I've never studied Kabala, and I've only watched the first 5 minutes of this video, but this guy is making the same sort of argument I made yesterday in an unrelated comment. The "bad" God or Devil is the "observable universe" of science. The Devil exists for the sake of the full realization of the Absolute, a reflexive self-identification process involving no object, subject, nor media.
Like the Devil, the universe of science never actually lies, but it never offers full disclosure either. Theories always underdetermine their objects and fail to describe their perceiving subjects altogether, while correct models which effectively demonstrate a theory's validity aren't specified within the theories themselves.
The purpose of observable reality is for the Absolute to be realized in the sense of "internal modeling" (of itself), the sense we know as "conscious awareness", as opposed to it being "realized" in the sense of direct embodiment, of it "merely" being self-configured.
By necessity, self-configuration ultimately entails full self-disclosure and a fully unambiguous self identification (proof) of the totality (Absoluteness) of whatever is self-configured.
The only path for the Absolute to be realized is a temporal one, for ignorance to precede the realization, and hence our worldly predicaments. We humans are the means by which the Absolute comes fully into self-realization, but only by being effectively self-deluded with ignorance to begin with.
Pure freedom alone can account for the capacity of man's ignorance, for only pure freedom could separate itself from itself, for the purpose realizing itself in a higher-order state of mind than mere physical or topological self-embodiment affords.
I would completely agree that what you have described in and through your interpretation of CTMU is very similar to Kabbalah. In fact, it's hardly distinguishable in most respects. It no doubt also strikes you that there is a similarity with several eastern traditions approximating 'great chain of being' cosmologies. Then again, it might not surprise us to find that Kabbalah takes a good deal of concepts from these perennial traditions.
The "bad" God or Devil is the "observable universe" of science. The Devil exists for the sake of the full realization of the Absolute, a reflexive self-identification process involving no object, subject, nor media.
I would personally want to avoid equating the material universe (or anything which is not pure God-self) with Satan. Evil is a tricky thing to grasp. On the one hand, we could identify evil in terms of a vector which begins at the precise moment of emanation, or in a rough manner of speaking, the very first moment of 'not-God'. I believe, in keeping with CTMU, you might describe this as the very first instant of simulation. I have personally theorized the fundamental (Ain Soph) state of God as pure self-referential being. This isn't quite satisfactory for the computational terms of CTMU, nor would I want it to be. But I could make it moreso if instead of saying that God is perfect self-reference, that He is instead an atemporal infinitely recursive function. It's precisely the moment at which God 'refers out' that we might imagine the accident of evil to emerge.
I have preferred in the past to think about the pure state of God as an infinite loop of self-reference for the precise reason that its contrast is so amenable to a description of the creative act. The precise moment at which God ceases self-reference necessarily indicates reference to 'Other'. In the creative imagery of my mind, this just is what something like a Big Bang would be. We could imagine the immaterial, all-encompassing God momentarily losing self-reference, and BOOM, a universe comes into being (or perhaps many, or infinite universes).
The purpose of observable reality is for the Absolute to be realized in the sense of "internal modeling" (of itself)
I agree. I've said in the previous comment, and I'll restate here to echo my paragraph just above, I believe that all of reality is a mind. This universal coming-to-be, in what we term a Big Bang, is not something I think of as an outward emanation of God, or a 'budding off' of a universe from some fountainhead of universes. No, there is no space or time except within that universe. It is something more like a thought, and of course it propagates deeper into itself at faster-than-light speed because light is the speed of information within that thought, or the speed at which the boundaries of the circles in Langan's Venn diagram propagate outward through space, acting as a kind of 'adapter' between the layers of simulation. I have not figured it out yet, but I actually believe gravity propagates at light speed, and it is not a fundamentally different force, but an inversion.
the sense we know as "conscious awareness", as opposed to it being "realized" in the sense of direct embodiment
YES! Hence, symbolic realism, ala my previous, longer comment.
By necessity, self-configuration ultimately entails full self-disclosure and a fully unambiguous self identification (proof) of the totality (Absoluteness) of whatever is self-configured.
I agree, but this is where it gets interesting. I am still staggered by how synchronous this is with what @PS and I have been discussing for many months now.
I believe this outward emanation that we take to be the timewise separation from God into more fully elaborated, yet differentiated, states of physical existence is something like an 'escape'. A thought is able to escape the mind-source only so long as it maintains difference. Just like when we are reading a fictional story, at any point there is 'fully unambiguous' self-identification of ourselves with the story, the story ceases and we are pulled back into ourselves. We must escape ourselves to enter fictional worlds. I take this to be an apt analogy for what our very cosmos is.
The moment that self-identification occurs, the universe (or simulation, if you'd rather) collapses back into the non-existence of the primordial God-state - i.e., back into the perfect, infinite self-referential loop that is God. Therefore, existence is always hanging on a delicate balance, and this is what necessitates evil in existence. For the goodness of Being to be realized in all of these myriad, differentiated ways, the evil is necessary to prevent God from perfect self-realization - to keep us barreling into the 'not God', constantly escaping God's 'view': to me, this is the Genesis story. I consider the apple to be analogous to the evolution of higher intelligence (which makes its coupling to the symbol of agriculture perfect from the historical standpoint). The moment that Adam and Eve realized something more sophisticated and 'naked' about their God nature, they had to escape. They had to be cast from the Garden and into a cruder level of existence because they'd become ashamed of themselves. This also recapitulates the Kabbalistic idea that the more we realize we are God (the more the Right hand accepts, the Left hand rejects), the stronger the force of rejection becomes which pushes us away and increases our sense of distance.
To me, this is also the essence of the story of Job. It's the immense desire of the person seeking God, combined with the commensurate rejecting force of this person into the 'dark night of the soul' that maintains the spiritual voltage that keeps the loop of existence open. Just like a current flowing requires opposite polarized voltages on either end of the path, our existence is contingent on a great desire to return to God combined with the proportional rejection that flings us further into existence - further into the dark night. Eventually God finds its way into all of these new places, but just like an author who writes a fictional place, we might think that the world he is writing expands 'out ahead of him' before has actually been able to explore it.
Evil just is the furthering of the creation. This seems immensely confusing because of the limitations of our language, but this is also how we understand that it's all truly just Good. Being is goodness, and evil is just what we perceive when we perceive the one aspect of the duality that is furthering creation. Hence, the afflictions of Job, or the scorched forest, or the tsunami all become evil things for us because our focal point of experience cannot perceive these from the standpoint of God. We cannot perceive from the standpoint of that which is the giver, but only from the standpoint of that which receives. This is the reason for suffering.
The idea is consummated in the crucified Christ. Take what I've said above about the desire for closeness being met with a pushing away, as necessary for the spiritual voltage that sustains existence.
Now consider the crucified Son of God who exclaims to the father, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
I consider this to be the most important thing spoken by Christ in the entire Bible. At the precise consummation of the Passion, of the piercing of the veil and the victory of goodness over evil, what happens? The Son is forsaken. That's it. It's all right there.
I would personally want to avoid equating the material universe (or anything which is not pure God-self) with Satan.
It's not even my original idea, in fact it's what the Bible says. I think a distinction can be made between "observable universe (of science)" and the (unseen) global scale of reality.
The physical universe is the realm of Satan, and the only escape is "death", which is a metaphor for the realization of the Absolute, and even then you have to get to "heaven", which is analogous to "nirvana", also an allegory for the realization of the Absolute.
Death, particularly when combined with resurrection, is a metaphor for the temporary cessation of volition (Karma). I suppose the cold, analytical description "cessation of volition" is virtually meaningless outside of its realization.
I have personally theorized the fundamental (Ain Soph) state of God as pure self-referential being.
The self-reference of God by God is via sentient beings, up to and including the direct realization of the absolute via the suspension of volition.
Realizing the Absolute is just the temporary suspension of volitional activity, but this also implies a meaning for life.
The Absolute state is "just" a pure stasis, and the realization thereof is "just" the suspension of volition or karma. The realization thus requires volitional (fallen) beings such that volition could then be suspended.
The Absolute is "pure stasis", "pure freedom", "boundlessness", or else in physical terms a "primordial, infinite mass". All of these descriptions are equivalent ways of describing an effectively infinite, unbound potential or else God.
An infinite, primordial mass (qua God) is implied by an expanding universe and the "Big Bang" model, while the inverted conspansion model (CTMU) models the (contracting) observable universe "inside" the primordial mass, thereby coherently describing the notion of God's presence in all things as the syntactic distribution of God over all things as per a Venn diagram.
My contention with the CTMU could be a matter of clarification. The "G.O.D." operator sounds like the Devil to me, while just by analytical definition alone, "God" couldn't be other than UBT, which is "pure stasis", or else "God's grace", "heaven", or "nirvana".
The purpose of life is that "God's grace" isn't "fully" realized unless or until "fallen" beings can realize it, most particularly in the very midst of mass suffering and the rampant and systemic non-realization of "God's grace" by society in general.
YES! Hence, symbolic realism, ala my previous, longer comment.
Symbolic realism isn't quite what I meant by a conscious awareness of the Absolute, but it's not unrelated. In the sense of a cessation of volition (karma), the Absolute (God's grace, Nirvana) is manifest by default in the mind of the perceiving subject.
The realization of the Absolute IS equivalent to a conscious, perceiving human being ceasing and desisting with volitional activity (karma), at least temporarily. Given that reality = mind, and that Absolute reality is an eternally pure stasis, the non volitional mind defaults by necessity to its most fundamental, Absolute state.
The Absolute can potentially be realized by anyone, yet it's not something anyone can do, since the "cessation of volition" is by definition not a goal which can be volitionally attained.
Beyond what I've said is the realization that there's simply no identifiable "cause" (of reality) besides volition itself, meaning volition is the only form of causality. Volition is cause because "God's grace" must be concealed to be fully realized, while volition (cause) is the only thing which conceals an ever present, eternally pure stasis from its own self-perceiving mind. The Absolute by definition is an eternally pure stasis which can't be caused, yet which must be "fully" realized in the direct, non-volitional sense.
The relative, physical universe is associated with causality up to a point, but never at the global scale.
Because we must use "cause & effect" to think and perceive, we're naturally wired to presume a cause for reality, ie "God", yet the constraints of the physical world aren't fully compatible with God qua "pure freedom".
Evil just is the furthering of the creation.
I agree, yet I'm suggesting there's ultimately no such thing as "creation", certainly not of the Absolute. Creation entails causality and causality is volition, which is our psychological baggage, not God's. If God is fully realized in the suspension of volition, God isn't volitional and has no reason to "create" what's already Absolute and eternal.
On the other hand, God isn't "forbidden" to create, just not the Absolute God, so we get the Devil instead.
The "creation" aspect of reality is the Devil, while volition is the very thing concealing God's eternal grace from the awareness. The Devil can be regarded as "furthering creation" in the sense that without volition there's no creation, yet nothing was actually "created" which wasn't eternally self-realized already.
I suppose I need to actually watch rest of the video now to comment further.
The only path for the Absolute to be realized is a temporal one, for ignorance to precede the realization, and hence our worldly predicaments. We humans are the means by which the Absolute comes fully into self-realization, but only by being effectively self-deluded with ignorance to begin with.
I think a certain reading of what you've said here can be considered true, if we add a caveat:
The Absolute, as reality, comes into self-realization through us, insofar as we participate in the Absolute's reality.
My point is that, God (the Absolute) does not need us for anything, let alone self-realization. His very Trinitarian nature is self-knowing - and this nature is eternal, prior to any creation.
But, given that God creates, His creation, insofar as it is real, necessarily participates in Him (that is what creation is). For any created thing to "realize itself", means to realize God. But this cannot be done by what is lower apprehending what is higher; what is higher must condescend to what is lower and enlighten it. This is the purpose of the Incarnation. The Absolute did not just create; He also entered personally into His creation. The eternal united Himself forever with the temporal.
I'm having difficulty expressing my point here. I guess the gist of it is, I think your statement is false prior to creation, but is necessarily true once God has created, since God (the One, the Absolute) is reality, and so is His creation. For reality to self-realize once reality constitutes God + creation, indeed, must involve both God and creation. This is why the Church has always taught that "only one will (God's) was required to create, but two wills (God's and man's) is required for salvation." Given creation, man's participation in salvation - which is nothing more than self-realization - is necessary.
Which is why "good atheists" still go to hell. They have decided to not participate in the self-actualization of reality. And yet they have been made part of reality (again, given that creation took place).
The second part of that Church doctrine I cited ("two wills (God's and man's) is required for salvation") is precisely what you are expressing when you say "We humans are the means by which the Absolute comes fully into self-realization". And of course, the Absolute wants the maximum number of "telors" to participate in this process, but insofar as some of the creatures involved are "telors", following Langan's terminology, their will, in addition to the Absolute will, is inseparable from this process.
God (the Absolute) does not need us for anything, let alone self-realization
I'm going further and saying "God" doesn't do anything whatsoever and forever. Part of God "not doing anything" is the stilled, empty mind of "Zen", whereby "God's grace" (the Absolute) is beheld directly, without any subject, object, or media.
I think I'm using the term "realize" in two different ways. In the most ordinary sense I know of, realize means "become aware of", yet in another sense "realize" could mean the generative act of becoming real, as per God creating it. The two senses of "realize" aren't unrelated, yet we can still draw a distinction between merely "becoming aware of something" and "something coming into being".
I think your statement is false prior to creation, but is necessarily true once God has created
As Langan notes, knowledge can mean either direct embodiment or else internal modeling, or both.
Prior to creation, as you say, reality is self-configured (realized) strictly via direct self embodiment. At some point after "creation", as an intrinsic aspect of its self embodied self realization, reality is temporarily self-configured (realized) via internal modeling (eg. sentience, perception).
The self-embodiment of reality by reality is the eternal and absolute stasis (grace of God).
The internal modeling of reality by reality is temporal, conditional, relative, and cognitive.
"only one will (God's) was required to create, but two wills (God's and man's) is required for salvation."
The realization of reality per self embodiment and internal modeling (sentience and perception) still isn't complete without the direct realization of the Absolute, which requires a being capable of reality-modeling, meaning perception, and a particular sort of temporary cessation of said being's volitional mental states. The stilled mind of the "internal modeler" defaults to the realization of the eternal grace of God, a process know in the East as Zen, and what could potentially be described in the West as "salvation".
The issue I have with the religious description of "two wills", although fine as poetic allegory, is that neither the cessation of mental activity nor the creation of the cognitive universe are acts of will, but rather it's the cessation of will altogether by which the Absolute is realized, and by which reality is created by God.
As I understand, Satan "falls from heaven", and this to me translates into "the cessation of will by God", namely the will to govern the universe as merely a self-configuration without internal modeling. The observable universe of life and science is a task taken up by "Satan" who oversees the "world" of cognition. Satan is deceptive in the sense that theories underdetermine objects and don't prescribe their own models, and can never predict who will perceive their confirmation. Theories can be true, yet which ones and in what contexts? The debate over science quickly devolves into politics, where politicians want it, and then it stays there unless or until people become aware of a new reality model. At this point a new set of religious myths and allegories wont cut it.
They have decided to not participate in the self-actualization of reality.
I don't think this is even possible. If raw sentience is self-realization and perception is self-modeling, reality is self actualized (to an extent) by default where sentience & perception exist, regardless if the sentient or perceiving being has any clue about metaphysics. I say sentience & perception self-actualize reality "to an extent" because the "full measure" of self-realization is the realization of the Absolute aka "Zen", a reflexive, monastic, self identification process free of duality or trilogy, involving the cessation of will by God & Man alike, amidst the domain of Satan himself, without recourse to will or ability, the only place it (the Absolute) could freely appear.
...their will, in addition to the Absolute will, is inseparable from this process
I'm agreeing the "two wills" are inseparable from the process, yet only because their concurrent cessation is the means by which the Absolute is fully realized. In other words, God ceases to "just be self embodied" and becomes "internally modeling" introducing Satan into the process, which is the only way for perceiving (reality-modeling) beings to freely give up their own will (volition, Karma) and thereby realize the Absolute.
and this to me translates into "the cessation of will by God", namely the will to govern the universe as merely a self-configuration without internal modeling
Very interesting that you say this. I've recently taken to following an interpretation of the Book of Genesis that suggests that the corporeal world as we know it came about as a result of the Adamic fall.
The observable universe of life and science is a task taken up by "Satan" who oversees the "world" of cognition
Satan is called the Lord of this World, the Prince of Darkness. The spirit of the world and his spirit are the same.
I say sentience & perception self-actualize reality "to an extent" because the "full measure" of self-realization is the realization of the Absolute aka "Zen"
Yes. And what Catholics call salvation is, as you've noted, akin to Zen - and so even if we are all already self-actualized "to an extent", it is the "full measure" that some (many, in fact) eternally forsake. Their consequent suffering is a result of God willing them to be saved (God loving them), but their not willing to be saved. The first will is inclined as necessary (or "ceased amidst the domain of Satan", as you put it), but the second will is not properly inclined, i.e. it remains fixed on the world, not God. The reason this error can persist forever is that once a creature is ensnared by sin, has been deceived by the devil, the grace of God is required to lift them out of it. But fixed on the world so firmly as they are, they will never open themselves up to this grace.
So insofar as I am talking about the "full measure" of self-actualization when I speak of salvation (as the Church teaches, salvation is the vision of God, the Beatific Vision, and once fully possessed, it can never be lost), then indeed, it is possible for some to not obtain it.
Which renders our lives here and now profoundly significant, instead of basically meaningless.
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