You and I C are alike in your tendency to classify. But what of those whose ideas cannot be classified. They are either nonsense or have become aware of a sense of scale and relativity. My ideas are closeer to those expressed by Sophia Perennis:Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:02 pmA small but significant correction. Nick (I gather) comes out of the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. I am uncertain the degree to which he participates in the rites of that church but he is not Catholic. EO is significantly different from the Roman Catholic.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 1:32 pmNo, Nick is a Catholic Mystic, of a somewhat Gnostic bent. And the definition of "fundamentalist" is not " one who does not justify his criterion for belief." It's closer to, "one who believes in the literal truth of a particular religious text." That is neither Gnostic nor Catholic.
Just have to set the record straight, there.
http://www.studiesincomparativereligion ... chuon.aspx
And from Huxley:“PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS” is generally understood as referring to that metaphysical truth which has no beginning, and which remains the same in all expressions of wisdom. Perhaps it would here be better or more prudent to speak of a “Sophia perennis”, since it is not a question of artificial mental constructions, as is all too often the case in philosophy; or again, the primordial wisdom that always remains true to itself could be called “Religio perennis”, given that by its nature it in a sense involves worship and spiritual realization. Fundamentally we have nothing against the word “philosophy”, for the ancients understood by it all manner of wisdom; in fact, however, rationalism, which has absolutely nothing to do with true spiritual contemplation, has given the word “philosophy” a limitative colouring, so that with this word one can never know what is really being referred to. If Kant is a “philosopher”, then Plotinus is not, and vice versa.
With Sophia perennis, it is a question of the following: there are truths innate in the human Spirit, which nevertheless in a sense lie buried in the depth of the “Heart” — in the pure Intellect — and are accessible only to the one who is spiritually contemplative; and these are the fundamental metaphysical truths. Access to them is possessed by the “gnostic”, “pneumatic” or “theosopher” — in the original and not the sectarian meaning of these terms — and access to them was also possessed by the “philosophers” in the real and still innocent sense of the word: for example, Pythagoras, Plato and to a large extent also Aristotle.
If there were no Intellect, no contemplative and directly knowing Spirit, no “Heart-Knowledge”, there would also be no reason capable of logic; animals have no reason, for they are incapable of knowledge of God; in other words, man possesses reason or understanding — and also language — only because he is fundamentally capable of suprarational vision, and thus of certain metaphysical truth.
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The fundamental content of the Truth is the Unconditioned, the Metaphysical Absolute; the Ultimate One, which is also the Absolutely Good, the Platonic Agathon. But it lies in the nature of the Absolute to be Infinity and All-Possibility, and in this sense St. Augustine said that it is in the nature of the Good to communicate itself; if there is a sun, then there is also radiation; and therein lies the necessity of the cosmos which proclaims God.
However, to say radiation is also to say separation from the source of light. Since God is the absolute and infinite Good, whatever is not God — that is to say, the world as such—cannot be absolutely good: the non-divinity of the cosmos brings with it, in its limitations, the phenomenon of evil or wickedness which, because it is a contrast, emphasizes all the more the nature of the Good. “The more he blasphemes”, as Eckhart said, “the more he praises God”.........................................
The intellect of man can be expressed on basically three levels. The first and lowest is the exoteric plan or what Plato describes as the cave. It governs the outer man. Sometimes a person feels something more than external conditioning. Their search for meaning leads them to feel their inner man. It is the inner man that is called to experience the highest level or the transcendent level of reality: the ONE. It begins the struggle between the outer and inner man: conditioning and consciousness.“The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to “Die to self” and so make room, as it were, for God.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy
All the great tradition initiating with a conscious source enter the world at the transcendent level but gradually devolve over time into the exoteric level producing the world of opinions. At the transcendent level they are the same but gradually conditioned to accommodate the mind of the world. The western mind and its concern for science is different than the Eastern mind and its concern for behavior. The modern world consisting of the battle of opinions expressing the exoteric level of conflict is the natural result of the exoteric world.
G.I. Gurdjieff has been a great influence. Without being exposed to the great laws and the relationship between Gurdjieff's cosmology and Ouspensky's dimensions I would not have my respect for understanding rather than parroting. Once a person has become disappointed then these ideas can become meaningful so no sense in debating partial truths in a secular forum when the purpose of these ideas is to awaken to wholeness.
The of course there is Simone Weil. What can a man say about a woman with the mind of a scientist who has grown to experience the heart and verticality of a mystic and puts them together to live by her philosophy in her need to experience truth. For the first time I had experienced what the heart of a woman is capable of being free of vanity. A rare gem.
The Christianity of one living on the exoteric level is completely different then the one having experienced the transcendent level of reality. Yet they have the same name. Having experienced that I am in Plato's cave or at the exoteric level, I am beginning to engage the struggle between my outer an inner man in order to be worthy of the name "human".