John Dunn

THE BEGINNING

Sunday, 8 October 2023 at 19:50

Before and after part 2

THE BEGINNING

We need to allow for spiritual receptiveness without individual enclosure.

I am constantly given to myself in a stream of ideas which come to my mind more or less unexpectedly, bringing me a light whose nature I cannot forebode and of which I become aware at a later stage.

The origin of this stream of ideas transcends my person and resolves itself in the reality of the whole.

My current thinking is the thinking of reality inside me. The reality and I coincide in a single centrality.

© John Dunn.

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

Sunday, 8 October 2023 at 19:48

Before and after part 1

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

This is the origin of the crisis of the modern man.

It is caused by the inability of looking outside ourselves for the source of our current consciousness and thinking.

We are incapable of believing in an other as absolute, of having faith in the idea.

The crisis lies in the hypostasis of the person, in egocentrism and egoism:becoming inward-looking, loving only ourselves directly and being miserable due to the awareness of our limitedness.

We believe our thoughts are our own, garnered from the ready-made world outside, and locked inside our brains, where eventually they perish.

© John Dunn.

Pinnacle of sinfulness

Sunday, 8 October 2023 at 19:33

Pinnacle of sinfulness

We cannot speak of any reality that is not in the living thinking of our current consciousness. This excludes the thoughts that differ from our current one.

To presuppose or believe in a reality outside of current consciousness is to repeat original sin.

This places God above, as understood by believers, at the pinnacle of sinfulness.

© John Dunn.

The origin story

Saturday, 7 October 2023 at 21:50

The origin story

All origin stories need a mythology, because there is no other way of explaining the inexplicable. 



The origin of being needs an intervention into the state of non-being. It is in the intervention that the mystery lies, because it will not be explained. That which will not be explained needs myth in order that we may at least grasp at the principle of being’s origin by some means. The critical turn comes when it is realised that the cosmic origin story serves to explicate the personal origin story. Once the transition is made, truth is no longer distant and abstract, but immanent and real.

How shall this infinite oneness of nothing be expressed, this unchanging equilibrium that lasted from for ever, until the mystery of the intervention? It will be personified as Ananke, goddess of inevitability, necessity, fate and destiny. The everlasting oneness was Ananke’s realm where she lay contentedly in her undisturbed repose, like the veiled Isis of Sais.



"I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no one has ever lifted my garment.”



Ananke rests alone, untouched, unpenetrated, undefiled. Her’s the state of undifferentiated oneness and equilibrium, her’s the endless repeating cycle, her’s the infinite cosmos.


© John Dunn.

Before the Beginning

Friday, 6 October 2023 at 21:16

Gold or nothing?

Before the Beginning

Zero is nothing more than a mathematical convenience. It has, by its very nature, no real existence. We all accept what nothing is, but only if it is a qualified nothing.

There is nothing …in this box
There is nothing …in this room
There is nothing …between you and me
I searched for gold and found nothing.

In these instances, nothing is delimited by a qualification. We know there is oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the box, but the qualification denotes the nothingness to be agreed upon. We know that the prospector might have dug up a pile of sand and dirt in the search for gold, but we know what nothing means because of the qualification. Nothing is actually nothing plus qualifier.

Can there be nothing without qualification? Can there be unbounded nothingness, or infinite nothingness? Let us suppose the answer is yes; there can be unbounded nothingness. However, would not that state, that everlasting equilibrium, be a single nothingness, an all-embracing oneness? We have the paradox of one equaling nothing.

You might say that before the Beginning there was not nothing; but rather there was one.

© John Dunn.

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.

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.