tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post5261390008222492236..comments2024-03-28T21:32:26.550+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Divine revelation includes 'built in' knowledge (innate, initially unconscious)Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-52275174583572289912022-01-26T22:35:58.249+00:002022-01-26T22:35:58.249+00:00Comment from easty: "the ancients believed th...Comment from easty: "the ancients believed those natural assumptions were approved by a heavenly host of gods and angels on their way down to us. but christianity eventually turned into a rigid monotheism [...](thanks martin luther) and that's what led to the modern rejection of all metaphysics."Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-42846665493549278632022-01-22T17:12:56.317+00:002022-01-22T17:12:56.317+00:00Dr Charlton, thanks for the expansion of your thou...Dr Charlton, thanks for the expansion of your thought. And the fascinating audio link. A lot to think on. I noted with interest that the speaker referenced John the Baptist as a proponent of "changing your thought". And for whatever it is worth, I am a firm believer in chakras. <br /><br />I used the word "willfully" clumsily. I think, perhaps not, I will have to think about it.<br /> In my mind, I tried merely to convey the kind of volition it takes to look at what is around us, at what is happening. I suppose this could be approached from a spiritual practice angle, but I meant something much simpler like not listening to commentators and news readers and talking to actual people. <br /><br />I consider myself an intuitive thinker and my position is that the ground or material on which intuition works is the physical perceptions. And that aligning oneself with God is (at least partly and I think necessarily even if only partly) using the perceptions. An abstraction created from something other than the perceptions can only accidentally correspond to the Hierarchy of Being. <br /><br />I think we differ on *reality*. I mean merely that level of the Hierarchy of Being in which we exist. What Anselm would call *in re* as opposed to the lower *in conceptu* or the higher *Angelic*. I did not mean to equate perceiving reality with a grasp of the entire Hierarchy or God his-own-self. <br /><br />The perception of beings *in re* is the necessary pre-condition for any successful abstraction upward to higher states. Skarphedinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-62886109264919292042022-01-22T16:02:30.665+00:002022-01-22T16:02:30.665+00:00@Sk "What 3) requires is a willful subordinat...@Sk "What 3) requires is a willful subordination of our abstracting faculty to our perceptual faculties. Christians must return to using their eyes as the primary tool of understanding....."<br /><br />I have heard this idea before - for example in this talk (ostensibly about Crop Circles) by Stanley Messenger (who was a Steiner expert, and largely argued from Steiner principles):<br /><br />https://www.wessexresearchgroup.org/audio-lecture-archive-page-3-wessex-research-group.html<br /><br />The relevant section starts about minus 26 minutes - where he talks about 'willed perceptions.<br /><br />But I myself regard this as the wrong idea. Willed perceptions is the kind of 'training of the mind' I posted about yesterday - https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2022/01/training-mind-double-edged-effect-at.html<br /><br />It can happen, but the results are not good because the will is corrupted. <br /><br />More importantly, it is not what we are *meant* to do - because it is an attempt to return towards the primal state of what Barfield calls Original Participation - in which all our values come spontaneously, naturally, as a simple combination of the inbuilt revelations operating fully and unconsciously - with ordinary perception. <br /><br />I believe that what is instead required is to change our thinking, not perceiving. By what I have variously termed intuition, direct-knowing or heart-thinking. This cannot be done by willing or wanting merely - but only indirectly in the primary context of being aligned with divine will; and this can only be done (I think) intermittently and for relatively short periods. <br /><br />In other words, I don't think we will know the truth via looking at reality - we will Not 'see' reality with our eyes. Instead we can come to know reality directly, by a sense of uncaused conviction which is not attained via any perception or communication, but is a direct understanding of reality. And then we are free to choose or reject this knowledge. <br /><br />This is my understanding of what Men *should* have been doing since the late 1700s when people like Novalis, Blake and Coleridge were among the first to become aware, and write about it. <br /> <br /><br />Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-91958614424652464392022-01-22T14:39:25.020+00:002022-01-22T14:39:25.020+00:00As usual, lots to think about in your post, Dr Cha...As usual, lots to think about in your post, Dr Charlton. <br /><br />I think you've precisely described the *post-modern* (properly defined) situation in which Man finds himself. Rome has fallen: what now? <br /><br />"Never again can we live in spontaneous unconscious accord with innate divine revelations; never again can we regard the natural as necessary. <br /><br />Instead, the path out from our current demonic system of imposed anti-divine assumptions is for us consciously to choose to base our lives, and our religion, on the inbuilt assumptions of divine revelation."<br /><br />I think the job facing Christians is to 1) accept that each of us (to greater and lesser degree) is enchanted by the false *hyper-reality* presented by The Principalities and 2) to reject that *hyper-reality* and 3) to return to actual reality. <br /><br />I suppose I differ from you in thinking that 3) is possible. But I do, as naive as that may sound. What 3) requires is a willful subordination of our abstracting faculty to our perceptual faculties. Christians must return to using their eyes as the primary tool of understanding. <br /><br />The abstracting faculty has become the primary way Men are corrupted. We have been seduced into accepting orthogonal abstractions as reality. Orthogonal abstractions (hyper-realities) such as the bird-demic and racism and equity.<br /><br />It seems to me that the recourse of Christians is to use our eyes again and look right at reality. To take our eyes off the orthogonal abstractions of the internet and *entertainment* and academia and refocus them on real people and things. This is how I conceive of the choice you reference. After that I admit we will all be at sixes and sevens but God works through good people even where they conflict because it is only when Men look at Being via beings that what you call the innate assumptions begin to work (inevitably). It will also render one a Holy Fool and a Simpleton to mass society...<br /><br />That said, I agree there is no going back other than in the sense of a similar approach to reality.Skarphedinnoreply@blogger.com