. You just get a circle of ribbon, cut it, flip one end, then reattach the cut ends. Presto. As I read Loder's book I kept thinking to myself, "Now what's so amazing about this? We can instantiate a Mobius strip IN OUR PHYSICAL WORLD. There's nothing mysterious about it. I mean, that's it? The whole secret to God and the world are contained in a piecie of cloth or paper that I cut and glue?"

Tom


 

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 8:04 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Tom:
Tom: Pantheism. And the accusation that this is just pantheism isn't to be poo-poo'd lightly. What's the DIFFERENCE between your monotheistic God expressing himself contingently and the pantheist's everything is God? The pantheist will agree that you, or the tree, or whatever are contingente instantiations of the divine, but they're still God. Or do you just agree with the Hindu that all things ARE God in the sense he believes but add the uniqueness of Jesus to it?

What is the difference between pantheism and panentheism in YOUR mind, Tom?


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 8:06 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
To me, the Mobius strip represents an idea: where there is COMPLEMENTARITY between SUPPOSED OPPOSITES.

Matter/Spirit
Finitude/Infinitude

That kind of thing...


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

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Tom
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   Posted 4/8/2007 8:06 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
One: The power of the separative ego...the Matrix has us...

Tom: It's statements like this that make me think you don't honor BOTH realities of the strip. You downplay the individual ego. It's like when you talk about the divine side you're pumped up and excited. Then when you talk about the individual self or ego the atmospher changes. God is real and substantial. But the individual ego isn't really real. It's an illusion, and salvation ultimately involves escaping it (the Matrix of the "self";-) where all that's recognized is God.

And it's hard to argue against this when the response it, "Well, who WANTS to be separated from God? Who wants to BE over-and-against God?" See?

Just emotin...

Pax,
Tom


 

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Tom
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   Posted 4/8/2007 8:07 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
One: What is the difference between pantheism and panentheism in YOUR mind, Tom?

Tom: I asked first.

Tom


 

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 8:08 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
This is what I really, really don't get.

Even IF we go as dualistice as we can, making some absolute separation between creaturely spirit and Divine Spirit, it STILL end up the same if we are completely submitted to God's Will and Way: Expanded Divine Self-Relationship. It would be God-in-Creation relating to God-in-Creation.

I'm so not understanding the problems here...


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 8:19 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Tom:
It's statements like this that make me think you don't honor BOTH realities of the strip. You downplay the individual ego. It's like when you talk about the divine side you're pumped up and excited. Then when you talk about the individual self or ego the atmospher changes. God is real and substantial. But the individual ego isn't really real. It's an illusion, and salvation ultimately involves escaping it (the Matrix of the "self" where all that's recognized is God.

Tom, I am not discounting the "lower" aspect of the Strip where becoming and change are possible. I'm talking unity-IN-diversity here. I DO believe that the true individuality that we have are NOT our egoic false selves, but it's in the particularizable way that our continuously-relating centers of being can express the divine reality that we are images of in the particular time-space contexts in which they primarily have their existence. Just because I downplay egoism (rightly, in my mind) doesn't mean that I am denying that there is no contingent individual that relates to the Divine individual.  The nature of the relationship between that contingent individual and the Divine Individual is what we are talking about.

**********************

All I can say is this for the panentheism: I cannot conceptualize something that is NOT of the same dispositional quality as God. In other words, when I see Creation, I see an expression of dispositional reality that is LIMITED in various way...but I'm not seeing some essential disjunct where Creation is NOT dispositional like God is. This is not to say that Contingent Expressive Existence is necessary! It is to say that Contingent Expressve Existence CANNOT be ultimately separated from Necessary Existence. How can it?
 
Let me ask it like this:  What is "non-divine reality" but CONSCIOUSLY LIMITED dispositional reality??


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Post Edited (One) : 4/8/2007 8:22:19 AM (GMT-5)

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Tom
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   Posted 4/8/2007 9:00 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
One: This is not to say that Contingent Expressive Existence is necessary!

Tom: I'll take that for now I guess. So "contingent existence does not equal necessary existence."

One: It is to say that Contingent Expressve Existence CANNOT be ultimately separated from Necessary Existence.

Tom: I can live with THAT. But for me "cannot ultimately be separated from" isn't equivalent to an equals sign (=) between God and the world. There are lots of ways we can be distinct from God while being ultimately inseparable. But I keep coming back to the feeling that for you "inseparable" means "indistinguishable."

Feel me?

I am fighting for my existence, yes. I hope I'm not doing so in a selfish or independent way. I want to survive so that God may shine in and through ME, AS me, as an individual who has freely offered his unique, individual self to God as a temple, a sacred space, where God comes and shines. I want to be FOR God. But I still think that for you that indivudal self just IS God. THAT'S where we are NOT distinct from God. But for me that's the most important place we need to really be distinct. Will the same dispositional nature that God necessarily is characterize my distinct identity/self? Sure. All reality is dispotional. But that doesn't undermine over-and-againstness as far as I can tell.

Let me try this. Anita and I have four kids. I passed on to them what's necessary to "human" being. They derive from me. They were not created ex nihilo. They were created ex Tomo-and-Anito! icon_brows2 They were created, they came into being, out of an act of love between Anita and me. But they're nevertheless distinct from me. But within this distinction, this over-and-againstness, there's still a fundamental unity (of origin [from me] and of being ["human" being; the necessary attributes of which they get from me]) that can never be denied and out of which my kids can never misrelate. They can never relate themselvse out of human being that derives from me and that manifests my image. But they're not ME. They're THEM. Are they contingent expressions of me? Sure, I can say that. So why do I feel that you're saying so much more than this? Probably because you are. And it's the extra stuff you're saying that bothers me.
 
I don't think this analogy captures what you have in mind when you say we are "expression of..." God. I'm understanding you to be saying some thing like this: I'm a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, etc. All these relations are JUST different insantiations OF ME. Some of necessary instantiations, like that of being a "son." I can't BE a human being without being "son." That's definitional. But other relations I instantiate are contingent, like being a brother or an employee, or an uncle, whatever. But there's only one SUBJECT variously instantiated. It seems that for you, D, "human being" is just another relation that God carries, another hat God wears, another role he plays on the stage of his own mind, so that all relations in creation, ALL of them, are no more than self-relations in a single mind. It's all just God relating to Godself in the way I might relate "Tom as father" or "Tom as son" TO "Tom as brother." I can do that. And there's some distinction between these identities or roles. But there's no REAL distinction in subject. That is, there's ultimately only ONE "subject"--God (or in the case of my roles, ME).

Tom


 

Post Edited (TGB) : 4/8/2007 9:09:47 AM (GMT-5)

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 9:48 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Pantheism REQUIRES that there be a necessary God/world relationship.

Panentheism does NOT require this. In a panentheistic system, Creation CAN be a free act of God.


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 9:49 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Who's doing the fighting for the existence, Tom?

Is it "Tom Belt", the persona who could be eliminated with a missed swipe of a neurosurgeon's scapel...(or the onset of Parkenson's)? Is THAT the "person" doing the fighting?

Or...

Is it the individual contingent expressive SOUL within the human frame that does NOT have any enduring eternal "PERSONALITY" as a constitutive element?

Remember. You were a soul/spirit BEFORE you were "Tom Belt" in any meaningful way.  You could have been "George Frederick" who grew up a Afrikkaner.  You could have been raised a French person man named Anton.  Heck, you could get into a car wreck tomorrow, end up in a coma for a week, waking up with heavy amnesia such that you'd be having to start a NEW LIFE, functionally speaking.  You'd NO LONGER be "Tom Belt" in usual sense we mean.

Do you see what I'm saying?


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Post Edited (One) : 4/8/2007 10:05:06 AM (GMT-5)

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 9:53 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Thomas Anderson to Morpheus:
"So this chair..it isn't real?"

Morpheus to Thomas Anderson:
"What IS 'real'? How do you DEFINE 'real'? "


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Post Edited (One) : 4/8/2007 11:53:31 AM (GMT-5)

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 10:06 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
When we talk to ourselves, answer ourselves, AND RESPOND TO THOSE ANSWERS...basically having internal dialogue...

Who's the subject and who's the object?
 
Moreover, is there "REAL" dialogue going on?
 
We obviously individuate and make an OBJECT out of ourselves by talking to ourselves, expecting our "separate" self to hear AS OBJECTIVE RECIPIENT of our communication and respond to the SUBJECTIVE COMMUNICATOR.
 
How does Necessary Existence explain this phenomenon?
 
Hmmm...
 
 


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Post Edited (One) : 4/8/2007 10:52:51 AM (GMT-5)

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 11:09 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.


Who's the subject and who's the object here?

---------------------------

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, "What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?"
"The son of David," they replied.

He said to them, "How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him 'Lord'? For he says,

" 'The Lord said to my Lord:
(Self-Relationship)
"Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet." '

If then David calls him 'Lord,' how can he be his son?" No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Post Edited (One) : 4/8/2007 11:12:16 AM (GMT-5)

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One Love
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   Posted 4/8/2007 11:11 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Tom,

At the end of all this, what doesn't end up being Divine Self-Relationship in Creation?

The "Trinification" of Creation?


"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

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