Transcendential Spirituality

These are adaptations of messages I posted in a thread of this name on the "Reality Checkpoint" MSN Group back in 2006.

Message 1
From: spiritrebel23 (Original Message) Sent: 7/21/2006 3:33 PM

I believe that it's extremely important to realize that human beings can apparently consciously influence the "mutation" component of physical evolution as well as the "selection" component, but I no longer feel I'm that close to understanding how this is done.

The concept of "transcendental spirituality" was essentially "damned with faint praise" in War in Heaven: it was mentioned in passing every once in while, but never described in the kind of detail it deserved. It is actually extremely important, and deserves major coverage in As Below, So Above.

Transcendental spirituality involves making a conscious effort to deal with archetypal concepts in relative rather than absolute terms. In other words, to regard them as goals rather than as limits. A transcendental approach involves applying the Socratic method of "questioning everything" to archetypes, rather than personifying them, or even rigidly defining them and using them to evaluate evidence.

The question, "What is God" is, by definition, unanswerable. However, if this is restated as, "What is godlike in…" and applied to information from every source, valuable knowledge can be obtained.

By "godlike" in this context, I simply mean, "closer to what I would like things to be."

Message 2
From: spiritrebel23 Sent: 8/27/2006 5:09 PM

Hmmm. I guess #1 isn't as clear as it should be. What I'm saying is that a truly "transcendental" approach to spiritual archetypes like "God" or "good and evil" is to regard them "mathematical limits" rather than as "entities" or "qualities".

In other words, a concept like "the supreme good" or "the ultimate evil" is completely meaningless, and "personifying" it is completely absurd. On the other hand, personifying our own intelligence and consciouness and saying, "This is what makes us human" makes quite a bit of sense.

Some people, and some actions, are "better" or "worse" as seen from someone's personal prospective. So it makes a bit of sense to define "good" as "the direction things are moving toward when they get better", and "evil" as the reverse of this.

Anyway, I'd like to know if this is making sense to the readers here, or not. It's a very tricky subject to talk about...

Message 3
From: spiritrebel23 Sent: 8/30/2006 7:36 AM

A number of futurists have used the terms STS (service to self) and STO (serivice to others) to frame a number of conflicting theories about how "we create external reality to fit a model in our own minds" and "our mind themselves are biocomputer programs input by interaction with external reality".

In other words, these theories range all the way from total predestinationism (we behave as we have been programmed to behave, and free will is a complete illusion) to total solipism (we can alter physical reality with our thoughts alone). Personally, I somehwere in the middle on this: I believe that our thoughts can alter physical reality only indirectly through pysical action, and that our consciously motivated behavior is once of many factors that influence the evolution of our personality structures during the course of our lives.

Where STS and STO come into the picture is that some people equate "serving your own self interests" with making a conscious effort to take control of your own mental programming, and "serving the interests of others" with yielding to outside programming. And others reverse this, postulating that altruistic behavior increases your free will and your ability to control your own destiny, because it runs counter to "selfish animal instincts" that are programmed into our genes, or imprinted into us in early childhood. My personal opinion on this is that we need to "transcend" both of these viewpoints and go in quite a different direction.

For example stopping in the middle of a freeway traffic-jam to give some food and money to a person in obvious need can easily be called a "reality checkpoint" experience. In other words, a flash of sudden insight that said, "Here's something that I can do, right here and now, to both make the world a better place and myself a better person."

Oh sure, philosophers can argue endlessly over the "meaning" of that last statement, especially whether it's "an abstract value judgment accepted on faith" or "a rational judgment based on past experience". Personally, I think it's about equal portions of both. Meaning that the conflicts themselves create a constantly evolving dynamic equilibrium that we call "reality". And I feel that this set of internal checks and balances may very well be the concept of "transcendental spirituality" that I'm trying to discuss in this thread.

And as I said, this is very difficult to put into words, but maybe discussing our interpretations of "why we have done things" is a step in the right direction...

Message 4
From: spiritrebel23 Sent: 8/30/2006 4:16 PM

I've always felt that "helping someone in need without a second thought" is an extremely important personality trait. It's evidence that some of us have mental programming that makes us react positively, instead of yelling, "Get away from me, you stink!" Even if that feeling bobs up simultaneously with the urge to help, as it often does in most of us.

When you react positively in situations like this, you're also traning your subconscious mind to react positively in many related situations. Which means you're generating "good karma" on a very practical, down-to-earth level of "you are what you do".