Einstein and the Cosmic Man

[seeds]

Seeds, you should really begin a thread called "The Holographic Universe." The universe as a hologram is a theory that is becoming increasingly accepted because there is a lot of truth in it. However, as this thread has indicated, we are psychologically closed to the third dimension of thought so are trapped in dualism incapable of opening to intuition leading to conscious evolution. So why not have a thread which would include your own ideas as well as current speculations as to the holographic universe.

That’s a good suggestion, Nick, and I may do that.

However, the reason for my introducing the holographic concept into this “cosmic man” conversation is not just to offer some unrelated theory on the workings of the universe, but more to demonstrate the similarity between the outer-dimension of the universe (i.e., the “MIND” of God), and that of the inner-dimension of our minds.

It’s almost too simple, Nick:

The universe, as described (implied) by many theistic (or even deistic) interpretations, consists of a central consciousness with a personal identity (an “I Am-ness”) that is capable of willfully grasping the mental fabric of its very own being and shaping it into anything it desires.

And the simple part is that we (within the context of our own minds), represent a precise replication of that very same situation.

Our minds consist of a central consciousness with a personal “I Am-ness” that is capable of willfully grasping the mental fabric of our own being and shaping it into anything that we desire.

How can this parallel not be obvious?

Now if you will just combine that obvious parallel with the “seed concept” that we discussed in an alternate thread, in that we are each imbued with the same potential as that of the fully-fruitioned Entity that we are the seeds of...

(a potential that will be fully revealed to us after our second and final birth into a higher context of reality – again, as implied in many theistic projections)

...then you will understand why I think that your vision of “cosmic man” falls a little short of what “COSMIC MAN” and “COSMIC WOMAN” truly are.

I mean, how much more “COSMIC” can the nature of our ultimate form and destiny be than to be the embryonic replications of the universe and its Creator? ...



(For a clearer view of the dialogue, click on the following link and expand the image - http://www.theultimateseeds.com/Images/ ... ge%207.jpg)

Why do we deny the third dimension of thought with such conviction even though it suggests levels of reality as the cause of our beliefs?

First off, if you haven’t already, then you need to describe what you mean by the “third dimension of thought,” for I’m guessing that a few readers may be a little confused by that idea.

And secondly, when it comes to the intense push-back against transcendent thinking (even for the sake of playful speculation), then I suggest that it is the overpowering influence of “cave consciousness” that is at the root of the problem.
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[seeds]

A popular misconception IMO is that the universe is here to serve us. Actually it is the opposite. We exist to serve universal purpose.

The only true purpose that the universe has can be seen in the efflorescence of an incalculable variety of lifeforms from the already living fabric from which it is formed – an efflorescence that culminates in the “seed-like” replication of itself via minds like ours.

Again, Nick, it is almost too simple.
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[Nick_A]

Seeds

...then you will understand why I think that your vision of “cosmic man” falls a little short of what “COSMIC MAN” and “COSMIC WOMAN” truly are.

I didn’t mean to suggest that Einstein’s description is completed human conscious evolution. Actually it is a beginning and in this way is related to the idea of Christian rebirth or what it means to be born from above. We are attracted to reality greater than ourselves either through emotions or through higher consciousness. Simone describes the needs of the heart which attracts us to receive help from above.

"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©

The third dimension of thought allows us to intellectually experience the vertical connection between levels of reality.

Imagine the extremes of yes and no as a horizontal line. They are reconciled by duality as either yes or no or just perpetual argument within the middle. Now imagine two lines moving in a vertical direction from the extremes rising in the direction of the center. They connect at this point producing a triangle. The apex of the triangle indicates the higher reality within which yes and no exist as a whole. Living in duality keeps us oblivious of the vertical direction connecting us with a higher reality. Here are two descriptions of the third dimension of thought.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/2 ... ve-of-god/

………………….Weil argues that this creates an incomplete and, in its incompleteness, illusory representation of reality — even when it bisects the planes of mathematical data and common sense, such science leaves out the unquantifiable layer of meaning:
“If the algebra of physicists gives the impression of profundity it is because it is entirely flat; the third dimension of thought is missing.”
That third dimension is that of meaning — one concerned with notions like “the human soul, freedom, consciousness, the reality of the external world.” (Three decades later, Hannah Arendt — another of the twentieth century’s most piercing and significant minds — would memorably contemplate the crucial difference between truth and meaning, the former being the material of science and the latter of philosophy.)

And from Parabola Magazine:

https://parabola.org/2017/07/30/the-hidden-third/

“The greatest responsibility of all: the transmission of the mystery.”
—Basarab Nicolescu

In response to this call, physicist and author Basarab Nicolescu’s recent fragmentary text offers a view of humanity’s current spiritual situation. In thirteen sections, items as brief as a few words are linked to delineate the cosmic obligation, at the same time respecting the silence of the sacred. Following suggestions of Maurice Blanchot, the fragments remind us that the whole is never given and that the beginning of understanding is always imminent. Fragmentation also mirrors a prime discovery that Nicolescu draws from his own area of scientific expertise, broken symmetry. Physicists now believe that a breakdown in laws of symmetry supplied the initial condition of the Big Bang. Thirdly, humans’ relation to God (or “Absolute Evidence” in Nicolescu’s account) and to the celestial order has ruptured. The holy reconciling force has withdrawn and the pathway once illuminated by it, is no longer visible. While we now pray for divine support, no reply is forthcoming.

The call, moreover, is blocked from our ears by deep habits of thought and language. Inherited from the ancient Greek world, their source lies in binary logic: either this or that but not both. Nicolescu’s rejection of binary-ism is strong: “The fiendish dialectics of binary thought have the redoubtable yet subtle force of being able to kill in the name of ideas.” The death consists in foreclosing the middle, the “third not given”: what is there before and remains there after the division into two. Yet that death preserves in hiding the excluded element, which allows a direct perception of multiple levels of reality, up to that of Absolute Evidence. Fear of confronting a many-dimensioned cosmos lies behind the embrace of the binary. We opt for ready knowledge and survival of the status quo rather than participation in a work of co-creation. Because we fail to see the ambiguity in “yes or no,” our spirit is blinded and put in shackles.

It is obvious that as a whole humanity is psychologically closed to the hidden third since meaning is supplied in the dualistic struggles within cave life.
Experiencing the hidden third is the beginning of the intellectual experience necessary for cave man to become cosmic man. An influential human being capable of awakening people to the hidden third or the objective value as the third dimension of thought will be in danger. Such a person is clearly not wanted by the world.

If the perfectly just (i.e., righteous) man were to come into the world…“He will be scourged, racked, bound. He will have his eyes burned out. And at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled.” Plato's Republic

We know that God is a trinity so a son of god which man can evolve towards is also a trinity only at a lesser level within creation. Where we exist as a plurality, evolved Man is an inner unity. We don’t know what this is anymore than a caterpillar know what it means to be a butterfly. The danger of a lot of new age theory is that the ego is assumed to be "I" This is really demonic.

If you want to know what I believe will be the result of human conscious evolution, St Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 15. But for me as of now, it is sufficient to be concerned with the third dimension of thought necessary to acquire a true cosmic perspective that connects above and below. The world doesn’t want it so those who have experienced it have the obligation to share it with those who are open to it regardless of the hostility it produces..

[Arising_uk]

You call it guff because you are limited to inductive logic. ...

Limited because I'd like at least some circumstantial evidence to back-up an assertion? If that is 'limited' then so be it as I understand that those who make such are claim are generally those that wish to impose their own guff upon others.

I call what you don't, and very carefully at that, talk about with respect to what you would introduce to our kids education guff because I'm pretty sure it'll be some kind of mystical Christianity drawn from your own indoctrination and as such I'd like to hear what you propose before I'll let my kids be taught it and pay taxes for it.

You are unaware of its limitation for opening to the third dimension of thought and the potential to acquire a cosmic perspective. ...

I'm all ears?

I cannot explain the value of what Einstein and Plato refer to. You either get it or deny it. Yet it is an essential part of human education. ...

If you can't explain it then it has no part in education. I also think it a disgrace that you bring Plato into such guff as he clearly thought what he believed could be taught and gave great detail about what he would teach.

Call it guff if you like but I can only appreciate it as the reactions of a closed mind.

That's because you're essentially a 'maxist'.

“It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.” From Philipp Frank's book "Einstein: His Life and Times"

Yes! A liberal arts education!! Where along with the sciences and the arts and the humanities, creativity and imagination are also allowed to reign but bugger all about teaching a mystical theistic metaphysic too.

"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows." ― Plato, Phaedrus

Not Again! This is about writing!! It's not about some mysterious recollection of things unknown but a response to the idea that by having writing one lose's one's ability to memorise things. And the reason why is that the Greeks and the Romans were largely illiterate and used memory extensively compared to how we do now, so he may have been right. As such I would be teaching memory systems in schools and not least because of the confidence it gives the students in their reasoning and thinking abilities.

[Dubious]

You seem to regard quantum theory as having the potential of extracting a god from consciousness. If this view is viable, then it’s equally possible we are surrounded by a universe that’s already been morphed to some other entity’s far greater extension of consciousness.

Good grief, Dubious, isn’t that exactly what I have been suggesting in my insistence that the universe is the mind of God – a “far greater extension of consciousness” that momentarily encompasses and “surrounds” us at this very moment?

I wasn’t thinking in terms of god in that context. Whenever the “mind of god” is mentioned by physicists or cosmologists they are speaking figuratively denoting the deep interior mysteries of creation. Your version is literal and that’s the difference.

My intention was to subrogate the faintly theological aspects of your argument toward a more metaphysical paradigm but no matter the juxtaposition, each are equally powerless and useless to denote a single truth. One rides on the rails of belief, the other on any tangent of speculation which “closes” the question. But even if your claim were accepted at face value humans don’t do what gods can do.

Methinks not so! Consciousness to whatever extreme cannot bend or warp reality to its own specifications beyond what is inherent in the universe from the very beginning. It may allow itself to be discovered by imaginative leaps but not infringed except perhaps in very minor ways.

Well then, methinks that if the reality in question (the universe) actually belongs to a particular consciousness in the same way that your own thoughts and dreams belong to you, then the bending and warping of that reality would be a breeze.

What you write is reminiscent of the Great Cosmic Lotus Dream of Brahma; an ancient and sublime idea figuratively but no longer rational as far the universe belonging to a particular consciousness is concerned.

Under the rubric of theology or metaphysics there is nothing which can’t be claimed since none of these free-floating systems requires or expects to receive confirmation requests; that would be a non-sequitur! Ideas not anchored to anything concrete float on self-endorsed preconditions that guide toward pre-resolved conclusions. Per your quote and its easy finale, speculations of this kind have indeed always been a breeze.

[Nick_A]

Arising_uk

I cannot explain the value of what Einstein and Plato refer to. You either get it or deny it. Yet it is an essential part of human education. ...

If you can't explain it then it has no part in education. I also think it a disgrace that you bring Plato into such guff as he clearly thought what he believed could be taught and gave great detail about what he would teach.

It isn’t that I cannot explain it but that you remain closed to it from emotional denial and an attack on Christianity

Yes! A liberal arts education!! Where along with the sciences and the arts and the humanities, creativity and imagination are also allowed to reign but bugger all about teaching a mystical theistic metaphysic too.

As a representative of secular education you are concerned with what to teach. Indoctrination is the goal of secular education. However, a human education includes creating the environment in which a student can learn as a human being as opposed to an atom of the great beast. Such an environment enables a student to experience conscious attention.

For example, secular education has no use for a student acquiring conscious attention. It gets in the way of indoctrination. Secular education insists on directed attention which is good for indoctrination but a hindrance to a human education. Jacob Needleman wrote in his book “Time and Soul”

It is necessary to realize that technology itself is not the cause of our problem of [not having enough] time. Its influence on our lives is a result, not a cause -- the result of an unseen accelerating process taking place in ourselves, in our inner being. Whether we point to the effect of communication technology (such as e-mail) with its tyranny of instant communication; or to the computerization, and therefore the mentalization of so many human activities that previously required at least some participation of our physical presence; or to any of the other innumerable transformations of human life that are being brought about by the new technologies, the essential element to recognize is how much of what we call "progress" is accompanied by and measured by the fact that human beings need less and less conscious attention to perform their activities and lead their lives.

The real power of the faculty of attention, unknown to modern science, is one of the indispensable and most central measures of humanness -- of the being of a man or a woman -- and has been so understood, in many forms and symbols, at the heart of all great spiritual teaching of the world. The effects of advancing technology, for all its material promise they offer the world (along with the dangers, of course) is but the most recent wave in a civilization that, without recognizing what it was doing, has placed the satisfaction of desire above the cultivation of being.

The deep meaning of many rules of conduct and more principles of the past -- so many of which have been abandoned without our understanding their real roots in human nature -- involved the cultivation and development of the uniquely human power of attention, its action in the body, heart and mind of man. To be present, truly present, is to have conscious attention. This capacity is the key to what it means to be human.

It is not, therefore, the rapidity of change as such that is the source of our problem of time. It is the metaphysical fact that the being of man is diminishing.

Secular education is totally oblivious of the value of conscious attention. It provides the human foundation from which the perspective of the cosmic man may be the result leading to the quality of consciousness capable of uniting levels of reality - "as above, so below". But secularism prefers indoctrinated cave man to support societal existence in Plato's cave. The process is called education.

[Belinda]

Dubious wrote:

Under the rubric of theology or metaphysics there is nothing which can’t be claimed since none of these free-floating systems requires or expects to receive confirmation requests; that would be a non-sequitur! Ideas not anchored to anything concrete float on self-endorsed preconditions that guide toward pre-resolved conclusions. Per your quote and its easy finale, speculations of this kind have indeed always been a breeze.

That is true. Do you think that perhaps some metaphysical system is better than another , according to which does the most good in present circumstances?

The socialist ethic of Jesus would then be arising to counter the blatant inequality of opportunity as defined by The Paradise Papers.

[seeds]

...then you will understand why I think that your vision of “cosmic man” falls a little short of what “COSMIC MAN” and “COSMIC WOMAN” truly are.

I didn’t mean to suggest that Einstein’s description is completed human conscious evolution. Actually it is a beginning and in this way is related to the idea of Christian rebirth or what it means to be born from above.

I wasn’t talking about Einstein.

I was referring to your idea that the most that an extremely limited number of humans could ever hope to achieve is the attainment of some sort of “demiurge” state of being that is forever tied to the inner-workings of the bubble of reality depicted below...



...while the vast majority of humans who have ever lived simply “fail to launch,” so to speak, like the billions of acorns that never become trees.

For some reason hidden in your justified enthusiasm of wanting to help lift humanity out of Plato’s cave, you cannot seem to recognize (as I have suggested elsewhere) that your theology forms the basis of one of the most exclusive religions I have ever heard of.

You need to wake up, Nick, and give careful consideration to the possibility that cave consciousness could still be influencing your thought processes.

The third dimension of thought allows us to intellectually experience the vertical connection between levels of reality.

Imagine the extremes of yes and no as a horizontal line. They are reconciled by duality as either yes or no or just perpetual argument within the middle. Now imagine two lines moving in a vertical direction from the extremes rising in the direction of the center. They connect at this point producing a triangle. The apex of the triangle indicates the higher reality within which yes and no exist as a whole. Living in duality keeps us oblivious of the vertical direction connecting us with a higher reality.

Please explain what you mean by “duality” in the context of your statement above. How are humans living in “duality”?

And in regards to your attempt to define “the third dimension of thought,” you describe the horizontal thinking associated with cave consciousness and then introduce the vertical direction of thinking associated with higher levels of reality - which then creates the image of a triangle.

In which case, the only thing you seem to be offering is some kind of symbolic “logo” for your metaphysics – a metaphysics that is filled to the brim with criticisms of cave consciousness, but empty of any tangible means of escaping the cave.

You need to provide some substantive and well fleshed-out answers to Arising_uk’s query of what needs to be taught to the children in order to set them on your extremely “narrow path” to becoming cosmic man.

For example, you stated the following to A_uk in a subsequent post:

As a representative of secular education you are concerned with what to teach. Indoctrination is the goal of secular education. However, a human education includes creating the environment in which a student can learn as a human being as opposed to an atom of the great beast.

With that in mind, please give a clear and concise description of what the above mentioned “environment” would consist of?

In other words, what is the literal nuts and bolts (physical) makeup of this ideal “environment,” and what study materials would you literally place in the hands of children in order to inspire third dimensional thinking?

Please be specific, Nick.

However, keep in mind that whatever you suggest, it cannot appear to be biased toward some kind of cult-like indoctrination into Nick_A’s favorite philosophers.
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[seeds]

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(Continued from prior post)

We know that God is a trinity...

No, we do not know that.

What we do know, however, is that the Council of Nicaea (a bunch of smelly old men who had a meeting in 325 AD) declared God to be a trinity in order to reconcile the strange implications of certain Biblical assertions.

...so a son of god which man can evolve towards is also a trinity only at a lesser level within creation.

How, exactly, can an evolved man be a trinity?

Please describe the triune aspects of such a being.
_______

[Nick_A]

Seeds

For some reason hidden in your justified enthusiasm of wanting to help lift humanity out of Plato’s cave, you cannot seem to recognize (as I have suggested elsewhere) that your theology forms the basis of one of the most exclusive religions I have ever heard of.

What is wrong with that? According to Buddhism, how many become a Buddha? Don’t the vast majority continue on the wheel of Samsara and reincarnate in forms rarely with the evolutionary potential of a human being? Such exclusivity may not be PC but what if it is true. Does it really matter if the secularists who worship the Great Beast object?

“The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.” ~ Meister Eckhart

Man is dual natured. If the God seed is within us and is destroyed by our outer shell through lack of nourishment, why does it seem so odd?

Please explain what you mean by “duality” in the context of your statement above. How are humans living in “duality”?

Every created act or action is a union of three forces of various but complimentary qualities: Yang (active) Yin (passive) and Qi (reconciling yin and yang. The hidden third is what allows enables life on earth. A person may will one thing, experience resistance and nothing is created. Normally this reconciling force manifests on the same level as yin and yang producing ever changing unities. Organic life continues the process of existence in this way. Qi reconciles extremes from a higher conscious level of quality which is what enables the experience of intuition. Without the awareness of the presence and potential for Qi, we live in duality only aware of the interplay between yes and no, or the male female principles.

In which case, the only thing you seem to be offering is some kind of symbolic “logo” for your metaphysics – a metaphysics that is filled to the brim with criticisms of cave consciousness, but empty of any tangible means of escaping the cave.

Diagnosing a problem isn’t a criticism. If the human condition has made it so that we live in imagination attached to shadows on the wall and completely oblivious to objective human meaning and purpose and the potential for human “being,” isn’t it worth the effort? Transcending the cave influence is called consciously awakening. If it were impossible than it would be cruel to bring it up. But the reality is that awakening is possible but not wanted. Imagination is too attractive. The first step consists of impartial efforts to “know thyself” or having the experience of ourselves. But how many even know what it means and that it is entirely different from introspection. Efforts to “Know Thyself” consist of having the conscious experience of oneself without judgment. Who wants that? Our dominant ego prefers to “Imagine Oneself.” How is the God seed supposed to grow if imagination denies the help of grace? A green plant cannot survive without sunlight so how can the God seed be expected to grow without the energy from the light of grace? When Jesus said “Let the dead bury their dead,” he was referring to the spiritually dead burying the physically dead.

You need to provide some substantive and well fleshed-out answers to Arising_uk’s query of what needs to be taught to the children in order to set them on your extremely “narrow path” to becoming cosmic man.

A human being and in this case a student consists of a lower animal part which normally lives our lives and a higher part with the potential to open to conscious awareness. For the healthy development of the lower parts, the human organism needs what Plato called a healthy “Metaxy” This provides our normal physical needs as well as the quality of ideas which awaken the intellect, and the quality of art which awakens us to emotional quality and the experience of wonder. Finally, a healthy body allows us to put the results of a healthy metaxy into practice

SOCRATES: I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher; for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. (Plato, Theaetetus 155c-d, tr. Jowett; "wonder" in Aristotle.)
But in which sense of the word 'wonder'? What is 'philosophic wondering'?
According to Plato, perplexity is the origin of philosophy; G.E. Moore agreed, as did Wittgenstein, but perhaps not Immanuel Kant ("Two things fill us with awe: the starry sky above and the moral law within"). In Plato's Apology the oracle of Apollo at Delphi gives Socrates special reason to wonder in philosophy.

A human being is analogous to a green plant. Its roots are fed by a healthy soil and its leaves are fed by sunlight. Man’s roots are nourished by a healthy socicty aware of its source and our higher parts are fed by grace if we allow it to enter.

The purpose of a human education would be to provide a healthy metaxy inspiring the human attraction to wholeness and teaching conscious attention as a means for opening to grace. In this way reason would become an expression of the balanced relationship between inductive and deductive logic. A teacher capable of leading this quality of education would be capable of what Plato describes.

There neither is nor ever will be a treatise of mine on the subject [of a certain teaching]. For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself.” Plato, Seventh Letter

None of this is possible anymore in secular schools. Dominant blind emotional denial prevents it. That is why I am in favor of private schools founded on sound knowledge of human “being” and how to allow the outer man not only serve society but care for the seed of the soul.

[Nick_A]

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(Continued from prior post)

We know that God is a trinity...

No, we do not know that.

What we do know, however, is that the Council of Nicaea (a bunch of smelly old men who had a meeting in 325 AD) declared God to be a trinity in order to reconcile the strange implications of certain Biblical assertions.

...so a son of god which man can evolve towards is also a trinity only at a lesser level within creation.

How, exactly, can an evolved man be a trinity?

Please describe the triune aspects of such a being.
_______

The triune universe is logical but remains closed to binary reason. I wrote of the three elemental forces in my last post. At their highest quality they are God. No-thing and every-thing exist in conscious potential along with the reconciling force which unites them all as ONE. Creation is the gradual devolution of these forces producing qualities of creation or things at lawful levels of reality..

God is an inner unity. A son of God is also an inner unity manifesting at a lower level of creation. Man is a plurality with the potential for inner unity manifesting at an even lower level.. With Man, the intellect, the body, and emotions revealing objective quality are not consciously connected and often in opposition.

Evolved Man as a trinity would have the expressions of the three essential forces consciously unified. We lack this quality of consciousness and inner unity so imagination takes the place of consciousness and we become victims of the human condition and remain attached to shadows.

[Belinda]

The Great Beast appears in full view:

The lengths to which companies will go to avoid paying substantial amounts of UK tax are laid bare in the Paradise Papers, which reveal in detail for the first time how some of the biggest property deals in recent years were structured.

The data includes hundreds of pages of tax advice prepared for several multimillion-pound deals involving the US private equity group Blackstone, including the £480m purchase of a business park in west London.

Leading accountancy firms can be seen recommending the use of offshore companies and a series of complex loans to minimise the tax bills on buying, letting and eventually selling commercial buildings for Blackstone’s investment funds.

None of this is illegal. In a statement, Blackstone said its investments were “wholly compliant with UK and international tax laws and regulations”. But the disclosures are likely to reignite the debate over the fairness of aggressive tax avoidance schemes.

latest on the PARADISE PAPERS Guardian today. The Great Beast is man become a machine with no connection to his humanity. Every dollar or pound not paid in tax is a dollar or pound that could have gone to pay for an ambulance or a hospital, or helped to house a homeless person, or enrich the education of some ordinary person.

[Nick_A]

The Great Beast appears in full view:

The lengths to which companies will go to avoid paying substantial amounts of UK tax are laid bare in the Paradise Papers, which reveal in detail for the first time how some of the biggest property deals in recent years were structured.

The data includes hundreds of pages of tax advice prepared for several multimillion-pound deals involving the US private equity group Blackstone, including the £480m purchase of a business park in west London.

Leading accountancy firms can be seen recommending the use of offshore companies and a series of complex loans to minimise the tax bills on buying, letting and eventually selling commercial buildings for Blackstone’s investment funds.

None of this is illegal. In a statement, Blackstone said its investments were “wholly compliant with UK and international tax laws and regulations”. But the disclosures are likely to reignite the debate over the fairness of aggressive tax avoidance schemes.

latest on the PARADISE PAPERS Guardian today. The Great Beast is man become a machine with no connection to his humanity. Every dollar or pound not paid in tax is a dollar or pound that could have gone to pay for an ambulance or a hospital, or helped to house a homeless person, or enrich the education of some ordinary person.

I agree that large secular institutions are examples of the Great Beast in action. We can complain about them but what if they cannot change and just keep popping up, does that make the idea of the cosmic man meaningless?

"The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact." Malcolm Muggeridge

But what if these institutions are not the cause but are actually the normal secular result of the human condition? Then it is better to appreciate the reality of what we are and admit it

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.~ Tolstoy

That is why only a few are capable of following the psychological path to the cosmic man. Secularists think of beneficial change in relation to societal adaptation or egoistic justification. The path to the cosmic man begins with the experience of what we are. This provides the will, need, and courage to awaken to a cosmic perspective and become more human.

Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Simone Weil countered with the idea that revolution is the opiate of the masses. The idea is that a revolution offers temporary change. Since we are as we are, everything is as it is. After a while the human condition will assure that the conditions causing revolution will repeat and the cycle will continue.

[Belinda]

Nick wrote:

I agree that large secular institutions are examples of the Great Beast in action. We can complain about them but what if they cannot change and just keep popping up, does that make the idea of the cosmic man meaningless?

"Large secular institutions" are not the Great Beast. The Great Beast is the spirit of man alienated from his human sympathy, i.e. his humanity and become a machine. The Great Beast appears in individuals too.

[Nick_A]

Nick wrote:

I agree that large secular institutions are examples of the Great Beast in action. We can complain about them but what if they cannot change and just keep popping up, does that make the idea of the cosmic man meaningless?

"Large secular institutions" are not the Great Beast. The Great Beast is the spirit of man alienated from his human sympathy, i.e. his humanity and become a machine. The Great Beast appears in individuals too.

A beast like a lion or tiger is a creature of the earth. Man as the Greet Beast is also a creature of the earth. An individual part of the beast or a creature of reaction. However an atom of the beast has the potential to be more than just a creature of mechanical REACTION but also capable of conscious ACTION. The potential for a quality of consciousness which connects Man to what Plato called the "Good" is what distinguishes man from beast