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.