#he has technically read plotinus

[caesarsaladinn]

you ask Niketas what faith he follows and he says "I'm Christian" (is there another option? what are you implying?), and if you press him on what that means he'll give you some misremembered Neoplatonist apologetics, and if you press him even further you'll discover he's just a normal orthodox iconophile anti-filioque Chalcedonian who does whatever the patriarch says

[sobujmollahblog]

Astral projection (or astral travel) is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience (OBE)[1][2] that assumes the existence of a soul or consciousness called an "astral body" that is separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it throughout the universe.[3][4][5]

The idea of astral travel is ancient and occurs in multiple cultures. The modern terminology of 'astral projection' was coined and promoted by 19th century Theosophists.[3] It is sometimes reported in association with dreams, and forms of meditation.[6] Some individuals have reported perceptions similar to descriptions of astral projection that were induced through various hallucinogenic and hypnotic means (including self-hypnosis). There is no scientific evidence that there is a consciousness or soul which is separate from normal neural activity or that one can consciously leave the body and make observations,[7] and astral projection has been characterized as a pseudoscience.

Western

According to classical, medieval and renaissance Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and later Theosophist and Rosicrucian thought the astral body is an intermediate body of light linking the rational soul to the physical body while the astral plane is an intermediate world of light between Heaven and Earth, composed of the spheres of the planets and stars. These astral spheres were held to be populated by angels, demons and spirits.[15][16]

The subtle bodies, and their associated planes of existence, form an essential part of the esoteric systems that deal with astral phenomena. In the neo-platonism of Plotinus, for example, the individual is a microcosm ("small world") of the universe (the macrocosm or "great world"). "The rational soul...is akin to the great Soul of the World" while "the material universe, like the body, is made as a faded image of the Intelligible". Each succeeding plane of manifestation is causal to the next, a world-view known as emanationism; "from the One proceeds Intellect, from Intellect Soul, and from Soul - in its lower phase, or that of Nature - the material universe".[17]

Often these bodies and their planes of existence are depicted as a series of concentric circles or nested spheres, with a separate body traversing each realm.[18] The idea of the astral figured prominently in the work of the nineteenth-century French occultist Eliphas Levi, whence it was adopted and developed further by Theosophy, and used afterwards by other esoteric movements.

BiblicalEdit

Carrington, Muldoon, Peterson, and Williams claim that the subtle body is attached to the physical body by means of a psychic silver cord.[19][20] The final chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes is often cited in this respect: "Before the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be shattered at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern."[21] Scherman, however, contends that the context points to this being merely a metaphor, comparing the body to a machine, with the silver cord referring to the spine.[22]

Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians is more generally agreed to refer to the astral planes:[23] "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows."[24] This statement gave rise to the Visio Pauli, a tract that offers a vision of heaven and hell, a forerunner of visions attributed to Adomnan and Tnugdalus as well as of Dante's Divine Comdy

Ancient Egyptian

The ba hovering above the body. This image is based on an original found in The Book of the Dead.

Similar concepts of soul travel appear in various other religious traditions. For example, ancient Egyptian teachings present the soul (ba) as having the ability to hover outside the physical body via the ka, or subtle body.

China

Taoist alchemical practice involves creation of an energy body by breathing meditations, drawing energy into a 'pearl' that is then "circulated".[26] "Xiangzi ... with a drum as his pillow fell fast asleep, snoring and motionless. His primordial spirit, however, went straight into the banquet room and said, "My lords, here I am again." When Tuizhi walked with the officials to take a look, there really was a Taoist sleeping on the ground and snoring like thunder. Yet inside, in the side room, there was another Taoist beating a fisher drum and singing Taoist songs. The officials all said, "Although there are two different people, their faces and clothes are exactly alike. Clearly he is a divine immortal who can divide his body and appear in several places at once. ..." At that moment, the Taoist in the side room came walking out, and the Taoist sleeping on the ground woke up. The two merged into one.

Hinduism

Similar ideas such as the Liṅga Śarīra are found in ancient Hindu scriptures such as, the YogaVashishta-Maharamayana of Valmiki.[25] Modern Indians who have vouched for astral projection include Paramahansa Yogananda who witnessed Swami Pranabananda doing a miracle through a possible astral projection.[28]

The Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba described one's use of astral projection:

In the advancing stages leading to the beginning of the path, the aspirant becomes spiritually prepared for being entrusted with free use of the forces of the inner world of the astral bodies. He may then undertake astral journeys in his astral body, leaving the physical body in sleep or wakefulness. The astral journeys that are taken unconsciously are much less important than those undertaken with full consciousness and as a result of deliberate volition. This implies conscious use of the astral body. Conscious separation of the astral body from the outer vehicle of the gross body has its own value in making the soul feel its distinction from the gross body and in arriving at fuller control of the gross body. One can, at will, put on and take off the external gross body as if it were a cloak, and use the astral body for experiencing the inner world of the astral and for undertaking journeys through it, if and when necessary....The ability to undertake astral journeys therefore involves considerable expansion of one’s scope for experience. It brings opportunities for promoting one’s own spiritual advancement, which begins with the involution of consciousness. Astral projection is one of the Siddhis considered achievable by yoga practitioners through self-disciplined practice. In the epic The Mahabharata, Drona leaves his physical body to see if his son is alive.

Japan

The 'ikiryō' as illustrated by Toriyama Sekien.

In Japanese mythology, an ikiryō (生霊) (also read shōryō, seirei, or ikisudama) is a manifestation of the soul of a living person separately from their body.[30] Traditionally, if someone holds a sufficient grudge against another person, it is believed that a part or the whole of their soul can temporarily leave their body and appear before the target of their hate in order to curse or otherwise harm them, similar to an evil eye. Souls are also believed to leave a living body when the body is extremely sick or comatose; such ikiryō are not malevolent.

Inuit Nunangat

In some Inuit groups, people with special capabilities are said to travel to (mythological) remote places, and report their experiences and things important to their fellows or the entire community; how to stop bad luck in hunting, cure a sick person etc.,[33][34] things unavailable to people with normal capabilities.

Amazon

The yaskomo of the Waiwai is believed to be able to perform a "soul flight" that can serve several functions such as healing, flying to the sky to consult cosmological beings (the moon or the brother of the moon) to get a name for a new-born baby, flying to the cave of peccaries' mountains to ask the father of peccaries for abundance of game or flying deep down in a river to get the help of other beings.

The expression "astral projection" came to be used in two different ways. For the Golden Dawn[37] and some Theosophists[38] it retained the classical and medieval philosophers' meaning of journeying to other worlds, heavens, hells, the astrological spheres and other imaginal[39] landscapes, but outside these circles the term was increasingly applied to non-physical travel around the physical world.[40]

Though this usage continues to be widespread, the term, "etheric travel", used by some later Theosophists, offers a useful distinction. Some experients say they visit different times and/or places:[41] "etheric", then, is used to represent the sense of being "out of the body" in the physical world, whereas "astral" may connote some alteration in time-perception. Robert Monroe describes the former type of projection as "Locale I" or the "Here-Now", involving people and places that actually exist:[42] Robert Bruce calls it the "Real Time Zone" (RTZ) and describes it as the non-physical dimension-level closest to the physical.[43] This etheric body is usually, though not always, invisible but is often perceived by the experient as connected to the physical body during separation by a "silver cord". Some link "falling" dreams with projection.[44]

According to Max Heindel, the etheric "double" serves as a medium between the astral and physical realms. In his system the ether, also called prana, is the "vital force" that empowers the physical forms to change. From his descriptions it can be inferred that, to him, when one views the physical during an out-of-body experience, one is not technically "in" the astral realm at all.[45]

Other experients may describe a domain that has no parallel to any known physical setting. Environments may be populated or unpopulated, artificial, natural or abstract, and the experience may be beatific, horrific or neutral. A common Theosophical belief is that one may access a compendium of mystical knowledge called the Akashic records. In many accounts the experiencer correlates the astral world with the world of dreams. Some even report seeing other dreamers enacting dream scenarios unaware of their wider environment.[46]

The astral environment may also be divided into levels or sub-planes by theorists, but there are many different views in various traditions concerning the overall structure of the astral planes: they may include heavens and hells and other after-death spheres, transcendent environments, or other less-easily characterized states.

Astral projection according to Carrington and Muldoon, 1929

Emanuel Swedenborg was one of the first practitioners to write extensively about the out-of-body experience, in his Spiritual Diary (1747–65). French philosopher and novelist Honoré de Balzac's fictional work "Louis Lambert" suggests he may have had some astral or out-of-body experiences.[47]

There are many twentieth-century publications on astral projection,[48] although only a few authors remain widely cited. These include Robert Monroe,[49] Oliver Fox,[50] Sylvan Muldoon, and Hereward Carrington,[51] and Yram.[52]

Robert Monroe's accounts of journeys to other realms (1971–1994) popularized the term "OBE" and were translated into a large number of languages. Though his books themselves only placed secondary importance on descriptions of method, Monroe also founded an institute dedicated to research, exploration and non-profit dissemination of auditory technology for assisting others in achieving projection and related altered states of consciousness.

Robert Bruce,[53] William Buhlman,[54] Marilynn Hughes,[55] and Albert Taylor[56] have discussed their theories and findings on the syndicated show Coast to Coast AM several times. Michael Crichton gives lengthy and detailed explanations and experience of astral projection in his non-fiction book Travels.

In her book, My Religion, Helen Keller tells of her beliefs in Swedenborgianism and how she once "traveled" to Athens:

"I have been far away all this time, and I haven't left the room...It was clear to me that it was because I was a spirit that I had so vividly 'seen' and felt a place a thousand miles away. Space was nothing to spirit!"[57]

The soul's ability to leave the body at will or while sleeping and visit the various planes of heaven is also known as "soul travel". The practice is taught in Surat Shabd Yoga, where the experience is achieved mostly by meditation techniques and mantra repetition. All Sant Mat Gurus widely spoke about this kind of out of body experience, such as Kirpal Singh.[58]

Eckankar describes Soul Travel broadly as movement of the true, spiritual self (Soul) closer to the heart of God. While the contemplative may perceive the experience as travel, Soul itself is said not to move but to "come into an agreement with fixed states and conditions that already exist in some world of time and space".[59] American Harold Klemp, the current Spiritual Leader of Eckankar[60] practices and teaches Soul Travel, as did his predecessors,[61] through contemplative techniques known as the Spiritual Exercises of ECK (Divine Spirit).[62] Edgar Cayce from the USA, was popularly known as the “Sleeping Prophet”. He had been practicing astral travel at Washington DC for many years.

In occult traditions, practices range from inducing trance states to the mental construction of a second body, called the Body of Light in Aleister Crowley's writings, through visualization and controlled breathing, followed by the transfer of consciousness to the secondary body by a mental act of will.[

There is no known scientific evidence that astral projection as an objective phenomenon exists.[7][8][9]

There are cases of patients having experiences suggestive of astral projection from brain stimulation treatments and hallucinogenic drugs, such as ketamine, phencyclidine, and DMT.[9]

Robert Todd Carroll writes that the main evidence to support claims of astral travel is anecdotal and comes "in the form of testimonials of those who claim to have experienced being out of their bodies when they may have been out of their minds."[64] Subjects in parapsychological experiments have attempted to project their astral bodies to distant rooms and see what was happening. However, such experiments haven't produced clear results.[65]

According to Bob Bruce of the Queensland Skeptics Association, astral projection is "just imagining", or "a dream state". Bruce writes that the existence of an astral plane is contrary to the limits of science. "We know how many possibilities there are for dimensions and we know what the dimensions do. None of it correlates with things like astral projection." Bruce attributes astral experiences such as "meetings" alleged by practitioners to confirmation bias and coincidences.[66]

Psychologist Donovan Rawcliffe has written that astral projection can be explained by delusion, hallucination and vivid dreams.[67]

Arthur W. Wiggins, writing in Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins, said that purported evidence of the ability to astral travel great distances and give descriptions of places visited is predominantly anecdotal. In 1978, Ingo Swann provided a test of his alleged ability to astral travel to Jupiter and observe details of the planet. Actual findings and information were later compared to Swann's claimed observations; according to an evaluation by James Randi, Swann's accuracy was "unconvincing and unimpressive" with an overall score of 37 percent. Wiggins considers astral travel an illusion, and looks to neuroanatomy, human belief, imagination and prior knowledge to provide prosaic explanations for those claiming to experience it.

[francesderwent]

Sorry for the curiosity but what is the "Good" kind of infinity? Because, like Gregory of Nyssa and the Cappadocian Fathers don't seem to articulate a positive infinity, and that's 4th century Christianity--giving evidence that negative infinity was still the mainstream. So I was curious about the development of the good infinity--sounds like cool reading! Sorry for the randomness, but I saw your ask to Sept.

First ofall, anon, this is hardly the bad kind of curiosity, and seeing as it wasprompted by something I said, it’s definitely not random!  My askbox is always open, never be afraid toreach out.

 That said,the line from the professor that I mentioned in the ask was just a throwawayone; I haven’t actually studied this at any length.  So my response is going to be sort of speculative,my best guess at an answer, and sort of coming at the answer from a sidewaysdirection.  

 I’m takingPlotinus as my quintessential Greek, because I’ve been reading him ad nauseamlately, and because he articulates this worldview most clearly.  Painting with verrrrry broad strokes, it is taken for granted that absolutesimplicity is identical with perfection. God, the Good, is most properly called the One, in which there is nodivision at all.  The next most perfectlevel of being is the Intellect, which is the union of subject and object – buteven in this union of two, still more divided and hence less perfect than theOne.  After this follows the World-Soul,which is the realm of multiplicity.  Eachlower level flows out of the one above it, and is also reaching back towardsits origin in the desire to be more perfect than it is in itself.

 Severalthings about this: first, the only thing that differentiates everything elsefrom God is imperfection.  What makes theIntellect to not be the One is that itis less perfect than the One, and what makes Soul to not be the Intellect is thatit is less perfect than either.  The emanationof everything from the One is a falling away – it isn’t exactly good for everything else to have its ownexistence, and what the everything else desires at its deepest heart is to loseitself in unity with the One.  Then, thisemanation has always already been happening. Plotinus insists that the One is free, but there was never a time whenthe One didn’t give rise to the Intellect and the Soul.  The One didn’t choose to emanate the world –it does so necessarily, of its very nature.  The movement of the world, from the One andback to the One, has been the same for all time.

 So,multiplicity as such can only be a negative, and there is no real novelty –with this sketched out, it’s clear that infinity could never be a positiveconcept.  Think of infinity as opposed toeternity – eternity is simplicity and immutability stretching on forever; infinityis multiplicity, a bunch of new things stretching on forever.

 So howdoes Christianity change this?  The startof an answer has to be Creation.  Godlooked on all that He had created and saw that it was good.  Good, not because itreflects some higher reality or can lead us to some higher reality, but good in itself.  And God didn’t have to create, doesn’t need to create in order to be God.  Creation is not a loss or a falling away, not“God-minus-perfection”, but it is desired by God and created out by Him ofnothing with its own proper existence.  This is super cool.  Basically it means that the world is not madeof God, we’re not pantheists, so God really gave the world to itself!  This is the theory of creation or being asgift (which is rooted in Aquinas’ real distinction between esse and essence, soa little later in Church history): creation is really given to itself – so that it really holdsitself, has its own existence and is not just the fringes of God’s own life –but is also really given – so that itremains intimately in relation to God, the giver.  Within this metaphysics of being, wedistinguish created things from God not by their imperfection, but by their finitude. Created things are finitelyperfect, created perfect in their own proper measure.  Moreover, created thingsare all really new, really unique.  I don’t know if we could technically say thatGod created an “infinite” number of creatures, but creation does involve thepositive sense of multiplicity and novelty. I have a professor who’s fond of saying that God didn’t have to create, Hewas already perfectly generous and good within himself, but once He decided tocreate, He couldn’t just create one thing, because only a whole bunch of stuff could manifest His goodness.  And yet, Creation is really a universe, it is one while also being many.

 Which, ofcourse, brings me around to the reason that we can affirm multiplicity sofirmly: that God Himself is not simply one, but one and three.  God is notinfinite, don’t get me wrong, but He expresses his goodness in the uncountablewonders of Creation, and invites us to participate in His life without beingdissolved in the divine essence.  TheTrinity allows for multiplicity to be good.

 So, tocycle all the way back to my professor’s point that I sent to septembersung,the Greeks give us the importance of form – form as perfection and limit – andChristianity gives us the importance of the individualand multiplicity.  Infinity is invariably bad if it is infinitywhich rejects form.  But I think we are meant to be imagining whata multitude of form would look like –not many things all reducing back to the Plotinian One, but more like theCommunion of Saints: the same love reflected in an infinite number of faces.

[trinitiesblog]

Ye Olde smug "denier" dismissal

I’ve never been much interested in sociology – though I do see the interest and importance of it. But being involved for so long in theological debates has made me more interested in it.

Consider this recent interaction of mine with Dr. Lydia McGrew, at her blog Extra Thoughts.

Now, I am in a sense changing the subject in my comments. That is on me. She posted about the (alleged) terrible errors of Dr. Michael Licona, and I’m chiming in and correcting what are to me clearly false assumptions she’s making about some famous New Testament passages.

She has been much concerned that Licona has been espousing, or sometimes nearly espousing, non-evangelical views about the NT, and moreover views that might give some advantage to evangelical nemesis Dr. Bart Ehrman. She will not be distracted from her goal by such matters as rightly understanding Mark 2 and John 10.

Not that there isn’t anything interesting in this dust-up about just how and in what way the fourth Gospel is historically accurate. I’m just not convinced that an alarm needs to be sounded.

Back to the NT, of course, she no doubt is convinced that she does rightly understand those passages I commented on. Thus, she refuses to lift a finger to engage my wholly non-speculative, text-based points about those texts (in the comments below her post), which lead away from reading them as teaching “the deity of Christ.” (Never mind that this abstract phrase might mean many things – let’s just say for now that if it is true, then Jesus is divine in the way that the one God is divine.)

Why is she so unwilling to hear simple arguments about the meaning of the NT? Here, I speculate. First, it has been my experience that those interested in apologetics often read mostly like-minded folks, except for the necessary reading of a few nemeses. (Biblical unitarians don’t qualify as a nemeses, as we’re perceived to be too little a threat, so most apologetics types ignore our work completely.) It is very possible that she has literally never encountered these points about John 10 and Mark 2 anywhere in her studies. Not knowing, off the cuff, what to say, she’d rather move on. It is important to see that mainstream Protestant theology since at least the late 19th c. has been eager to dismiss the unitarian minority report, as it cuts directly at the heart of their defining narrative, that they are the folks who derive their doctrines from clear, obvious NT teaching. The bottom line is that it is very easy to be an educated evangelical nowadays and only have this vague notion of some silly “rationalists” called “Arius” and then later”Socinus” who (for reasons no one can fathom, unless it is just that they refuse to believe what they can’t understand) denied the Trinity – and really of little else in the history of non-trinitarian theologies.

Second, it is human nature to be complacent and unworried – even smug – when one’s view is a majority view, or at least, a majority view with the right crowd, the good guys. I think that within at least American evangelicalism, it is probably a majority view that Mark in chapter 2 is telling us that Jesus can forgive sins because he is God, and that in John 10 Jesus claims to be God or to be “equal to” God. I’ve been there myself. It took quite a lot for me to be willing to re-open these issues. One of those things was knowledge of real, obvious, born again, Jesus-following Christians, who go with the NT when it conflicts with catholic traditions – even ones beloved by the heirs of the Magisterial Reformation. I was totally ignorant of such people until perhaps around 1999 or so – and then I only knew about a few early modern examples. I met the first one in real life… I think maybe it was 2009? The received wisdom among evangelicals would be that anyone who claimed to be a Christian and yet does not agree that “Jesus is God” or that “God is a Trinity” must be either a cultist or a crank or a (theological) “liberal.” Not true! But that’s what I formerly accepted as obvious.

Third, Christian philosophers, especially ones with technical, non-historical specialties, are often loathe to engage directly with the Bible. Even though they sometimes see the low standards of argument in systematic theology and in related fields, they would rather leave these matters to the experts and hope for the best. Partly, this is just not what most of us have been trained to do. It seems better to just dismiss any less popular reading as obviously wrong; that such could be correct may strike one as like a conspiracy theory. Now, I can see why philosophers poorly grounded in the history of philosophy may want, even need to pass the buck here. But by the year 2000, I had spent quite a lot of energy reading the works of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hume, Reid, Locke, Berkeley, Plotinus, the Stoics, etc. that I could not justify just taking, say, evangelical theologians’ and apologists’ word for what the NT writings actually say. I took a long, hard look at them, listening to more than recent American evangelicals.

And that was no supererogatory act on my part. These writings were given to all followers of Jesus, not only to the scholarly elite. I was just doing what fidelity to divine revelation demanded. Let’s be good Protestants and good Bereans, and always be willing to re-examine claims in light of the NT sources. Sometimes we need to take a break from that defensive apologetic stance.

I would think that in principle, Dr. McGrew agrees, and indeed, in that very post she avers from over-reading incidents like Jesus walking on the water (i.e. inferring from this that Jesus is there asserted to be Yahweh himself). In this, she admirably (and in my view correctly) goes against current evangelical scholarly fashion.

Fashion must yield to the known facts about the texts. Perhaps when the smug dissipates, she’ll take a look at Mark 2 in light of Mark’s actual language there and what Matthew does with it, and at John 10:31-33 in light of what immediately follows.

As to this encounter, she sees fit to dismiss my arguments with this: “Pausing to argue with someone who denies the deity of Jesus would take time away from other projects…”

Of course, who cares whether or not she wrestles with me. What’s overdue, is some wrestling with the NT, and squarely facing how it conflicts with some later catholic traditions.

I have commented on this “denial” rhetoric before. But here, this is not mere rhetoric. She does, I take it, peg me as a mere denier of the obvious. This reflects a lamentable ignorance of the long history of views like mine in Christian history, from the second to the 21st centuries. Dismissing current day “biblical unitarian” views, or various other historical unitarian theologies as “denying the deity of Christ” or even “denying the Trinity” is foolish, like calling all non-Calvinists “deniers of God’s sovereignty,” or calling all Protestants “Pope-deniers,” or all non-Molinists “Middle Knowledge deniers.” There are positive, fairly well thought-through bases for such views, and it is just a mistake to construe them as merely reactionary or bitter-ender denialism.

I say all this without casting stones, because as I said before, I was equally, if not more smug in the late 1990s; I specifically remember passing an old Congregationalist unitarian church in Providence (now a UU church) and explaining to my wife that those were just some silly oddballs who denied the deity of Christ, or words to that effect. I couldn’t have cared less what they thought about Christian theology. I’d just as soon inquire into the opinions of Oprah or Bishop Spong.

As I’ve said before, it was reading Clarke on the NT that got my attention. I quickly saw that in many ways he had a much better handle on NT theology than I did. But what kept my attention, was seeing, over time, how very non-trinitarian the NT is.

I need to do a podcast some time for those who are basically unaware of this long minority report in mainstream Christian traditions.

Dr. Lydia McGrew: I would recommend starting with this, and then reading this. Don’t be afraid to take the red pill. 🙂

http://trinities.org/blog/ye-olde-smug-denier-dismissal/