A Question for Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics

[Oeaohoo]

A lot of what I have said above is largely irrelevant so let me distill it down to a few essential points.

Like I originally said, it was not just eastern seers: Hinduism testifies to it; Zoroastrianism testifies to it; the Chaldean oracles testify to it; Egyptian mythology testifies to it; Greco-Roman antiquity testifies to it; Nordic and Germanic paganism testifies to it; even Judaism, Christianity and Islam testify to it.

It is not just that I view these civilisations as having been in every truly important way more significant (I know this will annoy you but: if less fundamental!) than our own, and if you don’t agree we can even forget about that altogether. The important point is that I see this mass convergence of vision across time and space as evidence, or at least as something which has to be explained in a sophisticated way. “That was just primitive superstition” is a very weak response for such a universal phenomenon, and sticking a colour-coded spiral badge on it like a good five-year-old is surely no better, for reasons I have described in my second comment in this thread.

But, in terms of empirical evidence, I would ask you this: when has there ever been a civilisation that is so one-sidedly materialistic as the post-renaissance European one? Every time I mention this you just say “matter is for the lower holons” and so on but let us look at the evidence: St. Augustine wrote that everything natural contained an “admixtio diaboli fraudis”, an “admixture of devilish fraud” (Note: I am NOT using St. Augustine as an authority here. He might have been a total moron. I am simply using him and others below as examples of attitudes towards matter in the major civilisations of the past); of course the older Vedic texts are absolutely steeped in anti-materialism (a further refutation of your claims), for example: “That which transcends hunger and thirst, grief, delusion, decay and death is your innermost Self. Knowing this very Self the Brahmans renounce the desire for sons, for wealth and for the worlds, and lead a mendicant life”; Buddha said to his disciples, “Look at your body. A painted puppet, a poor toy of jointed parts ready to collapse, a diseased and suffering thing with a head full of false imaginings”; and so on. Now, let us turn to the typical confessions of a modern “thinker”: “Body I am and body entirely”, “Do not believe those who talk to you of over-earthly hopes”, “We know better, we have put man back among the animals” (Nietzsche). If I had the time to wade through the trash-heap that is modern “philosophy” I could likely produce many more examples (the absolute amateurishness of the “new atheists” and the postmodern anti-Platonic war against transcendence in the name of “pure immanence” being notable ones), but I don’t. Anyway, Nietzsche was one of the less materialistic of the modern “thinkers”!

I will repeat again, I am not appealing to any authority here. I am just providing evidence for a change in worldview. Of course I am not denying that anyone in the past was materialistic. Materialism in the past, however, was an aberrant oddity. Today it is the norm. It could be said that so-called paganism was somewhat naturalistic, along with certain cults of Hinduism, but the “pagan” conception of nature was heavily suffused with spirit. Yggdrasil was not just a tree! Given the spiritual dearth of western modernity new “spiritual” movements have emerged - Theosophy, Spiritualism, Cat-lady astrology right up to Teal Swan, Law of Attraction and mindfulness - but even these are generally heavily influenced by the materialism of the present degenerate (in the literal sense of having lost connection to the original animating principle) age.

I think the best proof I have given of the absurdity of the spiral progressivism view is this:

On 31/05/2022 at 4:51 PM, Oeaohoo said:

Firstly, a simple observation: If every stage is more advanced than the last, then why is every stage shorter? Stage Red lasted for thousands of years, Stage Blue for over a thousand, Stage Orange for under 500, and Stage Green has so far only lasted under 100 years (and it already seems pretty strained)? Isn’t longevity a sign of peace, order and stability, and frantic activism a sign of disorder and chaos? And if every stage is getting shorter, then logically there must be an end of the cycle! (Or “third tier” stages will only last for an infinitesimal duration!)

How do you explain this? I see this is as evidence that the progress you speak of must terminate. Do you imagine a future in which every day is a new spiral stage? Every minute? Every second? That is the only other alternative because each stage is clearly - empirically, no superstition required, as you demand! - getting shorter.

I think the basic disagreement here is that I see the world as the unfoldment of God whereas you see it as the evolution of God. To me the idea that God itself could evolve is a metaphysical absurdity. What evidence is there that “the purer forms of God require evolution”? You have made many assertions for which there is no evidence whatsoever yet accuse me of empty appeals to authority. For example, you say that the pattern you describe is one “that is physically, vitally, mentally, supra-mentally, and spiritually unfolding as a knowable process”. This is only true because you are relying on modern thinkers and theories. If it is a knowable process, why did practically nobody know of it it until the modern progressivised world emerged? You say that this is because we have access to “more advanced systems” but this is just an appeal to the same authorities.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo You do not understand infinity.

[Oeaohoo]

What a smug and self-satisfied answer. “Men of all degrees will conceit themselves to be equal with Brahmans.” Then again, what could I except from a forum run by a guy who thinks he’s the most awakened man on the planet whilst spending most of his time chasing “pussy”!

Go to hell. After all, Lucifer didn’t need tradition. Lucifer didn’t need order or truth. “Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven!” Lucifer was a progressive just like you.

[AtheisticNonduality]

4 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

What a smug and self-satisfied answer. “Men of all degrees will conceit themselves to be equal with Brahmans.” Then again, what could I except from a forum run by a guy who thinks he’s the most awakened man on the planet whilst spending most of his time chasing “pussy”!

Go to hell. After all, Lucifer didn’t need tradition. Lucifer didn’t need order or truth. “Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven!” Lucifer was a progressive just like you.

Ah, he's making to great leap from Purple to Red!

[Oeaohoo]

@AtheisticNonduality I am only returning dismissal with dismissal. What else can you do? 

Even “Stage Red” is necessary sometimes, but Lucifer is “Stage Blue”! After all, how can you be free if you don’t have access to every “stage”?

Maybe you are just being smug because you don’t want to address my arguments which threaten your worldview.

[Oeaohoo]

If you think it is absurd to mention Lucifer, here is a description of Lucifer’s vainglory from the Danish composer Rued Langgaard’s opera Antikrist:

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The Mouth Speaking Great Things

"Progress" is the byword. [!] "Growth" is the ground of life. "Adversity" strengthens the will. "Struggle" prepares the victory. "Plans" further the work. "Objectives" awaken deeds. Clarity here and clarity there. Firm resolutions – slave of society. One life – : one law: Power defeats power. Anthropomorphically, the mammon smiles upon us – ennobling the slave in our mind. "Personality"! "Independence"! "Humanity"! The great school of "Life": "My" and "mine" "develops", - "matures" - ! Great life shines, whirls, revolves in hubbub, hallelujah! "Enriching" it rocks there: the surf of great life, blustering, struggling: "We ourselves can!". Great life is striving and coaxing: "Thou shalt, thou shalt" ye young and old, great and small in the Church Ruin of Noise! Great life pities, mocks, - lights, extinguishes altar flames, - bursts all bonds that check the wing-beats of desire: Hail greatness! Strength, enterprise: the banner of vainglory-pleasure flies in the city by day and by night: Grandeur: "truth": all in one; thunder on the roadsteads - living in me -!

Sound familiar?

This opera has a beautiful finale when God finally banishes Lucifer: https://youtu.be/gLWa7DSEYZE

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo @Oeaohoo You are an Ascender and what Nietzsche calls an Afterworldsman or a despiser of life; you do not understand that Brahman is the world and that there is no reason to be an ascetic detached from this reality when God is reached (but contradictorily you believe decay, going backwards / devolving is a means of reaching God when it is objectively not). You shun the facts of existence just so you can grasp religious stage Blue conformity. The reason many ancient cultures believed in "decay" was because they were still grappling with the most brutal truths of creation and destruction, and they saw a veering between creation and destruction as cyclical and something observable on a short term scale extrapolatable to a long term astrological or speculative cosmic scale. But they didn't see the growth, the irreversible defying of entropy that we have experienced after thousands of years. Of course those with only bricks would not believe in walls, and those with only walls would not believe in buildings. It is a simple fact that greater complexity happens consecutively, like it has and will continue to axiomatically. There is nothing incorrect about "my" or "mine" or maturation or "personality" or "independence" or movement. Any refusal of this is fucking disgusting.

 

[Oeaohoo]

Yes you are right. At least, I despise the present world because I view it as corrupted and fallen. I have reached a point in life where more or less everything I do is simply to remind me of this fact, an asceticism of sorts. Naturally, this despising must not be allowed to contaminate the tranquility and blissfulness of Being, for this would be to buy into the illusion. In another time, I might agree with you that there is no reason to be detached from it. Given the present world situation, however, I believe that love and happiness can in almost all cases only be a delusion based on comfort and inertia or false promises of the future, like the happiness that Nietzsche ascribed to the “last man”:

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“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" - thus ask the last men, and they blink.

For the earth has now become small, and upon it hops the last man, who makes everything small. Their kind are as ineradicable as the flea: the last man lives longest.

“We have discovered happiness!" - say the last men, and they blink.

They have left the places where the living was hard: for one needs the warmth. One still loves one's neighbour and rubs oneself against him: for one needs the warmth.

To fall ill and harbour suspicion is in their eyes sinful: one must proceed with caution. A fool, whoever still stumbles over stones or humans!

A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And a lot of poison at last, for a pleasant death.

They still work, for work is entertainment: but they take care that the entertainment does not become a strain.

Nobody grows rich or poor anymore: both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule anymore? Who wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.

No sheperd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.

"Formerly, the entire world was mad" - say their finest, and they blink. [!]

They are clever and know everything that has ever happened, so there is no end to their mockery [stage this or stage that!]. They still quarrel, but they soon make up - else it is bad for the stomach.

They have their little pleasure for the day and their little pleasure for the night, but they respect health.

“We have discovered happiness!" - say the last men, and they blink.

A prophecy which could happily be appended to the others that I have mentioned. Nietzsche was a despiser of life at heart too. His life was clearly an ascetic one. I mean, come on, a 40-year old virgin! He could have found himself a nice Victorian lady if he had wanted to, but he was more occupied with the (anti-)metaphysical.

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The reason many ancient cultures believed in "decay" was because they were still grappling with the most brutal truths of creation and destruction, and they saw a veering between creation and destruction as cyclical and something observable on a short term scale extrapolatable to a long term astrological or speculative cosmic scale.

Yes, that is a good argument. A projection of the destruction of their own civilisation onto the world itself. Then again, you have spoken a lot about holons, and as I have pointed out this idea was known to the ancient world as “man as a microcosm” and “as above, so below”. Therefore, if you concede that every civilisation, as a holon, has an ascending and descending phase and therefore a cyclical pattern, doesn’t it logically proceed that this world, as a greater holon, has the same cyclic pattern?

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

(but contradictorily you believe decay, going backwards / devolving is a means of reaching God when it is objectively not).

I didn’t mean to imply this. Of course there is no going backwards. When I say that the past was better and when I use the word “involution”, I am only talking about within this cycle of time. There is also the matter of initiation and inwardly following the thread of the process that has lead to your manifestation (like the Buddhist “Twelve Links of Interdependent Origination”), but this is not about going back into the past as such. It is more about retrieving what has been lost. Don’t you believe that God must have lost something to become a puny little human? Maybe even, lost everything?

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

But they didn't see the growth, the irreversible defying of entropy that we have experienced after thousands of years. Of course those with only bricks would not believe in walls, and those with only walls would not believe in buildings. It is a simple fact that greater complexity happens consecutively, like it has and will continue to axiomatically.

We have already stated our positions on this. “Everything is perishing except His Face”, so to me there can be no defying of entropy. As a question, what do you believe will happen at the “ascension” or omega point that is depicted in the picture you sent? Is it unknowable to us present humans? Is it knowable to God?

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

There is nothing incorrect about "my" or "mine" or maturation or "personality" or "independence" or movement. Any refusal of this is fucking disgusting.

Wow, “fucking disgusting”! Of course all of those things have their place, but the point is that Lucifer celebrates them over all else. Just like people do today. The whole should be greater than its parts. It seems to me that the purpose of religions like Christianity was as a last opportunity for men to attain liberation before the end of this cycle of time. That is why they can seem very one-sidedly stuffy and puritanical, and why everything that has emerged out of them is so one-sidedly Luciferian. I know you will disagree with this.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Oeaohoo

[AtheisticNonduality]

9 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Yes you are right. At least, I despise the present world because I view it as corrupted and fallen. I have reached a point in life where more or less everything I do is simply to remind me of this fact, an asceticism of sorts. Naturally, this despising must not be allowed to contaminate the tranquility and blissfulness of Being, for this would be to buy into the illusion. In another time, I might agree with you that there is no reason to be detached from it. Given the present world situation, however, I believe that love and happiness can in almost all cases only be a delusion based on comfort and inertia or false promises of the future, like the happiness that Nietzsche ascribed to the “last man”:

This is an unhealthy state of mind if it stays for too long.

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A prophecy which could happily be appended to the others that I have mentioned. Nietzsche was a despiser of life at heart too. His life was clearly an ascetic one. I mean, come on, a 40-year old virgin! He could have found himself a nice Victorian lady if he had wanted to, but he was more occupied with the (anti-)metaphysical.

The prevailing theory of his death is that it was neurosyphilis contracted from prostitution, so it seems unlikely he was a virgin. He also suffered a number of ailments, physical and later on mental, that kept his material pursuits under control, so it's not really a discrepancy in his philosophy but rather something his philosophy may have overcompensated for.

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Yes, that is a good argument. A projection of the destruction of their own civilisation onto the world itself. Then again, you have spoken a lot about holons, and as I have pointed out this idea was known to the ancient world as “man as a microcosm” and “as above, so below”. Therefore, if you concede that every civilisation, as a holon, has an ascending and descending phase and therefore a cyclical pattern, doesn’t it logically proceed that this world, as a greater holon, has the same cyclic pattern?

"Man as a microcosm" or "as above, so below" is an occult statement referring to humans and the greater world which does not disprove that we are complexifying. Civilizations have an ascending and descending pattern, and so do humans (birth, growth, death). But generationally, society is getting more complex, and the parts (humans) will as well, in following the pattern of which they are a culmination.

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I didn’t mean to imply this. Of course there is no going backwards. When I say that the past was better and when I use the word “involution”, I am only talking about within this cycle of time. There is also the matter of initiation and inwardly following the thread of the process that has lead to your manifestation (like the Buddhist “Twelve Links of Interdependent Origination”), but this is not about going back into the past as such. It is more about retrieving what has been lost. Don’t you believe that God must have lost something to become a puny little human? Maybe even, lost everything?

Going backwards in structure is essentially the same as going backwards in time. I am perfectly fine with refreshingly bringing back to focus aspects of the past that may have been unjustly neglected, but not to the point of regression. As for the duality between God as God and God as humans you've set up, God incarnated as humans never was God as only God. God as only God cannot come into contact with humans except through impurifying itself, so God as humans all we ever have been and ever will be so long as we are humans. But even if we realize God, that is not God as just God, because that is like mahāsamādhi, a metempsychosis that obliterates humanity and therefore is not humanity. But even if we go beyond humanity, into the Omega Point, we get God as post-humanity rather than God as just God. God as just God must always be an abstraction to formed beings.

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 As a question, what do you believe will happen at the “ascension” or omega point that is depicted in the picture you sent? Is it unknowable to us present humans? Is it knowable to God?

It is hinted to present humans. People now cannot see it.

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Wow, “fucking disgusting”! Of course all of those things have their place, but the point is that Lucifer celebrates them over all else. Just like people do today. The whole should be greater than it’s parts. It seems to me that the purpose of religions like Christianity was as a last opportunity for men to attain liberation before the end of this cycle of time. That is why they can seem very one-sidedly stuffy and puritanical, and why everything that has emerged out of them is so one-sidedly Luciferian. I know you will disagree with this.

Christianity and anti-Christianity both serve.

[Oeaohoo]

@AtheisticNonduality It is only unhealthy to the body that exists in this fallen world. That doesn’t bother me. Ascetic practices have generally been unhealthy. Like I said, “life is a journey in the nighttime hours”.

Regarding Nietzsche, I know this but the point stands. His life was an ascetic one, and I agree with you that he overcompensated with his exaltation of “life” and “the instincts”. There is a good book on this called Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle by an early postmodern author if you are interested.

Yes, I was just showing how the idea of holons could be used as a proof of the cyclical view of time I have described. I know you will just keep saying that things are getting more complex so we had best leave it at that.

I find your conception of God a little peculiar but we have already discussed it quite a lot. It seems to be rather limited, for example:

19 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

It is hinted to present humans. People now cannot see it.

Can God see it?

19 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Christianity and anti-Christianity both serve.

What do you mean by this?

[AtheisticNonduality]

12 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

@AtheisticNonduality Can God see it?

God is omniscient. So he sees it. But as a human, he does not see it.