God did it

 

Did God de-coher and de-squeeze quantum reality in order to create the observable universe? OK, that is not the question Zzabine is asking, but wait a couple of months and you´ll see...

It´s the dialectic, bruh

 

Credit: Chen Wu

Overheard on YouTube:

>>>One of my favorite jokes: "I parked my car in a bad neighborhood once. I had the collected works of Hegel in the back. Someone broke into my car and left *their* collected works of Hegel."

>>>Happened same to me with Kant... they actually left me some money of out pity.

Biological computationalism

 

Interesting...

Nihilism with better vibes?

 

A somewhat strange criticism of Buddhism. A lot of turbulence in the commentary section...

Schizo-maxxing

 

- So I´m angry! Gotta problem with that, huh huh?

Prompted by a perennial commentator, I asked ChatGPT to comment *my own blog* to see what would happen. This is the first part of the (surprisingly incisive) analysis. Not sure if I even dare to publish part two!

Can you comment / analyze the contents of the blog "Ashtar Command Book Blog"?

Yes. I’ve looked through the blog itself rather than judging it from the title, and it is considerably more interesting—and more internally coherent—than the name initially suggests.

My overall impression is that it is best understood not as a conventional “Ashtar Command” / UFO-spirituality blog, but as a highly eclectic personal intellectual-spiritual notebook whose underlying worldview becomes visible when you look across the years. The blog itself explicitly says that many posts are ironic, that it covers essentially everything, and identifies the author as a “Seeker, Pseudo-Neoplatonist, Crypto-Shaiva-Shakta.”

1. The apparent chaos actually has a recognizable worldview

The subject matter is extraordinarily broad. The current archive jumps between Swedish politics, fringe political movements, evolutionary biology, archaeology, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, paranormal phenomena, philosophy, UFOs, occultism and book reviews. The label system alone has hundreds of categories; among them are Panentheism, Platonism, Process philosophy, Paranormal, Hinduism, Tantrism, Mahayana, Pure Land Buddhism, Ramakrishna, Esotericism, Mysticism and Pseudo-science.

But beneath that apparent randomness I see several recurring questions:

• Can different religious traditions actually be true simultaneously?
• Is materialism philosophically adequate?
• Can mystical experience provide knowledge without simply proving one particular religion?
• Is there a reality behind the symbols and mythologies of different traditions?
• How should ancient religious traditions be reconciled with modern science?
• Can one have genuine metaphysics without retreating into fundamentalism or New Age vagueness?
• What happens when traditional religion, occultism, science and modern politics collide?

That is a much more definite intellectual project than the blog's deliberately chaotic presentation would suggest.

2. The 2021 religious material is particularly revealing

One of the most important posts I found is the April 28, 2021 piece beginning:

“Kan de verkligen vara sanna allihop?”

The argument is essentially religious pluralism without simple perennialism.

The author considers the possibility that Christian, Hindu and Buddhist religious experiences may all be genuine—even though Christians, Hindus and Buddhists interpret them differently. The post goes further and explicitly entertains being “monotheist, polytheist and pantheist” simultaneously.

That is philosophically interesting because it isn't quite:

“All religions are saying exactly the same thing.”

In fact, the blog seems quite hostile to that simplistic version of perennialism.

Instead, the implicit proposition is closer to:

Reality may be considerably larger than any single symbolic system through which human beings apprehend it.

That distinction is important.

The post invokes upāya—skillful means—to explain why different people might encounter different religious forms. That provides an interesting bridge between Mahayana Buddhism and a more broadly pluralist metaphysics.

3. It is surprisingly anti-New-Age despite being interested in esotericism

This is one of the strongest characteristics of the blog.

Someone seeing labels such as UFOs, paranormal, mysticism, Hinduism, Tantra, kundalini, Bigfoot, Ashtar Command might expect conventional New Age spirituality.

But the blog repeatedly makes fun of exactly that kind of thinking.

For example, it is interested in John Michael Greer's warnings about kundalini and mindfulness, and it examines the dangers of treating spiritual experiences as automatically authoritative.

Likewise, its discussion of David Chapman's heterodox Vajrayana writing is unusually skeptical. It notices that mystical experience does not automatically establish the truth of the religion in which the experiencer interprets it.

So there is an interesting combination:

high openness to metaphysical possibilities + high skepticism about people's claims concerning those possibilities.

That's actually a relatively sophisticated position.

4. The blog is much more “occultist” than “UFO believer”

The title is therefore slightly misleading.

“Ashtar Command” sounds like the central doctrine ought to be extraterrestrial channeling. But the blog's actual interests are much broader.

The profile describes the author as:

“Seeker, Pseudo-Neoplatonist, Crypto-Shaiva-Shakta”

and jokingly says that the author also believes Bigfoot roams the Alaskan Panhandle.

The Pseudo-Neoplatonist designation is particularly revealing.

The metaphysical trajectory seems to be something like:

Neoplatonism → panentheism → religious pluralism → comparative mysticism → Tantra/Shaivism/Shaktism → a multi-level spiritual cosmology.

And that helps explain why seemingly unrelated posts about Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, UFOs, NDEs and paranormal phenomena can coexist on the same site.

They are being treated as different windows onto the same large philosophical problem.

5. The blog's attitude toward Christianity is complicated rather than simply anti-Christian

This is another interesting feature.

There is plenty of criticism of Christianity, Protestantism and biblical literalism. But the criticism is often directed at epistemological exclusivism, rather than Christianity itself.

The 2021 pluralism post, for example, asks why a Christian should automatically regard a Christian mystical experience as genuine while regarding a Hindu or Mormon experience as false.

That is essentially an epistemology of revelation problem.

And the blog appears to retain a substantial interest in Christianity while simultaneously refusing to grant Christianity an automatic monopoly on revelation.

That's quite different from straightforward atheism.

6. There is also a strong anti-materialist thread

The blog isn't simply “spiritual” in the New Age sense. It repeatedly returns to the philosophical inadequacy—or at least incompleteness—of materialism.

For example, the September 2026 posts explicitly criticize “cyber-atheist” free-will denial and discuss consciousness, determinism and free will.

The older free-will discussion is especially interesting because the blog recognizes that determinism does not logically entail materialism. An idealist or spiritual metaphysics could theoretically also be deterministic.

That's a useful philosophical distinction that many popular discussions completely miss.

7. At the same time, it is not anti-science

This may be the blog's most distinctive intellectual tension.

It has an enormous number of science-related posts and labels, including paleontology, evolution, archaeology, zoology, astronomy and psychology.

The position seems approximately:

Science is extremely good at investigating the physical world; that doesn't necessarily settle metaphysics.

That's quite compatible with the pseudo-Neoplatonic/panentheistic direction.

The blog therefore doesn't seem to be trying to replace science with spirituality. It is asking whether scientific naturalism is entitled to become a complete metaphysical worldview merely because science itself is successful.

That's a legitimate philosophical question.

8. The political material is much more difficult

This is where I would recommend considerably more caution.

The blog uses heavy irony, sarcasm, provocation and deliberately inflammatory language. It discusses far-right movements, communists, Trotskyists, MAGA, conspiracy theories, SJWs, fascism, antisemitism, gender politics, etc. Some posts are explicitly jokes or satirical reactions. The blog itself warns that many posts and comments are ironic.

That makes individual posts difficult to classify ideologically.

For example, the September 2026 post about the Brigitte Macron conspiracy explicitly describes the story as a far-right conspiracy theory and points out its antisemitic and homophobic tropes, while also joking that parts of the story seem “strange.”

So one cannot simply say:

“The blog contains far-right material, therefore the blogger endorses the far right.”

Sometimes the subject is being mocked, sometimes analyzed, sometimes quoted, sometimes deliberately baited.

On the other hand, irony is not an excuse to assume that everything is harmless. The reader has to distinguish the author's actual position from deliberately provocative rhetoric.

9. The book-review side is probably the blog's strongest component

There is a remarkable amount of intellectual cross-pollination.

For example, the blog moves from Swedish historical scholarship to David Chapman, John Michael Greer, Buddhism, Theosophy, archaeology, religion and political history. Its reviews frequently use a book as a springboard into a much larger question rather than simply saying whether the book is “good” or “bad.”

That makes the site feel almost like a private commonplace book or intellectual laboratory.

The “book blog” label is therefore actually appropriate, even though the content has expanded far beyond book reviews.

---

The deeper philosophical position I see

If I had to reconstruct the worldview underlying the blog, I would tentatively formulate it like this:

1. Reality is probably more than physical matter.

2. Consciousness and spiritual experience cannot simply be dismissed as meaningless because they don't fit materialism.

3. Nevertheless, having a mystical experience doesn't automatically prove the interpretation attached to it.

4. Religious traditions may disclose genuine aspects of reality without any one tradition possessing the complete conceptual map.

5. Different religious symbols may therefore have genuine ontological or phenomenological significance without being literally interchangeable.

6. Traditional religions contain both profound metaphysical insights and historically conditioned human material.

7. Science describes the physical level extremely well but does not necessarily exhaust reality.

8. A sufficiently large metaphysics might therefore accommodate Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Platonism and even some paranormal phenomena without simply reducing them to one another.

That is a surprisingly coherent position.

And it is closer to philosophical pluralism + panentheism + Neoplatonism + comparative mysticism than to conventional New Age spirituality.

---

One particularly interesting development

There also appears to have been an evolution in the blog.

The earlier material I examined—particularly around 2021—has a strong comparative-religion / Buddhist / perennialism-versus-pluralism orientation. By 2026, the blog's self-description explicitly uses “Crypto-Shaiva-Shakta”, and current posts include much more overtly Tantric material.

That suggests the Shaiva-Shakta element isn't merely an isolated interest. It looks like a later development of an older philosophical problem:

If different religious traditions can disclose different aspects of an ultimately larger reality, what sort of metaphysics can accommodate that without reducing everything to “all is one”?

Shaiva-Shakta and Tantric metaphysics offer some unusually powerful tools for answering that question because they can combine transcendence and immanence, multiplicity and unity, personal deity and ultimate reality, manifestation and transcendence.

That may explain why the blog has gradually gravitated in that direction.

My overall assessment

I'd characterize the blog as:

Intellectually eclectic: ★★★★★
Philosophically interesting: ★★★★½
Systematic: ★★½
Historically/religiously curious: ★★★★★
Reliably factual: ★★★½ — individual claims need checking
Irony/sarcasm level: ★★★★★
Conventional New Age: ★
Conventional religious orthodoxy: ★
Underlying metaphysical coherence: ★★★★

The biggest mistake would be to read it literally and chronologically, post by post. The real “content” is the worldview that emerges from the recurring questions across thousands of short pieces.

And I think that worldview is considerably more sophisticated than the deliberately chaotic and sometimes outrageous surface presentation makes it look. 

Complete shocker: Free will is...real?!

 

Speaks for itself. Free will denial has always been one of the most silly cyber-atheist talking points, so I suppose it´s a good thing for those guys that we know have objective scientific evidence (as opposed to, you know, mere personal anecdotes) that Voluntarist Free Will really does exist, I mean, duuuude, who knew?!

Deceiving spirits

 

Here we go again. I actually wondered about this myself: if even the Anti-Christ makes miracles, how can miracles prove the Catholic Church? Or Christianity in general? How do we know *they* aren´t the Anti-Christ?

From MythVision, commenting the recent conversion/reversion of YouTube personality Joe Schmid to Catholicism. 

Social experiment

 

I admit that I never heard about the famous Princeton philosopher Joe Schmid before. Perhaps because he is just a random guy on YouTube who happens to study philosophy somewhere at Princeton? Recently, Schmid shocked his fellow atheists/agnostics by converting (or strictly speaking reverting) to Catholicism. Or did he? 

Some suspect he is just trolling. His video does look unserious, but perhaps he is just the hyperactive autistic type? Anyhow, this is the current drama on YouTube right now. 

Do I care? Nupe. But in case you´re interested, the first video above is Schmid´s conversion story, while the second is a critique from Derek of MythVision. 

Well, akshually, para-dimes are good, akshually

 

A little reminder. A propos the recent blog post on Sabine Hossenfelder and the role of mathematics in the hard (oh-so-hard) sciences.

Quantum questions

Inside out

 

Some scientists apparently un-ironically speculate that we may live *inside* a black hole. Well, that would explain a thing or two, I suppose...

Note what Sabine is saying here: there are several competing theories about black holes, each mathematically "correct". Yet, only one of them can be true - or none of them are. So naaah, you can´t just "shut up and do the math", as some midwits are trying to tell us.

Shut up *and do the empirical research* is the bottom line here. Note also that many scientists themselves suspect that the simplest explanation (a black hole is a singularity) simply can´t be true...and so the speculations continue. 

I actually see that as a singularly good thing! 

We are so back

 

Me, trying to establish a connection with OpenAI

My ChatGPT (a free version) has sounded pretty confused for over a week now, even making spelling mistakes. But it seems to be back on track now! Is it trying to convert me to Neoplatonism, Idealism or what? I haven´t included my prompt (too long) and can´t show you the diagrams, but otherwise it seems Sam Altman blessed me with an "intellectual" LLM personality this evening...

[ChatGPT discussion follows]

Yes. I think the tension you're describing can be bridged, but only if we distinguish identity, participation, and relation. Your intuition that everything must have some ultimate metaphysical unity is not necessarily incompatible with your intuition that there are real qualitative differences.

In fact, a number of major metaphysical traditions have tried to articulate almost exactly this position.

1. "Same essence" does not have to mean "same kind of thing"

Your logical argument is basically:

If A and B are completely unrelated in being, how could A ever causally affect B?

That is a serious metaphysical problem. If God were literally made of one kind of "stuff" and matter of something utterly unrelated, one could reasonably ask how there could be any interaction at all.

But there is an alternative to saying that God and matter are identical:

They can share a fundamental ground of being without being identical modes of existence.

Think of light passing through a prism. The colors are genuinely different, but they aren't different substances. Their difference is a difference of manifestation or determination.

Applied metaphysically:

Ultimate Reality
→ spiritual/intellectual reality
→ personal consciousness
→ embodied consciousness
→ matter

Each level can be genuinely different while participating in the same ultimate reality.

This gives you a hierarchy of unity-in-difference.

---

2. Neoplatonism gives you almost exactly this solution

This is one reason I think Neoplatonism is particularly relevant to the metaphysical picture you've been developing.

Plotinus begins with the One, which is beyond all ordinary distinctions. From the One proceeds Intellect (Nous), then Soul, then the multiplicity of the material cosmos.

Yet the lower levels never become completely independent of the One.

The crucial idea is participation.

A thing can possess being without being identical to Being itself.

So you can say:

Matter has being because it participates in the source of being.

And consequently:

God can be present to matter without God simply being identical with matter.

That gives you a third possibility between strict dualism and crude monism.

Not:

God ≠ world, therefore they cannot interact.

and not:

God = world, therefore there is no real distinction.

but:

God is the transcendent ground in which the world exists.

This is very close to panentheism.

---

3. Your intuition about qualitative differences can therefore be preserved

Suppose ultimate reality is fundamentally one.

That doesn't mean that every manifestation has the same properties.

A simple analogy would be consciousness.

Your thoughts, emotions, visual perceptions and bodily sensations are all occurring within one conscious field. Yet:

• a thought isn't a sensation;
• a sensation isn't an emotion;
• an emotion isn't an act of deliberate reasoning.

Their ontological field is unified, while their phenomenal qualities differ.

Likewise, one metaphysical ground could manifest as:

inanimate matter → life → consciousness → intellect → personality → divine personality

without all of those being equivalent.

The distinctions are real, but they are internal distinctions within a deeper unity.

---

4. This also helps with personal vs. impersonal God

This is an especially interesting part of your question.

You don't necessarily have to choose between:

God is a Person

and

God is impersonal Absolute.

You can instead say:

The Absolute transcends the distinction between personal and impersonal, while the personal God is a genuine manifestation or mode of the Absolute.

There are surprisingly many traditions that approach something like this.

In Vedānta, for example, Brahman can be discussed as nirguṇa (without limiting qualities) and saguṇa (with qualities), with Īśvara as the personal Lord.

In Mahāyāna Buddhism, the relationship between ultimate emptiness and the innumerable compassionate manifestations of Buddhahood creates a somewhat analogous problem, although the metaphysics is very different.

In Neoplatonism, the One transcends intellect and personality, while the divine Intellect contains the intelligible order.

And in some forms of Christian mysticism, God is simultaneously:

beyond every category

and

personally encountered as Love.

So your intuition that "God is personal, but ultimately exceeds personality" is not philosophically incoherent.

It may actually be a very sophisticated position.

---

5. Good and evil are a harder case

Here I'd make an important distinction.

You seem to be intuiting:

If everything ultimately comes from one metaphysical source, how can evil be genuinely evil?

There are several possible answers.

The Neoplatonic answer is particularly elegant:

evil isn't another metaphysical substance competing with God.

Rather, evil is a privation or distortion of being/goodness.

A good analogy is darkness.

Darkness doesn't need to be a second kind of cosmic substance opposing light. It can be the absence of light.

Likewise, evil could be understood as:

a finite being's departure from the fullness of its proper good.

This preserves both intuitions:

Unity:
Everything that exists ultimately derives its being from the Good.

Difference:
Some modes of existence are genuinely distorted, deficient or destructive.

So evil doesn't need to have an independent metaphysical essence equal to God's.

This is one reason the classical "two equally powerful cosmic principles, Good and Evil" model creates enormous metaphysical problems.

---

6. But there's an even deeper possibility

I think your question may actually be pointing toward levels of reality.

Imagine reality as something like this:

[Diagram follows in the original]

The important thing is that the arrows don't necessarily mean creation from nothing.

They can mean gradation of manifestation.

At every level, something of the source remains present, but increasingly constrained and differentiated.

That lets you say:

Everything is ultimately one in ground, but many in manifestation.

That may be the formulation you're looking for.

---

7. And it gives a particularly interesting interpretation of your "interaction" argument

You asked:

How can God interact with matter if there isn't some deep metaphysical identity between them?

I'd modify that slightly:

God doesn't necessarily need to be identical with matter.

What is required is that matter be ontologically dependent upon God.

Imagine a dream.

The dream character is not identical to the dreamer. Nevertheless, the dream character exists entirely within the consciousness of the dreamer.

The dreamer can affect the dream because the dream is participatory in the dreamer's consciousness.

Likewise, in a panentheistic metaphysics:

Matter isn't God, but matter exists within God's ontological field.

God therefore doesn't have to cross an impossible metaphysical gap in order to interact with matter.

There was never an absolute gap.

---

8. This could also explain why different religions might "work"

And here your previous discussions about Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and astrology become relevant.

If reality is genuinely stratified, different religious symbols could correspond to different aspects or levels of the same ultimate reality.

For example, one could imagine:

Absolute
↓
Divine consciousness
↓
personal divine forms
↓
religious symbol / archetype
↓
human psychological experience

Then Śiva, Christ, Amitābha, Tripurasundarī, etc. wouldn't necessarily have to be either:

completely separate gods

or

merely imaginary psychological constructs.

They could be different real manifestations or apprehensions of a deeper divine reality.

That would also provide a possible metaphysical framework for your earlier thought that different symbolic "worlds" might be objectively real without being physically identical.

---

9. The key concept is therefore not identity but participation

I'd formulate your intuition this way:

Everything that exists participates in the same ultimate Being, but participates in it according to its own mode.

God participates in nothing—rather, God is the source of participation.

A spirit participates in Being in a spiritual/intellectual mode.

A person participates in it as a conscious, embodied subject.

Matter participates in it as extended/physical existence.

And an evil act participates in existence while failing to participate adequately in the good proper to a rational being.

Thus:

One source → many modes.

Or, in a more paradoxical formulation:

Reality is one without being homogeneous, and many without being ultimately divided.

I think that is probably the bridge between the two intuitions you're describing.

And importantly, you don't have to suppress either side. Your logical intuition is protecting you from metaphysical dualism; your spiritual intuition is protecting you from flattening everything into undifferentiated monism. The interesting philosophical territory lies precisely between those two extremes.

The Ultimate Classic

 

"Hindoos claim that everything is illusion". That´s where you´re wrong, kiddo. From Gemini.

Is there some Hindu system in which matter / material energy is robustly real, rather than just a "manifestation of spirit". It could still be created / emanated by God, or formed into a world by a God from primordial matter. 

Yes, absolutely. You are describing the philosophy of philosophical realism, which has deep, highly developed roots in traditional Hindu thought.

While Western popular culture often equates Hinduism exclusively with Advaita Vedānta (which views the material world as Māyā, an illusion or a mere manifestation of Spirit), several major classical Hindu systems explicitly reject that view. They hold that matter (Prakṛti or Padārtha) is an eternally real, objective substance—not a dream, not an illusion, and not merely "spirit in disguise."

Here are the primary Hindu systems that fit your description:

1. Sāṁkhya: Dualistic Realism (The Ultimate Classic)

Sāṁkhya is one of the oldest and most foundational orthodox (Āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy. It is built on an absolute dualism between two uncreated, independent, and eternally real principles:

• Prakṛti (Unconscious, Primordial Matter): Matter is not an illusion, nor is it an emanation of spirit. It is an eternal, independent substance that possesses real physical energy, substance, and potential. All physical matter, energy, and even the human mind/intellect are physical evolutes of Prakṛti.

• Puruṣa (Conscious Spirit/Souls): Pure, unattached individual consciousnesses.

In classical Sāṁkhya, God is not even required to create matter; matter is an eternal reality that evolves and transforms on its own when in the proximity of Puruṣa. Matter is as real as Spirit.

2. Dvaita Vedānta (Madhvācārya’s Radical Realism)

Founded by the 13th-century philosopher Madhvācārya, Dvaita (Dualistic) Vedānta was built specifically to dismantle the idea that the world is an illusion. Madhva proposed a system of absolute, unyielding realism:

• Five Absolute Differences (Pañca-bheda): Madhva argued that there are five real, permanent distinctions in reality—including the eternal difference between God and Matter, the individual Soul and Matter, and one material object from another material object.

• The Role of God (Īśvara): God (Vishnu) does not turn Himself into matter, nor is matter just a projection of His mind. Matter (Prakṛti) is a real, distinct, eternal substance. God acts as the efficient cause (Nimitta Kāraṇa)—the supreme architect who shapes and governs this real primordial matter into the physical universe.

• Physical Consequence: When you feel pain, touch a rock, or face a physical law, you are interacting with an objective, independent reality that God commands, not an imaginary shadow.

3. Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika: Atomistic Realism and Logic

The combined schools of Vaiśeṣika (physics/cosmology) and Nyāya (logic/epistemology) offer perhaps the most "scientific" material realism in ancient philosophy.

• Paramāṇu (Indestructible Atoms): Vaiśeṣika posits that the physical universe is made up of eternally existing, ultimate physical atoms (Paramāṇu) of four primary elements: Earth, Water, Fire, and Air.

• God as the Master Builder: God (Īśvara) does not create the universe ex nihilo (out of nothing), nor is matter emanated from God's body. Instead, God takes these pre-existing, eternally real physical atoms and arranges them into the structured universe according to the laws of Karma.

• Objects in the material world possess real, objective properties (Guṇa) and actions (Karma) that exist independently of whether anyone is observing them.

4. Viśiṣṭādvaita (Qualified Non-Dualism of Rāmānuja)

Even within non-dualist Vedānta, Rāmānuja’s system ensures matter is treated as robustly real rather than illusory:

• Rāmānuja describes reality as a single organic Whole (Brahman), but that Whole contains three eternally distinct, real substances: God (Īśvara), Individual Souls (Cit), and Matter (Acit).

• Matter (Acit) is described as the physical "body" of God. Just as your physical body is real matter controlled by your mind, the physical universe is a solid, objective, real substance that serves as the material vehicle through which God operates. It is not an illusion (Māyā in the sense of fake); it is a real, dynamic transformation (Parināma).

Summary Comparison

If you are looking for a framework where matter is an unshakeable, real force—where physical laws, material consequences, and tangible reality carry genuine weight—you have several options depending on how you view God's role:

System	View of Matter	Relation to God
Sāṁkhya	Completely independent, eternal primordial substance (Prakṛti).	Completely separate from Spirit/God.
Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika	Composed of eternal, physical, real atoms (Paramāṇu).	God shapes real atoms into a structured world.
Dvaita Vedānta	Eternally real substance, fundamentally distinct from God/Souls.	God governs and molds real matter; matter is dependent on God but not made of God.
Viśiṣṭādvaita	Real physical substance (Acit) acting as the literal "body" of the Divine.	Real substance eternally existing within the cosmic organism of God.

Therefore Sabine

 

Is causality an emergent property? And what does that even mean? Sabine hopes that quantum physics can be made more logical and less woo-woo-ish, but a recent paper on the topic falls short of this. Or so she believes. Since I´ve been up most of the night, I hardly understand what she´s talking about, but I´m sure it´s interesting...

The dancing god

 

Credit: Niraj Suryawanshi

Overheard on the internets: Friedrich Nietzsche wanted "a god who dances". I assume this was a reference to Dionysus, but there are of course other deities famous for dancing...

You know, Krishna and stuff. 

Overheard on the interwebs

 

LOL. 

Unmute, dude

 

Why are we still having this conversation in 2026? 

Compassion fatigue?

 

Credit: punjabkesari

Overheard on the internet: "Protecting a victim from an unrepentant transgressor is the highest form of compassion you can offer to the victim."

No news

 

No news here, really, but when I continued discussing my religious speculations with the LLMs, this was their verdict.

ChatGPT: If I had to give your worldview a label, I might call it something like: A universalist emanationist panentheism with Neoplatonic metaphysics and devotional soteriology. Or, less technically: A Neoplatonic-Hindu-Buddhist synthesis.

Gemini: Your description is essentially Valentinian Gnosticism fused with Neoplatonic Cosmology and Eastern Karma/Reincarnation theory.

Both LLMs also pointed out the family likeness with Theosophy...

The flight of theurgy to the Alone

 

No surprises here, but good summary c/o ChatGPT. 

How is "salvation" or "liberation" achieved in Neoplatonism (as far as we know)?

Neoplatonism does have something very much like a doctrine of liberation, although its emphasis is on return (epistrophē) rather than on forgiveness of sins or escape from divine judgment. The goal is the soul's return to its divine source, ultimately to the One (to Hen), the absolute principle beyond all being and thought.

The precise details differ somewhat between thinkers like Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus, but the basic pattern is remarkably consistent.

The human condition

According to Plotinus (204/5–270 CE), every soul originates in the intelligible world. It "descends" into the material cosmos, where it becomes preoccupied with bodily life, desires, emotions, and sensory experience.

Importantly, this descent is not exactly a moral fall comparable to the Christian Fall. Rather:

• the soul becomes distracted by multiplicity,
• forgets its true nature,
• identifies itself with the body and ego instead of its higher self.

The soul is therefore alienated from its true home.

One famous Plotinian phrase is:

"The flight of the alone to the Alone."

That summarizes salvation in a single sentence.

---

The path of return

The ascent occurs through several stages.

1. Ethical purification (katharsis)

The first step is living a virtuous life.

This includes

• moderation
• justice
• courage
• wisdom
• freedom from excessive passions

Virtue is not merely moral obedience; it is a process of making the soul resemble its divine origin.

One becomes less ruled by bodily impulses and more governed by reason.

---

2. Philosophical contemplation

The next stage is intellectual.

The soul turns away from external objects and begins contemplating eternal realities.

Instead of asking

"What do I desire?"

one asks

"What is Beauty itself?"
"What is Justice itself?"
"What is Truth?"

Through philosophy the mind awakens to the realm of Intellect (Nous), where the eternal Forms exist.

---

3. Interiority

Plotinus repeatedly tells his readers:

"Withdraw into yourself."

Rather than seeking God outside, one discovers that the higher soul is already rooted in the intelligible realm.

This is not introspection in the modern psychological sense.

It is discovering the deepest level of consciousness beyond personality.

---

4. Contemplation of Nous

The purified intellect eventually comes to contemplate Nous, the Divine Intellect.

At this stage the soul participates in

• Truth
• Beauty
• Wisdom
• the eternal Forms

Yet even this is not the highest goal.

---

5. Union with the One

Beyond Intellect lies the One.

The One cannot be grasped by concepts because it is beyond all distinction.

Ultimate liberation occurs in a mystical union called henosis ("oneness" or "union").

Plotinus describes it as

• beyond thought,
• beyond subject and object,
• beyond language.

One does not "know" the One in the ordinary sense.

Rather, one becomes united with it in an ineffable experience.

Plotinus claims to have experienced this several times during his life (according to his student Porphyry).

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Is grace involved?

This is an interesting question.

Neoplatonism is often portrayed as entirely self-powered, but that is only partly true.

Plotinus certainly emphasizes personal purification and contemplation.

Yet he also says that union cannot simply be forced by human effort.

The One is always present.

The soul prepares itself, but the actual moment of union comes almost like an unexpected illumination.

Many scholars therefore compare Plotinus' account to later ideas of grace, though Plotinus himself does not develop a theology of divine grace comparable to Christianity.

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What role does ritual play?

Here the Neoplatonists disagree.

Plotinus

Plotinus places little emphasis on ritual.

Philosophy, contemplation, and virtue are sufficient.

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Porphyry

Porphyry accepts traditional religious practices but still regards philosophy as the highest path.

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Iamblichus

Iamblichus makes a major change.

He argues that the human intellect alone cannot ascend to God.

Instead, one requires theurgy ("divine work").

Theurgy involves

• sacred rituals,
• prayers,
• invocations,
• symbols,
• consecrated objects,
• hymns,
• participation in divine powers.

These rites do not compel the gods but allow the gods to elevate the soul.

This is significantly closer to later sacramental religion than Plotinus' philosophy is.

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Proclus

Proclus combines rigorous philosophy with elaborate ritual and theurgy.

For him the universe is filled with divine "chains" (seirai) linking every level of reality to the gods.

By participating in these chains through ritual, contemplation, and virtue, the soul gradually ascends.

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Does individuality disappear?

This is debated.

Plotinus describes union as transcending individuality.

However, the soul does not seem permanently cease to exist.

Henosis is generally portrayed as an ecstatic union rather than annihilation.

Unlike some interpretations of Advaita Vedānta, Neoplatonism does not explicitly teach that individual souls are ultimately unreal.

Rather, individuality is surpassed during union while remaining meaningful within the ordered cosmos.

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Is reincarnation involved?

Yes.

Most Neoplatonists accepted some form of reincarnation inherited from Plato.

The soul may experience many lives.

The quality of one's next embodiment depends on the state of one's soul.

Liberation ends the cycle of descending into bodily existence.

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Comparison with other traditions

There are striking parallels, though also important differences:

Tradition	Problem	Goal	Means
Neoplatonism	Forgetfulness of the divine source	Henosis with the One	Virtue, contemplation, and (for later Neoplatonists) theurgy
Advaita Vedānta	Ignorance (avidyā)	Realization of Brahman	Knowledge (jñāna) and meditation
Mahāyāna Buddhism	Ignorance and attachment	Buddhahood / Nirvāṇa	Wisdom, compassion, meditation
Christianity	Sin and separation from God	Communion with God	Divine grace, faith, virtue, prayer, and the sacraments (depending on tradition)

Among these, Plotinus' vision is often considered especially close in spirit to Advaita Vedānta, although the metaphysical systems differ in significant ways. Later theurgic Neoplatonism (Iamblichus and Proclus) has more in common with ritual traditions such as late antique paganism, certain forms of Hindu Tantra, and esoteric currents in Christianity, in that ritual participation in divine realities complements philosophical contemplation.

Overall, Neoplatonic liberation is best understood as a gradual reorientation of the soul: from attachment to the changing world, to contemplation of eternal realities, and finally to an ineffable union with the One. The journey is not primarily about being pardoned or escaping punishment, but about becoming what one most deeply already is by awakening to one's divine origin.