/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18712927]

I have numerous people on this board talk trash about this book. It is super cringe, it doesn't make you look smart it makes you look like a pretentious try hard pseud. There is literally nothing wrong with this book and it is great for all levels of students from their very first book to an advanced student.

If you study things like this I would have expected bit more maturity but a tiger cant change their stripes I suppose. You can take the negro out the hood but you cant take the hood out the negro.

I just wanted to let you know no one is impressed by a pretentious pseud, it has the opposite effect of what you are going for

[Anonymous No.18712930]

Why would you read this instead of the Hermetica though

[Anonymous No.18713333]

>>18712930
>>18712927
Hermeticism is cringe, just read Plotinus and Proclus and drop the ancient New Age.

[Anonymous No.18713345]

>>18712927
>It is super cringe
The book, yes.
>students
Of New Thought, sure.

[Anonymous No.18713378]

>>18713333
>annihilationism
No thanks

[Anonymous No.18713414]

Anyone who likes this book is dumb. Its 'principles' are just buzzwords that sound so mindblowing to retards but don't actually mean anything. Bullshit like 'everything is one', 'everything vibrates' and so on. What does it even mean exactly? If Atkinson had lived one century later he would have written 'The Secret' or some bullshit about quantum mechanics = creating your own reality.

Please focus on some serious study on some subject like mathematics or philosophy for some time. Anything that requires justification of one's claims, or at least making intelligible claims that actually mean something. Then, after you have learned to use your reason, maybe come back to this kind of studies and you will finally understand what's the problem with books like this.

[Anonymous No.18713424]

>>18712930
>why would you read more than one textbook on a subject in school
Well gee, idk mate

[Anonymous No.18713436]

>>18713414
this is what apex midwittery looks like

[Anonymous No.18713506]

>>18713436
You should put your pride aside and consider my advice instead. You are wasting your precious time all while looking like a fat lady using the law of attraction or something.

[Anonymous No.18713616]

>>18712927
>>18713436
If you actually read the corpus hermeticum maybe you would understand that the kybalion isn’t hermetic and instead of making this useless thread defending a lie and seething when anyone proves you wrong maybe you could read a book about hermeticism and be more knowledgeable about the subject.

[Anonymous No.18713631]

>>18713506
you should stop trying to paint yourself as some sage and wise advice giver. You are a fucking retard pseud like 95% of the rest morons on this website. You have literally nothing going for you to impress anyone with that would lead them to seek advice from you for anything

[Anonymous No.18713638]

>>18713616
apex midwittery with some retardation thrown in for good measure, nice

[Anonymous No.18713685]

>>18713631
It doesn't take a sage to understand that that book is just bullshit targeted at people who can't use logic and want to feel enlightened without putting in any kind of work. And man calm down, lol. You don't sound very spiritual right now.

[Anonymous No.18713692]

>>18713685
>It doesn't take a sage to understand that that book is just bullshit targeted at people who can't use logic

HAHAHAH I see now, you got fucking filtered. All makes sense now, nice projection mate

[Anonymous No.18714903]

>>18712927
Kybalion is gay read a real occult book

[Anonymous No.18715013]

>>18713414
>I don't understand
>Therefor there's nothing to understand and everyone who says they understand are lying
>God I'm so fucking smart

real 85 IQ hours up in here

[Anonymous No.18715030]

>>18713685
>BRO I'm just too fucking INTELLIGNET and LOGICAL to understand this book

[Anonymous No.18715056]

>>18713333
>Plotinus and Proclus didn't understand hermetics

[Anonymous No.18715067]

>>18712927
The book is trash. You just want to believe it isnt totally worthless because you were dumb enough to buy it and spend the time reading it.

[Anonymous No.18715082]

>new age hermeticism
just read the actual stuff instead

[Anonymous No.18715083]

>>18713638
>>18713436
Top level refutation bro. 10/10. Truly.

[Anonymous No.18715749]

>>18715083
The level of idiocy in those comments doesnt deserve any more of a response that that. It is apex midwittery, sums it perfectly. Brevity is the soul of wit

[Anonymous No.18715842]

>>18715083
That creature is an abomination

[Anonymous No.18716149]

>>18715030
>>18713692
I like how none of these people are using the book to defend it. Really shows how good it is.

[Anonymous No.18716240]

>>18716149
This thread was made with people who actually read and understand this book in mind. Not for literal droolers who couldnt even understand it.

The "pretentious pseud" part should have been a clue.

[Anonymous No.18716255]

>>18715842
She is beautiful.

[Anonymous No.18716279]

>>18712927
It's because Atkinson was a direct-marketing book mill, hence all the credibility-building pseudonyms. There's been a long history of direct marketers tied to the New Thought movement and its various offshoots. Look how many people behind The Secret are from the cringey-long-sales-letter tradition.
Also, although Hermetic principles may have the appearance of being actionable, they're actually just a bunch of caught-in-one's-head wank.

[Anonymous No.18716314]

>>18716279
P.S. The very first thing you should ask any student of the occult is what their studies have allowed them to accomplish.
What you'll find is that the vast majority of them have spent years accumulating limp factoids and mythological minutiae that don't translate to anything actionable in the real world.

[Anonymous No.18716557]

I'm reading both

Hermetica for historical/philosophical Hermeticism
The Kybalion for the New Age interpretation

[Anonymous No.18716589]

>>18715749
>Brevity is the soul of wit

That's how you cope with not having anything original to say? You are just putting together le funny 4chan insults and you think you are witty. I thought this was funny but it is actually sad. I understand why you like that BS book.

[Anonymous No.18716597]

>>18716279
Your post was pretty good until this part
>Also, although Hermetic principles may have the appearance of being actionable, they're actually just a bunch of caught-in-one's-head wank.

This part showed you are a midwit

[Anonymous No.18716601]

>>18716314
>knowing truth and seeking knowledge has to result in profitable ventures
please get fukt retard

[Anonymous No.18716603]

>>18716589
>t,

[Anonymous No.18716647]

>>18716603
Definitely an enlightened master Hermeticist

[Anonymous No.18716690]

>>18716597
Your substance-free reply shows that you're a brainlet.

[Anonymous No.18716699]

TGH maybe I missed something but when I read it it felt like I was just reading Napolean Hill tier platitudes about >polarity and >as above so below. I'm all for alternative spirituality / occultism / esotericism (I do occasionally read this stuff) but I felt underwhelmed by it.

[Anonymous No.18716700]

>>18716601
You don't have truth. You're an escapist retard with an all too common emotional trigger. You're in no way remarkable.

[Anonymous No.18716707]

Ironically, the only good Atkinson book is his Psychology of Salesmanship. All the old-master tricks are in there.

[Anonymous No.18716728]

>>18716700
>You're in no way remarkable.

[Anonymous No.18716730]

>>18716699
Try this, it connects these things together
https://esotericawakening.com/what-is-reality-the-holofractal-universe

[Anonymous No.18716776]

>>18716728
Woo is the most onions-boy thing you can get into, bruh.

[Anonymous No.18716789]

>>18716776
>Woo
>bruh
Imagine actively tying to not look soi and then failing this hard.

[Anonymous No.18716962]

>>18716647
Also notice how he still hasn't been able to defend the book in any way. He says he only wants to speak with people who 'actually understand this book', that is, with other brainlets that already agree with him. OP is basically looking for someone to jerk with.

[Anonymous No.18716987]

>>18716962
>Also notice how he still hasn't been able to defend the book in any way. He says he only wants to speak with people who 'actually understand this book', that is, with other brainlets that already agree with him. OP is basically looking for someone to jerk with.

[Anonymous No.18717177]

>>18716789
Imagine desperately reaching for anything because you have such a weak mind.

[Anonymous No.18717185]

>>18716728
>>18716789
>>18716987
"watch me act unfazed as I go spend buttmad effort fetching these pictures"
every time

[Anonymous No.18717205]

>>18717185
He's throwing a tantrum because he's not getting the attention/validation he wanted as a Hermetic wise man, because people see through his woo. He might try Satanism next.

[Anonymous No.18717434]

>>18717205
The occult is a big waste of time, you will learn more reading a selection of good novelists, then a life time of occult research.

The main problem with occultism, is that its basically a thousand little traditions of pseudo-religious and pseudo-scientific lore.

When you study catholicism, you get a coherent dogma, when you study the occult, you get all kinds of insane shit.

Thats fine, but the intelligence required to make sense of all that insane shit is much higher then understanding a coherent religious ideology.

[Anonymous No.18717444]

you can solely obtain true enlightenment by raping a rabbi / 33 degree freemason. It transmits the energy.

>t. albert pike

[Anonymous No.18717692]

>>18717444
>he got filtered by the symbols outside the temple

[Anonymous No.18717849]

Why does /lit/ hate new thought so much? I can understand hating the new age crystal tumblr bullshit, or the shallow "all is one, muh vibration" stuff but not everything is garbage

[Anonymous No.18717860]

>>18717434
The problem is all religions are false, and the occult is mostly bullshit, so you need to wade through all the falsehoods to arrive at your own, personal, coherent understanding. You need to study both, it's not one or the other. There are interactions anyway in the form of mysticism and esotericism.

[Anonymous No.18717926]

>>18717860
>The problem is all religions are false
No evidence provided for this conjecture.

[Anonymous No.18717928]

>>18717926
>evidence
Is that pic supposed to be your selfie? I don't care about evidence. It is purely intuitive to me, it doesn't matter if you disagree.

[Anonymous No.18717944]

>>18717926
read monroe and castaneda
or don't and remain in illusion because old thing good, new thing bad

[Anonymous No.18718043]

>>18717928
>I don't care about evidence. It is purely intuitive to me
This is what happens when people do not study philosophy and logic - they come to epistemologically unsound systems of truth. If somebody intuitively comes to the opposite conclusion from yours, how do you know they are wrong, and you are right? The only option is to admit there is some sort of objective truth about metaphysical reality, and you believe you are closer to it than the other person intuiting. And if you believe that neither of you have come close to the truth, then your words are useless, and posting things like "all religions are false" are simply expressions of your ego spreading its own ignorance, not even believing that what you are saying is true.

>>18717944
>read monroe and castaneda
Read Aquinas and Augustine.
Or don't, and remain in illusion because new thing good, old thing bad.

See why it is not fruitful to simply say "read X"? This is why we present rational arguments, and evidence where applicable, to support our positions.

[Anonymous No.18718047]

>>18718043
Oh you're a Christian. I'm not interested then.

[Anonymous No.18718063]

>>18717928
Intuit these balls in your mouth, pinche pendejo.

[Anonymous No.18718117]

>>18718043
There is no evidence. There is no uniformity between religious experiences from different traditions. All the systems make sense in their own little microcosm. The other guy talked about Monroe and Castaneda probably because both at some point say that belief systems are part of a general control structure and do not encapsulate the fullness of truth, or even part of it, i.e. that they are illlusions. From what I remember, they gathered this from their own personal experiences, which conflict with the personal experiences of religious people. In the end, this only shows that nobody knows the truth. You can pretend you've touched upon some kind of transcendent truth because you read Aquinas and thought it made sense, but you're just as ignorant as everyone else, and nobody will truly know until death arrives. It all comes down to belief and intuition then, because I also suspend my judgment regarding the idea that there is a metaphysical truth we can currently derive from reason and logical inquiry and that applies to all perspectives.
No matter how much I argue with you I will never convince you to renounce your religion, since you do not want to be convinced, because you believe you have arrived at a singular truth. Similarly, you will never convince me that your religion is true, because I am strongly sympathetic to the idea that no system of beliefs, old or new, institutionally established or fringe and dissipated, can presume to provide insight into what exists beyond this reality that we perceive, for everyone at least. Perhaps you've had an experience that has convinced you of the absolute and unquestionable truth of your beliefs, but this does not make a difference for me. Many people might have had experiences different from yours yet perceived them to be similarly profound, what then? Some people believe in perennialism, this is just changing the focus from one religion to a set of religions by excising their disagreements and focusing on their commonalities, it doesn't provide an answer because it still bases itself on assumptions that I disagree with.
This is why I said in my original post that the point is to arrive at your own personal understanding.
Maybe now you'll point out what you perceive to be flaws in my reasoning or something similarly nitpicky but that isn't the point.

[Anonymous No.18718184]

>>18717849
I like some new thought, for example K.O. Schmidt 's Neue Lebensschule. It is even mentioned by the UR group. The book posted by OP, however, is a complete fraud.

[Anonymous No.18718185]

>>18718047
>no argument
Thanks for outing yourself as irrational.
>>18718117
>There is no uniformity between religious experiences from different traditions.
The mystical experiences of oceanic boundlessness, oneness and unity, and ego death are universally present in almost all religions - although people interpret them differently.
>do not encapsulate the fullness of truth, or even part of it, i.e. that they are illlusions
This claim fails to realize that some religions posit having the fullness of some type of truth, eg. soteriological truth, rather than a totality of all truth per se.
>In the end, this only shows that nobody knows the truth
Again, the claim is without evidence, and requires a clarification of terms. The basic religious claim is to know the truths within a category, such as all truths regarding soteriology, which is different from knowing the totality of all Truth.
> You can pretend you've touched upon some kind of transcendent truth [...] but you're just as ignorant as everyone else, and nobody will truly know until death arrives.
This is, again, simply conjecture. I am happy to have a rational discussion, through philosophical discussion, to come to a closer understanding of objective truth - but the difference between perspectives on the existence of an objective Truth, whose aspects are knowable through reason, is critical to give any arguments any weight. If one rejects the existence of Truth, why should I believe that what they are saying is true? Further, why do they even believe that what they believe is true, if Truth does not exist, or that if it does, they cannot know any aspects of it?
>It all comes down to belief and intuition then
Through logic, you can reach an understanding of the necessity of existence of some objective Truth - and by that chain of argumentation (reaching the knowledge that there is Truth), one can know that there is a Truth beyond that first truth, of which the first truth is an aspect.
> I will never convince you to renounce your religion, since you do not want to be convinced,
I came from being an atheist. I am happy to hear out arguments, and if your arguments are solid, I will change my positions. As of yet, no universalist or postmodern argument has convinced me of anything in my myriad discussions - but you seem quite intelligent, so I would be interested in having the discussion. I consider myself intellectually honest.
>I am strongly sympathetic to the idea that no system of beliefs [...] can presume to provide insight into what exists beyond this reality that we perceive
I would be interested in having this discussion with you, because I once held a similar view, but was persuaded otherwise by Aristotelian logic.
>Some people believe in perennialism, this is just changing the focus from one religion to a set of religions by excising their disagreements and focusing on their commonalities
I used to believe this, realized its logical flaws, and thus abandoned it.

[Anonymous No.18718330]

>>18718185
I don't believe irrationality to be bad, so from the get-go, the assumption that logic is the one and only criterion from which all meaningful truth is discovered is doubtful.
>oceanic boundlessness, oneness and unity, and ego death
Some religions would call this annihilation and reject it, others would celebrate it, some would say it is the end goal, others would say it is an imperfect understanding. Either way, it is impossible to know if these experiences have genuine meaning in themselves, if they represent the truth or once again just a facet of it, etc.
>the fullness of some type of truth, eg. soteriological
Which my statement implicitly rejected when I said "encapsulate [...] part of it". A reccuring thing in religions is the claim that direct experience is superior to exposition, which I don't disagree with (although the fullness of direct experience regarding truth remains to be demonstrated), but I find the surrounding pageantry unnecessary at best, in my own case at least. This also addresses your next point.
>simply conjecture
What isn't? Without axiomatic claims, there is no discussion to be had. Some things have to be established through baseless assumption as I assume you're not a solipsist. I am skeptical of the idea that objective truth is available to us in any form as we currently are, which is not to say I don't believe it exists. Therefore, when I'm confronted with religious dogma that claims to provide me with objective truth, even in part, I dismiss it. Nothing, to me, indicates that reason is the almighty tool through which objective truth is discovered. I think you're assuming that I'm a platonist or at least some kind of realist, but even though I like Plato, if there is such a thing as universals (which might be the case) I deny that they are subordinate to reason, for I see nothing to make me believe reason and logic are not merely a perspective from which we are unable to detach ourselves.
I've argued this exact point many times on this website already and every time I fail to convey it in a fully understandable way because my English is lacking. To put it as bluntly as possible: our current state of existence is not one that affords us a full view and understanding of how things really are (all religions agree with me on this statement), therefore we are in a state of existence that is inherently limited, constrained. As such, I see reason as nothing more than a perspective that might simply be a default mode of operation for this current limited state, but nothing tells me it is applicable to a potential higher state (which I believe exists, and is revealed after death). Reason is immanent to this realm but nothing tells me it is transcendent.
>the necessity of existence of some objective Truth
I think my above statements apply to this.

Cont.

[Anonymous No.18718335]

>>18718185
>>18718330
>atheist
I am the farthest thing from an atheist, or at least from a physicalist because my idea of divinity is muddled and difficult for me to express, but unfortunately religious people tend to assume I'm a physicalist bugman because I say things like "I think all religions are false." My beliefs are personal and I have no way of demonstrating any of them, however I have had them for as long as I've lived and no inquiry, book or author has ever meaningfully changed them, although I have refined my stance over the years by becoming more educated in that subject. Some aspects of some religions I tend to think are plausible, but they all (by design and by necessity, this is almost tautological) are restricted by the lack of perspective that their existence within this realm affords them. If there is an absolute truth (I am open to the idea), then I presume it will be unimaginably different from what our limited systems of inquiry in this life have allowed us to come up with.
There are two problems with my line of thinking I can identify: the first is the idea of religious revelation, but this isn't actually a problem since I maintain my skepticism regarding the notion that revelations provide transcendent knowledge or a glimpse into higher states of existence; if they do, I would imagine that the understanding gets necessarily distorted and altered as the consciousness that grasps them is "thrown back" into this limited state of existence, therefore the transcendent truths afforded by revelations, if they exist, would be diluted by a kind of symbolic "watering down" to preserve their homomorphism. I can clarify this if needed.
The second, more pernicious problem is that I'm justifying my skepticism for logical inquiry by using logic, but I address this by saying that my ideas first came to me as intuition anyway, and that I am only using rationality to articulate them right now because this discussion requires me to.
I appreciate your candor, although I don't wish to change your mind as much as I'm using this conversation as a way to clarify my own understanding and beliefs, I suppose this is selfish but I think what I'm saying isn't trite enough that you wouldn't get anything out of it either.

[Anonymous No.18718355]

>>18718185
>I used to believe this, realized its logical flaws, and thus abandoned it.
I forgot to address this, are you saying you abandoned perennialism by realizing its logical flaws, or that you abandoned the idea that perennialism was false?

[Anonymous No.18718462]

>>18718330
>I don't believe irrationality to be bad
I will not claim that it is morally good or bad to be irrational, only that it is demonstrably not an effective strategy for coming to either empirical knowledge, or philosophical understanding, and is therefore undesirable when compared to rationality.
>Some religions would call this annihilation and reject it
Respectfully, this is a movement of the goalpost - your original claim, that "There is no uniformity between religious experiences from different traditions", is what this argument proved to be false. There is a uniformity in religious experiences, but not a uniformity in the evaluation thereof.
>Which my statement implicitly rejected when I said "encapsulate [...] part of it"
Yes, but you provided no evidence that this is the case. By what logic do you reject that, for example, the Catholic church contains the fullness of soteriological truth? How do you know that this cannot be true?
>What isn't?
It is not simply conjecture, for example, that the element we call 1H is composed of what we call a proton and and electron (which are themselves composed of other things, which we call quarks/forces, etc). This is an empirical fact, and can be independently measured and confirmed outside of conjecture.
>Some things have to be established through baseless assumption
I do not believe this to be the case. Can you provide an example of something that -has- to be established through a baseless assumption?
>I am skeptical of the idea that objective truth is available to us in any form as we currently are
What evidentiary basis do you have to support this position?
>I deny that they are subordinate to reason
Something need not be subordinate to reason, for the reasoning faculty to be able to identify or understand it in part.
>nothing tells me it is applicable to a potential higher state (which I believe exists, and is revealed after death)
If you do not believe that you can, with reason, encapsulate any aspect of an objective truth, why do you hold the above statement to be true? By what basis do you believe that an afterlife exists, if you do not believe that one can know even a part of the truth? To be logically consistent, you would have to reject the belief that there is an afterlife, because you have already posited that one cannot know any truth.
>Reason is immanent to this realm but nothing tells me it is transcendent.
Reason need not be transcendent to be able to, in part, identify or encapsulate some aspect of truth. If reason is solely a faculty of the brain (which I do not believe, but let us assume it for the sake of argument), we can still use it to understand that a thing consisting of quarks and forces, which we call a "proton", exists within the material reality that we inhabit.

[Anonymous No.18718482]

>>18718335
>If there is an absolute truth (I am open to the idea), then I presume it will be unimaginably different from what our limited systems of inquiry in this life have allowed us to come up with.
Why do you presume this, while knowing full well that the religions themselves claim to only encapsulate some subset of truths derived the absolute Truth, and not contain it in totality? Why is it tautologically impossible for a subset of a potential truth to be contained within a given set of religious beliefs? If you were talking about a system containing the full Truth per se, I would agree, but that is not the religious claim (as far as I can tell).
>The second, more pernicious problem is that I'm justifying my skepticism for logical inquiry by using logic, but I address this by saying that my ideas first came to me as intuition anyway, and that I am only using rationality to articulate them right now because this discussion requires me to.
The problem is that you are using logic and rationality to prove your skepticism of the statement that logic and rationality can lead to any given truth. Your use of the system belies your lack of confidence in it, which is why I believe your position (from what I can tell) to be based on a faulty epistemology.
>I forgot to address this, are you saying you abandoned perennialism by realizing its logical flaws
I used to believe perennialism, but abandoned it by realizing its logical flaws.

[Anonymous No.18718586]

>>18716149
Whose job is it to hold your hand and walk you through it until you don't feel left out? Mine? Why?

[Anonymous No.18718616]

I thought /lit/ was supposed to be one of the smart boards. This thread is a real shit show of filtered retards

[Anonymous No.18718645]

>>18718616
>implying anybody is filtered by babby's first spiritual book
It is literally religion for brainlets who haven't studied philosophy.

[Anonymous No.18718647]

>>18716240
The problem is that on /lit/ and just 4chan as a whole you have stupid people who can also pretentious which is demonstrated by this idiot.
>>18713685

It seems bizarre that someone could be pretentious about not understanding something but among profane morons in this world you see all kinds of bizarre shit. The Jews are right in calling them cattle, they need to be herded and dominated or they just fuck everything they touch up

[Anonymous No.18718657]

>>18718645
>hermeticism
>a religion
You are a stone cold retard my guy

[Anonymous No.18718694]

>>18717849
I like the 'vibe' of late 19th century / early 20th century New Thought. It was an exciting time, when science seemed ready to unveil marvels at any moment, when parapsychology was all the rage, when occult orders were springing up around the world. Even though I think Atkinson was largely a fraud, I think his passion for reading and learning that shines through in his books is commendable, and his books have a certain thriller quality.

[Anonymous No.18718698]

>>18718657
>implying New-Age beliefs like Hermeticism do not fall under the definition of a syncretic modern religion
lol

[Anonymous No.18718709]

>>18718698
look at all this mad and cope over getting filtered

[Anonymous No.18718718]

>>18718698
>hermeticism
>new age
You are a stone cold retard my guy

[Anonymous No.18718793]

>>18718647

OP, I've never met anyone as stupid and immature as you. You have run the gamut of middle school level quarrel and used all the 4chan approved words like 'pseud' and 'filtered', and still haven't replied anything of substance to anyone. If by any chance that book is really good, you are the worst possible promoter for it.

[Anonymous No.18718811]

>>18718462
My point is more that irrationality can never be eliminated because we are not purely rational, and that instead of being rejected, it is better to appreciate the different kinds of insights it provides, whether artistic or intellectual. I find irrationality to have a purer quality than rationality, which implies a filtering and subsequent hierarchical ordering of data based on principles which may be arbitrary and do not always lend themselves to creatively interesting results, but this is mostly anecdotal.
>this is a movement of the goalpost
True, I should've led with the statement that it is the interpretation of religious experience that differ between traditions and not the experiences themselves, although I will say for the sake of argument that it is hardly possible to provide a rigorous i.e. empirical classification of things that are by essence apophatic. I am not saying that all mystical experiences should be thrown in the trash by virtue of being tied to religion, as I simply see the religious interpretation to be an impurity, but as I said earlier, there is nothing that indicates that the experience of nonduality, for example, is anything else than a realization of the nature of a certain strata of this reality, or even that it is merely an experience of a higher order but that is nonetheless contained within the bounds of this reality and does not transcend it to reach a truth beyond it.
>By what logic do you reject that, for example, the Catholic church contains the fullness of soteriological truth?
This is a loaded question, why do I need to justify my lack of belief in a doctrine that, by essence, is predicated on faith, with anything else than the mere statement that I do not find it compelling?
That aside, I see these systems as manmade, and if I look at the multiplicity of said systems throughout the world and throughout history, there is nothing there to convince me of the primacy of any particular soteriological claim. As I have said before, it's a matter of perspective, and the truth of Catholicism is made incredibly obvious and unquestionable by adopting its perspective, but if I suddenly adopt the perspective of the Vedas, or of the Nikayas, or of a small group of people who came up with their own theories and were rigorous about it, there will be arguments to be made in favor of all of them, and yet none of them will succeed at swaying me. Again, because their only frame of reference is this world, and that they're using this frame to attempt to grasp something that is beyond it. It feels like a small subset trying to participate in an unimaginable, boundless superset, and I could pontificate on and on about this feeling wrong to me but I understand you're looking for a logical reason rather than intuition and feelings.

[Anonymous No.18718819]

>>18718718
>implying the kybalion is not a ubiquitous text in new-age circles
dude vibration lmao
>>18718709
>implying anybody gets filtered by babby's first spiritual book written by a new thought charlatan
There's a reason it's so popular with new-agers, lol

[Anonymous No.18718822]

>>18718462
Cont.

>empirical fact
Do we really need to get into a debate about epistemology and the possibility of knowledge? I think these issues were already addressed by the pyrrhonists long ago, or later by Descartes' dream argument, and I have nothing to answer to your appeal to empiricism if not platitudes because of course it is immediately obvious to both of us that some physical data appears predictable.
But these things progressively break down as an increasingly inquisitive examination raises more abstract questions that empiricism then fails to answer, which I don't think you can disagree with unless you believe physicalism to be true.
Why should we be obligated to limit ourselves to what we believe to be possible based on available data? Such data was previously unavailable, which means the conclusions we came to after discovering it would've seemed baseless beforehand. Observing what surrounds us and concluding "I can't observe anything more than that; my conclusion is that nothing else exists" is not satisfying.
>Can you provide an example
I am not a mathematician but I believe Godel's incompleteness theorems illustrate the lack of provability that arises at some point during a process of logical inquiry
>What evidentiary basis do you have to support this position?
Is this a trick question? I have absolutely none, otherwise I'd be proving myself wrong.
>Something need not be subordinate to reason, for the reasoning faculty to be able to identify or understand it in part.
Then you run the risk of reason distorting the object of observation and you drawing erroneous conclusions from what your reason will have told you. If you are a Christian, you most likely think that the nature of God is ineffable, and I similarly believe that the nature of the reality above this one, its superset in a sense, is ineffable as well, much like you would be able to understand a rational number if you knew irrational numbers, but wouldn't understand an irrational number if you only knew rational numbers; one being a subset of the other. I think this is an appropriate comparison.

[Anonymous No.18718831]

>>18718462
>why do you hold the above statement to be true?
The real reason which you will not accept as a legitimate one is because my experiences, thoughts and emotions have made this unquestionable to me. Which you will counter by asking why this exact reasoning couldn't apply to religious people, but isn't this the point where arguing breaks down and you are left with belief? You can argue about the Trinity with a Muslim for hours, but at some point you'll need to admit that he simply believes his faith to be superior to yours, not because his arguments are superior to yours (from your perspective they aren't) but precisely because his individual perspective has led him to this conclusion, just as yours has led you to yours.
I separate belief from knowledge. Knowledge can inform belief, but in a way you might also say that belief informs knowledge, as we are all profoundly shaped by our individual perspectives in ways that we are likely to overlook. I acknowledge that I cannot "know" there is an afterlife. This doesn't matter to me, because I believe there to be one.
>Reason need not be transcendent
If the truth is transcendent, reason needs to be transcendent in order to translate it appropriately, yes? If reason is not transcendent, then the aspects of truth that it can grasp will be distorted and not truly reflective of that truth. You have just made me realize that perhaps this is what religion is, not as a twisted form of perennialism, but maybe more appropriately described as the individual cristallization of truth in ways that are idiosyncratically made perceptible, understandable and intuitively acceptable by our current limited state. Although this still doesn't compel me to adopt one.
>If reason is solely a faculty of the brain
As with the comparison with subsets and supersets, the more likely explanation I think is that reason is a mere subset of a higher process which itself would be able to perceive the truth, but is condensed in the form of reason when it starts to exist in a limited state such as ours. I don't think reason stops existing after death, but that it expands, or becomes something else, that contains it but makes it irrelevant by virtue of sheer superiority.
>>18718482
>while knowing full well that the religions themselves claim to only encapsulate some subset of truths
Because I'm just taking it to the extreme. Religions say "we only present a small part of the truth", I say "I present nothing, because I don't believe anything I can present will do justice to Reality." I also see this as profoundly hopeful, because I refuse to let any part of truth, as small as it may be, be contained by anything that exists here. I think my stance more or less amounts to an extremely uncompromising form of apophatism that extends to every facet of what a religion would usually participate in, therefore eliminating the need for a religion.

[Anonymous No.18718842]

>>18718793
I'm not OP donkey and this post shows what an immature idiot you truly are. You will say anything to anyone to feel like "you won," it doesn't need to have any truth to it or even make sense. You are like a bitch with a cluster B personality disorder. You are very clearly a very unlikable person that people don't be around because you are always toxic and mouthy and negative which is why you spend your time here trying to spew your toxicity at strangers because they are forced to read it and can't punch you in the fucking face like irl people have always done to you

[Anonymous No.18718845]

>>18718482
>Why is it tautologically impossible
Because of the subset/superset thing, as I do not think an element of a particular subset can intrude on the superset that contains it. Perhaps your belief is that the superset is "porous" to emanations of truth that do not get corrupted upon entering a lower form of existence, but I find this doubtful.
>The problem is that you are using logic and rationality
I could also say "I just believe this to be true and feel no need to argue further", this was actually what I had originally intended, but keep in mind that although I am currently arguing with logic to make a point, I have never believed even once in my life that I needed logic for my beliefs to be true. If my position becomes unsustainable due to faulty logic, this won't bother me, and I won't abandon it, as prideful as you may think this makes me.

I apologize for the long posts, I didn't realize I had written this much. Don't feel the need to address everything

[Anonymous No.18718862]

>>18718819
>being this mad and butthurt about getting filtered

[Anonymous No.18718869]

>>18712927
It's the kind of shit you "feel" rather than understand logically. Treat it with the kind of weird logic you would give to a fortune cookie, but in a longer format.

Also Kybalion is more philosophy than occult, but occult shit is gay larp anyway. Neoplatonism and Hermeticism are like the middle-ground between philosophy and mysticism; Neoplatonism being closer to the former.

[Anonymous No.18718900]

>>18718819
There is nothing inherently wrong with new thought

[Anonymous No.18718945]

>>18718811
>instead of being rejected, it is better to appreciate the different kinds of insights it provides, whether artistic or intellectual
I did not posit that it should be rejected, only that it is not useful for coming to empirical or philosophical insights (such as the nature of truth).
>that it is the interpretation of religious experience that differ between traditions and not the experiences themselves
This would be correct, but does not constitute a cogent argument against my rebuttal to your positing that "there is no evidence" (for the truth claims of various religions), when the presence of a reliable method to achieve eg. oceanic boundlessness would prove that there is at least grounds to believe religions contain some truth (eg. in achieving mystical states) - and if this is true, why can other claims not be true?
>hardly possible to provide a rigorous i.e. empirical classification of things that are by essence apophatic
John Hopkins is doing exactly that in classifying mystical-type experiences with empirical data.
>as I simply see the religious interpretation to be an impurity,
What is your argument regarding that one or more of these interpretations could possibly be divinely inspired, and therefore be true?
>is nonetheless contained within the bounds of this reality and does not transcend it to reach a truth beyond it.
Besides the fact that almost all religions agree that the mystical experience is an experience of something beyond this reality, and reaches a truth beyond it? By what metric do you disregard this almost unanimous testimony?
>why do I need to justify [...] with anything else than the mere statement that I do not find it compelling?
You do not need to, but surely you have a logical reason to say why you do not believe it.
>there is nothing there to convince me of the primacy of any particular soteriological claim
For me, the primacy of the claims of the apostolic Christian tradition came as a result of rational analysis of the resurrection of Jesus. To this day, I have not heard any argument which accounts for all factors, that makes more sense than the resurrection. Thus, the unique nature of this phenomenon makes me place the highest epistemological weight on the words of Jesus - the man who claimed to be God, and by my most earnest rational analysis, appeared to have resurrected and appeared to His apostles. By extension, as eyewitnesses testified to this and His promise of guiding His apostles, and church, into "all truth", the church's claims on soteriology and theology appear to rationally have the highest probability of being epistemologically sound, as they would thus be divinely inspired.
>if I suddenly adopt the perspectives Vedas [...] there will be arguments to be made in favor of all of them
I agree, but I would posit that these arguments are epistemologically and rationally inferior compared to the Christian claim, which is why I am a Christian, despite having explored Sramanic traditions.

[Anonymous No.18719031]

>>18718811
>feels like a small subset trying to participate in an unimaginable, boundless superset
Using reason to reach a small subset of the absolute Truth would, by definition, not be unattainable or impossible logically, as we can ascertain certain physical truths about reality which we know correspond to the objective material realm around us, such as the phenomenological existence of what we call energy or matter.
>Do we really need to get into a debate about epistemology and the possibility of knowledge?
This is basically the entire argument, so I don't see how it can be avoided.
>raises more abstract questions that empiricism then fails to answer, which I don't think you can disagree with unless you believe physicalism to be true.
I am not a physicalist - but I posit that because we can have predictable and repeatable knowledge of things in this material universe, that claims of reason being unable to grasp -any- objective truth hold no weight.
>I am not a mathematician but I believe Godel's incompleteness theorems illustrate the lack of provability
This did not answer the request to name something which -has- to be established through a baseless assumption, as you claimed, but rather that there is uncertainty in some mathematical matters, which I do not dispute.
>If the truth is transcendent, reason needs to be transcendent in order to translate it appropriately, yes?
Reason need not be transcendent to translate aspects of Truth into knowledge. A naturalist could argue for the ability of the non-transcendent reason to grasp truths about material reality which are objectively true (although I do not hold this position).
>I don't think reason stops existing after death, but that it expands, or becomes something else, that contains it but makes it irrelevant by virtue of sheer superiority.
How can you believe this is true, if you do not believe that one can come to know anything true?
>I say "I present nothing [...]
But you do present many beliefs, such as your belief in the afterlife, or your belief that reason does not stop existing after death.
>>18718845
>I do not think an element of a particular subset can intrude on the superset that contains it
My mind does not contain the knowledge of the set of all irrational numbers, but does contain a subset thereof. Thus, transcendent sets contained in an absolute Truth can be apprehended in some partial manner.
>If my position becomes unsustainable due to faulty logic, this won't bother me, and I won't abandon it, as prideful as you may think this makes me.
It doesn't make me think of you as prideful, but it does make me recognize that your system is irrational and logically inconsistent, which will make you unable to defend it sufficiently in a philosophical discussion, make you unable to convince anybody of its validity. I believe this will lead to a profound lack of intellectual satisfaction, spiritual isolation, and ultimately, a future need to reassess the system to remedy these.

[Anonymous No.18719055]

>>18718945
not the guy you are arguing with but he is correct to say you can't use reason to fully grasp the Truth, you can at best broadly outline of what it might look like, much like a two dimensional flatlander would describe our universe. You just have no faculties to grasp the Truth.
An example that comes to mind is if you've ever had a psychedelic trip you can never really express what you experienced during it. You can talk all your life about it but it never comes close to the lived experience (which after a while you tend to forget because your mind can't fully process)

[Anonymous No.18719057]

Fucking hell, the bloggers have arrived.

[Anonymous No.18719061]

>>18719055
>he is correct to say you can't use reason to fully grasp the Truth
I agree, but the nuance in that conversation is that he is saying you cannot use reason to grasp -any- truth (any subset of the set of all possible truths), which I disagree with - but I do agree that you cannot use reason to grasp the totality of all Truth (the set of all possible truths).
>You just have no faculties to grasp the Truth.
I agree with regards to the absolute set of all Truth per se, but not with regards to a given subset.

[Anonymous No.18719073]

>>18719057
you should try twitter

[Anonymous No.18719170]

>>18718586
Well you are shilling the book here, and I'm into Hermeticism and I'm currently reading Meditations on the Tarot. Is The Kybalion worth reading and how does it compare to Meditations on the Tarot?

[Anonymous No.18719203]

>>18718945
>it is not useful for coming to empirical or philosophical insights
Sure, everything has its place. Although I will say that intuition can definitely take a part in helping rationality move towards an intended goal, as Jung said in more eloquent ways.
I disagree about philosophy being able to determine the nature of truth because I see no reason to believe epistemology can lead us to truth.
>my rebuttal to your positing that "there is no evidence"
I think we're getting off track here; you are saying that this proves me wrong concerning my allegation that there is no evidence to religious truths, by citing nonduality as an example. This is taking the problem by the wrong end, because I mentioned I wasn't convinced nonduality was an experience of truth in the first place. I am criticizing the very claim that is being made that an absolute truth of any kind can be presented.
>religions contain some truth
They do, relative ones, as I said before I don't believe them to be worthless but simply not capable of going beyond the worldly.
>John Hopkins
I'm aware of their research on psychedelics but what they're doing is essentially a more elaborate and academic version of trip reports, am I wrong? This does not inform us about the actual quality of these experiences, which are individual and cannot be communicated to others, much less through words.
>one or more of these interpretations could possibly be divinely inspired
Besides the obvious issue that is to determine how you could possibly know something is divinely inspired, I think what I said earlier about the "corruption of knowledge" that is inherent to our limited perception addresses this. Of course this is predicated on the notion that there can be only one way of interaction between this realm and the one above it, which I justified earlier with the irrational numbers analogy, so I think the argument stands.
>agree that the mystical experience is an experience of something beyond this reality
How could they possibly know?
None of the people who have had these experiences existed above this level of reality when they had those experiences. What ground do they base their claims on, then?
What I am trying to argue here and what the entirety of my posts boil down to is that I believe this reality to be hermetic, impenetrable, and that even if it is not, there is no way for us to make sure of that before we exit it. Until we are, "out of here" so to speak, nothing we can ever do will ever confirm with full certainty that we have accessed something outside. Much like false awakenings in dreams, you can only be sure you're awake when you're actually awake, but it is easy to mistake a dream within a dream for reality when it is not. Am I being clear? Because this is pretty much all I'm saying, nothing more.

[Anonymous No.18719210]

>>18718945
>you have a logical reason to say why you do not believe it.
In Christianity? I simply don't believe the events of the Bible to be true, or rather, to reflect any kind of transcendent truth. I see no reason to, which is why I find it difficult to answer your question, because you're asking me to justify a lack of belief by drawing upon reasons I don't have — since belief requires a reason to exist, while non-belief requires only itself as the justification for its skepticism.
I understand your views on the resurrection and I have been exposed to such arguments already. I have read the Gospels, which I found interesting, sometimes moving, but ultimately nothing more. Given my general skepticism towards empiricism and the value and inherent meaning of worldly events, I think you can see why testimonies and historical data would fail to convince me. As you are a mostly rational person, you were drawn to Christianity's appeal to rationality (I assume Catholicism since Orthodoxy appears to be much less rigorously "logical" in its theology and more mystical), through the analysis of data from eyewitnesses, coincidences and so on. Being that I am in the opposite case and generally tend to reject what is purely rational and empirical/evidence-based as ultimately inconsequential if not worldly, what constitutes reasons to believe for you actually turns out to be reasons not to believe for me.
>these arguments are epistemologically and rationally inferior compared to the Christian claim
If this were true in absolute terms, religions other than Christianity would be dying out, and theological arguments would have come to a close, or at least to a relatively unanimous consensus. I do not mean to be presumptuous, but I think you are also inevitably biased by the fact that your faith, as rational as its basis may be, also incorporates a level of belief, that is, that it draws upon your irrational preferences as well. What is grace, if not irrational in the most transcendental sense?
For what it's worth I find dharmic metaphysics generally more sensible than abrahamic takes (in very general terms) but I am conscious of the fact that this is merely a preference on my part and does not indicate objective superiority, although I am admittedly much less focused on logical consistency than you are.

[Anonymous No.18719217]

Will it actually teache how to get the philosopher stone?

[Anonymous No.18719219]

>>18719031
>we can ascertain certain physical truths about reality
Again, this only shows to demonstrate that reason is a fine method of inquiry in the realm within which it was designed to function, nothing more. The relative "truths" we perceive about reality are merely conventional and nothing more can be said about them; they appear to be true and unchanging, but there is no way to confirm the validity of these appearances, as this would require we take a step back from our frame of reference, which is life as a whole.
Your next point is related to what I said, in that you automatically associate the conventional truths granted to us by our system of rational inquiry, to the possibility of grasping hypothetical absolute truths, but this does not follow in my opinion, because there is no reason to think truth here translates into Truth "above".
>name something which -has- to be established through a baseless assumption
How does the idea that mathematical systems require unprovable axioms to function at some point not answer your request?
But either way, what about solipsism?
Frankly I don't really like arguing about epistemology because it feels like going in circles. Trying to determine the nature of knowledge is like the eye trying to see itself.
>Reason need not be transcendent to translate aspects of Truth into knowledge
At best, it would translate those aspects into conventional knowledge, i.e. relative truth, since if Truth is transcendent, it cannot be contained in this realm as per its very nature, and if it cannot be contained here because of its nature, then its nature would have to be changed to accomodate the requirements of this state of existence. At this point you're making a gamble and might be getting something that closely resembles Truth just as well as you might be getting pointless garbage that has nothing to do with Truth anymore except on an inscrutable semiotic level.
>How can you believe this is true
>you do present many beliefs
But I have separated them from my original claim, and have clearly specified that they are beliefs. My claim of extreme apophatism extends to my own beliefs, which I suspect will turn out to be ridiculously inane compared to reality, but even making this statement confines me to a set of assumptions that my original claims would have me avoid.
A pure negative stance of just denying everything you say is not very interesting however and even though I acknowledge that they are not based on much else than pure feeling, my refusal to take anything as granted should not preclude me from having beliefs, should it?

[Anonymous No.18719226]

>>18718945
>Thus, transcendent sets contained in an absolute Truth can be apprehended in some partial manner.
This is a good point but it is precisely for this reason that I believe knowledge of Truth to be impossible. As we are confined to our current set of "rationals", even if we do possess a piece of the puzzle, it is utterly impossible to make any sense of it before we stop being confined and are able to grasp the "irrationals". Therefore, all claims made before the full puzzle set can be seen are null.
>your system is irrational and logically inconsistent
Irrational yes, but so far I have not been convinced of its logical inconsistency.
I don't really seek to convince people, but if we were to sum up what I've been saying so far, it would amount to a flavor of radical skepticism. This is not an indefensible position by any means.
>lack of intellectual satisfaction, spiritual isolation
This would be true had I the need for logical consistency, but having held these exact beliefs for almost three decades and always feeling profoundly fulfilled by them, I suspect it will remain so. Perhaps I am being blissful in my stupidity, but none of my inquiries have led me to question my beliefs, so perhaps this is my intellectual limit.

[Anonymous No.18719239]

>>18718842
You seem a lot more toxic than the person you are replying to desu.

[Anonymous No.18719754]

>>18719203
>I see no reason to believe epistemology can lead us to truth.
I think I see the root of our failure to effectively communicate on this topic. We return back to the age-old question posited by Pilate - "Quid est veritas". To you, what does the word truth mean?

>I wasn't convinced nonduality was an experience of truth in the first place
But I am sure that, just like in almost every other case of mystical experience, you would view a given mystical experience a posteriori as being an encounter with some sort of transcendent reality which was not false or illusory, but True in the deepest sense. The experience is impossible to write off.
>They do, relative ones, as I said before
What do you mean when you say "relative truths"?
>essentially a more elaborate and academic version of trip reports
Yes, to study them empirically, in a controlled manner.
>This does not inform us about the actual quality of these experiences
Again, I believe this is moving the goalposts - you said initially that it was hardly possible to provide an empirical classification of experiences, not provide information about their "actual quality".
>Besides the obvious issue that is to determine how you could possibly know something is divinely inspired,
Which is a rational question, which is answered by the self-testifying nature of undeniable miracles - for example, the resurrection.
>How could they possibly know?
An a posteriori analysis, the same way you have come to believe in the afterlife, or eternal existence of the individual's logos.
>even if it is not, there is no way for us to make sure of that before we exit it
How do you know that that is true? What if you had a mystical experience that made you unambiguously sure of some aspect of a higher reality, seeing as you base your worldview on a posteriori irrational "rationalizations"? (no offence intended)
>I think you can see why testimonies and historical data would fail to convince me.
Yes, but you must recognize that for a logical and rational individual who wants a coherent worldview, being confronted with such a conundrum would generally lead to -some- conclusion being reached - either an acceptance of the hypothesis, or an embracing of some alternative one.
>what constitutes reasons to believe for you actually turns out to be reasons not to believe for me.
So positive evidence for a historical claim makes you doubt it even more than baseline? How can you square this as a coherent worldview, because it makes literally no sense to me. It seems that all things being equal, it makes sense that the more evidence there is for an event in this material world, the more one should attribute some type of actual-happenstance value to it. Do you not believe, for example, that Siddhartha Gautama existed or taught philosophy, because there is less evidence for him than for Jesus?

[Anonymous No.18719756]

>>18719239
It is also very clear that he IS indeed OP. Unmistakable middle school angry style.

[Anonymous No.18719772]

>>18719756
>>18719239

[Anonymous No.18719775]

>>18719073
You should try being less of a self-absorbed asshat. What you say really isn't as important as you seem to think it is, to put it mildly.

[Anonymous No.18719805]

>>18713333
Plotinus and Proclus are both Hermetic thinkers retard

[Anonymous No.18719846]

>>18719210
>If this were true in absolute terms, religions other than Christianity would be dying out, and theological arguments would have come to a close, or at least to a relatively unanimous consensus.
This is not necessarily true, because many people hold onto their belief system because of irrational a posteriori reasons, rather than a maximally unbiased perspective which attempts to weigh all factors with equal levels of impartiality.
>I do not mean to be presumptuous, but I think you are also inevitably biased by the fact that your faith, as rational as its basis may be, also incorporates a level of belief
It was the most rational and logically consistent system, and the "leap of faith" for me was relatively small, because of how much sense it made on all levels, especially when compared to the other religions I explored (almost all of them, in one tradition or another).
> this only shows to demonstrate that reason is a fine method of inquiry in the realm within which it was designed to function, nothing more.
Yes, and the point is that in this realm, we can use our faculty of inquiry to come to rational conclusions about things outside of our reality - for example, we can apprehend the nature of the number 1, or a triangle, although neither truly exist in our reality.
>there is no way to confirm the validity of these appearances
In my opinion, this is only if you irrationally discard the epistemology of empiricism (naturally, without evidence contrary).
>How does the idea that mathematical systems require unprovable axioms to function at some point not answer your request?
I suppose I placed more emphasis on the question of a given system having to be - established- on a baseless axiom, not just the possibility of there being axioms which cannot be proven when a system is taken to its logical maximums. I am no mathematician, though, so I suppose I can grant you this point, although it does not seem to me that it advances your hypothesis for the non-existence of truth through reason.
>if Truth is transcendent, it cannot be contained in this realm as per its very nature
I never argued for the absolute Truth existing in this realm, but rather that some subset of the absolute Truth is apprehensible through reason, such as the claim that the thing known as energy has being in the material realm.
>might be getting something that closely resembles Truth just as well as you might be getting pointless garbage that has nothing to do with Truth
This may be the case without further hermeneutics and epistemological investigations, such as a grand and unprecedented miracle performed by an individual leading to their claims of having Truth being much more reliable (or, in this case, literally being the Truth, as the incarnate Logos).
>even making this statement confines me to a set of assumptions that my original claims would have me avoid.
Which is why I am pointing it out - it is a glaring inconsistency in your system.

[Anonymous No.18719868]

>>18719226
>Therefore, all claims made before the full puzzle set can be seen are null.
So you are saying that because nobody can apprehend the set of all irrational numbers within their mind, no individual can apprehend any given subset of irrational numbers, because the "full puzzle set" cannot be seen in its totality? This would seem to fly in the face of all we know about consciousness and mathematics - I can prove this statement wrong simply by learning a single irrational number, which corresponds to me apprehending a subset despite having no vision of the full set itself.
>it would amount to a flavor of radical skepticism. This is not an indefensible position by any means.
If your position were one of radical skepticism, I would agree - but it is much more than that, as you profess a set of metaphysical beliefs which you cannot derive from a radically skeptic system. Thus, there is a logical inconsistency in your system - you claim to not believe in the apprehension of any truth, and yet you still believe.
>This would be true had I the need for logical consistency
You don't feel any cognitive dissonance when holding two simultaneously contradictory ideas in your mind? I find your perspective very strange.

[Anonymous No.18719902]

>>18719775
There is absolutely nothing wrong with he has contributed to this thread. You on the other hand came in, flung some shit and are now seething. Great job buddy!

[Anonymous No.18719944]

>>18719902
He literally just said "The bloggers have arrived". How would you know what he contributed to this thread, except if you are samefagging and think anybody else can tell what you've posted?

[Anonymous No.18719958]

>>18719944
Ah I think I responded to the wrong person. I think we both were admonishing the same person. Also I not a samefag to any of the posts being discussed

[Anonymous No.18720101]

>>18719754
I'm going to have to leave soon so this is my last reply, I will come back tomorrow if the thread is still alive. I enjoyed our discussion even though we have not come to an agreement.
>To you, what does the word truth mean?
For truth to mean something (and for me to define it without making self-evident statements like "truth is what cannot be denied"), there has to be a reality to which it applies, yes? So asking this question also necessitates that I qualify reality. I don't believe I am able to, at least not spontaneously and not without writing several blocks of text on this subject in particular.
Was this question meant to lead me somewhere, or were you asking out of curiosity? Do you have a personal definition for truth?
>The experience is impossible to write off.
Indeed. Just like particularly powerful psychedelic experiences are impossible to write off. But in the end, they are experiences, and their inherent reality, or rather, their correspondence to a hypothetical higher reality, can always just be assumed, never known for certain.
>"relative truths"
Something that is considered truthful because it seems to apply to all aspects of our existence in this plane, i.e. not absolute Truth. An agreed upon axiom or observation. I see the truth in this place as relative or provisional because it does not inform me about any absolute Truth. Just to be clear I'm not arguing for pomo, just drawing a line between the absolute and the worldly.
>an empirical classification
How do you provide an empirical classification of an experience that is inherently individual and qualitative? You can record physiological indicators, make psychiatric observations and whatnot, but what will this tell you?
>the self-testifying nature of undeniable miracles - for example, the resurrection.
I disagree that miracles constitute undeniable proof of divine inspiration. If something happens in this reality, then that means that it could happen, even if it had never happened before and might never happen again. Why/how did the resurrection happen? Can we know for certain that such a mechanism was not already present in this reality, rather than introduced in it by divine intervention from a higher plane of existence? It may seem to you like I'm being insincere but this is genuinely my line of thinking. I could feasibly believe that Jesus came back from the dead, but this would not automatically make me accept the claims that, according to Christianity, naturally follow from this miraculous event.
>the same way you have come to believe in the afterlife
I didn't come to this belief through a mystical experience, and I absolutely do not claim I have ever had access to any higher plane of existence; which is what mystics claim, and what I think they have no way of ascertaining, past their reliance on their intuition (which you said was not a reliable method of inquiry).

[Anonymous No.18720112]

>>18719754
>How do you know that that is true?
Considering my skeptical stance, you could just ask this of me every time I make a claim and put an end to the argument.
I don't know if it is true, but let's put it like this: I can be almost certain of some things that pertain to this realm because the relative knowledge here seems stable. Assuming our understanding of our own systems of logic isn't completely false and misdirected, I can therefore say with a high degree of certainty that it is not possible to have an overlooking view, or vantage point, on any kind of object if you are presently within that object, correct? If you are within a system, you cannot see the system from outside, the eye cannot see itself. From this I conclude that I cannot be sure of anything until I exit this plane of existence, and although I cannot even be certain of this claim, it seems like a reasonable one to make for the reasons previously stated.
>What if you had a mystical experience that made you unambiguously sure
Then I would be sure, secure in my belief, but I would not claim to know.
>lead to -some- conclusion being reached
Yes. I feel no need to come to a conclusion because of my aforementioned skepticism concerning religious claims on truth in general, even though I admit (since I am not wilfully dishonest) that the testimonial evidence for the resurrection is reasonably compelling. To me these two things (the truth of Christianity and the historical truth of the resurrection) are separate.
>positive evidence for a historical claim makes you doubt it even more
No, my wording was stupid. What I meant was that since I do not believe Truth can come from within this realm, claims of historicity and whatnot concerning religious events don't sway me one way or the other. Even if they did happen, it changes nothing because of what I said earlier regarding truth claims coming from religions.
Of course, the more evidence there is for an event in this world, the more inclined I'll be to believe it actually happened.
I believe Siddhartha did exist, but similarly, I don't feel compelled to believe in the truth of his system.
>many people hold onto their belief system because of irrational a posteriori reasons
Yes, and I am certain none of them believe they belong to this category of people. What I am saying is that everyone believes they have a maximally unbiased perspective. Some people will explore, with similar rationality and logical consistency as yours, all religions and find that Kashmir Shaivism makes the most sense to them.
>we can use our faculty of inquiry to come to rational conclusions about things outside of our reality
I wholly disagree with this for the reasons stated earlier and I don't believe your examples are adequate because you seem to base them on the assumption that Forms are transcendental and exist independently from the objects they describe. The problem of universals is still open-ended.

[Anonymous No.18720121]

>>18719754
>this is only if you irrationally discard the epistemology of empiricism
Not necessarily. You are talking about the absolute validity of the laws that appear to govern this realm, but so far, no origin to them has been figured out, no theory of everything elaborated, and these laws appear to be arbitrary from our frame of reference, if we assume there were other possibilities (which is a fair assumption). Why are cosmological constants what they are? I don't believe we have an answer for this. Empiricism seems stable until you acknowledge that the foundations on which it is based are invisible.
>it does not seem to me that it advances your hypothesis for the non-existence of truth through reason.
If the prerequisite for the existence of a system, in this world, is a set of axioms that can never be verified, then we ought to wonder if the axioms we use to conduct rational inquiry are meaningful on any level. Since they might as well be arbitrary from our point of view and that their reason for being is wholly impenetrable, why conclude that we are able to seize truth? All of the tools we use to analyze the reality we perceive are, in the end, given to us by a black box we cannot open. Without seeing what's inside, can we really say we're getting the whole picture, and thus that we are being objectively truthful?
>some subset of the absolute Truth is apprehensible through reason
The above statement applies to this also. If the foundations of reason itself are inscrutable, how can you be confident that you are apprehending a subset of absolute Truth?
>without further hermeneutics and epistemological investigations
But these investigations are contained within the framework of rationality. You can't escape it. I'm saying that we are stuck in a frame of reference from which we cannot possibly separate ourselves, and claims of truth require that you be able to at least analyze your frame of reference with unbiased tools that are foreign to it, but we cannot do this.
>Which is why I am pointing it out - it is a glaring inconsistency in your system.
No, I believe you misunderstood, that statement applied to the claim that I suspect my beliefs will turn out inane compared to the reality; this statement implied a level of knowledge of reality that I don't have, but I made it anyway in order to avoid autistically stating "but of course this cannot be ascertained" to every single statement I make. There is no apparent inconsistency in skepticism applying to itself, in fact I think it is natural. If I claim no knowledge to be possible here, I am also admitting that I could be wrong. I am also making a difference between knowledge and belief.

[Anonymous No.18720126]

>>18719754
>So you are saying that [...]
No, this is fallacious reasoning. The condition necessary to "see the puzzle" in that case would be to know what an irrational number is. If you only know what a rational number is, you cannot know what sqrt(2) is, it is completely opaque to you, it is null, an unknown, indescribable. But if you know what an irrational number is, this automatically includes the knowledge of a rational number. It isn't about apprehending the set in literal terms, but its nature. Furthermore, if you only know what a rational number is and have no knowledge of irrationals (or of the reals, rather), you have no possibility of knowing it is "a rational number": to you, it will simply be the set of all numbers, you won't perceive it as a subset of anything. The analogy has its obvious limits, the point is, again, the analogy of an object being unable to observe itself from a vantage point.
Applying this to reality, the nature of whatever exists above our world cannot be known, because the nature of our world is only its own nature: it does not contain within it anything that could it to observe itself without being contained inside it in turn. Any available tool used to observe the subject would also belong to the subject, which raises obvious problems of objectivity.
>you profess a set of metaphysical beliefs which you cannot derive from a radically skeptic system
I think I have stated that I acknowledge my beliefs as merely the possibilities that seem the most plausible to me, with no claim being made as to their objective truth. I do not think I have a monopoly on truth; I don't think anyone does, even on a small fragment of truth.
>You don't feel any cognitive dissonance
As I said above the ideas aren't contradictory, so there's no need for cognitive dissonance.
To make it clearer: I retain distance from everything. It's difficult to explain but I've always managed to feel a kind of "movement" of the mind where whenever I would start assuming things about the world (metaphysics), I would feel this impression of taking a step back and realizing my perspective was merely a perspective. It all hinges on being able to step back from everything and acknowledge that even as I am taking that step, I am still within an inescapable epistemological prison where the only winning move is not to play.

[Anonymous No.18720215]

>>18719754
>the self-testifying nature of undeniable miracles
What do you think of siddhis

[Anonymous No.18720372]

>>18720101
I enjoyed our discussion as well. It was the first time I have spoken with a self-identified illogical irrationalist skeptic (I hope these are not offensive labels, as they seem to me to accurately describe your epistemology), and I have found it quite interesting.

>Was this question meant to lead me somewhere, or were you asking out of curiosity? Do you have a personal definition for truth?
I was attempting to figure out which system of epistemology you use, because I believe it to be the root of our disagreement (as well as the nature of reality). I adhere to a correspondence theory of truth, whereby there is an objective reality and a metaphysical reality, and we can apprehend knowledge of subsets of things within them using the intellect. I believe your radical skepticism to be psychologically impossible, as in the end, you cannot possibly apply it to all things you phenomenologically experience (eg. I do not believe I am alive, I do not believe I loved my parents, I do not believe love is real, I do not believe I am real, etc.). It is only possible as an intellectual lens, and cannot hope to provide a satisfying explanatory lens for the phenomenon in your life.
>How do you provide an empirical classification of an experience that is inherently individual and qualitative?
The same way you can provide an empirical classification to the subjective experience of pain.
>what will this tell you?
It will increase the depth through which one can analyze these phenomenon, which will eventually lead to a more precise empirical measurement, until the phenomenon is being known in a predictable way.
>I disagree that miracles constitute undeniable proof of divine inspiration.
If somebody says they are God and then literally rises from the dead (the first person in recorded human history to do so), this does not make you think they could actually be telling the truth? I find it a bit outlandish that you can reasonably entertain such a thing happening, and that the claim is in fact evidentiarily compelling, but still remain skeptical of the claims to truth made by that individual. In the end, is it not a matter of your guesses as to the nature of reality, versus a literal miracle worker, who claimed to be God, and rose from the dead? What makes you think your hypotheses hold any weight in comparison, viewed impartially?
>this would not automatically make me accept the claims that, according to Christianity, naturally follow from this miraculous event.
If He spoke the truth in the eyewitness testimonies, we would see that it is inescapable that His claim to send the Holy Spirit to "guide [the apostles] into all truth" came to fruition, and that therefore, their claims were divinely inspired.

[Anonymous No.18720472]

>>18720112

>I can therefore say with a high degree of certainty that it is not possible to have an overlooking view, or vantage point, on any kind of object if you are within [it]
This claim seems to be contradicted by the existence of remote viewing, astral projection, or out-of-body experience-type phenomenon.
>To me these two things (the truth of Christianity and the historical truth of the resurrection) are separate
The eyewitness testimonies indicate that the resurrected Jesus said, essentially, that He would provide them with the Holy Spirit, which would provide them with epistemologically certain truths. As His resurrection is the self-testifying miracle giving a stamp of approval to His words (including His pre-death prediction that He would raise from the dead), this makes the two claims inseparable.
>I am certain none of them believe they belong to this category of people
Well, I mean, you belong to that category (by your own admission), so your certainty is misplaced.
>you seem to base them on the assumption that Forms are transcendental and exist independently from the objects they describe
This is based on Aquinas' argument from motion, which I doubt will be compelling to you, seeing as you are not interested in logic or rationality.
>Empiricism seems stable until you acknowledge that the foundations on which it is based are invisible.
"Invisibility" here is not a problem, as it Empiricism necessarily a metaphysical lens used to judge physical phenomenon. Who expects a metaphysical phenomenon to be empirically measurable?
>If the prerequisite for the existence of a system, in this world, is a set of axioms that can never be verified [...] why conclude that we are able to seize truth?
Because these truth claims correspond directly to an experiential reality, which can be known through logic and reason, and repeated. Because of our differing perspective on truth and reality is as of yet unresolved, I feel this point will be too troublesome to debate at this current stage.
>claims of truth require that you be able to at least analyze your frame of reference with unbiased tools that are foreign to it
I disagree that the analyzation of a frame of reference using an unbiased external tool is a requirement to reach truth. You can account for biases in a way approaching a lack of bias, such as through double-blind placebo-controlled studies, and minimize (if not eliminate) most errors caused by the bias of the individual.
>merely the possibilities that seem the most plausible to me, with no claim being made as to their objective truth
What makes you believe your intuited possibilities are the most plausible, or in fact, plausible at all?
>I am still within an inescapable epistemological prison where the only winning move is not to play.
And yet you have a parallel system to your Pyrrhonic skeptic system, in which you do play and hold faith-based beliefs, yet without being as skeptical as you would be for another's beliefs.

[Anonymous No.18720944]

>>18719944
The thread didn't get good until the bloogers arrived. Before that this thread as asscheecks because nobody wanted to discuss the kybalion

[Anonymous No.18720982]

>>18713424
>he actually read his textbooks

[Anonymous No.18721027]

>>18720215
I think siddhis are a complex topic. If I were to give a brief statement, I would say that, in one school of thought, you might say that one with invincible ignorance, who is nonetheless seeking the true Light earnestly and with all his heart, -might- be able to function as a type of vessel for God, whereby God may communicate His grace outside of the physical bounds of the church through performing miracles -through- an individual who has "denied himself" (ego death), and not become possessed by an evil spirit (through God's grace). I would not subscribe to the belief that siddhis are powers which can be earned or utilized by the individual themselves of their own power or volition, but rather that God may, in His infinite wisdom, choose to act through somebody who is invincibly ignorant, and unburdened by a sinful life, for His glorification.

In another school of thought, siddhis might be unholy powers achieved through either (unintentional?) communion with fallen entities after (attempted) ego death or magickal practices (eg. demonic possession), inferior and unholy powers achieved through willing communion with fallen entities (eg. pharaoh's magicians in Exodus), or the subjective schizophrenic delusions of somebody attempting to achieve enlightenment in an improper way (eg. without a guru, as Swami Vivekananda says in Raja Yoga), and actually breaks their mind, living in a psychotic reality.

I probably would lean towards the first option based upon the rarity of those who are able to manifest "siddhis" despite the huge amount of practitioners, and I would stress that this might only be possible for those who are invincibly ignorant, like small-town or rural Hindus who have never been exposed to any mechanism whereby they might hear and believe the Gospel. Please take this with a grain of salt, as it is my own opinion, and may be skirting the lines of Christian orthodoxy - it is by no means the belief of the ancient apostolic churches, which would probably lean towards the second and third explanation (if I had to guess).

[Anonymous No.18721415]

>>18717944
>read monroe
Monroe never claimed religion was fake. He just wasnt concerned with it. He even wrote of going to heaven.

>castaneda
Idiot who got absolutely rekt by a bruja and thought it must have been don juan messing with him. Ran away from his apprenticeship because he couldnt accept the fact that reality was more than he thought it was.
Attempted to use what he learned to make a cult of young poon.

>>18718047
Oh you're a new ager with no coherent belief system. I'm not interested then.

[Anonymous No.18721424]

>>18718900
Better go subscribe to the multiple gender theory and CRT, top fucking kek.
NEW THOUGHT IS GUD

[Anonymous No.18721432]

>>18719210
>I simply don't believe the events of the Bible to be true, or rather, to reflect any kind of transcendent truth
Thats your opinion and its founded in complete ignorance.

[Anonymous No.18722589]

it's all so tiresome bros

[Anonymous No.18723135]

>>18721415
>Monroe never claimed religion was fake.
He goes on to describe in several of his books how the soul goes through various locales, one of them being the "belief systems area" that acts as a sort of fake afterlife for those who are not ready to let go of their beliefs. He says something like "if you cling to your belief system, it's the same as clinging to anything else, which makes genuine ascent impossible." You can't get more anti-religious than this.

[Anonymous No.18723145]

>>18721415
>Christian
>coherent belief system
Ha he ha he ha he ho ha he ho ha ha ha ha he he ho ha he. You guys are the most talented mental gymnasts around.

[Anonymous No.18723151]

>>18720215
>What do you think of siddhis
This question wrecks the Christkike. Siddhis had been attributed to rishis long before Joseph got cuckolded.

[Anonymous No.18723159]

>>18719902
Nobody but a midwit is impressed with this fucking "Frater" dude who finally got tired of LARPing as a Victorian-era super-occultist and stopped namefagging. These "Frater" dudes are a dime a dozen. It's all words, words, words with them, the last refuge of the mystically/magically impotent. They can't do shit, on this plane or any other plane concocted by the feverish imagination. Keep simping, you midwit.

[Anonymous No.18723250]

>>18720372
Thread is still here, that's nice.
>self-identified illogical irrationalist skeptic
Yes, that sounds about right. I've mulled over your posts a bit, some of your arguments are compelling and leading me to try being more rigorous in my rejection of dogma, I'll try to focus on this instead of addressing the less important points.
>which system of epistemology you use
I don't subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth. I'm not well-versed in epistemology but some kind of perspectivism would fit my position better, although I'm not a nietzschean and would be inclined to posit that individual perspectivism would remain inferior to a hypothetical transcendental perspective, although its existence cannot be ascertained. I support an kind of quietist approach to the assessment of truth claims in general. You're right that this is the root of our disagreement, because your approach to truth is practical, objective, more active and seeking, while mine is subjective, ephetic and passive.
Concerning our respective positions on the nature of reality, they don't seem all that different. I maintain that this reality is a subset of a higher one, which is something I think you can agree with. For me, this nature justifies the epistemic inaccessibility of higher realities, while for you it facilitates it.
>I do not believe
This is a different statement from "I do not know".
I do not seek an explanatory lens, because I assume explanations to be false.
>this does not make you think they could actually be telling the truth?
I have no way of verifying if the Gospels represent an accurate retelling of the events of Jesus' life down to his words and personal claims. It seems likely, but cannot be known for sure. I don't think the weight of my opinion is predicated on my ability to perform miracles, as another poster implied, siddhis provide a different perspective on miracle working outside of an Abrahamist lens, which would imply that even for a miracle worker, the individual perspective remains inescapable. The assumption is that the miracles that could have been performed constitute evidence for the truth of the statements made, which does not necessarily follow.
>remote viewing, astral projection, or out-of-body experience
This does not contradict what I said: AP would have you remove yourself from the object (body) first in order to be able to observe it from a vantage point. You cannot observe something from afar if you are within it, without first exiting that thing in order to find a higher point from which to observe it.
>this makes the two claims inseparable.
I am skeptical of the idea that performing a miracle makes the miracle worker unable to make false/inaccurate statements.
>you belong to that category
Yes.
>argument from motion
I find it unconvincing because I see no reason to believe in the primacy of causal relationships past a certain point. A nonlocal approach is also possible.

[Anonymous No.18723252]

>>18720472
>"Invisibility" here is not a problem
It becomes a problem as soon as you start making metaphysical claims. Empiricism works for data that can be empirically determined, obviously, but the invisible foundations mean you're going in blind when it comes to anything else.
>You can account for biases
I think we're going in circles here because a fundamental disagreement we have is that I don't even believe it is possible to be unbiased in the first place, let alone that a method "approaching a lack of bias" would ever be sufficient. This is because I do not believe it is possible to go beyond an individual perspective, but also because my stance on knowledge means I do not admit higher realities to be accessible. This means any tool we have becomes worthless.
>What makes you believe your intuited possibilities are the most plausible
My individual perspective, conveniently unencumbered by the trappings of rationality; and it is precisely because it is my individual perspective that it is granted primacy over other possibilities, but because I admit a transcendental perspective might exist, I do not affirm the absolute truth of my beliefs.
>you have a parallel system to your Pyrrhonic skeptic system
This is a good point which I had to think about before making this post and I thank you for making me aware of it, but what I said above addresses it. I think a vague parallel can be drawn with the concept of the "two truths doctrine" in Buddhism.
>>18721432
Your own belief in the Bible is also your opinion and not predicated on more accurate knowledge than mine. It is a ridiculous statement to claim that a lack of belief in the bible is "founded in ignorance" since you are assuming your religion to be true in order to make this statement in the first place.

[Anonymous No.18723269]

>>18723159
>t,

[Anonymous No.18723279]

>>18723159
The Frater tripfag is a Protestant, so the other anon can't be him since he's a Catholic.

[Anonymous No.18723281]

>>18713333
>

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18723728]

>>18723279
Yeah it ain’t me.

[Anonymous No.18723745]

>>18713424
why would you read some random 20th century larpers take on the hermetica over the actual hermetica

[Anonymous No.18723753]

>>18723728
Could you recommend a good book on pure praxis for spiritual attainment? I have "between the gates" by Stavish, not sure if you know it, I want other stuff that gets to the nitty gritty since I've read enough theory for now.

[Anonymous No.18723758]

>>18723279
>The Frater tripfag is a Protestant
lol what a fag

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18723829]

>>18723753
Depends on the tradition you want, molinos spiritual guide for example isn’t bad, the New Testament obviously, but then the question arises if you want occult/esoteric lit, in which case I would recommend the arbatel and liber Juratus and for the theory read Iamblichus, proclus and Plotinus, if you want eastern lit the list changes, throw on the shiva samhita at minimum.

But really, study what traditions even interest you, if you do so you’ll immediately find the lit you’re looking for. Vagueness is why you’re having trouble finding the literature you want.

[Anonymous No.18723920]

>>18723829
I wanted to get into eastern mysticism but without a guru they say you'll fuck your shit up. I'll check out what you said, thanks

[Anonymous No.18723957]

>>18712927
Fuck you kike.

[Anonymous No.18724110]

>>18712927
bro stop thinking /lit/ is serious I'm certain everyone here is joking - I've shit talked that book a bunch, I haven't read it, I have no interest in hermetism or gnosticism I just got sick of seeing the cover in the catalog.

it's very easy to shit talk a book you haven't read
>for normies
>beginner level
>pseud easy to digest shit
>just for people who like to name drop obscure books (or books that they think make them look smart depending on how popular the book is)
>etc

[Anonymous No.18724121]

>>18724110
also as time goes on I'm more convinced that taking online discussion seriously (outside of interacting with friends) is a signifier of mental illness

[Anonymous No.18724373]

>>18713378
is the Hermetic Corpus anti-annihilationism? I know Egyptian religion was. I can't trust the neo-platonic grift of Egyptian religion via Iamblichus and then the later perennialists.

[Anonymous No.18724399]

>>18724373
Not many religions are anti-annihilationism honestly but yeah hermeticism qualifies

[Anonymous No.18724479]

>>18724399
Well, Egyptian religion, Zoroastrianism, there's hints of anti-annihilationism in Orpheusm, as well as the Ionian Greeks, various Hindu sects that don't follow Shankara, and of course Christianity and Islam.

[Anonymous No.18724490]

>>18724479
>various Hindu sects that don't follow Shankara
Aren't they fringe and mostly dying? Which ones are they specifically?
It's hard to make monism non-annihilationist

[Anonymous No.18725391]

>>18713414
>bullshit like 'everything vibrates'
t. midwit who's never heard of waves or particle spin, or who's never considered that even resting is an action

[Anonymous No.18725405]

>>18716149
>the lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding
Woah gee, that was hard