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Summary points for Week 5: Chapters 17, 18 and 3.2
Chapter 17: We are Composite, as Spiritual, Mental and Physical
á Postulate 15 What is unified and continuous in God, is imaged as discrete distributions.
Chapter 18: We are Sustained by Influx From God, Directly and Indirectly
á Combining God with the three created realms gives a set of four generative levels.
á Postulate 16 The relations between created realms is an image of the relation between God and creation.
á Postulate 17 Whenever love acts by means of wisdom, that action is a conscious action. There is consciousness of the production of the result and also of the delight that arises from the achievement of that production.
Chapter 3.2: A Way Forward: Changes to science
á Scientists should consider the possibility of as-yet-undiscovered dependencies of physical processes on such things as our individual minds or even on the transcendent mind of God.
Images of God (applying Chapter 10 again to anticipate Section 17.1)
á What is unified and continuous in God, is imaged as discrete distributions
á There are in us distinct images from God of Love, Wisdom and Action.
Realms
á The spiritual realm contains the separate loves in creation, including desires, loves, affections, motivations, purposes, dispositions, etc.
á The mental realm contains the separate carriers of wisdom, including thoughts, ideas, understandings, rationality, plans, ideologies, beliefs, etc.
á The physical realm deals with all the separate final actions and effects, including the entire sets of things we know from external observations and physics.
Three kinds of reception
1. Spiritual, to contain the separate loves in creation.
2. Mental, to contain the separate carriers of wisdom.
3. Physical, to deal with separate final actions & effects.
The spiritual and mental, together, are often call ‘mind’.
Our human spiritual is the container for the spiritual loves that we receive from God.
Our human mental is the container for the love of wisdom that we receive from God.
Generative relations between 3 receptions
God, with the three created receptions, gives a set of four generative levels.
God ⇘ Spiritual ⇘ Mental ⇘ Physical
á God generates first the spiritual realm, where there are containing-substances which appropriate and retain love.
á Spiritual (of loves) acts by producing new thoughts in the mental realm, where there are containing-substances which appropriate and retain ideas.
á Mental (of ideas) acts, in conjunction with the loves from the spiritual, by producing new effects in the final physical realm
á Physical (of actions) is the final effect of the chain and is the ‘bottom line’ or termination of all the processes.
Selecting relations between 3 receptions
Lower levels select what can occur:
God ⇘ Spiritual ⇘ Mental ⇘ Physical
á Particular existing spiritual containing-substances select which loves from God can be appropriated and retained
á Particular existing mental containing-substances select which ideas generated by the spiritual realm can be appropriated and retained.
á Particular existing physical containing-substances select which actions generated by spiritual and mental realms can have permanent physical effects.
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