Respectful greetings, Abaase,
I use that salutation advisedly, because I know from my own experience that sincerity of inquiry takes great courage in an enviroment that does not necessarily welcome it, especially in certain forms. I started on my own journey of inquiry while attending a Catholic high school. In retrospect, a triad of events sent me looking for answers that were not forthcoming from the source that I had considered infalible and inexhaustabel to that point. It seemed I had, despite its good service and good intentions, broke the camel's back. After some time I could no longer even bear to attend the mass I had loved so much, as it only reminded me that I had hit a wall of impenatrable opacity within the Church. This was mitigated later, but in an unexpected manner.
I was not so fortunate as you as to have such a book as "The Third Jesus" to use as one of my mile markers, though I did have other exceptional resources. I also framed my question in somewhat wider terms than you did. Having made a similar observation to yours about the complexity involved not only in Catholicism, but in other faiths as well, my inquiry centered on the matter of "How do I know God directly?" I was, as you might suspect, aware of the injunction that "No man enters Heaven except through me." Well, that statement became a bombshell of exceedingly great proportions, and the portal through which I entered a profound rebirth of understanding.
I must say here, that though I only heard it much later, it was when it was already impossible to turn back that I heard the following injunction: "The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." Also this one: "Spirituality is not a child's play. My words will tear apart anyone who listens to them." Though they were spoken by Nisargadatta, and not the words of my own Mentor, I understood from my own experience what this meant.
We are primarily mental creatures, as far as our perceptions of the world go. This means that in order to survive, as children we internalize by unconscious imitation the ideas and dynamics that form our environment. These are somewhat mitigated by our inborn propensities, wherever those may come from. The meaning of the above statements bear direct consequense on one's perception of the world. I had the imense good fortune to be with a Mentor who knew that as the false perception of Reality is disassembled as a scaffold for experience, the structure of Truth must already be there to enliven the experience of the seeker.
All that is to say that not only did I find a more profound Way of understanding the significance of Jesus, salvation, and all the galaxy of ideas that go with that, but I saw clearly and incontrovertably that the whole of religion as I formerly knew it was an innocently or deliberatly degraded husk of something that is fundamentally profound and miraculous, yet knowable. Indeed, the conjoining of the [I]feeling [/I]of knowing and the ability to see a clear cognative line of understanding precipitated for me a completely different world view than is common among our friends and loved ones. It resloved many seeming contradictions and gave a profound depth to both science and religion that both had previously lacked for me. This also brings with it a profound sense of the void between the fundamentalist practitioner of any form of christianism or strict scientism, even on one who has no more than an intellectual, but clear and certain understanding of the Third Jesus of whom Chopra speaks.
His line of reasoning has no doubt led you to some ideas that are different and disturbing in terms of the Catholic faith. They are mild compared to what is actually the difinitive experience behind them. I urge you to be careful in your desire to discover, because if you continue on this path you will change profoundly. You will become a pink monkey in the pack of furry brown ones. You will not feel seperate from them as you will see that we are all God's creatures, but they will not return that affection. Au contrair. We are a race that tends to crucify its saviors and innovators, or disdain and ignore them at best. It is not for nothing that what you might be embarking on is sometimes called "The Path of Ultimate Responsibility" or "the Way of the Lonely Ones."
You will have to come to the realization that your sole/soul friend is your own eternal Essence. There will be others like you, but they are few and far between with few exceptions. But like my Mentor said, "If you want a friend, be one/One!"
Yet this is the most glorious, if not also the most frustrating in terms of everyday life, aspect of it. One gains an experiential understanding of the root of the Golden Rule in both its forms, and one is found on an unshakable base for a real morality free of dogma. I think it is what has been refered to as "The Peace that passeth understanding" and "being above the Law." It is not that one is without rules, it is that "Thy Will is written in my heart, oh God" and one is rendered incapable of doing harm.
It is this aspect of the Law and Will being in one's own heart that has a transformative value. It is the knowledge and experience of what that means that may distinguish you from the majority of others.
I do not know your age, disposition, or support system as to any profound questioning you might undertake. I simply urge you to be careful, because you are talking here about taking the red pill, in case you have seen a movie called "[I]The Matrix[/I]." Though the merit of the sequels is dubious, the first part has some very significant analogies to the discovery of the true state of Man in the spiritual sense.
So, there you have it in brief. I can be a resource for you if you wish, but it may not be easy for you. I can refere you to others, if that is more helpful. In any case, you have my profound good wishes, as you seek to be a.....what? Something words cannot describe, other than as a transparency to the Divine
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Response to "The Pagan Chist"
I was going to post this on Catholic Answers Forum in reply to someone who couldn't understand the idea that Jesus was 100% both and each God and man. In Catholic theology this teaching is called the hypostatic union. Here is my answer, which is still oversimplified, but touches the main points as best my understanding and language permit. This is something I've been avidly looking into since high school, when three experiences set me on that path. I've also signed and dated this monograph some time ago as wishing to take responsibility for its contents.
I would also like to quote here a pertinent statement from my Mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills, who said "All of the logic in the world could never unbind the fetters that systems of belief have engendered in the lives of mankind. Of course, those in high places of power are always trying to keep from those who inquire the actual truth of what is happening, and there is nothing more insidious than to have partial truths." This tract, being written word, is inherently incomplete, but is an attempt to point to the Living Presence that constitutes the reason and manifestation of the reader. It also points to what I have come to feel to be my own Truth.
"Here is a perspective I've not seen on here regarding all of these questions. I figure it is OK, since this is the "Non-Catholic Religions" part of the forum and we can allegedly say here things that others believe in order to put them on the table. If that is [I]not[/I] OK with you, stop here and go read something else, because this one was a depth charge for me. It is posted in the spirit of the Sage who said [B]"The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." [/B]That is how serious this is. I'm assuming you are not on here to play, as this search is analogus to taking the red pill, for those who have seen the first installment of The Matrix.
This all goes along wiith the proposition that man is a rationalizing animal. It also goes with the proposition that a single act of creation followed by a period of temporal maintainance and an attempt to "fix" a broken part of that Creation is inconsitent with an eternal God. Eternality has NO component of duration. It is also a low level logic and lack of introspection that to presume that life forms are the demonstration of life. LIFE is a constant unchanging pressure that will seek out every possible form and function of energetic combination as an expression of itself above, below, and including the frequency range of the perceptions of Man. This holds, whatever the opinion, based on limited frequency response and intellectual/affective ability, of any specific examples of its own manifestations.
"The point of view I will try to delineate here is that of the growth of the component in the human we call "awareness." I am distinguishing it here from a word often used interchangeably with it. That word is "consciousness." Here, awareness refers to the ability to experience as an individual. Conscious-ness refers to that quality in the abstract, taken as an underlying Reality.
"As simply put as I can, here it is: Since man has had the ability to reflect on himself, he has had a masculine and feminine component to his awareness as manifested in the two halves of the brain. In the womb, these function as one, and there is only the unawakened feeling of "I." At birth, the awareness must start to distinguish between "this" and "that" in its myriad senses in order to function. This is the knowledge of duality, or of +&-, or of "good and evil." This engenders the sense of being a discreet individual, or "me" as distinct from "you" or "it," etc. The feminine, intuitive side, "eats" of this experience and brings the male component into a dualistic sense of existence, casting the entire [I]sense[/I] awareness from its Eden of wombish bliss as it receeds into the background. The male side goes about the world suffering the pangs of a subject-object awareness, taking the female [I]side[/I] with it. This is especially so in patristic societies, e.g. the church and Western christianist culture.
"The Ancients had among them a few who understood the split within man and knew that healing lay in raising the feminine intuitive to reunite with the masculine logical as an experience in Consciousness. (The experience of the brain surgeion who witnessed her own stroke as the rational portion of her was damaged points to this aspect of awareness.) This healing ( Jesus was in older translations refered to as "Healer" as distinct from more current translations,)constituted "salvation" or [I]realization[/I] of the sense of unity within oneself. This brought with it an ability to realize as well the sense of Unity with Nature, or God.
"The way to this revitalizing of awareness was accomplished by myth and ritual. These myths from at least 5K years ago included virgin birth in a cave or manger, miracles, an ignominious death, and a Resurrection. All these were tied in as well with the cycles of Nature as a mnemonic system.
"Over the ages thousands of people who knew these stories went into the desert and came back with their particular revelations of the meanings for them, with or without the actual intended end of the reunification of the individual sense of Self.
"Three or four of these revelations came into popularity for one reason or another. As they became politicized and degraded for public consumption, the mystery was lost and the husk was systematized into dogma.
"In the case of the Roman Church, and thereafter other forms of christianism, the mystery of transformation became historicised by being attributed to an historic person. It was taught that Divinity in Man occured solely in this one individual, whereas in the mystery religions and Eastern philosophies it was known to be the reward of a particular kind of effort. This new teaching which coalesced about the third century, effectively acted as a prophylactic against the knowledge that the hypostatic union is the inheritance of every person who does the work of transformation. It is yet understood in many systems that in the three centuries after Jesus, the milieu of ideas surrounding the transformative act became lost in the dogmatic-ization and historicization of a remote and singular.god-man who symbolically did what is in fact our own life's work.
"This teaching also accounts for the attribution of personality to God, or Consciousness, or Principle, and duration to eternality, both of which concepts are semantic impossibilities. It also accounts for the "fides sola," etc. approaches all of which require a remote savior. It also militates against the working our of our own salvation in fear and trembling (and love and joy) as Paul recommended.
"So, the anointed (Christ, or 2nd person) aspect of Jesus is his awareness of the Unity of Conscious-ness which he expressed as "I and the Father are One." History give other examples of such realizations. Thus, he is 100% God as recognition of his [I]Essence[/I] stemming from and being equal to Divinity, and 100% man because he was and we are, "the son of man." As a human He was one who had the distinction of being one of the Accomplished ones.
"As for the trinity, the "I" or the Pure Consciousness factor of Being can be equated with the Father. (Masculine.) The "I [I]AM[/I]," the creative, (Feminine, 'Elohim' is plural feminine) can be equated with the Holy Spirit. Thus, Man, capable of both practical (subject-object) and "nirvanic" or contentless unitary awareness is created in the "image and likeness of God." The Son can be equated with the knowledge [I]by identity [/I]of the essential root and stemming of each of us from THAT Source. It may be stated as "I AM THAT I AM." "The I AM is the vine, the "you's" and "me's." the branches. The nervous system is the "bush." or the "tree with its root in heaven," or the human body that burns without being consumed upon the realization of this Fact. In some traditions, when this realization occurs, the exclamation sometimes is [I]"I have not been deceived![/I"' and can be accompanied by a great feeling of heat in the body as it readjusts itself to the new perspective.
"This new "born again" understanding is also the basis of a viable morality. If one, in his deepest feeling of being, understands the Unity of all life, he is incapable of doing harm to living things or their support system and can only do works which promote the over all Good, as whatever he does, he does to himself. This psychologically, spiritually, and practically fulfills both the positively and negatively stated Golden Rule. It also fulfills "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
Much of this viewpoint is delineated very well in a book by Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest and long time religion editor for the Toronto Star. It is called "[I]The Pagan Christ: Is Literalism Killing Christianity?"[/I] It is written from the standpoint of revitalizing the interpretations of the Bible and the Christian faith in general. I doubt it will have much popularity. I will be glad to furnish you with other titles if you are interested. What I personally like about this direction of understanding is that it comprehends the basics of many religions while de-fusing the encrustations of emotionally laden dogma that act to separate all those who purport to believe in one God.
I would also like to quote here a pertinent statement from my Mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills, who said "All of the logic in the world could never unbind the fetters that systems of belief have engendered in the lives of mankind. Of course, those in high places of power are always trying to keep from those who inquire the actual truth of what is happening, and there is nothing more insidious than to have partial truths." This tract, being written word, is inherently incomplete, but is an attempt to point to the Living Presence that constitutes the reason and manifestation of the reader. It also points to what I have come to feel to be my own Truth.
"Here is a perspective I've not seen on here regarding all of these questions. I figure it is OK, since this is the "Non-Catholic Religions" part of the forum and we can allegedly say here things that others believe in order to put them on the table. If that is [I]not[/I] OK with you, stop here and go read something else, because this one was a depth charge for me. It is posted in the spirit of the Sage who said [B]"The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." [/B]That is how serious this is. I'm assuming you are not on here to play, as this search is analogus to taking the red pill, for those who have seen the first installment of The Matrix.
This all goes along wiith the proposition that man is a rationalizing animal. It also goes with the proposition that a single act of creation followed by a period of temporal maintainance and an attempt to "fix" a broken part of that Creation is inconsitent with an eternal God. Eternality has NO component of duration. It is also a low level logic and lack of introspection that to presume that life forms are the demonstration of life. LIFE is a constant unchanging pressure that will seek out every possible form and function of energetic combination as an expression of itself above, below, and including the frequency range of the perceptions of Man. This holds, whatever the opinion, based on limited frequency response and intellectual/affective ability, of any specific examples of its own manifestations.
"The point of view I will try to delineate here is that of the growth of the component in the human we call "awareness." I am distinguishing it here from a word often used interchangeably with it. That word is "consciousness." Here, awareness refers to the ability to experience as an individual. Conscious-ness refers to that quality in the abstract, taken as an underlying Reality.
"As simply put as I can, here it is: Since man has had the ability to reflect on himself, he has had a masculine and feminine component to his awareness as manifested in the two halves of the brain. In the womb, these function as one, and there is only the unawakened feeling of "I." At birth, the awareness must start to distinguish between "this" and "that" in its myriad senses in order to function. This is the knowledge of duality, or of +&-, or of "good and evil." This engenders the sense of being a discreet individual, or "me" as distinct from "you" or "it," etc. The feminine, intuitive side, "eats" of this experience and brings the male component into a dualistic sense of existence, casting the entire [I]sense[/I] awareness from its Eden of wombish bliss as it receeds into the background. The male side goes about the world suffering the pangs of a subject-object awareness, taking the female [I]side[/I] with it. This is especially so in patristic societies, e.g. the church and Western christianist culture.
"The Ancients had among them a few who understood the split within man and knew that healing lay in raising the feminine intuitive to reunite with the masculine logical as an experience in Consciousness. (The experience of the brain surgeion who witnessed her own stroke as the rational portion of her was damaged points to this aspect of awareness.) This healing ( Jesus was in older translations refered to as "Healer" as distinct from more current translations,)constituted "salvation" or [I]realization[/I] of the sense of unity within oneself. This brought with it an ability to realize as well the sense of Unity with Nature, or God.
"The way to this revitalizing of awareness was accomplished by myth and ritual. These myths from at least 5K years ago included virgin birth in a cave or manger, miracles, an ignominious death, and a Resurrection. All these were tied in as well with the cycles of Nature as a mnemonic system.
"Over the ages thousands of people who knew these stories went into the desert and came back with their particular revelations of the meanings for them, with or without the actual intended end of the reunification of the individual sense of Self.
"Three or four of these revelations came into popularity for one reason or another. As they became politicized and degraded for public consumption, the mystery was lost and the husk was systematized into dogma.
"In the case of the Roman Church, and thereafter other forms of christianism, the mystery of transformation became historicised by being attributed to an historic person. It was taught that Divinity in Man occured solely in this one individual, whereas in the mystery religions and Eastern philosophies it was known to be the reward of a particular kind of effort. This new teaching which coalesced about the third century, effectively acted as a prophylactic against the knowledge that the hypostatic union is the inheritance of every person who does the work of transformation. It is yet understood in many systems that in the three centuries after Jesus, the milieu of ideas surrounding the transformative act became lost in the dogmatic-ization and historicization of a remote and singular.god-man who symbolically did what is in fact our own life's work.
"This teaching also accounts for the attribution of personality to God, or Consciousness, or Principle, and duration to eternality, both of which concepts are semantic impossibilities. It also accounts for the "fides sola," etc. approaches all of which require a remote savior. It also militates against the working our of our own salvation in fear and trembling (and love and joy) as Paul recommended.
"So, the anointed (Christ, or 2nd person) aspect of Jesus is his awareness of the Unity of Conscious-ness which he expressed as "I and the Father are One." History give other examples of such realizations. Thus, he is 100% God as recognition of his [I]Essence[/I] stemming from and being equal to Divinity, and 100% man because he was and we are, "the son of man." As a human He was one who had the distinction of being one of the Accomplished ones.
"As for the trinity, the "I" or the Pure Consciousness factor of Being can be equated with the Father. (Masculine.) The "I [I]AM[/I]," the creative, (Feminine, 'Elohim' is plural feminine) can be equated with the Holy Spirit. Thus, Man, capable of both practical (subject-object) and "nirvanic" or contentless unitary awareness is created in the "image and likeness of God." The Son can be equated with the knowledge [I]by identity [/I]of the essential root and stemming of each of us from THAT Source. It may be stated as "I AM THAT I AM." "The I AM is the vine, the "you's" and "me's." the branches. The nervous system is the "bush." or the "tree with its root in heaven," or the human body that burns without being consumed upon the realization of this Fact. In some traditions, when this realization occurs, the exclamation sometimes is [I]"I have not been deceived![/I"' and can be accompanied by a great feeling of heat in the body as it readjusts itself to the new perspective.
"This new "born again" understanding is also the basis of a viable morality. If one, in his deepest feeling of being, understands the Unity of all life, he is incapable of doing harm to living things or their support system and can only do works which promote the over all Good, as whatever he does, he does to himself. This psychologically, spiritually, and practically fulfills both the positively and negatively stated Golden Rule. It also fulfills "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
Much of this viewpoint is delineated very well in a book by Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest and long time religion editor for the Toronto Star. It is called "[I]The Pagan Christ: Is Literalism Killing Christianity?"[/I] It is written from the standpoint of revitalizing the interpretations of the Bible and the Christian faith in general. I doubt it will have much popularity. I will be glad to furnish you with other titles if you are interested. What I personally like about this direction of understanding is that it comprehends the basics of many religions while de-fusing the encrustations of emotionally laden dogma that act to separate all those who purport to believe in one God.
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