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Perpetual Beginning
Thursday, 5 October 2023 at 20:24
Perpetual Beginning
The Beginning is a constant, now, in living thinking or it is nothing. This constant would be better described as the perpetual Beginning of living thinking. That which lies outside of living thinking is a dead abstraction, i.e. nothing.
A Bible literalist might ask: why did the Beginning happen when it did, some 6000 years ago? A Big Bang scientist might ask: why did the beginning happen x billion years ago?
These questions ask about abstractions, i.e. nothing, because the Beginning is not fixed at any one discoverable time. The Beginning is now in living thinking, or it is nothing, an abstraction. The coming into being that is normally conceived of as a one-off event actually never ceases.
The usual translation of John’s Gospel is wrong. John 1:1-5 reads:
1Inthe beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The Hellenistic Greek, from which the Bible was translated, has no past tense. Also ‘Word’ was not the result of a direct translation into English. A better translation from the Greek would be ‘mind’ or ‘living thinking’, something present and intellectually above the idea of merely a verbal utterance.
In the light of the above, let me rework the translation.
1Inthe Beginning is Mind, and Mind is with God, and Mind is God. 2 He is with God in the Beginning. 3 Through him all things are made; without him nothing is made that is made. 4 In him is life, and that life is the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness is not overcoming it.
‘The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory' (John 1:14) is an English translation that conceives only an image of the incarnation and ministry of Jesus in the past. Remove the past tense, however, and insert Mind for Word, and the text emphasises that Mind becomes flesh that dwells amongst us now.
The Mind becomes flesh and dwells among us, and we behold his glory.
The world that we behold is his glory, not the reflection back of some ready-made and pre-supposed, externalised idol.
The Word, in the context of John 1:1, is universally understood to mean the Logos. Given the better translation of Word, then the living thinking of Mind is the Logos, and the Logos is God and God is Love. Following my argument, we might then consider the Logos, the living God, as the living thinking of Mind, dwelling in rather than amongst us.
This notion of in, rather than amongst, was favoured by John:
He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)
© John Dunn.
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The Great North Road
Wednesday, 4 October 2023 at 21:32
The Great North Road
I’ll be motorcycling northwards up sections of the Great North Road in Cambridgeshire, seeking out stretches of the old road and landmarks, or the sites of vanished landmarks, along the way. I'll commit some of my explorations to video, and possibly to YouTube if the material seems worth it.
The old road in Little Paxton was bypassed by the current dual carriageway in 1971.
There are two milestones from the old turnpike days marked as still in existence along the bypassed road.
At the 57th milestone from London once stood Cosy Corner Tea Rooms. That old tea room serves to illustrate an era in motoring history when roadside refreshment was provided by a wide range of privately owned sheds and huts serving tea and lunch.The photograph shows the Cosy Corner Tea Rooms, opened in 1931 and, by 1936, renamed the The Cosy Corner Hotel.
In 1920 Paxton Park was sold by the Gordons and Mr Fish bought a lodge. He developed the tea rooms on the other side of the road. In 1931 it was called the Cosy Corner Tea Rooms and by 1936 The Cosy Corner Hotel. By 1940 the war had taken its toll on the business. AMr Wise acquired the failing business. However, with growing traffic along the A1 after the war, The Cosy Corner enjoyed some success, eventually expanding to become a petrol station.
Presumably this petrol business was no longer viable after the bypass was built, and eventually the St Neots Tool Hire Company was developed, which is still trading successfully to this day.
© John Dunn.
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Love is the only way
Sunday, 1 October 2023 at 17:04
The They would accuse me of solipsism wouldn’t they. (Thus spake Eros)
Love is the only way
Alone? I am never alone; but I can only ever know others through love.
Without love there is only acquaintance and thingship.
But in true encounter and Love I see others’ needs as my own, and I give myself to them.
The part of my loved ones which I lost is a reality which never lived.
Reality is not the simple abstraction from the thinking act which we take as real.
When I have this abstract reality in mind, in my ordinary mundane thoughts, I am unconscious of the thinking act which gives it life and makes it be.
Abstract reality simply does not exist, having no mortality or immortality.
The concrete reality which does exist lives in my mind.
My all-embracing mind gives life to everything.
This living multiplicity of everything is my living thinking.
My all-embracing mind coterminously brings destruction to everything.
The life of the object in my thinking mind is also its death, otherwise I would be abandoning it to a fallen life petrified.
The objects of my love, affection and passion live, their immortality being their eternal mortality.
As such, they partake of the one bread.
© John Dunn.
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Anagogic totalitarianism
Sunday, 1 October 2023 at 17:02
Anagogic totalitarianism
Erosentered my life, and now I know that my personality and liberty can only be conceived only on the basis of my freedom from the naturalistic,biological and primitively individualist bonds that existed before the Beginning.
My true state, the state characterised by my ‘transcendence’ of the political, historical and religious levels furnishes the only environment for the development of personality and true liberty
I carry myself beyond myself, beyond simple vegetative life.
Freedomis transcendence. My higher self transcends the lower self. This is thetranscendence that results from a rising up out of the vegetative ‘One life’.
This is the polar opposite of the sub-human self-transcendence, where the fallen individual transcends himself in the direction of collectives and demagogic movements. This results in a descent into the ‘One life’ with the concomitant loss of identity - the death of the self.
My transcendent consciousness is the total encompassing of all. My totalitarianism is ‘anagogic’, unlike that of the globalist collectivisers which is ‘catagogic’.
Anagogic: climb or ascent upwards.
Catagogic: one source defined it as "gutterward".
© John Dunn.
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Salt Way across the Cotswold Hills*
Sunday, 1 October 2023 at 16:48
Hailes Church, close to the Salt Way
Salt Way across the Cotswold Hills*
All life depends on the chemical properties of salt to survive. It has been used by man for thousands of years, from food preservation to seasoning.
Salt's ability to preserve food was a founding contributor to the development of civilisation. It helped eliminate dependence on seasonal availability of food, and made it possible to transport food over large distances.
Salt is the one vital food item that cannot be grown or nurtured.
A natural product, it occurs in vast quantities in a few places.
So it became a highly valued trade item, and was considered a form of currency by certain people. Roman soldiers were even paid with it, salt,in Latin Sal, hence our word today, salary.
Many salt roads were established as early as the Bronze Age to carry salt from where it occurs naturally to where it’s needed. Today I’m riding along one of them, the Salt Way across the Cotswold Hills.
This particular Salt Way was followed by salt traders and their pack horses from the source of salt in Droitwich in Worcestershire, to Lechlade in Gloucestershire.
I’m picking up the known part of the route here near Hailes Abbey, not far from Wichcombe.
It’s still identified as the Salt Way on modern maps, and has been since road maps were first made.
*My next YouTube video will be one in which I motorcycle along one of the most historic and well-known salt ways in England.
I pickup the route near Winchcombe, which in full led from Droitwich Spain Worcestershire to Lechlade in Gloucestershire. The route has been in existence since the Iron Age.
As ever, this is a sketched out basis of commentary to the video, which will slowly come together over the next couple of weeks. Please accept that this first rough draft is written for the spoken word, with all the textual liberties that this entails. This material takes a little pulling together, hence I might as well use the text here just to keep the home page fresh for Google searchers. Please bear with me.*
© John Dunn.
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