the point of the metaphor was that you can see things that are in within the circle cast by your lamp.

I like your analogy, it reminds me of the idea that the Christ is the light of the world. Wherein the light is not the light we see with our eyes, or known to science, but a spiritual light, which by its illumination animates life and consciousness, is the very quick of these things.

James O Brian provided an interesting insight into the government's (in UK) strategy for the coronavirus crisis. Essentially it is to create confusion so that when things go wrong it will become difficult to pin the blame on them. For example we have had a 14 day quarantine policy for anyone coming into the country for the last few weeks. But there is no guidance and no one knows what to do, so people just come in and go about their business, they are not stopped, or checked. If though they then die, or infect other people, it is their fault, because they didn't quarantine. The government is blameless.

Likewise on super Saturday, the day after tomorrow, if lots of people go to pubs, get drunk and spread the virus, it will be their fault, because they didn't use their common sense. Again the government is blameless.

A poll for the Robert Peston show yesterday has shown that twice as many people think the breakdown in the lockdown is the fault of the people, as those who blame the government.

The in depth analysis is that since the early eighties the governance and direction of the country has been leaning towards less and less social support, national provision and more and more privatisation, individual responsibility in all areas of life. The idea being that the government increasingly absolves itself of responsibility, which is increasingly left to the individual and the market. So now that we have a health crisis, the responsibility is laid at the door of the individual (in the land of the free), the government only coveys the advice of the experts, but is itself blameless. Free to take the credit for any successes and blame any failures on others.

The upshot of this is that the privelidged classes are freed to do whatever they want, while their puppet government is untouchable. This naturally includes a free reign for more untrammelled capitalism and exploitation, with the increases in the social and wealth divide.

Yes, so the racists (who are right wing) in the UK want to get rid of the EU and EU nationals, because they don't want immigrants stealing our jobs and using the NHS, especially socialist ones. But it's alright to invite in 3.5 million immigrants to save them from communism, whether they steal our jobs and use the NHS or not.

My first thought is that the working class supporters of the government and Brexit, aren't rightwing. They are left of centre and won't want to replace those pesky Europeans with pesky Hong Kong folk.

The silver lining is that Johnson has offered UK citizenship to the majority of Hong Kong's population, approx 3.5 million. I wonder if he told all his racist supporters, the Brexit party might now rear its ugly head again.

Just the other day he tried to reassure his supporters that he isn't a Communist, with mass public support and impending tax rises.

Super Saturday, our Independence Day, 4th July, the British economy gets back to normal. Johnson is urging us all to go out and spend, get drunk and be merry.

While Leicester locked down again the other day. Bradford, Barnsley, Doncaster and other towns are showing increases and may follow next.

Meanwhile big surges in many states in the US, I heard a report of over 50,000 newly identified cases in the last 24hrs.

I'd love to hear what the brightest minds have to say about our greatest problems and the one greatest problem that is behind them all; overpopulation.

I to am concerned about the problems of mankind. But from a slightly different angle than the usual. My concern is how humanity will secure its long term future. For many thousands of years there has been the rise and fall of civilisations. Each time the survivors have to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and start all over again. Apart from it all being an incredible waste of time (and suffering) before the next great natural cataclysm (such as meteor strike, or a great flood). Each time it risks the possibility of humanity becoming extinct.

Surely it is about time we grew up and looked to secure our long term future and this will inevitably require managing the population, the ecosystem and human relations. We really do need to get on with it now as we are over the hill in terms of our growth curve (the equivalent of the bacterial growth curve). We are risking the pollution of the planet, the destruction of the ecosystem, or the extinction of humanity.

This will require the populous to throw out the incompetent leaders, learn to cooperate with other countries and focus on sustainability, rather than personal greed and power games.

Fingers crossed.

And where does that leave you? — tim wood

Acknowledging my and humanity's lack of knowledge of our origins and the origins of the world we find ourselves in.

What even does it mean to have a "serious philosophical inquiry" into matters that "humanity and therefore human philosophical knowledge" are not equipped to answer?

They are not privy to the information required, or means to get it through rational thought, so as to be in a position to answer the questions of our origins. This would presumably be established through a serious philosophical enquiry. Is there a philosophical enquiry which has reached a different conclusion? I would be interested to know

I am not saying that philosophy is not equipped with the intellect (not able to) to comprehend answers of our origins, but rather they do not have the necessary information. This is because the evidence of (the required information pertaining to) our origins is not available to us*.

All you have is speculation and speculative reason. When you figure out how to think something you cannot think, please let us all know.

As I have just pointed out, I am not saying we cannot think it, but rather, that we are in the position of being in ignorance. Someone might discover some secret to our origins enabling them to determine our origins. But while we remain in ignorance we cannot think the thoughts that such a person would employ.

And you mock flying hippos, but the point is that whatever baseless speculation produces, the hippos - and any and every other baseless thing else - are equally justified.

I am not speculating, I am merely acknowledging our ignorance.

The only thing that favours your story is you.

I have not provided a story, I have referred to revelation and that revelation provides an alternative means to acquire knowledge. Personally I don't attach a narrative, or story to it.

And that's not proof in any sense of the existence of your God.

I don't profess to know the answer to the EOG, it is largely irrelevant to me. I am commenting on statements affirming an answer to the question and that rational thought can't answer it. I do accept though that it may be possible to answer it through personal revelation and that those who claim to have done this are not to be dismissed as weak willed, or to have fallen into a psychological trap of thinking a concept of a God somehow justifies a belief in that God, or conviction in its existence.

Not all, but many.

Quite, religious doctrine and revelation have often been bent to the purposes of manipulative people and groups. Religion has a lot to answer for.

"Atheist apologetics!?" Is that your phrase for knowledge and the limits of it?

I qualified that statement limiting it to the attempts by some to label believers as mistaken, weak willed (requiring a religious crutch), or subject to a psychological trait, or conditioning of believing a set of concepts as proving something to be true in the external world.

This is apologetics in the sense that it seeks to dismiss religious experience, or revelation as a figment of the mind and invalid. If that is what someone is doing, I would label it atheist apologetics.

You can believe what you like.

I prefer to limit belief to the tangible things in my everyday life.

So if you want to believe nonsense is knowledge, there's no help for you unless you want it.

I am rigorous in my reasoning. Are you able to provide knowledge of our origins?

But such is an obscenity.

I think you misunderstand me.

* I do not want to diminish the achievements and discoveries of science, I am claiming that such discoveries have not provided any evidence, or information as to our origins and may never do.

I can understand that, she was a controversial figure in her day.

Heavy animal farm shit.

This and this alone, to my way of thinking, empowers the idea of God, that it be limited only by combined imagination and reason - and not by mere material/physical being.

Well yes in the realms of human discourse, religion, politics and human intellectual knowledge. But none of that answers the question, the EOG, unless God can be reduced to, or subject to, the human understanding of God. That God can only exist in the minds of those who profess to believe in him, a psychological crutch. Or others explain that God is an artefact of human knowledge and thinking. Just like the perfect circle exists as a concept, but no truly perfect circle can exist, only the concept can.

Such philosophical arguments don't address the issue, they are nothing more than atheist apologetics and any serious philosophical enquiry into EOG must firstly conclude that humanity and therefore human philosophical knowledge is not equipped to answer the question. We are hopelessly ignorant of our origins, the origin of the world we find ourselves in (science has only managed to describe some things about what we are equipped to detect), any purposes, or meaning in regard of our origin, or our presence in such a world. We have no idea whether we are here due to a happenstance burp in the cosmic soup, as a kindergarten for baby Gods, or a kind of livestock being fattened up for slaughter.

We are uniquely blind not only to these truths, but in the modern world to our very blindness. We are the blind denying our lack of sight, insisting that our minds eye sees what we are. Philosophy ought to lay this bare, that what we know about existence, about the existence of God amounts to a hill of beans.

Some people who reach this kind of conclusion, then turn to other means of determining the answers to this issue and throughout the ages have reported on and written down what they have discovered. This is what has become known as the perennial wisdom.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy

Now as I pointed out before philosophers can poke holes in it with their logic and rhetoric, but philosophy is toothless in this regard and we're back to hitting each other over the head with inflatable hippopotami and unicorns.

Any Blavatsky Mews
— Punshhh

Nope, that’s not a familiar name to me.

Helena Blavatsky was the driving force behind the creation of Theosophy.

I would have to know what you mean by God, and probably also try to make clear what I understand by the term.

This is where we hit our first problem, I can't define God because I am not up to the task, but I still might know God, or have met God. So the question could now become;
Can you say that I am not this thing that I know, or have witnessed (through revelation), but for the life of me can't explain, but I know it and it is with me always.

No. I am confident you are not a supernatural being able to defy natural law.

This would not be a requirement. I might have a spark of the spirit of God in me, which is God just like a drop of water is the same as the ocean it came from. Or to put it another way, I don't have to be able to create a world at will to be God. I might be unaware that I am God and unable to use my powers. Or I might be God in a way in which I bare witness, but don't act, for example.

Yes, in that whatever idea of God anyone has, just is God, and they're God, greater or lesser, in having it. Whether any individual idea is any good another topic.

But this confines the God in me to human discourse. The God in me might be life itself and the act of creation is the progression of life. But this might be totally unknown to humanity in the domain of intellectual knowledge, although it could well be known in some other unarticulated living way.

I operate on the rule that we cannot know what we cannot know, and that which is unknowable, cannot be known. That leaves what we can know, and what can be known. Which is to say that the road to any knowledge and understanding of God starts, travels, and ends in reason - if it is to be intelligible. And if it is to be intelligible, must be reasonable.

This is probably at the root of the difference between us. I have pursued an interest in other ways of knowing things about nature. Precisely because I had come up against the limitations of human reason and the scope and results of the human intellect in addressing the issue (this is not to diminish the discoveries of science). Regarding intelligibility there have been aural and linguistic traditions developed specifically to render religious experiences intelligible. Such traditions are concerned with conveying understanding of such experience and accepting the reality of it into the self. This does not include rational analysis of what is being conveyed. Or the requirement for the intellect to know the experience through the power of the intellect to rationally understand what is to be conveyed.

In this, the idea of God - which I say is all there ever is, and that far from inconsequential - is akin to number.

I'm not sure of what you are saying here, but it sounds reasonable to me.

What wasn't to like??

Well you didn't address the issue at hand (EOG).

Can you say that I am not God?

Any Blavatsky Mews?

My bad if I misread or misunderstood. I suspect that even he, @3017amen, does not know where he is coming from. If it's beliefs, that's not on the card. "Debate EOG," is what he said. Assuming the E is for "existence," that's the matter up for discussion.

I joined the thread because there seemed to be a bunch of atheists bashing a theist. I just thought I would point out that philosophy can't do that, it is toothless in this regard. Theology might be able to help, but that is treated as archaic (vestigial) around here. So what are we left with atheists and theists bashing each other over the head with blow up unicorns and hippopotami.

Part of the problem here I think is that 3017amen is arguing from a position of revelation and other folks are bashing this position because it doesn't seem to be defended, justified, or sustained with rational argument. But to even entertain this requirement debases revelation to some kind of psychological crutch for the weak willed. While from the point of view of the person who has had the revelation, any attempt to fulfil this requirement also debases it and exposes them to criticism of their intellectual interpretation of their revelation. Which is inevitable because such an interpretation is limited and inadequate being a human narrative and subject to human frailty.

So back to the bashing with inflatable weapons.

I would be interested to have a look at existence, in reference to God, though. To see if any agreement can be found.

My starting point would be as I have mentioned;

Am I God?
and
Could I exist without God?

Both reasonable questions when one defines God as the initiator of I (me)

May I infer from your post that you know what 3017amen is talking about? Or were you being ironic? If you know, go for it.

I was being ironic, but also serious. I don't know what 3017amen has in mind here specifically, but I know where he's coming from. You see some people who have a belief in G/god and some Mystics contemplate the conception of the personal self as God indeed some have a revelation of this as a reality in some way, or that some essential part of themselves as universal and transcendent. So some of the most penetrating questions arising out of a discussion of the existence of God are very simple, for example; am I God?; could I exist if there were no God?

Maybe it is to simple

What you will repeatedly run up against on these forums is that philosophy is ill equipped to tackle the issue of G/god, because it is a discussion of what humans can say about the world they find themselves in from their position of ignorance. Philosophy of religion will inevitably become a historical record and analysis of religion. Theology might be a good place to look for answers, I don't have any formal training in theology and theologians seem quite rare around here, unless they keep their heads down.

I would be interested in a laymans discussion to see where it goes.

Bannono
Is this what it takes to get you to wax lyrical?
Surely quietism is appropriate here.

Agreed. On a materialism thread some folk say that there is nothing apart from the material known to us and science and its effects, products. I usually point out that there might be other materials that we, or science are not aware of.
Nice joke about the British parliament being billions of cells all arguing with each other.

Is there any sense to be made of a more “pearl” (soul) type view?

There is, but that largely falls under theology, philosophy seems to find it a hot potato.

You have some interesting ideas there, but until science finds out something, we won't be able to confirm or deny any of it.

Trillions of self-conscious cells? What a scandal! It would be worse than a session of the British parliament.

I hope you are not going to view me as schizophrenic now. lol

In fact, the concept of science as a fundamental part of Reason is typical of the Enlightenment, which Kant culminates. A reason that combines the analytical with the synthetic.

This is all fine for a philosopher, but it still doesn't have the capability to explain consciousness, or mind. This is because we don't know the basis of the world of existence we find ourselves in. As I said, we need legs then feet and a rock to stand on, to make any progress.

My point is you, or any philosopher, can't deny that the human brain is a host for a being which is as yet beyond the preview of science, or our understanding. You can call it fantasy, or something, but that would just be name calling. Hence idealism.

Even idealism becomes a straight jacket, because it entertains the immaterial, whatever that is.

I would prefer to distinguish consciousness ( awareness ) from mind,

Likewise.

It seems that the concept of human mind includes some functions of the body, but I will not say so.

I think it is reasonable to distinguish between the management of the bodily functions by the brain and the intellect.

Of course, if life=consciousness a paramecium has consciousness. And every cell in our body. Then we are composed of millions of tiny consciousnesses. Why not?

Yes, but have we established that a human is not millions of tiny consciousnesses?
Consider a wave in the ocean, is it constituted of millions of tiny microscopic waves?

Obviously, because it's not like that when we talk about consciousness.

So when we talk about consciousness, we know what we're talking about?
I doubt it, we are merely talking about what human discourse has established (informed by science). Which is based around biology, which is reductionist, hence it is deemed to be the attribute of awareness.
But what about what philosophy has to say about it, is idealism nonsense? Or is consciousness just some robotic post modernism?

They're two different problems.

Quite so, some people on these boards think that mind equates to consciousness, or visa versa.

Reflex acts of the body are independent of the conscious mind,

So you are including in mind everything the brain does, is it confined to the brain?

I don't know if you want to reduce the mind to the conscious.

For me the mind is what the brain does in relation to the person, or the self, the acting being.

"Living" seems to me a very ambiguous term to define consciousness.

Not at all, it can have a precise definition if we can bring ourselves to defining it as cellular life. Also it could have caveat that there do seem to be a few more simple forms of life, but these are outliers.

A paramecium is also living.

And conscious, being closely related to us. The main difference being that we are each a colony of cells.

I've had a change of heart after reading this on Quora;

Is Brexit going to make the UK more powerful?

So in that spirit, I will answer, yes of course it will. Guaranteed. We will have all the easiest deals in history and a landmass full of Big Red Buses proclaiming how the original Big Red Bus was not only telling the truth, but was exactly perfect in it’s predictions, remarkably accurate. In fact, accurate to the penny.

After the German car makers have done a surprise above and beyond delivery of an EU deal that’s even sweeter than what was promised by Vote Leave, there will be nothing stopping the UK as those fantastically favourable international trade deals roll in for our liberated nation. Each nation around the world will be desperately trying to out-bid the other nations in their attempts to be the most favoured trading nation for the UK. It will be open competition of giveaway deals that are eyewateringly profitable to the UK.

This will power a renewed era of British expansionalism that will see the UK sweep the globe as a benevolent, highly respected super power. The respect for the UK’s social savvy will only be matched by the admiration that the world has for how cohesive and united our society is but towering above this will be the respect, globally for how completely uncorrupt we are, with nothing but fair play and not the faintest hint of collusion in tax avoidance, money laundering, dark money and criminal money anywhere near any British jurisdiction or dependency.

It’s only onwards and upwards from here. Rule Brittania!

Chester where are you?

I don't know if you've noticed that you're describing consciousness all the time in terms of ideas (of a pig), perceptions (of things), and sensations (of pain). If we don't talk about them we can't talk about any consciousness.

I asked you for a thought proven to be true and you mentioned a finger in boiling water, it is you who are confused. My next point was that your body will act independent of your mind and consciousness (something else you use interchangeably).

I think you confuse the concept of consciousness as nothing with the concept of non-existence.

I note that the one attribute you are not prepared to remove in your description of the void of consciousness is the body. So you are secretly relying on it.

Consciousness exists, but you cannot define it or describe it with consistent properties.

You can, it has the property of being alive, it is living. Now prove that things live without being conscious?

That's why I say it's nothing. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that it is a void.

This intrigues me, I also have experienced it thus, but I somehow I don't think you mean it the same way.

Choose the word you like best.

Living.

I know the idea may seem strange to common sense, but I am nothing more than what I am feeling or thinking. If you take away my feelings, my sensations and my thoughts, I am left as an empty space. I am strictly nothing.

Until someone thrusts your finger into boiling water. You forgot to take away your body.

So if someone takes away your feelings, sensations, thoughts and your body (brain), I would agree with you, that you are strictly nothing.

Let's say you are watching something extraordinary like a pig flying, then you accidentally put your finger in boiling water. I doubt you would have any thoughts about it, all your thinking would be occupied with trying to believe that you were really looking at a flying pig. Your body would take care of its finger while your mind was preoccupied. It is not your mind, or your thoughts, which is looking after your finger.

Your are not gonna make it great by telling bedtime stories.

Can you give me a thought that has been proven to be true?

Surely truth needs legs, feet and a rock (emotional or not) to stand on.

Fiction is fine when we use it for entertainment. But it becomes a hoax when we put the label of truth

Truth is a high barrier. If we confine ourselves to what we have established is true and what can logically be deduced about our bodies, then we are nowhere near understanding the origins of consciousness, or mind and our philosophy gets smaller by the day.

Maybe this is evidence of that difference between metaphysics and mysticism which you have been describing. Metaphysics, in the tradition of philosophy involves the desire to know.

Mystics may also have the desire to know, however realise that there are necessarily things which are unknown, or can't be known. Also that the process of finding out something might be a distraction from a more important, or pressing goal. Let's say for example that it would take a Herculean effort to find out how the world we find ourselves in came to be. While in fact that knowledge is not of importance and that effort was either inefficient, or sideshow. When in reality the goal of the mystic is to allow her natural inclinations of the her higher self to shine through and further down the path such truths about existence might be revealed in an instant. Or more importantly they would be revealed via the appropriate route and not through an overdevelopment of the intellect.

As I explained in the prior post, the reason for separating space from time is to bring the eternal, or what you called eternity, into the realm of intelligible. What separates the forms which we know and sense, from the Forms of eternity, is matter. So we have to get through matter in one way or another if we want to properly understand the existence of the divine, immaterial Forms.

Yes I would agree with this, I would be interested in what metaphysics can say about this?

without any desire to act. But the nature of the human being, as I described earlier is to be inclined to act.

I would disagree with this from the point of view of a mystic, although I recognise the need for the mystic to want, to have the desire, to embark on the mystical path. Once on the path, the intellectual direction of one's actions are seeded to the higher self via the intuition to a degree.

and this makes us consider purpose and therefore ethics. We need to bridge that gap between the passive enjoyment of the divine beauty (aesthetics), and the ethical principles which guide us in our actions. This means that we need to understand what it means to act, and this includes all forms of activity, including that divine activity which is prior to material existence (the eternal). And since space is a concept based in observations of material existence, we must allow a conception of time which is free from space, in order to understand this activity, which is necessary for an inclusive ethics..

I don't see the requirement for a knowledge of an intellectual understanding of ethics in this endeavour, although I am interested in the role this will play, please continue.

But we see that the internal is much closer to the real, so the internal activity, internal changes, are the activities which the concept of time ought to be based in, not conceptions of space. The internal time is based in the distinction between past and future, not in spatial relations.

I follow you, although it would be useful to take a look at this distinction you make between past and future, and possibly the present again?

Regarding planes, we all understand what the physical plane is, it is not restricted to two dimensions. As we experience it there are a minimum of 3 dimensions. Perhaps if I were to substitute the word, realm, for plane that would give a better idea. So the mental plane is a realm in which mental stuff is the equivalent of physical material on the physical plane. So a being on that plane would be expressed through a mental body, or vehicle, but instead of emotion would have Atman* (Bhuddi) and except for mind would have Monadic consciousness.

So it seems to me that to say that this type of body is on this plane, and another type on another plane, would create a certain incommensurability between these different types of bodies.

but the planes are like nodes on a scale of frequency, the higher planes being at a higher frequency. We only hear sounds within the range of frequency that our ears are attuned to detect. All the other frequencies are present, but we can't detect them. Through incarnation a being becomes embedded in a plane of activity and is able to detect what the apparatus which naturally occur on that plane, in reference to the being in question, detects. Were that being to be more developed, she might detect higher frequency notes due to having a suitable apparatus. Mystical practice is about developing and using this apparatus for some kind of constructive purpose.

This is the opposite of what I described, and is the key principle of Plato's cave allegory. In reality, the material world is an expression of the immaterial Forms.

Substitute subtle (can be undefined) for immaterial and we are in agreement.

If so, do you think that an adequate conception of time could establish a relation between them?

Well they would all be bound to an extent to the time, the present of our world, certainly if part of our being. I think if there were a disconnect in time it would be between the lower three and the higher three. Although I see no reason to regard them as not present in the same moment of time.

* I put Bhuddi because some theosophists use different terminology for the planes and Bhuddi can be seen as equivalent to the consciousness of the Bhudda for example.

I don't think we're invaded by a parasite called "mind". We're not in Alien. We're not doing science fiction.

But you wrote this in your previous reply;

There's a lot we don't know about the universe in general that we know we don't know. Much more than we even suspect.

So were we to consider these things we don't know, we would be writing science fiction then?

You can't banish the "alien", because you don't like it. Theology a respectable branch of philosophy would'nt like it if you were to banish the soul, which is hosted by the brain.

What there is is an exact relationship between the mind, which is the manifestation of certain verbal and gestural actions, and the brain. Remove one, and the other ends.

Likewise a puppet on a string, or a philosophical zombie. Cut the strings and the puppet doesn't move ergo the puppet must be dead. Unplug the TV and the rendition of Bach's toccata and fugue in d minor ceases to be broadcast. Could, I wonder, the TV have broadcast it absent the signal it hosts?

There's no indication of a mental parasite.

There is in the puppet and the TV and perhaps if there weren't one in us we would be philosophical zombies.

And if a word has no directly or indirectly observable reference, a word has no meaning.

Does my TV understand the meaning conveyed by Bach's toccata and fugue?

But the philosophy is more serious. It is not about the possible but about the existing and, at best, about what we can predict from the existing. The horizon of our hopes and their foundation.

What exists beyond what can be tested for, or observed is up for debate. Our hopes can be narrow minded, confined to the conditioned reason that we are presented with by our culture. Presumably metaphysics tries to look beyond these confines, but where to look?

I have made an argument that the brain can be considered the cause of the mental.

Could it possibly be a host to the mental, or a cause of the expression in the host?

And if you want to say that it's a mixed thing between matter and non-matter you should specify what the properties of that strange entity are that they are neither.

Its more subtle than that. We don't actually know everything about matter. It's true we have worked out what can be determined and measured using scientific instruments, but it is a mistake to limit the properties of matter to these discoveries. The so called non matter, or the dreaded aether might also be properties of matter which we have not discovered yet. Also we don't understand the origin, or cause of matter, which might were we to know it provide a grounded basis for a philosophy of matter.

For the reasons alluded to in my last post, and mentioned earlier in the thread, I really think it is necessary to separate space and time conceptually.

I don't see the need myself, but I would like you to explain it some more so that I can understand what you are getting at.
Also, as I said initially the mysticism of the creation and maintaining of the physical world is complex with some deep mysteries and spiritual cosmology which will probably be difficult to correlate with metaphysics. It would be better to stick to the more obvious correlations around being and what Mystics are actually concerned with, as the physical world is regarded merely as a tool for the development of the expression of being.
If you insist on delving into the creation of physical matter and it's attendant time we can go there, but I expect we will quite rapidly hit an impasse. However provided when the impasse is reached we can get back to the topic in hand then that's ok with me.

The problem described in the last post is that there is an actuality which is prior to the existence of material things. Since space is a concept used for measuring material things, and this activity does not involve material things, being prior to them, we have no reason to believe that space is an applicable concept when we are speaking about this activity which is prior to material existence.

But surely the prior state is external to (separate from) the physical universe we are discussing. So it can have its own separate space? Remember I said the physical world we find ourselves in is a construct. So the prior actual, genuinely real state then constructed an artificial world which isn't real in the same, actual, way, which is the our physical world*.

So we must unchain the concept of time from the material world, such that we can apply it to the activity of the eternal, which for now is outside of time because the currently applied concept of time is tied to the spatial activity of material things.

Ok, that's fine and how does that look?

Remember the principle we agreed upon earlier, that the entire material world must be created anew at each passing moment.

I don't see it that way myself, but I am happy to go with that concept and see where it leads.

So if there is a bubble which is blown at each moment (to use your analogy), each of these bubbles must expand from nothing, or near nothing, to extremely big, in a time period which is so short that we do not even notice it.

My bubble analogy was for the creation of the physical world, not its maintenance. Although I am happy to look at the idea of it renewing every moment for now, as I said.

Our conceptions of space do not allow for anything like this, having been derived from the illusion of continuity of spatial existence and distances, rather than from this idea, that spatial existence must be recreated (therefore expanded from near nothing), at each moment.

Well this would not be an issue provided the recreation occurred at the level of the sub atomic particle, temporally on the Planck scale.

whereas western mysticism, such as Neo-Platonism has turned to a hierarchy of immaterial Forms which are separate, free from bodies

For me all is material, but this is not the material known to science, or philosophy, but rather a constellation of subtle bodies. The only physical material in this schema is on the physical plane. So if by immaterial, we can agree on some kind of subtle body, immaterial in terms of any material we are aware of, then that's fine. I can also go along with immaterial too, but at some point I would ask the nature of these immaterial forms and how they become expressed in worlds of material.

But a bigger body, a unity of which the smaller body is just a part, requires a Form with more governing capacity then the smaller one, because it also exercises some control over the smaller body, robbing the smaller body's Form of some degree of freedom by virtue of the smaller body being within the unity of the larger. So the Neo-Platonists start with the One, which would be the Form that corresponds with the entire universe, and they proceed from there.

Yes, for me these forms are subtle bodies, there are numerous kinds of subtle bodies, or ethers (ethereal bodies).

I think that's a good way of putting it.

Yes, the mystic is practicing activities tailored to their individual spiritual development, directed by the intuition.

*remember Ishvara spun the physical world from his fingertips. This is alluding to artifice, composition, weaving.

Unlikely. Newspapers seem to respond to bias, not drive it. People are always looking for some external bogeyman to blame.

Well I suppose the media could have exploited an underlying xenophobia in the population. But once the ball was rolling they just threw more and more fuel on the fire. Just like they did over Brexit.

There was a small residual scepticism about the EU, (which the tabloid media had been drip feeding for decades) which the populists, who were in league with the tabloid media, exploited. Resulting in a 52% victory for leave. Whereas just a few years earlier the levels of people who were sceptical of the EU, enough to even think about leaving it, was very few.

Here in the UK, it's the rightwing media which drives racism, to boost their readership and make a bit of profit. Not to mention, as a driver for Brexit.

Are you familiar with Aristotle's cosmological argument?

Yes, I haven't given it all that much significance for two reasons, firstly that it is a human invention and as such cannot be verified. Which is fine and secondly that I had already reached the point where you end up here;

Once the concept of time is adjusted, then the so-called eternal actuality can be brought into relationship with material actualities so that this actuality is no longer "outside time".

You see I had already arrived at these conclusions before I encountered academic philosophy, so it is more a case of marrying up academic philosophy with my own philosophy, (or more correctly a marriage of theosophy with Hinduism).

This implies that the common notion of "time", which ties time to material existence, is incorrect, and must be adjusted to allow for this time in which the supposed eternal actuality is active, prior to material existence.

Yes, which is why I said before that our material world is a construct, conceived by, constructed by, maintained by and animated by a being who is a priori, external to this world.

The way I view it is that divine beings came up with a system of generating a realm of manifestation, a place of extension, of extension of space and time, spacetime. As this extends the space inflates along with the window of time, like blowing bubbles. Or as the Hindu's describe it spun from the tips of Ishvara's fingers like silk, creating the fabric of our world.

This spinning is similar by analogy to the spinning generated by gravity around a black hole, or worm hole. I like to imagine a way in which each atom in our world is held and maintained on a thread of silk from its own point of connection with eternity. So eternity is actual, active, imminent via every atom and vibrationally expressed through the energy between them. But that we do not have apprehension of this reality because we are still in the early stages of embryonic development.

So the mystic is concerned with the practice of developing this embryonic development within themselves.

I see that there is a sort of understanding possible through comparison or analogy. The parts of the higher three can be compared to the parts of the lower three.

Yes, very much so, there is a correspondence between the higher and lower. Which is understandable, as we are told we are made in the image of God. We are baby gods, I suppose.

That's the first time I've seen "eternity" described without reference to temporal concepts. So I don't really think it's the classical interpretation. Even the ancient Greeks described it through relation to time.

Forgive me, I am not trained in classical philosophy, I simply looked for a definition and this seemed to fit.

Wiki, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity
"Eternity in common parlance means infinite time (or the quality, condition or fact of being eternal).[1] In classical philosophy, however, it is defined as what exists outside time as describing supranatural beings and forces, whereas sempiternity corresponds to the infinitely temporal, non-metaphoric definitions, as recited in requiem prayers for the dead. Thomas Hobbes and many others in the Age of Enlightenment drew on the classical distinction to put forward metaphysical hypotheses such as "eternity is a permanent Now".

I think where I stray from the philosophical definition is that I tend to use the word eternity as a substitute for divine realm. I will happily change to that if you would prefer. Naturally for me the divine realm is outside time, atemporal in relation to our word. Also I tend not to delve into that realm in discussion because we would be trying to discus things we don't understand, perhaps can't understand, which are not like our world and about which we don't have means of finding out (other than through revelation).

As such, I don't think we are in a position to say whether, or not there is time in the divine realm, or what form it might take, likewise extension and whether divine beings have bodies, or what form those might take. I tend to defer to spiritual systems of describing such things, not on the assumption that those descriptions are accurate, or specific, but that they convey the appropriate relation in the hierarchy of being.

Why is it called the seven planes of our solar system?

This is theosophy, in the cosmogony it refers to, it is specifically discussing the beings represented by humanity, their role in the being of the planet Earth and likewise in the being of the Sun.

Are you sure there would be a body composed of the third etheric? Doesn't "etheric" imply without any body? The diagram shows will there. How can there be a body composed of will?

The usage of the terminology is different to other uses. Etheric in theosophy refers to a level of being, and is often used as in the etheric body. The form this takes is not known in the sense that science currently understands the physical body. It is largely undefined, some people might know it as the astral body. It is a body in a system that describes a human being as having 7 bodies, or vehicles of expression.

Regarding the usage of will, I was not considering that there would be a body composed of will, but rather a body composed of Atman in which will is expressed.
So the divine being has a body, or vehicle of expression on the atmic plane, this would necessarily be a subtle body, which is undefined on the assumption that it is beyond our comprehension. That the divine being would have a mind on the monadic plane, again undefined on the assumption that it is beyond our comprehension and that the divine being has the equivalent of a soul on the logic plane, which would be beyond our comprehension. So trying to understand the detail of these planes, or bodies etc is futile, pointless, as they are manifestations in a divine realm, for which we as humans are unequiped to understand.

I'm really having difficulty with your use of "eternity"..

I appreciate this and am happy to try to find a way through here. Perhaps if you were to define your use of the word? We might find there is not much difference in our understanding of the underlying issues, but that I use the word in an unconventional sense.

Now, this is not the first time you've referenced "the divine", and "eternity", so we really need to broach this subject "eternity", to validate claims such as this. We've really avoided what constitutes "divinity" up to this point.

Well eternity is reality which from our perspective is all things to all men. It is heaven, or nirvana, for example. This I think is described as the classical interpretation of eternity. I will be more specific and define it as that realm embodied by the three higher planes of our existence. The atmic, monadic and logoic, in this realm the divine logos, or God is manifest together with the various divine beings and immortals which form the hierarchy of being. All things are born out of this realm and worlds like ours are like pearls on Ishvaras necklace.
By divinity I mean beings who dwell in eternity and their nature.

These three higher planes of our existence of the seven, in which our incarnate world is the lower three planes. In this link the seven planes are laid out. My preference is for the last passage taken from The works of Alice Bailey. I left the other references for comparison.
http://frcmh.tripod.com/sevenplanesofconsciousnes.htm

So when someone says something like "lifted up and hosted in the body of a divine being", I realize that it is impossible for a divine being to have a body, and so you are speaking metaphorically. What I can imagine is you taking a place in another human body, or even a body which is very much superior to the human body.

A subtle body, I don't think we can say that these beings do, or don't have a body, or what form it takes. But in line with the cosmology of the the three higher planes there will be a body constituted of the forms found on the lower of the three planes, the atmic. Something which we probably can't comprehend.

I would say that you've had a glimpse into eternity. It is experiences like this which open our eyes to the extremely befuddling nature of time and existence.

I have a rich narrative which I use in contemplation on this issue. What I have experienced is not that clear, but I have had a number of experiences in the form of a presence of eternity, or divinity in some way. Rather like sitting in a room and eternity is in the next room and there is frosted glass between them and I can feel the presence and dimly make out the forms. I have had experiences like soma, but not in a formal setting. Although in a heightened state in puja, there was formal orchestration of revelation, or ceremony, to a degree.

I haven't read Castaneda, but have heard of him on ocassion. During my youth I did get involved a lot in New Age groups which was more to do with channeling than soma. I have used hallucinogens in the past, which resulted in many of the more lucid revelations. Most of my interest though was with more formal texts.