Many years ago (I was about 20 years old) I was discussing with a friend about the how we limit ourselves by the habits we blindly follow. Just for one moment, everything around me came to a hold, there was no more sound, no more movement. In that moment I experienced the wholeness and the oneness of everything, I was outside time in a different all inculive reality... That moment changed my being for ever. The funny thing is that none of my friends had noticed anything. I had no other choice than to leave their company and be on my own, overwhelmed by the blessing. Spinoza (and you) refer to that kind blessing, I got the tears in my eyes... As for this video, I never heared something so beautiful on youtube. May you go well!
To repeat the non-dual immersion in Substance (Pure Consciousness, the One, the Tao, the timeless Transcendental Absolute), no problem. Access "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir" Listen to it for a few min per day for at least two weeks.
This is the best series on Spinoza on TH-cam. Executed with scholarly precision. You did a great job, Zevi. (applause, applause, applause). I think Spinoza *is* a mystic. Just a very, very, very realistic one. But I don't want to get into that. I just want to say "great job" and I enjoyed this series immensely.
I am tots an spinostic mystic. "Knowing is a feeling" dr Stuart hameroff. Having a broad knowledge set casts a larger net that experience can draw upon.
I'm a big fan of Deleuze, so Spinoza has always interested me, but the video pushed me to actually read The Ethics- while I'm no Spinoza scholar myself, and I don't think the question of "was Spinoza a mystic" is any sort of smoking gun, I get the sense that Spinoza's impact on secular thought has overshadowed the more nuanced view on God that he clearly seemed have had from reading especially the fifth chapter of the ethics. Love your channel, thanks for pushing me towards Spinoza! Hope to see a video on Deleuze someday, I think his thought has a lot to offer mysticism.
Thank you Collin. So glad we were able to push you to the text and we agreed with your analysis of the situation here. Thank you so much for the love and appreciation, it means a lot to us. We’d love to address Deleuze one of these days. And thank you for joining in supporting this project through Patreon. That’s really cool of you. Thank you.
Keep up the good work. Mysticism has the potential to transform the world for the better and by educating people on what it really is gives us a better chance of understanding it. :)
I first read the Ethics in an effort to make sense of an inexplicable experience, and it more or less explained what had happened. More to the point, I’m not at all sure I would have grasped the intent of the book without the experience, so obviously I agree, there is a mystical dimension to Spinoza. Anyone who can see it knows it’s there, and so sorry for Nadler, who clearly missed out. Thank you so much for this series. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.
In Part V, I think he deliberately leaves open a loop his readers are expected to close for themselves. That is, the first kind of knowledge, ie, imagination, should necessarily be harnessed in the service of the second to reach the third. For instance, a rational response to our subconscious chaos is creative discipline, which in turn hones our capacity for intuitive problem solving. That same idea is (I think) implicit in his commentary on prophecy in the TPT, but saying so out loud would have made the Ethics even more dangerous than it already was. Could it be that Baruch the mystic is pulling his punches, establishing some basic principles and leaving us to draw our own conclusions? This makes room for the universality of the religious experience, true to his personal motto: Caute.
Thank you for your excellent podcast, giving us an overview of the importance of Spinoza's philosophy. As a student of Spinoza's philosophy, I have studied Spinoza's Ethics extensively, and I believe to really understand Spinoza, you must live his ideas. I have more than a theoretical concept. After 40 years of work, I now teach, mentor, and coach those who want to live, understand, and love as Spinoza did.
Over 26 years ago, I, having had a mystical experience at the age of 22, struggled to convince my professor of philosophy that that Spinoza was indeed a mystic. My words fell short, and I ultimately walked away feeling defeated and deflated. Thank you for this wonderful video! It gave me goose bumps watching it. Bless you all!! And may the legend of the most well liked philosopher live on ad aeternum!!!!
Thank you so much Debby for that sweet message. We have to go back in time and see what your professor responds to this vid 😋 Thank you again. Viva la Spinoza.
@@SeekersofUnity Thanks so much! I’m particularly interested in Maimonides as I know very little about him, so I’m delighted that you have plenty more lectures to keep me busy. I really like your interpretation of the third kind of knowledge and the intellectual love of god. It goes very well with the rest of the Ethics. I suppose that while particular things can be understood by the empirical method, or the second kind of knowledge, the infinite (or the world taken ‘as a whole’) could only be understood by intuitive knowledge. Thanks again for giving me some interesting ideas to ponder.
You're most welcome. Maimonides influence on Spinoza is fascinating. I hope you enjoy the series on him that we're currently releasing. Just released the eighth part of the series yesterday. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on them. Yours, Zevi
Your synthesis is a divine treasure that has touched my soul. “The symbol is not the thing, the map is not the territory, the word is not that;” so, I m speechless; but lingering with inner radiance of gratitude, love, consciousness, and spirit. ❤
We hit 5K subscribers! Go drop a question in the comments of last weeks vid for the upcoming 5K Q&A and check out our diy merch patches: th-cam.com/video/07z7OGBkQ5I/w-d-xo.html - - - www.seekersofunity.com/merch And check out our college Justin Sledge @Esoterica's accompanying video: Spinoza - Rationalist Atheist or Mystical Pantheist ? Exploring Spinozism from Toland to Deleuze th-cam.com/video/6Tg03chJpZ4/w-d-xo.html
This is wonderful stuff. I would like to point that in your discusion of Scientia Intuitiva @18:00, whether it is irrational or arational, there is a lot of overlap with Nicolas of Cusa's concept of Learned Ignorance. In "De Docta Ignorantia" he suggests that the key to experiencing mystic unity with God through intellectual intuition is an awareness that a complete conceptual understanding of God is impossible and can only be acquired in a limited fashion. In other words, the more one learns, the more one realizes the extent of their own ignorance, especially in relation to the divine. There is another interesting parallel, namely Cusa's use of geometric metaphors to illustrate how God is both knowable yet incomprehensible. Perhaps a topic for another video?
I love the Spinoza series but I can't help but get distracted by your lamp lol. It's beautiful. You and Filip are killing me with these amazing lamps in the background. Now I want to go antique shopping.
❤ Spinoza is like the alchemist before the chemistry is worked out. I love that you mentioned the epistemological implications of how everything fits together in his ideas. From diverse areas of human inquiry. I never read or knew about Spinoza’s philosophy until a few days ago but I understand it better than anyone else because I came to the same ideas through a completely different route and perspective. But I had the benefit of modern science so I make predictions, did experiments, organized all knowledge in history in my first book and papers 20 years ago and brought to staggering detailed translations of what god is in my new book. I definitely thought my whole life that I was making a mind at one with, that worked like, the universe. I thought they were doing things the wrong way in schools. So I did my own thing which there were no grades for. I remember when I encountered the mantra “om mani Padme him” which was explained to me to read “to prepare a mind at one with the universe” and I was completely stunned because that is exactly what I had been doing my whole life. ❤ So your video really brought it home. The love part, everything-I figured it all out myself. Back in early 2020 I was posting about love, on my way to my “A Course in Miracles” reading group. 😂 and I have absolutely advanced so much since then. Sometimes I can hardly keep from crying in public because I love people so much. Because I see so much more in them. Because I love god so much. I have said many times that I only see god when I look at the world and universe. And I can tell you in great detail how and what everything means. ❤❤❤❤ Anyway, thank you so much for this!!! 🙏🏻❤️🔥
Spinoza, like so many other mystics, is clearly philosophizing from a noetic standpoint that completely transcends the dianoetic purview by which Nadler, Bennett, et al. register the field. Even though Spinoza graciously articulates the ramifications of his rarefied degree of consciousness in rationalist discourse, this by no means entails that the scope of his cosmovision is reducible to the intellectual parameters (and the dianoetic limitations) of unregenerate rationality. Generous soul that he was, the blessed Baruch condescended to express the fruits of his highest, trans-rational, mystical insights in an rationalist idiom so that we who are still mucking about in the swamps of magical and mythological thinking, and in the arid deserts of reductive rationalism and scientism, might get a taste of what it is like to register reality from the luminous standpoint of pure noesis, from the glorious ineffability of non-dual henosis. Sadly, intellectual ingrates like Jonathan Bennett - and those like him who are unaware of their rationalist blinders - take the generous gifts of mystical insight, which Baruch so beneficently attempted to put his vision into terms that folks limited to pure reason could get an inkling of, and they flung it back in his face with their obtuse criticisms.
@@lepidoptera9337 If by "clearer" you mean "mythological," then, yes, your fear is warranted. But since clarity is in the eye of the beholder, one man's "bullshit" is another man's brilliance. "To each his own" - the watchword for evaluating any register of consciousness.
@@simka321 Clearer means scientific. The actual watchwords are "success" and failure, where science is associated with success and philosophy and religion are associated with failure. Glad I could clear this up for everybody.
@@simka321 That's not me. That is reality staring you in the face. I am just the messenger. You know what they say about not shooting the messenger, right? Spinoza's reality, by the way, was the threat of religious violence. He could not have spoken the truth without severe repercussions, not even if he wanted to.
Thanks for the amazing work illustrating the mystical context of the intellectual love of G!d. When we came to this section during a grad seminar, it absolutely broke the class. People quit coming and the yelling and table-pounding were obscene as it was unsurprising. It was really the only seminar that I saw grad students and visiting profs behave like that; Baruch sure has a strange power to bring out the worst in philosophers. That experience produced in me the idea that perhaps you can tell what is real medicine by it producing toxic effects in the wrong hands and in the wrong conditions, as it were.
"I am no scholar" says Zevi Slavin. Dr Justin Sledge today, a year later, says Zevi is a scholar. Who is right? Both. I love this deep ecumenism that is flourishing as if we were all Creation Spiritualists of the Rev Dr. Matthew Fox(sic) . Meister Eckhardt becomes a household name like a Rumi of the Catholic Sufis. Thank you whatever you call yourself.
For the most part I have read nothing but a few statements about this subject. Like you said many academics do not seem to want to touch it and I understand why. Thank you for the great content.
Spinoza's third level of knowledge does indeed follow from the second level of rational thought. Without the second, it would have been impossible for him to have arrived at his third level of intuition. The three levels are inextricably connected. That is why he presents this theory as tripartite, although I must say, this third level that Spinoza speaks of is so drastically distinct from any other mode of thinking. Perhaps this is where the confusion lies.
I agree. I think it becomes clearer if you look at _real-world_ examples of the application of the third kind of knowledge. Two remarkable examples, I would argue, are Einstein's theories of General and Special Relativity, and the mathematical insights of Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Having studied, practiced and experienced ‘Tibetan Buddhism’ (in its essence without the ism), I can truly understand and identify with Spinoza’s 3rd type of knowing, where the known, knowing and the knower become one. No-one can understand this just from the arm-chair of reasoning. Reasoning is key, like a boat taking you to the other shore, but once reaching there, you might want to leave the boat behind and only return to it, when journey once again leads you through space and time.
Thank you Nathan. Great question. Spinoza has some fascinating thoughts on the immortality of the mind which follow on from where we left off here. Check that out. Maybs we’ll make another vid to discuss that 😉
I've never read Spinoza but now I really want to read Spinoza until I learn how to read Spinoza. Had to lol when you gave a trigger warning to the rationalists.
My Neoplatonism professor said that Descartes had read Plotinius. Many aspects of Spinoza's recall in some sense the One, it is to wonder if there might have been some, at least, indirect influence. Edit after listening: I saw you indeed mentioned Neoplatonism! Curious to dig more into it.
Very good. And if this is indeed what Spinoza thought, he was on the right track. (And it would seem that Einstein didn't fully understand him.) But Spinoza lacked certain information that most of us lack. And philosophy is fine, but Revelation is final. "God" can only be fully known experientially. But in the Twentieth Century God revealed Itself (on an intellectual level in the published literature) to any mind that seeks understanding. And with this information it becomes clear that absolute Reality is best understood in very simple terms. Because, anything added to Truth subtracts from Truth. Seek and ye shall find. (I don't receive TH-cam comment notifications so that I converse only with true seekers.)
Hey Zevi, and thanks for the awesome enlightening videos! I have a Spinoza-related question, if you find the time: Where do you see an interpretation of the Eden myth in an ego-forming, selfconscious-becoming (neo)platonic or pan(en)theistic way, where Hashem might be seen as Brahman if you will, and the ”banishment” perhaps in an agricultural ”layman versus the yogi” kinda way, where the Seraphim at the gate could be seen as the final remnants of the ego before returning to unity, kinda like the guardian demons at some buddhist temples? Meaning does this kind of thinking clearly exist before the major medieval kabbalistic texts? Thanks man! -Antti, Helsinki
Thank you so much Annti 🙏🏼 Hmm that’s a good question of where it appears first. We may have to look at Philo of Alexandria for an early hint at this. Just a hunch. Also, not that his is earlier, but check out Jacob Boheme’s exegesis of the Eden story, it’s fire.
@@SeekersofUnity Thanks for the quick reply, and thanks for the tips! Been looking for a possible earliest version of this ”YHVH as Ein Sof / Monad” and similar, in all three Abrahamic religions, and Philo is a great hunch. Keep up the good work! Shalom.
Great video. Question: Since according to Spinoza every being that exists is a mode of God, should Hitler (or pick your favorite murderous psychopath) be considered a mode of God?
Excellent! One point i think is important and upon which we seem to differ: 24:30 we are not God. Me loving me is not God loving God; it's me being Narcissus. Yin/yang is God loving God: look at the centre of each lobe; it loves the other and moves after it. We by our intellect can love the whole thing. Look at what happens when there is no other at the centre of each... division. Fascism is one colour; it puts itself at its own centre: this is our structural problem. It's not "there, but for the grace of God, go i"; it's "there, by God's grace, i also go".
@@javiersoto5223 What do you think about Ibn el Arabi's position wrt what would later be called "the Unity of Being"? Contrast with Spinoza's position wrt what would later be called "pantheism". I take what i believe to be a scientific perspective, where it seems there is a panqualism; some distance from panpsychism. Ultimately, truth will say.
@@javiersoto5223 I'm no expert; just watched "let's talk religion" vid. How about malchut, yesod, and shekhinah? I'm asking just cuz it seems relevant. We can run with our essence or run against it and, when we are with it, we are with God. ... Maybe....; it looks like maybe. Fundamentally, all together, i think maybe you're right.
Thinking about it; i see a pragmatic equivalence of Father and Son. A hard equivalence would maybe give us a pantheism like Spinoza's. I've leveraged something from the uncovered gnostic texts, "you cannot see the Father but, you can see His light in my face". I've wondered what in science could be these things and, that's why i might mention the coherence of Being that is the ground of truth. Truth has dexterity when it comes to how we articulate and, we have that same dexterity; that's as close as we get to being gods and, in the long term it's a responsibility.
I don't consider Spinoza a riddle. I look at him as someone endowed with an understanding that surpassed his contemporaries including Newton who may have gleaned ideas from him. The man was excommunicated in the harshest way abuobe can imagine.You feel me?😅
Reading the books of the New Testament, we probably asked ourselves more than once: *"Why 2000 years we do not see those miracles that accompanied the Сhurch of Christ in the I century, as described in the New Testament?"* Why do the so-called preachers of Christ have to prove that Jesus really existed and atheists boldly deny the historicity or divine origin of Christ? Maybe because the Сhurch of Christ has not existed for 2000 years? The Сhurch does not exist in the form in which it is presented in the books of the New Testament, but there are Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and other christian sects claiming to be the place of the Church, but they not have the only thing that distinguishes the divine from the human and is characteristic of just the Сhurch of Christ -the reinforcement of the word with signs, that is, miracles (Mark 16:15-20). Therefore, some researchers doubt the historicity of Christ, and some of them are not opposed to declaring him a an ordinary philosopher, teacher. But even if Jesus were an ordinary philosopher, his disciples would be ordinary followers of Jesus. And they would not dare to write about the miracles that not only Jesus, but also his disciples, could perform. If there were the Church in our time as described by the authors of the New Testament books, where miracles are performed, the sick are healed, where prophesied, and the dead are raised, no one would doubt the historicity of Christ. Then there would be the same controversy throughout the world as in the first century - Jesus the Son of God or the false prophet who seduces the world by miracles. As a result, we can say that the emergence and development of christian sects and atheism was the result of the fact that over the 2000 years the Сhurch of Christ did not exist. Find *"The Mystery about the Church of Christ"* video on TH-cam. The video reveals the prophecy of the disappearance and reappearance of the Church of Christ before the End of the World. Watching this video will give hope to all who sincerely seek God and will interest those who are not too lazy to think freely. Click on my name to watch the video (The video is in Russian, but English subtitles are included).
The use of "i.e." is far more apropos for work to be read. Find words such as "therefore" or "so to say" or "for example" or the actual "that is" id est is shorthand for.
I love the information you present in your videos BUT I do wish the image would stop jumping around so much! Why is it necessary to reframe to image so often? What are you trying to do? I totally understand that it is necessary to take breaks when recording but the jumping around so frequently, an average of every 10 seconds, is very distracting and ruins the continuity of listening. Please don't write and say that I can always look away, turn off the screen, close my eyes, etc., such thoughts are missing the point. Equally, if it only me that has this problem then I guess I'll just have to find another channel to 'watch'.
Hi Neil. Thank you for the honest feedback and critical feedback. I really do appreciate it. The reason i was reframing so often was because I was trying to visually punctuate new paragraphs and points that in written form could be punctuated visually with paragraph breaks, parenthesis and the like. All not available tool for video format. I apologize that the zooming was distracting and unhelpful, I’ll try use it less in the future. I’m glad you’re loving the content and the information. Keep learning, keep seeking. Much love, Zevi
@@SeekersofUnity Wow Zevi, I am both impressed and very grateful for your response! I at least now see the purpose nehind said reframing - and that helps. I most certainly wil continue to watch your channel because it is so informative and I learn so much. Thank you again!
It seems to be that Spinoza could not break himself away from Judaism and I think it inhibited his understanding of the Creator. I don't believe the Creator ever communicated with man so this idea of love of god or mysticism is based on the need for man to connect with a god instead of connecting with nature and the sciences.
@@SeekersofUnity OK, I don't believe the Creator is nature but I believe that the Creator binds all matter allowing it to exist. The Creator did give humans free will and the intellect to work within nature to improve it or as we have seen to destroy it.
![[ TEASER ] เงาะป่า - วงL.กฮ. | TMG RECORD](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/M4ObdFfcPww/mqdefault.jpg)
This is brilliant.
Thank you John. I’m quite the fan of your work. Can I invite you for an interview?
@@SeekersofUnity yes i would love that.
Wonderful. I’ll drop you an email to schedule. Thank you 🙏🏼
@@SeekersofUnity Great!!
Epic
Many years ago (I was about 20 years old) I was discussing with a friend about the how we limit ourselves by the habits we blindly follow. Just for one moment, everything around me came to a hold, there was no more sound, no more movement. In that moment I experienced the wholeness and the oneness of everything, I was outside time in a different all inculive reality... That moment changed my being for ever. The funny thing is that none of my friends had noticed anything. I had no other choice than to leave their company and be on my own, overwhelmed by the blessing.
Spinoza (and you) refer to that kind blessing, I got the tears in my eyes... As for this video, I never heared something so beautiful on youtube.
May you go well!
Same. / Same 😘
To repeat the non-dual immersion in Substance (Pure Consciousness, the One, the Tao, the timeless Transcendental Absolute), no problem. Access "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir" Listen to it for a few min per day for at least two weeks.
And who/what is this 'I' which experienced...?
Thanks for ths amazing journey through this Spinoza playlist. God bless you
This is the best series on Spinoza on TH-cam. Executed with scholarly precision. You did a great job, Zevi. (applause, applause, applause). I think Spinoza *is* a mystic. Just a very, very, very realistic one. But I don't want to get into that. I just want to say "great job" and I enjoyed this series immensely.
Thank you so much Hal. Thank you for encouraging us to make this series.
I'm just going to go ahead and say it. This is my new favorite channel. 👍
Thank you Francis ☺️ that’s really kind of you.
I am tots an spinostic mystic. "Knowing is a feeling" dr Stuart hameroff. Having a broad knowledge set casts a larger net that experience can draw upon.
Quantum Spinozism! Right on! 👍 Orch-OR 💪
I'm writing a comparative essay between Spinoza's and Leibniz's conception of God. Listening to you brings such joy to my heart. Thank you Zevi ☺
I'm a big fan of Deleuze, so Spinoza has always interested me, but the video pushed me to actually read The Ethics- while I'm no Spinoza scholar myself, and I don't think the question of "was Spinoza a mystic" is any sort of smoking gun, I get the sense that Spinoza's impact on secular thought has overshadowed the more nuanced view on God that he clearly seemed have had from reading especially the fifth chapter of the ethics.
Love your channel, thanks for pushing me towards Spinoza! Hope to see a video on Deleuze someday, I think his thought has a lot to offer mysticism.
Thank you Collin. So glad we were able to push you to the text and we agreed with your analysis of the situation here. Thank you so much for the love and appreciation, it means a lot to us. We’d love to address Deleuze one of these days. And thank you for joining in supporting this project through Patreon. That’s really cool of you. Thank you.
Man, this is the video about Spinoza I had needed for a very long time! Thank you!
You’re so welcome Oscar. Thank you for the kind feedback.
Keep up the good work. Mysticism has the potential to transform the world for the better and by educating people on what it really is gives us a better chance of understanding it. :)
Thank you Deus. We couldn’t agree with you more. Thank you.
I first read the Ethics in an effort to make sense of an inexplicable experience, and it more or less explained what had happened. More to the point, I’m not at all sure I would have grasped the intent of the book without the experience, so obviously I agree, there is a mystical dimension to Spinoza. Anyone who can see it knows it’s there, and so sorry for Nadler, who clearly missed out.
Thank you so much for this series. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thank you Elizabeth 🙏🏼 That’s very telling indeed, and I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying the series. I’ve had a lot of fun making it 😊
@@SeekersofUnity Just watched again, (nope not obsessed, no siree) and I’m reminded of my personal theory of Spinoza’s Ethics.
In Part V, I think he deliberately leaves open a loop his readers are expected to close for themselves. That is, the first kind of knowledge, ie, imagination, should necessarily be harnessed in the service of the second to reach the third. For instance, a rational response to our subconscious chaos is creative discipline, which in turn hones our capacity for intuitive problem solving. That same idea is (I think) implicit in his commentary on prophecy in the TPT, but saying so out loud would have made the Ethics even more dangerous than it already was. Could it be that Baruch the mystic is pulling his punches, establishing some basic principles and leaving us to draw our own conclusions? This makes room for the universality of the religious experience, true to his personal motto: Caute.
I really dig this reading Elizabeth. I’ll have to give some thought to it. Cauté.
Thank you for your excellent podcast, giving us an overview of the importance of Spinoza's philosophy. As a student of Spinoza's philosophy, I have studied Spinoza's Ethics extensively, and I believe to really understand Spinoza, you must live his ideas. I have more than a theoretical concept. After 40 years of work, I now teach, mentor, and coach those who want to live, understand, and love as Spinoza did.
Over 26 years ago, I, having had a mystical experience at the age of 22, struggled to convince my professor of philosophy that that Spinoza was indeed a mystic. My words fell short, and I ultimately walked away feeling defeated and deflated. Thank you for this wonderful video! It gave me goose bumps watching it. Bless you all!! And may the legend of the most well liked philosopher live on ad aeternum!!!!
Thank you so much Debby for that sweet message. We have to go back in time and see what your professor responds to this vid 😋 Thank you again. Viva la Spinoza.
Hi Debby. There’s a small group of Seekers forming around mystical experiences. Would you be interested in connecting on that topic?
@@stephenvankleeck4801 That sounds really interesting Stephen. I would definitely be interested in connecting. Just fill me in on the details.
I recommend reading "Perceiving God-The Epistemology of Religious Experience" by William P. Alston.
Thanks for the recommendation 🙏🏻
Immensely interesting interpretation of Part 5 of the Ethics. I find your arguments compelling.
Thank you friend. That’s a high compliment coming from you. Your Spinoza classes are fantastic. Thank you.
@@SeekersofUnity Thanks so much! I’m particularly interested in Maimonides as I know very little about him, so I’m delighted that you have plenty more lectures to keep me busy. I really like your interpretation of the third kind of knowledge and the intellectual love of god. It goes very well with the rest of the Ethics. I suppose that while particular things can be understood by the empirical method, or the second kind of knowledge, the infinite (or the world taken ‘as a whole’) could only be understood by intuitive knowledge. Thanks again for giving me some interesting ideas to ponder.
You're most welcome. Maimonides influence on Spinoza is fascinating. I hope you enjoy the series on him that we're currently releasing. Just released the eighth part of the series yesterday. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on them.
Yours,
Zevi
Your synthesis is a divine treasure that has touched my soul. “The symbol is not the thing, the map is not the territory, the word is not that;” so, I m speechless; but lingering with inner radiance of gratitude, love, consciousness, and spirit. ❤
We hit 5K subscribers! Go drop a question in the comments of last weeks vid for the upcoming 5K Q&A and check out our diy merch patches: th-cam.com/video/07z7OGBkQ5I/w-d-xo.html - - - www.seekersofunity.com/merch
And check out our college Justin Sledge @Esoterica's accompanying video: Spinoza - Rationalist Atheist or Mystical Pantheist ? Exploring Spinozism from Toland to Deleuze
th-cam.com/video/6Tg03chJpZ4/w-d-xo.html
Congrats, Zevi!
*_Love God as God Wills Humanity._*
Beautifully done. Thanks for the presentation.
Thank you Aaron 🙏🏼
Amém 🙏🏼 Thank you for the wonderful content and presentation.
You’re most welcome. Thank you for joining us to learn.
This is wonderful stuff. I would like to point that in your discusion of Scientia Intuitiva @18:00, whether it is irrational or arational, there is a lot of overlap with Nicolas of Cusa's concept of Learned Ignorance. In "De Docta Ignorantia" he suggests that the key to experiencing mystic unity with God through intellectual intuition is an awareness that a complete conceptual understanding of God is impossible and can only be acquired in a limited fashion. In other words, the more one learns, the more one realizes the extent of their own ignorance, especially in relation to the divine.
There is another interesting parallel, namely Cusa's use of geometric metaphors to illustrate how God is both knowable yet incomprehensible.
Perhaps a topic for another video?
Absolutely beautiful !
🙏🏼
I love the Spinoza series but I can't help but get distracted by your lamp lol. It's beautiful. You and Filip are killing me with these amazing lamps in the background. Now I want to go antique shopping.
😂😂😂 When i started reading your comment Justin and saw the “but...” i thought I was about to get lampooned or lambasted for some mistake i make. 😅
@@SeekersofUnity hahaha nope just a little humor. Haven't caught any mistakes yet!
😋 Let us know if you do 🙏🏻
Thanks. Good work! You and your "periyoutubic" circle dr. J.S., P.H. and others. Peace.
❤ Spinoza is like the alchemist before the chemistry is worked out. I love that you mentioned the epistemological implications of how everything fits together in his ideas. From diverse areas of human inquiry. I never read or knew about Spinoza’s philosophy until a few days ago but I understand it better than anyone else because I came to the same ideas through a completely different route and perspective. But I had the benefit of modern science so I make predictions, did experiments, organized all knowledge in history in my first book and papers 20 years ago and brought to staggering detailed translations of what god is in my new book. I definitely thought my whole life that I was making a mind at one with, that worked like, the universe. I thought they were doing things the wrong way in schools. So I did my own thing which there were no grades for. I remember when I encountered the mantra “om mani Padme him” which was explained to me to read “to prepare a mind at one with the universe” and I was completely stunned because that is exactly what I had been doing my whole life. ❤ So your video really brought it home. The love part, everything-I figured it all out myself. Back in early 2020 I was posting about love, on my way to my “A Course in Miracles” reading group. 😂 and I have absolutely advanced so much since then. Sometimes I can hardly keep from crying in public because I love people so much. Because I see so much more in them. Because I love god so much. I have said many times that I only see god when I look at the world and universe. And I can tell you in great detail how and what everything means. ❤❤❤❤ Anyway, thank you so much for this!!! 🙏🏻❤️🔥
You’re most welcome Stephanie.
Wonderful!
Spinoza, like so many other mystics, is clearly philosophizing from a noetic standpoint that completely transcends the dianoetic purview by which Nadler, Bennett, et al. register the field. Even though Spinoza graciously articulates the ramifications of his rarefied degree of consciousness in rationalist discourse, this by no means entails that the scope of his cosmovision is reducible to the intellectual parameters (and the dianoetic limitations) of unregenerate rationality.
Generous soul that he was, the blessed Baruch condescended to express the fruits of his highest, trans-rational, mystical insights in an rationalist idiom so that we who are still mucking about in the swamps of magical and mythological thinking, and in the arid deserts of reductive rationalism and scientism, might get a taste of what it is like to register reality from the luminous standpoint of pure noesis, from the glorious ineffability of non-dual henosis. Sadly, intellectual ingrates like Jonathan Bennett - and those like him who are unaware of their rationalist blinders - take the generous gifts of mystical insight, which Baruch so beneficently attempted to put his vision into terms that folks limited to pure reason could get an inkling of, and they flung it back in his face with their obtuse criticisms.
Clearer minds call that "talking bullshit", I am afraid.
@@lepidoptera9337 If by "clearer" you mean "mythological," then, yes, your fear is warranted. But since clarity is in the eye of the beholder, one man's "bullshit" is another man's brilliance. "To each his own" - the watchword for evaluating any register of consciousness.
@@simka321 Clearer means scientific. The actual watchwords are "success" and failure, where science is associated with success and philosophy and religion are associated with failure. Glad I could clear this up for everybody.
@@lepidoptera9337 You’re so nice! Thank you.
@@simka321 That's not me. That is reality staring you in the face. I am just the messenger. You know what they say about not shooting the messenger, right?
Spinoza's reality, by the way, was the threat of religious violence. He could not have spoken the truth without severe repercussions, not even if he wanted to.
Pretty BALLER video, brother!
Thanks for the amazing work illustrating the mystical context of the intellectual love of G!d. When we came to this section during a grad seminar, it absolutely broke the class. People quit coming and the yelling and table-pounding were obscene as it was unsurprising. It was really the only seminar that I saw grad students and visiting profs behave like that; Baruch sure has a strange power to bring out the worst in philosophers. That experience produced in me the idea that perhaps you can tell what is real medicine by it producing toxic effects in the wrong hands and in the wrong conditions, as it were.
You’re most welcome. That you for sharing the telling anecdote.
"I am no scholar" says Zevi Slavin. Dr Justin Sledge today, a year later, says Zevi is a scholar. Who is right? Both. I love this deep ecumenism that is flourishing as if we were all Creation Spiritualists of the Rev Dr. Matthew Fox(sic) . Meister Eckhardt becomes a household name like a Rumi of the Catholic Sufis. Thank you whatever you call yourself.
Thank you, friend 🙏🏼
Super grateful for this ❤️
You’re most welcome brother :)
I completely agree with this line of interpretation.
Absolutely amazing and awesome video. Thanks for sharing
You’re most welcome Phillip 🙏🏼
This channel is so great! Thank you for these wonderful videos.
Thank you friend :) You’re most deeply welcome.
Great Video!! So full of deep knowledge and human insight. Thank you for your fantastic work!!
You’re most welcome Adam. Thank you 🙏🏼
Hi! Three years too late, but I love what you're doing here and how you present.
Thank you Joshua. You’re not late at all. You’re right on time. Welcome 🙏🏼
For the most part I have read nothing but a few statements about this subject. Like you said many academics do not seem to want to touch it and I understand why. Thank you for the great content.
Yup, it’s scary stuff 😋 Thank you 🙏🏼
Thank you for helping me understand me
Wow. You’re so deeply welcome. Thank you.
I've always said, scrutiny and patience yield the sweeter revelation.
This video is spot-on and overlaps with a lot of the things I talk about in my videos.
Solid work.
Thanks brother. I'll have to check out your work. Glad what we're putting out is resonating.
@@SeekersofUnity Definitely resonating! I see you got John Vervaeke on as an interviewee. Can’t wait to watch that.
Probably get to it this weekend.
Enjoy my friend.
You're breaking my 20 year old brain in the best way possible
Good lectures. I found that listening at .75 speed is helpful.
Thank you friend. I’m glad you’re appreciating them.
Hi Zevi, thank you so much for this. ..
You’re most welcome Rene 🙏🏼
Spinoza's third level of knowledge does indeed follow from the second level of rational thought. Without the second, it would have been impossible for him to have arrived at his third level of intuition. The three levels are inextricably connected. That is why he presents this theory as tripartite, although I must say, this third level that Spinoza speaks of is so drastically distinct from any other mode of thinking. Perhaps this is where the confusion lies.
Agreed. Well put.
I agree. I think it becomes clearer if you look at _real-world_ examples of the application of the third kind of knowledge. Two remarkable examples, I would argue, are Einstein's theories of General and Special Relativity, and the mathematical insights of Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Excellent. Congratulations.
Spinoza gets it.
So now we've found our starting point.
Perhaps there is hope after all.
Perfect timing friend!
Thank you Dal. Took a lot to get it out on time 😅
Wow, that was sublime!
Thank you brother 🙏🏼
Genius. Love it
Having studied, practiced and experienced ‘Tibetan Buddhism’ (in its essence without the ism), I can truly understand and identify with Spinoza’s 3rd type of knowing, where the known, knowing and the knower become one. No-one can understand this just from the arm-chair of reasoning. Reasoning is key, like a boat taking you to the other shore, but once reaching there, you might want to leave the boat behind and only return to it, when journey once again leads you through space and time.
❤ love u thank you very much we are all one
This is brilliant. So we’ll explained
Thank you Victoriah 🙏🏼
Great video. I wonder what Spinoza thinks of the after life.
Thank you Nathan. Great question. Spinoza has some fascinating thoughts on the immortality of the mind which follow on from where we left off here. Check that out. Maybs we’ll make another vid to discuss that 😉
Love it! Thank you!
🙏🏼🙏🏼
Excellent! Thank you! ❤️
You’re most welcome ☺️
I've never read Spinoza but now I really want to read Spinoza until I learn how to read Spinoza. Had to lol when you gave a trigger warning to the rationalists.
My Neoplatonism professor said that Descartes had read Plotinius. Many aspects of Spinoza's recall in some sense the One, it is to wonder if there might have been some, at least, indirect influence. Edit after listening: I saw you indeed mentioned Neoplatonism! Curious to dig more into it.
One of the last images is a painting of Dante's Paradise made by Gustave Doré, if I am not mistaken.
What about a video on Rudolf Steiner or Anthroposophy in general?
I’m keen.
beautifully put
Thank you Derris 🙏🏼
hey, dude. you're amazing.....
Thanks Dale. You are too.
Very good. And if this is indeed what Spinoza thought, he was on the right track. (And it would seem that Einstein didn't fully understand him.) But Spinoza lacked certain information that most of us lack. And philosophy is fine, but Revelation is final. "God" can only be fully known experientially. But in the Twentieth Century God revealed Itself (on an intellectual level in the published literature) to any mind that seeks understanding. And with this information it becomes clear that absolute Reality is best understood in very simple terms. Because, anything added to Truth subtracts from Truth. Seek and ye shall find. (I don't receive TH-cam comment notifications so that I converse only with true seekers.)
Hey Zevi, and thanks for the awesome enlightening videos! I have a Spinoza-related question, if you find the time: Where do you see an interpretation of the Eden myth in an ego-forming, selfconscious-becoming (neo)platonic or pan(en)theistic way, where Hashem might be seen as Brahman if you will, and the ”banishment” perhaps in an agricultural ”layman versus the yogi” kinda way, where the Seraphim at the gate could be seen as the final remnants of the ego before returning to unity, kinda like the guardian demons at some buddhist temples? Meaning does this kind of thinking clearly exist before the major medieval kabbalistic texts? Thanks man! -Antti, Helsinki
Thank you so much Annti 🙏🏼 Hmm that’s a good question of where it appears first. We may have to look at Philo of Alexandria for an early hint at this. Just a hunch. Also, not that his is earlier, but check out Jacob Boheme’s exegesis of the Eden story, it’s fire.
@@SeekersofUnity Thanks for the quick reply, and thanks for the tips! Been looking for a possible earliest version of this ”YHVH as Ein Sof / Monad” and similar, in all three Abrahamic religions, and Philo is a great hunch. Keep up the good work! Shalom.
Love you
Love you back 😘
Cool.
I like how you currently have 6.13 thousand subscribers lol
Hehe. 7.70 next? 😉
Like many others mystics is panentheism, spiritual but not religious, tolerant, cosmopolitan, and non dualist.
Did he think that we could know nature but not love it, simply feel neutral about it ? How did he define love ?
Greetings brave young man. One can have states (quantifiable - Hz) of mind, not so of consciousness. 😊
Great video. Question: Since according to Spinoza every being that exists is a mode of God, should Hitler (or pick your favorite murderous psychopath) be considered a mode of God?
Excellent! One point i think is important and upon which we seem to differ: 24:30 we are not God. Me loving me is not God loving God; it's me being Narcissus. Yin/yang is God loving God: look at the centre of each lobe; it loves the other and moves after it. We by our intellect can love the whole thing. Look at what happens when there is no other at the centre of each... division. Fascism is one colour; it puts itself at its own centre: this is our structural problem. It's not "there, but for the grace of God, go i"; it's "there, by God's grace, i also go".
We are all god in essence. The essence of any given thing is indistinguishable from God's at the most fundamental level.
@@javiersoto5223 What do you think about Ibn el Arabi's position wrt what would later be called "the Unity of Being"? Contrast with Spinoza's position wrt what would later be called "pantheism". I take what i believe to be a scientific perspective, where it seems there is a panqualism; some distance from panpsychism. Ultimately, truth will say.
@@mediocrates3416 I'm familiar with the unity of being but I have not studied it well enough to comment on it. Sorry.
@@javiersoto5223 I'm no expert; just watched "let's talk religion" vid. How about malchut, yesod, and shekhinah? I'm asking just cuz it seems relevant. We can run with our essence or run against it and, when we are with it, we are with God. ... Maybe....; it looks like maybe. Fundamentally, all together, i think maybe you're right.
Thinking about it; i see a pragmatic equivalence of Father and Son. A hard equivalence would maybe give us a pantheism like Spinoza's. I've leveraged something from the uncovered gnostic texts, "you cannot see the Father but, you can see His light in my face". I've wondered what in science could be these things and, that's why i might mention the coherence of Being that is the ground of truth. Truth has dexterity when it comes to how we articulate and, we have that same dexterity; that's as close as we get to being gods and, in the long term it's a responsibility.
I don't consider Spinoza a riddle. I look at him as someone endowed with an understanding that surpassed his contemporaries including Newton who may have gleaned ideas from him.
The man was excommunicated in the harshest way abuobe can imagine.You feel me?😅
Thank you for rejecting the experts who wrote their own “worthless rubbish” when they didn’t understand what their superior was saying.
poggers for sbinoza
intuition is extrapolation from the facts that reason have limited capacity to find the answers.
Please adjust the EQ, to harsh to leasing!
Thank you.
Reading the books of the New Testament, we probably asked ourselves more than once: *"Why 2000 years we do not see those miracles that accompanied the Сhurch of Christ in the I century, as described in the New Testament?"* Why do the so-called preachers of Christ have to prove that Jesus really existed and atheists boldly deny the historicity or divine origin of Christ? Maybe because the Сhurch of Christ has not existed for 2000 years?
The Сhurch does not exist in the form in which it is presented in the books of the New Testament, but there are Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and other christian sects claiming to be the place of the Church, but they not have the only thing that distinguishes the divine from the human and is characteristic of just the Сhurch of Christ -the reinforcement of the word with signs, that is, miracles (Mark 16:15-20). Therefore, some researchers doubt the historicity of Christ, and some of them are not opposed to declaring him a an ordinary philosopher, teacher. But even if Jesus were an ordinary philosopher, his disciples would be ordinary followers of Jesus. And they would not dare to write about the miracles that not only Jesus, but also his disciples, could perform. If there were the Church in our time as described by the authors of the New Testament books, where miracles are performed, the sick are healed, where prophesied, and the dead are raised, no one would doubt the historicity of Christ. Then there would be the same controversy throughout the world as in the first century - Jesus the Son of God or the false prophet who seduces the world by miracles. As a result, we can say that the emergence and development of christian sects and atheism was the result of the fact that over the 2000 years the Сhurch of Christ did not exist.
Find *"The Mystery about the Church of Christ"* video on TH-cam. The video reveals the prophecy of the disappearance and reappearance of the Church of Christ before the End of the World. Watching this video will give hope to all who sincerely seek God and will interest those who are not too lazy to think freely. Click on my name to watch the video (The video is in Russian, but English subtitles are included).
The use of "i.e." is far more apropos for work to be read. Find words such as "therefore" or "so to say" or "for example" or the actual "that is" id est is shorthand for.
Tai chi and Aikido are also arts of union with the whole of Nature 👍
💝💝💝💝💝💝. 💜. 😘
Something for your Mind. 😘
Advaita Vedanta esp the teaching of ramana maharishi ,
I love the information you present in your videos BUT I do wish the image would stop jumping around so much! Why is it necessary to reframe to image so often? What are you trying to do? I totally understand that it is necessary to take breaks when recording but the jumping around so frequently, an average of every 10 seconds, is very distracting and ruins the continuity of listening. Please don't write and say that I can always look away, turn off the screen, close my eyes, etc., such thoughts are missing the point. Equally, if it only me that has this problem then I guess I'll just have to find another channel to 'watch'.
Hi Neil. Thank you for the honest feedback and critical feedback. I really do appreciate it. The reason i was reframing so often was because I was trying to visually punctuate new paragraphs and points that in written form could be punctuated visually with paragraph breaks, parenthesis and the like. All not available tool for video format. I apologize that the zooming was distracting and unhelpful, I’ll try use it less in the future. I’m glad you’re loving the content and the information. Keep learning, keep seeking.
Much love,
Zevi
@@SeekersofUnity Wow Zevi, I am both impressed and very grateful for your response! I at least now see the purpose nehind said reframing - and that helps. I most certainly wil continue to watch your channel because it is so informative and I learn so much. Thank you again!
What does that actually mean?🤔
Yes 💗 the third one intuition, knowing before you knew, catch 22, welcome back to the Truth?
Like you say someone's gotta do it l'm glad it's you. Why not?
Thank you Ruth 🙏🏼 and having fun while doing it 😉
Spinoza: a great mode.
We should be proud to be a part of him!
In truth he we all are proud of Spinoza. He's not just your friend. Read them ethics if you 'is' confused😅
Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt.
It seems to be that Spinoza could not break himself away from Judaism and I think it inhibited his understanding of the Creator. I don't believe the Creator ever communicated with man so this idea of love of god or mysticism is based on the need for man to connect with a god instead of connecting with nature and the sciences.
For Spinoza God is Nature. “Deus sive Natura.”
@@SeekersofUnity OK, I don't believe the Creator is nature but I believe that the Creator binds all matter allowing it to exist. The Creator did give humans free will and the intellect to work within nature to improve it or as we have seen to destroy it.
@@Rajul_Jamil I recommend you read the first two Biocentrism books and Advita Vedenta.
@@johnnykrauze Only a fool would think that the universe only exists because of an individual's consciousness of it.
@@Rajul_Jamil I am a fool
Never apologise for chutzpah!
😉
Samsara equals nirvana! 👍
.
Why stoop to the level of using soyboy-mouth-open-surprised thumbnails for the video?
Let your content speak for itself. 🙄
Nah nah nah, the mouth is wide open to symbolize oral receptivity of Spinoza's monster mysticism.
Unironically saying soyboy 🙄