Why did René Guénon convert to Islam?

[Anonymous No.21737180]

I am genuinely curious why he would convert. It is not one of the oldest religious traditions, and it is generally life-denying.
If someone better versed could help me with that, It would be great.

[Anonymous No.21737189]

>>21737180
Why not? Lots of people, once they discover the beauty of Islam, do so.

[Anonymous No.21737190]

required to enter a Sufi order plus cucked by anglodogs out of India which was his first option

[Anonymous No.21737194]

dedicated to his larp

[Anonymous No.21737202]

>>21737180
he got a cooler sounding name

[Anonymous No.21737204]

>>21737190
>required to enter a Sufi order
That's silly. It's like saying why did the cardinal convert to Christianity, in order to enter the Church. If he didn't like Christianity he wouldn't enter the Church in the first place.

[Anonymous No.21737205]

>>21737190
That makes sense.
Thanks.

[Anonymous No.21737210]

>>21737190
>anglodogs out of India which was his first option
Guenon was also well versed in Hindu traditions, given that these works were spreading through Europe at the time, so this is also flawed

[Anonymous No.21737224]

>>21737210
Yes, but if he could not go to India he could not collectively practice.

[Anonymous No.21737282]

>>21737204
it's not the same, he was aiming at initiatic knowledge first and foremost, the exoteric nature of Islam was utterly of secondary importance to his goals: it's basically as the saying goes, when in Rome, do as the Romans do; in Egypt at the time and for his particular goals you have to formally be a convert to the Islamic faith

[Anonymous No.21737327]

Islam doesn’t give a shit if you endorse heresy and are a kaffir as long as you abide by sharia and nominally promote Islam. Guenon’s “non-dualism” (monism) is not only wrong, but Islamic heresy. They just don’t care.

[Anonymous No.21737330]

>>21737327
If you follow the rules outwardly and say “Islam is great”, they don’t care if you believe in absolute one-ness and identify creatures with creator.

[Anonymous No.21737340]

>>21737327
>>21737330
The fact both of you retards are saying this shows you have zero knowledge of the massive theological debates had in Islam.

[Anonymous No.21737346]

>>21737327
>is not only wrong, but Islamic heresy
So Ibn Arabi is a kafir?

[Anonymous No.21737351]

join to discuss Tradition and Guénon

https://discord.gg/gUFx4F4h

[Anonymous No.21737356]

>>21737346
>So Ibn Arabi is a kafir?
Well, don't ask the Salafi's about it.

[Anonymous No.21737362]

>>21737340
It was one person elaborating on my previous statement, and I what I said is true. Islam IS a dualistic religion as a matter of fact. Guenon’s “non-dualism” is not only wrong generally but incompatible with Islam. The things he believes would have him labeled a kaffir if Muslims actually practiced what they preached but they don’t. They pick and choose because they don’t actually care as long as you promote sharia. I’m right about this.

[Anonymous No.21737364]

>>21737356
I don't care what those guys think, but the four major traditional school of thoughts, do any of them consider Ibn Arabi's monism kufr?

[Anonymous No.21737365]

>>21737330
>they don’t care if you believe in absolute one-ness and identify creatures with creator.
They do, however that is between you and Allah, they may warn you, but only Allah can punish you, if he so sees fit.

[Anonymous No.21737368]

>>21737364
> Muslims don’t care as long as you promote Islam
Did you miss this part?

It’s quite obvious that identifying creation with creator makes you a kaffir. They just don’t care.

[Anonymous No.21737369]

>>21737364
>kufr
That's a strong word, so no.

[Anonymous No.21737372]

>>21737365
If they did, they would be forced to concede that what Guenon believed and endorsed was in fact not Islam, but something else wearing Islamic garb. You can call yourself a Muslim but if you deny basic Islamic presuppositions you’re not a Muslim. Guenon’s religion was in reality not orthodoxy anywhere on earth.

[Anonymous No.21737383]

>>21737372
>You can call yourself a Muslim but if you deny basic Islamic presuppositions you’re not a Muslim.
Honestly, the definition under which one can call himself Muslim is quite broad, unless you're a fundamentalist. But what Islamic presuppositions did Guenon deny, as I am not familiar with his work.

[Anonymous No.21737387]

>>21737383
So if I fundamentally disagree with the Quran about the nature of Allah, am I Muslim? Because that’s what Guenon does. Guenon does not even believe in the same God.

[Anonymous No.21737401]

>>21737387
>So if I fundamentally disagree with the Quran about the nature of Allah, am I Muslim?
I can perhaps share my opinion in the Islamic context, since the there's various interpretations about the "nature of Allah", but I am unsure as to what exactly you're referring to as far as Guenon goes.

[Anonymous No.21737408]

>>21737401
It's just the regular anon who gets triggered by Guenon and will repeatedly churn out the same talking points without substantiating anything.

[Anonymous No.21737474]

>>21737362
>because they don’t actually care as long as you promote sharia. I’m right about this.
How are you saying this you retard when various groups within Islam are labelled as hertical or at the very least misguided for holding varying beliefs? The muʿtazila uphold sharia, they are/were still labelled as heretics by some or at a minimum misguided by others for their various beliefs about saying the Quran was created, that God has no attribute etc..? This a MASSIVE subject within Islam with literally LIBRARIES filled with books on the subject and centuries of debates. Saying Muslims don't care what you believe as long as you promote sharia is so braindead it's unreal.
>>21737364
Ibn Arabi has his detractors right across amongst various Islamic schools.
>>21737368
Is that why numerous scholars contemporary to Ibn Arabi made takfir of his saying? Is that why numerous contemporary to Ibn Arabi sought fit to articulated and clear up "misconception" around his sayings? How are you this retard?

[Anonymous No.21737594]

>>21737368
At minimum, at least some (if not many) of the followers and the founders of at least these Sufi orders hold to some qualified degree of “non-duality”

The Akbarriya Sufis, a branch started based on the teachings of Ibn Arabi and especially his doctrine of Wahdat al-Wujud (the Unity of Existence).
The Mevlevi Sufis, started based off the teachings, writings, and practices of Rumi, as well as off what he learned in his relationship with his spiritual preceptor Shams i-Tabrizi
The Naqshbandiyya Sufis
The Bektashi dervishes of Albania, who especially revere Ibn Arabi’s thought and place stress on his concept of Wahdat al-Wujud

Now, about this “non-duality” issue. Ibn Arabi himself explicitly made clear this is not to be regarded as a “blasphemous raising of the status of humanity and of creatures to their Creator.” In fact, Allah, or His wujūd (Unity), is what is primary, original, increate, unlimited, all-encompassing, and uniquely itself. Created things and creatures are contingent, entirely dependent on Allah for their existence, and in a subservient status to Him. Analogously, it is like a moon which would have no light if it didn’t reflect any from the Sun, or an apparition in a mirror which is entirely contingent on the figure outside the mirror. In fact, he even says all things “borrow” their wujud (unity) from God, sounding now much like a Platonist or Neoplatonist talking about “things having their oneness based off of their being modeled after the Forms” or “off the One.”

In his book Fusus –al-Hikam, Arabi states that "wujūd is the unknowable and inaccessible ground of everything that exists. God alone is true wujūd, while all things dwell in nonexistence, so also wujūd alone is nondelimited (muṭlaq), while everything else is constrained, confined, and constricted. Wujūd is the absolute, infinite, nondelimited reality of God, while all others remain relative, finite, and delimited".

[Anonymous No.21737668]

>>21737362
>Guenon’s “non-dualism” is not only wrong generally
In truth, it's the final red-pill

[Anonymous No.21737733]

>>21737180
To give a conventional explanation, it’s because, with some leeway for this claim, there’s a lot of places in the Muslim world where saying and affirming the Shahada (“I bear witness that there is no deity but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God”), and outwardly living as a Muslim, you are now a Muslim. You can be a sinning, an errant, an improperly educated Muslim, but this is — to be extremely reductionistic — “what it takes”. In more tolerant, less dogmatic and authoritarian places and times of the Muslim world, at least, this gave quite some freedom for what “mystics” could say, speak, write about, and think, so long as ultimately they traced everything back to the Holy Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. There even eventually became a semi-precedent that things said in an ecstatic state of inspiration about divine truths and reality, could not necessarily always be superficially judged and condemned on a lower level as “improper,” but could have some wisdom in them.

Of course, there has still always been great societal fervor against and attempted persecution against the “outsiders” or “heretics” — of whom figures like Al-Ghazzali, Ibn el-Arabi, Jalaluddin Rumi, Bayazid Bistami, and so forth, also all Sufis, were all regarded at one time, but who funnily enough made a big “comeback” and are now accepted as leading lights of Muslim theology, philosophy, and poetry.

The vastness of Sufism was also home to lots of comparative religious study and thought, as well as “non-dual mysticism”, long before Guenon “made this up.” Rumi’s work, thought, and poetry is filled with it; as are the poet Attar of Nishapur’s works (author of the famous poem “Conference of the Birds”); as is Ibn Arabi’s thought and teachings, especially his concept of Wahdat al-Wujud (the Unity of Being); and so on, for quite some time, this only listing a handful of very well-known figures.

Of course, you still get events like al-Hallaj’s execution, the impropriety (according to intellectual society) of the theologian Ibn Arabi writing “salacious love poetry,” the madness (according to societal conceptions) of Rumi’s leaving his distinguished career in jurisprudence and high place in Muslim society to follow “some insane, poor, obscure, doddering old ‘Sufi master’ Shams Tabrizi, who weaves baskets for a living”; and so on. There’s also the outlawing of Sufism in regions like Turkey, as well as even some terror attacks against them and their places of worship, because “they’re heretical outsiders to Islam,” so this isn’t a 100% lovey-dovey romanticized portrait of the Muslim world.

Hence it’s NOT (far from it) one hundred percent true that, “You can believe anything you want in Islam so as long as you adhere to the core beliefs of Islam and outwardly appear and act as a Muslim in much of the Muslim world,” but it is SOMETIMES true.

[Anonymous No.21737740]

>>21737180
>I am genuinely curious why he would convert.
An exoteric step he didn't care about, but required to enter some esoteric order.
>It is not one of the oldest religious traditions, and it is generally life-denying.
Guenon doesn't care much about islam, he cared about metaphysical traditions he felt were still alive in the esoteric circles of those countries, under a superficial muslim clothing.
Guenon would be consider not just a deviant but full haram by 99% of imams. Imagine someone caring about neither Jewish ethnicity nor rabbinical law but formally converting to judaism in the hope of learning magic he thinks is revealed by Kabbalistic teachers.

[Anonymous No.21737758]

>>21737733
>al-Hallaj’s execution
this was based

[Anonymous No.21737785]

Comparative religious study, perennialist thought, esotericism, and non-dual mysticism in Islam and Sufism long before and apart from Guenon and the Traditionalist school:

“I am in the pagan; I worship at the altar of the Jew; I am the idol of the Yemenite, the actual temple of the fire worshipper; the priest of the Magian; the inner reality of the cross-legged Brahmin meditating; the brush and the color of the artist; the suppressed, powerful personality of the scoffer. One does not supersede the other — when a flame is thrown into another flame they join at the point of ‘flameness.’ You throw a torch at a candle, and then you say, ‘See! I have annihilated the candle’s flame!’” (Ishan Kaiser in “Speech of the Sages”).

“Take the wheat, not the measure in which it is contained” (Rumi, Mathnawi, Bk. II). A phrase rather similar to this and which could’ve been inspired by it (or at least is in alignment with it), used by some Sufis, is “chewing the glass instead of drinking the wine.” This is an analogy (they hold) to those who take the outer container or medium of religions as the essential thing, instead of getting to the deeper and vaster reality behind it.

“My heart can take on any form: a meadow for gazelles, a cloister for monks; for the idols, sacred ground, Ka’ba for the circling pilgrim; the tables of the Torah, the scrolls of the Quran. My creed is Love; wherever its caravan turns along the way, that is my belief, my faith.” (Ibn Arabi, the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq or “Interpreter of Desires”)

The Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (1615 — 1658) was a Sufi and learned Sanskrit and hired tutors so he could study Hindu religious text in their original form. He sought to promote unity between Hinduism and Islam in his empire — not in the sense of forcing either’s beliefs and practices on the other, but encouraging respectful dialogue and tolerance each of the other between them.

His spiritual preceptor was the Armenian mystic Sarmad Kashani (1590 - 1661), a very liminal, eccentric, and heterodox figure, sometimes called a Sufi (and having much in common with Sufism in his works), or just not classified at all, since he claimed to be “neither Jewish, Muslim, nor Hindu” after interacting with all these religions.

Prince Dara Shikoh also undertook a systematic and detailed comparison of the Koran with foundational Hindu holy texts like the Upanishads and Vedas, and, more specifically, of Sufi doctrines and teachings with Vedanta, in his comparative religious work, the Majma-ul-Bahrain (variously translated as “The Confluence of the Two Seas” or, “The Mingling of the Two Oceans”). As the poetic name suggests, he believed Hinduism and Islam ultimately led to and derived from the same source, both being able to lead followers to God. For this work, which was deemed blasphemy, he was executed, just as his one-time spiritual preceptor Sarmad was beheaded in 1661 for blasphemy.

[Anonymous No.21737786]

>>21737758
>the subversive idiot Massignon writes a four-volume apology seething about al-Hallaj's execution, who was completely unknown in Europe
>fucks up islamology for decades
>most people just dislike al-Hallaj after reading it
Much more than Guenon, I blame him and his Egyptian/American students for establishing the sufism meme in the west.

[Anonymous No.21737852]

>>21737740
>Imagine someone caring about neither Jewish ethnicity nor rabbinical law but formally converting to judaism in the hope of learning magic he thinks is revealed by Kabbalistic teachers.
I can definitely imagine that

[Anonymous No.21737858]

>>21737786
>I blame him and his Egyptian/American students for establishing the sufism meme in the west.
I think the works of Hazrat Inayat Khan et al. are the ones that the Western """"Sufism"""" can be traced back to.

[Anonymous No.21737861]

I see the resident Islamic zealot learned to disguise his proselytizing threats better.

[Anonymous No.21737871]

>>21737861
>resident Islamic zealot
What?
>disguise his proselytizing threats better.
Guenon posting is now proselythizing? No seriously I'm out of my depth, haven't visited /lit/ in over a year

[Anonymous No.21737879]

>>21737282
He could've joined the Copts.

[Anonymous No.21737880]

>>21737858
It was a combo, Inayat Khan set up something for a few spiritual-but-mot-religious larpers, Massignon spread it in academic circles.

[Anonymous No.21737886]

>>21737785
“Cross and Christians, end to end, I examined. He was not on the Cross. I went to the Hindu temple, to the ancient pagoda. In neither was there any sign. To the heights of Herat I went, and Kandahar. I looked. He was not on the height or lowland. Resolutely, I went to the top of the Mountain of Kaf. There only was the place of the ‘Anqa’ bird. I went to the Kaaba. He was not there. I asked of his state from Ibn Sina: he was beyond the limits of the philosopher Avicenna … I looked into my own heart. In that his place I saw him. He was in no other place…” (Rumi)

Before garden, vine, or grape were in the world
Our soul was drunker with immortal wine.
(Rumi. The interpretation is that divine and all-encompassing reality is prior to and transcendent beyond any formulation of it or historical manifestation of it — “Sufism” existed even when Muhammad had not walked the Earth yet, kept alive, for instance, by Jewish prophets here, and Christ and His disciples there, and even existed eternally before this without a name amongst the wise and devoted.)
__
An account of the famed Muslim theologian and philosopher, El-Ghazali, abandoning life as a scholar and academic, to search for what he felt had to be a “deeper” form of Islam. He was drawn to finding this in Sufism, and this long sojourn with the Sufis, and subsequent return to written theology and philosophy, had a tremendous impact on his character and his thought. He talks about “non-duality,” extinction or annihilation (fana) of the individual ego in God, or any other ecstatic spiritual experience, is only the first step on the spiritual path.

“‘I traveled to Syria,’ [El-Ghazali] says, ‘and remained there for two years. I had no other objective than that of seeking solitariness, overcoming selfishness, fighting passions, trying to make clear my soul, to complete my character.’ He did this because the Sufi cannot enter into understanding until his heart is prepared to ‘meditate upon God,’ as he calls it.

“The period of time was sufficient only to give him sporadic flashes of spiritual fulfillment (foretaste) — the stage which is considered by most non-Sufi mystics to be the ultimate, but which is in fact only the first step.

“Instead of being bemused by his ecstatic experiences, considering them the be-all and end-all of the mystical quest, Ghazali realized that ‘the so-called absorption in God, considered to be the GOAL of the Sufi, is in fact only the beginning.” (Idries Shah, “The Sufis”).

“You belong to the world of dimension. But you come from non-dimension. Close the first ‘shop,’ open the second.” (Rumi)

“What can I do, O Muslims? I do not know myself. I am no Christian, no Jew, no Magian, no Musulman, not of the East nor of the West.” (Rumi’s “Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz”)

[Anonymous No.21737893]

>>21737785
>Comparative religious study, perennialist thought, esotericism, and non-dual mysticism in Islam and Sufism long before and apart from Guenon and the Traditionalist school:
Heck even mainstream Islam itself is part perennial, incorporating all previous religious, as the prophets of Allah who all preached the same message.

[Anonymous No.21737900]

>>21737785
“Cross and Christians, end to end, I examined. He was not on the Cross. I went to the Hindu temple, to the ancient pagoda. In neither was there any sign. To the heights of Herat I went, and Kandahar. I looked. He was not on the height or lowland. Resolutely, I went to the top of the Mountain of Kaf. There only was the place of the ‘Anqa’ bird. I went to the Kaaba. He was not there. I asked of his state from Ibn Sina: he was beyond the limits of the philosopher Avicenna … I looked into my own heart. In that his place I saw him. He was in no other place…” (Rumi)

Before garden, vine, or grape were in the world
Our soul was drunken with immortal wine.
(Rumi)

[The interpretation is that the Reality of God is prior to and transcendent beyond any formulation of His Reality or historical manifestation of His — “Sufism” existed even when Muhammad had not yet walked the Earth, always existing as a reality without a named among at least some people.]

__
An account of the famed Muslim theologian and philosopher, El-Ghazali, abandoning life as a scholar and academic, to search for what he felt had to be a “deeper” form of Islam. He believed to have found this in Sufism, which massively influenced his later work and thought.

“‘I traveled to Syria,’ [El-Ghazali] says, ‘and remained there for two years. I had no other objective than that of seeking solitariness, overcoming selfishness, fighting passions, trying to make clear my soul, to complete my character.’ He did this because the Sufi cannot enter into understanding until his heart is prepared to ‘meditate upon God,’ as he calls it.

“The period of time was sufficient only to give him sporadic flashes of spiritual fulfillment (foretaste) — the stage which is considered by most non-Sufi mystics to be the ultimate, but which is in fact only the first step.

“Instead of being bemused by his ecstatic experiences, considering them the be-all and end-all of the mystical quest, Ghazali realized that ‘the so-called absorption in God, considered to be the GOAL of the Sufi, is in fact only the beginning.’” (Idries Shah, “The Sufis”).
__

“You belong to the world of dimension. But you come from non-dimension. Close the first ‘shop,’ open the second.” (Rumi)

“What can I do, O Muslims? I do not know myself. I am no Christian, no Jew, no Magian, no Musulman, not of the East nor of the West.” (Rumi’s “Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz”)

[Anonymous No.21737903]

>>21737886
What is even the point of posting all this?

[Anonymous No.21737980]

>>21737903
Because people repeatedly make ignorant claims that none of what “the Traditionalists” say is ever actually found in Islam or Sufism. As someone who knows this is wrong, and likes discussing literature, theology, and philosophy on this /literature/ board, I find it enjoyable and stimulating to give counter-examples to this claim.
__

“What I have learned as a Sufi is something that man cannot credit because of what he has already been taught. The easiest thing to grasp in Sufism is one of the most difficult for the ordinary thinker. It is this:

“All religious presentations are varieties of one truth, more or less distorted. This truth manifests itself in various peoples, who become jealous of it, not realizing that its manifestation accords with their needs. It cannot be passed on in the same form because of the difference in the minds of different communities. It cannot be reinterpreted, because it must grow afresh.

“It is presented afresh only by those who can actually experience it in every form, religious and otherwise, of man.

“This experience is quite different from what people take it to be. The person who simply thinks that this must be true as a matter of logic is not the same as the person who experiences that it is true.” (Khwaja Salahudin of Bokhara).
__

“None attains to the Degree of Truth until a thousand honest people have testified that he is a heretic.” (Junaid of Baghdad).

The world has no being except as an appearance;
From end to end its state is a sport and a play.
(Shabistari, Gulshan-i-Raz)

“Sufism is truth without form.” (Ibn el-Jalali)

For him who has perception, a mere sign is enough.
For him who does not really heed, a thousand explanations are not enough.
(Haji Bektash)

“Everyone in the ordinary world is asleep. Their religion — the religion of the familiar world — is emptiness, not religion at all.” (Sanai, the Hadiqat al-Haqiqa or “The Walled Garden of Truth”)

Recorded sayings of various of the Central Asian Khwajagani Sufi masters, Khwajagani literally meaning “the Masters”:

We work in all places and at all times. People believe that a man is important famous if he is famous. The converse may equally well be true. (Ghajdawani)

We send a thought to China, and it becomes Chinese, they say, because they cannot see the man who sent it. We send a man to India, and they say that he is only a Turkestani. (Sokhari)

[The interpretation seems to be that Sufism remains Sufism wherever it has authentically manifested itself. People may protest, “But this is Americanized Sufism!”, or, “This is a highly regional Indian form of Sufism which takes much from Hinduism!”, or, “This is a far-out Orientalized Chinese form of Sufism…” etc., but Sufism remains Sufism despite its interaction with other cultures.]

Pass from time and place to timelessness and placelessness, to the other worlds. There is our origin. (The Khwajagan Sufi Aminiki).

[Anonymous No.21738005]

>>21737733
By literally every orthodox viewpoint sinning and erring doesn't make you a heretic in Islam. It's actually heretical/unorthodox sects like the Mu'tazilah and the Khawarij that believe committing a major sin renders someone heretic. But orthodox Sunni Islam, whether that be Athari/Hanabli/Salafi or Ashʿari/Maturidi believe that sinning, even major, doesn't render someone a heretic

Furthermore, it's absolute not nor has it ever been the case that simply saying the Shahada means that then committing or espousing acts/beliefs of hearsay is excused. Save for committing or espousing them under duress or genuine ignorance. Literally every single "sect" associated with Islam affirms the Shahada, and yet the Jahmiyyah, the Qadariyah, the Falsifa, the Mu'tazilah, the Shia etc... have all been labelled as either heretics or holding heretical beliefs.

Also I'm not sure why you're listing Al-Ghazzali with the other 3. Al-Ghazzali was never considered a heretic. He was literally called by his contemporise "proof of Islam", DURING his lifetime he was considered the Mujaddid. EVEN amongst believers of differing theological schools, namely the Athari/Hanabli/Salafi, the man is still highly respected and revered. Ibn Taymiyyah who disagreed with Al-Ghazzali on numerous issues and refuted him on numerous issues, he literally refers to him as Ḥujjat al-Islām.

[Anonymous No.21738027]

>>21737387
Yes because Islam is a war manual not a religion
If you nominally call yourself Muslim that's good enough, because to be Muslim means 'to submit'

[Anonymous No.21738031]

>>21738027
You again? I thought I BTOF'd you in the other thread, you braindead moron.

[Anonymous No.21738034]

>>21737733
It's true during the infiltration phase and stops being true due to abrogation in the violence phase

[Anonymous No.21738037]

>>21737740
That sounds like a terribly toxic way to live. Imagine conforming to something that requires uprooting your whole life while longing for something entirely else. Why should we listen to this man again?

[Anonymous No.21738039]

>>21738031
You thought incorrectly

[Anonymous No.21738056]

Guenon has Livecraft tier ugliness.

[Anonymous No.21738060]

>>21737980
If you take what is relative to be absolute, you may be lost. Take nothing, rather than risk this. (Simaqi)

Man can partake of the Perpetual. He does not do this by thinking he can think about it. (Jan-i-Janan)

You cannot destroy us if you are against us. But you can make things difficult for us even if you think you are helping. (Badauni)

You hear my words. Hear, too, that there are words other than mine. These are not meant for hearing with the physical ear. Because you see only me, you think there is no Sufism apart from me. You are here to learn, not to collect historical information. (Qandahari)

You may follow one stream. Realize that it leads to the Ocean. Do not mistake the stream for the Ocean. (Jan-Fishan)

The visible places of Sufi study are like lamps in the dark. The inner places are like the Sun in the sky. The lamp illuminates an area for a time. The sun abolishes the dark. (Jan-Fishan)

A portrait of the Afghani Sufi Jan-Fishan Khan to the left.
__
“MORE LIGHT HERE” (being a Sufi joke or teaching-story of the illumined Sufi sage and action-teacher Mulla Nasrudin, one who typically transmits a message in a roundabout way by playing the fool.)

Mulla Nasrudin was outside on the ground looking intently for something. A neighbor saw him and asked, “What are you doing here, Nasrudin?”

“I am looking for the keys to my house.”

“I’ll help you,” the neighbor offered. They spent some time looking for it on the ground together there.

After quite some time of unsuccessful search, the neighbor, exasperated, said, “It doesn’t seem to be here. Are you sure you lost them here?”

“No,” the Mulla said, “I lost them in my house.”

“Then why, for heaven’s sake, are we looking for it here?”

“Because there is more light here.”

[Analogously, many search for the truth “outside their own house” — for instance, of what religion is, or what authentic Sufism is, for happiness, fulfillment, for enlightenment or even for God, instead of seeing with the “eye of the heart”, a Sufic phrase referring to an inner spiritual faculty and possibility of direct, immediate, and intuitive knowing of the reality behind appearances.]

[Anonymous No.21738135]

>>21738005
The Al-Ghazali reference was in error, put in there out of autopilot. The other points are addressed in my post and I wasn’t implying what you seemed to think I was implying — in fact, I was even agreeing, yes, a Muslim is still Muslim even if sinning or imperfect. I repeatedly made clear and said, that those with sufficiently far-out views are still often regarded as heretical in the Muslim world, but that Muslim civilization overall also paradoxically and ultimately allowed for a good deal more variety of interpretation than, say, the Christian world historically seems to have done, viz. in the form of numerous dervish orders and the phenomenon of Sufism in general, among whom a common view of at least some is that there is a transcendental core tying together different (authentic) Sufi and dervish orders, despite their geographical dispersion, or seeming differences in teaching style and emphases of doctrine.

It’s a more ecumenical sense (again, only among SOME), than something like the Christian world’s, “Only the Protestants got it right!” “No, the Roman Catholic Church!” “No, it’s the Eastern Orthodox Church!” etc. There is an understanding in (at least some) of that manifestation called “Sufism” that various dervish orders can be authentic guides of spiritual upliftment, and sometimes (although more rarely, and often more covertly held, due to threat of being labeled a “heretic”) even that apparently differing religions can be authentic and valid paths to the same End. A few anecdotal examples of these were aforementioned. There’s also the case of the Illuminationist school of the Persian Sufi. theologian, and philosopher Suhrawardi (1154 - 1191), who saw an “inner succession of teaching,” outwardly dispersed but being an unbroken chain of authentic divine inspiration, from the Platonists and Neoplatonists, the Egyptian figure of Hèrmes Trismegistus, and the Magians or Zoroastrians, up to the time of Islam and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Again, these are only anecdotal accounts, in response to the posters going, “No one ever actually believed in anything like this in the Muslim world, amongst the Sufis, or among the numerous world religions in general.” This is, in fact, explicitly false.

Pic to the left is a manuscript of the aforementioned Majma ul-Bahrain of Prince Dara Shikoh, the comparative religious tract asserting a core identity of Hinduism and Islam.

[Anonymous No.21738136]

Unironically nerd rage. He wanted to rub it in to the "Western civilisation" he so hated, overlooking all the aspects of tradition that really did reside in the West at the time. Even Evola, who's extremely blackpilled about the West, pointed out how absurd Guenon's hyper-islamicisation was.

[Anonymous No.21738206]

>>21737786
>Al Hallaj and other sufis cheaply rip off shia concepts
>makes outrageous statements to attract attention
>shia islam in a precarious position due to the occultation
>abbasid government is dominated by shia
>shia government officials execute him

[Anonymous No.21738268]

>>21738060
>>21737980
>>21737900
sufis just seem subversive as fuck

[Anonymous No.21738353]

>>21738268
Only some “Sufis” are (the ones I particularly respect and admire, that is). A good amount are just pious and sentimental dervish followers who are incredibly strictly and faithfully Muslim, both inwardly and outwardly. And yet, a good amount of the figures I brought up were also renowned for their personal saintliness, discipline and asceticism, their strict and rigorous adherence to Islam, and many becoming regarded as paragons and exemplars of Islam (like El-Ghazali and Ibn Arabi, regarded as some of the most important and influential of Muslim thinkers).

I am partially pumping in my own subversiveness here because I’m a goofy Western outsider fascinated by exotic Orientalism.

Anyway, you may think that, but I regard Wahhabis, I.S.I.S., Al-Qaeda, and perhaps whoever of the C.I.A. and Mossad occasionally funds, trains, arms, foments, or even impersonates these entities, and the like, as a good amount more “subversive” than some ragtag bunch of Sufis very piously and devotedly (if in their own seemingly eccentric way) devoted to self-betterment, improvement of the lives of those around them, a positive contribution to the world in general, and seeking either closeness to or oneness with God, as they variously formulate it.

[Anonymous No.21738374]

Because he liked the idea of it

[Anonymous No.21738376]

>>21738135
>The Al-Ghazali reference was in error, put in there out of autopilot. The other points are addressed in my post and I wasn’t implying what you seemed to think I was implying — in fact, I was even agreeing, yes, a Muslim is still Muslim even if sinning or imperfect.
Ok fair enough pal.

As for the rest of your post, I seem to get it now. It seems like you're analysing things within the paradigm of extremely fringe and highly unorthodox (if not outright heretical) "Sufi" groups. Yeah these beliefs seem to have popularity on this board and among some Westerners, by they are absolutely not representative of any type of Islam practiced and studied by the vast overwhelming majority of Muslims today and during these periods themselves. Suhrawardi and Dara Shikoh were both executed for heresy. Not only that, but they're literally nobodies in terms of scholarship in the Islamic world. I know you keep mentioning "some" but you could literally use that same qualifier and say that "some" in the Christian world were tolerant of X, Y and Z heretical belief. So I don't quite see your point here.

[Anonymous No.21738379]

>>21738353
>I’m a goofy Western outsider fascinated by exotic Orientalism.
Get a hobby, bro.

[Anonymous No.21738395]

>>21738376
>by they are absolutely not representative of any type of Islam practiced and studied by the vast overwhelming majority of Muslims today and during these periods themselves.
That's wrong. Sufi's were always an integral part of any Muslim society. In fact, places like Turkey were full of them, and most Ottoman Sultans were Sufi themselves.

[Anonymous No.21738396]

>>21737474
They don’t. If there are heretical groups that are persecuted for their hersey it’s strictly because what they preach outwardly violates sharia or fails to promote Islam. Muslims generally don’t care about theological presuppositions. Being a monist in Islam is totally indefensible. There’s no way around this. That one can call oneself a Muslim and preach that Islam contains monism is heresy. If Muslims don’t call it out, they’re just choosing not to, which is exactly the scenario I laid out.

[Anonymous No.21738409]

>>21737594
The logical conclusion of non-dualism is that it necessarily has to be monism. That he said it’s not the same as associating Allah with creatures doesn’t matter. It’s not dualist by nature, it’s not trinitarian because that would be aping Christianity, so the only conclusion is that its monist. It naturally follows then that you are associating creature with creator, even if you say you’re not.

[Anonymous No.21738416]

>>21737668
It’s occult nonsense, dude. I actually feel bad for people who get really deep into Guenon without seeing the bullshit. The guy smoked opium and never made a single justification for any of his claims about religion. Not one. He only ever endorsed beliefs that made them unjustifiable (illogical).

[Anonymous No.21738417]

To correct the propagandists here: it's absolutely incorrect to suggest that Guenon did not "care" about exoteric Islam and was only interested in the esoterism. For one thing, Guenon himself argued in multiple books that separating the two is not possible, the exoterism and esoterism are a package deal, just the inside of the dish and outside of the dish are both irrefutably part of the dish.
Secondly, Guenon shows clear signs besides this of taking the exoterism seriously, for example praising the Prophet in his letters to Evola and humbling himself in comparison.
Propagandists have an inherently deceitful mentality so they won't listen anyway, this is posted just so the truth can be stated. May you snakes suffer torment for eternity, inshallah.

[Anonymous No.21738449]

>>21737980
I can't attested to the validity of all of this, but I can say for this quote
>“None attains to the Degree of Truth until a thousand honest people have testified that he is a heretic.” (Junaid of Baghdad).
That there's no authentic nor reliable evidence that al-Baghdadi actually said this.
Also in this post, >>21737900
The supposed quotes about Al-Ghazali are nothing more than Idries Shah incorrect paraphrasing/interpretation of what Al-Ghazali said, rather than what Al-Ghazali LITERALLY said. I wouldn't class Idries Shah as a reliable source at all. Al-Ghazali's works are also readily available, so why the need for a 2nd hand interpretation of a translation (Idries Shah didn't know Arabic) of his works?

You should know that the type of "Sufism" you seem to be interested in this rife with WOEFUL scholarship.

[Anonymous No.21738467]

>>21738379
This IS that hobby.

>>21738376
Yes, those are good points. The “comparative religious” or perennialist aspect is particularly rather controversial in the Muslim world — however, the bit about “non-duality” which a poster in this thread was blasting as “heretical” and “non-Islamic,” certainly DOES show up in Islam, even amongst some of their greatest luminaries (whether poets, theologians, or mystics and ascetics popularly revered as saints among many Sufis); such as Rumi’s odes to non-dual oneness with or extinction in Allah; the conclusion of Attar’s “Conference of the Birds,” in which the birds go through the stages of fanā (annihilation, extinction of their separate individual egos, into God) and baqā (subsequent permanence in, abiding in or residence in God and by God; both being central Sufi concepts); Ibn Arabi’s doctrine of the Oneness of Being (Wahdat al-Wujud); and numerous Sufi and dervish orders aforementioned here, >>21737594
sometimes even explicitly based off of these figures and their ideas, who in their practices and teachings stress unity with God.

If no one else among the aforementioned is such, yet still, at minimum, Ibn Arabi is indeed a “big guy,” and it’s a verifiable fact that many geographically and culturally widespread dervish and Sufi orders have such core beliefs about attaining oneness with God, as a part of their blood and bones.

He is the Hearing, the Knowing. (The Quran 10:65)

And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein. (Quran 50:16)

And the unbelievers say, "Why has a sign not been sent down to him from his Lord?" You [Prophet] are there only to give warning, and for every people there has been a guide. (Quran 13:7)

Say: 'People of the Book! Come now to a word common between us and you, that we serve none but God, and that we associate not aught with Him, and do not some of us take others as Lords, apart from God.' And if they turn their backs, say: 'Bear witness that we are Muslims.' (Quran 3:64)

[Anonymous No.21738473]

>>21738449
>You should know that the type of "Sufism" you seem to be interested in this rife with WOEFUL scholarship.
Yeah, he's doing the typical romanticizing occidental culture ordeal, although it's better than spreading hate, but both can be dangerous if misconstrued

[Anonymous No.21738474]

>>21738395
Yes SUFIS are. But 99% of Sufi's don't/didn't follow what the likes of Suhrawardi and Dara Shikoh espoused. Again, they were executed for to hearsay for a reason....

[Anonymous No.21738482]

He was a schizo, plain and simple, only retarded take this guy seriously.

[Anonymous No.21738484]

>>21738417
> I take x religion seriously
> but here all these things I assert as true which fundamentally incomparable with x orthodoxy
This is the problem explained simply since I think you’ve failed to understand it.

[Anonymous No.21738496]

>>21738474
>Suhrawardi
he was executed for supposedly spreading batini ideas (shia)

[Anonymous No.21738519]

>>21738473
I did explicitly say at least some of these guys are or were regarded in their days as heretics, also that these are far from the mainstream views of Islam; but also point out that at least SOME of them were still allowed to exist, and gained many followers and great repute. I explicitly qualified my claims with this, as well as with how the overall Muslim world is far from perfect. So I don’t think you can accuse me of “romanticizing” it. These niche facets of Sufism do not represent all of Islam at large, or even all of what is referred to as “Sufism” at large, but refers to a interconnected and widespread phenomenon which actually does exist.

After all, the very responses in this thread give evidence of its unpopularity and suspicious-seeming nature to Muslims — the more fundamentalist, dogmatic or literalist type of Muslim is prone to look at any of these claims about or of Sufism warily. And yet, these facets of Sufism DO exist, and have contributed to Muslim culture and society, as a sort of current hiding under the stream.

[Anonymous No.21738523]

>>21738467
The belief that you can attain oneness/unity with God is heresy. Outright and unanimously attested in Islam. Even from those that defended and revere Ibn Arabi they do so because that state his doctrines has been misconstrued, misunderstood and misrepresented. If you were to clearly and unambiguously articulate that this is what you believe then I am certain that every orthodox Sufi order would label you a heretic.

Either Western scholarship of this topic is exaggerated/inflating the prevalence of extremely fringe and minor "Sufi's" that literally believe this or it's doing a terrible job of translating what's already seen by some as an extremely finnicky topic in Arabic.

[Anonymous No.21738529]

>>21738519
Sufism is just a corruption of Sunni Islam mixed with shia ideas

[Anonymous No.21738535]

>>21738496
He was executed for hearsay. Call them batini or shia, whatever, the views are heretical. All your articulation does here is clarify that batini views are heretical.

[Anonymous No.21738544]

>>21738535
>Call them batini or shia
It was obviously a political execution then

[Anonymous No.21738548]

>>21738519
>These niche facets of Sufism do not represent all of Islam at large
Right, and I mentioned how that's not true here>>21738395
>After all, the very responses in this thread give evidence of its unpopularity and suspicious-seeming nature to Muslims — the more fundamentalist, dogmatic or literalist type of Muslim is prone to look at any of these claims about or of Sufism warily.
The existence of this thread proves nothing historically. Sufism was an integral part of every Muslim society in history. It wasn't until the 20th century that Sufism dwindled to practically non-existence, and these fundamentalist types resurged in turn, probably due to a combination of various sociological, economic, political reasons.

[Anonymous No.21738559]

>>21738519
Heretics/heretical views exist. So what's your point? No one denied that. So just because someone espouses a heretical belief and some people follow that belief it proves what exactly?

[Anonymous No.21738571]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmBzklEzKiY

[Anonymous No.21738576]

>The high cerebrality of visual reasoning means that, despite the identity of tradition, esotericism and exotericism live on two entirely different planes. As they cannot touch each other, any conflict is impossible, except in the case of the desecration of the mysteries, and in this case it is always the exoteric doctors who are right. Martyrs are those who died fighting, either against the savages (that is to say the exclusivists), or for the rights of man and of the citizen, that is to say against tyrants. One cannot call martyrs the esotericists who have crashed into the street by throwing themselves deliberately from the top of their ivory tower. We should not judge them for good or bad. Allah alone knows the things of the other world and what conceals the depths of the human soul.
>I am referring to the famous martyrdom of Ibn Hallaj, who was executed as a heretic in Baghdad (3). According to the theological opinions of each one, one finds his ordeal just or unjust. The truth is that he was justly condemned, not as a heretic, but as a profaner and a muddle. There were insiders among his judges, and the same people who find his condemnation just revere his memory. He spoke a language foreign to the plebs, who were disturbed and had him executed. But social misadventures prove nothing, however tragic.
Ivan Agueli "PAGES DEDICATED TO MERCURY, SAHAÏF ATARIDIYAH"

[Anonymous No.21738609]

>>21738576
Abu Huraira said, "I have kept in my memory two large quantities*
of learning from God’s messenger, one of which I have disclosed among
you; but were I to disclose the other, this bul'um, meaning the food
tract, would be cut". Bukhari transmitted it.
*Lit. receptacles, or vessels.

[Anonymous No.21738631]

>>21738559
>>21738449
Yep, you may have a good point here, I unthinkingly took some quotes from his books without being able to 100% vouch for their veracity. Mistakes in scholarship do indeed happen, but the core presentation of these aspects of Sufism remains pretty much an interconnected and coherent whole … what I mean by this, is even if it turns out Junaid of Baghdad never really said that phrase, it remains true it’s an apocryphal saying kept in circulation and respected by some Sufis, and the other presentations of this facet of Sufism are borne out by various obscure literature (some from hundreds of years ago, hence way before any “New Age” movement to blame things on), as well as some journalists’ and travelers’ accounts. However, if you are an orthodox religionist, you can attribute all this to being the handicraft of Satan seeking to subvert religions, and if you’re non-religious or a skeptical agnostic/atheist, can safely disregard it as useless for your life.

Keep in mind, these posts are in response to the OP’s question — why Guenon converted to Islam, or why he thought “they’re saying and teaching anything like what he is.” So in response, I explicitly and obviously gave and answers tailored to this question — examples of the overlaps in the Muslim world and in the world of the Sufis, especially, to the thought of figures like the “Traditionalists”.

“Is that even REAL Islam?” or, “Is all of this just a bunch of tentatively tied together cranks and heretics, used to justify indulgent people who want to come up with some entirely new religion of their owns?” is up to you to answer for yourself.

[Anonymous No.21738669]

>>21738523
> If you were to clearly and unambiguously articulate that this is what you believe then I am certain that every orthodox Sufi order would label you a heretic.
I don’t and am not denying this. However, it’s kind of hard to deny a work of the stature of Attar of Nishapur’s “Conference of the Birds” is explicitly saying this at the end of that beautiful poem; or that Rumi, one of the greatest and most renowned poets of Islam, writes and speaks of it.

An imperfect analogy is as if some of the most renowned mystical poets or writers of the Christian Western world — say, the works of Dante, or of St. Francis of Assisi, had parts in them and heavy and obvious messages like these of talking of unity with or extinction in God. The line between “heretic” and “orthodox” would be blurred in such a case — you’d have these luminaries writing and thinking things like that, even while the majority of nominal Christians wouldn’t explicitly adhere to such a view. Yet can you deny their stature and influence on Christianity? Or it would be like if the Eastern Orthodox Church insanely and blasphemously held the end-goal of human life was theosis (lit. “making divine” or “deification,” implicitly of oneself), or union with God, after a transformative process of catharsis (self-purification and discipline) and theoria (the right contemplation of God, or illumination with the vision of God). It would be, analogously, a similar case as if a significant and frequently influential and accepted subset of, say, the Eastern Orthodox Church — their mystics, ascetics, theologians, philosophers and writers — held to beliefs like this and extensively wrote on them, having a large influence on Eastern Orthodox theology, but weren’t always agreed with by everyone, sometimes regarded as heretical, and even many average “cafeteria Christians” don’t much note or pay attention to these teachings. This is a sort of similar status as some Sufis. (In fact, this description is a bit similar to the regard of Palamism and Hesychasm in Christianity.)

>Either Western scholarship of this topic is exaggerated/inflating the prevalence of extremely fringe and minor "Sufi's" that literally believe this or it's doing a terrible job of translating what's already seen by some as an extremely finnicky topic in Arabic.
A big source of this is actually the Afghan Sufi Idries Shah, who had similar criticisms lobbed at him, but who wrote some very beautiful and incredibly well-compiled works, bringing a lot of before-poorly-known information and sources to the West, as well as himself traveling through the Middle Eastern and Central Asian world extensively and recording such sayings, folklore, practices, teachings etc of dervish orders.

[Anonymous No.21738677]

>>21738523
> every orthodox Sufi order would label you a heretic.
Correction***: some of the Naqshbandiyya, Bektashis, the Yasawiyya Sufis, and of the Khwajagani would be in alignment with this, if not more; however, the sticking point is “orthodox.” Who defines that? They can define themselves as orthodox and others as heterodox, or others can do the same to them vice versa.

[Anonymous No.21738704]

>>21738416
>It’s occult nonsense, dude.
It has nothing to do with 'occultism' but is a school of Hindu thought

>I actually feel bad for people who get really deep into Guenon without seeing the bullshit. The guy smoked opium
So? opium rocks! I wish I had some right now to smoke

>and never made a single justification for any of his claims about religion.
Did you not read his books where he cites various passages from eastern texts like the Upanishads and Zhuangzi?

>He only ever endorsed beliefs that made them unjustifiable (illogical).
unjustifiable isn't the same thing as illogical, a philosophy that doesn't care about justifying itself can be free of logical contradiction for example

[Anonymous No.21738706]

>>21737180
Wow clearly lot of you retards itt never read Guénon since he literally spells his reasoning out for you in his works: Guénon considers Islam as a bridge between Western Tradition and Eastern Tradition, he believes Western Tradition is totally void of genuine initiatory organizations in our modern world, and he also believes Eastern Traditions such as Hinduism (which was his preferred metaphysical system) or Taoism are simply too out of reach for the average Westerner, both in terms of physical distance and in spiritual distance, therefore he presented Islam as the in-between for Westerners because it still retains Traditional chain of initiation (Sufism specifically) n is similar enough in spirit to Christianity n close enough in distance to Europe for it to be realistically available for a Westerner to become initiated into. Also because he’s a perennialist it isn’t really too relevant which religion he chose as long as it provided a genuine initiatory path to transcendental realization, etc…

[Anonymous No.21738725]

>>21737362
You're right about tonging my anus. how about that

[Anonymous No.21738760]

>>21737180

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmBzklEzKiY

[Anonymous No.21738832]

>>21738484
They aren't. Read more.
I notice you also didn't address the blatant lies I caught your ilk in. Getting real tired of your kikery Dajjal.

[Anonymous No.21738840]

>>21738706
Literally retarded

[Anonymous No.21739020]

Because he wants a loli waifu too

>>21737189
I'd check through your storage files for endorsing/following the religion of a pedophile. I don't know how people can say Islam is beautiful after Muhammad diddled Aishah

[Anonymous No.21739374]

>>21737879
They didnt have the mystical knowledge he sought after

[Anonymous No.21739455]

>>21738576
Based Aguéli.

[Anonymous No.21739498]

>>21738417
>Guenon himself argued in multiple books that separating the two is not possible, the exoterism and esoterism are a package deal,
this distinction of esoterism and exoterism is valid only for semitic traditions, just a note


Also, those traditions are inherently dualists, just look at the fact that for them evil is something Real and hell is eternal; those notions are completely abominable from the standpoint of dharmic traditions.

sometimes some individuals try to trascend these limitations, but they're either ignored or considered 'heretical', just look at the treatment of Eckhart and Dante by the church;
and even in their initiatic domains (sufis and orthodox hesychasts) they're still dualists and tainted by the 'exclusivism' and 'divine predilection' inherent in semitism.

[Anonymous No.21739576]

>>21738704
It’s actually not a school of Hinduism. It’s not considered orthodoxy anywhere in any religion. It’s just rehashed Rosicrucian and Cathar heresies, some occult ideas mixed in, and smuggled into real religions.

[Anonymous No.21739578]

>>21737180
>It is not one of the oldest religious traditions
Takes a certain sort to be taken in by first coming of Joseph Smith, and by that I mean spiritual "yellow fever".

[Anonymous No.21739583]

>>21738704
No, it can’t. If you make claims about absolute knowledge but have no way to justify those claims, that knowledge is fundamentally unknowable, is by definition not knowledge, and it would be illogical to accept the claims.

[Anonymous No.21739638]

>>21738396
Modern Muslims know nothing about their religion. For them it's some vague notion of God being One (what does that entail?) and believe in Mo as a prophet. Because they lack normative authority you can go around with a buffet approach to theology and scarcely be called a heretic

[Anonymous No.21739803]

>>21738396
>That one can call oneself a Muslim and preach that Islam contains monism is heresy
How do you know that? Are you Muslim? Whadat al Wujud (Unity of Being) is orthodox and is supported by numerous passages from the Quran and Hadiths.
Only retard "Salafis" and plebs have issues with that (and they should because esotericism is not for everyone).
Read this to learn more: https://ibnarabisociety.org/oneness-of-being-wahdat-al-wujud-aladdin-bakri/
>>21739638
>Modern Muslims know nothing about their religion. For them it's some vague notion of God being One
You obviously don't know what you are talking about because there is a whole islamic science devoted to that "Ilm Al-tawhid" (not the book by ibn abdel wahab)
Imam al-Tahawi's Creed of Islam (Al-Aqida al-Tahawiyya) is an example.
This playlist is useful if you want to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhsrVqKigRk&list=PLgcTs9YAg99_h3Qe165hUG1yHkLRytGRt&index=1
>Because they lack normative authority you can go around with a buffet approach to theology and scarcely be called a heretic
We derive our authority from the Quran, Sunnah, Consensus (of the Ulama), and finally Reason (Qiyas).
In Islam, if you are a suspect of heresy you will be questioned by the Ulama and if you have anything that goes against the Quran or Sunnah then you will be persuaded to change your opinion and if you refuse then will no longer be considered to be from Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaa (the majority of the ummah). Something similar to Anathema.

[Anonymous No.21739811]

>>21739576
>It’s actually not a school of Hinduism.
>Advaita Vedanta non-dualism isn't a school of Hinduism
ok retard

[Anonymous No.21739818]

>>21739498
>>21739498
This has some good points, offensive as it may sound to some. I’ve been the one “shilling” for Sufism in this thread, but it’s not really that, as I’m not recommending to anyone to convert to any Sufi order specifically, or even to Islam more generally (although you’re free to do so if you wish to). An open-ended, somewhat postmodern “theosophy” (not in the sense of adherence to Blavatsky’s cult, but in its etymological meaning) makes more sense to me.

In a way, almost every mainstreamed and traditional form of the world’s major religions is “totalitarian” — they demand your exclusive and blind adherence to it, along with an often automatic dismissal that there can be any great wisdom or spiritual development of note in other religious traditions.

What we want is universalism, the universe itself, simultaneously the “final and most ultimate” teaching as well as the most primordial, ancient and original … DIRECT experience and confirmation of whatever platitudes and truisms the elders, the churches, the monks and the gurus have given us — whether it’s of Yahweh, of Christ, of Allah, of Brahman, or of the Buddha, the Buddha-nature, and the Adi-Buddha … paradoxically enough (particularly paradoxical, that is, if you look at the world’s religions, worldviews, and their cultural and technical advancement on a sliding-scale from “less civilized” to “more civilized”, with some of them ranking at the bottom and others at the top), something like a “democratic shamanism, both intoxicated and serene,” in the words of Hakim Bey, might lie, Ouroboros like, at both the beginning and the end of the world’s religions and cultures …

[Anonymous No.21739829]

>>21739498
That is to say, that, unexpected, counter-intuitive, and paradoxical as it might seem, the ultimate “sophistication” or “advancement” might ultimately be found in a return to “primitivism” — an unabashedly “naive” (in the sense of being able to consider apparently outrageous claims as potentially having some grounding in the truth) acceptance of wild, supernatural, or paranormal claims, and a workmanlike attitude towards such claims and potentially unexplored realms of reality. Instead of, “Can I plausibly give credit to this?”, it’s, “Do I have the spiritual or metaphysical insights, developments, attainment, or development of the higher organs of perception to perceive and experience the potential truth behind such claims?”

Seen from this point of view, syncretism, pluralism, even apparent “self-contradictoriness” or “paradoxes” may not be a BUG but a FEATURE. After all, if one wants to be accepted as a philosopher, a philosophy professor, or an academic student of and scholar of philosophy, it’s passé you will have to learn about many, many, and often apparently conflicting or contradictory schools of philosophy, from Stoicism to Nietzscheanism, from Platonism to nominalism, from Epicureanism to existentialism, and find or synthesize your own unique worldview along the way. In the words of Heraclitus:

>He who loves wisdom must needs be a student of a great many things.

Ultimately, maybe “religion” or “being religious” is similar — deny it as we might like to, many of the major ones of the world are themselves founded off the cannibalism of and/or the recycling of the beliefs, teachings and practices of other religions. The Abrahamic ones all either themselves derive from or are themselves Judaism, which itself has a dubious potential origin as a sect raising its Volcano God, Yahweh, as superior to all the other Canaanite deities. Buddhism wouldn’t be what it is without Hinduism and Jainism. And all plausibly can have their roots tied to a “primitive” and primordial, animistic and shamanic way of viewing reality — that all is paranormally, supernaturally, spiritually or immaterially animated and has some deeper significance or purpose beyond the apparent one.

This is why I’m drawn to the thought of anarchist thinker, writer and philosopher Hakim Bey, again, especially on “ontological anarchy”: what he calls “a fusion of the metaphysics of Ramana Maharshi with the ethics of Max Stirner,” the coincidence of the Atman with the Stirnerian Einzige, the ultimate metaphysical equivalence of the anarch with the monarch; of rootless and wandering nomads with the Monad.

[Anonymous No.21739830]

>>21739583
>No, it can’t. If you make claims about absolute knowledge
Every religion justifies their teaching by saying it comes from a revealed scripture, Hinduism and Vedanta are no different from Christianity and Islam in this regard.
>but have no way to justify those claims, that knowledge is fundamentally unknowable
Incorrect, because knowledge is known directly and not through its justifications, you can have knowledge of something without being able to fully justify how you acquired that knowledge; hence you spoken incorrectly and lacking justification doesn't mean that knowledge is unable.

Moreover, the knowledge that culminates in spiritual perfection, which alone is absolute knowledge, is not acquired through proofs or logical justification in the first place, so your whole premise is dumb and its suggests you're a hylic.

[Anonymous No.21739836]

>>21739830
*doesn't mean that knowledge is fundamentally unknowable

[Anonymous No.21739838]

>>21737194
Kek

[Anonymous No.21739857]

The loli wife and many wives builds are excellent selling points. I would if I could. Better than christcuck, which options amount to altar boys and refugee bvlls, both of which are homosexual.

[Anonymous No.21739870]

Kikefagtardianity is the religion of the cuckold and homosexual.

[Anonymous No.21739891]

>>21737180
Lots of words and thoughts in this thread, all meaningless.

[Anonymous No.21739895]

>>21739891
What did you expect in a gu*non thread

[Anonymous No.21739913]

>>21739829
>This is why I’m drawn to the thought of anarchist thinker, writer and philosopher Hakim Bey, again, especially on “ontological anarchy”: what he calls “a fusion of the metaphysics of Ramana Maharshi with the ethics of Max Stirner,” the coincidence of the Atman with the Stirnerian Einzige, the ultimate metaphysical equivalence of the anarch with the monarch; of rootless and wandering nomads with the Monad.
Profane ideologist, your long pompous meandering rants are rubbish, and by all means keep polluting the thread in search of validation, for all the meaningless factoids which have aggregated in your memory.
>the ultimate metaphysical equivalence of the anarch with the monarch; of rootless and wandering nomads with the Monad.
Right here, define in elbaroate detail what you mean by "metaphysical equivalence" 5'9 you wordy pseud. What does an "equivalence" of or on the metaphysical "plane?" even constitute

[Anonymous No.21739916]

The trouble with islam is that it’s full of muslims

[Anonymous No.21739937]

>>21739818
>What we want is universalism, the universe itself, simultaneously the “final and most ultimate” teaching as well as the most primordial, ancient and original … DIRECT experience and confirmation of whatever platitudes and truisms the elders, the churches, the monks and the gurus have given us — whether it’s of Yahweh, of Christ, of Allah, of Brahman, or of the Buddha, the Buddha-nature, and the Adi-Buddha … paradoxically enough (particularly paradoxical, that is, if you look at the world’s religions, worldviews, and their cultural and technical advancement on a sliding-scale from “less civilized” to “more civilized”, with some of them ranking at the bottom and others at the top), something like a “democratic shamanism, both intoxicated and serene,” in the words of Hakim Bey, might lie, Ouroboros like, at both the beginning and the end of the world’s religions and cultures …
>That is to say, that, unexpected, counter-intuitive, and paradoxical as it might seem, the ultimate “sophistication” or “advancement” might ultimately be found in a return to “primitivism” — an unabashedly “naive” (in the sense of being able to consider apparently outrageous claims as potentially having some grounding in the truth) acceptance of wild, supernatural, or paranormal claims, and a workmanlike attitude towards such claims and potentially unexplored realms of reality. Instead of, “Can I plausibly give credit to this?”, it’s, “Do I have the spiritual or metaphysical insights, developments, attainment, or development of the higher organs of perception to perceive and experience the potential truth behind such claims?

>when thoughts no longer appear you are a buddha
Enough said you annoying twat.

[Anonymous No.21739975]

>>21738669
>>21738467
Enable a trip code, you post in a very distinct style, and you have been doing so for tens of threads, I would like to filter you, thanks. There is just something about your writing style which comes across as some sort of faggoty try hard-pompous pseud, you make many long posts, but you don't seem to get to any point.
One thing which I will say though, is that Sufism is not "nondualism" as such, in the same way tantra is not, I doubt that you even understand the difference though, they approach spirituality with the intention of founding unity in multiplicity, whereas nondualism, starts in zero and there is no multiplicity at all that unity has to be found in, and and since there is no unity or oneness, which only exists referentially, and is an affirmation which goes against the principle of non-origination, neither unity nor multiplicity are adequate terms for nondualism, Sufis of note denounce nondualism as solipsitic.

[Anonymous No.21739981]

>>21737785
Can I please have a list of esoteric books about Islam? You seem to know a lot of shit.

[Anonymous No.21739984]

Two simple questions to BTFO nondualists
What's the reason/purpose of creation?
Where does ignorance (of ultimate nondual reality) lie?
>Heidegger considered the question, “Why does the universe exist?” to be the “fundamental problem of metaphysics”
He is 100% absolutely right here.

[Anonymous No.21739999]

>>21739981
>You seem to know a lot of shit.
Falls for this guys acting kek, he is trying to come across as encyclopedic, but in every case, he does not actually get anywhere, he just uses many words, terms, with that distinct lecture like explanation style, just look in the archives for gurdjieff, idries shah, guenon, and so on, and you will find this guy all over there, all that I sense from his posts is a type of insufferability, unconsciousness, also a sort of Bill-nye the science guy vibe, the way he interspersed the questions between his paragraphs aswell, it just comes across as condescending

All I can say to this poster is Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.21740010]

>>21739818
Something about these posts come across like I jew writing on eastern religions like Buddhism, and you will see many Buddhist centers in the west run by secular Jewish couples, do you come from a Jewish background by any chance?

[Anonymous No.21740014]

>>21739830
You’re wrong. Christian scripture reveals knowledge of God but it’s ultimately God which justifies faith in scripture. The God that’s revealed to us is a God that makes knowledge of God possible. The Allah that’s revealed in Islamic scripture is a god that fails to justify any knowledge at all. The Traditionalist god is not revealed and is completely unjustified.
> you can have knowledge of something without being able to fully justify how you acquired that knowledge
Begging the question.
> I know my direct experience
> how do you know you can trust your direct experience
> my direct experience told me so
This is your brain on Islam/Traditionalism

[Anonymous No.21740023]

>>21737224
There is little to no "collective practice" in Indian religion, it's not like you go to Church every Sunday.

[Anonymous No.21740058]

>>21739984
>What's the reason/purpose of creation?
There is no "creation" in the first place
>>/lit/thread/S21733140
>Where does ignorance (of ultimate nondual reality) lie?
>There is only mithyā (wrong knowledge), bhrama (misunderstanding) and viparīta darśana (wrong viewpoint) which result in adhyāsa, there is no Absolute Ignorance, which can only be synonymous with Unreality, adhyāsa "lies" in the point of overlapping, in terms of dharma (properties), guṇa (qualities, black, white and red) and lakṣana (characteristics) between the Ātman and anātman, as a result the individual sees the anātman as the Ātman (the rope as a snake) because of the three aforementioned factors, this results in aviveka.
>This is where the Vedānta vicāra begins. At this initial point it is appropriate to distinguish between dharmi , i.e. the one who owns the property, and dharma the property itself. In this context Ātman and anātman are considered dharmi, therefore the exchange between Ātman and anātman also involves the exchange of their properties. That is, they take one for the other, due to the inability to understand, i.e. due to the absence of understanding that Consciousness is only the property of Ātman and never of the anātman . Thus the qualities of anātman , which are transient and changeable, are attributed to Ātman. Since anātman is the object of Consciousness, I consider myself the object of Consciousness, so I say: «I am so and so». This is the mistake of exchanging properties, because the Ātman is immutable, but I consider myself subject to change. The body, mind and intellect change and one regards oneself as subject to death. But the Ātman is not subject to death, because Consciousness is immutable ( kūṭasta ). It is the body that is subject to change and death; this means that the qualities of the body are attributed to Ātman . Hence, deeming oneself subject to birth and change ( vikāritvam ), the fear of death is naturally present in everyone. when the Ātman is subject and anātman is the object there is objectivity ( viṣayītvam ). The anātman is dependent, while the Ātman exists independently, i.e. by itself: this is Reality ( satyatvam ). Even though the Ātman is my own existence, I seem to be struggling to exist; and, as an individual, I struggle to maintain my existence, as I think I may lose it. This insecurity involves the fear of losing one's existence considered only as one's individuality. This evaluation, which is really just a mental attitude, a thought, attributes the nature of anātman to Ātman.

[Anonymous No.21740069]

>>21740058
>Ātman is free from pleasure ( sukha ) and pain ( duḥkha ) which arise from worldly relationships. The Ātman does not depend on the relations of the external world. He is independent and blissful in his own right. Instead I, as an individual, am continually subject to pleasure and pain. While being undifferentiated ( nirāśatvam ), i.e. of one nature, I believe I have body, mind, prāṇa, as if there are many parts and elements in me. Sometimes I am the seeing, sometimes the hearing, depending on whether I am associated with the eyes or the ears. Sometimes I am hungry, sometimes I have physical, mental and intellectual problems. Therefore in the same personality there are all these experiences, as if in the same individual there were various personalities: this is fragmentation ( saṃśatvam ), that is, the multiplicity superimposed on the Ātman , which by its nature has no parts. At this point Śaṃkara states that lack of discrimination ( aviveka ) is nimittam , that absence of discrimination ( viveka abhava ) is nimittam for the adhyāsa. Why does adhyāsa take place ? Simply because it happens. We must now understand exactly what bhāṣyakāra means by nimittam , because the use of this term has given rise to many different interpretations. To explain this, Satcidānandendra Svāmījī here quotes an argument from another text. Svāmījī whenever he found a statement of Śaṃkara, which was considered not very clear, he looked for similar arguments in other śaṃkarian works. First of all he states that the adhyāsa is svābhāvika 1 and hence, in stating so, there is no need to invoke a cause. What is svābhāvika has no cause (akāraṇa ). If it were produced and had a time link, then a kāraṇa could be supposed . Instead it is not a product that arrives at a certain moment, as if it were an effect. Causality cannot disregard time. In fact cause and effect are always in temporal succession. Cause and effect is one of the relationships that characterize vyavahāra . Outside of vyavahāra there is no cause and no effect.

>There is another reason which forces us to accept that cause and effect must be in a temporal sequence. This reason can be described thus: if cause and effect appeared simultaneously it would be impossible to relate them to each other in order to distinguish which would be the cause and which the effect, just as it is impossible to establish a temporal sequence between the two horns of a cow, since they grow together ” ( Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad Gauḍapāda Kārikā Śaṃkara Bhāṣya , IV.16).

etc. etc. I am not going to paste the whole article
Here is the link, https://vedavyasamandala.com/1-qual-e-la-causa-dellignoranza/
Tldr: ignorance "lies" in superimposition, which is itself synonymous with unreality
To speak of some sort of causal ignorance, doesn't make sense, because it is to speak relatively, and it also makes the system impenetrable, because it introduces relative causality.

[Anonymous No.21740094]

>>21740058
>This snake and rope shit again
Just tired of this analogy tbqh
>This is the mistake of exchanging properties
Who mistakes?
>Ātman is immutable, but I consider myself subject to change
Why?
>This evaluation, which is really just a mental attitude, a thought, attributes the nature of anātman to Ātman.
I thought Anatman doesn't exist right? What's the point of it all then?

I HAVE COUNTLESS HOURS SEARCHING FOR THE ANSWER BUT IT TURNS OUT NO ONE KNOWS SHIT.

[Anonymous No.21740101]

>>21739999
Yeah hence my request. I hate Islam after reading historical essays and books, now I want to look into the esoteric aspect of it to form a definitive opinion. I don't think I'll be more lenient toward this ultraviolent cult but it birthed potent civilisations so there must be more to it.

[Anonymous No.21740110]

>>21740058
>>21740069
Thanks for taking the time and responding to my question but I have read all of these points and found no answer to the fundamental question posted above (I think you probably know what I really mean)
I am looking for answers to these questions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx3SyhVj78o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeio2MFThZg
The best he could come up with is that the question disappears after "enlightenment" and that there is no answer.

[Anonymous No.21740139]

>>21740094
>What's the point of it all then?
>Who mistakes?
Who, what, when and all this is inapplicable, name and form aswell
>I'm tired of this analogy desu

>He said the question dissapears, that's pretty much all they can say, but you're right.
>"What we say is that nothing anywhere is unreal, inasmuch as it is Being alone that is mistaken for the world of duality and difference. Just as it is a rope alone that is called a 'snake' when it is mistaken for a snake or just as a lump of clay or a jar is taken to be other than clay and is called by names like 'lump', 'a pot' etc., but for those who have distinctly recognized the rope or the clay, the names and ideas of a snake or a jar Cease to Exist (including all questions of cause and effect, who, what, where when, whatever it is pertaining to a temporal sequence) , so also for those who have distinctly recognized the Absolute Being (as the only Reality) the name and the idea of an effect cease to exist"
(Ch. Bh. 6-2-3;P.510)

They say the consciousness is alone, independent, blissful, free from pleasure and pain and all this, when they say independent they mean from cause and effect, from temporal sequence, from change, from relativity, by attaining such a state, they essentially see everything as their own Being, there is no "other" no relationship, no twoness no life and death, no threeness, no past, future or present, no plurality or multiplicity, because everything is Infinite Being, everything is experienced as their own Being, if they were raped to death, eviscerated and tortured, it is their own blissful and free Being,
This is just something hard to accept, I don't agree with it myself either, but to the best of my knowledge this is what they say and the only answer they can really give.

[Anonymous No.21740151]

>>21740110
>Who mistakes?
The ego I guess.
>Why?
Same as last answer, the Whyness arises in time and space, why exactly the consciousness disperses itself amongst objects, why we were incarnated in a changing form, I don't know personally
>I thought Anatman doesn't exist right? What's the point of it all then?
Anatman is simply speaking to me it sounds at least, like the Ego, the individuality, the conditioned experience, respecting relativity, cause and effect, subject and object,
It does exist for the individual, but one the individual is delimited, passes from conditioned to unconditioned, "supra individual" this individual existence "loses" its "support," because the absolute is infinite and encompassing, with no other, just Being.

[Anonymous No.21740177]

>>21740094
>NO ONE KNOWS SHIT.
>A disciple who has attentively followed the exposition of the nature of Brahma must be led to suppose that he knows Brahma perfectly [at least in theory]; but, in spite of his apparent justification for thinking so, this is nevertheless an erroneous opinion. In actual fact the well established meaning of every text concerning the Vedānta is that the Self of every being who possesses Knowledge is identical with Brahma [since through that very Knowledge the ‘Supreme Identity’ is realized]. Now a distinct and definite knowledge is possible in respect of everything capable of becoming an object of knowledge: but it is not possible in the case of That which cannot become such an object. That is Brahma, for It is the [total] Knower, and the Knower can know other things [encompassing them all within Its infinite comprehension, which is identical with Universal Possibility], but cannot make Itself the object of Its own knowledge [for, in Its identity, which is not the result of any identification, one cannot even make the principial distinction, as in the condition of Prajña, between a subject and an object which are nevertheless ‘the same’, and It cannot cease to be Itself ‘all-knowing’ in order to become ‘all-known’, which would be another Itself], in the same way that fire can burn other things but cannot burn itself [its essential nature being indivisible, just as, analogically, Brahma is ‘without duality’].13 Neither can it be said that Brahma is able to become an object of knowledge for anything other than Itself, since outside Itself there is nothing which can possess knowledge [all knowledge, even relative, being but a participation in absolute and supreme knowledge].
>If you think that you know [Brahma] well, what you know of Its nature is in reality but little; for this reason Brahma should be still more attentively considered by you. [The reply is as follows]: I do not think that I know It; by that I mean to say that I do not know It well [distinctively, as I should know an object capable of being described or defined]; nevertheless, I know It [according to the instruction I have received concerning Its nature]. Whoever among us understands the following words [in their true meaning]: ‘I do not know It, and yet I know It,’ verily that Man knows It. He who thinks that Brahma is not comprehended [by any faculty], by him Brahma is comprehended [for by the Knowledge of Brahma he has become really and effectively identical with Brahma Itself] ; but he who thinks that Brahma is comprehended [by some sensible or mental faculty] knows It not. Brahma [in Itself, in Its incommunicable essence] is unknown to those who know It [after the manner of some object of knowledge, be it a particular being or Universal Being] and It is known to those who do not know It at all [as ‘this’ or ‘that’].

[Anonymous No.21740183]

>>21740139
>They say the consciousness is alone, independent, blissful, free from pleasure and pain and all this, when they say independent they mean from cause and effect, from temporal sequence, from change, from relativity, by attaining such a state, they essentially see everything as their own Being, there is no "other" no relationship, no twoness no life and death, no threeness, no past, future or present, no plurality or multiplicity, because everything is Infinite Being, everything is experienced as their own Being
I don't understand Why do I not already have this knowledge. When did I lose it and Why do I need to work and read to attain it?
There is no guarantee that I will not fall into this ignorance again for a new cycle of creation/destruction.

In the symbolism of the heart the blood starts a journey from the heart traveling through all the parts of the body and finally reaches where it started only to start the journey again.
Is this our fate? Are these cycles endless? Do they reach a certain point where things finally end?
What happens after the end of all manvantaras, kalpas and eventually the end of the Cycle of Brahman? Why does such an elaborate system of time and cycles exist if it's all illusions?
Is our purpose really to fuel this dream/creation like blood vivifies the body and not run away from this illusion but participate in it in someway?

[Anonymous No.21740200]

>>21740177
>‘I do not know It, and yet I know It,’ verily that Man knows It. He who thinks that Brahma is not comprehended [by any faculty], by him Brahma is comprehended [for by the Knowledge of Brahma he has become really and effectively identical with Brahma Itself] ; but he who thinks that Brahma is comprehended [by some sensible or mental faculty] knows It not. Brahma [in Itself, in Its incommunicable essence] is unknown to those who know It [after the manner of some object of knowledge, be it a particular being or Universal Being] and It is known to those who do not know It at all [as ‘this’ or ‘that’].
Can you please provide any source for that? This sounds very similar to Taoism.

[Anonymous No.21740213]

>>21740151
>why exactly the consciousness disperses itself amongst objects, why we were incarnated in a changing form
This is the Kernel of the matter. The only answers I find are "It's just nature", "God likes expansion", or even "Asking about it is sheer obsession"

[Anonymous No.21740222]

>>21740183
>I don't understand Why do I not already have this knowledge.
because it is not knowledge which you would have like the knowledge you have which is comprehended by any faculty, in fact this is knowledge you do have in a state uncomprehended by any faculty, Knowledge which is identical to Being, it does not require anything, being independent as was already said, it would follow that it doesn't need work or reading
>There is no guarantee that I will not fall into this ignorance again for a new cycle of creation/destruction
This sort of knowledge is changeless and cannot fall or rise
>In the symbolism of the heart the blood starts a journey from the heart traveling through all the parts of the body and finally reaches where it started only to start the journey again.
At some point the circulation stops by death

[Anonymous No.21740232]

>>21740200
>Kena Upanishad II.1–3. Here is an almost identical Taoist text: ‘The Infinite said: ‘I do not know the Principle; this answer is profound. Inaction said: I know the Principle; this answer is superficial. The Infinite was right in saying that It knew nothing about the essence of the Principle. Inaction was able to say that it knew It as regards Its external manifestations.... Not to know It is to know It [in Its essence]; to know It [in Its manifestations] is not to know It [as It really is]. But how is one to understand this, that it is by not knowing It that It is known? This is the way, says the Primordial State. The Principle cannot be heard; that which is heard is not It. The Principle cannot be seen; that which is seen is not It. The Principle cannot be uttered; that which is uttered is not It.... The Principle, not being imaginable, cannot be described either. Whoever asks questions about the Principle and answers them, both show that they do not know what the Principle is. Concerning the Principle, one can neither ask nor make answer what It is. (Chuang Tzu, chap. 22; Father Wieger’s translation, pp397–399).

[Anonymous No.21740241]

>>21740232
>Concerning the Principle, one can neither ask nor make answer what It is.
>aka just shut up cunt and don't ask
ok lmao

[Anonymous No.21740248]

>>21740069
Also read the last part of this article with the Q and A of the link in this post

[Anonymous No.21740258]

>>21740241
The principle is Unknown to and Uncomprehended by any faculty whatsoever, be that the thinking mind, the senses, when they start from this, also consider the parallel with the "sacred ignorance" of church fathers, that's the sort of circular aphorisms which are generated as a result, it is what it is

[Anonymous No.21740267]

>>21740258
"It (The Principle) can't be objectified, arrived at by any means, because it is beyond subject-object relationships, it is independent, it is one without two - has no other, it's free of name and form, or any sort of particularization for that matter, it is your own present awareness, absolutely free from impurity and obscuration."
- the book of escapist cope

[Anonymous No.21740302]

>>21740258
>>21740267

[Anonymous No.21740307]

>>21739020
>I'd check through your storage files for endorsing/following the religion of a pedophile
You're singling him out? It's the second largest religion in the world. Largest, if we're counting sects. It's not some freak, fringe belief system. It's an established religion with perfectly well-adjusted followers all around the world
Inb4
>yeah but you can't be a white 4channer LARPing as a Muslim because then you're just culturally appropriating a religion for ethnic people and there's probably some sinister, problematic, transphobic impetus behind it, not so mention some secret sexual drive

[Anonymous No.21740334]

>>21740307
Exoteric Islam is too big a apart of islam for intellectually inclined westerners to take seriously, which is why secular meditation and Buddhism is so big now in the west. And I don't blame them at all

[Anonymous No.21740622]

>>21737194
He’s a dedicated grifter.

[Anonymous No.21740814]

>>21739984
Neither of those questions btfo anything

>What's the reason/purpose of creation?
It’s Brahman nature to project it, there is no external/prior reason for this aside from Brahman’s nature because Brahman and his nature (same thing) is prior ontologically to anything that might be considered a reason.

>Where does ignorance (of ultimate nondual reality) lie?
It doesn’t have a location, the notion of “location” is itself a product of maya and not a fact of reality that we find a place for maya within. There is only the infinite Brahman everywhere and there are no real such things as ‘locations’ that are distinct from other locations. From this partless infinite non-dual reality, the illusion of maya is projected. Since its not a real place or physical object it needs no physical space to inhabit. You yourself have the experience of illusions not needing locations in order to be experienced every time you dream.

>Heidegger considered the question, “Why does the universe exist?” to be the “fundamental problem of metaphysics”
He is 100% absolutely right here.

[Anonymous No.21740815]

>>21740814
> >Heidegger considered the question, “Why does the universe exist?” to be the “fundamental problem of metaphysics”
>He is 100% absolutely right here.
I didnt mean to include that part

[Anonymous No.21740839]

why aren't guenon's schizo works translated?

[Anonymous No.21740868]

>>21740839
Because only another schizo can accurately translate another schizo's work, whike conveying the meaning

[Anonymous No.21740888]

How is taking care of your body and having a wife and kids "life denying".

Anyways Islam has a deep and colorful tradition, any Shaykh worth his salt will admit the hellenistic influences and deep philosophical methodology going on in Islam.

Salafism literally destroyed sacred Islamic sites, it's of the devil.

[Anonymous No.21740890]

>>21740014
>You’re wrong. Christian scripture reveals knowledge of God but it’s ultimately God which justifies faith in scripture. The God that’s revealed to us is a God that makes knowledge of God possible. The Allah that’s revealed in Islamic scripture is a god that fails to justify any knowledge at all.
I dont see how Allah or Brahman is any less justified than the Christian God, each God is justified by their respective scripture, it’s pretty simple. You have not given any reason why the Christian God is a special exception to this, it seems like a totally nonsensical argument to argue there is a special exception.

> The Traditionalist god is not revealed and is completely unjustified.
Well, Guenon thought God was basically non-dual Brahman, which is again revealed and justified by the scriptures of Hinduism.

> you can have knowledge of something without being able to fully justify how you acquired that knowledge
>Begging the question.
> I know my direct experience
> how do you know you can trust your direct experience
> my direct experience told me so
When something is self-evident then there is no purpose or grounds to doubt it, so this objection is an irrelevant pseudoproblem. When someone reaches spiritual perfection, enlightenment, liberation etc, that knowledge is self-evident. Moreover you yourself are forced into conceding this as correct upon pain of not looking like a retard since every verification has to culminate in a final self-evident knowledge that needs no further confirmation, or else you will be lost in an endless regress of confirmations that won’t allow you to confirm anything, because the act or instance of knowing A has to be confirmed, which has to itself be conformed, and so ad infinitum, until you arrive at self-evident knowledge that needs no confirmation.

[Anonymous No.21740930]

>>21740814
>It’s Brahman nature to project it,
this isn't an answer, if we use this type of rethoric we can refute Shankara's own critiques of buddhism and just say that it's in the "nature" of each moment to extinguish itself and let a almost identical moment arise, then refuting the whole Advaita system, the "it's in his nature" answer is a double edge sword, since it let your enemies refute your own system with your own arguments

[Anonymous No.21740944]

Traditional Islam also has a very logical-philosophical bent to it.

They use logisms/terms for everything, like state of dispair has one word, the practice of Sufism has one word, the schools of law philosophy have a term etc.

[Anonymous No.21740948]

>>21739020
They understand the context?

Abu Bakr: Look here Mo, I'll let a pagan subhuman diddle my 6 year old daughter or I'll marry here to you but the latter only if you consumate the marriage before going to Medina.

Maybe Mo lied about actually sleeping with Ai'sha that early to appease Abu Bakr. It's not like those events happened in a vacuum.

[Anonymous No.21741022]

>>21739975
What’s up with the fingers-in-the-ear “LALALA I’m not listening!!!” denial that any Sufi ever speaks of “non-duality”? Have you ever read Attar of Nishapur’s “Conference of the Birds” till the end? You can plausibly accuse me of pretentiousness and rambling, you have a point about that, but you will never take away my love of non-dual mystics among the Sufis.

Their souls rose free of all they’d been before;
The past and all its actions were no more.
Their life came from that close, insistent sun
And in its vivid rays they shone as one.
There in the Simorgh’s radiant face they saw
Themselves, the Simorgh of the world – with awe
They gazed, and dared at last to comprehend
They were the Simorgh and the journey’s end.
They see the Simorgh – at themselves they stare,
And see a second Simorgh standing there;
They look at both and see the two are one,
That this is that, that this, the goal is won. They ask (but inwardly; they make no sound)
The meaning of these mysteries that confound
Their puzzled ignorance – how is it true
That ‘we’ is not distinguished here from ‘you’?
And silently their shining Lord replies:
‘I am a mirror set before your eyes,
And all who come before my splendour see
Themselves, their own unique reality;
You came as thirty birds and therefore saw
These selfsame thirty birds, not less nor more;
If you had come as forty, fifty – here
An answering forty, fifty, would appear;
Though you have struggled, wandered, travelled far, It is yourselves you see and what you are.’
(Who sees the Lord? It is himself each sees;
What ant’s sight could discern the Pleiades?
What anvil could be lifted by an ant?
Or could a fly subdue an elephant?)
‘How much you thought you knew and saw;
but you Now know that all you trusted was untrue.
Though you traversed the Valleys’ depths and fought
With all the dangers that the journey brought,
The journey was in Me, the deeds were Mine – You slept secure in Being’s inmost shrine.
And since you came as thirty birds, you see
These thirty birds when you discover Me,
The Simorgh, Truth’s last flawless jewel, the light
In which you will be lost to mortal sight, Dispersed to nothingness until once more
You find in Me the selves you were before.’
Then, as they listened to the Simorgh’s words,
A trembling dissolution filled the birds –
The substance of their being was undone,
And they were lost like shade before the sun;
Neither the pilgrims nor their guide remained.
The Simorgh ceased to speak, and silence reigned.

[Anonymous No.21741039]

>>21737180
>and it is generally life-denying
This has to be bait or you're just clueless. I'm not even Muslim.

[Anonymous No.21741082]

>>21740944
>Traditional Islam also has a very logical-philosophical bent to it.
I'd argue that it's so reason obsessed that the practice of it is completely lacking in any faith.
The story of Abraham in that religion is a great example of this. Here's a man who is so certain about what the nature of god must be that he's willing to forsake the traditions of his people and determine all the things that god is not before god actually reveals himself to him.

[Anonymous No.21741137]

>>21737180
Was Guénon Muslim? No.

"What also surprised me a great deal was the regret that I had no biographical information about myself; this is something I have always formally opposed, and above all for a reason of principle, because, according to traditional doctrine, individualities count for nothing and must disappear entirely ... But, in spite of this, I am obliged at least to rectify erroneous assertions when they occur; For example, I cannot let it be said that I am "converted to Islam", because this way of presenting things is completely false; anyone who is aware of the essential unity of traditions is by this very fact "unconvertible" to anything, he is even the only one who is; but he can "settle down", if it is permitted to express himself in this way, in this or that tradition according to circumstances, and especially for reasons of an initiatory nature. I would like to add in this regard that my links with Islamic esoteric organizations are not something more or less recent as some people seem to think; in fact, they are almost 40 years old...".o
- Letter from René Guénon to A. Daniélou, August 27, 1947, my translation - i'm french and my English is bad so sorry if there are mistakes

Retarded Muslims who try to grab his glory must get out. Guénon was Sufi at the end of his life, for purely practical reasons: he already had links with Sufi organizations and he wanted to leave France. The closest and most convenient was the Maghreb.

99.99% of the Muslims who try to seize Guénon's genius by saying "he converted to Islam lol" are refuted by the master himself in this letter and probably never read him, because they would make apostate any Muslim having 1/10th of Guénon's beliefs. Some points of his belief in brief:

1. that all religions are currently valid to lead to God and that Islam is only the most practical path of our time for a European
2. that deliverance (union with the Absolute, death of the ego, al-fana' ) is superior to salvation (entry into paradise), the latter being there for the masses when deliverance is the way of the elites
3. that the world is a part of God and that there is an Absolute superior to the personal God.
4. that it is desirable to achieve supra-individual states through intiation
5. that there is an esoteric path that transcends religious divisions

The Sufi Islam of Guénon is: yes.

The exoteric Islam of 99.99% of the Muslims on earth: it's no, it's shit, and it's probably the worst exotericism still alive.

[Anonymous No.21741161]

>>21739020
youre just jelly cause she obviously consented to senpai`s tender caresses.

>Narrated `Aisha: I said, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! A virgin feels shy." He said, "Her consent is (expressed by) her silence."

And they had lots of fun together:

>Aisha reported: She was with the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, while on a journey. Aisha said, “I raced him on foot and I outran him, but when I gained some weight, I raced him again and he outran me. The Prophet said: This is for that race.”
>It was narrated that 'Aishah said: "I used to play with dolls when I was with the Messenger of Allah, and he used to bring my friends to me to play with me."

[Anonymous No.21741184]

>>21740890
It’s because you’re supposed to accept faith in scripture for your method of knowing Allah but the Allah that’s revealed is not an Allah that makes that knowledge possible, let alone logical. It’s not just that a god is revealed in scripture. It’s specifically what sort of god is revealed that justifies faith in revelation.
>When something is self-evident then there is no purpose or grounds to doubt it
This is begging the question. How do you know this? You don’t. You’re trapped in circularity, which means it’s unjustified.

[Anonymous No.21741202]

>>21740890
> Moreover you yourself are forced into conceding this as correct upon pain of not looking like a retard since every verification has to culminate in a final self-evident knowledge that needs no further confirmation, or else you will be lost in an endless regress of confirmations that won’t allow you to confirm anything, because the act or instance of knowing A has to be confirmed, which has to itself be conformed, and so ad infinitum, until you arrive at self-evident knowledge that needs no confirmation.
Wrong. The Christian knowledge of God is justified by revelation, specifically revelation of exactly the type of God which justifies faith in revelation. This is not a self-evident awareness of knowledge. Other religions would have you believe that all knowledge of God is strictly self-evident because to admit otherwise would be to admit they are wrong, but you’ve been duped.

[Anonymous No.21741270]

Unpopular opinion: everything sophisticated about Islam was introduced and/or developed by the (Aryan) Persians. If it were left in the hands of the Arabs it would be grug tier (see Wahhabism).
>Al-Grug ibn Grug behead infidel because Allah say so

[Anonymous No.21741289]

>>21741270
The only reason why Muslims had access to Greek philosophy was because of Syriac-speaking Christians translating them

[I V R I • N E M O !!GgBWHLRiayD No.21741293]

[Anonymous No.21741303]

>>21740890
No - the justification of Christianity is ultimately founded in the God-man, Jesus Christ. Truth is not a set of propositions to intellectually assent to or scripture. Truth is a Person. Because Jesus is fully God and fully Man, He is the only one who can act as the mediator between humanity and the Divine thereby giving full access of the former to the Latter. Scripture in the Christian understandings is part of the deposit of the Church ie. the Church gave us the Holy Scriptures.

Because it is anathema in Islam to say God can incarnate as a human, Muslims are forced to justify the veracity of their faith on the basis of the Qur'an. Yet the whole book is full of absolute howlers but that's another story

[Anonymous No.21741326]

>>21737180
The real answer is that modern Islam was an invention of Italian Black Nobility families like the Pallavicini and Aldobrandini families. Guenon had a strong connection with the Pallavicini family.
In order to secure investments, the Pallavicini family keeps the Middle East locked in a controlled dialectic of alternating fanaticism or liberalization. They were involved in financing both extremists and liberalists.
Most hadiths were probably written in recent times.

[Anonymous No.21741372]

>>21741303
It’s worse than that because the implications of the Quran are that knowledge of Allah is not even possible, so the Quran that they use to know AllH also tells them it can’t help them know Allah.

[Anonymous No.21741592]

>21741303
>Truth is not a set of propositions to intellectually assent
>immediately states several intellectual propositions the church tells him he has to assent to

verification not required

[Anonymous No.21741607]

>>21741303
>Truth is not a set of propositions to intellectually assent to
>immediately states several intellectual propositions the church tells him he must assent to
Woweee so this is the power of Truth™

[Anonymous No.21741654]

>>21741607
They’re not intellectual propositions for knowledge. Only the line of argumentation in favor is.

[Anonymous No.21741750]

>>21741303
>Truth is a Person.
Retard.

[Anonymous No.21741936]

>>21741607
What is this strawman? Anon never said there were no true statements to hold.

[Anonymous No.21742070]

>>21740930
> this isn't an answer
Incorrect, it is an answer
> if we use this type of rethoric we can refute Shankara's own critiques of buddhism and just say that it's in the "nature" of each moment to extinguish itself and let a almost identical moment arise
Incorrect, because none of these moments or the factors making them up are considered to be metaphysically independent and unconditioned in Buddhism and can’t be; while on the other hand Brahman in Advaita is metaphysically independent and unconditioned; that projecting maya is “just Brahman’s nature” agrees with and proceeds from the fact that Brahman is metaphysically independent and unconditioned, while on the other hand the Buddhists is, per his Buddhist logic, unable to state that changing moments of temporary/transient factors are independent. Thus, there is no issue and the Vedantists position is entirely consistent. The Buddhist is logically unable to use the same response here (it’s just their nature to exist that way without needing anything else) without mutilating his own doctrine to the point that it’s no longer Buddhism (because that makes them independent, aka non-empty) and doesn't agree with Buddhist teachings, but the Vedantist doesnt have this issue because he has maintained from the beginning that Brahman is unconditioned and independent. Momentariness was decisively refuted by Shankara by the way.

[Anonymous No.21742148]

>>21741184
> but the Allah that’s revealed is not an Allah that makes that knowledge possible, let alone logical.
begging the question

> This is begging the question. How do you know this?
When there are no evident doubts left any longer that one can discern within one’s mind, then it’s self-evident that all doubt has been removed, just like it’s self-evident for someone holding an apple to be able to look at their hand and see it and know they possess an apple, they dont need further confirmation of that to confirm that have an apple after having already seen and felt it unless they are unless severely mentally retarded.

>You don’t. You’re trapped in circularity, which means it’s unjustified.
No, as I have explained some kinds of knowledge are self-evident, including the final removal of doubt. You yourself are logically forced to admit this is correct, that some forms of knowledge are self-evident, because the alternative leads to an infinite regress (because nothing can ever ultimately be confirmed if there is no final self-evident knowledge that removes the necessity for further confirmations), and that positions is logically untenable, hence your position was already refuted from the beginning and I’ve already won the argument but am trying to help you realize and understand that because you are slow to catch on.

[Anonymous No.21742151]

>>21742070
Where can I find Shankara’s refutation of Buddhism?

[Anonymous No.21742153]

>>21739498
>this distinction of esoterism and exoterism is valid only for semitic traditions, just a note
Yes sort of, this is "not true" specifically for Hinduism which Guenon chooses to label as "purely metaphysical", rather than "naturally esoteric", since he says, again, its nonsense to call something esoteric when there's no exoteric correlate, and vice versa. However for other religions like Taoism the situation is more complex, where the "exoterism" is the social application of the doctrine. And also Hinduism has its own means of guarding higher knowledge.
>Also, those traditions are inherently dualists, just look at the fact that for them evil is something Real and hell is eternal; those notions are completely abominable from the standpoint of dharmic traditions.
This is just an anti-esoteric stance. As Schuon says, the exoterist will say that Scripture must be interpreted in such and such a way. The esoterist will say that Scripture is inwardly absolute and externally relative. Neither side will ever budge the other so it depends on what type of person you are, i.e. are you called to higher knowledge or are you not.
>sometimes some individuals try to trascend these limitations, but they're either ignored or considered 'heretical', just look at the treatment of Eckhart and Dante by the church
It is what it is, unique problems of the Semitic religions. Eckhart and Dante still accomplished what they did within Christianity regardless of how the ignorant perceived them.

[Anonymous No.21742168]

>>21737351
Invalid. Make another one.

[Anonymous No.21742175]

>>21740930
Its illogical to assume that Creation "must" have a purpose. In fact its blatantly illogical because it implies the Creator was compelled to create it or saw that it needed to exist. The avaitic notion of Creation being "sport" or "play" , something that emanates out of the Creator without any need or purpose, is the only notion that actually makes sense. Its not some rhetorical pose, its actually the simple truth, there is no "purpose" or "need" for Creation.

[Anonymous No.21742180]

Are any of you actually brown and from a Muslim country or do you just LARP as hard as white women who go to India to pet a sedated tiger and wear baggy pants because they had an epiphany? Do you really think dressing up what is ultimately abandoning your own culture and traditions for the latest trend with fancy words and philosophical sophisms makes it any less cringe?

[Anonymous No.21742190]

>>21742180
So you would prefer people just stay the exact same?

[Anonymous No.21742193]

>>21742180
Where do you live and what is your supposed religious culture and tradition?

[Anonymous No.21742267]

>>21742190
Unless you're some kind of mystery meat, I'd prefer you'd rediscover your own culture and tradition, the one your forefathers fought and died to protect and pass on. The one shaped by your people's own firsthand experience, by their surroundings, by the time passed between and through them.

How's becoming gay or trans - a genetic dead end, any different from becoming some wild convert - a genetic and cultural dead end? You have no real connection to your newfound infatuation and are only deluding yourself because of some pathological obsession to the foreign and the new (spiritual jungle fever) + the arrogance of thinking the physical is just a construct and with mind alone you can infer what others are offered through distillation of time and space.

>>21742193
Preparing for a pedantic ad hominem already? I live where I was born, where all my grandfathers were from, and I naturally share their same faith and traditions. No normal person would even ask such questions as it's just normal.

[Anonymous No.21742428]

>>21742267
By your own logic — and I’m not even saying I agree or disagree with them — the only valid tradition any people should have is their respective indigenous religions. If that’s your case then, fine; I don’t necessarily agree but at least you’re being coherent and putting your money where your mouth is, but if you’re anything but if you’re a Christian trying to argue that Christian is the tradition for Europeans and anything else is larping then you’re an idiot for not seeing the irony.

[Anonymous No.21742452]

>>21741137
You are partly correct.
Islam is much more than modern Salafi cancer.
If Guenon was not Muslim then neither are Alevis or Bektashis.

[Anonymous No.21742589]

>>21742148
You don’t even understand what begging the question means. To say knowledge, any knowledge, is self-evident is begging the question. How do you know knowledge is self-evident? Was that self-evident knowledge too? And how do you know that self-evident knowledge was self-evident knowledge? Is that self-evident knowledge? This is circular reasoning. It makes no sense. Overcoming this is important when you’re dealing with metaphysical categories and not mere phenomenological observations. “Apple” is not a metaphysical category. It’s a description of a phenomenon, and not a claim about absolute truth. So to say “I’m observing this thing we commonly refer to as Apple” is an entirely different sort of thing than saying “this is the nature of absolute reality and here’s how I know it”. That I can read a Quran and say “this is the Quran” is not a justification of the claims inside the Quran and the same is true for the claims of Traditionalists. To say “the Quran is true and I know because the Quran tells me it’s true” is just begging the question. This is ultimately while their arguments are unjustified. Traditionalists do not even go so far as to rely on revelation in scripture. They just assert things and insist that you accept it. But either way, both of these things end in circularity, meaning they can tell you “X is true” but they can’t actually tell you how they know X is true other than relying on X. That’s an example of begging the question. So no, you actually do not even have an argument because you didn’t get past step 1 with basic premises. You’ve fallen for bullshit and are unwilling to let go.

[Anonymous No.21742593]

>>21742151
> Where can I find Shankara’s refutation of Buddhism?
His main criticisms of Buddhism occur in a section of his Brahma Sutra Bhasya that starts at verse 2.2.18 and which continues for two dozen pages or so, this pdf should open at the right page. AJ Alston has a much smoother and more readable translation of the same source material in “A Sankara Sourcebook” on libgen.

https://archive.org/details/BrahmaSutraSankaraBhashyaEnglishTranslationVasudeoMahadeoApte1960/page/n421/mode/1up?view=theater

The other large section of his writing criticizing Buddhist positions is in his commentary on Brihadaranyaka Upanishad verse 4.3.7. There are further criticisms and attacks scattered throughout some of his other works especially his Mandukya-Karika-Bhasya

[Anonymous No.21742596]

>>21741750
Not merely a Person.

[Anonymous No.21742612]

>>21742175
Why is it so important for "us" to transcend it, then?
Why do realized beings come back as avataras/boddhisattvas?

[Anonymous No.21742619]

>>21742267
> You have no real connection to your newfound infatuation and are only deluding yourself because of some pathological obsession to the foreign and the new (spiritual jungle fever) + the arrogance of thinking the physical is just a construct and with mind alone you can infer what others are offered through distillation of time and space.
You're essentially ignoring that there's a real spiritual component to religious traditions - not just that, but that's its the entire point, but that's another discussion - and seem to be putting the "cultural" on equal footing with it rather than as a secondary component, where it belongs.
More to the point I actually agree that a person should, in my words, have a really good reason for not following the tradition that they have the strongest cultural, racial, and social connection to. The reason Guenon went to Islam is partly because its the closest thing to Christianity without actually being Christianity.
The weird thing is though you blasted Orthodoxy with your meme pic, which is just another strand of Christianity. So if someone is deeply dissatisfied with Protestantism for example, Orthodoxy is an extremely close switch.

[Anonymous No.21742626]

>>21742612
Because we're part of Creation and don't have an absolute viewpoint. You're mixing up viewpoints here, there's no point acting as if you've attained a level of existence/knowledge that you simply haven't. I can understand, for example, that there's more than the human being but also realize that I am nonetheless a human being. In other words it just is what it is.

[Anonymous No.21742754]

>>21742452
>If Guenon was not Muslim then neither are Alevis or Bektashis.
Lol don't push it, lots of people might agree the latter aren't Muslims.

[Anonymous No.21742758]

>>21742626
I think it's more sensible to imagine the beings are one while being multiple at the same time and manifestation is just them having fun (the play of the famous "Lila")
With sometimes realized beings deciding to "manifest" themselves as boddhisattvas to help others

Otherwise it doesn't make sense. If we're one, why do prophets give a shit about "others", why the moral rules about hell
Even René Guénon keep talking about "beings" in a plural sense when he's speaking of the ultimate metaphysical realization, so while there is no "two-ness" there is clearly not ONE single being going schizo

[Anonymous No.21742807]

>>21742758
I mean again you're mixing up the levels. It's not like one absolute thing is true or another absolute thing is true. Rather there is absolute and relative truths.
Crucial concept that a lot of people struggle hard with unless they've been raised without a Western mentality it seems like.
You should really read Schuon he clears a lot of these types of confusions up.

[Anonymous No.21742830]

>>21742807
I did read schuon and every single book of René Guenon's work. In french.
In the end, the answer is just "It happens because it happens"
Or "the possibilities manifest themselves because they are possibilities"

It's just nihilistic if the Absolute truth is "it is what it is"
The crucial element lies in the fact that after reaching total universalization of himself, the realized being does choose to "come back" as an avatara, I think.
It's like the collective dream of an infinity of beings who are, nonetheless, never separated, so "one"

[Anonymous No.21742834]

>>21742589
> You don’t even understand what begging the question means.
I do, your self-serving rhetoric about how only the Christian God fulfills your sophist’s device involves blatantly begging the question.

>To say knowledge, any knowledge, is self-evident is begging the question.
No, as I have explained, there are arguments that establish this by showing that the alternative is logically untenable. You can reject this by holding that logic is meaningless and useless but then you forfeit any grounds to argue in favor of or against anything anymore.

>How do you know knowledge is self-evident?
Because if it isn’t there is an infinite regress because the knowledge of have of anything (yourself, god, a tree, sounds) is only evident to a subsequent knowledge, and this second confirmatory knowledge, by extension of the principle of there being no self-evident knowledge, is itself not self-evident and thus requires a third for it to be known, and ditto for the third requiring a 4th and so on ad infinitum. This would make it impossible for you to have even sensory knowledge of the objects around you, much less knowledge of the Christian God. Thus, your position is nonsensical. If you dont admit that knowledge is self-evident then it becomes logically impossible for you to have any knowledge of God, Jesus, prayed, heaven etc, your own position is self-refuting.

> That I can read a Quran and say “this is the Quran” is not a justification of the claims inside the Quran and the same is true for the claims of Traditionalists. To say “the Quran is true and I know because the Quran tells me it’s true” is just begging the question.
That I can read a Bible and Church Fathers and say “this is the Bible+fathers” is not a justification of the claims inside the Bible+fathers. To say “the Bible+fathers is true and I know because the Bible+fathers tells me it’s true” is just begging the question.

[Anonymous No.21742842]

>>21742830
> It's just nihilistic if the Absolute truth is "it is what it is"
That’s not the meaning of nihilism anon, clearly, you just want to seethe and will find any dumb excuse to do so

[Anonymous No.21742853]

>>21742842
Nihilistic in the sense of not having any purpose of meaning.
Honestly, I don't see the difference between an absolute materialistic explanation
"Yeah, things are things because of randomness"
And the ultimate explanation of René guenon in The multiple states of being
>"Possibilities of manifestation are what they are because of what they are"

At least exoteric religion tells you that you've been willed, that there is a meaning to what you do or your existence.

[Anonymous No.21742856]

>>21742830
>I did read schuon and every single book of René Guenon's work. In french.
Genuinely surprised you have this question then, not trying to be condescending at all. Schuon is pretty good at establishing the absolute/relative distinction if the person doesn't pick it up from Guenon's more mathematical treatment of it.
>Or "the possibilities manifest themselves because they are possibilities"
You're overly simplifying it but yes this is technically true. What's really going on is a possibility comes into existence when the appropriate conditions for it are met. Eventually the conditions will be met for all possibilities, by definition (or they wouldn't be called "possibilities") so eventually all possibilities come into being.
>It's just nihilistic if the Absolute truth is "it is what it is"
I mean the point is that its above the rational. You can't bring everything "down" to the rational. "Being is" is a legitimate metaphysical truth, if it required some other rational justification, then it wouldn't be Being, would it? It would be something subservient to rationality, in other words, not God. You can indicate God with reason, but God is above reason so you can't fully contain God with reason like the Western mentality would like to. God is not an object in the rational field, in other words, but He casts a shadow in that field, being both its author and ultimate end.
>The crucial element lies in the fact that after reaching total universalization of himself, the realized being does choose to "come back" as an avatara, I think.
We perceive him as doing so, that doesn't mean that is what is objectively going on, if that makes sense. But yeah I don't really disagree with your take, just on your conflation of the absolute with the relative.

[Anonymous No.21742867]

>>21742853
> Honestly, I don't see the difference between an absolute materialistic explanation
>"Yeah, things are things because of randomness"
An independent and unconditioned supreme entity manifesting a power which it is the nature of that entity to manifest (as in Vedanta) is pretty much the opposite of random chaos giving rise to things by chance without any order or teleology.

[Anonymous No.21742874]

>>21742428
>h-having the religion and traditions your people had for over 1500 years (which came on top of your indigenous ones and molded and complemented each other) is the same as just adopting one you never had any contact with but internet nobodies tell you it's le true based one this time
>i-in fact you should akshually revert to the indigenous traditions you barely have any sources on and haven't had any contact with in millenia because i'm holding you to my own delusional purity spiraling and claiming it's ironic otherwise
Impressive. Very nice. I also like the added centrist touch with what you're (not) agreeing or disagreeing on so I wouldn't be able to catch you. Clever, I certainly haven't seen that one before.

>>21742619
>The reason Guenon went to Islam is partly because its the closest thing to Christianity without actually being Christianity.
>The reason I cheated on my wife with her sister is because she's the closest thing to her without actually being her.
You find the weiredest ways to justify and even defend what is basically just tranny-tier delusions. "I put a dress on and now I'm a woman" - "I read some books about something I have no real connection with (genetic, cultural and spiritual (latter which cannot exist in a void) so now I'm a buddhist/muslim/whatever new is considered based."

>you blasted Orthodoxy with your meme pic
Worrying you'd see it that way, it couldn't be further from the truth. I haven't blasted Orthodoxy, but the eternal terminally online catechumen making a mockery of what he's trying to mimic to appear based in his fervent adoration for the foreign. These aren't exclusive to Orthodoxy, it's just that Orthodoxy is the latest iteration. Decades ago it was Buddhism. Now apparently it's Islam.

[Anonymous No.21742877]

>>21742853
There is a meaning, but only in a relative sense, not in an absolute sense. Humanity has nothing to offer God, in other words, since God is perfect.

[Anonymous No.21742892]

>>21742874
>You find the weiredest ways to justify and even defend what is basically just tranny-tier delusions. "I put a dress on and now I'm a woman" - "I read some books about something I have no real connection with (genetic, cultural and spiritual (latter which cannot exist in a void) so now I'm a buddhist/muslim/whatever new is considered based."
The fuck are you talking about? You can legitimately become a Buddhist or a Muslim or whatever. Do you think its impossible unless you're an Arab or something? You do realize the religion itself has always advocating converting to it, right?
>Worrying you'd see it that way, it couldn't be further from the truth. I haven't blasted Orthodoxy, but the eternal terminally online catechumen making a mockery of what he's trying to mimic to appear based in his fervent adoration for the foreign. These aren't exclusive to Orthodoxy, it's just that Orthodoxy is the latest iteration. Decades ago it was Buddhism. Now apparently it's Islam.
Yeah there is an element of being dissatisfied with your own culture so you adopt a grass is always greener mentality, sure. That's not the entire story though, its a secondary element. Its like you're trying to suggest conversion isn't legitimate, when your own religion probably disagrees with you. Have you ever given that any thought?
In other words, just because some people have a grass is always greener outlook doesn't mean no one can legitimately convert to another religion. It doesn't even follow logically that the person is question who has that mentality can't legitimately convert. So what exactly do you think you're proving? That some people are extremely dissatisfied with Western culture to the point they illogically admire foreign culture? Interesting, my first wonder is why they're so dissatisfied.

[Anonymous No.21742898]

>>21742856
No, you’re too stubborn or stupid to parse the argument. I don’t agree that knowledge is self-evident and ironically, if knowledge were to be strictly self-evident that knowledge can exist at all would be the only untenable position.

Your last paragraph shows clearly that you either don’t understand the argument or are purposely strawmanning it. Christian knowledge is justified by the God that reveals Himself to us and not by the Bible. Meanwhile, your position is quite literally
> X is true
> how do I know
> X told me so
If you can’t see the logical problem here, you are too lost to see anything.

[Anonymous No.21742905]

>>21742898
Not at all what I was saying, but you going asshole mode tells me its not worth my time to continue the conversation.

[Anonymous No.21742916]

>>21742905
That is what you were saying. You literally said knowledge is self-evident and I asked how you know that, to which your only possible answer would be that it’s self-evident and that’s circular.

[Anonymous No.21742922]

>>21742916
If I literally said it, then go find in quotes where I said the words "knowledge is self-evident", you fucking retard. Go on, find the post and quote me.

[Anonymous No.21742928]

>>21742916
>You literally said knowledge is self-evident and I asked how you know that, to which your only possible answer would be that it’s self-evident and that’s circular.
That's precisely how it works. You start from basic presuppositions such as the existence of God, then work your way up, building upon previous presuppositions

[Anonymous No.21742957]

>>21742877
>Humanity has nothing to offer God
O ye men! It is ye that have need of Allah: but Allah is the One Free of all wants, worthy of all praise.

[Anonymous No.21742981]

>>21742922
Right here
>>21740890
>When someone reaches spiritual perfection, enlightenment, liberation etc, that knowledge is self-evident.
And multiple times after that

>>21742928
To say “I presuppose that God exists” doesn’t tell you anything about the God that exists, and that’s what’s in question here. Muslims, Traditionalists, etc. believe that a sort of God exists, but what sort of God and how they know that they can’t answer in any way that makes logical sense. Muslims will tell you that it’s all in the Quran but the type of God that’s revealed in the Quran is not a God that allows for knowledge to be contained within the Quran and it’s certainly not the type of God that allows knowledge of Him to be self-evident. Traditionalists will not even go this far and will just say “It’s self-evident. Just trust me, bro.” To say that some claim about knowledge is self-evident is begging the question. How could you know it’s self-evident if the way you’d know that is self-evidence? You couldn’t. That is called a circular argument. Christians avoid this entirely by stating that knowledge isn’t grounded in the self or in the fact that it’s revealed but specifically in the actual God that is revealed. Knowledge of God via revelation is only possible if the God that is revealed is precisely the sort of God that allows for knowing God to be possible in the first place.

[Anonymous No.21742993]

>>21742981
I didn't make that post, you fucking idiot. My posts are these:
>>21742626
>>21742807
>>21742856
>>21742905
>>21742922
Never once did I say "knowledge is self evident".

[Anonymous No.21743008]

>>21742981
>>21742928
Have you ever seen this painting? It illustrates what Christians literally believe. The saint is able to know God, know anything at all, because his knowledge ultimately derived from the Holy Spirit, from God. His knowledge of God doesn’t come from the book or from himself. The book merely reveals the sort of God that is revealing itself to Him and his self is simply apprehending knowledge that is grounded in that God. This is an entirely different sort of claim to knowledge than “Revelation says so” or “it’s self-evident”.

[Anonymous No.21743012]

>>21742898
> I don’t agree that knowledge is self-evident
Then your position is self-refuting and its impossible for you to have knowledge of Jesus, yourself, or indeed anything at all.

> Christian knowledge is justified by the God that reveals Himself to us and not by the Bible.
The Vedantist position is that Brahman reveals Himself directly to us in gnosis and not by the Scripture alone, thus the Vedantic knowledge is justified in the sense you are using term.

[Anonymous No.21743021]

>>21742993
That’s my mistake. I quoted the wrong person.

>>21742898
Was meant for
>>21742834

[Anonymous No.21743025]

>>21743008
> This is an entirely different sort of claim to knowledge than “Revelation says so” or “it’s self-evident”.
If it doesn’t require further confirmation then that means it’s self-evident you dumbass

[Anonymous No.21743031]

>>21743021
I take back my insults then.

[Anonymous No.21743033]

>>21743012
Your position is self-refuting. How can knowledge be self-evident if the only knowledge that you could have to justify that statement would necessarily also have to be self-evident? You cannot conceivably answer this question without more self-evidence. That’s called circularity and it means you don’t actually know what you think you know and your statement is not true by default.

[Anonymous No.21743034]

>>21742867
>>21742856

I think I find it "nihilistic" in the sense I described because the possibilities are eternally fixed.
If someone gets tortured to death, well, it was a possibility from all eternity. I suppose I wouldn't have a problem with it if there was a "play" of possibilities, so to speak...or if a god "wrote" the story in a personal sense

It's like having a deck of cards
Within that deck, even though all the cards are always existent and fixed, you can choose which cards are gonna be manifested (be revealed)
But if there is a total determinism, all the cards are gonna be revealed one by one and in order. That's why I said there is an apparent lack of meaning
Why was that card played? It just had to be. Nobody to write the story too since it was always a possibility, will always be

>We perceive him as doing so, that doesn't mean that is what is objectively going on, if that makes sense.
Of course, you're correct and I know it too, that's why I used "come back". There is not an "actual come back"
Still the avatara definitely isn't being a schizo and talking to himself. There is truly "other beings", it's just that they, at the same time, aren't separate from him. Otherwise, it would be sollipsistic and the avatara could simply will away the awakening of everything, as a lucid dreamer does with its dream...

And when we push the logic further... was the realized being coming back and doing all of what he's doing (as Krishna, for example) part of the eternal play of the possibilities too?
In the end, either it's a thing that happens because it happens, or, by some transcent thing we can't understand, the beings all collectively united as BRAHMAN, sort of decide of their destiny

I think pic related from a guenonian reader (among others) offered me the more plausible, or more palatable explanation of the whole stuff.
Things like "God" or Brahma/ishawara are not beings but rather metaphysical states after all. Which is why mahayana buddhism (which is orthodox) does away with a "creator"

There is just the ultimate reality and beings that come out of it, some willingly after awakening (boddhisattvas)

[Anonymous No.21743048]

>read 5 Guénon books
>not entirely sure I understand what he's talking about
>he just affirms a principle and refuses to elaborate
>always vague
Did I get trolled?

[Anonymous No.21743050]

>>21743025
You have no idea what you’re talking about. This isn’t the empirical method. We’re not talking about a science experiment. We’re talking about pre-suppositions that make those things valid in the first place. We’re talking about you justify knowledge and specifically knowledge about God. If I say “God is X” the question you should immediately ask is “how do you know that?” and that wouldn’t be a call to confirm the statement but rather to justify it. How do you justify these claims about God? These are not claims you confirm, only justify.

[Anonymous No.21743062]

>>21743048
In the sense that you wasted your time on the book, yes. This is what Traditionalism is. It’s assertions about things that you’re expected to just accept for no particular reason. If you ask for the reason the answer is either “these things are in common so they must be true” which is a fallacy, “it’s self-evident”, which is begging the question, or “just trust me” which is not really an answer.

[Anonymous No.21743077]

>>21743034
Whether or not its deterministic is another question, and asserting that the correct view of possibility leads to determinism is sort of a subtle shift. I personally am a determinist, but Guenon and Schuon were not, so its not necessarily a part of the perpsective. We can discuss that if you want but I don't want to conflate it with what Guenon or Schuon actually asserted.
>Still the avatara definitely isn't being a schizo and talking to himself. There is truly "other beings"
This is the absolute vs relative distinction. There are other beings, insofar as Creation exists, insofar as human beings exist. There aren't other beings on the absolute level. But we, as beings, don't live on the absolute level so to speak, we live on the relative.
Shankara for example rejected and argued against subjective idealism. Objects, he argued, did have a real existence insofar as they were objects, but that existence is relative and entirely derived from the absolute. Its a subtle difference but leads to a very different conclusion.
Guenon also explains this well. Is the image in the mirror "unreal"? No, it exists in its own mode, but its 100% dependent on whatever its reflecting, so we say that its existence is "relative" with respect to what its reflecting.
>Things like "God" or Brahma/ishawara are not beings but rather metaphysical states after all. Which is why mahayana buddhism (which is orthodox) does away with a "creator"
Yeah absolutely. But I think a better way to put it is not that God is "literally" a state. We cannot describe what God "literally" is, we can only represent in such and such a way, hence the various deities, or hence in Semitic traditions, the angels and the aspects of the Divine. Whatever symbolism feels the most natural to you is what you should use, this is why we have different spiritual traditions in the first place.
>There is just the ultimate reality and beings that come out of it, some willingly after awakening (boddhisattvas)
Yeah I'd say this is also a fair description, although I won't pretend to understand avatars fully.

[Anonymous No.21743084]

>>21743033
> Your position is self-refuting.
No, it’s not. I have pointed out that yours is actually self-refuting because the incorrect model of knowledge that you subscribe to results in an infinite regress.

>How can knowledge be self-evident if the only knowledge that you could have to justify that statement would necessarily also have to be self-evident?
Did you even think about that sentence before you wrote it? What you just described is no problem at all, those are not two mutually exclusive possibilities that conflict with each other but both can be simultaneously true without any contradiction or problem involved.

>You cannot conceivably answer this question without more self-evidence.
When knowledge it self-evident it follows naturally as a matter or due course that it would be self-evident, thus there is no issue and everything I am saying is in accordance with the facts.

>That’s called circularity
Incorrect, that’s just consistently following the implications of something, if knowledge is self-evident then that means….. *drumroll*….. that knowledge is self-evident! That’s not circular but its just correctly understanding the implications of the original statement.

>means you don’t actually know what you think you know
lol, not at all, this is just sophistry

[Anonymous No.21743090]

>>21743033
I'm the other guy you mistakenly quoted, but can't help but jump in and say - you do realize all rational knowledge is based on axioms, right? Have you ever done serious math, for example? In rationalism if you try and trace back the reasoning chain for anything you eventually arrive at an assumption that was either knowingly taken or was believed to be "self-evident".
Moreover what the other guy is talking about is supra-rational knowledge, which does literally possess a self-evident property because it bypasses the subject/object duality. "Direct knowledge", in other words. Guenon explains this.

[Anonymous No.21743104]

>>21743062
But why are they like this?
How are we supposed to just accept those assertions?
I mean it's not too hard when he criticizes the modern world of the 30s, but when he goes about the multiples stades of being it's just schizo rambling to me... maybe it's supposed to simply make sense to some people and I'm dumb.

[Anonymous No.21743117]

>>21743104
>How are we supposed to just accept those assertions?
Instructive to flip the question. Why have you accepted the assertions you currently have? Because you have accepted assumptions.

[Anonymous No.21743120]

>>21743084
It doesn’t result in infinite regress. You seem to think that but it’s not true. These are transcendental categories in philosophy.

So I can trust my self-evidence because my self-evidence suggests I can and you don’t think this is circular? This is somehow “no problem” to you?

[Anonymous No.21743134]

>>21743090
While I disagree that knowledge can be self-evident, I don’t disagree that at some point knowledge is axiomatic. My argument is that axioms are accepted on some basis. If I say something is logical, logic needs to be a possibility. For me to say accepting the principles of logic is logical or self-evident is circular and renders anything I think logical to be in reality nonsense.

[Anonymous No.21743138]

>>21743117
But I haven't accepted any assertions about the notion of time as a cycle...

[Anonymous No.21743143]

>>21743104
A smart person wouldn’t accept them.

>>21743117
Not all assertions are equal. An assertion about the color of a car is different than an assertion about God.

[Anonymous No.21743153]

>>21743134
Right, so then you would be saying its okay to make an assumption as long as you knowingly do so, in other words, as long as it remains labeled as an assumption in your mind, and you don't start calling it a "self-evident truth".
That's admirable, but a consequence of this is that you can't truly be said to know anything except that which is self-evident. If no self-evident knowledge exists, then you can't truly know anything.
The kind of knowledge that Guenon is talking about is supra-rational. You can deny that it exists, basically you can deny that man has the capacity for directly knowing. But you should realize that Guenon is not talking about rational assertions when he talks about "self-evidence", he's talking about supra-rational knowledge.

[Anonymous No.21743165]

>>21743143
>Not all assertions are equal. An assertion about the color of a car is different than an assertion about God.
Seems like another subtle shift, I'm not talking about the quality of the assertions, just pointing out that if all you have access to is rational, everything is ultimately based on assumptions if you refuse to accept that something being self-evident is possible. So the complaint applies to everything.

[Anonymous No.21743171]

>>21743138
Did I say that? If you believe you know something, you've accepted some assertions in general.

[Anonymous No.21743177]

>>21743153
No, I’m saying that you can make an assumption if that assumption is grounded in something which allows you to do so. In the case of accepting logical principles, I justify it by some other transcendent category that can justify logic in lieu of logic’s inability to justify itself. That’s God. Were this not the case, I would have no reason to accept logic. Indeed, I would have no reason to suppose that I know anything. Knowledge would be impossible. There are types of knowledge that can be self-evident but the realm of things we’re talking about cannot be self-evident. That knowledge is possible cannot be self-evident else it would necessarily not be knowledge.

[Anonymous No.21743189]

>>21743165
Well, I’m not advocating for strict rationalism.

[Anonymous No.21743199]

>>21743177
Right, I also agree with that, but this means you are holding something to be self-evident which is the justification for your reasoning process. That's exactly what I'm also talking about.
I personally think that the basic laws of logic qualify as self-evident but that's a minor, secondary point here.
>There are types of knowledge that can be self-evident but the realm of things we’re talking about cannot be self-evident.
Not rationally, but again Guenon holds that man has a capacity to know truths in a direct manner, some would call this "intellectuality" or "spiritually" knowing. Many spiritual traditions also hold that this is possible. If you disagree with that, then you're just rejecting Guenon's claim (and the claim of many spiritual traditions) but you're not demonstrating any fault of logic in Guenon since he doesn't hold that you can rationally prove his assertions in the first place. This is why he didn't consider himself to be a "philosopher", for example.
So basically I have no issues with your stance except you pretending that Guenon thought he was asserting what is self-evident in the *rational* sense which is simply a lie.

[Anonymous No.21743200]

>>21743165
How do you know that everything is based on assumptions? Or do you not know and you’re just assuming?

[Anonymous No.21743204]

>>21743189
Fair enough. My point is, neither is Guenon.

[Anonymous No.21743226]

>>21743200
I don't personally believe it, what I'm saying is this is the natural consequence if you don't believe that self-evident knowledge is possible. Which ironically, is itself an assumption.
In other words, what I'm saying is if I take the assumption that self-evident knowledge is not a possibility, this is the consequence of that assumption.
Like I said above, I consider the basic laws of logic to be self-evident personally. If you disagree that's fine its not really the point I'm trying to make here, the point I'm trying to make is that you and the other guy are misrepresenting Guenon/Schuon's stance.

[Anonymous No.21743233]

>>21743199
No, I’m not. God reveals Himself to us and allows for knowledge. This is not self-evidence. You know fully well that the laws of logic cannot be self-evident and you cannot prove logic with more logic.

I don’t disagree that things can be known spiritually, intuitively, directly, etc. I just don’t agree that everything which is known in these ways is actually true or justified. Self-deception is a possibility and if your method of knowledge is ultimately self-evident at bottom there’s no way to know when you’ve deceived yourself and you’ve arrived at genuine knowledge. In fact, to call whatever you come up with “knowledge” or “true” would be wrong. And this is basically my problem with Guenon. He calls you to accept things which you shouldn’t logically accept. Moreover, he calls you to accept things that can’t logically be true (i.e. absolute one-ness) but that’s a deeper level of this argument.

[Anonymous No.21743240]

>>21743120
>So I can trust my self-evidence because my self-evidence suggests I can and you don’t think this is circular? This is somehow “no problem” to you?
Not that anon, but I see no problem here.

[Anonymous No.21743247]

>>21743204
Okay. And? That doesn’t mean we agree.

>>21743226
No, it’s not. You’re stuck in this false dichotomy where all knowledge is ultimately self-evident and accepted or denied on that basis or knowledge strictly is strictly rational. Self evident knowledge IS a possibility, but not when it comes to knowledge itself. That’s not to say that all knowledge is strictly rational. Belief in a revealed God is not a rational argument, even if I’m making a rational argument right now to convince you of that.

[Anonymous No.21743253]

>>21743240
Well you should because that’s circular. What you’re using to justify is the same thing that needs justification in the first place.

[Anonymous No.21743260]

>>21743050
> You have no idea what you’re talking about.
I do
>This isn’t the empirical method. We’re not talking about a science experiment. We’re talking about pre-suppositions that make those things valid in the first place.
This is an irrelevant objection because the same point applies either way, you are asking “how can you be free of doubt that said knowledge is correct” both in the case of more mundane dealings and with grasping abstract metaphysical models about God, the same point is true in both cases that it is self-evident to someone when they have lost all doubts about that things being correct.

[Anonymous No.21743267]

>>21737282
Not a single Sufi order treats the exoteric nature of Islam as utterly secondary importance. They are entirely rooted in Qur'anic teachings and the exoteric Five Pillars.
If there is some ultra-heterodox fringe Sufi order which doesn't care about exoteric Islam, then they wouldn't require initiates to identify as Muslim to join them.

[Anonymous No.21743269]

>>21743233
>No, I’m not. God reveals Himself to us and allows for knowledge. This is not self-evidence.
...I mean genuinely how is it not self-evident? Its as if when you say "self-evident" you strictly mean it in the rational sense. Is that what's going on? Because that's what it appears like.
> I just don’t agree that everything which is known in these ways is actually true or justified.
If that's the case then its not actually being directly known, i.e. its not a truly spiritual knowing.
>Self-deception is a possibility and if your method of knowledge is ultimately self-evident at bottom there’s no way to know when you’ve deceived yourself and you’ve arrived at genuine knowledge
A good way to tell is that when you've known something directly, there is no possible way to doubt it. This follows as a consequence from a bypassing of the subject/object duality. There is no "distance" between you and what you know, in other words, so there is no space for doubt to arise.
>And this is basically my problem with Guenon. He calls you to accept things which you shouldn’t logically accept. Moreover, he calls you to accept things that can’t logically be true (i.e. absolute one-ness) but that’s a deeper level of this argument.
I mean again, this is what I'm saying, you're misinterpreting him. He's not saying he's rationally proved these things. He's saying these are symbolic statements of truths that its possible for a human being to come to direct knowledge of.
If you disagree then you disagree, but that doesn't make Guenon illogical. He isn't. This would be like saying Christians are illogical from the empirical perspective because they hold to faith.

[Anonymous No.21743279]

>>21743260
No, it’s not. To say a Christian’s knowledge of God and thus knowledge about knowledge is self-evident is incorrect. Lack of doubt =/= self-evident, this is clearly evidence by the fact that we’re even having this argument.

[Anonymous No.21743283]

>>21743267
>Not a single Sufi order treats the exoteric nature of Islam as utterly secondary importance. They are entirely rooted in Qur'anic teachings and the exoteric Five Pillars.
As someone who has come contacts with Sufi's, this is 100% true. They're even more zealous about the exoteric nature than a lot of ""regular" Muslims, because they see that once exoteric is mastered, the esoteric path is easier to follow.

[Anonymous No.21743284]

>>21743247
>Okay. And? That doesn’t mean we agree.
Yeah that's exactly what I'm saying. You don't agree with Guenon. That doesn't therefore make Guenon illogical, you just reject his basis. I'm also free to reject the axioms of math, for example, but math itself remains logically consistent.
>elf evident knowledge IS a possibility, but not when it comes to knowledge itself. That’s not to say that all knowledge is strictly rational. Belief in a revealed God is not a rational argument, even if I’m making a rational argument right now to convince you of that.
I mean I agree with you I just think you're using "self evident" in a really weird, narrow way. God revealing Himself to you IS self-evident, it requires no justification beyond itself, it is self-sufficient.
If instead you just believe in God, and He hasn't revealed Himself to you, instead you have faith. Which is also valid, but not really what I'm talking about because faith allows for doubt.

[Anonymous No.21743300]

>>21737387
>X does not even believe in the same God.
I never understood this rhetorical trick, which I see used in all sorts of religious contexts. If you and I disagree on whether a person (say John Cena) is a good or bad person, does that mean we are talking about a different entity? No, of course not.
Similarly, you can absolutely disagree about the qualities of God while still talking about the same entity.
It's completely baffling that so many people use this braindead rhetoric.

[Anonymous No.21743303]

>>21743253
It's self-evident to me that I can trust my self-evident knowledge to refer to my self-evident knowledge.

[Anonymous No.21743306]

>>21743300
They secretly view God as a human construction.

[Anonymous No.21743309]

>>21743306
>secretly

[Anonymous No.21743320]

>>21743309
I mean no one who uses that rhetoric would admit to it, but that is in fact the state of their heart.

[Anonymous No.21743322]

>>21743171
Not understanding that kind of bullshit and trying to figure out if you really mean something or if it's just nonsense is so tiresome.

[Anonymous No.21743323]

>>21743283
I know it's the same with esoteric strains in Judaism and Buddhist schools like Vajrayana or Shingon, and I'm pretty sure any esoteric tradition upholds the same strictness about the exoteric path. The whole reason esoteric traditions are esoteric is because they believe the knowledge and practices to be dangerous to the unprepared. Since their tradition(s) are based on a "broader" one, it is of utmost importance to vet initiates so you don't just get schizos who are in it for magic powers or other nonsense. One of the primary vetting tools is being able to uphold the teachings and practices of the exoteric forms.

[Anonymous No.21743329]

>>21743322
I mean you're making logical errors that I'm pointing out. I don't get what's so hard about this.

[Anonymous No.21743342]

Despite all the shitflinging and uneducated opinions going on in this thread, I appreciate that there's genuine discussion going on and everyone is putting effort into making their points.
Good thread overall.

[Anonymous No.21743353]

>>21743342
>I appreciate that there's genuine discussion going on and everyone is putting effort into making their points.
Don't jinx it, nigger. But yeah I'm quite surprised at such a high quality thread. Haven't seen such fervor in months on several boards

[Anonymous No.21743360]

>>21743269
Maybe you need to explain what exactly you mean by “self-evident” because in my mind, the only thing that’s self-evident here is that my knowledge of a God who reveals Himself in scripture, in miracles, and in various other ways and is elaborated on in church councils cannot be said to be merely self-evident. To be clear, what’s ultimately being asserted here is that knowledge is only possible because we have a God which justifies the possibility of knowledge while a claim to knowledge on the basis that it’s obvious or just intuitively known without a God that makes that possible is in fact not knowledge and can’t be said to be true.

You’re right. I don’t think Guenon actually knows what he says he knows.

I would ask you how you know that’s a good way to know that you know.

I completely understanding that Guenon is not making a rational argument. He’s saying they are directly known or arrived at intuitively. What I’m saying is that can’t possibly be said to be true because 1) it’s an unjustified statement by default and 2) an illogical statement by default. Not only do we have no reason to believe Guenon’s knowledge because his justification is “it’s just intuitively known” because intuition can be deceiving but also because what specifically is being known is the sort of thing that would render any knowledge at all impossible. It is indeed illogical because Guenon’s God isn’t revealed. It’s only intuitively known. How does he know can trust his intuition? His intuition told him so! It would be illogical to accept this argument. Christians accept revelation and they accept a revealed God that justifies their knowledge. That’s not the same as accepting revelation and accepting revelation that tells them they should accept revelation.

[Anonymous No.21743365]

>>21743306
You're definitely right. But even under that assumption, the logic doesn't hold up because they're talking about people (religious believers) who don't think God is just an arbitrary construct.

Actually, even assuming it's all a fiction I don't think the logic works. If I we disagree about Dumbledore's sexuality and morality, we're still talking about the same character. Dumbledore as an entity doesn't require any quality of independent reality to make this hold true.
I might almost go so far as to say that perceptional disagreements about the qualities of an entity reify that entity far more than simple agreement does. But I haven't thought about that long enough to defend it.

[Anonymous No.21743372]

>>21743284
Guenon is illogical. If his knowledge is directly apprehended, how does he know this knowledge is true? He’s have to directly apprehend that. Direct apprehension justifying direct apprehension. This is circular. It would be illogical to accept this.

[Anonymous No.21743381]

>>21743300
Imagine you see John Cena and you have in your mind a mental picture of a man who is about 5’9”, muscular, has blonde hair and blue eyes, naturally dark skin, and a deep voice. Then, I come up to you and I start talking about the John Cena I met, but the John Cena I met was 6’5”, thin, had dark hair and dark eyes, naturally pale skin, and a squeaky voice. Are we talking about the same John Cena?

[Anonymous No.21743382]

>>21743329
Are you truly oblivious to how elliptic and overwhelming your posts are?

[Anonymous No.21743383]

>>21743372
You sound like a Vulcan.
>Illogical. Illogical. Illogical.
It's almost like you've made logic your religion, and you have to keep saying your prayer(It's illogical). But logic isn't always logical.

[Anonymous No.21743390]

>>21743360
>Maybe you need to explain what exactly you mean by “self-evident”
Just what the term literally means, not some weird conception of it. "Self-evident", literally, "what is its own evidence", i.e., what is self-sufficient and does not require anything else as a basis.
As a further note having said that, anything that transcends the subject/object distinction is, by consequence, self-evident. A good way to put it is, when dealing in rationality, you need "evidence" because there is "distance" between you (the subject) and what you know (the object). We call this "the subject/object distinction". If its transcended, there is no "distance". This is direct knowing. I put things in quotes to highlight that I'm using such terms symbolically.
>You’re right. I don’t think Guenon actually knows what he says he knows.
Which is fine, impossible to debate because his assertions can't be proven rationally and are in fact not meant to be. If it were otherwise, he would be a philosopher, but he emphatically insists that he isn't.
>What I’m saying is that can’t possibly be said to be true because 1) it’s an unjustified statement by default and 2) an illogical statement by default.
The statement itself isn't the truth, its a symbolic expression of the truth. Guenon himself understands this and shows his understanding of it when he says "any formulation of the doctrine always leaves out much more than it includes", because metaphysical truths are above and beyond language and can only be directly known.

[Anonymous No.21743394]

>>21743300
> Similarly, you can absolutely disagree about the qualities of God while still talking about the same entity.
No, you can’t. If I use God to refer to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I’m simply not talking about the same entity as a Christian when they talk about the triune God. This is a fallacy.

[Anonymous No.21743396]

>>21743372
No, that's not at all what's going on or what is he saying. You created a strawman and then accused it of being illogical. You're right about the strawman but haven't accomplished anything otherwise.
>how does he know this knowledge is true?
Consider what "self-evident" means.

[Anonymous No.21743398]

>>21743120
> It doesn’t result in infinite regress.
It does, and it’s on you to explain exactly how otherwise if you want to argue that it doesn’t
>You seem to think that but it’s not true
I have already explained to you why it’s true, and you’ve been unable to explain why what I said is wrong.

> So I can trust my self-evidence because my self-evidence suggests I can and you don’t think this is circular? This is somehow “no problem” to you?
Yes, if you have no reason left to doubt something, that means you have no reason left to doubt something, its as simple as 1+1=2

[Anonymous No.21743402]

>>21743383
Logic is always logical, but that’s not the point I made, which you didn’t grasp because you’re not following along. The point is that things which are asserted as intuitively true but logically false, should be rejected. That which is true would not call on you to defy logic. If something is true, it’s true directly, intuitively and logically.

[Anonymous No.21743410]

>>21743381
Yes, I'd say we're disagreeing about the particular qualities of John Cena, and in this regard one of us is even necessarily wrong. But we're still talking about the same entity.
I guess the next step of the hypothetical is: if we've both seen John Cenas with completely different qualities and are both correct in our perception, then I'd say we can conclude that we are talking about different entities which happened to be referred to by the same name.

Which I suppose means that the only way to establish that we are talking about different Gods is to be able to prove certain qualities as correct or incorrect.

[Anonymous No.21743412]

>>21743390
So in what way is the evidence of my knowledge of God my knowledge of God? That’s not what I said. I did not say I know God because I know. I said I know God because God allows me to know.

[Anonymous No.21743415]

>>21743402
>The point is that things which are asserted as intuitively true but logically false
That seems intuitively true.

[Anonymous No.21743416]

>>21743390
In other words, “it’s not the truth”. I agree.

[Anonymous No.21743421]

>>21743412
I mean it sounds like what you're talking about is faith, which is not at all what I'm discussing. Nor am I talking about rationality, which is where "statements" and "assertions" belong. I'm talking about directly knowing something, which I described in the post you quoted.

[Anonymous No.21743425]

>>21743396
Again, some things can be self-evident but others can’t. Knowledge itself can’t be self-evident.

>>21743415
…and not logically false. Correct. See? You’re getting it.

[Anonymous No.21743430]

>>21743425
>…and not logically false. Correct. See? You’re getting it.
But given that I am a human and can't fly, and penguins also can't fly, that must surely mean I am a penguin?

[Anonymous No.21743434]

>>21743416
I know you're saying this in a catty way, and it is clever, but yes it actually literally isn't and Guenon himself also agrees with that. The "rational" side of a doctrine is just preparation for the supra-rational, that's it, no more. Many religious figures in many traditions say things that allude to this, not just "Eastern" either, St. Aquinas comes to mind.

[Anonymous No.21743438]

>>21743425
>Knowledge itself can’t be self-evident.
That seems self-evident, so I get your point.

[Anonymous No.21743439]

>>21743410
Exactly. So if I’m talking about God, and I’m explaining these attributes, but the God I end up describing is a God that can’t possibly allow for my knowing these attributes about Him? Then I’m wrong, aren’t I?

[Anonymous No.21743442]

>>21743394
Because anyone talking about FSM is under no impression that they are talking about any kind of God which religious people believe in.
To significant contrast, Abrahamic believers are under the impression they are talking about the same God. And even between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic faiths, there is a significant amount of similar discussion, instead focusing on other words like "divine" or "the Ultimate" or "reality." Thinkers in Mughal India absolutely and overwhelmingly operated under the assumption that Allah and Brahman were the same, with each tradition disagreeing about the particulars.

[Anonymous No.21743445]

>>21743425
>Knowledge itself can’t be self-evident.
I'm guessing by this you mean "rational knowledge", which yes, can't be self-evident. But what's being discussed is supra-rational knowledge. I'm sensing that you're conceiving of this as "you magically feel convinced about the truth of such and such statements", no that's not at all what it is.

[Anonymous No.21743453]

>>21743439
No?

[Anonymous No.21743462]

>>21743382
Again I genuinely don't see what's difficult or overwhelming. Not being a dick, I'm saying that as a completely genuine statement.

[Anonymous No.21743472]

>>21743421
I’m actually not talking about faith. I’m talking about the sort of entity that makes knowledge possible at all. If you don’t have that, you don’t have knowledge. If you do have it, you’re just aping the Christian trinity anyway. I’m not talking about rationality either even if I am making a rational argument to you about this. Direct knowledge cannot justify how you directly know. You have to admit this. If you know something directly, and your only justification for how you know something directly is more direct knowledge, it’s not actually right to say that you know anything.

>>21743434
Again, I’m not making an appeal rationality. I’m simply not calling you to be irrational. Christians also agree that things can be known intuitively and not rationally, but they admit that things which are “known intuitively” can in reality be mere self-deception and thus not actually known intuitively.

[Anonymous No.21743479]

>>21743453
Correct. This is why Muslims, Traditionalists, Hindus, etc. are wrong.

[Anonymous No.21743484]

>>21743233
> actually true or justified. Self-deception is a possibility and if your method of knowledge is ultimately self-evident at bottom there’s no way to know when you’ve deceived yourself and you’ve arrived at genuine knowledge.
If it isn’t self-evident at bottom then it always has to be subsequently made evident to another knowledge in a regress that never ends, to the effect that nothing is really known at all. Having it end in self-evident knowledge is what makes knowledge possible.

[Anonymous No.21743486]

>>21743442
That’s not the orthodox position. Those people are in error.

[Anonymous No.21743487]

>>21743233
> Moreover, he calls you to accept things that can’t logically be true (i.e. absolute one-ness)
There is no reason this cant be logically true

[Anonymous No.21743503]

>>21743472
>I’m talking about the sort of entity that makes knowledge possible at all. If you don’t have that, you don’t have knowledge.
Again, it seems like what you're talking about here is knowledge...but specifically conceived of in the rational sense. Consider why what you're discussing when you say "knowlege" even needs to "be made possible", and compare it to this explanation I gave previously:
>>anything that transcends the subject/object distinction is, by consequence, self-evident. A good way to put it is, when dealing in rationality, you need "evidence" because there is "distance" between you (the subject) and what you know (the object). We call this "the subject/object distinction". If its transcended, there is no "distance". This is direct knowing. I put things in quotes to highlight that I'm using such terms symbolically.
>Direct knowledge cannot justify how you directly know. You have to admit this.
No man I know this will be frustrating but I sincerely have to assert this - you're not conceiving of direct knowledge accurately here. Yes, direct knowledge does justify itself. That's what the term "direct" there signifies. Hopefully you remain polite and we can continue to discuss this as I know me just asserting what I just said is frustrating but sincerely, if you think that direct knowledge needs to "justify" itself then what you're conceiving of is not direct knowledge at all.
> Christians also agree that things can be known intuitively and not rationally, but they admit that things which are “known intuitively” can in reality be mere self-deception and thus not actually known intuitively.
Yeah there is no disagreement on this point. The key here is that if what you think you "know intuitively" is wrong, then you didn't actually know it intuitively.
I still get the persisent sense though, that what you're talking about is "I arrived at rational knowledge in an intuitive way." In other words, "I became utterly convinced that certain statements or assertions were true". No, that's not direct knowledge and not at all what I am discussing. As a further statement on direct knowledge, in it the "content" of knowing and the "means" of knowing are one. In what I believe you're discussing, the "means" of knowing (which you assert is "intuitive") and the "content" of knowing (the assertions, statements, whatever) remain separate. That's another way of explaining the difference.

[Anonymous No.21743504]

>>21743382
NTA but put simply he’s just saying that we all operate inevitably on SOME assumptions about reality, and only after those assumptions do we begin logically deducing or evaluating things.
High-level (read: fart-sniffing) philosophers get into the territory of questioning our fundamental axioms, but not all of them at once. For us regular people we do (and should) just operate normally with those implicit assumptions unquestioned, like the validity of sense perception (to a degree), the validity of our logical faculties, the singular direction of time, etc.
>>21743462
Is that a fair assumption or am I off? I didn’t follow the reply thread all the way. I think anon is confused because most often posts on 4chan are pointlessly opaque for the sake of ulterior rhetorical motives, which can make us all second-guess what other anons are trying to say.

[Anonymous No.21743509]

>>21743445
No, I mean knowledge itself. You can call it direct, intuitive, supra-rational, whatever. It doesn’t matter.
Consider the line of questioning
> I intuitively know X!
> how do you know you can trust your intuition?
At this point we’re talking about knowledge itself because that’s the category of thing we’re dealing with, we’re not dealing with the color of the sky or if people exist, we’re asking how it is you know what you know
>I intuited that I can trust my intuition!
This is a circular argument. To say that this is self-evident is just wrong. If this were your answer, you’d have failed to give an account for knowledge and inadvertently proved that not only is your knowledge not self-evident, but that it’s not even really knowledge. You can call it knowledge, but it’s not really known. You can say it’s true, but you don’t really know it’s true. In other words, it’s bullshit.

[Anonymous No.21743513]

>>21743504
Yes I'd say that's accurate, thank you for explaining. My only note that I would add is that I personally think the basic laws of logic (non-contradiction, causality) qualify as self-evident. But other than that, your explanation was absolutely perfect.

[Anonymous No.21743517]

>>21743484
This “regress” ends with God.

[Anonymous No.21743518]

>>21743509
See my post here please:
>>21743503
You're actually talking about rational knowledge, "known" intuitively. We are not talking about the same thing. I am simply talking about arriving at the content of rational knowledge in a different manner.

[Anonymous No.21743520]

>>21743479
I don't follow.

[Anonymous No.21743523]

>>21743487
> reality which contains distinctions is an illusion
> how do you know?
> I arrived at that totally not illusory conclusion in the inherently illusory reality
So logical…

[Anonymous No.21743524]

>>21743518
>>21743509
I am not simply talking about*
Apologies

[Anonymous No.21743525]

>>21743517
Yes, which leads us back to the first presupposition -- the existence of God.

[Anonymous No.21743530]

>>21743520
The God they describe is a God that doesn’t allow for knowledge of God to be known and this can’t actually know God or be right in describing the God that really does exist.

[Anonymous No.21743536]

>>21743525
So if we agree that we presuppose God exists the question then is what sort of God exists? Is it a God that allows for knowledge or a God that excluded the possibility of knowledge? The absolute one-ness and non-duality that Guenon describes necessarily implies a God that renders knowledge impossible.

[Anonymous No.21743544]

>>21743279
> Lack of doubt =/= self-evident, this is clearly evidence by the fact that we’re even having this argument.
All cases of something being truly self-evident invariably involve a lack of doubt.

[Anonymous No.21743549]

>>21743536
No, it doesn't imply that. Bizarre assertion to be frank.

[Anonymous No.21743552]

>>21743503
If you define “direct knowledge” as something like the supra-rational apprehension of something which is absolutely true, then my question would be how you know that what Guenon preaches is indeed this true direct knowledge? When presented with that question, his answer is that it’s directly known, which is still begging the question.

[Anonymous No.21743556]

>>21743536
>So if we agree that we presuppose God exists the question then is what sort of God exists?
Yes
> Is it a God that allows for knowledge or a God that excluded the possibility of knowledge?
That's the question isn't it?
>The absolute one-ness and non-duality that Guenon describes necessarily implies a God that renders knowledge impossible.
This is open to interpretation, but it's a possible outcome, if we follow the chain if suppositions.

[Anonymous No.21743558]

>>21743549
Yes, it does. Guenon’s absolute one-ness renders knowing anything impossible. Reality is inherently illusory. Whatever you think you know would necessarily just the an illusion. This is also why Buddhism is wrong.

[Anonymous No.21743560]

>>21743513
Glad I could help then.
I know some philosophers have definitely tried to push back against certain self-evident axioms. Not being a philosopher, I would describe my stance on such things as that of practicality; even if something like causality isn't actually fundamentally true, so long as it appears to be so then it's practical just assume it is true.

More to the topic of the thread (Islamic thought), Al Ghazali and the Asharite school of theology believed causality to be an illusion; the only efficient cause within the universe is God's will and action. When I spark flint on to wood to start a fire, it is not the causality of the chemical reaction and heat which spreads the flame, but instead God personally and intentionally causing each step of the process.
I disagree with that, but it's novel and such explorations can be funny.

[Anonymous No.21743565]

>>21743556
It’s the only outcome. Non-duality excludes the possibility for knowledge by default.

[Anonymous No.21743568]

>>21743552
>If you define “direct knowledge” as something like the supra-rational apprehension of something which is absolutely true, then my question would be how you know that what Guenon preaches is indeed this true direct knowledge?
It isn't. Guenon himself says that it isn't, and I already talked about this in previous posts.
The "content" of direct knowledge is *not* rational. I really cannot emphasize that enough and its the key thing you're stuck on here. To further explain
>the supra-rational apprehension of something which is absolutely true
Yes, but what is this "something"? The fact that you even thought it could be sentences in a book shows that you're conceiving of the "object" of direct knowing as a rational form of knowledge. No, that is absolutely not what it is.
Transposing what I said earlier to the form of your language right now - in direct knowing, the "apprehension" and "what is being apprehended" are not distinct. That understanding is absolutely crucial.

[Anonymous No.21743572]

>>21743530
The existence of a God (or any entity) whose qualities necessarily cannot be known does not strike me as illogical, nor does it seem relevant to what I was saying.

[Anonymous No.21743576]

>>21743558
Nonsense assertion aside from the fact that yes some forms of Buddhism are indeed wrong.

[Anonymous No.21743577]

>>21742874
Ok so according to your own logic, you’re larping as a brown Levantine. Thanks for showing us that you’re a dumbass for not seeing how your argument applies to yourself.

[Anonymous No.21743579]

>>21743558
Why does that follow, when that is why most schools of Buddhism argue?

[Anonymous No.21743581]

>>21743565
>Non-duality excludes the possibility for knowledge by default.
But non-duality does not deny the existence of individual experiences and perceptions

[Anonymous No.21743597]

>>21743568
Whether or not it’s rational is irrelevant. It’s not true and it’s not knowledge. You have no reason to accept anything he says and that’s the whole point.

Your second paragraph is just being intentionally obtuse to evade the line of questioning. Sentences are what we’ve got at our disposal here. And I already used them to explain that I understand that what Guenon thinks he’s “directly knowing” is not a rational sort of knowledge, but he still thinks it’s a sort of knowledge nonetheless. My whole point is that while he may think that’s a sort of knowledge, he has no actual way to prove it’s true or that it’s even really knowledge, and neither do you. So you have no reason to accept what he says. Moreover, you, I think, admitted that self-deception is a possibility, which means that even if you were to directly know in the exact same way he knows, you’d still have no reason to accept that as either truth or knowledge. In the end what Guenon and now you are calling us to do are to defy rationality and logic to accept something that can’t possibly be said to be true or known.

[Anonymous No.21743598]

>>21741372
True, and that leads us into the debate of whether the Qur'an is created or uncreated which also leads to questions Muslims can't answer
>>21741607
Christ established the Church and is therefore the head of the Church.
>>21741750
Yes, a Divine Person. You're ignoring the fact that He's the God-man and therefore the bridge between the Divine and humanity

[Anonymous No.21743604]

>>21743576
So if I describe God to you but it’s a God I shouldn’t possibly be able to describe, you think it would be logical to believe me…?

[Anonymous No.21743608]

>>21743597
>Whether or not it’s rational is irrelevant.
No, its actually the most relevant thing to consider here.
>Your second paragraph is just being intentionally obtuse to evade the line of questioning.
How is it directly evading when my reply to your question was "it isn't"? Come on dude, you're not being fair. Reply to this directly before we continue the rest of this conversation because I'm not going to continue with someone who is deliberately misrepresenting me.

[Anonymous No.21743619]

>>21743604
If you can't possibly describe it then how did you just apparently describe it? What? You're extremely confused

[Anonymous No.21743620]

>>21743579
You tell me. In a reality where real distinctions are not actually real and my experience in reality is by default illusory, why would any sort of understanding I think I come to not also be illusory?

>>21743581
So? That a phenomenon seems to occur is not what’s being debated.

[Anonymous No.21743626]

>>21743619
Kek. I think you’re confused. The conclusion is simply that I can’t be right and you’d have no reason to believe me. Obviously, you can describe things but that doesn’t mean what you’re describing is actually the case.

[Anonymous No.21743637]

>>21743626
>Obviously, you can describe things but that doesn’t mean what you’re describing is actually the case.
Yeah, but that's not what you said, is it? What you said was someone described God but it was a God they couldn't possibly describe. So how did they describe it in the first place? Lol

[Anonymous No.21743663]

>>21743608
Because first you said it isn’t and then you said yes to something that corresponded to it as if to agree to it is. You then went on to say how I’m conceiving of it as sentences in a book when in reality sentences are merely referring to some thing which we’re talking about. I think you are the one who is not being fair to be honest. I completely understand the content of the direct knowledge is not rational. I said that multiple times, but you keep saying that I’m misunderstanding it as exactly that. I’m not. I’m simply stating what I think is really an indisputable point and which I think you’ll agree with if you’re just honest, and that’s the content of what he’s directly knowing cannot properly be said to be true or known. And any assertions about this direct content, even with the understanding that “apprehension” is “what is being apprehended” would necessarily just be assertions, not truth and not knowledge.

[Anonymous No.21743677]

>>21743637
Ah you’re right. If I said it was a God I couldn’t describe, I was mistaken. Describe is probably the wrong word anyway. What I meant was if I say “I know God is X” but then I go on to claim I know that God has attributes which make knowledge impossible, then I don’t actually know God. I can only guess about his attributes, which necessarily can’t be wholly true.

[Anonymous No.21743711]

>>21743663
>and then you said yes to something that corresponded to it as if to agree to it is.
No, that's not at all what I said. To make it even clearer - what Guenon is explaining IS NOT direct knowledge. Direct knowledge cannot be explained in a rational manner. The answer to "how do you know that what Guenon is saying is direct knowledge?" Is, IT ISN'T. How do I know that for sure? Because by definition, direct knowledge cannot be expressed in a rational form.
>You then went on to say how I’m conceiving of it as sentences in a book when in reality sentences are merely referring to some thing which we’re talking about.
No man, they aren't, that's what I'm trying to help you understand.
>I think you are the one who is not being fair to be honest.
From my point of view you don't understand what I'm saying (not saying that to try and offend) and you're then getting upset with me about it. You seem to think I'm secretly trying to assert that Guenon is describing direct knowledge when I've said repeatedly that this is emphatically not the case. Can you understand how I feel then, when you then start accusing me of stuff like being "evasive"? I answered a direct question directly and apparently I'm somehow "evading" the question. So far you've been polite which is great but if that ceases to be the case I'm going to leave, there's no point speaking with someone who doesn't respect you.
> I said that multiple times, but you keep saying that I’m misunderstanding it as exactly that. I’m not.
I contend that you are. My evidence is that if you understood that direct knowledge can't take a rational form, you of course wouldn't have asserted that I could see Guenon as explaining direct knowledge in the first place, since Guenon's bonks all take a rational form - the form of logical constructions in language.
What you really seem to be conceiving of is the same end as rational knowledge - something understood in a rational form - but arrived at in an "intuitive" way. Its also shown that you're conceving of it this way in your previous example when you talked about "the knowledge itself" being something that can be rationally articulated, here:
>>21743509
If you understood what you're claiming you understand, then you'd already know direct knowledge cannot be explained, it can only be indicated. In other words, its the "direct knowing" that casts such rational statements as Guenon makes as its shadow, but what Guenon says can never be direct knowledge by definition. Whether you believe Guenon actually possessed direct knowledge or not is up to you and furthermore is not even Guenon's concern.
>And any assertions about this direct content, even with the understanding that “apprehension” is “what is being apprehended” would necessarily just be assertions, not truth and not knowledge.
Yes, I 100% agree!

[Anonymous No.21743717]

>>21743677
A lot of respect to you for admitting that small mistake instead of calling me a retard or something. Yes I agree with you otherwise. I don't agree that what Traditionalists advocate has the consequence of making knowledge impossible though.

[Anonymous No.21743753]

>>21743565
>Non-duality excludes the possibility for knowledge by default.
complete and utter nonsense

[Anonymous No.21743789]

>>21743711
In other words, what Guenon writes is neither truth nor known.

[Anonymous No.21743792]

>>21743789
Yes, and my reply to this is the same as my reply here:
>>21743434

[Anonymous No.21743794]

>>21743753
Non-duality either apes the Christian trinity or it collapses into monism, and in the case of the latter nothing about illusory reality can actually be known.

[Anonymous No.21743805]

>>21743792
That still leaves the problem that what Guenon does describe about God and reality can’t possibly true. So in the end his books contain no rational truth or knowledge and no intuitively apprehended but rationally conveyed knowledge so what he wrote was at best a waste of our time and should be dismissed.

[Anonymous No.21743806]

>>21743794
You completely misunderstand the subject you're trying to discuss.

[Anonymous No.21743819]

>>21743805
>That still leaves the problem that what Guenon does describe about God and reality can’t possibly true.
No that's not the case either. There is direct knowing and then there is rational or indirect knowing. What Guenon says is not "true" in the sense that it isn't the former - not exactly a shock, nothing that takes a rational form can be. Whether it is "true" or not in the sense that its valid in the rational sense is an open question.
>So in the end his books contain no rational truth or knowledge
Yeah, as I guessed, you show your error again by even appending "rational" to this. What Guenon writes is rational in form, you're free to agree or disagree with it and there are things that I myself disagree with Guenon on. But his main project is to describe the rational side of metaphysics which he bases on the Vedanta, which he succeeds at, and then to talk about the importance of seeking supra-rational knowledge and how this is linked to the world's great spiritual traditions. From your comments I'm guessing you're an exclusivist Christian. That's great, all Guenon would like for you to do is take it seriously.
>nd no intuitively apprehended but rationally conveyed knowledge
Which, to further belabor the point on, is not possible.
>so what he wrote was at best a waste of our time and should be dismissed.
No, as I said in what you replied to, the point of the rational side of the doctrine is preparation for the supra-rational.

[Anonymous No.21743854]

>>21743805
Also, to add, Guenon himself describes that his own goals in writing are the following:
1. To acknowledge the West's debt to the East.
2. To "set some people thinking", no doubt the "people" Guenon has in mind are people in the west of brahmin nature.
That's it.

[Anonymous No.21743874]

>>21743794
> Non-duality either apes the Christian trinity or it collapses into monism
Incorrect, because unlike monism it doesn’t propound that everything is the same thing but it recognizes a distinction between reality and falsehood. Monism is more like Vishishtadvaita or Kashmir Shaivism which both say that literally everything without exemption including all impure and sinful things are literally Brahman and/or his physical body.

>and in the case of the latter nothing about illusory reality can actually be known
Incorrect, because this reality itself is our own self-disclosing awareness which is known self-evidently to us always. Reality, God, Brahman, is always known as our own self. This is just as much a part of the teaching as saying that maya is an illusion. When you try to criticize one part of the doctrine while deliberately ignoring another part of the doctrine that rectifies your so-called “criticism”, then that’s just sophistry. You are engaging in strawman fallacies by describing a fantasy of your own invention and not non-dual Vedanta in that case. Brahman’s power that projects maya always as part of that projects the divinely-revealed Sruti scripture, and this scripture has the effect of removing misconceptions about the Self, leaving us with the self-evident awareness of God that we already had, but now purified of the misconceptions and misunderstandings that formerly obscured it from being correctly known. When Jay Dyer repeats this line he is just being a brain dead retard who hasnt bother to read what he is talking about, its not a real argument and it can be answers in one minute by anyone who has read Shankara.

[Anonymous No.21743880]

>>21743874
Excellent post

[Anonymous No.21743946]

>>21743874
> not dualism
> not trinitarian theology
> not monism
Makes no sense. Either you’re describing monism or Christianity. There is no other option.

[Anonymous No.21744133]

>>21743946
Not every philosophy and religious tradition fits neatly into one of those three categories, to think they do is a mistaken assumption which you should abandon. That is a rationalist error. That is why it doesn’t make sense, because your assumptions are fundamentally wrong.

> There is no other option.
There are no valid grounds for this assertion whatsoever

[Anonymous No.21744280]

Buddha is in hell and so are his followers.
Brahma is in hell and so are his followers.
Embrace the sweetness of Jesus now or suffer unspeakable tortures in hell for all eternity.

[Anonymous No.21744468]

>>21743805
"Rational truth" is an oxymoron.

[Anonymous No.21744491]

>>21743946
>either monism or trinitarianism
Please explain this in detail, why exactly? I am particularly intetested in why trinitarianism is the only other option from a logical/rational viewpoint which I assume you are discussing, why not dyadism tetradism, pentadism etc.?

[Anonymous No.21744492]

>>21744280
> Embrace the sweetness of Jesus now or suffer unspeakable tortures in hell for all eternity.
cringe schizobabble

[Anonymous No.21744621]

>>21744133
They do actually. To say they don’t is a nonsense cope. I suppose you don’t believe in numbers or something…

[Anonymous No.21744636]

>>21743946
I assume this anon is the same as >>21744280
and that he's just here to shitpost LARP after a good, honest thread with sincere discussion.

[Anonymous No.21744637]

>>21744491
Dyadism is dualism. So non-dual implies by definition not a dyad. You also can’t have a group of 4+ because every number necessarily reduces to groups or 2s and 3s and is in reality just dyads and triads i.e. a quadrad would in reality be a dyad of dyads, etc. That leaves a monad and a triad as your only options. As for why the absolute can be neither one nor two and only one and three, that’s a different argument.

[Anonymous No.21744642]

>>21744636
You’re wrong.

[Anonymous No.21744646]

>>21744491
>>21744637
And to be clear, every worldview has to fit into one of these. To say it fits into none is to ascribe a non-value of distinction to it, which is to say there is no world and that world render the whole argument moot and nonsensical. So you can’t say it doesn’t fit into one of these.

[Anonymous No.21744666]

>>21743819
This is double speak. In one breath you admit that one he says is indeed not truth or knowledge. In the next breath you say it is. Which is it? I say that what he says can’t possibly be said to be true or knowledge because he has no way to account for how it is true or how it’s known and neither does anyone else. To draw some distinction and pretend none of this applies because he’s not claiming to have rational knowledge is an arbitrary and meaningless distinction that doesn’t matter at all. A claim is true and known, or it isn’t.
Your second paragraph illustrates that you just blatantly ignored the point of the argument since I pointing out that he contains no rational nor intuitive knowledge, not that he contains no rational knowledge.

I asked you if you if Guenon’s claims could be said to be true or knowledge. You said no. Thus, the book is worthless.

[Anonymous No.21744682]

>>21744468
And this really illustrates the problem with people who just blindly follow Traditionalist preaching. You have such a strong distaste for rationalism that you see it everywhere like a boogeyman, let it become a distaste for the rational, and deny rationality entirely. In the end, that’s what Traditionalists want you to do. They want you to deny logic, deny rationalist accept assertions of a drug addict that he arrived at intuitively and not rationally, never consider that you’ve deluded yourself, and ignore rationality entirely because the intuitive knowledge being asserted is at odds with it. But real truth wouldn’t ask you to deny rationality. It can be apprehended intuitively AND rationally.

[Anonymous No.21744718]

>>21744646
>Non-answer just opinion
Explain how and why

[Anonymous No.21744737]

>>21744718
That’s not an opinion. If you didn’t understand something just say what you didn’t understand and I’ll explain it.

[Anonymous No.21744740]

>bb-buh perennialism is arbitrary nonsense...
>In virtue of his miraculous power, transcending human intelligence, Residing in the centre of the smallest atom, The Tathagata preaches the doctrine of perfect serenity.
Avataṃsaka Sûtra

>Soul is not in the universe, on the contrary, the universe is in Soul.
Plotinus

>Om mani padme hum: ‘Om, the jewel in the lotus, Hum!’
Tibetan Mantra

>Once transport ourselves in spirit, outside of this universe of dimensions and localizations, and there will be no more question of trying to ‘situate’ the Principle.
Chuang-tse (ch. XXII)

>Those who bridle their mind which travels far, moves about alone, is without a body, and hides in the chamber of the heart, will be free from the bonds of Mâra, the tempter.
Dhammapada, III. 37

>The Most High is absolutely without measure, as we know, And yet a human heart can enclose Him entirely!
Angelus Silesius

>‘My earth and My heaven contain Me not, but the heart of My faithful servant containeth Me.’
Muhammad

>That God, the All-worker, the Great Self (mahâtman),
Ever seated in the heart of creatures,
Is framed by the heart, by the thought, by the mind—
They who know That, become immortal.
Śvetâśvatara Upanishad, IV. 17

>Near and far addeth not nor subtracteth there, for where God govemeth without medium the law of nature hath no relevance.
Dante (Paradiso, xxx. 121)

>What is here is there, what is not here is nowhere.
Vishwasâra Tantra

>He, truly, indeed, is the Self (Âtmâ) within the heart, very subtile, kindled like fire, assuming all forms. This whole world is his food. On Him creatures here are woven.
Maitri Upanishad, VII. 7

>His throne is in heaven who teaches from within the heart.
St Augustine

>Bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God.
Hermes

>This, verily, is the person (puruṣa) dwelling in all cities (puriśaya).
Bṛihad-Âraṇyaka Upanishad, II. v. 18

>I am seated in the hearts of all.
Bhagavad-Gîtâ, XV. 15

>God...who dwells nowhere but in Himself, while compenetrating all things, in being neither near nor far from anything....
Boehme

>This center which is here, but which we know is really everywhere, is Wakan-Tanka.
Black Elk

>Nor is being such that there may ever be more than what is in one part and less in another, since the whole is inviolate.
Parmenides

>Thus, open out the Tao, and it envelops all space: and yet how small it is, not enough to fill the hand!
Huai Nan Tzû

[Anonymous No.21744744]

>>21744740
>And then our Lord opened my spiritual eye and shewed me my soul in midst of my heart. I saw the Soul so large as it were an endless world, and as it were a blissful kingdom. And by the conditions that I saw therein I understood that it is a worshipful City. In the midst of that City sitteth our Lord.
Julian of Norwich

>I am blind and do not see the things of this world; but when the light comes from Above, it enlightens my Heart and I can see, for the Eye of my Heart (Chante Ishta) sees everything; and through this vision I can help my people. The heart is a sanctuary at the Center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit (Wakantanka) dwells, and this is the Eye. This is the Eye of Wakantanka by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him. If the heart is not pure, Wakantanka cannot be seen, and if you should die in this ignorance, your soul shall not return immediately to Wakantanka, but it must be purified by wandering about in the world. In order to know the Centre of the Heart in which is the Mind of Wakantanka, you must be pure and good, and live in the manner that Wakantanka has taught us. The man who is thus pure contains the Universe within the Pocket of his Heart (Chante Ognaka).
Black Elk

>In this abode of Brahma (Brahma-pura) there is a small lotus, a place in which is a small cavity (dahara) occupied by Ether (Akâsha); we must seek That which is in this place, and we shall know It.
Chândogya Upanishad, VIII. i. 1

>If thou conceivest a small minute circle, as small as a grain of mustard seed, yet the Heart of God is wholly and perfectly therein: and if thou art born in God, then there is in thyself (in the circle of thy life) the whole Heart of God undivided.
Boehme

>The heart of the gnostic possesses such an amplitude that Abû Yazîd al-Bisṭâmî said of it: if the divine Throne with all that surrounds it were to be found a hundred million times in a corner of the heart of the gnostic, he would not feel it; and Junayd said in the same sense: if the ephemeral and the eternal are joined, there remains no further trace of the former; now, how could the heart which contains the eternal feel the existence of the ephemeral?
Ibn ‘Arabî

>‘Heart’ is merely another name for the Supreme Spirit, because He is in all hearts.
Sri Ramana Maharshi

>The Dwelling of the Tathagata is the great compassionate heart within all living beings.
Saddharma-puṇḍarîka

>What a wonderful lotus it is that blooms at the heart of the wheel; who are its comprehensors?
There in the midst thunders the self-supported lion-throne, there the Great Person shines resplendent.
Kabîr

>He whose heart rejoices in the knowledge that he is really one with God loses his own individuality and becomes free. Be eternally satisfied with thy Beloved, and so shalt thou dwell in Him as the rose within the calyx.
‘Aṭṭâr

[Anonymous No.21744747]

>>21744744
>The entire man is in his being the three worlds.
Boehme

>Lo! thou art of a tremendous nature.
Qur’ân, LXVIII. 4

>I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Revelation, I. 18

>His are the keys of the heavens and the earth.
Qur’ân, XLII. 12

>Man, this major world in miniature, is a unified abridgement of all that exists, and the crowning of divine works.
St Gregory Palamas

>Our Stone is called a little world, because it contains within itself the active and the passive, the motor and the thing moved, the fixed and the volatile, the mature and the crude—which, being homogeneous, help and perfect each other.
Philalethes

>I was Manu and the sun (Sûrya).
Rig-Veda, IV. xxvi. 1

>Man is a composite of all things spiritual.
Ezra ben Solomon

>(Man is) an image which comprises everything.
Zohar, III. 139. b

>The universe is composed of a part that is material and a part that is incorporeal; and inasmuch as its body is made with soul in it, the universe is a living creature.
Hermes

>To him who knows the Truth comes the realisation:—
‘I am Brahman; I have no suffering and no joy; I neither long for anything, nor do I renounce anything; I am blue, I am yellow, I am white; I am in grass, leaves, trees and flowers; I am the hills, the·streams, dales and peaks; I am the essence of all. When all imagination and feelings are gone, then I am the transcendental Reality. The immutable, the nameless and the formless, am I: I am the Witness-Self; I am the basis of all experience; I am the light that makes experience possible.
‘I am the man who has fallen in love with a young woman and who compares her beauty to the moon; the consciousness which illumines the joy in the heart of a lover, am I. I am the taste in the dates. Gain and loss are the same to me. As the string bearing the beads remains hidden, so I am the Reality which is hidden in all beings.
‘I worship the Atman which is the essence of living beings, the sweetness in the moon, and the splendour in the sun.’
Yoga Vasishtha

>The sun illumines earth and sky, but the saint, kindling the fire of divine wisdom, lights up the heart. He is the true friend of man. He is the Atman. He is my very Self.
Srimad Bhagavatam, XI. xix
>>21744737
Exactly I don't understand it, which is why I asked you to explain how twice and why only monism and trinitarianism is possible and true

[Anonymous No.21744762]

>>21744747
No, you asked me to explain why non-dualism must necessarily be monism or trinitarian theology (triadism), which I did by explaining that it can’t be 2, can’t be 4 or more, and can’t be 0, so it must be 1 and/or 3.

[Anonymous No.21744808]

>>21744637
Somehow my eye skipped over your answer anon, my bad
>As for why the absolute can be neither one nor two and only one and three, that’s a different argument.
This is what I want you to explain
>So non-dual implies by definition not a dyad. You also can’t have a group of 4+ because every number necessarily reduces to groups or 2s and 3s and is in reality just dyads and triads i.e. a quadrad would in reality be a dyad of dyads, etc. That leaves a monad and a triad as your only options.
Would you agree with this post I wrote last year?
>>/lit/thread/20525885#p20526276
I also went through a schizo phase of numerical mysticism
But I have sort of forgotten it at this point, I am at a stage where I don't view even three as a necessity because it implies multiplicity, the unmanifest is only relatively personified by the totality of threeness, the main point is the unconditioned and the conditioned are not symmetrical at all, threeness and ,multiplicity is contingent and an illusion, a liberating mirage

God doesn't have to appear as three, and say not two, or as some sort of relational triad, the threeness is already present just in the triad of the knower/known/knowing triad, the personification of the triad is not at all a logical necessity

[Anonymous No.21744818]

>>21744762
> which I did by explaining that it can’t be 2, can’t be 4 or more, and can’t be 0, so it must be 1 and/or 3.
It’s not trinitarian, nor is it monism for reasons already explained, nor is it dualism since it doesnt propound a plurality of existences or real entities, if none of the terms you are using apply to it, then the only significance of this is that the labels and groups you are coming up with are non-exhaustive and that its an error for you to assume they are exhaustive.

[Anonymous No.21744826]

>>21737180
theres literally a book on it

[Anonymous No.21744833]

>>21744818
No, it is trinitarian or monism. There are no valid reasons why it’s not. A non-dual worldview implies monism most often and what Guenon described is absolute one-ness, or in other words, monism. They are exhaustive too by the way.

[Anonymous No.21744852]

>>21744808
I just skimmed your post and I without really getting into the nuance of it, I’d say yeah, I agree but you’re going way deeper with it than I am. This is not really numerical mysticism. It’s just a description of worldviews. You see the world as made up of a singular whole, of two parts, of three parts, or nothing. This brings us to why it can’t be one or two. It can’t be one because in oneness distinctions are erased, real knowledge is impossible, and so I can’t really say anything about that worldview with any degree of confidence. All of reality would necessarily be illusory including my realizing it’s illusory and anything else I realize about it. It can’t be two because let’s say the two were creator and created. The creator would necessarily be inaccessible to created. So how could we know anything about creator? We couldn’t. Most Muslims actually unknowingly accept dualism when they accept that there’s Allah and everything else, and Allah is not like everything else and everything else is not like Allah. That leaves you with just 3 and the coherent expression of 3 is the Christian trinity. So to say you accept non-duality is to err into monism or ape the Christian trinity. There’s a book called the One and the Many that might interest you.

[Anonymous No.21744853]

>>21744808
At the point when I made that post, I did not truly understand the principle, that the body is in the spirit and not the reverse, so manifestation, or otherwise,
God is neither the knower/known/knowing and neither the past/present/future, or the beginning/middle/end, the completion or actualization of a potential, is definitely according to causal threeness, that's the problem,
To say God is one and three, is to say God is unity and multiplicity, the multiplicity in question is the result of name and form, and in truth an illusion, falsity, the spirit is not bound by causality, existence is, threeness only applies as an explanation to the conditioned relative domain of existence, and binds one to temporal sequence,

That which is changeless, cannot be three, that which pertains to the illusory matrix, is precisely what must be not entertained, and ultimately negated, threeness is relative, there is nothing absolute about three.

[Anonymous No.21744860]

>>21744833
>No, it is trinitarian or monism. There are no valid reasons why it’s not.
The valid reason is that those labels are not exhaustive and you never proved they were in the first place, this is a rationalist fantasy of your own imagination and nothing more
>A non-dual worldview implies monism most often and what Guenon described is absolute one-ness, or in other words, monism. They are exhaustive too by the way.
If you are using the term this loosely then it's so broad as to be practically meaningless

[Anonymous No.21744861]

>>21744808
It’s worth point out that the Christian trinity is at once 1, 2, and 3. 1 God, 2 distinctions in God and creation, 3 divine persons that render knowledge of God possible. See >>21743008

[Anonymous No.21744864]

>>21744852
>real knowledge is impossible, and so I can’t really say anything about that worldview with any degree of confidence. All of reality would necessarily be illusory including my realizing it’s illusory and anything else I realize about it.
this was refuted already here >>21743874

[Anonymous No.21744870]

>>21744860
It is exhaustive. You can’t have a worldview made of zero parts or else you wouldn’t have a world and to say it’s made of parts of 4 or more is in reality just to say that it’s made or groups of 1, 2, or 3.

[Anonymous No.21744878]

>>21744864
To say it recognizes a distinction between reality and falsehood really says nothing. The worldview ascribed one of these 3 views. There are no exceptions. To say it’s not monism is to say that it is dualism or trinitariamism, which is obviously a problem for the argument.

[Anonymous No.21744879]

>>21744870
And knowledge grounded in the self has already been dealt with in this thread. The self can’t justify knowledge.

[Anonymous No.21744883]

>>21744879
Why would the the Self(Knowledge) have to justify itself?

[Anonymous No.21744885]

>>21744878
>To say it recognizes a distinction between reality and falsehood really says nothing.
False
>The worldview ascribed one of these 3 views. There are no exceptions.
here you are committing the Petito principi logical fallacy

>>21744879
>And knowledge grounded in the self has already been dealt with in this thread. The self can’t justify knowledge.
Incorrect, the self is self-evident knowledge. We are self-evident to ourselves and this is a kind of knowledge

[Anonymous No.21744895]

>>21744879
>>21744885
I mean, the self can act as a foundation that can serve to justify knowledge of something else in a discussion of epistemological matters, but in itself it is self-evident to itself (ie us) and thus requires no justification and to speak of doing so reveals that one is a fool and hasn't the slightest iota of understanding about the nature of knowledge and self

[Anonymous No.21744925]

>>21744883
First of all, the self is not knowledge. Second, it’s because you’re making a whole host of assumptions by default anyway and also because you trap yourself in circularity.

[Anonymous No.21744931]

>>21744885
How do you know it’s self-evident? The sort of knowledge one arrived at by stating that I’m experience the phenomena of being a self is not the same is the sort of knowledge about how you can know anything.

[Anonymous No.21744933]

>>21744925
>First of all, the self is not knowledge.
Incorrect, It is a kind of knowledge, because it involves the disclosure of something (the presence of self), and to say that something is disclosed but without knowledge being involved is a contradiction.

[Anonymous No.21744938]

>>21744852
>I agree but you’re going way deeper with it than I am,
I don't see how you agree, anyway
in the chandogya upanishad it says the world is threefold, constituted by three elements, many people talk about the three worlds, all traditions do in fact, many traditions talk about man as a tripartite microcosm, but once you recognize that causality is simply "name and form" and that the Self of all beings, is unborn, this threefold structure is precisely a quality of the superimposition,
How is it to ape the christian trinity, a relative personification of the threefold structure, a natural triad, like that of perception, what christian will say correlate the triad of known/knowledge/knowing, none, or the the past/present/future, the christian trinity in a a way is aping the three fates, the three gunas, and all other natural triads, anyway what has to be understood, is that God conceived of as Creator is a relative notion, it can be done away with the simple logic of non-origination, which questions causality to begin with, the threefold personification of the christian trinity is simply a devotional support, and can be substituted, for whatever other tripartite personification one conceives of, or none whatsoever, because God is not Creator, he is no dependent upon causal threefoldness. About your book recommendation, this is the one Jay dyer always recommends and I have read that it is rubbish and an oversimplification of the matter, but now I know that you are coming from the side of Jay dyer and so on, and are here aping some sort of apologetical game, so I will not take you too seriously

[Anonymous No.21744942]

>>21744895
If I say the self can justify knowledge, how do I know it can justify knowledge? The self can’t justify itself and properly call that knowledge. You’re only re-stating what you know without giving an account for how you know. That’s why you actually can’t justify knowledge with the self.

[Anonymous No.21744944]

>>21744931
>How do you know it’s self-evident?
Because I'm not an NPC, also because the alternative involves an infinite regress and is thus logically untenable

>The sort of knowledge one arrived at by stating that I’m experience the phenomena of being a self is not the same is the sort of knowledge about how you can know anything.
That's not even proper English, nor is that an argument that challenges anyone's position

[Anonymous No.21744945]

>>21744938
This is a schizo post. If you’re going to schizo post, I’m not going to engage with you.

[Anonymous No.21744946]

>>21744944
“I’m not an NPC” is not a justification for knowledge.

The argument is perfectly clear. I can stage that something seems to be the case, or that I know something, but I can’t actually justify how I know that something is the case or how I know something, or how I know anything at all if all I have to justify it is the self. You’d be stuck in a self referencing cycle of the self and would thus be unjustified.

[Anonymous No.21744950]

>>21744933
I didn’t say knowledge isn’t involved. You used lazy language that didn’t make sense and you know you did.

[Anonymous No.21744952]

>>21744942
>If I say the self can justify knowledge, how do I know it can justify knowledge?
You can't speak of knowing anything at all without necessarily relating that knowledge to being known by.......you

>The self can’t justify itself and properly call that knowledge.
I didn't say the self justifies itself, I said it's self-evident which precludes any reason for needing justification

>You’re only re-stating what you know without giving an account for how you know.
What I know about metaphysics comes from infallible supernaturally revealed scriptures (Sruti) so im above all this kiddo, Im not bound by your pedestrian rationalist concerns

[Anonymous No.21744961]

>>21744946
>The argument is perfectly clear. I can stage that something seems to be the case, or that I know something, but I can’t actually justify how I know that something is the case or how I know something
So? that doesnt refute anyone's philosophy or religion or metaphysical position. It is a fact that knowledge of the self is self-evident though, you can accept this or cope about it.

>or how I know anything at all if all I have to justify it is the self.
I never said that knowing the self automatically proves whatever kind of knowledge you want, only that in certain situations the self could be conceived as a support for a certain type of epistemic claim

[Anonymous No.21744964]

>>21744942
By justify do you mean empirically verify? Secondly, what do you mean by call? Let's put it this way, without the subject there is no object, before anything can be known, there is the self, which not diffused in objects rests in itself, as an experiment, I suggest you quiet your senses, stop thinking, and try to turn inwards, and question what is there that remains, what is witnessing, and ask yourself whether or not that "whatness" constitutes something justified, something real, or something which can be called Knowledge.

[Anonymous No.21744966]

>>21744952
So? To say “I know” is not the same as saying “I know because I know” which is what you’re implying whether you realize that or not. That knowledge relates to me doesn’t mean I know because it relates to me.

I’m challenging whether knowledge itself can really be self-evident. To say it’s self-evident is really just begging the question. How do you know it’s self-evident? Is that self-evident too? Surely, you see the issue here…

[Anonymous No.21744969]

>>21744950
>I didn’t say knowledge isn’t involved.
You said "the self isn't knowledge" and then when confronted with how that's silly nonsense you had an intuition of your error and backed down
>You used lazy language that didn’t make sense and you know you did.
No, I didn't

[Anonymous No.21744970]

>>21744961
That’s not a fact. Do you know what a fact is? It kind of sounds like you don’t even know what self-evident means. To say some thing is self-evident is not to say that escapes the need for justification, even if it is true. If you want me to concede that some claims are self-evident, sure I agree. But that’s not what we’re talking about.

[Anonymous No.21744975]

>>21744969
Saying "the self isn't knowledge" is to refute an equivalence, not to deny that knowledge can be involved in the self. He's right, you're using lazy language which confuses the entire discourse at best.

[Anonymous No.21744976]

>>21744969
That’s not an error. Self =\= knowledge.

[Anonymous No.21744988]

>>21744966
>To say it’s self-evident is really just begging the question.
No, it's not, because this is shown by how the alternative involves an untenable regress, because we have this logical argument it's by definition not "begging the question", you should stop misusing that phrase
>How do you know it’s self-evident?
Because without this you end up in an endless regress that makes knowledge impossible (you have failed to address this and further responses without doing so are now just coping at this point)
>Is that self-evident too?
Yes
>Surely, you see the issue here…
No, you have failed to identify the exact issue

[Anonymous No.21744992]

>>21744964
No, I don’t mean empirically verify. To be clear, nobody is denying that the self is witnessing. But to say the self experiences some phenomena and witnesses something does not give an account for how knowledge is possible. If you were to try to claim that the self can give an account for how knowledge is possible you’d fail because you’d necessarily concede all of these values that are just presupposed and not actually justified by the self.

[Anonymous No.21744998]

>>21744988
> I know that this is self evident
> how do you know that you can trust something that is self evident
> it’s self evident
This is called begging the question.

Your infinite regress scenario is made up. It’s a straw man argument that no one actually presents.

[Anonymous No.21745000]

>>21744970
>That’s not a fact.
It is a fact, looks like you picked the path of coping instead of accepting the truth
>It kind of sounds like you don’t even know what self-evident means.
I do, it's roughly synonymous with 'obvious'
>To say some thing is self-evident is not to say that escapes the need for justification, even if it is true.
You can find arbitrary ideological reasons to investigate justifications for anything whatsoever, the point of saying that is that in our normal course of behavior we don't seek to justify what is obvious before accepting it

[Anonymous No.21745007]

>>21742070
>because none of these moments or the factors making them up are considered to be metaphysically independent and unconditioned in Buddhism
that's beyond the point, the fact is that i can say that they are "because it's their nature" i can say anything and just justify it with this "it's its nature" argument, that's becaus eit's not am amswer but a metaphysical cop out
and yes, each moment it's self sufficient, that's the whole point, and any critique you cna have about that, just remember: "it's their nature to be that way", so neither you or shankara can refute it

[Anonymous No.21745009]

>>21745000
So you think that because the truthfulness of some statement is obvious then it evades the necessity for justification? That’s actually not the case. To say it’s obvious is only to say that the justification of the statement need not be said, not that there is no justification nor need there be some justification.

[Anonymous No.21745011]

>>21744976
I said the self can be considered a kind of knowledge, ie self-knowledge, the most fundamental of all knowledge and which all other kinds of knowledge presupposes as its bass. This is not to say that the Self is like other kinds of knowledge, however in that context he was arguing against saying self-knowledge is a kind of knowledge so I was right to object

[Anonymous No.21745015]

>>21745011
Your language indicated that the “self” and “knowledge” were interchangeable terms.

[Anonymous No.21745020]

>>21744998
>Your infinite regress scenario is made up. It’s a straw man argument that no one actually presents.
Wrong, Shankara (pbuh) says it verbatim when refuting hylics retards such as yourself:

>For the Self is never at any time (completely) unknown to anyone, neither is it susceptible either to acceptance or rejection. Indeed, if the Self were entirely unknown, there could not be a motive for any of our actions (and hence we would not commit them, which is absurd). Nor can we conceive of them as being performed for the sake of the body or any other non-conscious being. And neither happiness nor misery exist for their own sakes, while all practical activity leads ultimately to experience for a Self.

>Therefore, just as (on account of its immediate proximity) no special means of knowledge are required in order to take note of one’s own body, so none are required in order to take note of the Self, which is the inmost principle of all. Hence it stands proved that, for those who can practise discrimination, establishment in knowledge of the Self is already accomplished fact. Even those (the Purva Mimamsakas of Kumarila’s school) who try to maintain that knowledge is formless and not itself immediately known, have to admit (according to their own theory) that knowledge, just like happiness and other attributes of the mind, is evident to immediate inspection, for awareness of an object can only occur through knowledge.

>Further, it is (logically) impossible to seek for knowledge of knowledge. If knowledge were initially unknown, like the object of knowledge, then we should have to seek knowledge of knowledge, just as we seek knowledge of an object. In the case of an object of knowledge, like a pot, the knower seeks to encompass the object with his knowledge. If this were also the case with knowledge, the knower would seek to encompass every cognition with another cognition. But (this would lead to infinite regress and) we do not find that this is so. Knowledge, therefore, is immediately evident, as also is the knower. Hence no effort has to be made to gain knowledge of the Self. It is to put an end to false identification of the Self with the not-self that efforts have to be made. The path of knowledge, therefore, is something perfectly within our grasp.

- Shankara (pbuh)

[Anonymous No.21745026]

>>21744998
>This is called begging the question.
Again misuing the tern

When someone uses logical inferences to provide an independent argument for how one possibility is logically untenable because of a regress, that's by definition not "begging the question".

If someone considers this a good argument and is unaware of any counter-argument that rescues the argument being attacked from refutation, to the point that they consider the above argument "obvious", that's not "begging the question" either, you are just grasping at straws

[Anonymous No.21745034]

>>21740814
>It’s Brahman nature to project it
why he does it?
>there is no external/prior reason
then you're just dodging the question by saying "we can't understand god"
so you have no answer but blind dogmatism, thus those questions indeed btfo non-dualism

[Anonymous No.21745035]

>>21745026
I’m not misusing the term but I don’t really care about that. It’s circular logic either way. To say that some thing is self evident and when challenged to explain how you know it’s self evident to say you know because it’s self evident is just re-stating the very claim you’re being challenged to justify.

[Anonymous No.21745046]

>>21744998
>It’s a straw man argument that no one actually presents.
If you mean to say that "you don't actually deny that knowledge is self-evident" then that's not true. You argue against various conclusions being self-evident and/or not subject to reasonable doubts whenever its perceived as threatening your mindless Jay Dyer goyslop sophisms, both in the context of trusting the validity of wider metaphysical systems and also in the context of the attainment of a theoretical supra-rational gnosis granting spiritual perfection/liberation

[Anonymous No.21745050]

>>21745035
>It’s circular logic either way. To say that some thing is self evident and when challenged to explain how you know it’s self evident to say you know because it’s self evident is just re-stating the very claim you’re being challenged to justify.
It's not circular because an independent logical inference is being invoked against the feasibility of your alternative position (ie the regress) its sad that I have to repeat this again

[Anonymous No.21745055]

>>21744883
>Why would the the Self(Knowledge) have to justify itself?
the self must justify itself because nothing in experience present itself as a self, but as particular instances of "self related"moments, but each one of those self related moments are different, never creating a real substantial self, always creating different particular "relative-selfs"
>why knowledge have to justify itself?
it's a whole branch of philosophy called empistemology, a form of knowledge that can justify it claims it's no knowledge at all

[Anonymous No.21745056]

>>21745034
>>there is no external/prior reason
>then you're just dodging the question
It's not by definition not dodging the question to say the reason is internal to Brahman instead of external, please think before posting next time

[Anonymous No.21745061]

>>21745056
*It's by definition not dodging the question

[Anonymous No.21745070]

>>21745050
That’s a straw man if the alternative position. Your go to rhetorical device seems to just be to re-state things, re-state the straw man of my position as if it were true, re-state the claim as if it were a justification of how you know the claim is true. All you’re doing is re-stating, re-stating, re-stating. You’ve not actually responded to any of the challenges. To call that an independent logical inference is ridiculous.

This is why these schools of thought are retarded. Just like your argument, they’re just an infinite cycle of re-stating assertions and evading lines questioning with some strawmen thrown in for good measure.

[Anonymous No.21745076]

>>21745070
Rhetorical tactic*

[Anonymous No.21745080]

>>21744885
>the self is self-evident knowledge
this is a petitio principi fallacy, teh self is not self-evident
>We are self-evident to ourselves and this is a kind of knowledge
not really, we're never actually aware of our own existence in an abstract way, our existence ir always relative to the world in which we live, we can only be aware of ourself in the context of our lives "i'm at the shop" "i'm reading a book" "i'm happy" etc, we never can just say"i" without a proper existential context, we can "think" we can do that, but that's only thanks to our own proces of abstraction, what Kant called the Trascendnetal Principle of Aperception, we think we can just think of the self, that we can think of "i" but in reality what we're doinf is reflecting and thinking:"i'm thinking about "i" the pure notion of ourselves withou proper contextualisation is a philosophical impossibility, and just thinking is self evident without providing proof is indeed a petitio principii fallacy, which make sense because that's how that illusion of the self is created
or as Fichte said:an absolute self always need an absolute other

[Anonymous No.21745083]

>>21745007
>that's beyond the point, the fact is that i can say that they are "because it's their nature" i can say anything and just justify it with this "it's its nature" argument,
You can say that but it won't be serious philosophy because it has actual philosophical implications and if you say this without accepting the implications then you are just doing bad and illogical philosophy. Advaitins aren't saying literally "it just is that way" but rather "Brahman has an unconditioned, independent and self-contained nature that means nothing about Brahman whatsoever relies on anything else, with the result that Brahmans manifesting of his power is simply Brahman expressing its own nature". The Buddhist is unable to say this to rescue the paradoxes and faults of momentariness-theory from Shankara's refutation of it. Momentary moments, flow of moments etc, they cant also have this nature which Brahman has without ceasing to be shunyata, and to even speak about them as arising on something else as a chain of moments while being self-established is logically contradictory so it wouldnt work even if you don't care about maintaining shunyata

[Anonymous No.21745097]

>>21745070
>That’s a straw man if the alternative position.
No it's not, you have denied previously denied that self-knowledge is self-evident and you have also seemed to argue against a supra-rational intuition of God being self-evident as well

[Anonymous No.21745107]

>>21745097
This is another straw man of my actual argument. Please don’t waste my time if that’s what you’re going to do. All of my arguments are laid out in this thread already.

[Anonymous No.21745112]

>>21745080
>this is a petitio principi fallacy, teh self is not self-evident
All our actions and behavior actually presuppose it you NPC
>not really, we're never actually aware of our own existence in an abstract way
Wrong, because in any kind of knowledge a knower is self-evident even at the pre-conceptual level
>our existence ir always relative to the world in which we live
No way to prove this
>we can only be aware of ourself in the context of our lives "i'm at the shop" "i'm reading a book" "i'm happy" etc
Incorrect, these are transient distinctions that come and go within the span of constant partless awareness that is without beginning or end
>we never can just say"i" without a proper existential context
Awareness is its own "I" to itself always independent of whatever the mind is thinking about it

[Anonymous No.21745127]

>>21745107
>Please don’t waste my time if that’s what you’re going to do. All of my arguments are laid out in this thread already.
You just repeated "how do you know that's right?" like a broken record, and then when it was explained to you that within the context of different systems there are ways to arrive at a spiritual understanding that remove any further reasons to doubt it, you didn't have any further arguments except to complain about supra-rational intuitions of God not conforming to rationalistic explanations, which doesnt actually refute the premise you are arguing against

[Anonymous No.21745133]

This thread is way better than UFC.

[Anonymous No.21745139]

>>21743805
>That still leaves the problem that what Guenon does describe about God and reality can’t possibly true.
Why not?

[Anonymous No.21745154]

>>21745127
You didn’t actually prove the removal of any further reasons to doubt. You just asserted that you did, over and over and over. Go back and read your own replies. You simply re-stated “it’s self evident” “how do I know” “well, it’s self evident”.

[Anonymous No.21745157]

>>21745139
Read through the thread. It’s been explained a few times.

[Anonymous No.21745162]

>>21745009
>So you think that because the truthfulness of some statement is obvious then it evades the necessity for justification?
No, but an unnecessary justification is a philosophical pseudoproblem, if spiritual perfection and the permanent end of all one's psychological ills and doubts can be granted by a supra-rational spiritual intuition of Brahman/Self, the question of the justification of that is a philosophical pseudoproblem because when it's actually reached by someone they have no doubts and so they don't seek to fully justify it since it's already obvious and accepted by them, since justifying it is not a problem you need to concern yourself with (its reached through spiritual intuition under a gurus direction) either before or after reaching it, the justification for it is accordingly a pseudoproblem and not a real problem, so you kvetching about it like this doesnt refute Vedanta etc in the slightest

[Anonymous No.21745166]

>>21745157
>It’s been explained a few times.
Your two objections have been:

1) Muh justification
this is a pseudoproblem, see >>21745162

2) if non-dualism is true, you cant know nuffin!
already refuted here >>21743874

[Anonymous No.21745174]

Perennialist Chads win again.
Damn kikesisters we tried out best but it looks like the only thing we can beat is refugee meat.

[Anonymous No.21745202]

>>21745174
If you think traditionalist arguments won here you’re unironically brain dead.

[Anonymous No.21745208]

>>21745202
t. hylic

[Anonymous No.21745214]

>>21745202
>I tried so hard and got so far

[Anonymous No.21745225]

>>21745112
>All our actions and behavior actually presuppose it you NPC
not really, that's only in the advaita paradigm, a lot of philosophical systems can explain actions and behaviour without the need of a self
>Wrong, because in any kind of knowledge a knower is self-evident even at the pre-conceptual level
again a petitio principii fallacy, a lot of systems can explain knowledge without the need of a tarscendental self
>No way to prove this
it empirically self evident, existence is the background of our experiences, if there's "something else" then the burden of proof is on you, i don't need to prove that we live on this world
>Incorrect, these are transient distinctions that come and go within the span of constant partless awareness that is without beginning or end
again a petitio principii fallacy, you can't pos ethis as self evident, since i can just say that the transient distinction is generated as an abstraction of particular moments of experience
>Awareness is its own "I" to itself always independent of whatever the mind is thinking about it
again, a petitio principii fallacy, you need to prove that this "i" is something more than the abstractionof particular moments of experience