(1) Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. (2) If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. (3) Rather, the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you. (4) When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. (5) But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and you are poverty.”
— Gospel of Thomas 3 (NHS)
Yes. But another interpretation of “The Way of heaven is impartial” is suggested by the Tanakh: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).
And later the writer interprets this ‘Deep’ as “Ineffable” and comments to the effect that if Mind (or, in the West, God) is ineffable, why try to describe It (Him)?
As for God’s partiality (or not) for His ways or ours, I don’t know what Jews think (referring to my earlier quotation from Isaiah), but Christians tend to think that God’s Way (Love) *ought be* Our Way and, that to the extent that it is, we are, as it were, One with God.
But I personally am thinking here of the God of Peirce’s religious cosmology, one where cosmic evolution extends Love further and further. That–along with a few other Signs (natural, human, and Divine)–is, perhaps, all we can truly know of the Mind of God, so that not only religious sages, but Nature itself is also our teacher of the Ways of God.
And so, not surprisingly, Peirce includes a religious metaphysics in his cenoscopic philosophy.
Tonight I’m thinking that the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection and Life Everlasting is but a metaphor for the notion that there is *only* Life, that Death is an illusion (I know we disagree on this).
This is hard to get at scientifically, but I think that some of Peirce’s ideas in the 1898 lecture series hint at the way in which there has *never* been nothingness (although Time is a problematic concept in all this), that Life and potential Life were, are, and always will be (from the get go, before the putative Big Bang).
And if this is so, then as the Vedas proclaim, Tat vam asi–you are that and so you are eternal.
As for one’s personality, well, I’m glad I have one! But in the long run *that* doesn’t matter all that much. Peirce says as much.
(1) Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. (2) If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. (3) Rather, the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you. (4) When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. (5) But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and you are poverty.”
— Gospel of Thomas 3 (NHS)
Yes. But another interpretation of “The Way of heaven is impartial” is suggested by the Tanakh: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).
Hmmm … so the Lord’s ways are different from ours/yours, but He’s not partial to either?
A Tibetan tantra begins: “Samaya. Gya. Gya. Gya.” Translated: “(Cosmic)Mind. Deep. Deep. Deep.”
And later the writer interprets this ‘Deep’ as “Ineffable” and comments to the effect that if Mind (or, in the West, God) is ineffable, why try to describe It (Him)?
As for God’s partiality (or not) for His ways or ours, I don’t know what Jews think (referring to my earlier quotation from Isaiah), but Christians tend to think that God’s Way (Love) *ought be* Our Way and, that to the extent that it is, we are, as it were, One with God.
But I personally am thinking here of the God of Peirce’s religious cosmology, one where cosmic evolution extends Love further and further. That–along with a few other Signs (natural, human, and Divine)–is, perhaps, all we can truly know of the Mind of God, so that not only religious sages, but Nature itself is also our teacher of the Ways of God.
And so, not surprisingly, Peirce includes a religious metaphysics in his cenoscopic philosophy.
Tonight I’m thinking that the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection and Life Everlasting is but a metaphor for the notion that there is *only* Life, that Death is an illusion (I know we disagree on this).
This is hard to get at scientifically, but I think that some of Peirce’s ideas in the 1898 lecture series hint at the way in which there has *never* been nothingness (although Time is a problematic concept in all this), that Life and potential Life were, are, and always will be (from the get go, before the putative Big Bang).
And if this is so, then as the Vedas proclaim, Tat vam asi–you are that and so you are eternal.
As for one’s personality, well, I’m glad I have one! But in the long run *that* doesn’t matter all that much. Peirce says as much.
Love is love is love.