“The consensus of the best spiritual opinion and insight in regard to the life beyond is, in the view of the present lecturer, to be found in the cosmic speculations of our Aryan ancestors, whether Brahmanic, Buddhistic, Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonic or Neoplatonic. To this the Jews added a vision whose intense moral fervor provided the necessary complement to whatever is negative, inert and emptily transcendental in the otherworld vision in question. We may be urged to be Jews in regard to this world, and Brahmins and Neoplatonists in regard to the next.” (Transcendence of the Cave, pp. 166-167)
“The intelligible world is...presided over by a mind which is not anyone’s mind but to which all minds, set outside this world at varying distance in the sphere of instances, aspire, and by which they may be said to inspire. Ultimate truth in this region seems as close to atheism and to theism (or vice versa), a fact evidenced by the perennial wobble of enlightened opinion on the matter (meaning by ‘enlightened’ the view of Buddhas and Messiahs, not of what are generally called ‘advanced thinkers’).” (Transcendence of the Cave, p. 156)
I may here say briefly why I considered the Messianic life and mission of Jesus as a shadow of the cave, and not as the unique incarnation of absolute deity that Christians suppose it to have been. My reasons for questioning the central dogma of Christianity are reasons of emphasis: that in the notion of the Messianic status of Jesus there is a stress on the contingent carry-out as opposed to the essential core of deity which I cannot but see as unbalanced, and which leads, I think, to a large amount of essential emptiness and circularity.” (Transcendence of the Cave, pp. 114-5)
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