John Dunn

Beginning is a constant, now, in active thinking

Friday, 30 September 2022 at 17:31

Illustration for John Milton's Paradise Lost by Gustave Doré (1866). The spiritual descent of Lucifer into Satan

Beginning is a constant, now, in active thinking

We are all born fallen (Fallen angel tempted Adam and Eve)

Death, comes before life

The cosmic Beginning is the metaphor for man’s own Beginning

Again I reiterate, in archived blog Beginning, always 2, a point that I have settled upon throughout my philosophical/theological writings, and that is: the Beginning is a constant, now, in active thinking.

In the afore mentioned blog I compared the state of falling away from active thinking to that of the fallen angel, the Deviland the Devil’s children who live amongst us today.

Adam and Eve were tempted to fall too, with the result that we are all born fallen.

What are all these falling metaphors driving at? The answer is that to exist outside of the constant, active, creative, Beginning, is to be subsumed into the one, i.e. the interminable equilibrium that comes before the Beginning, the state of objectified ‘reality’, the ready-made nature into which we are seemingly dropped.

The saving grace is that this state of subsumption, this death, comes before the awakening, this life.

The cosmic Beginning is the metaphor for man’s own Beginning.

© John Dunn.

Following a section of my Portway itinerary between Preston Capes and Farthinghoe in Northamptonshire

Thursday, 29 September 2022 at 21:12

Known as a former drovers' inn, Magpie Farm is on my Portway route

Following a section of my Portway itinerary between Preston Capes and Farthinghoe in Northamptonshire

From the moment I turned off the minor road through Preston Capes to follow my Portway itinerary towards Eydon, I felt, almost, an isolation. This is a lost lonely land of single track lanes, the Cotswolds without the tourist traffic and, for much of this stretch of my Portway, I pottered along alone and unharassed, across a wide countryside, with broad open views through the gaps in the hedgerows.

The plateau land rose gently to Woodfordhill, thence to higher ground at Cherry Tree Farm at 614 feet. There is a fork in the road here. The left is the more likely Portway route, but there is an unmetalled section at Crockwell Farm. It has byway status, but my motorcycle is unsuitable for off road work, so Itook a detour via Eydon, before returning to the southbound lane, south of Crockwell Farm.

Here is met one of the rare occasions when the Portway traveller is force to cross water, the way dropping to 413 feet at a tributary of the River Cherwell, which intersects the North-South Portway from East to West. Travellers in the past would haveforded the stream here. As I rode over the little bridge it was clear to me that this area must be subject to flooding from time to time.

A hauntingly quiet stretch of crumbling lane followed, passing through woodland and over the traces of a disused railway, before meeting wider,slightly busier lanes between Sulgrave and Culworth, passing too by Magpie Farm, formerly called the Magpie Inn, once frequented by drovers driving cattle to markets in Northampton and as far as London.

Southward, my Portway itinerary carried me over the HS2 works, then between Marston St Lawrence and Greatworth, whilst keeping to the watershed ridgeway on the hill top village of Farthinghoe.

© John Dunn.

The living God did not walk amongst us, he is within the ones who live in a concrete rather than an illusory reality. God is the living thought and God is Love.

Wednesday, 28 September 2022 at 22:10

(Pictured: Blessing Christ by Hans Memling, late 15th century)

The living God did not walk amongst us, he is within the ones who live in a concrete rather than an illusory reality.

God is the living thought and God is Love.

In the archived blog, Living thought as Logos, I reinforced a position which is so very hard to maintain in the face of the reinforcement of the anti-truth by the controllers communication. The position is founded upon the principle that concrete reality is only in the present.

There was not, or is not, a before, a beginning and an afterwards, there is only a now. All past and all future is in the present. The Beginning is always, the Creation a constant.

The archived blog, Living thought as Logos, gives a corrected translation of John 1 which serves to emphasise the point. John’s Gospel begins: In the beginning is the living thought, and the living thought is with God, and the living thought is God.

The implications for those who reject the dead, reflected thought of an illusory, presupposed ‘reality’, turning instead to the living thought by which the light of the Logos shines upon the Earth, are thus hugely divine in their implications.

The living God did not walk amongst us, he is within the ones who live in a concrete rather than an illusory reality.

He is in those for whom the Beginning is always.

What was that mystery, the Originatory Principle as I have termed it, i.e. that which will not be explained, that which will not be objectified?

The mystery is Love.

He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.’ (1 John 4:16)

God is the living thought and God is Love.

© John Dunn.

Unbounded nothing as one

Tuesday, 27 September 2022 at 21:47

Unbounded nothing as one

The oneness of nothing can only exist now as created now

My next archived blog under consideration (Beginning, always) is once more about an unbounded nothing being one, i.e. 1 - 0. All in all, when that all is reduced to its absolute limit of reduction, i.e. the reduction of the religionists, the supposed nought (0) before the supposed one-off beginning, or the supposed nought (0) before the so-called big bang, then we are dealing with a nought (0) that is one and all. 0 = 1.

“With the beginning the infinite space of nothing was bounded.” I wrote this in my blog (Beginning, always), and I am now trying to recover what I meant by it.

To be bounded it had to become observed and known, but perhaps that is simply to objectify it, make of it an abstraction.

The concrete actuality of anything can only exist now, in Creation, in the Beginning , always.

As such, the concrete reality of the oneness of nothing can only exist now as created now “in the eternity of the present, behind which there is no past and in front of which there is no future”.

The darkness of nothing, i.e. death, as preserved by the Prince of Darkness and his followers, is uncovered for what it is, nothing but a pre-existent ‘reality’, a presupposition, i.e. an idol.

© John Dunn.

Before the Beginning was the oneness of nothing

Sunday, 25 September 2022 at 21:41

Before the Beginning was the oneness of nothing

Oneness is the realm of Ananke

The Beginning was the violation of Ananke

The apartness of the violator is the mystery

The mystery is Love

What existed before the Beginning?

Or if you are of the religion of science, what existed before the Big Bang?

Well, there was nothing, no thing, no being.

This is hard to imagine… to say the very least.

I have tried my best to ‘picture’ it by mythologising it. I resort to personification, calling this state of nothingness Ananke, goddess of determinateness and fate, goddess of the interminable, infinite, and uninterrupted equilibrium.

How can nothing be an equilibrium?

The answer lies to some extent in my thinking that produced the archived blog entry entitled One nothing (scroll down the archived entries to see and read).

Nothing is one, stated the blog.

Nothing, so my mythology tells, is the realm of Ananke, the realm of oneness.

For the Beginning to happen there must be an intervention of the oneness, a violation of Ananke.

It is in this intervention that the mystery lies.

The mystery existed apart from the oneness.

What was that mystery, the Originatory Principle as I have termed it, i.e. that which will not be explained, that which will not be objectified.

The mystery is Love.

© John Dunn.

Further notes on the north-south Roman Portway in Oxfordshire and Northhants

Saturday, 24 September 2022 at 10:16

Portway near Somerton*

Further notes on the north-south Roman Portway in Oxfordshire and Northhants

These are additions to my researches into a possible long distance Roman Road connecting Silchester and Dorchester-on-Thames to Watling Street and points north of present-day Daventry from Bannaventa (Norton village)

I conjecture that the road from Kirklington to Souldern is Roman in construction. After Souldern, the route to Norton (Bannaventa) is a pre-Roman ridgeway, Rainsborough to Borough Hill, incorporated into the north-south Portway by the Romans.

Ivan D. Margary confirms the first part of my conjecture in part as Roman Road 161a, starting near Kirklington in Oxfordshire ending near Aynho in Northamptonshire.

There is a motte and Bailey at Preston Capes, suggesting that the route northwards after Souldern retained its importance as a medieval trading route.

Roman building debris and Roman pottery scatter have been found at the site of a Roman Villa in Farthinghoe. This is evidence of Roman activity on the Souldern-Norton ridgeway section of the Portway.

“The Portway at Souldern crossed Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, and can still be distinctly traced from Walton Grounds, through Aynho Park, to the turnpike gate east of Souldern, whence it runs along the present road towards Fritwell, passing on its way the ancient barrow called Ploughley Hill, which has been within the last 60 years partially levelled.” (19th Century account)

Beckley is significant because it was at the point where the Roman Road met Otmoor, which was probably impassable in winter. Travellers would have to make the decision to risk continuing on over the moor, or diverting northwards over the River Ray at Islip.

A Roman Villa has been excavated at Islip on the approach road from Beckley.

Several fields from around the village of Woodeaton have for nearly 300 years produced Roman finds. A Roman temple at Woodeaton overlooks the Beckley -Islip Road

The O.S. map of Roman Britain (2nd ed., 1924), shows the evidence of field-boundaries, marking a line of road leading northwards from Wood Eaton via Islip to near Bletchingdon.

The A4074 (much of it along the line of the Port Way), came into existence in the 1960s, taking on the B479 from Caversham to Crowmarsh Gifford (the remainder had already become the A423. Then in 1991, following the completion of the M40 and general improvements to the A34 and A404, the A423 was deemed to be no longer suitable as a long distance commercial route, and so was detrunked and renumbered south of Banbury. The section between the Oxford Ring Road and Crowmarsh Gifford became an northward extension of the A4074.

© John Dunn.

*Acknowledged to http://www.fraw.org.uk/rambles/noas/portway.shtml

The Logos can only be the living thought itself, Creation always, the Beginning always

Thursday, 22 September 2022 at 21:53

Daniel Gran's Glory of the Newborn Christ in Presence of God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Note how Adam and Eve are portrayed below, in chains.

The Logos can only be the living thought itself, Creation always, the Beginning always

In the Beginning is the Word, the Word being the Logos, or God, or Love.

Immanence with the Logos is Love

I write the notes as a further development of the archived blog Where the immanence? (Scroll down the Archive to read.)

It deals with a question: if there is an imminence possible with the Logos, and I have stated repeatedly that it is possible in the realm of living, active and non-objectifying thought, then where will the Logos be found.

A Logos that finds me, or to which I return, is out of the question, as that would involve a presupposed existence that is tantamount to idolatry; it would objectify the the idea of the Logos, making of it an abstraction, a non-entity.

The Logos can only be the living thought itself, Creation always, the Beginning always.

The mistranslation in the Bible must be amended to make this clear.

In the beginning was the Word should read In the Beginning is the Word, the Word being the Logos, or God, or Love.

To understand the Beginning as a Big Bang, one-off, event is to objectify the Logos making of it an abstraction, a non-entity.

Where is the Beginning, and how can it be discovered without objectifying it and thereby idolising an abstraction.

Here we come to the Originatory Principle for which there is no explanation. Here we come to the mystery.

That which will not be objectified or rationalised into abstraction is Love.

God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)

Immanence with the Logos is Love.

To be read with the archived blog Where the immanence? (Scroll down the Archive to read.)

© John Dunn.