Response from Son of Moses

This was originally posted as a comment here. I thought it was worth a posting all its own. This is quite a long post, so you need to click "read more" to see the full text. Love to hear what people think. Vayukesha.

I think that a lot of what you say in your post of June 13th is a sort of half truth, or, to be more polite, an expression of only one side of the truth. I say this because what you say seems to deny the place and the function of true revelation.

Philosophy, as usually understood and as to some extent I see you and Mr. J. using the word, is an after-the-event activity, an analysis of what has first to be revealed to the inner soul of a seer (either that of the philosopher him/herself- as probably in the case of Plato and Shankara - or that of some other recipient of authentic revelation).

A seer in this context means simply a human vehicle suitable for the purpose, sufficiently inwardly pure, that is, or otherwise fitted for reception of a cosmic vision, a vision that necessarily comes through but is otherwise sourced than the limited mental conditioning of the human being. The job of philosophy, therefore, is to seek to make sense of, to explain and to bring down to earth, a primal communication of the Holy Spirit.

Thus philosophy tends to make use of the analytical function of the mind, whereas the original divine vision comes through the intuitive function of human inwardness, which, rather than analytical, is whole, positive, balanced and affirmatory.

On the other hand, if we start from the human end of things, philosophy can be seen as the human search for authentic vision, and this too must eventually - as soon as possible, in fact - pass beyond the activity of the analytical mind.

Now, you may say that true philosophy is ultimately self-knowledge, needing no outside agency, and this may be so. Where then is the place of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit and the long tradition of the masters through which we gain knowledge of the path of self-realization?

This, to me, is a living question and I spend much of my study, which in my case consists of a large part of my life, pondering on and enquiring into just this area. I have noticed that Mr. J. always seems to leave out the divine world, the world of revelation, preferring, as you say, to speak of vision as the ‘product of human intelligence, imagination, endeavour and creativity.’ This, to me, leaves out any higher agency (angels, messengers, divine beings, or Being and higher worlds). It seems to negate any concept of the reality of such things as heaven, supernatural agency and the potency of prayer. It suggests that there are only two realities in relation to spiritual evolution, namely human intuition and the universal Self, perhaps with the teacher standing as the link between. This has always seemed wrong to me. As you say ‘Where does that leave revelation? What about the idea of the Upanishads as "Shruti"? Is there no place for mystical union with the divine,of intuitions received from the eternal?’

There is a lot more I could say on this subject and how Mr. J.’s words often seem so arid to me, but, for the moment I will only add just a little to the above. Indeed, I would love to meet and thrash it out with you and perhaps others. This would probably be more interesting than the average group night.

The result of the ‘reductionism’ I complain of is that there is no proper acknowledgement of the power of poetry, narrative, myth, ecstatic revelation and the like. Short of self-realization, these, in fact, are the only contact we may have with valid truth. The human mind on its own cannot know truth, only its figuring in these other, more original forms, and, as I say, philosophy has the job of midwifery, of translating these otherworldly communications to the ordinary human mind. Whether self-realization can arise without such a connection with Samashti is a question to which I have not yet reached an answer.

Concerning the living power of the scriptural word, revelation may indeed vary in purity, strength and veracity according to the cultural conditioning of the recipient, but it will always be at a different level to ordinary human thinking. It is just this higher level of understanding that qualifies it for the title of ‘scripture’.

One way of proving the potency of such scripture is its efficacy, its fruits. Thus the simple words of Jesus have transformed the world over the last two thousand years in such a way that no other words can come near. Who can say that these are mere words, or, as you put it, a ‘fossil record’ or ‘sedimentary deposit’?

There is a further point to be made before dismissing or belittling scriptures in this way, and seeing them as mere time-bound records, albeit revolutionary statements in their day. I am not alone, I think, in believing the greatest scriptures to be revelations of a ‘divine plan’, consciously given for the evolution of the human race, and also that special incarnations such as Jesus Christ are agents who ‘come down’ from higher worlds to furnish the next step in human evolution, to guide us, or at least to mitigate what would otherwise be great destruction and suffering.

Their sayings are thus relevant for as long as their visitation is current, and I personally get the sense that Jesus together with his vision still have plenty of life left in them and will guide us well through the next millennium.