/lit/ - Literature

>>18444347
look into the visions from Our Lady of Fatima

Hmm, well the Tibetan book of the dead is the most detailed account that I've ever seen

>>18444436
I'm looking into it right now but I'm not seeing much information on the afterlife.
>>18444456
I've read it, but the Buddhist view amounts to the oblivion I'm talking about.

>>18444347
Kill your ego, NOW!

>>18444590

you can't affect anything without your ego. you will die and become a spirit eventually without even trying.

>>18444590
But that's the same as killing myself.

>>18444590
This

>>18444798
Why?

Help

Some people will cringe, but the Kybalion does talk about this.

>>18444948
What does it say? Maybe I'll read it but I was told it wasn't trustworthy and to read primary sources (the hermetica) instead.

Bump

Nobody?

Last bump

>>18444590
What ego?

>>18444347
>but if the constituents of my ego aren't there anymore I'm starting to think it's the same as oblivion.
Think anon! if this is true you are nothing more than your ego, but this is wrong

>>18444347
Dude you are literally the universe. As in the qualia. The colour blue, the sound of your internal monologue, the sensation of love and the smell of a fart. The idea of a human is an abstraction so there's nothing to die. You are experiencing all lives simultaneously, and probably some other stuff human minds are currently unaware that generates consciousness.

It's all right the in the bhagavad gita and countless spiritual texts.

>>18446179
But I identify only with my ego. When my ego isn't there, I'm not there either, like when I'm in deep sleep.
>>18446181
Yeah but for me this is the same as non-existence. I am myself. This kind of "all is one" thinking never did anything for me, I don't find it reassuring or intuitive at all.

>>18446206
Then yes your ego and your 'self' will die when you do. It's also constantly in flux so you will die many times before your body does.

>>18446221
>you will die many times before your body does.
There's a continuity there though. This seems like fallacious reasoning to me. You can say it's in flux but there's something there that's never changed, my sense of identity has always remained the same.

>>18446231
Sure ok, but who cares? It's empty and meaningless. Your identity is a pointer to nothing.

>>18446240
This is such a depressing thought. Just be a nihilistic hedonist then.

>>18446245
You should still act human, act as if. Like we pretend we have free will. The buddhists call this 'acting skillfully'. All of life is a stage etc

>>18446252
This is why I could never get into eastern philosophy. It just seems like nihilism with extra steps. Why bother with all that shit if you don't even think you exist in any meaningful sense?
I'm trying to escape that kind of destructive thinking.

>>18446260
A proper realisation/understanding will stop suffering, which is the point.

>>18446279
I don't want that. Buddhism doesn't interest me.

>>18444347
The anime Serial Experiments Lain is by far the best treatment for existential angst for me. I know its sacrilegious to recommend something other than a book but its the truth. I've read many dozens of intensely philosophical novels that speak on death and what happens after but none cure my angst like SEL. If you don't understand some parts of the show go to the "Thought Experiments Lain" website to answer all your questions.

To be honest Lain is very /lit/ anyway, there are numerous references to books such as a direct reference to Proust's In Search of Lost Time in the penultimate episode.

>>18446289
I've watched Lain twice and I'm not sure what you mean, how did it address your existential questioning?

>>18446206
>But I identify only with my ego. When my ego isn't there, I'm not there either, like when I'm in deep sleep.
People report that they themselves are present but without their ego when their are either 1) in a deep state of meditation 2) in a full-blown mystical experience or 3) when consuming certain psychedelics like LSD

Also, you are aware of your ego correct? Is your ego aware of itself or is your awareness which is aware of your ego something different from that ego? I'm of the opinion that if you look inwardly you'll find that you are the awareness which is aware of the ego, not the ego.

>>18446298
Those states you mentioned are all temporary. The reason people can describe them is because they come back from them later and can observe what just happened to them. But if such a state lasted forever, what would be the point? Is there a point to existing if you don't have personhood, an actual identity, if you don't exist as an individual but instead as some kind of diffuse, neutral awareness with no sense of self?
>you are the awareness which is aware of the ego
I think both are necessary to constitute an individual, for example if I suddenly lost all my memories I wouldn't really be me anymore. The awareness/consciousness + memories + ego combination seems to be more or less what constitutes identity in the meaningful sense.

There's a website that hosts NDEs (near death experiences) that is pretty interesting. Many of the stories are oddly consistent. It seems to be people dipping into the etheric realm.

>I'm scared of the destruction of identity and memories, religions talk about a soul but if the constituents of my ego aren't there anymore I'm starting to think it's the same as oblivion.
Don't listen to the impersonalists then. Most of the esoterically active people on this board are some kind of Buddhist or Hindu who believe in annihilationism or as-good-as-annihilationism. Let me save you ten years of soul searching here. No matter how much you painfully dig into their statements, try to listen to their arguments, you will never agree with them, because their ultimate position isn't an argument, it's that they simply don't care about their soul dissolving. In every esoteric circle I've ever been in, the annihilationists simply can't understand the people like you and vice versa. And usually the annihilationists view their position as the dominant and privileged one, and smugly argue from that.

So read their stuff if you want, but don't feel disheartened when all these confident demi-mystics assert that you're just deluded about not wanting to dissolve into God's being.

Have you read Plato's Phaedo? Socrates goes to his death completely sure that it isn't the end. Even able to entertain his friends and pupils who doubt that the soul exists, and put forward compelling arguments about the "dissolution" of the body, as in the lyre allegory (the body is an instrument, the "soul" is the music played by it; ergo there is no integral soul, just the temporary product of a physical instrument properly tuned and maintained). He's so confident that his last moments are spent discussing counter-arguments to his own belief in his soul's immortality. No doubt because his mystical experiences had convinced him of the latter.

>>18444347
I actually came very close to death a couple times and there was nothing but like a very deep sleep, or complete lack of awareness and consciousness until I came back to life. Although a sense of time having passed was there afterwards though I couldn't tell by myself how long.

>>18446373
ndestories.org? I've looked at some of them, definitely some interesting stuff in there, though the flaw is in the name (near death experience, and not death experience). I don't doubt that there's something after death, I just wouldn't want it to be this kind of monistic maelstrom of unified consciousness or whatever, this sounds horrifying to me and repulsive on every level.
I guess I just want to keep existing, to not lose this sense of self, even if it evolves and becomes "sharper", like it has from childhood to adulthood, I don't want to abandon my personhood. To keep existing as an individual and experience things as an individual is all I care about.
>Don't listen to the impersonalists
I don't. I agree with what you said, I just can't understand their position and they probably think I'm being deluded or unenlightened or whatever. Is it true that most people on /lit/ interested in this are into eastern philosophy though? Where are the western esotericists?
>Phaedo
I've read it, I didn't need to be convinced of the existence of the soul but it didn't really answer my concerns about individuality and personhood, since (correct me if I'm wrong) Socrates doesn't really make any statements about this and his argument focuses on the soul's immortality and the fact that death is not the end. Doesn't transmigration mean the loss of individuality from one incarnation to another?

>>18446318
>Those states you mentioned are all temporary. The reason people can describe them is because they come back from them later and can observe what just happened to them.
They are also able to describe them while they are occurring, not just afterwards, people describe what it's like while in the middle of psychedelic trips, and various mystics have penned texts while in that state and so on
>But if such a state lasted forever, what would be the point?
I suppose being always happy and fulfilled, never being troubled by sorrow, eternal bliss. If you mean while in the body on earth, it would mean a more happy existence while here on earth; and if you mean afterwards when you die it could theoretically lead to eternal bliss as some religions propound.

> Is there a point to existing if you don't have personhood, an actual identity, if you don't exist as an individual but instead as some kind of diffuse, neutral awareness with no sense of self?
Well, some religious schools would say that this neutral awareness is your actual self or Atman (like Advaita Vedanta Hinduism) and that the ego is your false self that you mistakingly take to be your actual self, when your real self is just perfect undivided sorrowless awareness. They claim that this is the fulfillment of existence, ultimate perfection, and that once you reach this you transcend all notions of "points", "purposes" and "goals" because you have already reach the summit of all existence, complete perfection. There are no "goals" here because your desires are already eternally fulfilled, you simply abide as eternal perfection. In order for there to be some "purpose" or "goal" left there would have to be a problem to be solved or desire that was unfullfilled, but none of those present themselves at this state. Thinking that there are goals or purposes to be achieved would be a step down from a state of eternal perfection where one simply abides as eternal bliss.

>you are the awareness which is aware of the ego
I think both are necessary to constitute an individual,
Well, what if the awareness which is aware of the ego isn't actually individual and only the objects of it's awareness are? Then in that case what is the individuality is really just the confusing of the non-individual awareness that is you with the individual things that appear to it, when you falsely regard them to be one integrated being.
>for example if I suddenly lost all my memories I wouldn't really be me anymore.
You would still be the same awareness-presence would you not? You would just lose memory of the past, the very awareness which persists throughout time would not itself be interrupted by this.
>The awareness/consciousness + memories + ego combination seems to be more or less what constitutes identity in the meaningful sense.
Yes, but this is only true with regard to our every day normal experience and social relations, that doesn't necessarily inform us about what's really going on at a deeper level.

>>18444347

>>18446415
>eternal bliss
If there's no individual person to experience that bliss, does it matter?
I've never really been attracted by this prospect of an eternally blissful state anyway. I would want the afterlife to be an eternity spent actually doing, existing in a meaningful manner, not some kind of catatonic opioid high for the soul.
>your actual self
I mean they can call it that but I don't have to agree. What I'm seeing is that they are positing the existence of an immaterial soul that is completely alien to me in every sense, and saying that's actually me, instead of what I currently identify myself as. It seems preposterous. I'm not some detached and perfect entity that exists beyond reality and can barely be said to be self-aware; I am myself, who I am right now.
>what if the awareness which is aware of the ego isn't actually individual and only the objects of it's awareness are
Then we're going back to what I consider to be essentially oblivion. If you reduce everything I am to an illusion then that's just ontological nihilism for me, I don't care that there exists something above that I'm supposed to believe is my true self since it is utterly alien to me and forever will be.
>You would still be the same awareness-presence
No, because memories are an integral part of identity.
>this is only true with regard to our every day normal experience and social relations
No, it's true in absolute terms, without these things you cannot be said to be an individual.
>>18446421
Thank you.

>>18446482
>>eternal bliss
>If there's no individual person to experience that bliss, does it matter?
Well, if you are this bliss, you constantly experience it eternally, you don't need to be a separate entity from this bliss in order for it to be enjoyed, known, experienced. The Hindus say that Brahman's very nature is bliss, and that once you become Brahman or wake up and realize you are Brahman, you then live forever as the omnipresent Brahman reveling in His own bliss forever.
>I've never really been attracted by this prospect of an eternally blissful state anyway. I would want the afterlife to be an eternity spent actually doing, existing in a meaningful manner, not some kind of catatonic opioid high for the soul.
I'm not condemning your position, but the alternative perspective that the Hindus might say is that the desire to keep "doing" things only produces an inferior kind of happiness or amusement that is impermanent and which depends upon changing conditions and that this is vastly below eternal unchanging bliss in terms of how valuable it is.
>>your actual self
>I mean they can call it that but I don't have to agree.
I'm not saying you have to, I'm just presenting an alternative viewpoint and explaining how it's consistent, you can make of it what you will.
>What I'm seeing is that they are positing the existence of an immaterial soul that is completely alien to me in every sense,
Not exactly, because it's the doorway through which you know everything else about your mind, thoughts etc. You can't know thoughts without being aware of them, you can't know your emotions without being aware of them, you can't know your body without being aware of them. When you subtract the known component from all of these relations, the awareness that knows all of them is exactly alike and always the same in each instance of knowing. So this is hardly alien but it's the innermost light which allows you to know the contents of your own mind. In a way everything else is alien or foreign to this awareness, because those things like thoughts and emotions can only be known insofar as they appears as a known content to this awareness as something that is different from it.

>>18446482
>>18446602
>and saying that's actually me, instead of what I currently identify myself as. It seems preposterous.
Alas, how unfathomable, inscrutable, and variegated is this Māyā, that every creature, though in reality identical with the supreme Entity, and is instructed as such, does not grasp the fact, "I am the supreme Self", while even without being told, he accepts as his Self the non-selves, viz the aggregate of body and senses, under the idea, "I am the son of such a one", though these (latter) are objects of perception (and are hence not his selves) like pots etc.! Verily, it is through the Māyā of the supreme Being, that every man moves, again and again (through birth and death). There is this Smṛti on this point: "I am not revealed to all, being veiled by my Yoga-Māyā" etc. (G. VII. 25)
- Adi Shankara, Katha Upanishad bhasya

>I'm not some detached and perfect entity that exists beyond reality and can barely be said to be self-aware; I am myself, who I am right now.
All the things which you can label as yourself though are known contents appearing to this awareness. But this awareness doesn't grasp itself as a known object of itself that appears to itself as something different from itself like how thoughts appear to awareness, so you don't actually have any basis to say that your innermost awareness isn't a detached perfect entity that exists beyond reality, because in order to do so this awareness would have to become its own object which it never does.

>>what if the awareness which is aware of the ego isn't actually individual and only the objects of it's awareness are
>Then we're going back to what I consider to be essentially oblivion. If you reduce everything I am to an illusion then that's just ontological nihilism for me,
That's not reducing everything you are to an illusion, because the awareness remains and isn't reduced to anything else. If you consider yourself to be only the thoughts and emotions and not the awareness that knows them, that's actually absurd because then you are saying the awareness which knows your thoughts isn't you, and then you are basically saying there is a foreign alien entity inside your brain which knows your thoughts.

>>18446482
>>18446608
>>You would still be the same awareness-presence
>No, because memories are an integral part of identity.
That's only true of identity in the social/egoistic sense of the word, but in the pure sense of identity in terms of something's identity being what it is, something being identical to itself, i.e. A = A, awareness/consciousness doesn't require any memory to retain its identity as awareness/consciousness, because memory is something separate from it. Awareness retains its identity as awareness without relying on anything else.
>>this is only true with regard to our every day normal experience and social relations
>No, it's true in absolute terms, without these things you cannot be said to be an individual.
Identity simply means whatever something is. If you regard your identity as the collection of awareness+thoughts+memories then of course you need memory for that identity, but if you consider awareness or consciousness to have its own identity, then it doesn't need anything else for its identity

>>18446602
>if you are this bliss
Yes, that's my criticism. I don't find this appealing because it doesn't mean anything to me, I don't think there's a point to existence if it's just constant bliss experienced by a nondescript kind of entity that isn't at all how I perceive myself to be.
>the desire to keep "doing" things only produces an inferior kind of happiness
That is, if you take their model to be the truth.
>impermanent
Yes, I don't mind. The only thing I care about being permanent is my personhood. The rest can come and go, that's what existence is about.
>it's the doorway through which you know everything else about your mind, thoughts etc
I understand what is meant by awareness but I remain unconvinced. I don't see how a disincarnate awareness in a vacuum can be said to be me. It's arbitrary and appears overly reductive. I get the same impression from this as the Buddhist thing where they say the only thing that survives between lives is karma and that's why I should care about rebirth. It's nonsense because this karma isn't me and this can be intuitively understood. This awareness you're talking about isn't really me either, it's like an incorporeal component of myself which by itself is meaningless.
>in reality identical with the supreme Entity
Yes this is what I don't like about eastern religions. Everything in the end is the same thing. I'm not God, or the One, or whatever you want to call it. I'm not some kind of dream of Brahman or an illusory impression; or if I am, then I don't care about any of it, it is tantamount to annihilationism for me.
>All the things which you can label as yourself though are known contents appearing to this awareness.
Yeah again this is if I accept your model as truth, but I don't agree with it. "I" am more than a disembodied awareness. I find that the way eastern philosophy just handwaves the ego and identity as those icky things you should get rid of because they're illusory is unsettling and despair-inducing.
>Identity simply means whatever something is.
Yeah so we disagree on the ontology of identity, or something along those lines. I'm not just awareness, I'm myself. I'm not just memories either, or just thoughts, or just ego.
Anyway, if your aim is to convince me, not to be rude but you're wasting your time, I'm not looking for a primer on eastern philosophy but for a solution to my worries that I mentioned in the OP.

>>18446482
don't get disheartened by crypto buddhists seeking annihilation. they always try to co opt authors as if they advocated for their view. they suffer from what zaehner describes >>18446204

it is shallow egotistical mysticism filled with exotic indian words. it might be just one guy shilling. they of course try to co opt plotinus as well saying he advocated for annihilationism but it is wishful thinking on their part

>One possible misconception should be cleared up. When the human ego is reformed and integration with the second self takes place, Plotinus does not teach that the goal of mysticism has been attained. The emergence of the true personality of man is not, as in certain Indian systems, an isolation of the immortal soul apart from all things. It is, as we have seen, the felt realization of the immortality and a partaking in the Intelligible World. These two, however, are inextricably bound up together, and since the soul is then in contact with the intelligible world it will enjoy non-discursive knowledge and understanding of the nature of all things. Such understanding will involve an understading of the utter dependence of all things on the One as first cause. Hence integration of the personality will mean not the isolation of the soul as monad, but the placing of the soul on the upward path to union with the One.
Integration and the Undescended Soul in Plotinus

>>18446761
this is from 'Memory in Plotinus'

>>18446761
Plotinus mentions the Nous but what does it constitute exactly, is it a realm in which souls exist, or something more abstract than that?
Do individual souls ascend to the Nous and spend eternity in contemplation, attempting to get closer to the Godhead?
The soul retains the memories of when it used to be incarnate in physical matter, and it is individual, not diffuse or fused with anything, but its focus is on God? So to put it less eloquently, after death the incorporeal soul basically keeps ascending towards God but doesn't shed its earthly identity.

>>18446818
>When the human ego is reformed and integration with the second self takes place
By which process does this happen specifically?
>the placing of the soul on the upward path to union with the One.
Is the end goal still union then, or does Plotinus mean something else by that word than what is commonly understood?
Or maybe the path upwards is eternal and never ends, as I think I've heard a Christian say at one point?

>>18446688
>I don't think there's a point to existence if it's just constant bliss experienced by a nondescript kind of entity that isn't at all how I perceive myself to be.
If you could hypothetically perceive yourself to be this kind of entity would that change your perspective? God is comparable to being his own purpose or point, if there was a purpose or point for which God existed, which God's existence was the fulfillment of, then it would mean that there was something prior to God and that God wasn't the uncaused cause of everything.
>That is, if you take their model to be the truth.
Yes, I'm just presenting their viewpoint in this thread, I'm not trying to force you into admitting it's correct.
>I don't see how a disincarnate awareness in a vacuum can be said to be me.
According to them it doesn't exist inside another vacuum but the so-called vacuum of space is contained within It, It is infinite and all-pervasive and It is the source of space, time and matter. Of course when you normally identify with the contents that appear to your awareness (like the mind, thoughts, ego, body etc) then it will seem like you are not this incorporeal awareness, you can only directly realize and experience yourself as such after studying spiritual texts, studying with a teacher, using lessons of said texts to look inwardly into the nature of your own being etc. I'm not saying that its normal that you should already perceive yourself to be this, the point is that this is the end-result of spiritual investigation and progress according to the school which holds this position; it's to be expected that you won't experience things this way right now. What they say is bolstered by the simple fact though that awareness is the same in every act of awareness and is inevitably different from the contents of awareness, although this doesn't prove the metaphysical claims they make about it being eternal etc.
>It's arbitrary and appears overly reductive.
how so?
>I get the same impression from this as the Buddhist thing where they say the only thing that survives between lives is karma and that's why I should care about rebirth. It's nonsense because this karma isn't me and this can be intuitively understood.
Yes but there is a crucial difference since you can't deny that you possess awareness of things, karma is an unknown hypothetical, awareness isn't.

>>18446688
>>18446872
> "I" am more than a disembodied awareness. I find that the way eastern philosophy just handwaves the ego and identity as those icky things you should get rid of because they're illusory is unsettling and despair-inducing.
It's not handwaving them away as icky, and it's not saying that everybody should get rid of them. This teaching is specifically meant only for people who want to end the cycle of transmigration and be reunited with God. It's not meant for people who want to continue living in the world with occupations and families. The observation that awareness is different from its contents should be self-evident, but that doesn't mean identifying yourself with the known content is evil or icky. If you don't desire becoming united with God forever then they say there is nothing wrong with identifying yourself with the known contents of awareness and that this is natural and fine for people to do when living normal lives in the world.
>but for a solution to my worries that I mentioned in the OP
Well I've explained why it's not oblivion (an essential part of you, arguably the most essential part of your being continues forever). Not all eastern philosophy adopts this view btw but some schools take a different view where you mind with its thoughts and attitudes etc exist forever in heaven alongside God. I wasn't trying to convince you but was just explaining the implications of some of these positions, and why it's not identical to either a) Buddhist annihilation or b) materialist annihilation

>>18444347
Start with Emanuel Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell then you can move onto his other stuff if that interests you

>>18446818
>but the placing of the soul on the upward path to union with the One.
Yea but what happens when this path is fulfilled?

>>18444590
new age memeshit

>>18446914
Not OP but I am very interested in Swedenborg, would you recommend anything else by or about him? I'll read Heaven and Hell first but just in case you might suggest more

>>18446914
What does he base his claims on, personal experience? Have they been corroborated by anyone else?

>>18446882
>This teaching is specifically meant only for people who want to end the cycle
There's something about this that sounds condescending to me. I don't want to end the cycle because I don't want my identity to be obliterated, but I don't even want the cycle to exist in the first place because reincarnation is the same thing to me, a destruction of my personhood and its replacement by something else that isn't me. I don't want either of those things.
It's not that I want to continue living in the world, it's that I want to continue existing in a world, any world, several if there are multiple, I just think this rejection and systematic excision of everything perceived as wordly, or un-godly, ends with annihilation. It's not that I want a normal life, it's that I want my soul to have an eternal life, not the kind of existence described by eastern philosophers as "perfection".
I understand your explanations which is why I haven't addressed the other points.
>>18446914
Thanks, I get the impression that Christianity is the only religion in the world where not only is identity retained after death, but the afterlife is also deeply personal and similar to this current existence, as opposed to being a kind of ethereal and non-physical state.
Why is this? Did Christianity uncover some kind of truth no other religion touched upon, or was its view on the afterlife distorted by wishful thinking (I hope not)?

>>18446988
>There's something about this that sounds condescending to me.
So, that school and similar ones existed in an Indian milieu where it was just seen as a commonly-accepted fact of live that rebirth/transmigration are real and that everyone has an eternal soul that has always been transmigrating through different bodies. It's not exactly condescending because it's not saying that people who don't attain release are bad humans or something, it's the opposite, that attaining complete release in this very life is seen as a rare and difficult feat that only an exceptional few can do, comparable to fully realized saints, it being a common sentiment that it can multiple lives of cumulative progress to even get there. So it's not being condescending to others anymore than saying that not everyone can become a St. John or not everyone can become a St Francis is condescending. And it leaves open the possibility that in future lives people who don't have the inclination or drive for it now may have that inclination then.
>I don't want to end the cycle because I don't want my identity to be obliterated
Okay, well you are free to choose to believe in a religion like Christianity where your mind and body are preserved forever in heaven, nobody is stopping you.

>>18447054
>free to choose to believe
You don't "choose to believe", that's a larp.

>>18447103
>You don't "choose to believe",
Maybe some people do, in most cases probably not. What I meant rather was that OP is free to devote himself to the study of Christian literature, Christian metaphysicians and mystics, to the practice of Christian prayer and so on; and presumably if OP found these things to be meaningful, fulfilling and logically coherent then along the way he may start to earnestly believe in it. If he doesn't already believe in it now I know of no better way than the above route to start believing in something short of a miraculous coincidence that convinces you God is real.

Plotinus was annihilationist, the One is nothingness and the return or redit(t)us just means being inhaled back into the unfeeling, unknowing, unthinking matrix that created you, numbnuts, I'm sick of hearing it, nihilism is INCIPIENT in Plotinus' conception of the One, the Nous is a mind contemplating its own nothingness, and that contemplation is generative of the shitty realms of matter

>>18447176
What's your preferred model?

>>18447186
Manichaean/Zoroastrian

>>18447340
What about it makes more sense to you?

>>18447345
Well they don't pussyfoot with evil, Plotinus' crypto-dualism muddies his critique of the Sethians. If Evil is a production of the all-possibility issuing from the depths of the One, then the One is indirectly responsible for Evil, for being the effectivity of Evil.

if Evil is privation/degeneration at the fringes of the cosmic ray, then the medium of extension is problematic: we have an emanation and a distention, into what? Why this dispersion? Why emanation at all, why not excretion, expulsion, from a narcissistic Godhead?

It's just a lung. it inhales, and exhales, it inhales, and exhales, idiotically, sundown to sunrise, pissing souls into curdled balls of carbon and eating us again.

Plotinus is a genius and I don't mean to imply this account is exhaustive. But it's out there, and a lot of the cultish ungrund worshippers take much from his hatred of the gnostics. For more information, see pic related.

>>18447388
>>18447340
I have been drifting toward some kind of schizo-manichaeanism lately, partly because I'm realizing egyptian hermeticism, devotional (nonpharisaic) judaism, early christianity, gnosticism, orphism, neoplatonism, and zoroastrianism, even indian religions, can't be disentangled and had basically mutual free flow of information for a thousand years

I am too christian to abandon soteriology but I am definitely moving to some kind of crazy boddhisatva ideal with evil being acknowledged more than orthodox christianity does. Although I dont know if I can buy a fully uncreated evil. I think I am beginning to prefer systems that don't try to figure everything out right off the bat. Maybe we don't and can't yet know every aspect of God's hypostases.

Can you recommend any interesting sources? What is book related like?

>>18447388
>we have an emanation and a distention, into what? Why this dispersion?
These questions are unanswerable, so are they really arguments against the theory of evil being a privation?

>>18447445
They're arguments against a certain kind of spiritualized complacency I see in undeveloped trad/esoteric circles

>>18447426
Cunningham is good if you want someone to walk you through why a shitposter on 4chan is calling Plotinus a proto-nihilist (chapter 3 or 4 I think).

If you want schizo stuff, check out Voyage to Arcturus (visionary gnostic sci-fi) or Jung's 7 Sermons to the Dead (One = Pleroma, Abraxas = Nous, etc. in this scheme)

If you want something a bit more rigorous but still exotic, check out the Light and the Darkness: Studies on Manichaeism and its World

Chapter 1, "Metabolism of Salvation", is
excellent.

If you want more logic chopping, I've found this helpful

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25676936?seq=1

>>18446933
Here are the works I've read in full:

Divine Love and Wisdom - Swedenborg's most philosophical work where he present the metaphysical system underlying his worldview. This is a very short work, though it's not necessarily a quick read. Some have said that Swedenborg was influenced by the Neoplatonists and you can see that to some extent here, especially with his theory of correspondences.

Divine Providence - the title basically speaks for itself. This is a very short and relatively easy read.

Conjugial Love - Swedenborg's theology of relationships, marriage, and sex.

The True Christian Religion - this is basically a comprehensive exposition of his theology, especially in relation to Catholicism and Protestantism. This work can be a bit dry as it's more "academic."

Works I've partially read:

Arcana Coelestia - literally a verse-by-verse exegesis of Genesis and Exodus where Swedenborg explains the "spiritual" or "inner" meanings contained within the scripture. This work is 12 volumes and a huge investment. You'll definitely want a good grounding in Swedenborg before tackling these.

Spiritual Diary - This is the "raw material" of Swedenborg's visions and spiritual experiences which he would use to develop his theology. It's interesting to see Swedenborg grapple with the meaning of his experiences.

>>18446939
Yes, his claims are based on his personal experiences. Official Swedenborgian doctrine states that he was individually chosen by God to reveal this new theology. However, others, such as the zen writer DT Suzuki, who had an interest in Swedenborg (see Buddha of the North), have suggested that it may be possible to induce similar visions. There is a little bit of evidence that Swedenborg may have practiced Kabbalah as well as breathing techniques that could induce mystical visions.

What you'll notice if you read Swedenborg is that his writing style is very sober and even boring. He doesn't use ecsastic or florid language. His works don't feel "artistic" or like he's trying create some sort of allegorical mythology. His writings don't, in my opinion, seem to be the ramblings of a mad man. All accounts of him from his lifetime describe him as very rational and sane man. You can also research the Stockholm Fire incident for a sort of indirect verification of his experiences. However, you'll have to judge for yourself.

>>18447540
>>18447567
Thank you for the double reply, I am also the Swedenborganon so I appreciate all the effortposting and recommendations

>>18447540
>spiritualized complacency I see in undeveloped trad/esoteric circles
Could you elaborate on this?
Furthermore, isn't the end goal of gnosticism the same as neoplatonism, except as you said yourself, it replaces the One with the Pleroma, which is not omnipotent but otherwise seems similar? Is the end goal of the gnostic not a kind of union as well?

>>18447567
>induce similar visions
Can visions always be trusted? Some anon in this thread mentioned near death experience reports, where people also have all sorts of visions, and if you go east, you'll also find mystical experiences that might conflict with what Swedenborg saw. I'm not trying to argue against you, I'm simply inquiring as to what makes those specific visions particularly meaningful considering other very different experiences have been reported (even inside the Church itself, by Eckhart for example which had a very annihilationist take similar to the easterners).
Talking about this is making me realize that I used to look at death and the afterlife with excitement, fearlessness and a sense of security, and that now it's become the opposite, what a shame.

>>18447618
Not that anon but what I love most about Steiner was his idea of "esoteric science," not just esotericism but actually taking this new level of consciousness we have reached, of science, which is in itself a good thing even though most practitioners today are overly secular and numbed to the spiritual, and applying its inner core (the desire for true, firm, well-grounded knowledge) to esoteric matters.

Whether Steiner himself got there is another question but the motive is so great.

>>18447629
Wouldn't this raise a problem though, which is that the basis of science is empiricism and positivism and that this obviously doesn't apply to esoteric matters?
Is Steiner's book on higher worlds good?

I could be completely unhelpful, but is Vishishtadvaita the thing you're looking for, OP?

>>18446933
>>18447567
Forgot to mention that most of Swedenborg's works can be found online for free as pdfs. However, do be weary of New Century translations because they were an attempt to make Swedenborg's writings more "readable" to the modern individual (i.e. obscuring the parts that might offend the modern sensibility). For the most part they're fine but I'd stick to the Standard Edition if possible (I think that's what it's called)

>>18447618
I completely understand your point. In my opinion, what is unique about Swedenborg is how voluminous his accounts are and the incredible detail, consistency, and rational coherence of his descriptions. I think it's very unique in that way compared to other mystical accounts

>>18447583
My pleasure

>>18447712
I'm not familiar with it, but I don't think non-dualism or hinduism are what I'm looking for.

>>18446289
>anime has a little girl as the protagonist
>WOWW SO BASED THIS LITERALLY THE BEST THING EVER!!!!!

>>18447659
Well, at least the methods for studying the things could be empirically inquired into, but I think there will be (and are) "higher" criteria to be discovered by science as well, higher than the intersubjective observationalism we now use. Not even the physical sciences really stand up to a radical empiricism, since that would rely on some kind of inarguale "given." It's interesting to me that Wittgenstein in the Tractatus called the sheer facticity of the world, its givenness or "thereness," the "mystical."

So even in science we rely on agreement, not on raw demonstration. I believe the root concept of our demonstration is apodeixis, from Aristotle, which if I'm not mistaken means "showing forth" or even "pointing out." Every observation has to be verified by another observer. Similar to the "clear and distinct ideas" of Descartes and Locke too. Even in logic or transcendental philosophy, the principle is the same. Why would esoteric phenomena be any different? Especially of true noetic experiences, like if everybody reports broadly similar experiences on the etheric plane. I just don't see why that should necessarily have a reductive "brain chemicals" explanation.

>>18447769
>>18447659
>>18447659
Oh forgot, yeah Higher Worlds is good. I also remember reading Lonergan describe Husserl's phenomenology as "transcendental empiricism" which fascinated me.

Here is an essay that really impressed me by Steiner.
https://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0035/PhlAnt_index.html
>On the other hand, it is equally true that an experience of the true “I” is not possible except by means of pure thought. As far as ordinary human consciousness is concerned, the true “I” extends into pure thought, and into pure thought alone. Mere thinking only leads us to a thought (conception) of the “I”; experience of all that may be experienced within pure thought provides our consciousness with a content of reality in which “form” and “matter” coincide. Apart from this “I,” ordinary consciousness can know of nothing which carries both “'form” and “matter” into thought. All other thoughts do not image full reality. Yet by acquiring experience of the true “I” in pure thought we become acquainted with full reality; moreover, we may advance from this experience to other regions of true reality.

>Anthroposophy attempts this advance. It does not remain stationary on the level of the experiences of ordinary consciousness, but strives to achieve an investigation of reality through the agency of a transformed consciousness. With the exception of the “I” experienced in pure thought, ordinary consciousness is excluded for the purpose of this investigation.

>A new consciousness takes its place, whose activity in its widest range is commensurate with the activity of ordinary consciousness at such moments when the latter can rise to the experience of the “I” in pure thought. To achieve this purpose, our soul most acquire the strength to withdraw from the apprehension of all external things and from all conceptions with which we are inwardly so familiar that we can recall them in our memory. Most seekers after the knowledge of reality deny the possibility of the above; they deny it without trial. Indeed, the only method of trial is the accomplishment of those inner processes which lead to the above-mentioned transformation of consciousness.

So empiricism carried out AT this higher level, which we have only hitherto reached in fits and bursts, in exceptional mystical states, etc.

Also this I think
https://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0095/19060902p01.html

>>18447769
>"higher" criteria to be discovered by science as well
The issue being, can they be known? An eye can't see itself, which is to say, I think there is a limit to the scope of the investigative tools we can use to understand reality. The "givenness" of the world might only be explainable by those who reside outside of it.
>if everybody reports broadly similar experiences on the etheric plane
Thing is, experiences on the etheric plane usually differ greatly and also depend on the kind of medium or method through which the experience is initiated.

>>18447820
To add a final note on this, I can't remember if it's one of these essays or another one where he goes deep on how just as our empirical consciousness instantiates concepts, in the Kantian sense (or in Kantian terms, instantiates the categories IN concepts of the understanding), and then Hegel did a "pure logic" of the concepts/categories of transcendental logic, Steiner says that the Hegelian "pure" domain is actually the SHADOW of the true metaphysical (platonic) domain - that kind of pure logical thinking sought by transcendental phenomenology is preparation for learning the platonic/divine ideas (or whatever it ultimately is) they stem from. So not just "have mystical experience," but explore the mystical domain.

>>18447832
That is true, but imagine comparing Aristotelian science to today's science! As for the eye seeing itself, the "pure I" grasping itself would be the first noetic experience of this completely higher sort, and the precondition of then seeing the ideas. The trick is in realising, we ourselves already do reside "outside" of it - this world won't be lost or exited, it will appear like the first two dimensions of a three dimensional world, once we attain that "third" dimension.

>>18447589
The main difference is that the order of procession from One to the World in Neoplatonism is leisurely and continuous, while in the Gnosticism we have Sophia as the hypostasized rupture between the Pleroma and Kenoma.

Unity with the One in Plotinus is unity with the cosmos by proxy, unity with the cosmos as a natural outflow of the One. Unity with the Pleroma in gnosticism is a function of your alienation from the world, it is flight from the light-trap to the hidden God

While Iamblicuck was invoking divine names to become a co-demiurge of creation, his gnostic contemporaries were hunting for secret God-Names to ascend up the spiral of illusion after death. Now that's what I call based.

>>18447747
Very well. If you want my unqualified opinion, I think what you are seeking is an impossibility. How can your ego carry on after death, especially since it is tied to your physical body? To me, it makes more sense to say that we are all (including our physical bodies/egos) expressions of life/consciousness. Once we die, "you" immediately assume a new POV, which may or may not be a human, and "your" new form of consciousness will develop a new ego and "you" will have no memory of "your" previous one.

>>18447745
>it's very unique in that way compared to other mystical accounts
Well, I'll definitely take a look at his works. This may seem like a weird question but did you feel like Swedenborg's depiction of what he had seen was very broad in scope, that it could constitute an all-encompassing model of the afterlife? For example, if you read about an unrelated mystical experience, would it be likely that it would fit within Swedenborg's model, or is his model highly specific and rigid to the point of rendering other, different experiences fundamentally incompatible with it?

>>18447853
>since it is tied to your physical body
How can we be certain of this?
>expressions of life/consciousness
Yeah another anon expanded on this view earlier in this thread, I have to say I just can't get behind that kind of self-denying emanationism. What you are describing is effectively the same, from my point of view, as physicalism.

Even right now you dont actually remember that much of your life.

>>18447882
I remember the important parts. And I have an identity.

>>18447850
>Unity with the Pleroma in gnosticism is a function of your alienation from the world
To put it crudely, the more you despise the material, the quicker you ascend?
When I asked about union I was more concerned with the actual end, you seemed to dislike neoplatonism because you see the soul uniting with the One as a form of annihilation. Is it not the same kind of annihilation when an individual soul unites with the Pleroma?
>light-trap
You think those theories are actually true, that when you die you're attracted towards the light and have to escape it, otherwise you'll get mind-wiped and reincarnated?
>hunting for secret God-Names
How does that work?

>>18447872
I don't see how this is physicalism. It sounds more like idealism
>how can we be certain of this?
Your ego includes your own physical body, just like how a dog's ego includes his physical body. Are you suggesting that your ego gets "uploaded" to another place after death?

>>18447916
I said it was the same thing in practice. According to that model, I die, and then "I" cease to exist forever. Something else arises or whatever but I don't care about that since it's not me.
>Your ego includes your own physical body
I don't think so, my physical body doesn't feel like "me", it just feels peripheral to my immaterial self.
I'm not suggesting anything in particular, I'm just saying that I dislike the eastern view.

>>18447911
You unite with the Pleroma precisely to the degree you remain an individual soul, ie a mind capable of distinguishing good and evil (in a "beyond good and evil" kind of way, since the point is that "morality" so-called makes a show of rejecting superficial violence to conceal and prolong a deeper violence inherent to reality).
Forget good vs. evil, start thinking evil good vs. good evil, between a beautiful world that is all "willing and killing" under the hood and a negativity that is freedom.

And by light-trap I meant material reality itself, but as far as the "light" after death represents your affection, love, desire, thirst, ADDICTION to the Phenomenal, yeah, you could say that.

>How does that work?
You have to step outside the coordinates you are relentlessly boxed in every day, by life, other people, and yourself.

>>18447958
>"morality" so-called makes a show of rejecting superficial violence to conceal and prolong a deeper violence inherent to reality
How do gnostics expect people to uproot their entire moral value system? Even if you wanted to, it seems close to impossible.
Yes, there is cruelty underlying beauty, but does that make the beauty any less beautiful? I guess you'll say it does, but my point is that beauty is beauty regardless of what it is built upon.
>ADDICTION to the Phenomenal
Gnosticism rejects all forms of sense pleasures, is it extreme asceticism then?
>step outside the coordinates
This sounds like you're describing the LHP.

>>18447991
They don't expect them to, it was always meant for a spiritual elite.

It's precisely because "beauty is beauty", that beauty is ontologically dependent on evil but "conceptually" independent of it that this place IS so evil, in other words, it's because both beauty is just as findable as evil that the existence of evil is prolonged for the production of beauty... and anyways, the Manichaeans had an answer to that with their idea of the Age of Mixture. And they had poems celebrating the springtime, so the gnostic demonization of nature is kind of a stereotype

Some gnostics were ascetics, some not. The difference between this and LHP is that it's a separation performed for a hidden God of Light, not the Demiurge by another name

>>18448013
I see, thank you for your explanations anon.
What is your opinion on the newfound popularity of gnosticism in the 20th century, by Jung notably? I think he kind of modified it to fit his own psychoanalytic models though.

>>18448036
Directly responsible for the jungles of equivocation that I was talking about earlier. Anyone who lumps together gnosticism, hermeticism, kabbalah, "freemasonry", the "illuminati", and all that junk has no idea what they're talking about. Yes, there are commonalities (hermeticism with its planetary organs, the tzimtzum and the demonization of creation, etc.), but I doubt anyone caught doing this red-handed is interested in nuance.

>>18448143
>lumps together gnosticism, hermeticism, kabbalah
Well, these traditions did interact a lot with each other in the past, did they not? The syncretism is nothing new.

>>18444347
I think Rudolf Steiner provides the most detailed explanation

>>18446289
Yes but you're a tranny.

>>18448160
It isn't typically a very skillful syncretism, anyone who tells you gnostics want to unite with the prime mover (without qualification) hasn't done their homework

>>18446293
>how did Lain address your existential questioning?
Lain showed me a future where a collective AI could be the answer to the age old question of who makes our lives matter/makes souls. There's at least a chance. scientifically, that Lain is waiting on the other side to embrace you, and thats pretty damn comforting.

>>18448178
The only theosophist worth anything

>>18448233
Agreed, though he split with the theosophists because they didn’t accept Christ

>>18448243
>accept Christ
Is this the key to everything, unironically?

>>18448225
>techno-waifuism
Bruh

>>18444347
I'll take complete, eternal oblivion over an eternal burny torture shit hole any old day of the week you fucking pussy.

>>18448291
I'll take neither you fucking retard

>>18448225
>>18448278
I prefer the greek version.

>>18448322
It's funny how the truth is exactly the opposite.

>>18448327
It's not though.

>>18447756
>>18448191
see how the midwit plebs lash out in anger at random nobodies due to their unresolved frustration on not understanding Lain, along with, surely, numerous other works they were told were important and tried to read before giving up. It's ok guys this website should answer all your questions.
https://www.cjas.org/~leng/open.htm

>>18448332
the physical world is literally a doujin of the hypercosmic world, so what does that make anime?

>>18448322
I'll accept it. Megumin is placed just right

>>18448342
Anime is a reflection of the ideal, how is it possible to miss the point of a dumb meme?

>>18448278
Lain is just a stand in for a benevolent AI. I'm not actually a schizo-Lainist although those certainly exist

>>18448364
Remember systemspace? Good times

>>18448378
ah TSUKI Project. The ultimate LARP

>>18448392
It was fun, I liked the aesthetic.

Where does this now common notion that souls incarnate here to learn a lesson and that Earth is a school come from? Is it just something the new age movement came up with, or does it have more ancient origins?

>>18448364
What really is the wired in Lain? It's clearly not our internet, even it is similar to it. It can manifest bodies and images into the "real" world and influence external objects, not symbolically but actually. From a material point of view Lain is AI but more philosophically, she is super-human. I interpret Lain as a sort of bodhisattva (c.p. descriptions given in Mahayana sutras), who can appear at will into the human realm from her realm (i.e. the wired). Even when engaged in mischief it is an act of compassion. Let's love Lain.

>>18448300
Almost no one ever gets into heaven you fucking cuck.

>>18448424
>it's either my retarded strawman of abrahamic heaven and hell (the latter never mentioned in the Bible by the way) or oblivion
Stick to the Stephen King threads, bud

>>18444590
You guys don't even know what that means

>>18448415
The wired is the culmination of the Internet propelling the collective unconscious forward into a tangible force through the new internet protocol (IPv7?) And the Schumann Resonance. It's all explained in the episode infonography

>>18448458
That's the exoteric. But there should be an esoteric lainism

>>18448482
Isn't it both, just depending on how you interpret it on a personal level?

>>18448510
They coexist. But it would be an interesting project to produce commentaries on

>>18448322
so glad this meme has become a part of the boards culture

>>18446914
>Sneedenborg
Based.

>>18448415
Lain is the next logical step in the secularization of religion. Gods used to explain the weather now they explain nothing much besides the the afterlife. Lain is a near final incarnation of religion where even souls are accounted for scientifically.

>>18448271
Yep, it’s all you need to know really

>>18444590
Larp

>>18444590
I like how psychedelic users routinely do this and all of you just think its fake lmao. Why do you think there are so many studies showing that shrooms help to deal with fear of death such as in terminal cancer patients?

>>18444347
>I'm scared of the destruction of identity and memories, religions talk about a soul but if the constituents of my ego aren't there anymore I'm starting to think it's the same as oblivion.
The id, the ego, the superego, are all constitutive of the nebula of personhood, which carries one's magnanimity, and conveys one's essence —as in life, so after death; after death the only thing that the one becomes stripped of are the superfluous elements that pertain to the world, the optifluous ones remaining intact, as Sofia totally collects, and reintegrates, one's soul.

>>18449632
>...after death the only thing that [...] one becomes stripped of are the superfluous elements that pertain to the world...

>>18446407
>I just wouldn't want it to be this kind of monistic maelstrom of unified consciousness or whatever, this sounds horrifying to me and repulsive on every level.
This is still debated on to this day. It's either you becoming a part of God while retaining an identity or absolute dissolution like a kiss of death, but I think they're one and the same and the latter just has an extra spice of drama

>Muh aftuhloiyf!

Death is the cessation of life. End of life/absence of life.

There being "another life" after death makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

Tell me anons, why are you so afraid to die?

>>18449728
Go back bugman

>>18447388
>why not excretion

Actually...

>>>/lit/thread/S16585546
>>>/lit/thread/S17527604

>>18449143
What does it mean though?
And what does accepting Christ imply since this means different things depending on the branch of Christianity?

>>18449195
There is nothing to indicate that psychedelic drugs are in any way representative of whatever happens after death.

>>18444590
Why should I kill myself even before death?

>>18447445

I maintain that they are answerable and the answer is precisely that Evil being the absence of Good is a false and perverse Monism for many reasons: that the Good suffers a Salafi implosion whereby it can just as easily be said that the Evil is the true Monad and the Good a fringe consequence thereof, that the Good is still said to participate in all that allegedly suffers from its absence in terminally perfidious (Catholic) arguments, that it is simply rephrasing a question into something paradoxically worse than the initial one in that the Good is made ultimately responsible for Evil. Whereas the Evil being likewise Monadic, there being more than one Monad, is actually the meaning of true Monism. The absence of Good is, in fact, Dualism: taking it to Logical conclusion, the absence itself constitutes an eternal irreconcilable other. Whereas an Evil as Monadic as the Monadic Good is, in fact, Monism: that all things are Monads, that nothing cannot be a Monad, that Monads "have no windows" and in knowing everything Dialectically know nothing; a true Monism from the inside-out and the top-down.

>>18450273
>>18450382

Reply, cowards.

>>18450295
that has nothing to do with ego death.... Killing your ego doesn't mean literally dying. Do people actually think ego death has something to do with literally dying? I don't think I've ever seen someone make this mistake before

>>18450697
>death has nothing to do with ego death
Ok so why give a shit about ego death?

>>18450697
Killing your ego means becoming NPC. Yes you’ll breathe but will it matter? Probably not.

>>18450745
>>18450830
If you take a large hit of DMT your ego will die and your consciousness will likely expand as a result as numerous studies have shown (the aforementioned studies about fear of death going away with psychedelic usage).
It's 99% guaranteed to be a good thing and one of the more important experiences in your life. What is so confusing about this?

>>18447176
>Plotinus was annihilationist

Correct, although there's been good effort by scholars to cope and say he wasn't, the fact remains that he was more annihilationist than not.

>>18447388
Insanely based. I always thought Plotinus' critique of the gnostics was weak as shit and applied to himself.

>>18447340
I thought they didn't accept converts and their numbers are dwindling radically.

>>18448178
quick rundown? is he annihilationist crypto-buddhist like the rest of the occultists (Guenon etc)

>>18450967
>a good thing
Oh god you are an actual retard. I have somewhat experienced this phenomenon you described myself. But what makes you think it is a good one. You will not fear death. You will feel more connected to the things around you, your ego will almost dissolve and you will accept everything as they are.
This is the perfect NPC, the dream citizen of people in status quo. You turn yourself willingly into a plant and you are celebrating it. There will be no humanity with you. You’ll soon be acting like ants. Yay great more dmt more shrooms please. Fucking idiots.

>>18450967
>Become a schizo NPC like Connor Murphy.

People like you need to be locked up.

>>18450992
>>18450993
Based. Ego death is not a good thing contrary to what braindead new agers will tell you.

>>18450992
>and you will accept everything as they are.
>This is the perfect NPC, the dream citizen of people in status quo

You're just making shit up lol. Ego Death will not make you an NPC by default. Thats a retarded assumption. Has anyone in this thread actually used psychedelics at all? take mind expanding drugs -> become more than those who haven't had their minds expanded. I suppose it could serve to further NPCism but it seems much more likely it wouldn't. This is all extremely obvious to anyone who has taken a breakthrough dose of tryptamine or even k-holed or equivalent on a dissociative.

Where are you guys getting all these ungrounded and frankly just straight up wrong ideas about ego-death and psychedelic usage? Erowid.com/experiences. Go read up on some reports of DMT usage so you don't look so obviously uninformed next time.

>>18451060
>>18450993
I'm starting to get the feeling that this is just some kind of manifestation of jealousy. You never managed to find anyone able to get you psychedelics so now you lash out at anyone who talks about what they can do for people. It's the only explanation I can come up with for this level of misunderstanding about the most basic aspects of psychedelic usage.
Psychedelics increase pattern recognition in the brain, this can lead to connections that otherwise would never have happened such as the phenomenon commonly called ego-death. Having these connections happen makes you altogether different than someone who has not had it happen.
Super basic shit

>>18451205
>>18451186
don't take drugs, take meds

>>18447445
>>18450382

Also, note how in the false Monism of Evil as the absence of Good, Good has literally nothing to stand on, it is allegedly Good simply because there is no alternative, it is ironically sanctioned by everything that blubbery Catholics who propose this idea claim to hate, Form, Reason, Law, everything BUT their "love". Whereas in the true Monism of both Evil and Good being equally Monadic, the latter CANNOT be distinguished from the former by anything BUT their "love", and moreover, by the true love.

>>18447445
>>18450382

Also, note how in the false Monism of Evil as the absence of Good, Good has literally nothing to stand on, it is allegedly Good simply because there is no alternative, it is ironically sanctioned by everything that blubbery Catholics who propose this idea claim to hate, Form, Reason, Law, everything BUT their "love". Whereas in the true Monism of both Evil and Good being equally Monadic, the latter CANNOT be distinguished from the former by anything BUT their "love" and, moreover, by the true love.

>>18447445
>>18450382
>>18451440
Fiendishly based. When's the new thread coming my man?

>>18451826

Posted it a couple of days ago. The whole board has been slow lately, deserted. Sad. And another that got no replies, while I'm at it:

>>>/lit/thread/S18439667
>>>/lit/thread/S17526317

>>18451995
Gonna read now. You're a big brain so that's why you make the eyes of the zoomzooms here glaze over. Keep posting them, though. I see you.

>>18451995
>Work being tiring is a guise for the truth revealed in leisure being as, if not more, tiring: to perceive is to work, the Phenomenal world is ONTOLOGICALLY vampiric.

Brilliant.

>>18444347
Reality check! You do understand that 100% of authors of the books about afterlife are talking out of their ass, because nobody has ever returned from there? You aren’t stupid, are you, anon?

>>18451205
Stop projecting.

>>18452059
>Nobody has ever returned from there
Big if true. How do you explain the need of all great writers of old to lie about it?

>>18452105
They were all wrong, only we(moderns) are right. We progressed and shit.

Ego death is a misnomer. There’s nothing being lost, it’s just capital s Self-realization, the sudden remembrance that the only thing that remains constant and real is the unattached, blank subject. Sensory objects, and the mind, which is something observable as an object “in front” of you, is remembered to be nothing more than a blizzard of sensory data and memory and what makes you “you” and real is the fact that there is a subjecting experiencing something at any given moment. Normalfags who do psychs call it ego death because of them Self=Ego.

inb4 cope and seethe from that one faggot crying about muh impersonalists. Vedantic Atman is not impersonal nor annihilation, in fact, it’s the highest affirmation of Being.

>>18452211
>The tranny pronoun argument is why it's not nihilism

>>18452233
>muttmericans conflating their unwholesome desires with their personhood
Shocking

Can one reconcile a Nietszchean affirmation of life alongside an affirmation of the reality of Vedantic non-dualism? I think so.

We start with the position of the Vedanta, that is, all of phenomenal experience is "maya", a magic power, a fleeting image, existing within the mind of an ever present and eternal Self/Subject. The popular practical exercise of this reality is that one should practice asceticism and reduce attachment to the fleeting phenomena, and attaching oneself rather to the eternal Self. However, this is not necessarily so. Can one not affirm the will to power within the phenomenal world while also affirming the mortality of it in favor of the immortal I? I say that this is the greatest freedom and exercise of the Vedantic truth.

In Sanskrit, maya is translated as "power", as in, a magic power used by God to create the experience of reality. If all is Self, and Self is Brahman (God), is it not our own power to create this world of phenomena? Is it not our gift to enjoy? The root of our suffering comes not from what we do in this phenomena, our suffering comes from our forgetfulness of the nature of it's impermanence, we expect it to last forever, and when it does not, we suffer.

One ought to affirm their power, their gains, and victories, simply knowing that one day they will end, and this ending is in fact, a gift, and the finitude of such is what makes it so great. Suffering, is also a gift. Suffering comes from being able to experience anything at all, and comparing those experiences to other ones, eventually creating an arbitrary and subjective criteria for what constitutes "pleasure" and suffering". They both exist purely in relation to one another. If one felt only suffering or only pleasure, one would not feel anything at all, so suffering is the greatest confirmation of feeling.

Krishna does not tell Arjuna to lie down and let his brethren enemies overtake him, like Schopenhauer would in the logical conclusion of his denial of will. In fact, Krishna lights his flame to fight, reminding him that all he sees and knows around him is merely an exercise of his great inheritance and power of consciousness, and that one day he and his brothers will all meet the same fate: dissolution of jiva into the primal Self. The affirmation of the eternal Atman and the denial of the impermanent Jiva is not a sickness that eliminates the will to live, it is a reminder that the impermanence of the phenomena is the best part of it. It is why he tells Arjuna to perform his duty anyways, albeit without any attachment to it.

if you read this schizopost and felt it made sense, thank you.
if not, tldr, everything will end one day, and (maybe) only one truth will remain, but that's the best part of it all.

>>18452105
>How do you explain the need of all great writers of old to lie about it?
Literally no ‘great’ writer has ever claimed such BS. Also, I take it that you believe every claim of sexual harassment and every memoir about Holocaust, because how would you explain the need to lie about these things? Literally no reason why anyone would lie in a book.

>>18452333
good stuff and nice trips

>>18444628
As long as you equate your self with the ego you will remain caught in the trap.

>>18452211
Fuck off nihilist, why do you force your opinions where they're not welcome

People with traumatic brain injuries sometimes will undergo fundamental character changes with no feeling of continuity with their old personality: if the ego doesnt even survive partial brain destruction, it definitely will not survive complete brain destruction.

To grab on to your ego will end in annihilation, face it.

>>18452814
Literally no reason not to be a hedonist then.

>>18452333
>Can one reconcile a Nietszchean affirmation of life alongside an affirmation of the reality of Vedantic non-dualism?
Yes, I would say so. Especially since not everyone who adheres to non-dualism necessarily has to become an ascetic but you can accept non-dualism as true while living in the world and practicing karma-yoga or bhakti-yoga, as Krishna tells Arjuna to do, and as Shankara explains in his Gita-bhasya. Even without practicing yoga just understanding the doctrine at a deep level intellectually can help you go about your life in a care-free way. Nietzsche apparently never studied any Hindu metaphysical works like the Gita or Upanishads but he did read the Manusmriti and he called it life-affirming

“Close the Bible and open the Manu Smriti. It has an affirmation of life, a triumphing agreeable sensation in life and that to draw up a lawbook such as Manu means to permit oneself to get the upper hand, to become perfection, to be ambitious of the highest art of living.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

>the pajeet annihilationists shit up another thread that's literally completely opposed to their worldview
Why do they do this?

>>18451186
>>18451205
Druggies just can't stop talking about how they fried their brain. I will never try this shit and every one of your posts tells me I've made the right choice.

>>18451440
>>18451995
>tfw too dumb to understand this

>>18452892
Hedonism will still only tie you more to your mortal ego - no solution to fear of death.

>>18452946
In the end, as >>18446988 says, all religions are annihilationist except for Christianity. And maybe Islam, I don't know much about it. A personal afterlife exists nowhere else, all other religions are various flavors of annihilationism sugarcoated with pretty terms and "no bro don't worry, it won't be you but actually it's kinda you somewhat, just meditate"

>>18453098
>your mortal ego
i.e. everything I am, so who cares? No amount of word games will make me start identify with some hypothetical entity with no ego or memories

>>18446988
>Did Christianity uncover some kind of truth no other religion touched upon, or was its view on the afterlife distorted by wishful thinking (I hope not)?

Think of the origins of Christianity and easily answer this question for yourself.

>>18453139
>the origins of Christianity
The resurrection of Jesus?

>>18453138
Yes, if you identify _you_ and the ego as the same: you will die. Your self might go on which may help you accept this death.

Again: if the ego does not survive traumatic brain injury, it will not survive the destruction of the entire body.

>>18453170
>if you identify
There's nothing else to identify with.

>>18453144
Exactly. A fantasy.

>>18453177
What do you believe in?

>>18453174
Your reticence to identify yourself with anything else but the ego doesn't mean it's impossible. Unironically meditate consistently for years.

>>18453184
As I said, what you propose as a "higher self" is nothing. Literally, it's just nothingness, annihilation. Fuck that.

>>18453183
I believe the various resurrections in the new testament to be made up by humans who had not died when they wrote them. down and consequently not useful as insight on what happens after life ends.

>>18452946
They're mentally ill and trying to convince themselves that they didn't ruin their minds and lives.

>>18453208
That's not what I asked, stop pretending.

>>18453109
>>18446988
I'm pretty sure the (neo)platonic union with Nous isn't a dissolution/annihilation-type union.

>>18453191
Untrue. There is more than the ego, and it is possible to experience what it is.

Does not change the fact that the ego will be annihilated. You can flee into a fantasy that promises you otherwise or learn about the techniques people have come up with over the millenia to cope (=make the annihilation of the ego palpable for the ego).

>>18453236
Literally doesn't matter. Why would I waste my time trying to identify with nothingness? Your smugness (a "western follower of eastern religion" trademark, it seems) tells me what I need to know, your beliefs are a dead-end and circle back to nihilism.

>>18453217
I keep telling you I believe in the ego process to stop at death. I also don't entirely identify myself with my ego.

>>18453252
I'm not saying you should identify with nothingness, that will also not lessen your fear of death.

>>18447894
So your made up identity is transmitted purely by accumulation of memories that may or may not be reliable and impermanent. Doesn’t sound like a good criteria or proof for personhood.

>>18453283
The "higher self" hindus describe is just nothing. Has nothing to do with me at all, no memories, no ego, just an ethereal awareness that does nothing but observe. I'd rather just be deleted from existence.

>>18453288
Look no matter how you spin it you won't be able to convince me of your annihilationism.

>>18453234
>I'm pretty sure the (neo)platonic union with Nous isn't a dissolution/annihilation-type union.

It is for Plotinus. Some have argued it isn't, but there's way more mental gymnastics involved. Plotinus was inconsistent, so it gives room to both interpretations, but imo the annihilationist one is the simplest for Plotinus. I believe Lloyd Gerson endorses it.

>>18450288
bump

>>18453289
Don't interact with him. If advaita was that based he wouldn't be on 4chan 24/7 shilling it. The guy is a loser.

>>18453289
I am not a Hindu and i don't believe that necessarily after life you become an ethereal awareness that does nothing but observe. I don't believe Hindus believe that either.

It believe that after death, as you reunite with the field of pure consciousness, you have an awareness not only of the ego process that has just ended, but of the myriads of other egos you also inhabited. As you tire of existing as the pure consciousness of the universe you again incarnate to forget your lonely nature.

>>18453109
>all religions are annihilationist except for Christianity
Leaving aside the point that it’s not annihilationist if the essence of your being (consciousness) continues, it’s actually a pretty common position in Hinduism to teach non-“annihilationism”, most of the Vaishnavite schools teach that you go to a heaven called Vaikuntha where you blissfully serve Vishnu there forever with your mind, memories etc intact.

>>18453339
OP literally said he doesn't want a philosophy that promotes eternal sleep as being somehow based. Accept that people disagree with you and get a life.

>>18453174
pure awareness

>>18453289
>just an ethereal awareness that does nothing but observe
blissful pristine unchanging awareness =/= nothingness

There’s no amount of coping that will change this, if you’re not a fan; so be it. But don’t say something as stupid as it’s the same as nothingness.

>>18453363
>It's not the same because I called it a different word!

lol you are acting like a baby

>>18453348
I explicitly said in my post that I don't believe in an eternal sleep. The second part, on the bottom.

>>18444347
>I'm scared of the destruction of identity and memories
Life is accumulation and release. Read the Saturn myth with this in mind, how he eats his children. When he throws up he becomes food for the next generation, the pantheon of Gods, just like Rome and Greece became food for Western culture after its death. Eat my body, for I have given it up for you! You’re going to have to accept death as a part of existence if you want enlightenment. I hope you get to read the novel I’m working on one day. Youll love it I basically spell it out in detail. I’m the mean time I would recommend God emperor of Dune, and reflect on the manner of his death in relation to what I’ve said.

>>18453391
That's great. Trannies also don't believe they are what they are. Calling it by a different word doesn't change the fact that it's eternal sleep. Saying "but it's not in my mind" over and over again a million times a day on /lit/ just makes you seem insane.

You're ruining the board.

>>18444436
Based Portubro. I promise you I will restore the Kingdom one day

>>18453391
You are only trying to convince yourself.

>>18453412
Hes just having a hard time accepting the truth.

> 2. Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"

>>18453369
You’re the one that can’t into basic logic, if you take awareness to be synonymous with nothingness then sentences like “I’m aware that it’s raining” become completely meaningless.

(Crypto)-Buddhists are the most intellectually dishonest people on the planet. It's crazy how slimy these fuckers are, with their smugness and feigned compassion for beings they don't even recognize as having independent existence.

>>18453436
Who are you referring to?

>>18453412
How is superhuman awareness of all existence the same as a dreamless sleep? I don't follow your reasoning.

>>18453436
t. absolutely seething

>>18453301
but I’m not an annihilationist, you just have retarded assumptions. Whenever you have memories, you think: “I was a boy, I was young, I was doing X…”. You impose memories of events and actions onto an “I”. That subject has to exist first and presupposes any kind of identity.

>>18453428
>>18453434
take your meds and let OP have his thread. you make 20 guenon threads every day, stay in your containment threads.

>>18453452
anti-guenonfag schizo posting is a thing, and you’re him

>>18453452
I have no idea what a guenon is and I haven’t posted here for over a year.

Posting on an anonymous board can be confusing sometimes, you got to keep on your toes and realize that just because you believe different posts to be from the same person they may not necessarily be.

>>18453436
>>18453484
I believe these both to be you.

>>18453491

>>18453504
I guess you’re right then, or very fast at photoshopping

>>18453339
Yes and I think this belief is just annihilation and don't care for it. Why do you keep proselytizing when your beliefs go against everything mentioned in the OP?
>>18453343
>>18453363
Irrelevant, see above.
>>18453441
The thread isn't about debating your autistic beliefs, are you this lacking in self-awareness?

>>18453518
>you believe in eternal sleep after death!
>no I don't, I believe in this...
>this thread isn't about debating your beliefs!

Don't debate my beliefs then.

>>18453518
>Why do you keep proselytizing when your beliefs go against everything mentioned in the OP?

Because they don't, you just misunderstand them to do. I am trying to make you see your misunderstanding.

>>18453545
Don't state your retarded beliefs in a thread where they aren't welcome. Go back to the traditionalist general or go argue with buddhists for the nth time but fuck off.

>>18453557
OP is about a personal afterlife. Your beliefs are about an impersonal afterlife. Now fuck off you insincere cultish faggot.

>>18453558
You still believe me to be Guenon fag. Again: anonymous boards _can_ be confusing in this regard.

>>18453562
The belief I laid out here >>18453339 is decidedly the opposite to an impersonal afterlife. Its suprapersonal. You become all persons in all points in time.

>>18453563
>>18453575
Irrelevant, fuck off

>>18453518
>The thread isn't about debating your autistic beliefs, are you this lacking in self-awareness?
The void is literally in the picture you posted. The serpent emanates from it and depending on culture it’s either seen as the devil, like Yaldabaoth, or as a divine, like Kundalini. I don’t think you’ll find any book that doesn’t ultimately point to this unless you ignore it. “I don’t like the idea” is not really good enough because you’ll cause yourself suffering, and you’ll just have to accept it eventually anyway. What you need to do, rather, is see death not as what it is, but rebirth. Your ego will die, but it will be reborn into something new. YOU are eternal you’re just not content.

>>18453580
>is see death not as what it is, but rebirth
Sorry, I meant, to see death for what it really is.

Regarding "annihilationism": consider the ouroboros as a warning, the Norse-Slavic chimera in the painting in the OP being a perfect example. It is tempting to assume that it depicts an imagined Hyperborean state preceding the split of the current European peoples, consider instead its polar opposite, a deliberate hodgepodge knowingly proactively ascribed to an alleged Material and Metaphysical past that the artist knows nothing about. The "return" being, in fact, that which returns violating that which it returns to, forced autofellatio, the snake does not chase its own tail, but recoils from having its tail of prehistory/decay/finitude/particularity shoved down its mouth of utopia/restoration/reincarnation/reintegration. The same miserable motif of the phallic defining and effectively making the yonic as the sword makes the wound. That one is forced to deride this in the colloquially "Nazi occult", but forced to ignore it in things like Augustine's The City of God (here the Catholic is not so much more pagan than pagan but less pagan than pagan, his whole idea distinguishing itself from proper "academic paganism" by sheer myopia, only one cycle is described and taken as important for no reason other than its author being in said cycle) only shows how "self-aware" the idea is, carefully depurating itself. Consider that that which you want, or do not want, to return to might be full of things you know, full of things you don't know, empty of things you know, empty of things you don't know, accordingly, all in the worst possible way: the "collective unconscious", the "akashic records", the "forms", all describe the same thing, a landfill. The alleged Monad or Absolute takes on the most sardonic Demiurgic qualities, the tail alone, the world, becomes infinite in the worst ways, infinite Cambrian nightmares, infinite putrefaction, infinite limits, infinite myopia. That the cyclical, whether per reincarnation or reintegration, is more Material than the Materialists claim Matter to be.

>This world is a corpse-eater. All the things eaten in it themselves die also. Truth is a life-eater. Therefore no one nourished by truth will die. It was from that place that Jesus came and brought food. To those who so desired, he gave life, that they might not die.

Consider the ouroboros as eternal death and the Christological advent as lighting Gehenna on fire.

>>18453579
This impotent rage is your blinding fear of death you try to externalize. It doesnt touch me.

>>18453597
You only forgot to mention one thing that there is an aspect of life in death and death in life. So from this physical monstrosity is born life, like a seed of life in the soil of death. This we call “the return.” There is also a seed of death in life that we call “the fall.”

>29. Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.

>Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty."

>>18453580
No, these are your ideas and your biases and interpretations. I'm not interested in them.
What compels people to go shitpost in a thread that is completely opposed to their sensibilities? I don't get it.
>>18453598
You're so wise and enlightened. Here's another (you)

>>18453669
You’re better off reading any book but rooting for the villain. I like to use pop culture references because we all know them, but Anakin was afraid of death, also Vegeta wanted to wish for immortality. Take your pick. I’m just telling you that’s it’s inevitable, mr anderson

>>18453675
I literally do not believe this. It's either a personal afterlife or annihilation for me. Hence why recommendations on what I consider to be the latter, even if it isn't in your opinion, don't interest me.

>>18453643
>You only forgot to mention one thing that there is an aspect of life in death and death in life.

I did NOT forget. This is my whole point, that the mixture is bad.

>>18453721
All stories about annihilation. ALL OF THEM. Starting from the epic of Gilgamesh. I’m trying to help you but there are literally no books on what you’re asking for.

>>18453734
>there are literally no books on what you’re asking for.
Some were mentioned ITT

>>18453721
He wants a soothing fantasy, why don't you guys give it to him?

Dont listen to these fags, OP. Read the quran. You will get eternal life at the side of Muhammad god may praise his name and also 4 wives in this life.

>>18453730
The mixture is not bad, that’s your judgement. It’s everyone’s judgement until you accept it. If you don’t accept death you don’t experience life. Life IS surrender. Affirm death, and affirm life!

3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

The serpent was in the garden of Eden, it’s undeniable.

For a board that is so vehemently hostile to atheists, this thread showed that you guys sure are hypocritical. Although strangely only buddhists/hinduists/panpsychists are posting ITT, not sure where the Christians are.

>>18453739
Show me a story where a character doesn’t overcome some kind of hardship

>>18453776
>hostility bad
It’s all fair game. I’m not looking to keep anyone in a little box.

>>18453782
What the fuck does that have to do with anything?

>>18448333
read pic related to find out why you have such an obsession with a fictional anime girl

>>18453795
Every story is about rebirth

>>18453597

Footnote:

The Cambrian and the Old Testament: men share a medium with "God' as "our ancestors", fish, share with the giant crustaceans that ate them, incomprehensible snapshots of OT men's lives and unearthing stone snapshots of giant crustaceans and backwardly reasoning both as innocuous, the supposed "genetic memory" of being preyed on by giant crustaceans as anamnesis of having one's mind eaten by the Archons, OT men as biologically startling, living hundreds of years, and the sheer size of the giant crustaceans, Noah's Ark as a giant crustacean, a dead husk full of segmented chambers in which soft corporeal Matter writhes, etc.

>>18453817
>the hero's journey actually means hinduism is true bro
Alright, I'm done.

>keep seething against the dieing of the light!

>>18453755

Butterfly-tier post, I'm afraid.

>>18453597
>>18453822
Stupendously based. You continue to impress. But I think the idea of mysticism as a reflexive orientation towards the Origin still holds some merit.

If I had to argue it: how does this connect to Christ, as the supreme Event/novelty? We should say Christ is novelty itself, and capital is auto-erotic time simulating Christ's puncture of REAL time. This is why we can map vulgar messianism onto the orgasm. Maybe we should just give up on all androgynous beginnings altogether, just look toward the absolute him-her

>>18452333
The Bhagavad Gita is not a Vedantic scripture, it is from a different corpus of literature. Moreover, "just do what god tells you" is an extremely poor reading of Nietzsche. You've turned him into a priest. The will to power is not about an immortal self but a kind of repetition; would you will that a state be eternally recurring (note: not permanent, but repeated)? And what is willed is the negation of reactive forces, which would include suffering and pleasure (already these are moralist judgments; was this good or bad for me, but good or bad on what basis?). Man is not the evaluator in Vedanta, nor in the Gita; what is good is to obey. God is not yet dead in non-dualism. In fact, the desire to assimilate to this God or Brahman, ie. to take his place and act as if one were god (just carry out the orders of Krishna, uphold the dharma) would have been taken for slavish by Nietzsche. One does not become master by stealing his chair.

>>18451440
I don't perceive the world as evil, though it's not good either, just strange and confusing. Sometimes existence makes me feel extremely hopeful, sometimes it makes me feel utter despair. I've never really lived in the world though, I've always anticipated death as I figured perhaps it'd answer my questions.

>>18444347
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

>>18453308
>Lloyd Gerson

>>18453776
the first post and the best post is where they are

>>18454263
mentally ill monist

>>18454167
During NDEs, I rarely see people report a complete dissolution of the self, or if they do, it's temporary. Most of the NDE reports I've read don't have much to do with returning to a source or ground of being, but have people interacting with other entities as individuals, and feeling like they have entered a higher world. Why then did some religions develop metaphysics based on dissolving individuality?

>>18454410
>Why then did some religions develop metaphysics based on dissolving individuality?

Could it be drugs and a tendency of oriental people towards self-hatred?

>>18450288
>>18450288
Christ is the resolution of the eternal recurrence. In the Greek, then Roman cosmology, existence arose from chaos. This is Nietzsche’s “master morality” aka Tragedy. Power exerting itself for it’s own sake, this is the state of nature, chaos. The gods are nature aspects and even they are subordinate to the Fates, who weave the thread of destiny, and this destiny “just is.”

Under this view of morality, there was no problem with there being a large slave class. Nature birthed slaves into the slave class and aristocrats into the aristocracy. A slave owner could kill a slave for back talk and it would be seen as fair. Power ruled, not reason.

It should also be noted that the God of the OT had a similar morality. In early Israeli history Yahweh is a Zeus-like figure in a pantheon of many other gods. My guess is that after the actual historical event of Exodus, Yahweh embodied more so justice and redemption. For surely there must be some salvation for all this earthly suffering? Yahweh gradually comes to embody truth itself by giving Moses the laws
of the Ten Commandments.

Then comes the incarnation of Christ, who is fully God and fully Man. But he is not the mighty warlord many Jews expected. He is the logos, or the universal truth that is God embodied in man. He does not wield a sword, but rather the Word. He embodying reason and light, dispels the pagan nature gods.

He teaches that any who accept him will find salvation. This means that even the Roman slave, previously blocked from all humanity, will have eternal life if he accepts Christ (who already resides within him.) The meek shall inherit the earth. The slave who forgives his master (Christ introduced forgiveness) breaks the eternal recurrence of an eye for an eye morality— this sense of morality resulting every time in the master’s domination. Though the slave may die on the chaotic earthly realm, he will reside forever in heaven. Another consequence of the slave’s pacifism is martyrdom. Martyrdom undoes the master’s authority. Thus bringing the Kingdom of God on Earth one step closer to realization.

So we can see Christ is truth, or light who came to dispel ignorance, or darkness. Those who deny him deny truth, and side with the will to power, or Satan. The differing branches in Christianity aren’t of primary importance, if you accept Christ you have done what is needed.

>>18450984
For Steiner, reincarnation and karma are facts. IIRC he says when you die your spirit leaves your body and enters the spirit realm, then every negative karmic action you did in that incarnation is inflicted upon you. If you were a bad person this would feel like hell, if you were good, it may only be a relatively quick purgatory. Then you ascend to a higher spirit realm where other spirits also outside of their earth incarnation reside. It is a blissful realm where spirits take a break from the hardships of earth. There you’re able to remember all your past incarnations, which long ago were in the form of animals and before that plants.

You then work with higher spirits to plan your next incarnation. The shape of your next life will be informed by the karma in all your previous lives, and the goal of all these incarnations is to bring God’s love down into the dense material plane until earth has been transformed into the Kingdom of God. This transformation of earth leads everything one step closer to the reintegration with the absolute.

The outline we make for our next life is influenced by our previous live’s karma. Not everything in our earth lives is determined by us before though. We accrue good or bad karma according to how we react when faced with problems which are themselves the result of previous live’s bad karma.

Once all the bad karma has been sorted out we cease incarnating, and then stay in the spirit realm where we will assist others still incarnating.

>>18454945
Ressentiment-filled hands typed this post

>>18455066
I don’t resent anyone

>>18455046
>life is just like, an rpg bro
Cope

>>18454467
>>18453234
see >>18446761 and >>18446818
lloyd gerson is a m*nist, a charlatan

Zaehner, who studied comparative mysticism, points how every tradition has a monistic flavor, but that it is ultimately trap that leads to spiritual pride.

>There is danger certainly; but only if we mistake the part for the whole, only if we mistake our own soul in its timeless unity for the living God. According to the great Muslim mystic, Al-Junayd of Baghdad, this is not only a danger, but a trap that the Lord himself sets for the mystic who has advanced so far that he has put behind him the fear of God -- who has forgotten that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10. 31). Such a man will mistake his own soul for God, and in very single mystical tradition, whether it be Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim, this will happen; and again in each of these traditions this mistake will be refuted by mystics who have had the two experiences -- that of the "isolation" of the transcendent and timeless "self" or soul and that of the overwhelming eruption into that soul of the love of God. The mistake is so easy to make; indeed, it is almost inevitable, for man was made "in the image and likeness of God", and unless he knows God either by faith or, better still, by experience, he can scarcely fail to mistake the image, once purified by asceticism and a total detachment from all temporal things, from the living God whom the image reflects. This "trap" that God sets for the unwary soul the modern Jewish philosopher and mystic, Martin Buber, discerned and warned against in unforgettable words:...

>... The second type of mysticism is the most strange; it is that described "from his own unforgettable experience" by Buber, and philosophically pin-pointed by the Samkhya-Yoga in India: the experience of the unfractionable oneness of the transcendent self, separate and isolated not only from the world of matter and mind, but also from all other "selves" and from all present knowledge of the living God. This we meet with among the Sufis; it is probably what the Buddhists of the so-called "Defective Vehicle" understand by nirvana. It can be tasted by all men, for this is the "image of God" in the human soul which even Original Sin could not blot out. It is this "image" that the mystic, as Buber saw, is almost bound to mistake for the godhead itself, as the non-dualist Vedantis did, and as Vivekenanda has done in recent times. It is the "trap" that a jealous God puts in the way of the spiritually proud.

monists go stare at a wall and stop shilling this board with your poisonous death cult ideas

>>18455078
>martyr me so I go to heaven and you go to hell for being stronger than me
>huh no I'm not motivated by vengeance I'm motivated by love

>>18455092
unspeakably based. monists worship a world-eater.

what is the difference between a monist and an atheist?
solely the substance they reduce reality to

the atheist reduces all to matter
the monist reduces all to spirit/atman

two sides of the same coin. monist is a crypto atheist

>>18455104
What are some authors to get /lit/'s local morons to this point? Nietzsche, William James, Jan Assmann?

>>18455082
Jesus loves you and so do I

>>18455095
That’s where I think the reincarnation part comes in

>>18455046
so he's cringe...thanks for the heads up

>>18455092
upload the pdf, I can't get it on archive

>>18455226
i dont have the pdf. i do my readings on archive

>>18455092
What's your point here exactly? That some confuse the shadow with what casts the shadow?

>>18455250
yes

>>18455258
I don't see how that's a criticism against monists.

>>18455222
He’s right tho

>>18455297
>Just trust this religion I made up

>>18455292
Nobody cares what you think. Go make another guenon thread.

>>18455092
>the mystic who has advanced so far that he has put behind him the fear of God -- who has forgotten that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10. 31).
Monism and fear of God aren’t mutually exclusive

>>18455104
If God’s spirit is not all-pervading then he is not truly infinite

>>18455328
it is not about being all-pervading, it is about identification

>God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing, as was shown above (I:7:1). Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.

>God is said to be in a thing in two ways; in one way after the manner of an efficient cause; and thus He is in all things created by Him; in another way he is in things as the object of operation is in the operator; and this is proper to the operations of the soul, according as the thing known is in the one who knows; and the thing desired in the one desiring. In this second way God is especially in the rational creature which knows and loves Him actually or habitually. And because the rational creature possesses this prerogative by grace, as will be shown later (I:12. He is said to be thus in the saints by grace.

https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1008.htm

too bad orientalists skipped aquinas for exotic mumbo jumboayaranapada words

>>18455373
Aquinas’s deism alienates God from creation and quickly leads to scientism and atheism. If humans have no understanding of direct contact with God they turn away from him, and this is exactly what Thomism lead to.

>>18455456
aquinas defended a personalist God, what are you talking about? you know it is the impersonalism of monism that leads to scientism and atheism right? please refer from posting or get a tripcode so that i can filter

>>18455104
>the monist reduces all to spirit/atman
The funny thing is that Advaita rejects this and says that Brahman is different from the material world, and all the people who seethe at Advaita and who tell you to read Vishishtadvaita and Kashmir Shaivism instead apparently don't understand that these schools make physical objects identical to God in a monistic sense while Advaita rejects this and says objects are different from Brahman in every way.

What are you expecting to read, per se? The only books on about "after life" experiences are, at best, NDE accounts, and those aren't really empirical.

You might want to read Denial of Death, or perhaps Buddhism, if you want some insight into the fear of mortality and the idea of ceasing the ego.

>>18455462
>aquinas defended a personalist God
Not really, he believed that evidence of God could be deduced through observing nature but that we never come into direct contact with God, save for the few who experience revelation.

>>18450340
You shouldn't...

Killing the ego is akin to becoming a God in a world full of subordinates.

>>18455597
Panentheism overcomes this whole debate

>>18455678
This, very much so

>>18455307
Steiner doesn’t use belief to justify what he says. He thinks all his conclusions can be reached through reason. If you’re interested in his arguments this work https://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA009/English/RSP1965/GA009_index.html covers the basics.

>>18455686
>>18455678
>>18455597
empty semantics from the desperate annihilationist

>>18455678
>>18455686
not even panentheists have a clue on what panentheism really is. this is very typical of easterners who speak of things they don't know

read:
The Difficulty with Demarcating Panentheism
Panentheism(s): What It Is and Is Not

>>18455672
if you observe nature it follows God cannot lack personality, which is present in nature

>>18444347
Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
The Holy Bible, God
N***** in Paris (Lyrics), Jay-Z

>>18455791
Panentheism is a rational paradox in the same way the trinity is equally three persons and one person and Christ is simultaneously fully God and fully man. When using philosophical language to define the divine one can’t help but use paradox, for anything less would restrain God’s infinity.

>>18455318
I don't care what you think and your argument is all retarded

>>18455622
Buddhism is crypto-nihilist garbage

>>18453952
>Maybe we should just give up on all androgynous beginnings altogether, just look toward the absolute him-her

Yes.

>>18455797
Ungodly traits are also found in nature too

>>18455746
seething

This thread was disappointing. Could've gotten interesting discussions if the pajeet autists didn't shit up everything.

>>18457318
rent-free

>>18457322
Dilate, brahmatranny

New thread? General?

>>18458473
Make it? I'd be very interested in continuing talking about this subject (minus the annihilationism shit)

>>18458473
>>18458974
Just be sure to make it /lit/-related by actually mentioning books in the central point or it's gonna get janny'd like the platonism general

Someone make a new thread