Subj : Big fat warning, oh my! To : TODD HENSON From : Frank Masingill Date : Tue Oct 24 2000 06:27 am TH> > I have not found that in my search for the truth of TH> > existence that religious dogmatism is a huge problem. As a TH> > matter of fact as I look back upon my life and study, I TH> > think I overcame that without too much difficulty because TH> > the suspicion began in childhood. But as to secular TH> > dogmatism, I found, to my great surprise, that the TH> > educational system through the universities there was also TH> > tremendous closure and dogmatism. I have had to struggle TH> > against the freedom of what Bergson symbolized as the "elan TH> > vitale" or the constancy of the Aristotelian "wonder" that TH> > with Plato's nous is the heart center of philosophy as the TH> > deadly opponent of "philodoxy" (love of dogma). Since I TH> > also do not consider the "God" symbol to be representative TH> > of an "existing thing" I also have been insulated against TH> > the mighty torrent of the "God is Dead" foolishness. TH> If would answer the repeated questions as to what you mean by TH> a "nonexisting God", it might make it easier for people to TH> understand you. You experience God as an existing thing among other existing things in the shaft??? And you experience such an existent thing as the ground of all other existing things??? That would appear to be the experience of one still under the intracosmic myth before the dissociation of the cosmos and the experience of the God beyond the world. I think it is YOUR language in this respect that is strange, not mine. Can you imagine the Exodus revelation to Moses to be something like, "I am another intracosmic god just a step beyond the other gods you well know as a cultured Egyptian? Just color me the head of the others in a new summodeism!!" Would such a voice have inspired in Moses the command to go back to the Son of God who occupied the Egyptian throne and oppose his voice to THAT voice? One can imagine (using the language of a prophet in the Mosaic mode) a scene such as: "If you are Elijah, I am Jezebel." With the command to Moses, however, there eventually succeeds a "darkness over Egypt that one could touch." What could this darkness be but the darkness of the gods facing the intracosmic ground of Being who is saying, "Let my people go." Please refrain from literalizing this leap in being. The same "I am" in the Gospel of John will say, "Ye have heard that it hath been said......but "I" say unto you. Can you imagine the scene of the Mount of Transfiguration as a picture of a transfer of authority from one intracosmic god to another? Is the ejaculation, "before Abraham was, I am" the utterance of an intracosmic god? Frank --- PPoint 2.07 * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12) .