Meme: "God and the World" Introduction: The Perennial Philosophy
I am about to start a meme which i got from silvershe_wolf , called "God and the world. It contains 22 questions
1) Do you believe in God?
2) Define God.
3) What religion were you raised with?
4) Do you practice that religion?
5) Your most spiritual moment?
6) The last time you were in a house of worship...
7) Death is...
8) How do you picture the end of the world?
9) God has spoken to you...
10) If so, what did God tell you?
11) Do you feel that most wars started because of religious conflict?
12) Does life exist on other planets?
13) Have they made contact with us?
14) Do you believe that we are descendants of Adam and Eve.
15) Do you believe in evolution.
16) Do you believe in astrology?
17) Do you read your horoscope?
18) If yes, why?
19) Have you ever been in psychotherapy?
20) If yes, why?
21) Do you believe in reincarnation?
22) If reincarnation exists, what would you like to come back as?
Some of these questions i take seriously, others sound like they might be fun. Some i don't yet know how i would answer
and i am interested to see what my answer might be.
But first....
Before starting the meme, i want to review one of the four or five traditions/beliefs/assumption sets that form the basis for my efforts to seek a spiritual path. It is called the Perennial Philosophy. mythosandlogos.com/perennial.html
The perennial philosophy, according to Aldous Huxley, has four propositions.
1. The phenomenal world of matter and individual consciousness is only a partial reality and is the manifestation of a Divine Ground in which all partial realities have their being.
2. It is of the nature of people that not only can they have knowledge of this divine ground, by inference, but also they can realize it by direct intuition, superior to discursive reason, in which the knower is in some way united with the Known.
3. The nature of humans is not a single but a dual one. They each have not one but two selves, the phenomenal ego, of which we are chiefly conscious and which we tend to regard as our true self, and a non-phenomenal, eternal self, an inner person, a spirit, the spark of divinity within us, which is our true self. It is possible, if we so desire, and are prepared to make the necessary effort, to identify ourselves with our true self and so with the divine ground which is of the same or like nature.
4. It is the chief end of our earthly existence to discover and identify with our true self.....
Haphold adds two additional propositions which i feel are unnecessary; the first having to do with the necessity for avatars (special inczrnations of the divine) i reject, and the second, having to do with our basic spiritual nature, is implied in the four propositions above.
There is an interesting summary of Huxley's treatment in his introduction to a translation of the Baghavad Gita parvati.tripod.com/perennial.html.
I believe that this perennial philosophy exists, and that it is the basis, not only of all the so-called great world religions, but of all human life everywhere and through all time up until the beginning of the industrial revolution. A secular mentality has succeeded in alienating the western world and the former communist world from that philosophy. Unfortunately, the fundamentalists who are the major foes of this secular world have no idea of the great, unitive philosophy which underlies their own traditions.
What do i think of this philosophy? Well mostly i accept it as my own. I get surly once in a while and start to argue against one or more of its propositions. But most of the time i accept it completely. I know that this partly a function of age. Even in traditional societies most people are not expected to begin this spiritual quest until they have fulfilled their obligations to family and society. A woman might educate herself, raise her children, have a career, and only then feel free to join a religious order. Younger, single women have had to go to extreme lengths to live a spiritual life, and married women even more so. But i like to think that it was ignorance, not necessity, which kept me from following a spiritual path earlier.
It is also my belief that religions, even though they are the vehicles which had carried spirituality through the centuries, are as much an enemy of the spirit as a friend. Religion is a social institution which socialized the religious impulse in the service of law and orderliness, But the spirit is free and has its own definition of "freedom" which refuses to conform to any social, economic, or political conceptions
1) Do you believe in God?
2) Define God.
3) What religion were you raised with?
4) Do you practice that religion?
5) Your most spiritual moment?
6) The last time you were in a house of worship...
7) Death is...
8) How do you picture the end of the world?
9) God has spoken to you...
10) If so, what did God tell you?
11) Do you feel that most wars started because of religious conflict?
12) Does life exist on other planets?
13) Have they made contact with us?
14) Do you believe that we are descendants of Adam and Eve.
15) Do you believe in evolution.
16) Do you believe in astrology?
17) Do you read your horoscope?
18) If yes, why?
19) Have you ever been in psychotherapy?
20) If yes, why?
21) Do you believe in reincarnation?
22) If reincarnation exists, what would you like to come back as?
Some of these questions i take seriously, others sound like they might be fun. Some i don't yet know how i would answer
and i am interested to see what my answer might be.
But first....
Before starting the meme, i want to review one of the four or five traditions/beliefs/assumption sets that form the basis for my efforts to seek a spiritual path. It is called the Perennial Philosophy. mythosandlogos.com/perennial.html
The perennial philosophy, according to Aldous Huxley, has four propositions.
1. The phenomenal world of matter and individual consciousness is only a partial reality and is the manifestation of a Divine Ground in which all partial realities have their being.
2. It is of the nature of people that not only can they have knowledge of this divine ground, by inference, but also they can realize it by direct intuition, superior to discursive reason, in which the knower is in some way united with the Known.
3. The nature of humans is not a single but a dual one. They each have not one but two selves, the phenomenal ego, of which we are chiefly conscious and which we tend to regard as our true self, and a non-phenomenal, eternal self, an inner person, a spirit, the spark of divinity within us, which is our true self. It is possible, if we so desire, and are prepared to make the necessary effort, to identify ourselves with our true self and so with the divine ground which is of the same or like nature.
4. It is the chief end of our earthly existence to discover and identify with our true self.....
Haphold adds two additional propositions which i feel are unnecessary; the first having to do with the necessity for avatars (special inczrnations of the divine) i reject, and the second, having to do with our basic spiritual nature, is implied in the four propositions above.
There is an interesting summary of Huxley's treatment in his introduction to a translation of the Baghavad Gita parvati.tripod.com/perennial.html.
I believe that this perennial philosophy exists, and that it is the basis, not only of all the so-called great world religions, but of all human life everywhere and through all time up until the beginning of the industrial revolution. A secular mentality has succeeded in alienating the western world and the former communist world from that philosophy. Unfortunately, the fundamentalists who are the major foes of this secular world have no idea of the great, unitive philosophy which underlies their own traditions.
What do i think of this philosophy? Well mostly i accept it as my own. I get surly once in a while and start to argue against one or more of its propositions. But most of the time i accept it completely. I know that this partly a function of age. Even in traditional societies most people are not expected to begin this spiritual quest until they have fulfilled their obligations to family and society. A woman might educate herself, raise her children, have a career, and only then feel free to join a religious order. Younger, single women have had to go to extreme lengths to live a spiritual life, and married women even more so. But i like to think that it was ignorance, not necessity, which kept me from following a spiritual path earlier.
It is also my belief that religions, even though they are the vehicles which had carried spirituality through the centuries, are as much an enemy of the spirit as a friend. Religion is a social institution which socialized the religious impulse in the service of law and orderliness, But the spirit is free and has its own definition of "freedom" which refuses to conform to any social, economic, or political conceptions