Tuesday, June 18, 2013

A Borne Again Man of Dustinction

Don't know if I have time to spell- or even basic sensecheck, so you're on your own...

To say there is a human nature is to say there is an archetype of our humanness, a "cosmic man." It has to be cosmic, because everything about the cosmos has to be tweaked just so in order for us to existentiate the archetype.

For example, imagine if I have the idea for a palm tree. If I live, say, in a subarctic zone, no matter how perfect the idea, the palm tree cannot take root there outside the archetype.

Both Kabbalah and Vedanta posit a Cosmic Man from whom we are descended: Adam Kadmon and Purusha, respectively.

A google search for the two yields some arresting images, although I didn't spend any time looking for the best ones. For example, here is Adam Kadmon and his holo-hoops, the one below descending from the one above:

And here (see below ↓) is Adam Kadmon bifurcating into Adam-and-Eve, the archetypal terrestrial parents (recall that in Judaism, the proper unit of mankind is not man or woman, but man-and-woman, 1 and 0):

Down here (↓) is another shot of the cosmic man, as if emerging out of O (or vice versa):

Here's a shot of Purusha, kicking back and enjoying his cosmic slack. Note that the world seems to be a product of his creative imagination:

Here's another that captures the relationship with O -- a humandala, as it were:

Ultimately, the positing of the Cosmic Man helps us to unvert the cosmos, and to understand the nature -- which is to say, end -- of evolution. The Cosmic Man is both alpha and omega, and thus, both the ground and destiny of evolution. In between is this little nightmirror we call "history." In the night it is hard to see the image, which is precisely what Finnegans Wake is allabout. Yes, Obama is an uncommonly lightless loafer, but it's always the Dark Pages down here. You can look it up. With a little light.

I want to shift gears momentarily, because for the past two weeks I have been flooded with Baader-Meinhof phenomena revolving around the Cosmic Man -- as if he's dropping hints everywhere. Look out below!

For example, in Bouyer's The Christian Mystery, he discusses the idea of "Christ as the Second Adam, or rather the last Adam, that is, the heavenly man whose radiant image, as First Corinthians tells us, we have to put on," because "we have borne for too long the disfigured image of the first man."

Also, the neophyte Raccoon cultist or even advanced stalker will be reminded of the obscure references on pages 254/f. 17; 261/47; and 264/58. I know. They're funny because they're true!

Now, this is intriguing. "Son of man" appears in the the Hebrew Bible over 100 times, so it is a very common construction, and one that would have been familiar to Jesus (in other words, he obviously didn't coin the term, except of course he did). But what does it mean, exactly?

Here is Kabbalist interpretation, which may or may not be kosher: "the essential meaning of Ezekiel's vision, then, is that the son of man, the human son of God, is he who has achieved the mystical capacity to see the divine nature of his own higher self."

This comports with what Bouyer says about the matter. He adds that in his letters, Paul rewords the concept in order to get away from Jewish esoterism, and make it "more accessible to non-Jews." Thus, the phrase "Son of Man... disappears from a preaching to the Gentiles, in spite of its central place in the preaching of Jesus. All its content" is "now transfered into the figure of the heavenly Man, which Paul introduces when he contrasts with the first man another man, who is not just a second Adam, but the final Man."

This gets very dense, and I'm running out of time. But Bouyer quotes Paul who wrote of a "psychical body" and a spiritual one: "the first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam a life-giving Spirit." And "the first man was from the earth, a man of dust, the second man is from heaven." Therefore, "Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven."

But there's an additional twist here, because it was a common belief in antiquity that "the primordial man was a quasi-divine being and that man as he is now only a degenerate form of this being, fallen into matter and multiplicity..."

However, this is not the Jewish understanding; rather, it is unalloyed Gnosticism, for if you will note the image above of Adam and Eve, they do not represent an a priori fall from Adam Kadmon. In short, the fall occurs to Adam & Eve, not in them.

And again, "humanity" is both source and goal for human beings. We must "become reintegrated into the second Adam" in such a way "that it becomes more than a second beginning -- for Humanity is its final goal" (Bouyer). The Body of Christ? Yes, you could say that, because that would seem to represent the real instantiation, or existentiation, of Adam Kadmon/Purusha herebelow: body of Christ, mind of Slack.

5 comments:

julie said...

It all starts to look like a Klein bottle after a bit.

Re. Baader-Meinhoff phenomena, I had a funny one last week. It occurred to me while driving one of south Florida's freeways that it might be nice to have a street-legal bumper car out here. Then a couple of days later, one showed up on Vanderleun's sidebar. If it had room for car seats, I'd consider buying it...

Jason T. said...

Bob said: "And again, "humanity" is both source and goal for human beings. We must "become reintegrated into the second Adam" in such a way "that it becomes more than a second beginning -- for Humanity is its final goal" (Bouyer). The Body of Christ? Yes, you could say that, because that would seem to represent the real instantiation, or existentiation, of Adam Kadmon/Purusha herebelow: body of Christ, mind of Slack."

This reminds me a great deal of some of the keys of the Tarot, particularly the more esoteric interpretations offered by Paul Foster Case. Specifically I am reminded of keys 19, 20, and 21, or The Sun, The Judgment, and The World (or Universe).

Through consciousness of and opening to The Sun, the duality of conscious/unconscious, masculine/feminine, rationality/intuition begin their assimilation and fluidic alternation by way of intellectual analogy (as Above, so Below). As we move into Key 20 (The Judgment) what was awakened in The Sun is expanded and integrated in the Imaginal Above, simultaneous abode and body of the Purusha, and little Adam and Eve (conscious and unconscious) are brought into their proper fold as realized Imaginal expressions descending from Heaven. Finally, all is subsumed and illuminated in the fullest realization of the Cosmic Man (The World or Universe), as expressed in the relationship between Adam Kadmon, the Crown of Kether (fist emanation on the Tree of Life), and the En-Sof, the Boundless Mystery of God's Infinity.

If only the Leftists, with their cruel hearts and parasite-ridden minds, could fathom but one-tenth of what they actually ARE. Sadness...

ted said...

I've recently came across the idea of trans-dualism. After opening to the Light, one can make clearer distinctions in Purusha's emanation.

ted said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mushroom said...

I think Ezekiel is the only writing prophet that speaks of himself as the son of man -- at least his references occur at a higher frequency than anyone else. And it makes sense, because he is prophesying in the exile after Solomon's temple is destroyed. There is going to have to be a new and mystical understanding to carry God's people through seventy years of separation from what they thought was the center of worship.

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