/lit/ - Literature

>>14561992
The writings of the Golden Race; Plato, the Platonists and the Pythagoreans.

>>14561992
You could read Schuon and become a Muslim- nothing could be further from dualism than the Islamic tawhid. Also, read Shankaracharya.

>>14561992
The material is provided by the spiritual. To deny the material is to deny the goodness of the immaterial. Become a spiritual materialist, anon.

Daodejing. There is no "good" or "evil". There only is.

>>14562182
>>14562087
>>14562043
>>14562019
All good posts, OP you would do well to read all of the stuff mentioned in them. Also, Israel did 9/11

>>14561992
>become a Gnostic
You want be a Gnostic? Then you have to believe what they believe. And if you already do, then you would already be gnostic.

>>14562292
>>14561992
This is such a horrible use of the term; that was used by most of the Fathers of the Church and by Paul himself, with the acceptation being something close to ~he who has direct knowledge of the Unseen.
Oh, well, language can but degenerate.

>>14562182
Going off that, you could read Stirner as well.

Being is emerging into higher forms of complexity and perfection, it's not evil but ignorant

>>14562358
From whence does this teaching come from?

>>14562375

I just thought about it right now

>>14562375
Perhaps you shouldn't listen to him, OP, since no metaphysical tradition teaches that there's evolution on the Absolute- or change, as a matter of fact.

>>14562399
From the void we are in a state of non duality, through emergence we enter into dialogue with duality, through dialogue we begin to understand, through understanding we fall in love, and through love we create new life. There is no change, evolution is simply unveiling the bride.

unironically and unequivocally the bible

>>14562358
Evil is intentional

>>14562943
The imperfection of the world adds to the perfection of God, as expressed by Ibn Al-Arabi.

>>14564045
That’s retarded

>>14564061
To your dim view, brother.

>>14564045
>imperfection is the real perfection

Really makes you think...

>>14564074
But of course you already knew that?

>>14562087
Based

>>14562087
Sorry, no way you're gonna convince me that flesh eating viruses, civil war, disabilities and tsunamis killing hundreds of thousands emanate from anything good. There is no way there isn't a malevolent force with great power over this world if there are spiritual forces

>>14564634
Literally, Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus and Confessions by St. Augustine.

>>14561992
It's not evil, just flawed. Take the gnosis pill.

>>14564634
Whatever happens, happens. Que sera sera. Just because you think it’s bad doesn’t mean it is. Your opinion of nature bears no meaning on the goodness of nature.

Corpus Hermeticum (skip definitions)
Plato's Sophist-Statesman, Phaedrus, Timaeus.
Plotinus' 6th Ennead
Iamblichus The Mysteries.
Papyrus of Ani
The Orphic Poems
Music of Philosophy Series by Guy Wyndham Jones

>>14566459
Alcinous - The Handbook of Platonism, is a good start, if you are not familiarized with Platonism.

>>14566459
Not op but just ordered the Corpus Hermeticum what am I in for?

>>14566478
The gateway for fully understanding Plotinus and all Neoplatonism and most importantly the revelation of Plato.

>>14566491
This. Although, Platonism is the mysteries unveiled, and therefore superior.
Also, anon, what do you mean by the revelation of Plato?

>>14566491
>>14566511
Thanks

>>14562019
>>14562043
>>14566459
>>14566469
>>14566491
You guys realise that Platonism/Neoplatonism had the same worldview as the Gnostics right? That the material world is flawed and based on a "perfect immaterial world" Thats why they made Nietzsche sperg out so hard.

>b-b-but Plotinus criticised the Gnostics
He attacked a specific school of Gnosticism that generally implied that Platos Demiurge was an evil being, and even in this school Plotinus misrepresented the Gnostic worldvew.
very few Gnostics, even Sethian Gnostics, thought that the material world, and the demiurge, was inherently "evil", they just thought it was flawed and imperfectly built on the world of archetypes. And the Demiurge was a prideful and ignorant being, but not inherently evil.
The Gnostics were NOT Dualists.


>>14566361
This.
Just ignore all the Platonist/Neoplatonist/Christian spergs in this thread who have clearly never read the Gnostic texts but get their knowledge off of internet memes.
The label "Gnostic" is redundant and has no meaning in itself. The "Gnostic" Philosophy, generally speaking, is completely compatible with Platonic/Neoplatonic Philosophical systems

t. someone who has thoroughly studied the Nag Hammadi scriptures, Enneads, Hermetic Corpus, etc.

>>14566491
>Plato was the one who got revelation
cope Platofag

>>14566511
Pythagoras was the one who got the revelation, not Plato. Plato was a seething brainlet who subverted the Pythagorean system the same way Aristotle subverted the Platonic system. Ignore the Neoplatonist fanboys and read some Pythagorean literature

>>14566563
Inform me on some Pythagorean literature that I may read, please, anon.

>>14566572
I was mostly shitposting in that comment, I still really like Plato and Plotinus and they are worth reading, but they dont do justice to the original system of Pythagoras.

The "Pythagorean sourcebook and library" is probably the best collection of texts in English.
Pythagoras also apparently did claim to be a sort of Prophet sent by God, and taught the idea of the transcendent Monad (An early form of Monotheism), Reincarnation, and a load of other cool ideas.
He travelled around the middle east a bit and the biography of him includes a part about him travelling to Phonecia and meeting some of the Jewish Prophets there which was around 600-500BC. And then to Egypt and Babylonia where he learnt about Zoroastrianism and some other Esotericism

But yeah, most of Platos cool ideas come directly from Pythagoras

>>14566529
Plotinus was a revival from the dark age of middle Platonism (which includes gnosticism, and even possibly Christianity). Of course he at times also carried with him the taint of that great age of confusion. He also wrote for a long time, the early tractates can be excused as not having systematized his henosis, and his last tractates can be excused by his long overbearing sickness that he had to endure, who wouldn't hate such a body that he lived with?

>>14566563
Revelation of Plato not Plato's revelation. Plato is held highest because he perfected philosophy. Orpheus, Pythagoras, Philolaus, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Socrates. These were all prophets that Plato with his perfect exegesis explained, it's Plato's work the gods preserved, not the others.

>>14566651
O Pericles, to me the dearest of friends, I am of opinion that the whole philosophy of Plato was at first unfolded into light through the beneficent will of superior natures, exhibiting the intellect concealed in them, and the truth subsisting, together with beings, to souls conversant with generation (so far as it is lawful for them to participate of such supernatural and mighty good); and again, that afterwards having received its perfection, returning as it were into itself and becoming unapparent to many who professed to philosophize; and who earnestly desired to engage in the investigation of true being, it again advanced into light. But I particularly think that the mystic doctrine respecting divine concerns, which is purely established on a sacred foundation, and which perpetually subsists with the gods themselves, became thence apparent to such as are capable of enjoying it for a time, through one man,[1] whom I should not err in calling the primary leader and hierophant of those true mysteries, into which souls separated from terrestrial places are initiated, and of those entire and stable visions, which those participate who genuinely embrace a happy and blessed life. But this philosophy shone forth at first from him so venerably and arcanely, as if established in sacred temples, and within their adyta, and being unknown to many who have entered into these holy places, in certain orderly periods of time, proceeded as much as was possible for it into light, through certain true priests, and who embraced a life corresponding to the tradition of such mystic concerns. It appears likewise to me, that the whole place became splendid, and that illuminations of divine spectacles everywhere presented themselves to the view.

>>14566620
What do you mean by "excused"?

Im saying that even Plato had the same worldview, that the material world was imperfect and based on an ideal world.
granted, there is some difference between different schools being optimistic-pessimistic about that fact

Pythagoras for example, thought that the material world was amazing BECAUSE it was based on the perfect world of Numbers and Mathetics.

Im just saying that the label "Gnostic" is redundant because it didnt get used by Plotinus or the Gnostics themselves.
He was criticising a specific group of "Gnostics" (Sethians) who exaggerated their pessimism of the material world and said that the Demiurge was inherently evil.
"Gnosticism" is a broad term that covers a huge number of schools of thought that encompass Christianity, Hermeticism, Platonism/Neoplatonism, Pythagoreanism/Neopythagoreanism, and also fusions of ideas from all those schools.

There is no clear cut definition of what "Gnosticism" really means, which is why I dont like people translating Plotinus's Ennead as "Against the Gnostics" when it actually says "Against those who affirm the creator God to be Evil"

>>14566655
These interpreters of the epopteia (or mystic speculations) of Plato, who have unfolded to us all-sacred narrations of divine concerns, and who were allotted a nature similar to their leader, I should determine to be the Egyptian Plotinus, and those who received the theory from him, I mean Amelius and Porphyry, together with those in the third place who were produced like virile statues from these, viz.: Jamblichus and Theodorus, and others, who after these, following this divine choir, have energized about the doctrine of Plato with a divinely-inspired mind. From these, he[2] who, after the gods, has been our leader to everything beautiful and good, receiving in an undefiled manner the most genuine and pure light of truth in the bosom of his soul, made us a partaker of all the rest of Plato’s philosophy, communicated to us that arcane information which he had received from those more ancient than himself, and caused us, in conjunction with him, to be divinely agitated about the mystic truth of divine concerns.

>>14566651
God also preserved the Holy Quran mmm

>>14566659
The word itself is a heresy to us.
>Is the One then unknowable due to its inherent nature, if the unknowable
is something other than the One? The One wishes to be by itself and does not
tolerate being with another. That which is contradistinguished from the know-
able is the unknowable, but that which is beyond the One is entirely ineffable,
and we confess that we have neither knowledge nor ignorance but rather tran-
scendent ignorance with regard to that which, by its proximity, overshadows
the One as well. For since it is nearest the principle that is inconceivable, it as
it were abides in the sanctuary of transcendent silence.

>>14566662
To this man, therefore, should we undertake to return thanks adequate to the benefits which we have received from him; the whole of time would not be sufficient. But if it is necessary, not only[3] that we should have received from others the transcendent good of the Platonic philosophy, but that we should leave to posterity monuments of those blessed spectacles of which we have been spectators, and emulators to the utmost of our ability, under a leader the most perfect of the present time, and who arrived at the summit of philosophy; perhaps we shall act properly in invoking the gods, that they will enkindle the light of truth in our soul, and in supplicating the attendants and ministers of better natures to direct our intellect and lead it to the all-perfect, divine and elevated, end of the Platonic theory.

>>14566651
Nah, what Plato got wrong was thinking the forms were the highest perfect things in themselves, and not Numbers.

>>14566679
All of what you just said is in agreement with the Gnostic texts.

>>14566671
And the Bible, yet the two contradict each other.

>>14566679
"under a leader the most perfect of the present time, and who arrived at the summit of philosophy."
If no such a man exists, is Platonism, and therefore Philosophy, possible as virtual knowledge only, and almost dead?

>>14561992
>onvince me that the material world is not in fact evil?
The Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Issac Newton. Seeing the world depicted as a collection of physical forces and rules would be good for you as it would show you metaphysical evil does not exist. The physical universe just is. It does not adhere to moralistic codes or values.

>>14566690
>muh numbers
Limit and Unlimited are the highest knowable principles.
The Forms are numbers are derivative of these, and you've clearly not read further than Phaedo.

>>14562087
>Become a spiritual materialist
lol what

>>14566671
There's also evidence that the original Quran is lost and the one we have is like 150 years after his death, compiled by the Caliphs as population control.

>>14566746
Both the original Biblical texts and the Quran have been corrupted, that doesn't mean they aren't useful

>>14566659
I mean that Plotinus is interpreted, by Porphyry, the worst of masters. He wrote paradoxically and barely intelligibly, the original text could almost be said to be the translation of Plotinus. The times were Plotinus is pseudo-gnostic himself should be contrasted with the times when he praises the world and even matter. The negative statements should be "excused", as either allegorical use of the word evil, or as a product of his failing body, or a product of Porphyry.

>>14566764
>>14566746
Quran has been corrupted; any prove?

>>14561992
Emerson and Whitman

>>14561992
No book can convince you of such a thing, it can only be gained by experience of the natural world. Books can only serve to augment this.
Amateur astronomy is an extremely rewarding hobby that can provide tangible ways for you to connect to the cosmos.
Learning about plants and animals and observing and appreciating them in the wild can help you to realize the preciousness and beauty of living things.
Geology can let you read rocks and the terrain and develop a familiar understanding with the dynamic processes that have formed the landscape around you.
Artistic activity of any kind - appreciated merely for itself - can help you realize the power of creativity and how it can transform the human spirit.
Philosophical inquiry goes hand in hand with such pursuits, and is blind without some intimate connection to personal experience.
These two videos show the kind of inspired passions involved with love of life and the universe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxVVm75k_8Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLigBYhdUDs

>>14566764
They can both be used, but it would require reading them as almost solely allegorically. But I believe it's dishonest to claim that. And it implies that God didn't establish a divinely guided church, the same church that compiled the Bible.

I think Wisdom of Solomon is clearly inspired. But God sending bears to kill some teens who just were bantering? Eeeh

>>14566529
based

>>14561992
Nietzsche
I'm not gonna find the quote so I'll paraphrase
>It was once a blasphemy to deny God's existence
>For me, it is a blasphemy to deny the Earth's existence
from Thus Spake Zarathustra

>>14561992
Rudolf Steiner- Founding a science of the spirit
Lecture 9 - the evolution of the earth
>audiobook
>http://www.rudolfsteineraudio.com/foundsciencespiritCW95/foundsciencespiritcw95.html

>>14566769
>Anything Plotinus wrote that doesn't agree with my specific worldview wasn't really written by Plotinus

lol, thats not how it works.
Plotinus's interpretation of the word "evil" was different from the regular Christian one, his literally just referred to anything that deviated from an original archetypal form.
Its possible to still believe that the material world is imperfect while being optimistic about living in it.

I found a Youtube channel that actually explains Plotinus's Philosophy really well. I would recommend everyone interested in this thread to check out this guys videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CkY-SxhU50

>>14561992

The material realm is coordinated by an evil God and his name is Ialdaboath. You consume to survive as does all things on this plane, and those most predatory are the strongest in the present epoch.

>>14566771
The fact that it took like 100 years before it was written down completely. It's also extremely poorly written for something to have been written by God an eternity ago.
>The Quran is believed to have had some oral tradition of passing down at some point. Differences that affected the meaning were noted, and around AD 650 Uthman began a process of standardization, presumably to rid the Quran of these differences. Uthman's standardization did not completely eliminate the textual variants.

>>14566790
I wouldn't say they should be read solely allegorically. They should be read without superimposing a 21st century liberal moral worldview onto them though.

They should be read however, as being designed for the masses of people, not for a "spiritual elite", the teachings for the spiritual elite are in the Kabbalah, Gnosticism and Sufism respectively, which you pretty much need to be guided by a traditional teacher/master for.

Solomons wisdom literature is great though. Most people dont see the huge Gnostic themes in it. Right down to The Aeon Sophia being the first of the creations, in Proverbs

>>14562019
These are the people mainly responsible for the proliferation of those types of views though?

>>14566814
Terrible interpretation of the Gnostic texts, you probably just read the Apocryphon of John once

>>14566833
Ngl, Schopenhauer would have loved Sethian Gnosticism

>>14566804
>Plotinus's interpretation of the word "evil" was different from the regular Christian one, his literally just referred to anything that deviated from an original archetypal form.
>Its possible to still believe that the material world is imperfect while being optimistic about living in it.
That's literally my point.
And evil isn't the state of anything if it lives by its nature. Evil is to desire to be what you aren't. Being I'd the Whole, the all is a hierarchy, "chain of being", evil is to remove a piece of the chain and put it somewhere else. Corrupting the harmony. No gods does this, only individual souls—whose nature it is to descend and ascend the chain—he who has entered the hall of God has the duty to descend again.

>>14566831
That's simply not true. You must never have read them to think such a thing.

>>14566769
>The negative statements should be "excused", as either allegorical use of the word evil, or as a product of his failing body, or a product of Porphyry.
Meanwhile, every sentence ever written by the infallible Shankaracharya (pbuh) is perfect and needs no excusal, his writing shining with divine splendor and the illumination of complete enlightenment

>>14566852
I know, im saying thats also what the Gnostics believed too. Take Yaldabaoth for example, according to the most common Sethian version of the Myth in the Apocryphon of John, he was born from Sophia trying to imitate the emanation process of the Monad.
The text says that when he was born he was "imperfect", but it never says that Yaldabaoth was inherently evil. The Demiurge was material, an imperfect emanation of the Monad.

Thats why I think Plotinus actually misrepresents the Gnostic worldview by saying that the Gnostics believed that the creator God was "evil" (in the absolute dualistic sense)

There might have been some Sethian Gnostics who thought that, but it wasn't the mainstream view and wasnt the case even for the majority of Gnostics

>>14566828
>They should be read however, as being designed for the masses of people, not for a "spiritual elite
This is a good point. Plato's and Plotinus texts are targeted towards would-be Guardians. Not uncle Joe.
And fuck your aeons.
To claim the world is a mistake is to say that the demiurge was a mistake, and that would be to claim Being was a mistake, and that would be to claim that God is a mistake, and you get the point.
If the effect of the effect of the effect is an error then the Original Cause is in error.

>>14566880
Yes, exactly, Plato. Perfect and flawless. Plotinus is also perfect, only interpretation corrupts him.

>>14566885
Aeon is just a fancy word for Platonic Archetype.
Also thats a strawman of the Gnostic worldview, just read the texts yourself, including the Proverbs of Solomon zzz

>>14566881

>>14566890
>Perfect and flawless
>In the material world with a material body

cringe and clearly you are just a Platonic fanboy, neither Plato nor Plotinus would have agreed with this

>>14566900
Sethian Psyop Strawman boogeyman. Maybe go read some Gnostic texts instead of making retard posts

>>14566900
>>14566529

>>14566905
>>14566912
The Whole is perfect, matter is the bottom of the Whole. Matter is perfect as being the bottom bitch Sub of Being

>>14566890

>Flawless
>Dead

Pick one and only one

>>14566529
Good post.

>>14566938
lol, no. This was refuted by Plato and Plotinus

I dont mind if people dislike Gnosticism, as long as they dislike Platonic Philosophy for the same reason

The Brothers Karamazov

>>14561992
Good and evil only exist as a subjective interpretation of the world.
Categories are innate to human conceptualisation, becoming aware of them is the first step. So the only way to escape the evil is to change ones conception of evil as something nonexistent. Divorce yourself from these categories, or live under a vail of ignorance.

>>14566938
EEEEEEYYOOOOOOAAAAAAAAA WEEEEE

>>14566953
True, and thats basically what Nietzsche did.

The real debate is between Schopenhauer vs Nietzsche

>>14566988
Book of the Great Invisible Spirit is a pretty good text. I believe they were chanted as mantras similar to the Hindus with "OM"

>>14566953
>This was refuted by Plato and Plotinus
The person, therefore, who complains about the nature of the cosmos does not know what he is doing, nor does he realize where
this insolence of his is leading him. This is because they do not know the ordered sequence of what comes first, second, third, and so on, continuously until the final things are reached, and because one should not be contemptuous of the things that are worse than the first; rather, one should graciously allow cach thing to have its own nature, while oneself pursuing the first things, having left behind the tragic drama of the terrors as [the Gnostics] consider them – in the
cosmic spheres, though these spheres actually 'render all things gentle and kind' for them. For what is so terrifying about the spheres that they terrify people who are inexperienced in argument and who
have not been privy to the proper, cultivated 'gnosis'? For if their bodies are fiery, they should not be feared, since their relationship
to the universe and to the earth is a balanced one, and [the Gnostics] should focus their attention on the heavenly bodies' souls, since it is surely on account of their own souls that they consider themselves to
be honourable. And yet even the heavenly bodies differ [from sublunary bodies] in magnitude and in beauty, and they cooperate and contribute to the things that are generated in accordance with nature,
which could never fail to be generated, as long as the first Beings exist, and they are major parts of the universe and secure the plenitude of the universe.

>>14567074
And if human beings occupy an honourable rank in comparison to other living beings, the heavenly bodies are still more honourable, as they are in the universe – not in order to reign cruelly over everything else – but rather because they provide order and ornament.
As for what is said to come from the heavens, one should hold that they give
signs of what will happen in the future, and yet generated living beings turn out differently on account of chance - since it is impossible that the identical events happen to every individual - as well as on account of the different moments of their generation, the far-removed places [where they were conceived or born], and the states of their souls.

>>14567080
And again they must not demand that all human beings be good nor, because this is not possible, should they be so eager to censure the things here in the expectation that they should differ in no way from those higher things; and they should simply think of 'evil' as a deficiency in wisdom, that is, an inferior and always diminishing [good] , just as one might say that nature is 'evil', because it is not sense-perception, and that the faculty of sense-perception is 'evil',
because it is not reason. Otherwise, these men will be forced to say that evil exists in the intelligible world, too. For in the intelligible world, Soul is worse than Intellect, and Intellect is also inferior to something else.

>>14566953
This is were you drop to your knees and ask for mercy from Ananke.

>>14566387

>saying that nature is bad is subjective!
>because it's good, which is objective!

>>14566529
Might the understanding of "evil" just be that of "removed from god's perfection"(in this case the Monad), in the same manner that I think Augustine defined evil? In that case the Gnostic view would be that the world is evil, but I ultimately agree that in today's nomenclature, using the term "evil" just ends up being misrepresentative.