{"id":7917,"date":"2015-02-27T00:37:46","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T05:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=7917"},"modified":"2015-02-27T00:37:46","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T05:37:46","slug":"unknowing-and-true-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=7917","title":{"rendered":"Unknowing and True Will"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\nFirst and foremost, I will tell you who should work in this work, and when, and by what means: and what discretion you shall have in it. If you ask me who shall work thus, I answer you\u2014all who have forsaken the world in a <strong>true will<\/strong>. ~ <em>The Cloud of Unknowing<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Going through the Ruins<\/h2>\n<p>To reconstruct Tradition in the West, we need build on the ruins left behind. Despite a mini revival of Thomism, as useful as that it, it does not go much further than skirmishes in academic debates. Rather, we must take it seriously, so seriously in fact, that it leads to an intellectual conversion. That conversion is a \u201cforsaking\u201d of the modern world for the real world. In other words, it begins with an \u201cunknowing\u201d and ends in the contemplative life which is true will.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some basic notions that cry out for further development:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the distinction between essence and existence<\/li>\n<li>the soul life of man<\/li>\n<li>the intellect as the form of the body<\/li>\n<li>human nature<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are recited and then neglected. Now the Summa was intended as a beginner\u2019s book so it cannot, as such, contain the whole of the teaching. The logical consequences of each notion must be teased out.<\/p>\n<h2>Essence, Existence, and Freedom<\/h2>\n<p>Every substance is the result of the union between an essence and existence, or, form and matter. What is unclear in that is how an essence becomes a substance. Science, the dominant ideology of today, only needs to deal with substances and their interrelations. The capability to \u201csee\u201d the essence in the thing has been lost. The intellectual conversion will therefore reveal that the world of things is but the reflection of a transcendent, perfect order.<\/p>\n<p>But back to the problem. Kant determined that we cannot know the real world through pure reason since our experience of it is filtered through the categories of the mind. Only practical reason uncovers the truth about God, freedom, and immortality. This led those who followed, especially Schopenhauer and Fichte, to conclude that it is the Will that is fundamental, since that is what we know directly, \u201cfrom the inside\u201d as it were. <strong>Julius Evola<\/strong>, drawing on that line of thought as well as the energy (\u201cShakti\u201d) of the Tantras to make his own contribution: The world, then, is my Will. (from the <em>Individual and the Becoming of the World<\/em>). This is justified on the grounds that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nthe concept can account for what constitutes the \u201cessence\u201d of a thing, or the totality of the characteristics that logically define it, but it is impotent to deduce \u2013 and even less to produce \u2013 its \u201cexistence\u201d, the naked fact of its \u201cbeing there\u201d (<em>dasein<\/em>) as a real thing.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In Guenon\u2019s terms, the possibilities of manifestation or of non-manifestation are logically the same. Hence, only a Will can bring an essence into manifestation. The extent to which the manifestation does not match the essence is called \u201cprivation\u201d, the failure to fully manifest. In other words, the amount of \u201cbeing\u201d a thing has is related to its power and esoterically, power is freedom. (from Gnosis 1, IX, (7))<\/p>\n<h2>Essence, Accident, and Human Nature<\/h2>\n<p>The popular view is that humans share a common nature. That nature, then, is the essence of man and all other qualities are \u201caccidents\u201d, i.e., they do not change one\u2019s essential nature. In Aristotelean terms, that nature is rational. But is that sufficient? Does it represent the \u201ctotality of characteristics\u201d that define a man or woman?<\/p>\n<p>Take, for example, one\u2019s sex. In today\u2019s belief system, sex is an accidental quality. Given that, same sex marriage and transgenderism make perfectly good sense. The Church, however, tries to hold out against the modern world. For example, a transgendered person can go to the political authorities and have documents such as birth certificates and drivers licenses changed to reflect the new sex. However, baptismal records cannot be changed. Another example is the commitment to the male priesthood, something that is unjustifiable is sex is an accidental quality.<\/p>\n<p>Hence, one\u2019s sex must be part of one\u2019s essence, but Thomism as currently understood has no place for that. The same goes for one\u2019s race, ethnicity, and so on: are these accidental or essential? Of course, a man is more that an abstract essence, he is also a person, an \u201cI\u201d.<\/p>\n<h2>Esoteric Evolution<\/h2>\n<p>The world process takes into account both involution and evolution. Involution is ontologically prior. Beings fall into different states of existence along a chain of being from the higher to the lower. The inverse of this is the apparent evolution from the lower to the higher, which is really the manifestation in time of involution.<\/p>\n<p>In esoterism, we seek regeneration through the reversal of involution through evolution. In our human situation, we are born into a \u201cmatrix\u201d that precedes us while keeping us within its bounds. If you recall, <strong>Joseph Ratzinger<\/strong> put it this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe seat of original sin is to be sought precisely in this collective net [or matrix] that precedes the individual existence as a sort of spiritual datum, not in any biological legacy passed on between otherwise utterly separated individuals.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That is the human-created reality, the justification for Seth\u2019s claim that we \u201ccreate our own reality\u201d. Battered by the vast number of conflicting opinions, the first step is an \u201cunknowing\u201d of that false reality. Gradually one develops a \u201cReal I\u201d that is transcendent to the matrix. To the extent we are freed from false opinions, we become a unified and integral being. As we become more conscious of the forces that operate through us, we develop a higher intellect that is open to revelation free from the distortions of the collective net.<\/p>\n<p>The next Thomist principle is that the Will follows the Intellect. Hence, the next stage in esoteric evolution is the True Will. Note that the Will is beyond even consciousness. From the Intellect\u2019s perspective, this is \u201cdark and irrational\u201d, but freedom, to be truly free, cannot be determined by anything else, not even by God. For the time being, I\u2019ll refer you to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.berdyaev.com\/berdiaev\/berd_lib\/1930_349.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Teaching about the Ungrund and Freedom<\/a>, an essay by <strong>Nicolai Berdyaev<\/strong> on <strong>Jacob Boehme<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>The Subtle Rules the Dense<\/h2>\n<p>Involution then is the reversal of evolution. First there is the Will, then Consciousness, then the Person or I, and finally manifestation. Now it is obvious that we are not manifesting the True Will exactly since we are born into the collective net. That is original sin and represents a privation of what we truly are or could be.<\/p>\n<p>This is the true understanding of \u201ccreating our own reality\u201d, as the Will seeks to manifest itself in the various stages. We don\u2019t remember doing this, and on the occasions that we get a flash of remembrance, many people assume it to be a proof or \u201creincarnation\u201d. A good exercise is to try to recall how much of our own lives we have chosen or created. At night, go through the events of the day and see how much you may have contributed, even unconsciously and unwittingly, to what happened. Plato describes this in the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Myth_of_Er\" target=\"_blank\">Myth of Er<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Amor Fati<\/h2>\n<p>This is not incompatible with exoteric teaching insofar as it claims that God creates life.\u00a0 Of course, but God created man with a free will which cannot be interfered with. As a man aligns his own will with God\u2019s will, the distinction becomes moot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First and foremost, I will tell you who should work in this work, and when, and by what means: and what discretion you shall have in it. If you ask me who shall work thus, I answer you\u2014all who have forsaken the world in a true will. ~ The Cloud &hellip; <span class=\"continue-reading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=7917\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[1113,1093],"class_list":["post-7917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality-2","tag-cloud-of-unkowing","tag-joseph-ratzinger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}