Post by david on Jul 8, 2020 17:52:39 GMT
Dear friends,
In order to make spiritual development, we must be spiritual beings. The spirit must be in us. That means our inner nature responds to spiritual influences. That enables us to understand them. If we are created by God, then God must be reflected into our inner nature.
All our qualities as spiritual. Matter creates nothing. That means the intellect must be spiritual, because there's nothing else it can be.
It is argued that it is spiritually harmful because it creates subject and object, but that is not how the intellect works. You can't explain something by just dividing it into subject and object. You have to find inter-relating principles. That is what the intellect does.
When you think, it has an inter-relating effect on your inner nature. That is why meditation has always been part of religious practice. Its function in spiritual development is to reflect spiritual principles into consciousness. Our inner nature is affected by it. A cross, for instance, is an aspect of the Divine Mind. When we meditate on its meaning, that aspect is reflected into our nature and changes us.
If the intellect came from matter, then we would find pure intellect in stones and bricks. We would be able to communicate with them and learn philosophy from them.
The belief that God is beyond conceptualisation is caused by the fact that they could not explain how creation can come from a male principle. The Madrian explanation is that all things come from within the Mother in the way a woman gives birth to a child. There is no patriarchal equivalent of this explanation.
This leads to a contradiction in Hermetic writings. They maintained that spiritual development comes from being rational, but still believed that no concept could be attached to the Father. They could not integrate that concept into their philosophy.
There is also the problem that Christianity does not stand up well to an enquiring mind. It's based on worshipping God in an incarnate form, which draws us from the spirit to matter. There's also the doctrine that we have only one life in which to achieve absolute perfection, and the passage of the cursing of the fig tree (Mathew Ch 21, V 18-19, and Mark Ch 11, V13-14 & 20-21) will have caused some doubts. In The Imitation Of Christ, Thomas A Kempis writes "Beware of curious and unprofitable enquiry into the Mysteries of the most holy Sacrament, if you would avoid being plunged into the depths of doubt;" "do not fight your thoughts, or attempt to answer any doubts that the Devil suggests" "God...conceals his grace from the curious and conceited." It is this restriction on the enquiring mind that caused rationalism to become hostile to religion and materialistic. This did not happen in the ancient world. Plato was a rationalist and a mystic.
People cannot conceive how the intellect can understand creation, because they can only imagine the intellect existing as it does in its material manifestation in the minds of ordinary people. They imagine that a spiritually perfect person would still only have the intelligence of an ordinary person. This is not being consistent. Ordinary people are not enlightened, but we don't conclude from this that enlightenment is impossible. We accept that our consciousness can development to the point of perfection, but don't accept that our intellect can develope with it to attain perfect intellect capable of understanding everything. This is necessary if we are to achieve perfect consciousness. When we achieve it, we must understand everything.
May She be with you,
David.
In order to make spiritual development, we must be spiritual beings. The spirit must be in us. That means our inner nature responds to spiritual influences. That enables us to understand them. If we are created by God, then God must be reflected into our inner nature.
All our qualities as spiritual. Matter creates nothing. That means the intellect must be spiritual, because there's nothing else it can be.
It is argued that it is spiritually harmful because it creates subject and object, but that is not how the intellect works. You can't explain something by just dividing it into subject and object. You have to find inter-relating principles. That is what the intellect does.
When you think, it has an inter-relating effect on your inner nature. That is why meditation has always been part of religious practice. Its function in spiritual development is to reflect spiritual principles into consciousness. Our inner nature is affected by it. A cross, for instance, is an aspect of the Divine Mind. When we meditate on its meaning, that aspect is reflected into our nature and changes us.
If the intellect came from matter, then we would find pure intellect in stones and bricks. We would be able to communicate with them and learn philosophy from them.
The belief that God is beyond conceptualisation is caused by the fact that they could not explain how creation can come from a male principle. The Madrian explanation is that all things come from within the Mother in the way a woman gives birth to a child. There is no patriarchal equivalent of this explanation.
This leads to a contradiction in Hermetic writings. They maintained that spiritual development comes from being rational, but still believed that no concept could be attached to the Father. They could not integrate that concept into their philosophy.
There is also the problem that Christianity does not stand up well to an enquiring mind. It's based on worshipping God in an incarnate form, which draws us from the spirit to matter. There's also the doctrine that we have only one life in which to achieve absolute perfection, and the passage of the cursing of the fig tree (Mathew Ch 21, V 18-19, and Mark Ch 11, V13-14 & 20-21) will have caused some doubts. In The Imitation Of Christ, Thomas A Kempis writes "Beware of curious and unprofitable enquiry into the Mysteries of the most holy Sacrament, if you would avoid being plunged into the depths of doubt;" "do not fight your thoughts, or attempt to answer any doubts that the Devil suggests" "God...conceals his grace from the curious and conceited." It is this restriction on the enquiring mind that caused rationalism to become hostile to religion and materialistic. This did not happen in the ancient world. Plato was a rationalist and a mystic.
People cannot conceive how the intellect can understand creation, because they can only imagine the intellect existing as it does in its material manifestation in the minds of ordinary people. They imagine that a spiritually perfect person would still only have the intelligence of an ordinary person. This is not being consistent. Ordinary people are not enlightened, but we don't conclude from this that enlightenment is impossible. We accept that our consciousness can development to the point of perfection, but don't accept that our intellect can develope with it to attain perfect intellect capable of understanding everything. This is necessary if we are to achieve perfect consciousness. When we achieve it, we must understand everything.
May She be with you,
David.