Making Panentheism My Own

[Jordan St. Francis]

Thus God is the very device of thought by which things are assigned forms and those forms are related to one another, upon which all reality takes shape for me.

Sounds like God and the logos are one. This reminds me of a discussion set forth by Cardinal Ratzinger [Pope Benedict] in the Introduction to Christianity:

To the creative original spirit, the
Creator Spiritus, thinking and making are one and the same
thing. His thinking is a creative process. Things are, because they
are thought. In the ancient and medieval view all being is
therefore what has been thought, the thought of the absolute
spirit. Conversely, this means that since all being is thought, all
being is meaningful, “logos,” truth. It follows from this traditional
view that human thinking is the re-thinking of being itself, rethinking
of the thought which is being itself. Man can re-think
the logos, the meaning of being, because his own logos, his own
reason, is logos in the one logos, thought of the original thought,
of the creative spirit that permeates and governs his being

Let's say we take as our starting point the pantheistic approach and determine "nature" or "God" is "the totality of all reality, unfragmented by discrete knowledge"

Could this be spun into the Genesis myth? Human kind, in profound harmony with nature signified by the docility of the beasts, reaches out towards The Tree of Knowledge and in becoming a "knowing being" fragments reality and introduces disorder?

 

[doppelganger]

Sounds like God and the logos are one.

Maybe. Or perhaps "yes" and "no" would be more accurate. God is the substratum of grammar in which words work - ordered thought itself. Logos is the word by which all things spring into being by their relationships in ordered thought.

Could this be spun into the Genesis myth?

In the Beginning Was the Word

A Feral Philosopher's Take on Redemption and Atonement

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/575578-post11.html

 

[sandandfoam]

God is the substratum of grammar in which words work - ordered thought itself.

Does ordered thought work in grammar or does it emerge from it?

 

[sandandfoam]

I propose, as I've hinted at a few times recently, that "God" is the rules and structures of grammar itself - the essential structure of language by which all things are categorized, given meaning and related to, including my own sense of self identity (the "I am" at the center of the universe of my experiences, relating to it all). Thus God is the very device of thought by which things are assigned forms and those forms are related to one another, upon which all reality takes shape for me.

Is that like 'the devil is in the detail' - 'God is in the morphemes'?

 

[doppelganger]

Does ordered thought work in grammar or does it emerge from it?

Talking about "ordered though" using words necessarily "works within grammar." In that sense, the Tao is ineffable because to talk about it is to be in a strange loop of claiming to look upon that which is the very device used to look. So the answer is 'yes' and 'no.'

Critique of "reality": where does the "more or less real," the gradation of being in which we believe, lead to?--

The degree to which we feel life and power (logic and coherence of experience) gives us our measure of "being", "reality", not appearance.

The subject: this is the term for our belief in a unity underlying all the different impulses of the highest feeling of reality: we understand this belief as the effect of one cause--we believe so firmly in our belief that for its sake we imagine "truth", "reality", substantiality in general.-- "The subject" is the fiction that many similar states in us are the effect of one substratum: but it is we who first created the "similarity" of these states; our adjusting them and making them similar is the fact, not their similarity (--which ought rather to be denied--).

One would have to know what being is, in order to decide whether this or that is real (e.g., "the facts of consciousness"); in the same way, what certainty is, what knowledge is, and the like.-- But since we do not know this, a critique of the faculty of knowledge is senseless: how should a tool be able to criticize itself when it can use only itself for the critique? It cannot even define itself!

- Nietzsche, Will To Power

 

[blackout]

...... Logos is the word by which all things spring into being by their relationships in ordered thought.

I love that. :rainbow1:

 

[sandandfoam]

'It seems that all approaches to language understanding have some reference to how world knowledge is involved in interpretation'. Given that, what do you think of the idea of Glenberg, Kaschak and others that our understanding (of language) "relies on representations that are literally of how our bodies interact with the world"?
Would that constitute an 'I' that comes before God?

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Making Panentheism My Own

Perhaps it already is, was, and forever will be?

And if so, seeking through the conceptual mind process ensures it will never will be 'your own' due to the fact that your mind is like a house divided, you are THIS which is seeking and simultaneously THAT which is sought.

Perhaps the best approach for the resolution of this paradox is through stilling of the mind so that when it is quiescent, the underlying non-duality of ALL THAT IS is naturally revealed.

Nay,... not just a realization, but perhaps even a total transformation that results in eternal perfection, i.e. nothing left to do in the illusionary worlds of duality (good and evil).

But then it can't really be called a transformation since nothing has been gained except recognition of what was all along.

I just love the parable of the prodigal son!

 

[Anti-thesisofreason]

Does ordered thought work in grammar or does it emerge from it?

I would think that grammar arises from ordered thought. We have to know how to put the words together in order for them to make sense :yes:???

 

[sandandfoam]

Sorry for being dense - but I have to come back again. Is the idea that God is before Grammar?
When we speak, we choose the linguistic unit before we work out the grammar.
Or is God in the grammar - If that is the case do we precede God?

 

[sandandfoam]

I would think that grammar arises from ordered thought. We have to know how to put the words together in order for them to make sense :yes:???

Doesn't analysis of speech errors suggests that the evidence is to the contrary, i.e we choose a word and then work out the grammar?

 

[Anti-thesisofreason]

Doesn't analysis of speech errors suggests that the evidence is to the contrary, i.e we choose a word and then work out the grammar?

But do we order the words before they are spoken (grammar rising from order) or do we order them as we are saying them?

I've never really thought about it. but I find the ideas very interesting.

 

[Troublemane]

Could this be spun into the Genesis myth? Human kind, in profound harmony with nature signified by the docility of the beasts, reaches out towards The Tree of Knowledge and in becoming a "knowing being" fragments reality and introduces disorder?

Thats what the zen approach is. Man cannot "know himself" except in simply being himself. Its when you try to dwell in your thoughts and assumptions about reality (my car, my bank account, my career, etc.) and use those mental images as substitutes for reality, try to grasp and hold onto them, that suffering results.

Maybe its when man tries to grasp and hold the image of his reality that he suffers? Like trying to grasp the reflection of the moon in the lake.

 

[Troublemane]

Talking about "ordered though" using words necessarily "works within grammar." In that sense, the Tao is ineffable because to talk about it is to be in a strange loop of claiming to look upon that which is the very device used to look. So the answer is 'yes' and 'no.'
- Nietzsche, Will To Power

...sounds like the Tao is in a state of 'quantum superposition', as I have long suspected!

 

[Guitar's Cry]

If "nature" or "God" is "all that is," then of logical necessity, doesn't there have to be an underlying aspect of reality that places me in relationship to "all that is"? In other words, is there something even older than "God" or "nature" that makes the formulation of "all that is" possible in the first place? It would seem that there is such an underlying reality. In the Tao te Ching, for example, we read:

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.

So the Tao that is unspoken (verse 1) is even beyond "God." Likewise, in Genesis "God" creates the Heavens and the Earth, but the Hebrew word bara in almost every other usage means to "prune" or "to give shape or form" rather than creation of something from nothing at all - more like a sculptor bringing shape out of a block of granite by taking things away rather than adding them.

I think this is what mysticism is really all about, and why most religions, when looked at existentially, all have similar psychological themes.

When attempting to analyze and philosophize reality, we realize that everything we know and can know exist as symbols. When we recall the experience of becoming conscious and self-conscious (such as when we awake, or, as Heidegger and Sarte did, in moments of dread or panic) we realize the connection between mathematics (first there is nothing, then everything, then somethings,) and language, and that our reality is a sliced-up, garnished dish of abstract models.

But a pattern must have a matrix and set. A designer requires material to design from.

And the Unknown God begetting its emanations comes into play:

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.

This lines up well with my own exploration of reality.

 

[sandandfoam]

But do we order the words before they are spoken (grammar rising from order) or do we order them as we are saying them?

Based on error patterns in speech Brock (1995) produced a summary of the language production system with 3 main processes.
1.Formulation of message in pre-linguistic form
2.Formulation of grammatical aspects of the utterance
3.Formulation of the phonological aspects of the utterance.

Formulation of the grammatical aspects can be further split into processes for selecting a word and processes for assigning it a function in the sentence.

We also self-monitor as we speak and self-correction is important in speech production. Self monitoring can result in order changes as we speak.

So I think the answer to your question is probably both.

 

[Kay]

Sounds like God and the logos are one. This reminds me of a discussion set forth by Cardinal Ratzinger [Pope Benedict] in the Introduction to Christianity ...

I didn't realize that Pope Benedict is such a mystic. Nice.

 

[doppelganger]

Sorry for being dense - but I have to come back again. Is the idea that God is before Grammar?

No. "God" is necessarily a product of relationships in ordered thought, which necessarily requires a substructure of grammar - a methodology by which relationships are created in thought.

Or is God in the grammar - If that is the case do we precede God?

I don't know about "we," but "I am" and "God" necessarily come into existence at the same instant, right?