Linked HERE a paper from the_ UofH_ analyzing these two sects of spirituality.
I’m writing this for a few different reasons. One is the notion that reason emerged with the enlightenment in the west via an evolution of consciousness–it’s a progressive stage theory within spiritual studies. I just don’t find it compelling. The Samkhya schools are proof that reason and logic were fully developed in antiquity and these were some of the finest thinkers to ever grace the earth. The best I can give the western enlightenment is it correctly wanted to move culture away from theocracy to secularism–but, even that failed as there were rotten spiritual apples who controlled the flow of culture and who practiced duplicity on the societal level.
The Enlightenment was many things but one of the primary drivers was what motivated the moneylenders who wanted to destroy Christendom and its injunctions against usury. Needless to say, they were ruthlessly successful and we are all now pimps and whores for their economic machinations. Don’t dismiss, also, that central banking and the way it creates currency is the largest theft in the known universe–no small petty crime like Wall St.
The second reason is the moneylenders and their alphabet agents within the spiritual domain have waged a steady war and blackwashed the idea of duality–they make reality out to be a swear word! Samkhya is thoroughly dualistic on two fronts: the distinction between cosmic mind and matter and the distinction and separation between the human spirit and transcendent spirit–they are of the same essence but not of the same order. Linked HERE a paper on _Dvaita Vedanta _which also argues these same points.
The fact is that the material universe is real and the best of modern science testifies to this! And anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that animals that shit, piss, and can reflect on existential questions are not God in any definitive sense in the way non-duality teaches. Now, as a Christian Gnostic, I don’t share the same views as Samkyha or Dvaita, but I can tell when something is right and I can tell when something is dreadfully off. As a Christian Gnostic, I don’t share the Vedas view on Immanence as this place is a very real deceptive prison and our spirit is deceitfully trapped here by wicked archons.
I guess as an aside I should touch on the Gunas: sattvic, rajas, and tamas, and pneuma, psychic, and hyle of the gnostics. I tend to think they are real, fair, and accurate, but I have a real problem with reincarnation as an excuse to order any society. It is sensible though to think that purity (sattva) is a condition needed for gnosis or jnana and is a doorway or path needed to access higher dimensions of spirit.
2022:
A quote from another fantastic paper linked HERE...By Paul Schweizer
Consciousness, on the other hand, is held to belong to a different ontological category altogether. Consciousness is placed in the realm of puruṣa, the absolute, unconditioned self, which in some respects is comparable to Kant’s noumenal self. Puruṣa is described as pure and undifferentiated awareness, and it is held to be immutable and inactive, to be formless and without parts or limiting characteristics. Puruṣa is the metaphysical principle underlying the individual person, and closely corresponds to the atman of the Vedānta school.3 Puruṣa is held to exist in complete independence of the material realm, and so the basic dualism in the Sāṃkhya-Yoga metaphysics is between puruṣa and prakṛti, between consciousness and matter.
So mind as we know it in the west is a type of substate within the material universe or what I call the demiurgic construct. This is distinct from GOD WRIT LARGE…Purusa or god consciousness– which is not the human mind. So, in a sense, someone like Daniel Dennett is correct: mind is an epiphenomenon of brains/material processes. But mind can be illuminated by something entirely different from it: SPIRIT. But this is an_ eternal mystery. _However, science, within the hard-problem of consciousness, will make some traction in the field of panpsychism–this is a guess on my part. So there is a flawed Telos in the demiurgic construct. The how is still unknown. I still like the idea of Involution and the Implicate Order although I’m not a betting man.
I guess what I’m getting at here is that the early gnostics intuited the demiurgic material universe and said the god that instantiated it was blind (unconscious for this paper)…I think Samkhya gets fairly close to that, too. Although I’d understand if it’s not a perfect fit. Christian Gnosticism is for the most part anticosmicism and I’d argue it’s not true Gnosis if it isn’t; I also believe the original Rishi’s understood this, but the Babylonian bankers have had their way with India for a very long time.
Oh, yes…this also goes to my theory that Kastrup is wrong to call ’the thing in itself’ mind. From this view mind is thoroughly instantiated as a part of the physical/phenomenal universe. But I concede I make a lousy Advaitan.
The paper addresses IDEALISM (all is mind) at the end. I address my thoughts on it HERE in a review of Sam Harris and Rupert Spira. Nothing has changed since I wrote it. For me the non duality presented by Spira takes me to a cul- de-sac and I explain why in the blog. Briefly, there is no obvious lived difference between the atheistic Harris and the ‘Spira as God’ non dual view. It could just be me but I want a little more from Purusa if it truly does exist. Have you ever come across a non dual philosopher that substantially critiques capitalism and predatory usury? I haven’t…
I’ve also said it renders Christ as nothing but a Socratic philosopher, could be…but, again…I’d hope for more from the god/s. On the last point: Christian apologists now commit a category error and conflate the ‘god of the philosophers’ with the god/s of revealed religion! They do this, of course, because they are unable to demonstrate openly and publicly any supernatural manifestations–miracles, etc..yet insist this good supernatural god/s exists –by arguing from a dishonest avenue. And, of course, they thoroughly embrace usury today and in the usual flip these Christians say that usury is ‘saving the world’…tikkun, oh vey…
I guess what concerns me the most are the techno-fcuks/hacks that want to usher in a singularity and concretize the demiurgic mind within a human/A.I. interface. From the spirit side of the fence I can’t see how this will be allowed. At least it’s my hope that it will not be tolerated by the Pleroma.
Another full moon in the woods:
