Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
#1678 - Thursday, January 15, 2004 - Editor: Jerry
This issue features excerpts from Yale Landsberg's website on Neo-GNOSIS. It begins with excerpts from an article that summarizes Gnosticism.
The Gnostic World View: A Brief Summary
of Gnosticism
from http://www.gnosis.org/gnintro.htm
GNOSTICISM IS THE TEACHING based on Gnosis, the
knowledge of
transcendence arrived at by way of interior, intuitive means.
Although
Gnosticism thus rests on personal religious experience, it is a
mistake
to assume all such experience results in Gnostic recognitions. It
is
nearer the truth to say that Gnosticism expresses a specific
religious
experience, an experience that does not lend itself to the
language of
theology or philosophy, but which is instead closely affinitized
to,
and expresses itself through, the medium of myth. Indeed, one
finds
that most Gnostic scriptures take the forms of myths. The term
“myth”
should not here be taken to mean “stories that are not
true”, but
rather, that the truths embodied in these myths are of a
different
order from the dogmas of theology or the statements of
philosophy.
...
Gnosticism embraces numerous general attitudes
toward life: it
encourages non-attachment and non-conformity to the world, a
“being in
the world, but not of the world”; a lack of egotism; and a
respect for
the freedom and dignity of other beings. Nonetheless, it
appertains to
the intuition and wisdom of every individual “Gnostic”
to distill from
these principles individual guidelines for their personal
application.
...
Many esoteric teachings have proclaimed,
"As it is above, so it is
below." Our psychological nature (the microcosm) mirrors
metaphysical
nature (the macrocosm), thus Gnosticism may possess both a
psychological and a religious authenticity. Gnostic psychology
and
Gnostic religion need not be exclusive of one another but may
complement each other within an implicit order of wholeness.
Gnostics
have always held that divinity is immanent within the human
spirit,
although it is not limited to it. The convergence of Gnostic
religious
teaching with psychological insight is thus quite understandable
in
terms of time-honored Gnostic principles.
...
The Gnostic world view has always been timely,
for it always responded
best to the “knowledge of the heart” that is true
Gnosis. Yet today,
its timeliness is increasing, for the end of the second
millennium has
seen the radical deterioration of many ideologies which evaded
the
great questions and answers addressed by Gnosticism. The clarity,
frankness, and authenticity of the Gnostic answer to the
questions of
the human predicament cannot fail to impress and (in time) to
convince.
Yale Landsberg
Intro to how It dually works to create non-duality
Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, "The aspects of things
that are most
important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and
familiarity."
If you take the time to read it through, you will see that
what is at
http://Neo-GNOSIS.org is the
most unique description you have so far
ever encountered about how It does Its thing so simply and so
familiarly and so dually non-dually that It tends to slip through
our
minds' fingers like evaporating cognitive water -- until one is
willing
to wrestle with Its Heraclitean "union of O's and 1's
opposites"
nature.
Like Neo's Red Pill, the REAL Red Pill you will find is only
for a
special kind of reader, one willing to wrestle with what is both
totally strange, and yet also strangely familiar, until he or she
prevails over its slipperiness and elusiveness and get to see it
in all
its wholly integrated diversity.
These are excerpts from the website of Yale Landsberg. Much has been left out and enough is presented to give the reader a taste of this gnosis. To follow the logic taking the reader from one excerpted paragraph to another, refer to the website: http://Neo-GNOSIS.org
PART ONE
Could it be that even the idea of there possibly being some
kind of
"set-in-stone" or re-programmable (if you know the
password) master
template of cognitive "must's", "must not's",
"should's" & "should
not's" within us, which tends to govern what we do and how
we do it, so
violates at least one of our most cherished religious or even
scientific beliefs, that when we are given an opportunity to
experiment
with that idea, so as to wrestle with it -- and test it out --
all (but
the most liberal) thinkers turn away from that improbable
although
possible possibility? Instead of objectively subjecting it to
thoughtful scrutiny? ...
The beginning of my (and perhaps, your) journey...
A good many years ago, in the spirit of H.A.P. (Humor,
Acceptance and
Patience), I was luckily offered what turned out to be a
miraculous
opportunity. I was asked to solve this very enlightning puzzle:
if "Ox"
is "going away from x", and if "1y" stands
for "coming towards y", what
are "1Ox", OOx", "11y" &
"O1y"? It is easy to assume that this puzzle
is nonsense -- and that those binary combinations are
meaningless. On
the other hand, after much "contempleation" I have come
to believe that
the easily overlooked and much under appreciated "Mira!
Mira! Look!
Look!" answers to this mira-culously enlightening Puzzle,
step-by-step
logically lead to the re-creation of a "natural machine
language" of
Nature -- AND ULTIMATELY ALSO TO...
God and Nature's "Natural" Operating System
...
Part One's pointing to that one point of view in meme space
that can
help you move away from a limited view of Change and towards a
more
inner eye-opening one is reminiscent of Luis Borge's The Aleph --
Borges' "Aleph" being a fictionalized version of a
legendary though
possibly not fictional point of view in pre and post-orthodox
meme
space, an orthogonal to conventional wisdom perspective with
these
properties:
when you properly turn away from an old point of viewing
natural
processes and towards a singularly unique new point of view in
your
mind's eye, and then also properly look at that point and from it
at
just exactly the right angle,
and your mind does not in revulsion revolt and thus re-veil
what is
being cognitively revealed to you via what passes for a wholly
unorthodox new and more encompassing perspective,
you can, in some at first disorienting and then sooner or
later
reorienting way, simultaneously view all of the beautiful and
vile
comings and goings of the comings and goings... of the universe.
~ ~ ~
PART TWO ...
The nature of any such God and/or Nature's "natural"
operating system
is indeed confusing due as much as anything else to the nature of
its
outside-in and inside-out dual ways of "looking" at
inputs and outputs.
To make things a little easier for non-experts, this chapter
begins
with a "GNOS IS" introduction to fractal
self-similarity...
... The following is a "GNOS IS" way to
visualize the makings of a Koch Curve. First begin with an
initial x called the "initiator" with which to initiate
its construction. Then replace initiator x with some very
specific replacement y called the "generator" which is
used for generating the next generation. But notice that as this
construction is the construction of a fractal the generator y
must look in some way similar to its initiator x. E.g., a Koch
Curve's initiator is a straight line of unit length, and its
generator is a straight and zig-zag line, y, whose
zig-zagging middle third consists of two straight line-segments,
each of which is 1/3 of length of its original straight line initiator x.
As you have already figured out, y is called the "generator" because y specifically specifies how to generate the fractal's next generation from its previous generation (implicitly starting with the initiating generation.)
And now having gone through/come through the first cycle of fractally "going away from initiator x & coming to generator y", keep repeating that process, no matter how complex the result seems to get. And simply by first changing each x-like portion of y into a new x. And lastly by replacing all of those new scaled-down x's with scaled-down new y replacements. Again and again and again..
.
Another example of such an iterative and recursive process is this. Should we begin with the three equal-in-size connected lines of an equilateral triangle instead of a single line, the result is this fractal version of a real-world snow-flake.
Computerized fractal constructions are the optimal way to create realistic computerized images of natural phenomena like snowflakes, clouds, surf, shorelines, islands, continents, and all other naturally occurring shapes. Indeed, naturally occurring fractals, each with their own "going away from x" and "coming to y" recursive iterations have been found while studying natural processes as seemingly diverse as traffic flows, condensed matter, earthquakes, DNA sequences, cosmology, biology, finance, turbulence, gravity, metallurgy, etc. And thus a multi-part question about a possible, legendary unity in diversity...
...Is there something going on here in our new millennium's "God is dead/God is a computer" computationally intensive studies of natural processes? Yet not quite as yet coming off? Something that God and/or Nature through the work of Benoit Mandelbrot and Ilya Prigogine and others, now seems to be loudly telling us about itself and about us whenever we are willing to see the music of its artistry and listen to its mute musings? And ours? For are we not, for as long as we still remain here, part of Nature, and perhaps even (at the risk of offending some of you) the, at risk of self-sacrificing ourselves, children and parents of children and children of parents of children... of God?
...
Going Away From Strife And Hopefully Towards Safety
Fragment 45 of Heraclitus' "On Nature": Opposition
unites. From what
draws apart results the most beautiful harmony. All things take
place
by strife.
This essay proposes that deeply contemplating the consequences
of
longer and longer strings of O's and l's (where "O"
simply means "going
away from", not zero; and "l" stands for
"coming towards", not one)
leads to the rediscovery of a naturally occurring, infinitely
recurring
master template of Nature. And that if one is willing to think
metaphorically, this master template can be seen as both God and
Nature's own naturally occurring to and fro' computer-like
"machine
language" -- and as God and Nature's fuzzy and Boolean
logic-like
fractally operating "natural" operating system...
"Machine language" in the sense that any
computational machine at its
lowest level of processing requires instructions to it to be in
the
form of a particular set of digits such as O's and l's.
"Fractal" in the sense that going away from Number
10, Downing Street
and coming towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are both:
--simultaneously going away from the Prime Minister's
residence, going
away from the city of London and going away from the coast of
Britain,
as well as at the same time,
--simultaneously coming towards the United States, coming
towards
Washington, D.C., and coming towards the White House.
And "natural" as compared to more familiar
"artificial" operating
systems such as Windows, Unix, Linux, OS 360, etc., in the sense
that
logarithms to the base "e" are more "natural"
than logarithms to other
bases.
...
(A thought experiment follows which) assumes that you are by now
open
to the tiny but possible possibility that a Godly Nature or a
Natural
God might really be using hierarchies of program-like strings of
O's
and 1's in all of its going from state x and coming to state y
processes;
...
I now rephrase the circumstances of our thought experiment
thus. You
are once again in the process of going away from initial perilous
country x and coming towards a hopefully safer neighbor y. Only
this
time you are open to an enlightening possibility. It is -- the
possibility -- that just as velocity is about change of position,
and
that acceleration is about change of change of position:
so too there may be other kinds of changes, and other kinds of
changes
of changes, and other kinds of changes of changes of changes and
so on,
happening all of the time.
All of which tend to go un-detected until we find them by
first looking
for them and then second looking at them and finally actually
seeing
them and noticing their properties -- instead of turning our
cognitive
eyes away from them.
Thus, the crux of Neo-GNOSIS, an always and in all ways
hidden-in-plain-sight logical pathway to rightly cross /pass over
from
absolute ignorance about God and Nature's "natural"
operating system to
a first glimmering of enlightenment about it.
...
Yesterday Heraclitus the Obscure said, "All is flux".
Today, these "resurrected" fundamental insights
about God and Nature's
OS are now added: All of nature is ever fractally ebbing/going
away
from, and flowing/coming towards, an infinite number of other
comings
and goings... of change. And if you want to see it, there is
based on
pure logic and everyday experiences a funda-mental
ethos/meta-morality
inherent in Change.
And tomorrow?
Maybe this "trans-cultural",
"pan-ecumenical", perhaps even one day
"scientific" observation:
To future Science, from 'Religions' Past:
All, ah, is 'Allah', Christ's 'First' and 'Last'.
From ancient Crete, when all was 'Pan',
To Humanism's 'God is Man' --
Ezra's 'El Yah' is Rome's Jove Pater,
and priests of Buddha's Almah Mater.
In 'Books of Changes', (Yh Chng and Tao)
Is Sanscrit's Yahve -- Your Sacred Cow.
Thy 'To' is coming and 'From' is going;
Thy never changing is E v e r - F l o w i n g . . .
__________________________
The End of this Journey for Those Who Were Destined to Reach This Destination
By the grace of whatever you believe in, this essay has by now
revealed
to you the possibility that:
all from x to y changes are "consciously" observing
the same
meta-"must's" & meta-"must not's" and
meta-should's & meta-"should
not's "; and in a metaphorical if not meta-physical way
also,
"con-science-iously" following the exact same
meta-ethics/"good"
standard of conduct attributed to the way God Works and/or the
standards and standard deviations that Nature objectively
subjects Her
processes to;
and thus we "end up" with a most natural kind of
always fair to its
principles of operations (however, not always kindly) kind of
"natural"
operating system.
And therefore whether we seek to observe its GNOSIS answers,
and to hear them in all of their aweful might and legendary glory --
or we prefer to close our eyes, our minds and even our hearts to it
-- verily, God and Nature's "Natural" Operation
System" IS.
Read the entire treatise: http://Neo-GNOSIS.org