Pluto and the Kabbalah

October 10, 2014
A few years ago, when I began studying the Kabbalah, the correlations between the Sephirot (the ten archetypal cosmic emanations of the Infinite) and the planets quickly became clear to me. Even though Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto had yet to be discovered by astronomers, the ancients anticipated them, as made clear by the Kabbalah. When Daat (the “invisible eleventh” Sephirah) is understood to correlate with Neptune and form a mystical dyad with Keter, which correlates with Pluto, then the ten-Sephirah Kabbalah remains intact as an integral Tree of Life.

But when I learned that Pluto, in 2006, had been unceremoniously demoted from the pantheon of planets by professional astronomers, my faith in the Kabbalah as an integral Tree was shaken, for if Pluto was no longer a planet, then the Kabbalah no longer made sense to me.

Thankfully, I came across the article below on the Web, and in accordance with the East Kentucky Science Center and Planetarium, I am happy to still consider Pluto as the ninth planet in the solar system. The article follows:

“In August of 2006, the International Astronomical Union came up with a definition of the word “Planet”. … Read the full article

Spiritual Music

October 8, 2014
Gautama Buddha instructed his monks not to listen to music. But in Hinduism, devotional music has, across the Ages, served as an aid to spiritual practice. Although I’m a big fan of Gautama’s teachings, my sentiments are with the Hindus, because I know from personal experience that the“right” music can be spiritually helpful.

The question is, what is “right” music? The answer is, whatever music helps you connect to and stay connected to the Spirit. Music that opens the heart and/or stimulates vertical feeling-intensity (such as certain psychedelic and hard rock) can be classified as “potentially” spiritual - and I say “potentially spiritual,” because unless you are able transmute the musical vibration into spiritual energy, then it’s not spiritual for you.

It’s common to consider New Age music, such as Paul Horn’s Inside the Taj Mahal, Ray Lynch’s Deep Breakfast, and Merlin’s Magic-Chakra Meditation music, as “spiritual”; likewise, it’s not uncommon to also consider some classical music -- exemplified by Pachelbel’s Canon (which Adi Da classified as 7th-stage music) – as spiritual.… Read the full article

Aristotle’s Three Laws of Thought, Part 2

September 23, 2014
In this brief article, I will argue that Aristotle’s Three Laws of Thought also hold true for Spiritual, or Ultimate, Reality. Here are the three Laws again:

1) A thing is what it is (the law of identity).
2) A thing cannot at once be and not-be (the law of non-contradiction).
3) A thing cannot neither be nor not-be (the law of the excluded middle).

I say that God, or Ultimate Reality, is the Thing-Itself, the single Existent, or Being, from which all existents derive. This Being Is What It Is – Consciousness-Energy –and it can Be nothing other than Consciousness-Energy, because Consciousness-Energy is Being: the uncreated single, irreducible, timeless, spaceless Context or Source of all created content, or existents.

Being cannot Be and not Be. If Being could not Be, then it would no longer Be Being; it would be Non-Being. But Non-Being is a Non-Existent, a Zero.

There can be no middle ground between Being and Non-Being. Being either Is, or Is Not. And as I have made clear, Being Is (Consciouness-Energy).

Ayn Rand Objectivists would argue that an all-subsuming Divine Being (the two “Vines” being Consciousness and Energy) is a Floating Abstraction.… Read the full article

Aristotle’s Laws of Thought, Part 1

September 21, 2014
I have just finished reading (and reviewing at Amazon) Avi Sion’s book “In Defense of Aristotle’s Laws of Thought,” (available for under $2 on Kindle). Sion does an outstanding job arguing for the irrefutable truth of these three axiomatic statements that form the base of standard logic. These three laws of thought are:

1)    A thing is what it is (the law of identity).

2)    A thing cannot at once be and not-be (the law of non-contradiction).

3)    A thing cannot neither be nor not-be (the law of the excluded middle).

As Sion makes clear, these laws are not arbitrary, and any attempt to deny their axiomatic primacy in the practice of logic (non-contradictory identification of the facts of reality) is fanciful. Sion writes:

“The validity of logic is thus itself an inductive truth, not some arbitrary axiom. Logic is credible, because it describes how we actually proceed to distinguish truth from falsehood in knowledge derived from experience. No other logic than the standard logic of the three laws of thought is possible, because any attempt to fancifully propose any other logic inevitably gets judged through standard logic.… Read the full article

Dissing the Da Avatar, Part 4

September 12, 2014

Was Adi Da just a brilliant synthesizer of the Great Spiritual Traditions, or also a true innovator, upgrading Dharma for all the ages? My vote is for the latter. Although my viewpoint is that Da is dishonest, or not transparent, about what he appropriated from the Great Spiritual Traditions, he deserves credit for his seminal insights and and exegeses.

First and foremost among Da’s seminal revelations was his teaching on radical understanding. Although he doubtless developed this teaching on the basis of J. Krishnamurti’s teachings, Da took radical (or gone-to-the-root) understanding to an unprecedented level. His exegesis of the understanding and transcendence of one’s moment-to-moment activity of self-contraction is pure genius. According to Da, the self-contraction (the formation of awareness that is suffering) is generated by one’s ego, which is not an entity, but rather an activity – the complex avoidance of relationship.

To one who has “cracked the cosmic code,” there isn’t a clearer, more precise description of the root-ego (the complex avoidance of relationship) and the “method” to transcend it (relationship, as Be—ing).… Read the full article

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