seeds wrote:
You like the term “cave dwellers,” whereas I prefer the term “womb dwellers.” Clearly, what they both have in common is the idea that a higher context of reality exists “above and outside” of either situation.
Nick_A wrote:
This is our first essential difference. Where the womb nourishes the fetus, Plato’s cave serves to starve the higher parts of our organism of nourishment from higher influences.
Yes, the womb nourishes the fetus; however, its primary purpose is to provide the means for the manifestation of the fetus into existence.
Furthermore, implicit in the fetus metaphor is the promise of an impending birth into a higher level of consciousness that is above and outside of the confines of the womb (above and outside of the “cave”).
So instead of thinking that Plato’s cave represents a situation that is intended to “starve” the higher parts of our organism of nourishment from higher influences, I suggest that it is merely a temporary “withholding” of the truth of our ultimate form and destiny.
It is simply a momentary “hiding” of the higher context of reality that can only be experienced via a second and final birth - out of the “placental-like” encasement of these physical bodies - and into the light of “true reality.”
As Jesus proclaimed:
“Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7 – KJV)
seeds wrote:
Yes, Panentheism is indeed the most logical framework for uniting science and the essence of religion.
However (as I'm sure you know), “religion,” as handed down to us from ancient minds, will never work in parity with modern science.
Nick_A wrote:
I believe that the essence of religion is a perennial tradition. This means it always was.
Yes, and from a different perspective - that of Hermetic philosophy, there appears to be agreement with that assessment.
According to Wiki in regards to Hermeticism:
“The tradition claims descent from a
prisca theologia, a doctrine that affirms the existence of a single, true theology that is present in all religions and that was given by God to man in antiquity.”
Nick_A wrote:
Secular evolution has only served to devolve the essence of religion over time.
Secular evolution, which is underpinned by scientific discovery, has merely called into question (and rightly so) the antiquated interpretations of the perennial tradition.
We are talking about unique and opposing visions of the “essence of religion” (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) that evolved independent of each other in the past (generally due to geo isolation), but now find their divergent ideologies butting heads in our modern state of globalization.
Couple that with the fact that most of those “interpretations” are mythological nonsense invented by minds that thought if you travelled too far in one direction you would fall off the edge of the earth, then you can understand the need for the aforementioned
“new paradigm” of spiritual understanding.
Nick_A wrote:
I also believe that science will eventually verify the perennial tradition.
(IMO) the only thing that science (methodological naturalism/materialism) will ever be able to do is come to a greater understanding and control of the fabric of reality.
It will take us to the point of revealing (to the astute metaphysician) that the fundamental essence of reality is a “mind-like” substance that is capable of being formed into absolutely anything “imaginable” (hence the Berkeleyan aspect of my personal philosophy in which the universe (God's spirit "body") is the literal mind of God).
In other words, what I am suggesting is that there will never be a scientific verification of the perennial tradition (i.e., the “truth” of the transcendent reality) in some overt and irrefutable, materialistically provable process or discovery.
Not because it is utterly impossible, but because it is
forbidden, for it could totally disrupt the “illusion” of objective reality – an illusion of mentally constructed phenomena (suns, planets, bodies, brains, etc.) that have been specifically designed to awaken God’s literal “offspring/progeny" (us) into life.
Remember, I stated earlier that we must function at a limited (attenuated) level of consciousness while on earth in order to make standing on a rotating ball, flying through the ether of God’s mind seem “natural and logical” to us.
In which case, it is this purposely attenuated level of consciousness that lies at the very heart of Plato’s allegory.
(This post is getting pretty long, so I’ll address the rest of your comments in a subsequent post.)