MZ/RC Thanks for your reply. A few points about it
>For me, the human individual cannot universalize >his consciousness. Period. Tommy Aquinas taught >me his, convinced me of this. Me: I'm not sure how Aquinas convinced you of this since it was already axiomatic to the Western Augustinian view of human nature that it is fallen and irredeemably defiled. Thus abounded the view that our innate infirmity must be superseded by divine intervention (through the church) to supply it with knowledge of something ultimate. My answer is that human nature is defined by the presence of transcendent intelligence and free will. These values are constitutional to us and are actualized by the interactions of human culture. Without these constituent values we lack human-ness. Contrary to your enthusiasm, I find that Christianity's sin/guilt/redemption dialectic subverts this recognition about human nature by reducing human intelligence to the human mind and then further reduces that mind into a mere adjunct of the will. What we are left with is only common conceptuality (theologies/ideologies) and whatever haphazard choices we happen to make throughout our human lifetime. No wonder that our post-modern world is turning into the human exemplar of the ant heap. BTW You seem uninformed about the influences on Aquinas from Neoplatonism, particularly through Dionysius the Areopagite. In fact you seem uninformed about all of Neoplatonism. I feel the same about your ignoring of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Most of what you end up professing seems to be quaint 19th Century Western-Eurocentric theologizing. Thus it is hard for me to take your statements too seriously since they are so provincial For my part, it is only because of Thomas Merton, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Fr. Basil Pennington and Abbott Thomas Keating that I even acknowledge that there is something still alive in Catholicism. If not for them, I would be like you flogging the old Roman corpse every time it was displayed. . --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@...> wrote: > Dear emptybill: > > Here you expose the abyss of my ignorance about the scriptures and teachings of the East. Mind you, I feel I have comprehensively *experienced* what the wisdom of the Easteverywhere, in every formis aiming at, but, as you can imagine, this claim is disputed. But reading your references here, you must understand that I am a kindergartener in this realm of esoteric knowledge of the spirituality of the East. I inhaled to the extreme *everything* Maharishi taught me (at least up until I found him wantingand more); but once having understood the essence of what it means to know everything is one, and having experienced one's actions in accordance with a purpose and intention which mechanically was built into my very physiology and limbs and which originated in the uncreated (I thought) intelligence of the universe itself, I had no interest in pursuing theories and teachings which ultimately had already been proven to me. Such an act seemed superfluous. However, I changed, and came to see that the wisdom of the East (and especially enlightenment) was notthis was the shock of my lifecongruent with reality. For me, the human individual cannot universalize his consciousness. Period. Tommy Aquinas taught me this, convinced me of this. Then I began to fight a war against those powers which had led me to the bliss and wholeness of enlightenment. That war is still going on, but with some supernatural help I have more or less fundamentally undeceived myself. And returned to my waking state consciousness, which, for me is like getting enlightened after being 'enlightened'. > > But to my main point: I recognize the depth and comprehensiveness of Vaj's knowledge of the East, and I appreciate you setting me on a path where I could more clearly intellectually understand where he is coming fromat least in his [Vaj's] formal spiritual point of view. But for me to say I am interested in the East (which began to fascinate me immediately upon taking LSD, and hold me powerfully in its grip through TM and Maharishi and my putative enlightenment) is as much as to say that I am interested in learning more biographically about Snow White after having discovered she was the Witchor, perhaps more concretely, learning more about a geocentric universe after finding evidence for a heliocentric universe. I suppose I am open to the charge of over re-action: once dogmatically pro-TM and Maharishi and the East; now, in order to preserve the dynamic of my flawed personality and needs, I must become as dogmatic in my opposition to these as I was once willing to die for them. I post at FFL *for my own good*, because I encounter there pressure points exerted against me, which not only draw out from me specific and rhetorical responses, but I get to find out how secure, how stable, how truly foundational is my retreat to the West, even as I recognize that the basis of the spirituality of the West is now, in the 21st century, but a cadaver. I am a child of the Sixties, I am a child of Maharishi; now I am attempting to be a postmodern child of a post-Catholic universe. Which requires, at the very least, that my philosophy or point of view, is always able to meet every challengemaybe not in some purely abstract intellectual sense, but certainly in an existential sense: i.e. that I can 'take it', I can ride through it, I can be humbled by it, I can learn from it. This at least is my personal credo. > > I apologize for going beyond, way beyond what you anticipated in simply informing me about this matter of Vaj and his point of view about TM and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But, as Curtis said more graphically and incisively, further study of Eastern scriptures or traditions can never command my interest. And now you know why: Because I believe this whole metaphysical approach is dead wrong; therefore not true to reality, not true to God, not true to the tradition which once ruled the West: Roman Catholicism. AndI have said this repeatedly in earlier postsI get this sense of *what the Truth once was* by sensing *the context within which the saints, the Church are speaking* when I read what they say. *God has altered, or allowed to be altered the ontological context of his creation*. This means everything. And it explains for me the invading armies of Eastern gods who have more or less taken possession of the Westcertainly the Buddhism of Vaj has more life inside of it than does the once virginal bride of Christ: his Church. Christ, he truly seems dead to me. Where is he? The only person I have heard of who went from LSD to Christ*through that very psychedelic experience*was Katy Perry's father, who Russell Brand tells us became an evangelical Christian as a result of his acid experience [Brand, more or less implying here, that, despite being a born-again, his father-in-law knows a thing or two]. For the rest of us, it was a proof of the truth of paganism, of the East, of a pantheistic vision of the universe. TM reinforced this; Unity Consciousness consummated this. And now I am determined to resist and overthrow everything within myselfsince LSD and TM and Maharishi and enlightenmentwhich attempts to tell me this is the true way of seeing and experiencing reality. > > Without any means to making contact with the real living God of the universe, I think there is little point in arguing about what the Truth isthat is, some idea of an ultimate final truth which explains the what and why of this Creation. You know, the Hindu Theory of Everythingas the spiritual counterpart of the same idea in physics. So, I can offer nothing by way of truth or wisdom to anyone. And I think it an exercise in tolerance for those at FFL who are so sincerely and profoundly committed to the truth of the Veda, to read my posts. How can I criticize this? I was once inside this dream myself. But do I have any access to a *means* to entertain another reality than the TM-Maharishi-Vaj-Buddhist oneor, in the case of Curtis, the atheistic one? Hardly. God will have to explain why he has abandoned us. And his silence since I was born is terrible and unending. Still, though, when I make contact with the context of the pastbefore the Allied Bombing of Monte Cassino [that reference is becoming quaint and eccentric by the minute I think: reality is not exactly getting behind this intuition of mine]*I feel what reality used to be*. And it confirms me more deeply and persuasively than anything that once there was a Trinitarian God, and he is, in the final analysis, "the simple intelligence of loving goodness". > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "emptybill" emptybill@ wrote: > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > Dear Curtis, > > > > > > Your argument that Vaj could very well be a TM meditator and TM > > initiator is explained entirely by a scientific and skeptical frame of > > reference. The artist in you is held in abeyance. I refute the entire > > basis upon which you make this thesis. Did you read my two posts to him, > > Curtis? The only way I can explain your position vis-a-vis Vaj's claim > > to be a TMer and (once) a Maharishi-ized person is that you yourself, > > miraculously, have escaped from all the effects of doing TM, teaching > > TM, and spending four years at MIU getting a degree in philosophy. I > > would like you to consider putting to music your argument with Judy: it > > is not *inspired*. It is very clever, brilliant even, but I don't buy it > > as coming from that place in you where your heart fuels your > > intelligence. You will smack me down but good for all this, but I detect > > something mischievously pseudo-Socratic in this whole dialectical piece > > (with Judy). Of course you just *might be dead right*, but if you are > > (i.e. that Vaj was once a TMer and an initiator) it won't be for the > > reasons you adduce. It will be because of an entirely different > > principle. What, I don't know. Vaj's allegiance to his anti-TM, > > anti-Maharishi position is entirely *non-reactive* to any previous > > experience of TM and Maharishi. It is coming from a different place. For > > all I know his dismissal of TM as negative compared to other Eastern > > spiritual practices, and Maharishi as a false Guru compared to other > > Eastern spiritual teachersthat is, based on the criteria and > > evidence he appliesmay be the correct view. I don't think it is > > (vide my last post to him); but I would not want to go to the wall > > insisting I am right and he is wrong. > > > > > <snip> > > >
