Showing posts with label Gnosticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gnosticism. Show all posts

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Thoughts While Listening to The Collins Brothers



I was led to a radio interview with the Collins Brothers, Gnostic Luciferianism - What is it ? "Religion of Apotheosis" Paul and Phillip Collins via a Youtube link on Facebook today.

As I listened I made the following notes.

The Catholic sesquipedalian Collins Brothers, authors of  The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship: An Examination of Epistemic Autocracy, From the 19th to the 21st Century,
seem not to notice the Luciferianism in the Vatican.

At 21 minutes in we get the inevitable phrase "immanentizing the eschaton." This is the Collins' Catholic (via Voegelin and  American conservatism) putdown of any who presumes to try to make this world a Heaven (merely trying to improve one's self through gnosis or to ameliorate man's lot on this world is enough to qualify) rather than accepting one's place and suffering in Faith until one dies and is judged by God. I do not believe the Collins Brothers can get through an interview without using this term. 

Of course, Gnosticism was a prime heresy suppressed by the early Church for "Immanentizing The Eschaton," which, to the Church, is a form of the Sin of Pride. Salvation can only come through Faith and the Church. Good things come from God but without the intercession of Jesus Christ via the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Man is Lost. 

Self-knowledge and knowledge of the world are anathema to the Church since both lead man and society away from the bindings of the true Faith.

The Collins Brothers present many good insights, however, the blinders they wear courtesy of the Catholic Church, force them to scrupulously examine Trees and to ignore the Warden of the Forest.  

Some Collins Brothers Links:

http://www.thebyteshow.com/CollinsBrothers.html
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Articles/Egypt_and_Beyond.htm


Eric Voegelin, Nazi refugee. Is it any wonder he despaired that government could do good?

"Don’t let them immanentize the eschaton," Eric Voegelin wrote in the National Review back in the fifties. "Them" referred to anyone (liberals) who believed government could be used as a tool to improve the lot of the people.  At the same time National Review conservatives were embracing big government as long as it was big in ways they wanted: Promoting big military, big intelligence (especially big intelligence since the Buckley Brothers were heavily involved in this avocation), big corporations, suppression of people's movements around the world, and obedience through faith and dogma. Conservatives who thought otherwise were ostracized. 
This pattern was copied, consciously or unconsciously, from the Catholic Church. In fact, many of the neo-cons are Catholic. Take a look at the current roster of the Supreme Court. There are six Catholics (four of whom are ultra conservative, one not quite so ultra and another a purported liberal). 
If government cannot be used to improve man's existence (a marker of their Faith), the only other things it can do is to protect a wicked establishment and oppose change. The United States government and the Catholic Church have lurched (in the case of the Church one might say it re-lurched) over to this kind of faux conservatism since Voegelin wrote these words. Voegelin would be appalled.



Eric Voegelin Quotes and Notes:

Let us peruse a few words of Eric Voegelin and discover what flavor conservative he is. 

 “A further reason for my hatred of . . . ideologies is quite a primitive one. I have an aversion to killing people for the fun of it. What the fun is, I did not quite understand at the time, but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through asserting one's power, optimally by killing somebody—a pseudo-identity that serves as a substitute for the human self that has been lost. . . . A good example of the type of self that has to kill other people in order to regain in an Ersatzform what it has lost is the famous Saint-Juste, who says that Brutus either has to kill other people or kill himself.
. . . . I have no sympathy whatsoever with such characters and have never hesitated to characterize them as "murderous swine."



[I wonder if the conservatives who consider him a hero understand that their own belief set might be counted among the "ideologies" hated by Voegelin, especially after their conservatism morphed into a murderous and intolerant neo-conservatism.-JB]


"In order to degrade the politics of Plato, Aristotle, or Saint Thomas to the rank of "values" among others, a conscientious scholar would first have to show that their claim to be science was unfounded. And that attempt is self-defeating. By the time the would-be critic has penetrated the meaning of metaphysics with sufficient thoroughness to make his criticism weighty, he will have become a metaphysician himself. The attack on metaphysics can be undertaken with a good conscience only from the safe distance of imperfect knowledge." 

"Excuse my rough words—I don't mean to be disrespectful to the psychological analyses of Sartre (late in L' Être et le Néant, for example)—but he is a vulgarian and an epigone. He's not interesting.  He's not to be compared with Camus;   he was a thinker!  Sartre is not on that level."

[Sartre was a comedian.-JB]

"[Milton writes in Of True Religion , 1673:]  Catholic worship cannot be tolerated  "without grievous and unsufferable scandal giv'n to all consciencious Beholders."   And he leaves it to the civil magistrate to consider whether Catholics in England can be tolerated at all, even without public worship.   If Catholics should complain that their conscience is violated if the celebration of the mass is not permitted to them, he replies that  "we have not warrant to regard Conscience which is not founded on Scripture." . . . . Radical scripturalism has become, in the field of social technique, the instrument through which the conscience of man can be kept within the limits of national jurisdiction.
Milton goes even further in his scripturalism:  he expects everybody to do his duty and to use the opportunity offered by the English Bible translation for becoming thoroughly acquainted with Scripture.  "Neither let the Countryman, the Tradesman, the Lawyer, the Physician, the Statesman, excuse himself by his much business from the studious reading thereof. . . ."
Using a modern category, we might say that Milton was a totalitarian National Scripturalist. . . ." 

[I wonder what my Christian conservative friends think of that.-JB]
 

Voegelin Link:

http://www.voegelinview.com/

Many more quotes here:

http://www.voegelinview.com/ev/voegelin_pungent_observations.html




Sunday, January 23, 2011



All or nothing at all
Half a love, never appealed to me
If your heart, never could yield to me
Then I'd rather (rather) have nothing at all
All or nothing at all
If it's love, there is no in between
Why begin then cry, for something that might have been
No I'd rather (rather) have nothing at all
But please don't bring your lips so close to my cheek
Don't smile or I'll be lost beyond recall
The kiss in your eyes, the touch of your hand makes me weak
And my heart may go dizzy and fall
And if I fell (I fell) under the spell of your call
I would be, caught in the undertow
So you see, I've got to say no, no
All or nothing at all


"All Or Nothing At All" Lyrics by Jack Lawrence, music by Arthur Altman
first recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1939
Billboard #2 in 1943
Sinatra claimed he and Harry James were fired from the Victor Hugo cafe in Hollywood after performing it to an empty house in 1939.

"The struggle between the two worlds can permit of no compromises...Either We or They."- Benito Mussolini

“You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!”-Matthew 23:24:

The desire for an unambiguous black and white world that is certain and where one knows the rules and there is no doubt of right and wrong is the root desire and need of religion and government. This desire cannot bear individual point of view.  This desire projects upon the people a superior godlike point of view that actually emanates from the rulers of state with the acolytes of religion in their thrall (or vice versa) and is perfectly congruent with their interests. This desire for a spiritual authority actually represses true spirituality because it relies on Faith. And the beauty of Faith (belief without evidence or proof and belief in the presence of evidence or proof to the contrary) is inculcated into the minds of the people from birth. It has always been in the interest of the rulers to turn off both the rational and irrational minds of the people.

Natus est Dei Filius, non pudet, quia pudendum est; et mortuus est Dei Filius, prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus resurrexit, certum est, quia impossibile.— Tertullian (De Carne Christi V, 4)

"The Son of God was born: there is no shame, because it is scandalous. And the Son of God died: it is wholly believable, because it is foolish. And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because (it is) impossible."

Tertullian's words are often condensed into the phrase
Credo quia absurdum- I believe because it is absurd.

The unknown world of Knowledge (Gnosis) must be cloaked by established Religion and the State in the cape of Fear, partly because Gnosis is a fearful thing and partly because Gnosis is a threat to the establishment.  All the liberal humanities of the Renaissance are Gnostic. All progressive impulses in man arise from Gnosticism. Conservatives know this well and that is why they must see the world in black and white and this is why they tend to encourage State Religion (Formal or Informal) whether they actually believe in it or not. The Irony is that Gnosticism and its sundry practices produce a better man than Faith based Religion which somehow has a blind spot for the constant and simple touchstone of Gnosticism, which is the Golden Rule.

I Heard An Angel

I heard an Angel singing
When the day was springing,
"Mercy, Pity, Peace
Is the world's release."

Thus he sung all day
Over the new mown hay,
Till the sun went down
And haycocks looked brown.

I heard a Devil curse
Over the heath and the furze,
"Mercy could be no more,
If there was nobody poor,

And pity no more could be,
If all were as happy as we."
At his curse the sun went down,
And the heavens gave a frown.

Down pour'd the heavy rain
Over the new reap'd grain ...
And Miseries' increase
Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.

-William Blake