This is true if "man was made in the image of God'. But then if the image of the human is the image of God, then in a symmetrical sense the image of God is the image of the human. And if the world is the expression of God, and God is the image of the human, the world is also human-shaped. In Heidegger's quite different sense the world is human-shaped, because without the human there is no world (animals are "world-poor" according to Heidegger). At the very least we might feel justified in saying that the world appears in its most comprehensive expression in human experience.

Yes agreed. This reminds me of a thought technique which I use on ocassion. I don't know if there is a word for it. But, simply, I take two positions, such as Humans are God shaped and God is human shaped, which can be in opposition and bang them together until they become one, a kind of synthesis. Simply by adding the thought that there can be nothing which is not God shaped, because everything that there is was made by God, using bits of God, there is nothing else of which to make anything. So God and humans are one and the same, it is only something about our predicament which results in us not knowing this and knowing God.

Spinoza's view of God is like the Buddhist vision, non-teleological; in both there is no ultimate overarching purpose; no culmination in an "end of days" or "end of history". I think what you suggest about the human imagination is on the right track. Even Spinoza, for all his rationalism, allows that the human imagination can "feign" in order to gain a richer understanding. Fiction has a profoundly important place in human life. There can be no rigid demarcation between human faculties.

Yes, I can see a non-teleological perspective, with teleological realities on the smaller scale within the cosmos. But then one is confronted with the idea that scale becomes meaningless when talking of the cosmos. So God can then be on the small scale, local, in a much bigger scale, so we are back where we started, the end of days is only a local event.

Yes I agree about fiction. An example I use is regarding belief in magic, if everyone believes in it, it will happen. I have heard opinions that in ancient India, when it was fully accepted and believed that magic was real. That it did happen and was a part of life. Indeed, I suspect it does still happen, in places where the tradition is still alive. I think I have been a witness to such things myself.

Do your ears not hear what your mouth has spoken? You say you don't believe in God but then straight away add that you can't imagine what a world without God looks like. (Hint - think communist Russia.)

Ha ha.

Actually I was thinking of the cosmogenesis when there is no God. Is it turtles all the way down? It appears to be entirely without foundation. If there is no God, where is meaning, is everything meaningless, purposeless?

At least when I think of a cosmogenesis with God it is all explained and makes perfect sense.

Yes and people differ in opinion on that. The end result? Theism for those who think god is useful and atheism for those who think otherwise.

This is over simplistic. I think a God is useful, but I don't believe in God. Although perhaps I think God is useful as opposed to the alternative, no God. For I don't know what a world with no God looks like.

Perhaps humans are God shaped, so a religious person is realising this as Wayfarer suggests.

Also if God exists there is a purpose and goal towards which people are moving(as opposed to Nietzsche's vision of the death of God). If God doesn't exist that same purpose and goal is going to be constructive anyway and will result in a better life for people (and the biosphere) in the future. Although people will cease to exist upon death (perhaps), they will have had a constructive enjoyable experience before they die.

I wonder - would there be anyone here who doesn't believe in God, yet want one to exist? Or vice versa?

I am that person, I don't believe in God, but if it were in my gift I would have a God.

More precisely, enable people to be aware when they are committing sin. Cut out the middle man. Remember God (via the Christ) will forgive you when you sin, so why worry. By not committing sin people were guaranteeing an entry into heaven, otherwise they can't be certain what will happen when they arrive at the pearly gates.

I can't answer your pole because I regard my whimsical want to be irrelevant. Also God is far to undefined and limited by any pronouncement. Also I am of the opinion that the omni's are a nonsense dreamed up by medieval theologians.

The reason why my whimsical want is irrelevant is that I am in a position of ignorance, ignorance of the form a universe with, or a universe without a God would take, etc etc. Also any choice someone makes in this pole is likely to on irrelevant, or naive premises.

Regarding philosophy, the existence of God is perhaps given to much weight due to the historical link between philosophy and theology. This is not because there is in some way less likelihood that a God exists than is suggested in philosophy, but rather in the accepted and engrained conceptual framework of a Christian God.

Personally I follow a mystical approach to philosophy, in which the existence of God is irrelevant. Although I suppose I would say on balance that I do regard that there is a spiritual reality with beings equating to gods present. But even here this is irrelevant for me as I am concerned with practice, service and living a fulling life in the world.

Its a crisis if the philosopher seeks to look beyond the conceptual schemas. Short of asking an advanced alien, or a god what it's like, how are we to know?

But is this really the case? Let's consider a couple of examples. The ancient Hebrew cosmological schema was the following:

Jewish-Universe2.jpg

This reminds me of the Truman Show.

In the Truman Show the world is artificial and is provided and directed by a hidden controller. Also the purpose behind this world is in the mind of that controller. In this scenario Harry Truman has no idea of the reality of his world, or the purposes behind its existence. However near the end of the film he finds the door in the sky, exits the set, meets his controller and is given the purpose of his world and its reality is explained to him.

This idea has also been developed by other thinkers and philosophers throughout history, here is another example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flammarion.jpg

Perhaps there is some truth in this, pertinent to your question, a truth that we can step out of our conceptual world by meeting our controller(maker), being told of the purposes and reality of our world. But until we are told, we are blind to it.

It would seem then that conceptual schemas are fluid, and subject to revision or replacement after checking the world.

Perhaps they would change rapidly if a UFO arrived.

TGW would point out that we don't even need to bring science into. Human beings learn conceptual schemas as they grow up, depending on one's culture and education, and change them as needed. We also often don't agree on what concepts are the right ones. You can see this from endless disagreements in philosophy, politics, religion, etc which tend to have their roots in fundamentally different ideas.

Perhaps we can be taught to see the clues to the reality in the world we perceive. Surely the clues are there, were we to posses the eyes to see them.

Yes, very much so. I have found when I'm overly fatigued, or hungover, I start seeng faces in everything, especially textured surfaces, or something with some kind of random patterning.

Nice work.

No, that's how I found it in the internet. It doesn't look edited to me.

Oddly enough, in the arts, my view has always been that modernism did the opposite to your claim; rather, it problematized 'truth'. If you take 'The waste land', Eliot presented a diverse range of voices with no clear overarching 'truth' at all (although later he became a Christian). If you take the novel, Woolf or Joyce or Dos Passos presented us with a plurality of subjective voices as against the Victorian era novel where you always knew what the author would think. If you take painting and sculpture, the Impressionists, Picasso and the Cubists inaugurated devastating assaults on old ways of truth-telling. Take 'The rites of Spring' and Schoenberg...where is the sanctuary of truth in all this?

I have an interest in postmodernism in the arts, also I see a parallel process going on to that which is going on in philosophy.

I would say that postmodernism in the arts has had to find/establish/invent its own foundations/feet. This is a reaction to the crisis of identity brought about by the breaking of the foundational mould by modernism. It was left realing for a number of decades with a nebulous expression of personal reactions to this crisis of identity. In the visual arts there was an acute degeneration into shite, quite literally with Chris Offili's Turner Prize winning piece. Other fields in the arts went in various and interesting directions.

The result of all this is that art is now becoming creatively diverse with individual artists following their own personal path of creativity, free of subjective restraints. There doesn't appear to be a new grand movement coalescing at the moment. But there are many interesting developments, or movements on the small scale.

As to the value(read truth) in art these days, there are no rules anymore. A favourite quote of mine is what Grayson Perry said about the value of art. He called it the skip test. Put your work in a skip and see how long it is before someone walks off with it. If it doesn't leave the skip, it has no value and may not be art.

The regret was that I had missed an opportunity due to my own failings. I agree with what you say about the foolishness of youth and don't blame my younger self for my behaviour back then. This regret was linked to a deeper feeling and experience of social inadequacy throughout my life.
Anyway, I mentioned this example of an experience to illustrate an experience of an emotional breaking or opening of the heart. Which seemed to me to be deeper than what I would expect in the life of a being in my position. Or in my humility I would never have expected, or imagined that such a thing would happen to to me, a person who lives a peaceful emotionally stable and humble life. The recollection of events 23 years ago was I presume the event in my past which my consciousness found appropriate for the experience to become anchored in my lived experience and was not important in the experience, but rather a way my mind found to understood what was happening.

It is this which started me thinking about a universal, or deeper love than what we normally experience in the world.

Do you agree, in particular, with the distinction I made between one respect in which love is "in experience", and another respect in which love is "outside experience" in the bodies of the animals who love?

I agree that all animals love and that it is known and felt in experience, perhaps in humans, the kind of love is more self aware than in animals. Also that love can be in respect of external facts, things.

I understand what you are saying about instances of love as facts, but this is not something which I view as important. For me love is a personal experience of sentiment, something which through repetition becomes an established predisposition, or bond within the person.

My view is that it has a "real existence", in the bodies of those sentient animals and in the experience of those sentient animals.

Yes, but I am asking if there is a greater love of which we and our experiences of love are pale reflections? This was spurred by a personal experience I had in which I sensed/intuited such a thing.

I suppose on my view, love is as concrete as physical matter. Or, a particular instance of love is as concrete as a particular instance of physical matter. But I see no reason to suppose that love is "fundamental", in the sense that it is a basic feature of anything said to exist. Tables and chairs, sunbeams and raindrops.

But I do have reason to suppose this, however my reasons fall within the realms of theology.
Namely that our existence is hosted by beings for whom love is the meat and potatoes of life and creation.

A story like the one you've told about a demiurge: We can imagine it so, and we can imagine it not so. We can imagine countless alternatives like this one, each as consistent with the balance of appearances as any of the others; each as unsupported by the balance of appearances as any of the others. On what grounds would we choose among all those possibilities?

Yes, I agree we have no grounds from which to establish such knowledge of reality. (Well there is revelation etc, but putting that to one side for now). For me establishing the facts of such knowledge is not important, or relevant to me. However I do contemplate intuited forms of which such knowledge may take as an intellectual exercise.

Let me illustrate by analogy, many people say why do depictions of aliens resemble so closely the anatomy of humans. I don't because I see how this might be the case through the processes of evolution and that any alien which travels here from elsewhere in the universe would likely exhibit certain anatomical forms, forms mirroring the forms in human anatomy which enables them to develop the technologies which might one day enable them to travel to other planets. Namely, they would most likely have limbs, so as to be able to move in their environment, hands, or means of grasping and manipulating material. Good eyes, most likely bi-focal, for seeing and intricately manipulating the materials. Mouths for accessing sufficient energy and minerals to sustain a large body. An intelligent brain etc, etc. Ther are many examples of animals on our planet who are highly developed, but who will not develop such technologies because their anatomy is inadequate, dolphins for example.

Well by analogy divine beings hosting us, or of which we are a part are likely to have certain forms of anatomy.

This particular story emphasizes a connection between love and sentience. That's an interesting dimension of our discussion: Can we conceive of love without sentience?

I agree, I consider that there are other forms of love without sentience, but the kind of love we can conceive of is through experience reliant on sentience. This is in line with an idea I have about divinity being universally sentient.

Are the love and sentience of the demiurge, or of the demiurge's "realm of mind", similar to the love and sentience of our animal experience, or how are they different? How do we know the answer to such questions? On what grounds would we support an answer?

I would intuit it by analogy, I observe that the love in an animal is similar to that I experience personally, but less selfaware, integrated, sentient. So presume that the love in a demiurge is more selfaware, integrated and sentient than my own.
For me there is a reality by which I intuit knowledge in, from and through interaction with my environment. This knowledge is refined and sculpted through a creative process guided by intuition, rather like an artist. Whilst on the spiritual path this is my daily bread and along with some other practices enables me to walk forward.

Who was talking about Blavatsky?

Also what does western philosophy say about love again ( Remember you spoke with authority to begin with)?
Apart from a handful of logical extrapolations from a place of ignorance, western philosophy can only comment on observations about human or worldly love. Areas well covered already by biology and anthropology.

What about universal love, the subject of the Op?

Alice Bailey's work is an example of a western interpretation of Hinduism, as such it derives from the eastern philosophical tradition and is inline with my perspective on philosophy.

I don't see how the western philosophical tradition is addressing universal love other than in arriving at some logical positions from the starting point of an emergent(by evolution) intellect blind to the reality it finds itself in. As such western philosophy can't address any reality there may be in existence, because it is a-priori in ignorance.

It is blind to any spiritual reality other than what it has inherited (primarily) from Christianity. You can't address spirituality and therefore any kind of universal love that there might be without deriving from a spiritual, or religious source. So what is your source?

You are talking as though you have some insight on love, what is your source material?

Again your comments regarding my experience are a monologue exposing aspects of your own personality. I am not surprised to read that your are in fact perfect and I am a fool. Feel free to monologue some more.

The two passages were comments made to different posters, so amount to different conversations. My comment to Wayfarer was an observation about humanity and philosophy. My comment to you was about a way of describing a personal experience in a way that may convey a difficult to describe circumstance, to a poster who does appear to have some knowledge of these issues. I only mentioned Alice Bailey as a reference where a definition of the part of my experience, or being that I was referring to can be found. If you don't like the school of thought referenced, just read my meaning as of the soul, rather than the intellect. It's a simple but important distinction. Your summary of love, came across as a description of the intellectual processes involved in self realisation. I was pointing out with an example that it entails other levels of being.

Regarding my "weird shit", you seem to have gone off on some tangent and projected lots of your own ideas onto it. There doesn't seem to be much point in trying to explain it further, other than to point out that your interpretation of the situation is wildly off the mark. That I am not in love with the person mentioned, and there isn't anything tragic going on. Have you not in your youth been a "fool", or regretted the one that got away? Come on be honest now?

Actually the probability is 50/50, or 1in 2. Because we have a binary choice here.

I would dispute your assertion that the doors of spirituality are closing irreversibly. Madness indeed :)

Nice account, I appreciate your reference to the pitfalls of sexual, or erotic love and why you brought it up.
I suppose what I am alluding to is a realisation of a Platonic form of good, as you put it. Although in a more physical way (actually on the plane of the soul*) than simply the mental, or intellectual realisation.

The form that my weird shit took was a crisis of the heart brought about by a brief and fleeting recollection of a brief meeting with someone in India 23 years ago and the crushing realisation that this person was a soul mate, a candidate for true love, as you describe. And the pain of the acceptance that I failed to go with this person, but rather turn away for petty egotistical reasons and subsequently regret it ever since.

*i will reference the egoic plane(Alice Bailey) to be more precise.

The problem is, that is just what the materialist account obscures. It is found in traditional wisdom schools and other sources such as those you mention. It is real, but a 'first-person science' - the sacred science, it has been called - is required to realise it. The point is, there are ways to tap into that resource, like digging for gold, or diving for pearls. That's what spiritual paths are about.
an hour ago

Yes, we are left with personal anecdotal testimony. However I do think that philosophy can go further than this, given some preliminary assumptions. Such as the assumption that there is a spiritual reality and that the form it takes can in some way be accurately intuited by people. This then gives us a large amount of material to sift through and come up with some philosophical conclusions. Such assumptions are I suspect problematic to many philosophers, particularly those who haven't looked into it.

Also I do think that there are many people who are philosophically minded, but who are not academically trained who do look into such ideas, or don't rule them out. In fact they probably outnumber academic philosophers. Perhaps an underswell of innate spirituality within humanity, including an innate wisdom and knowing, a knowing which may be more of a knowing than those academics appear to have.

Yes I was thinking this, that all spiritual and religious thought and aspiration can fall within an evolutionary explanation. However, I would not agree that it is born out of fear, but rather curiosity, in the beginning. The curiosity in the minds of the earliest people who found they had a mind and could think, think about themselves and their predicament and the earliest philosophical questions, that these people thought about.

Perhaps the very existence of such beings, realising this capacity and questioning is evidence of something other than the gross physical reality we find around us.

Perhaps, so what is all this religious and spiritual love? What purpose does it have, in terms of survival of the species?

I do know the answer to this question, but I am suggesting it is not required, perhaps it is a byproduct.

I see the examples you give as indicative of a spiritual reality in which the person awakens from ordinary emotional love and realises a more, as you say, transpersonal love and other kinds of spiritual and transcendent love.
By analogy a person in the world is like a plant developing to the point where it develops a bud. When the bud flowers, the flower, awakens, into a rarefied transcendent realm(also inhabited by butterflies, who have undergone metamorphosis).This is perhaps alluded to in the symbolism of the thousand petalled lotus of the crown chakra in Hinduism and Bhuddism.

This is all very well, but can we identify something obviously transcendent, universal in any of this? Something which isn't accounted for in the materialist evolutionary account.

For me this is evident in a sentiment, or experience of, a universal love which transcends the planet. Specifically the planet, because in evolutionary terms the processes are blind to any reality beyond this planet. I describe this as the fixed cross of the heavens(Alice Bailey), which I have been contemplating for some time.

I was not questioning whether we experience love, but rather asking if from your perspective, it is solely within experience? I agree with the rest of your account about this and the ways people can become confused.

Regarding universal love, the way I am treating it in this conversation is in the sense of the principle, the reality and the experience of love and realities of which love might be a derivative, having some real and fundamental presence in the processes of existence itself, or the existence we find ourselves in. For example our existence might be hosted by a demiurge through a process of creative love and life for that demiurge might be all within the realm of mind where intellectual compassion and love is as concrete as physical matter is for us.

I love the King James Bible.
Yes I agree with your observation of a "withered and partial account" and the extent to which who we are is shaped by our experience and the presence of love in our lives. What I am trying to identify is a distinct universal, or transcendent, love in all of this. As opposed to evolved feelings and behaviour.

I bring this up because about 2 weeks ago, while travelling in New Zealand, I had an experience of something which I interpreted as a realisation of universal love and I seek to account for it philosophically.

Quite, the capacity for love in humans does seem to exceed that required for survival of the species though.

What about ones love for existence, the world, is this perhaps misplaced emotion(beyond where it is of benefit in survival of the self, or social group)?

I didn't suggest it is about erotic love. I am refering to the mating/pairing between partners and the bonding process between family members etc, as the basis for the experience of love in humans(and other animals).


Yes universal love might be in some way "Leibniz's teleological dimension of the interconnectedness of all things", etc, or transcendent.

Yes capacity for love, of caring for all, is interesting. I still don't see how this might necessarily be transcendent.

Yes, in true, or selfless love. This is not specific enough though because both forms can conceivably be due to some physical phenomena. Even if an unfortunate predicament of the accidental evolution of intellect.

You mad old fool, you ;)

Yes, I know what you mean. This comes to the heart of the issue I am considering. I am looking for something about loves which reaches, or expresses something, beyond this animal function.

So are you suggesting that all the romanticism about love in the minds of humanity, is a happy accident of physical evolution?

Agreed.

I see how you consider love to be universal, in the expression of experience in beings who experience. I consider the divine, because the divine might be the basis of existence, this would necessarily include the basis of love.

Yes, I am considering the distinction between the perspective of "evolutionism", as opposed to something "immaterial", or transcendent.

I wish to identify something in the experience of love which indicates the later(transcendent), rather than the former(evolutionism).

Regarding spiritual experience, I have experienced something akin to what Bucke testifies to and have contemplated the role of love in spirituality. I am beginning to realise the the presence of wisdom in "love wisdom"(Alice Bailey), which I failed to grasp initially. I perceive this in the inevitable wisdom of the benevolence to be found in love. An expression of the gift of creativity and fundamental in the phenomena of extended existence.

So love is something in experience? and we as experiencers may project it (psychologically) onto the world, imagining it as something, on occasion, external to experience?

But what about a universal love, is this similarly a projection?

Alternative tyrants.

As I watched the towers fall, I recalled the final scene in Fight Club, in which the twin towers fall. Perhaps a movie we should watch again, now.

Yes it is confusing, but I do think Willow understands the idea and to a large extent agrees. But uses a less conventional way of speaking.