Circumnavelgazing Heaven and Hell

If "the kingdom of heaven is within," then it is our task to exteriorize and render it manifest. Perhaps we might say that the kingdom of heaven is THE within -- or withinness as such, bearing in mind that there can be no within without a without; or, to say within is to immediately say without, even if the within takes priority.

But the same within may manifest in different withouts. As alluded to yesterday, there is no reason why the soul cannot persist "in some other embodiment appropriate to the environment in which it is placed." Thus, "The spiritual body is not... some sort of ghostly double," but rather, "the whole Spirit-enlivened man in that other environment we call 'heaven.'"

We might say that heaven is the sensorium of God. A sensorium is essentially the totality of one's interior, everything one may perceive, know, feel, and imagine. When one performs a mental status exam on a patient, one occasionally sees what is called a clouded sensorium, which is an essential feature of delirium.

But in reality, our sensorium is always more or less clouded, isn't it? Perhaps not in the upper atmasphere, but herebelow there are winds of passion, fogs of war, icy glances, glacial progress, and many, many shitstorms.

The air is boiling -- sun on my back / Inside I'm frozen girl -- I'm about to crack / They may fix the weather in the world / Just like Mr. Gore said / But tell me what's to be done / Lord, 'bout the weather in my head --Donald Fagen, Weather in My Head

So, we are "enabled by grace" to actualize the divine intention, which is a willing on earth what must be accomplished "instantaneously" in heaven. In so doing, "we become instrumental causes in the matter of our own salvation, which is none other than the extension of his Kingdom," or a "'making outer' of what is 'inner.'"

I suppose it could work both ways. We can have the experience of heaven without -- say, in the beauty of the world -- and assimilate it to the within. Even so, to witness the beauty of the world in all its metaphysical transparency is already to be within the divine presence. Davie writes that the inward -- or vertical -- is not "somewhere else," but rather,

"a space that is cointensive with the outward spread" of the world of things. Thus, "corresponding to every point on the horizontal plane" is "a vital INNER axis."

These are those little wellsprings dotting the landscape, which call out and invite us to the other side. I was just reading yesterday in Voegelin's Israel and Revelation that these were among mankind's first spiritual discoveries. It is probably accurate to say that no culture has been unaware of them, and that we all -- even the most mushheaded atheist -- orient ourselves around them.

These two-way terrestrial power points have a funny Greek name that is just too obvious to merit a gag (for even I have standards): omphalos.

The omphalos is "the navel of the world, at which transcendent forces of being flow into social order." Everybody's got one! It is the "gate of the gods," where "the stream of divine being... flows from the divine source," the "civilizational center from which the substance of order radiates, with diminishing strength, toward the periphery." You might say that this navel is simultaneously an "innie" and an "outie" (okay, so I have no standards).

Really, it is the source of civilizational mojo, and to lose contact with it is to begin the slide into exhaustion, decadence, and auto-destruction. Although a *mythological* construct, like all true myths it illuminates a great deal about our contemporary crisis, because the left attempts to systematically bury, deny, denigrate, and destroy all our civilizational omphaloi and replace them with their own sacred cowpies, e.g., the right to marry one's double, or the right to a dead baby, or the right to beat a neighborhood watchman to death.

To be "in love" is, in a sense, to "share the same interior space" (Davie). Thus, perhaps heaven is "a community of love," characterized by "the mutual internality of those who love one another in God, and God in one another." Intersubjective, only transposed to the highest key.

But if there is heaven, there is hell. Which is what? Schuon has a plausible answer:

"Hell crystalizes a vertical fall.... Those who enter hell are not those who have sinned accidentally, 'on the surface,' so to speak, but those who have sinned substantially or with their 'kernel,'" e.g., "the proud, the wicked, the hypocrites -- hence all those who are the opposite of the saints and the sanctified."

The possibility of a vertical fall implies that the omphaloi run in two directions; or, that there are holes in the horizontal landscape that lead both up and down. I've been in both, so I'm pretty sure about this.

Come to think of it, there is no question that people can mistake the one for the other. Each features a kind of transcendence, except that the downward path engenders the kind of reverse transcendence we see in ideology.

To take the most obvious examples, Marxism and National Socialism drew people into a kind of transcendence, resulting in the hypnotized mob as opposed to the community of love alluded to above. Call it hell on earth.

In this context, an Al Sharpton is indeed "reverend," but in an inverted manner. And his bloodthirsty community of hate is darkness visible.

Likewise, Obama is a transcendent genius.

Resurrection, Mind Parasites, and Transporter Errors

So, if you're still with us, you will understand how and why the Resurrection "is an event not wholly in history."

How is that? Well, "on the one hand, it is the limit of history, the frontier and boundary, the end and the beginning in one." But at the same time -- or timeless -- it must be "that very concurrence of End and Beginning 'entering the horizon of man,' appearing as the limit from which that new corporeality comes into being" (Davie).

Get it? In an analogy we have deployed before, think of a three-dimensional object passing through a two-dimensional plane. As it does so, what is a single entity in "higher" (i.e., 3-D) space will be transformed into a temporal event.

If the object is, say, a sphere, the two-dimensional event will begin with a point that then "grows" into an expanding circle. At its limit it will then begin shrinking back toward the point, before disappearing.

But the 3-D object hasn't actually gone anywhere or become anything other than what it always is: a sphere.

Likewise, God is by definition God. And if we stipulate that he is an object of "infinite dimensions," so to speak, then his passage through history is going to generate some *interesting* phenomena.

Among others (recalling the analogy above), some of his "spatial" dimensions will manifest herebelow in a temporal manner, e.g., "beginning" and "end." But as Jesus says, "I am Alpha and Omega." Down here, Alpha and Omega may appear distinct, but this is analogous to maintaining that the sphere's point and circle are separate events in time: just an uptical illusion.

Bearing this in mind, "if mankind, in all the stages of its evolution, is recapitulated in Jesus, as Iranaeus maintained, the implications of this doctrine are far-reaching and profound" (Davie), to put it mildly.

Profound because it would suggest that what we call "evolution" represents the passage of a hyperdimensional object through our 4-D world. Far-reaching because it would explain an awful lot of orthoparadoxes, wouldn't it?

One cannot help recalling John's remark that if one were to try to document the "many other things that Jesus did," "the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (21:25). I mean, right? This is precisely what one would expect, given the principle involved.

Also, if evolution is ultimately conditioned by the top, it suddenly makes sense of a doctrine that is otherwise grounded in absurdity. We'll return to this idea later, if at all.

Ah, this I like, because it suggests that God is a little like Thelonious MOnk (or vice versa):

"Resurrection shows the power of God to bring forth harmony at the extreme limits of dissonance" (ibid). They say that MOnk could bend the notes of a piano, which is reminiscent of how God somehow writes straight even with crooked liars.

Another good one: "the final term in the redemptive progression of Birth-Death-Resurrection is not another embodiment in the same environment but the same embodiment in another environment (namely, that of heaven)."

It's kind of the opposite way in which the transporter works in Star Trek:

"Transporters convert a person or object into an energy pattern (a process called dematerialization), then 'beam' it to a target, where it is reconverted into matter (rematerialization)." The transporter creates a memory file of the person's pattern, thus making it vulnerable to various transporter errors.

For example, "Scramblers distort the pattern that is in transit, literally scrambling the atoms upon rematerialization, resulting in the destruction of inanimate objects and killing living beings by rematerializing them as masses of random tissue..."

But in real life, our soul-archetype, or form, or divine clueprint, is again conditioned from the top down. It is not, and could not be, the result of matter or energy patterned in a particular way, from the bottom up.

Rather, the soul is the form of the body, which is why, even if it must always have a body, it may have "the same embodiment in another environment." At least I see no reason why this could not be so. It's like a piece of music: it can be on tape, or in vinyl, or in digital bits, but it's the same musical information "embodied" in different media.

The notion of transporter errors also illuminates the human mindscape. If we begin with the idea that the soul is a kind of trans-energy pattern, the purpose of life would be to manifest this pattern in a resistant environment we call "the world." Mind parasites would represent viral forms that get mixed up with ours, interfering with the ability to "materialize" the soul (i.e., love and create) and interiorize or assimilate the world (i.e., learn and grow).

More generally, the world will throw up all sorts of obstacles to the soul's exteriorization and actualization. Which, within certain limits, is a good thing.

Think of the analogy of sports, which couldn't exist in the absence of the gravity we must overcome in order to run, jump, or throw. Trolls and assouls are like vertical gravity. Up to a point.

Thus the purpose of our daily verticalisthenics and gymgnostics. You may now take a rest. And stay away from the scramblers!

New School History: Imagine a Yout' Smashing a Human Head -- Forever

We left off yesterday in the moment of abandonment -- or eternity of surrender -- between crucifixion and resurrection.

Davie writes that even -- especially? -- an eye witness at the foot of the Cross would have "no answer to Pilate's question, 'What is truth?,'" nor would he have any idea that the question -- which implies a world-weary and cynical subjectivism -- was about to be answered in the most definitive way imaginable -- or broadest way immarginable (Joyce).

Only several days later does the disciple learn that the story hasn't ended (recall what was said yesterday, to the effect that we can never actually know what history is until we have seen its end):

"His senses tell him one thing: this is so. His preconceptions tell him another: this cannot be so. He has seen the humanity of Jesus as the vehicle of his divinity, and now he encounters his divinity as the vehicle of his humanity" (emphasis mine).

In other words, the vehicle of the divinity -- the body, the flesh -- "died." But the vehicle of the humanity -- its form or essence or something -- is here, reorganizing matter -- or something -- in its pattern. What is going on?

Remember, at this point there are no gospels to consult, no Bible to explain the matter. Rather, as alluded to in a comment yesterday, "the believer does not look to the Gospels to explain the Resurrection: it is, rather, the other way about. It is the Resurrection that explains the existence of the Gospels: it is the Resurrection that has become the central explanatory event..."

Again, we cannot know what history is until it has reached its end. Thus, in the absence of a vertical ingression -- something from outside or beyond history -- there is literally no possibility of understanding what it is (or was).

For Voegelin, all of the genocidal mischief of the 20th century was rooted precisely in this pneumopathic error: presuming to know the meaning of history, and then proceeding to make it happen.

Communists, progressives, and Nazis all know the purpose of history. Thus, if you have other ideas, you're just in the way of the future. Trayvon Martin's friend, the ridiculous Rachel Jeantel, couldn't have expressed it better: "The jury, they old. That's old school people. We in a new school, our generation."

This new school not only doesn't teach cursive, but ignores facts, logic, and evidence, none of which matter, since the progressive -- like the Islamist -- already has all the answers and knows the direction and destination of history.

George Zimmerman -- who voted for Obama -- nevertheless finds himself in the ruthless path of progressive history, which, ironically -- if you've ever tried to reason with a liberal -- is exactly like smashing one's head against concrete. The concrete wins every time, unless you have a deeper source of truth or are carrying.

(Recall Orwell's remark that if you want to understand fascism, just imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever.)

Voegelin spent his life trying to understand the deep historical structure of such depraved thinking. Yes, we joke abut the media-tenured idiocracy complex (MTIC), but that is only to keep from crying. Here is how he described it in a letter:

"The liberal pastor who denies original sin, the... intellectual who asserts that man is good, the philosopher who argues for utilitarian ethics, the legal positivist who denies natural law, the psychologist who construes the phenomena of life as manifestations of the instinctual life -- they all do not commit crimes like an SS-murderer in the concentration camp -- but they are his intellectual fathers, a very immediate historical cause."

The MTIC may be childish, but they are far from harmless. Rather they are the collective expression of a "destroyed person" which attempts "to establish public, binding validity, which can only be done at the expense of the existing public order." This is where the permanent revolution comes into play, or in other words, the boot to the face forever.

I just flipped to another page, in which Voegelin points out that, in one sense, both Socrates and Jesus are judged guilty by the mob. But that is only in history. Outside history, the mob is forever being judged by Socrates or Jesus.

Likewise, the liberal mob has decided that George Zimmerman is guilty, just as they have decided the Constitution has no standing and God is dead (because they both old school and just impede new school History).

It isn't difficult to look at Obama and see a hand reaching into to your wallet -- forever. But Obamacare reaches directly into your body, just as the educational establishment reaches into the soul, the redefinition of marriage reaches all the way down to the foundation of civilization, and the ceaseless attack on religion reaches up and out to our source. That pretty much covers all the bases doesn't it? Inside and outside, up and down.

Nevertheless, Obama and his mob of wilding scribes and tenured mouthpieces are forever judged guilty by a higher standard.

Perfect (via American Digest):

At the Cutting Edge of the Cosmos, Where the Razoraction Is

We are now up to chapter IX of the book we've been deconscrewing around with, Jesus Purusha. It is here that Davie begins to lose me a little bit, either because he is too fast or too obscure or I am too slow or too dense.

But even if the latter, I agree with Don Colacho's advice to writers (paraphrasing): torture your sentences so as to avoid torturing the reader. Yes, I'm down with making the reader think, but there's a fine line between that and just being lazy, unclear, or confused. Schuon, for example, always leaves an unsaturated space for thought, despite his verbal precision.

True, we're dealing here with ultimate issues -- technically beyond the limits of the cosmos -- so that is a valid excuse. Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Anamnesis, i.e., vertical recollection of the first two, to the point of re-Incarnation. Is it even possible to com-prehend such mysteries, or is it only possible to part-icipate in them via the mode of faith? How much can we know before the living knowledge begins congealing from a fragrant encounter to a smelly little ideology?

In his last book -- appropriately dictated on his death bed, at life's limits -- Voegelin addresses just this problematic:

"As I am putting down these words on an empty page I have begun to write a sentence that, when it is finished, will be the beginning of a chapter on certain problems of Beginning.

"The sentence is finished. But is it true?

"The reader does not know whether it is true before he has finished reading the chapter.... Nor do I know at this time, for the chapter is yet unwritten.... [T]he story has no beginning before it has come to its end. What then comes first: the beginning or end?"

Voegelin answers his own question with the only possible orthoparadoxical response:

"Neither the beginning nor the end comes first. The question rather points to a whole, to a thing called 'chapter,' with a variety of dimensions."

Among others, a chapter has "a dimension of meaning, [which is] neither spatial nor temporal, in the existential process of the quest for truth in which both the reader and writer are engaged. Is then the whole, with its spatiotemporal and existential dimensions, the answer to the question: what comes first?"

We'll come back to that question, but note how the sentence points to the incomplete chapter, the chapter to the unfinished book, the book to the unknown -- or is it somehow known? -- whole, which must be "present" to both writer and reader.

This actually goes to the whole structure of being-consciousness in its relation to the thing we call "history" -- the latter of which being the human stream of being-consciousness as it reveals itself in time.

You could say that the (human) beginning begins precisely with this recognition of participation in the greater whole. For example, where in Genesis it says: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, this is not about God's beginning, but about our beginning in relation to him, or to O, if you prefer. It is a statement about the absolute limit of what we may know about the "beginning." Attempting to go beyond it will only generate paradox and absurdity, i.e., "what was before time?", or "what is outside space?"

So, when Jesus affirms that he is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, he is suggesting something fraught with metaphysical implications. In a way, he is providing the answer to -- or at least way to think about -- the question, "what is before the beginning and after the end?"

With this prelude in mind, perhaps we are in a better position to understand Davie. For example, we could say that Incarnation represents a beginning of sorts, a horizontal beginning that ends in Crucifixion.

However, these then point before and beyond themselves, to pre-existence on the one hand ("before Abraham was, I am") and to Resurrection. But what comes first? Or is it a single flowing whole vertically encompassing self-sacrificing generation and rebirth?

Don't ask me. The post isn't finished.

Maybe this passage by Davie will illuminate the discussion: in the Crucifixion, "where Jesus hangs, the true center lies. In the pause between upward and downward breath, we are being created: in the pause between Crucifixion and Resurrection there is a cessation, a suspension, of creation. And in that pause, God is abandoning his very Self, abandons the universe to the internal collapse which it must suffer in his absence: for Jesus knows, in the cry of dereliction from the Cross, what it would be like if there were no God."

Or, to put it another way, if this were the END, full stop. If it is the end, then this confers absolute meaninglessness on everything that has preceded it and everything that will follow. It is absolute nihil, nada, zilch, bupkis. A cosmic shutout, with no runs, no hits, and no errors (for there can be no errors in the absence of God).

Thus, "Jesus consents to die in order that our humanity shall no longer be separated from his. In the cry of dereliction from the Cross," Jesus throws himself on the live grenade and "suffers the death of all men, the death of the universe. He takes the supreme risk of love, and that risk is the 'awful daring,' not of a moment's, but an eternity's surrender" (emphasis mine).

Why my emphasis? Because it goes precisely to our question of what is before the beginning and after the end, and therefore reveals the wholeness that conditions both of these human limits.

So: "Must we not say that there is an eternal Passion of Creation enacted in the unfolding drama of the universe, and a temporal Passion of Redemption which is the enactment in time of that eternal Passion; and yet that there are not two Passions, but one?"

I don't know. The book isn't finished. Or is it? You might say that the end occurs somewhere in the suspended tick of time between p. 266 and p. 7.

Which is pretty much where the previous 2,186 posts have come from. Yeah, born again, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.