[MD] Wanted: A proper foundation

[Michael Poloukhine]

> > Michael:
> > I think, though that the term "Absolute Source" implies a pantheistic POV,
> > where it may be more fruitful to foster an understanding of this "s*urce"
> > to include that we don't really know whether it is one or the other,
> > or that the distinction even makes any sense at that point.
> 
> Ham:
> That point has been made before, but Essentialism really has nothing in 
> common with pantheism.  The pantheist believes that everything taken
> together constitutes holistic reality.  The essentialist discounts the 
> reality of "things", regarding all existents as intellectual constructs of 
> value.  In Pirsig's terms, there are two "levels" of reality: absolute and 
> differentiated.  The Essence of reality is uncreated, undivided and
> immutable, while the "actualized" world of process and difference is a 
> product of the reduced (negated) sensibility of finite creatures.

MP: I can accpet that, and followed your lead up to it. My reference to 
pantheism/panentheism was only to note that it is a theistic distinction that I 
think also applies to your "Absolute S*urce" but it all depends on what one 
refers to as "reality" when considering if the source encompasses it all or is also 
greater than it in scope. In the theistic, I take your point that it is from an 
essentialist POV; reality is essence, g*d is either part of it all or also that and 
more. I think I am understanding your point to be that the very concept of the 
essence ("reality") in that view is flawed from the outset. I agree.

This is something I picked up while reading on Buddhism; the concept that 
reality as we know it is more like this Aboslute S*urce you refer to of which we 
are parts in the sense that we are "locii" of it, condensed points of its "en*rgy" 
that have coalesced into what we on a simplistic level know as S/O essence but 
which is all essentially in flux, more like phase shifts, albeit at a rate and in a 
medium only enlightenment can really begin to illuminate to us.

Good discussion! Thanks!