🤔 Metaphysics_ Universal Truth & Primer to understanding the System

All the countless topics in metaphysics that I've done, it's kind of rare that I run across one of the facts that's like, you know, I've not made a video about that before. I certainly haven't. I like to read a couple passages. This is the select works of Ananda are essentially a compilation of article letter responses that he's had with other people that used to write them. Back in the day, a lot of them are ignorant, of course, bold statements, you know, the way things even are now where various religious entities will go after others, certainly more so amplified in the early 1900s. Kumaraswamy actually died in 1947. I was son friends with his son, Ramapikumaraswamy, who is a cardiac surgeon. He said I had the rights to all of his father's works, as long as I didn't charge for them, which of course, I never had any plans charging for them. I have mentioned one aspect of this that without the primer. And first, I'd like to make a statement about this kind of make things easy to understand. It would be like somebody writing about cake that's never eaten cake, or someone that's written a travel book on Hawaii, that's never been to Hawaii. I used to know the wife of this guy who was the head of nursing down in Atlanta, I won't say which hospital and of the pediatric division of nursing, specifically children. Well, she hates children. She's never had a child. She doesn't like children. She's, she's the head of pediatricians. Yeah, it's slightly, it's not ironic and hypocritical. It's just, you know, it's kind of one of the ear markers of a strange upside down backwards universe, of course. But I have talked before about the fact that no one can talk about anything intelligently without a primer. They have to understand something. They have to fundamentally grasp it at the ontological level, not having read a bunch of stuff and been able to parrot it and repeat it back. Obviously, that's not comprehension, that's epistemic or empirical knowledge, and this is the case. But truth also, too, must be universal. There is no way that truth could be specific, nor could wisdom, of course. By the way, there's no branch of Sophia, of Sophia Perennis, the traditionalist school of metaphysics, i.e., a monist, really, that will say that there is a specific truth. In other words, it applies here, but it doesn't apply over here. Obviously, it must be universal. Aristotle did mention that, and I ran across one passage in one of the Selected Letters of Kumaraswami in writing. He often corresponded with priests and sometimes nuns and different scholars. He would actually give them educations on things. It's kind of odd, too, that of the countless, endless numbers of articles and thousands and thousands of articles and countless books that Kumaraswami wrote in his life, and he knew 27 languages, and he only typed on his typewriter with two fingers, by the way. His son actually makes a count of that. All of those books and all those articles, and he couldn't do this number with both of his hands on a typewriter. It's quite amazing that he was retiring from writing and was going to move to India to fulfill the last half of his life in the final spiritual quest. In other words, finish opening the doors up in a spiritual quest, but shortly before going, he dropped dead. As the old saying goes, you need to work hard. As Gautama said, you never know when you're going to pass on from this world. Of course, that which dies is not the self. People always ask the question, what happens when we die? The answer to that is, what makes you think you are that which dies? Anyway, here's a little reading from Kumaraswami, and there's a letter. As for the uniqueness of Christianity, in the first place, this can only be a matter of faith, not of historical certainty. One cannot have it both ways because, as Aristotle said, factual knowledge can only be of what is normal, not of exceptions. In other words, it can't be specific. It can't be unique, and that's an incredibly important point people really don't make note of. In the second place, I can only say that I'm happy to disclaim the uniqueness of my own beliefs, to disclaim the uniqueness of my own beliefs, defend the truths of Christianity accordingly. I am very sure that it redounds to the greater glory of God, that on the veritas in veris signis, veria resplendiat. I only had a few years of Latin back in the day. Get on to another passage here of Kumaraswami, and then talk about a couple things. He goes on to, in a couple of these other passages, to go after those that are attacking Buddhism, or the works of Sri Sankaracharya, or this notion of Hinduism. In Western so-called Buddhism, there's this idea of, well, that soul stuff, that's Hinduism. There's no such thing as a religion of Hinduism. Hindu refers to a people, not a religion. I've said this before in many videos, and many Indians will actually speak up in the comments, like, yeah, this guy's right. I've never encountered a Westerner before who knows that fact. There's no such thing as a religion of Hinduism. It's completely ludicrous. It's not my opinion. That's a hardcore fact. There's Sanatana Dharma, Dvaita Vedanta, Advaita Vedanta. There's followers of the Bhagavad Gita. There's all sorts of faiths in India. There's no such thing as Hinduism. It's completely ludicrous. This is kind of an interesting read from Kumaraswami response to a, well, let's say, use the word heretic. Someone is attacking something that they have no idea about. It's no different than a superficial reader of Buddhism. People encounter this in college. We'll actually take a philosophy course. One of the core fundamentals of Buddhism is teach there is no soul, or not man, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People actually believe that, and that's not only illogical, absurd. It's completely non-doctrinal. There's no basis to say such nonsense. Where did that come from then? It actually came from the Theravadins, all those yellow-robed guys you actually see running around Southeast Asia, specifically Ceylon. They came from Sarvastivadins. Sarvastivadins literally means Sarvastivada. This is all there is, ism. This is all there is, ism. The isms meaning materialism. They're not original to Buddhism. Whatever you think about me saying that, I don't care. It's a substantial fact. I feel I have to speak about other religions that one's own, unless one has knowledge of the scriptures, comparable to that which one has of one's own. This is especially true as regarding Indian religions, where one does not read Sanskrit or Pali, has to rely on translations made by scholars, and he uses scholars in a pejorative fashion, who are themselves usually nominalists and rationalists, quite ignorant of the technical terms and meanings of theology and metaphysics. The result of relying on them is only to add to the already too prevalent misunderstandings in my own writings, which I consistently correlate to India, doctrines of Christianity as based on the readings of Christian sources in Latin and Greek, and never on what non-Christians may have had to say about Christianity. Do you not think that Christian writers ought to feel a similar responsibility when speaking of the teachings of other beliefs of faiths? I like to use the word religion because I have no interest in religions, by the way. The isms, you know, I don't care if it's Judeo-Christianity or Buddhism or anything. I'm not interested. I'm only interested in metaphysics and fundamental truth, which is transmutable. It's not specific. It has to be universal, just as that really important passage that the Guru Nanak Swami quotes regarding Aristotle. I found it odd that I had not made a video about that. I might have touched upon it before. You know, that the truth must be normal. It can't be exceptional. In other words, well, you got the truth over here, but not over here. It has to be universally applicable. It can't be like, well, that's the truth of XYZ belief or faith. That can't be. If it's the truth, then it must be universal by definition, period, and connotation. Here's a response to another. I think this is a letter to a Catholic priest. I'm afraid that most Christians, for some obscure reason to me, find it indispensable to exalt their own belief by giving a perverse account of those others, meaning other faiths, of which, moreover, they have only a secondhand knowledge derived from the writings of scholars who have been, for the most part, rationalists, unacquainted with the religious experience and unfamiliar with the language of theology. In other words, the lexicon of metaphysics. An important point. People have seen Egyptian hieroglyphs. That was not the lingua franca of your Joe Blow in Egypt. It was the language of the priests. It was specifically a metaphysical language. All those carvings that we think is, well, that's ancient Egyptian. No, it was a priestly language. This is not my opinion. This is a fact. Have you ever heard that before? Maybe one person in a million might have heard that fact before, but that was not the language. People, and actually a couple real wise scholars, have mentioned this before. If you went back to even an educated Joe Blow on the street, what does this say? They have no idea. That was never the language of the common man. Never was. They don't have the primer. They have no idea even back then. The average person. What the hell it meant? None. This is the same reason why when you read translations like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, other translations, even of the Rosetta Stone, where we had the Greek and the Aramaic, I believe. What was it? Greek and Latin. We had three languages on Rosetta Stone. We had Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek, and I think the other one was, yeah, it was Latin, wasn't it? The translation is ridiculous. Even with the Greek right next to it, still, it's demonstrably empirically roughly accurate, but it's nonsensical. It doesn't translate anything. All meaning has been completely baked out of it. This is a priestly language, and without the ability to actually translate it such that meaning is conveyed, then nothing is being said. Secondhand knowledge from derivative writings of scholars, rationalists, unequated religious experiments, experienced and unfamiliar with the language of theology. I recommend you spend as much time searching the scriptures of the Vedas and of original Buddhism and the original languages, and you may have spent on the scriptures as much as you have spent on the scriptures of Christianity in their original languages before you say anything more about other religions. This is a letter response from Kumaraswamy to Dr. Schweitzer. Anyway, back in the 20s and 30s, Kumaraswamy would get these letters from these ignorant people, and wanting to know the answer to the thing, or just flat out attacking him. Not attacking him, but, you know, for talking about what in their view was ignorant beliefs. But the only reason they thought it was ignorant is because they themselves didn't understand it, and they'd been reading, you know, commentarial trash. The same is true today. One of the co-founders of the Polytech Society, Caroline Augustus Foley and she called these books written by these uneducated scholars, you know, with degrees, scholars renowned and acclaimed, she called them miserable little books on Buddhism. Quote, unquote, miserable little books. That's what they are. These are people that have never tasted cake that are writing books about cake. No different than that head of pediatric nursing, that chick that doesn't have any children. She hates children. Never had any children of her own. You know, who would take the advice of somebody like that? I've never been interested in mere scholasticism. I've never been interested in knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It is a means. It is a bridge. There's certainly no ends. Just because I make a lot of videos about scholastic stuff and write articles doesn't mean I consider that the be-all end-all. Of course, I've never, ever, you know, even implied that and certainly never said it. But one has to have a primer of this theology, of this metaphysics within them. Otherwise, they have no idea what's being said. This is the reason why all translations of Plotinus are, oh, they're really horrible. Maybe the most accurate one, technically accurate, A. H. Armstrong. It's complete. Most accurate, complete one. It's still garbage. I've read his commentary on what he thinks about Plotinus and he thinks these things don't jive, various aspects of life, but he just doesn't understand them. They jive completely, but he's clueless. He's just this fat Christian scholar who's never, you know, experienced what is being taught regarding the epistrophe of Plotinus. He has no idea what monistic metaphysics is. I've read his articles and his, specifically his articles on monistic emanationism. He's completely clueless. He thinks there's all these contradictory things. He just doesn't understand it at all. He doesn't have within himself, he's dead now, you know, what is being said. He doesn't have within himself the primer. He has no idea. That's the reason why these translations are so horrible. You know, you read them, it's like, well, you know, you can see it's really heavy stuff, but it doesn't speak to me. It doesn't speak to you because it was written by a scholar. I have no clue what's being said, which is unfortunate, but also true when it comes to metaphysics. The truth definitely must be universal. It cannot be specific, it cannot be unique, and it can't, like, well, it exists over there, you know, but these people have their own truth. It can't work that way. Mother Nature can't work that way. Natural order cannot exist that way. It's completely impossible, logical, and absurd. This is a great little book to get. Anyway, it's a collection of articles called Selected Works of Kumaraswamy. The PDF, thanks to me, is available out there to get. It's quite a hefty book. Here's a picture of Kumaraswamy in some of his later days. It's kind of unfortunate he died shortly before moving to India to finish up his spiritual journey in India. He was just going to stop writing, and because he's written enough, you know, poor guy wrote enough in his life. He was going to finish up the scholastic stuff and finish up with completing his spiritual quest, and he died before he could get there. That says a lot about, you know, time being short in life. Anyway, I hope this video wasn't too dry and boring. I didn't mean it to be. I meant for it to be illuminating and insightful. Thank you so much for watching, and good night.