Christian Mysticism – A different understanding of Christ

[Jerry]

@tentative

How do we mesh The Christian cosmology with Eastern traditions, or do we? The parallels are obvious to those who have spent time looking at both, but parallels aren’t necessarily capable of carrying the same or even similar POV, are they?

I don’t think we do mesh them, JT. I don’t think we can even mesh differences within each tradition, let alone between them. The problem is the incredibly personal nature of the matter of how we each relate to God or the universe or divinity or Christ or Tao or whatever name you wish to pin on the ineffable.

We experience in our heart. Our mind interprets the experience. We take the mind’s interpretation of the experience and attempt to put it into language. We post the words in a philosophy forum. Somebody in Idaho reads the words and makes his own interpretation. See the problem?

For all we know, you and I might have the exact same experiences in our hearts. But by the time we relate them to each other, they’ve been put through the meat-grinder and, by necessity, can be nothing at all like their original form.

But is this a bad thing?

There is, it seems to me, a certain amount of creativity that takes place in the understanding and the interpretation, creativity in a positive way, so long as there is also honesty in those things. And so we are able to relate in different ways to different people through different words. We compare and contrast. We see fragments of Reality in Tao, we see fragments in Christ.

Is there an all-encompassing point of view? Well, that might be what I would call God. Good luck getting your mind around that.

Viva la difference.

[tentative]

Jerry writes:

There is, it seems to me, a certain amount of creativity that takes place in the understanding and the interpretation, creativity in a positive way, so long as there is also honesty in those things. And so we are able to relate in different ways to different people through different words. We compare and contrast. We see fragments of Reality in Tao, we see fragments in Christ.

Is there an all-encompassing point of view? Well, that might be what I would call God. Good luck getting your mind around that.

Viva la difference.

Preeeecisely!

[Nick_A]

Hi Jerry

Hi Nick. One can’t get too far into a discussion without stepping into explanation. It is the explanations that are in need of, that are the reasons for, the discussion.

But assuming for a moment that this quality of understanding is beyond us due to our subjective limitations, is it more profitable for one desiring to understand to defend our explanations and our “rights” to our explanations or to better “feel” the questions?

One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights. Simone Weil

Very annoying but IMO true. People can argue about their dignity, what people think, who should say what and how and all the other stuff you even see on this board. Prestige is of primary importance. But what if the desire to understand is the primary importance? Then IMO one must be willing to sacrifice righteous indignation for the experience of feeling the differences in perspectives.

So the question for me is my attitude and what collective attitudes allow for shared profit from these speculations.

Let’s be clear. Every understanding of Christianity, indeed every understanding of anything, is an interpretation. Yes, we attempt as best we can to abandon all preconceptions but the very fact that we are attempting understanding, the very reasons for our interest in the first place, says something about our underlying beliefs, try as we might to purge them from our thought processes.

Yes, these are all interpretations. But the question here is if they are all as good as each other or as bad? The PC approach of course is that one subjective approach is as good as the other so everything is just lovely. However the honest approach from the point of view of the humble attitude and the only one IMO that can lead to anything objective is admitting that they are all as bad as each other. If this is the case, NOW WHAT?

Part of the reason that these defensive attitudes cannot be purged is because of continual argument in which they are defended. Who are you to say this? Who are you to think that? Basically in regards objective truths what you have is one idiot calling another idiot an idiot. Normally this is too insulting to consider which is why real discussion is done in private with people willing to experience this humility and respect for one another. It takes a while for a real teacher to bring his students to this level of freedom from attitudes so as to genuinely profit from discussion. This is in contrast to the more usual PC approach which consists in sharing “wonderful” thoughts which feel good but are meaningless imagination. A person must become “vulnerable” to free oneself from defensive attitudes leading to insult and the like that serve only to support our misconceptions. It is said on my path that the cause for all your insult is in you and not the other person. Not so easy to honestly admit.

Asceticism in modern times IMO both understood and practiced wrongly producing the opposite of its initial intention. It is often believed that the body is evil and must be cast away and the like. This IMO is not only foolish but genuinely harmful psychologically Actually self denial is related to prayer in that both have the esoteric purpose of allowing us to become “vulnerable” “open.” We temporarily get out of our own preconceptions. Normally the body or our false pride and vanity is our boss Attentive self denial serves to weaken their supremacy allowing us to experience the higher realities beginning as higher emotions or “feelings.”

There is nothing evil about this. If you want to learn piano you must train your hands. If you want to experience higher reality you must train your body not to get in the way. The body has its needs and must have its time but our consciousness must also and make the rules. As of now it doesn’t since we lack both will and consciousness. The purpose of these esoteric exercises in self denial are for the development of both consciousness (presence) and will necessary for our attempts at interaction with newly experienced objective realities at the expense of our subjectivity.

What place man? What purpose? And what comes from union with God?

This is something else. A proper answer requires describing the qualitative scale of being in order to theoretically place both Man and fallen man on earth and beyond this thread.

I don’t disagree. I would just suggest once again to you that all is interpretation, including our experience and what it is we think we understand. I would also suggest that that may not be a bad thing. And further, that in a philosophy forum, it is unavoidable.

Quite true. Arguing is neither good nor bad by itself. It can only be defined by our aim or goal. If our goal is self justification, the blend of argument, intimidation, and righteous indignation is the best approach. If the experience of more objective reality at the expense of our subjectivity is our goal, then these previous delights must be sacrificed in the quest and respect for mutual sincerity.

Is there an all-encompassing point of view? Well, that might be what I would call God. Good luck getting your mind around that.

If an asteroid collided with the earth and destroyed the earth and mankind, would the universe continue? If it will then you must admit to an objective reality by which it functions. Our connection with this is objective reality and beyond the limitations of our sensations and inner psychological chaos. It is our imagination and its created subjectivity that denies it.

Can a person awaken allowing consciousness to replace imagination (enlightenment)? I believe so. Jesus and Buddha were both such beings. Our subjectivity imagines differences that on their level doesn’t exist. They speak the same language though our subjectivity prevents us from understanding it and our attitudes deny us the ability to try.

[jeffl]

@Nick_A

People can argue about their dignity, what people think, who should say what and how and all the other stuff you even see on this board. Prestige is of primary importance. But what if the desire to understand is the primary importance? Then IMO one must be willing to sacrifice righteous indignation for the experience of feeling the differences in perspectives.

So the question for me is my attitude and what collective attitudes allow for shared profit from these speculations.

Well said, Nick. A very instructive post, all of it.

To come together in meaningful understanding is to transend; it is the flash. It includes notions of truth and justice, so don’t think ‘everyone’ involved is in their happy place. Religion is a rereading, a recosideration, midrash and its progenitors; it’s what discussion toward understanding does, it’s what the brain does.

[Bob]

Hi Jerry,

“The Christian revelation at its richest contains and reflects the Kogi and Hopi knowledge of the interconnecton of all life, the Taoist sense of organic balance and the mysterious conjunction of opposites, the Hindu awareness of the grandeur of the soul, the Buddhist devotion to compassion and clear ethical living, the Jewish awe at the unutterable holiness of God and the sacredness of ordinary life, the Greek adoration of divine beauty, and the Islamic passion for God as the Beloved.” – Andrew Harvey, The Essential Mystics, Castle Books, 1996

This is a useful quote, since it grasps a lot of what is happening in mystical circles today and shows us how a spiritual globalisation is taking place, crossing borders and sharing traditions and insight. This isn’t to be understood as a culmination of development, but rather the Kairos of the moment. It is simply time.

The dangers of religion lie in the unbalanced approach which gives personal improvement a touch of extremism, whereas wholesome religion provides balance and the discovery of the side of our nature that is to our awareness like quadraphonics to mono. It is like suddenly being able to hear with both ears, or having a pair of spectacles prescribed and seeing how bad your vision has been. It isn’t about reading about it, but practising – which presents problems in modern society.

What is lacking most of us so called “civilised” people is the interaction of both brain halves, the interaction of the psychic with the somatic side of life, the acceptance of our own duality and an understanding of the unconscious imagery of religion that all cultures interpret within their own concepts. But generally, we also lack a tradition by which we can grasp what would otherwise be the ineffable Mystery.

I see Jesus of Nazareth as a mystical revolutionary who, although he never claimed any divine status, became unique for starting a spiritual process moving which began empowering people to recognise their essential but stunted “divine identity” - the seed of eternity that each of us has in us, but which is poorly cared for. This is, for example, a discovery that knocked Paul off of his “high horse” and had him suddenly hearing Christ. He regarded his previous pious accomplishments, which by rabbinical standards were praiseworthy, as “faeces” in comparison to the freedom he had found in Christ.

In our haste around here to dismiss all things that smack of “organized” religion and authoritarian and patriarchal orders of theology, I worry that Christianity gets too easily rejected by those who see it, perhaps from childhood memories, as an instrument of either guilt or fear. And the beauty of the story of Jesus, the story of his life and death and resurrection, gets rejected along with the misguided perceptions of what it means to be a Christian.

I think that contemporary religion is too often unbalanced and for that reason becomes extremist in its attitudes. Organised religion has something like the situation of the “official” Prophets in the days of Jeremiah about it. It is reacting all of the time instead of speaking out of the equilibrium of communion with God. Just like in those days, our prophets these days are caught up in the physical, the carnal and the somatic, and forget the psychic aspects of life.

This imbalance is something that young people have a gut-feeling about and which, if it isn’t addressed or attended to, accompanies people their whole life through. They also recognise the hypocrisy of elders who speak of the Gospel and remain imbalanced. Therefore it isn’t unusual to find people rejecting the Christian tradition, since there are few people who present a witness in word, deed and their own balance.

Shalom

[jeffl]

@Bob

Just like in those days, our prophets these days are caught up in the physical, the carnal and the somatic, and forget the psychic aspects of life.

I don’t think it’s so much that they don’t consider the psychic aspects of life; it’s just that noone can articulate meaningfully and with faith the way that the psychic imposes itself on the carnal. Because that genre of dialog is absent, the psychic landscape is very fluid and maliable; and that suits the mystic just fine. I hope you’ll agree that we don’t move toward that dialog when we insist that the truth cannot be articulated. To insist on the mystery is to say we cannot know; it is to be strong agnostic. I don’t think that’s a viable position.

I’m not saying that’s your position, Bob; it’s just where it went.

This imbalance is something that young people have a gut-feeling about and which, if it isn’t addressed or attended to, accompanies people their whole life through. They also recognise the hypocrisy of elders who speak of the Gospel and remain imbalanced. Therefore it isn’t unusual to find people rejecting the Christian tradition, since there are few people who present a witness in word, deed and their own balance.

I agree. Without an articulated mandela, kids will form themselves into groups, gangs and such, and for good reason.

I think it’s important to point out that our structure is out of balance aswell, so it’s not surprising to see ‘imbalance’ as an expression of truth. I’m a pipefitter and, on the shop floor there seems to be alot of third level fellas keeping people carnal. There are alot of secret groups whos dynamics should be understood; not their internal dynamics but, how they as groups of people impinge on our working society.

[omar]

Hello Jerry:
This is, of course, a road i am currently on with Nick and before that with Bob, both mystics more or less. My comments here are echoes of those conversations. Perhaps I am not saying much that is new, but I am curious to hear your thoughts.

— In our haste around here to dismiss all things that smack of “organized” religion and authoritarian and patriarchal orders of theology, I worry that Christianity gets too easily rejected by those who see it, perhaps from childhood memories, as an instrument of either guilt or fear.
O- Not necessarly. I protest from the state of Christianity as of to-day. Besides, I believe that you too reject Christianity.

— And the beauty of the story of Jesus, the story of his life and death and resurrection, gets rejected along with the misguided perceptions of what it means to be a Christian.
O- There is a story, all right, of Jesus life and death and presumed resurrection, but what we have to remember is the diversity of reactions provocked by his story. Your reaction towards the story is just another christianity, another interpretation to a story told and retold and serving at times, like a Roschach’s inkblot test. “Here is the story. What does it mean to you?”

— This is no less than tragic and I think it’s about time somebody around here presented an alternative to what is unfortunately perceived as Christianity today, at least a nutshell version of what Christian Mysticism is all about.
O- You can present another version of christianity, but why should I accept yours as true above others? Always confusing to me is this “Christianity today” as if the Christianity of Constantine has changed, or that of Luther, but most of all, that Christianity within the pages of the Bible. Then, to add to my scepticism, another Christianity is hoisted above the others, the true Christianity of Today, but is presented as if it was the true one all along, in the times of Jesus, Peter, James and Paul. You are a modern day Constantine, hoisting as true one Christianity and denying all others. It was an error then and it is again today.

— Mysticism has taken many forms since then and mystics can be Taoists, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians. In its essence, mysticism is a spiritual approach towards the union of the soul with God, or whatever one considers as the underlying force of the universe.
O- As an “ism” it is a methodology into how to achieve this union.

— In mysticism we see a God that is accessible, able to be touched and able to touch. A God not at arm’s length, not worshipped from afar, but present here and now, searching as much for us as we search for Him. One can either find God deep within, moving away from the rest of the world, or find God without, in all things, in all beings. In philosophical terminology, mysticism is something of a pantheistic worldview.
O- But I find questionable the support found for it in Biblical literature. You can have your mysticism, but to strech it across Christianity is more than a justified leap.

— For Christian mystics specifically, the approach is to find the underlying “true self” within, rejecting the “ego self,” that part of us corrupted by the material world and the erroneous choices we have made, through our free will, as we have stumbled blindly through life, moving farther from God rather than closer. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the story of Christ’s resurrection, the sacrifice of the body (ego self) to be reborn as spirit (true self). This is the meaning and the point behind the resurrection story, the central tenet of Christianity.
O- And who can secure for me the truth in your claim? You? Hardly. As it stands, it is a theory among other theories. Why did Jesus have to die? To provide us with this example? A parable might have done the trick. No mention is there in your view about the Messiah and what it meant in 1st century Palestine, nor about the Apocalytic visions in Jesus message which can also explain his actions. You’ve a story and you’re sticking to it, but by leaving in silence Jesus as an apocalyptic messiah, I feel, you have missed something in the story.

— It was never about Heaven and everlasting life.
O- That will be hard to prove using the Bible, wouldn’t it Jerry?

— Through the sacrifice of the ego self, through quiet and stillness and prayer and meditation, through harmony with the underlying reality of the universe (call it the Holy Spirit), one can find union with the Divine and one can find union at this moment.
O- Then why was Jesus put to death if that was his only message?

— The union of created with Creator is a theme of wonderous beauty and divine love. Once one comes to understand that we are a part of God, an expression of God, a manifestation, a co-creator, an incarnation no less than was Jesus, then anything less than union with God is unthinkable.
O- That question still nags at me: Why was Jesus put to death? So much like Jesus we are that the Bible had him being born from a Virgin and his birth foretold by angels, and his Baby shower attended by Magi. Yeah, he is just like us…

— Upon this realization, the full realization of all of this, I might go so far as to say that anything less is - in fact – impossible, as God seeks union with us every bit as much as we with Him.
O- The King can always see the servant, but the servant cannot always see the King.

— We find and we are found. We become God, God becomes us. This is the meaning of Christian mysticism. More than this, it is my opinion that this ought to be the meaning of Christianity and what it means to be a Christian.
O- Thus the King is the servant and the servant the King? Do you know any mystics, Jerry? Now tell me, how many of them can answer these questions:
“Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundation?”
" have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn it’s place?"
“Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?”
Surely they know these answers since they are like God and have lived for so many years…

[Jerry]

@Nick_A

But assuming for a moment that this quality of understanding is beyond us due to our subjective limitations, is it more profitable for one desiring to understand to defend our explanations and our “rights” to our explanations or to better “feel” the questions?

Technically I’m not sure it matters either way if the quality of understanding is truly beyond us. My position is that we can catch glimpses of understanding, and the explanations I have put forth here are intended to provoke the kinds of questions we ought to feel, as they do for me. For the record I am not here necessarily to defend them. If this is what we’re doing, you and I included:

So the question for me is my attitude and what collective attitudes allow for shared profit from these speculations.

…then I’m just fine with the approach.

self denial is related to prayer in that both have the esoteric purpose of allowing us to become “vulnerable” “open.” We temporarily get out of our own preconceptions. Normally the body or our false pride and vanity is our boss Attentive self denial serves to weaken their supremacy allowing us to experience the higher realities beginning as higher emotions or “feelings.”

I have no problem with this, and it is well said. I have been thinking lately about this word “vulnerable.” This is important I think. And not an easy place for one to put oneself. It is St. John’s Dark Night really.

This is something else. A proper answer requires describing the qualitative scale of being in order to theoretically place both Man and fallen man on earth and beyond this thread.

My question about man’s purpose, though perhaps beyond this thread’s scope, has to do specifically with the idea of God and man’s union, but in a much more general sense, it might have something to do with this idea:

If an asteroid collided with the earth and destroyed the earth and mankind, would the universe continue? If it will then you must admit to an objective reality by which it functions.

Actually I’m not willing to argue for the idea of a continuing universe absent man, or for that matter for an objective reality, at least in so far as the manifest universe is concerned.

[Jerry]

@omar

Hello Jerry:
This is, of course, a road i am currently on with Nick and before that with Bob, both mystics more or less. My comments here are echoes of those conversations. Perhaps I am not saying much that is new, but I am curious to hear your thoughts.

Hi omar. Great post. I don’t pretend to be even in the same league with Nick and Bob but I am happy to see what I can do.

There is a story, all right, of Jesus life and death and presumed resurrection, but what we have to remember is the diversity of reactions provocked by his story. Your reaction towards the story is just another christianity, another interpretation to a story told and retold and serving at times, like a Roschach’s inkblot test. “Here is the story. What does it mean to you?”

I can’t think of a single thing in the world that we come upon throughout life, that doesn’t meet this description, including how we interpret both the world and life itself. It’s all an inkblot test, omar.

You can present another version of christianity, but why should I accept yours as true above others? Always confusing to me is this “Christianity today” as if the Christianity of Constantine has changed, or that of Luther, but most of all, that Christianity within the pages of the Bible. Then, to add to my scepticism, another Christianity is hoisted above the others, the true Christianity of Today, but is presented as if it was the true one all along, in the times of Jesus, Peter, James and Paul. You are a modern day Constantine, hoisting as true one Christianity and denying all others. It was an error then and it is again today.

I wouldn’t presume to deny other interpretations of Christianity. If a literalist finds union with God then his interpretation has served its purpose. I would only suggest that if one is worshipping from afar, and believing out of fear, and praying out of guilt, then one is missing the true idea of union. Is my interpretation something you should automatically accept? Well, no, and it wasn’t one I automatically accepted either. One comes to a point where one finds God (and one allows God to find) not very easily, at least in my case. It can be a long, winding, circuitous path, ultimately affirmed by a kind of direct awareness which is impossible to relate.

But I find questionable the support found for it in Biblical literature. You can have your mysticism, but to strech it across Christianity is more than a justified leap.

I think it’s interesting, though, to go beyond the Biblical literature, and here naturally is where a literalist would have a problem. But the sheer amount of life/death/rebirth motifs found throughout mythology from the ages is no less than stunning. At some point, one has to wonder just what is going on. Couple this idea with a belief in pantheism, throw in the sheer beauty of Christ’s message (the Sermon on the Mount, if nothing else), and the stretching of mysticism across Christianity becomes more justified all the time. At some point, for me, along the circuitous path previously mentioned, the idea began to resonate. This was no ivory tower discovery. This was prayer and meditation, along with philosophy and history. I have no interest really in arguing my path. I am merely suggesting that there is a point of view that marries all of these ideas together and that point of view is, essentially, Christian mysticism.

Why did Jesus have to die? To provide us with this example? A parable might have done the trick.

I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t a parable.

You’ve a story and you’re sticking to it, but by leaving in silence Jesus as an apocalyptic messiah, I feel, you have missed something in the story.

And vice-verse. “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men see it not” (The Gospel of Thomas). There’s your apocalyptic message.

That will be hard to prove using the Bible, wouldn’t it Jerry?

Yes. And as distasteful as it is for literalists, there is more to Heaven and Earth than what is contained in the Bible. “I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written” (John 12:25).

Then why was Jesus put to death if that was his only message?

I can’t speak for what really happened to the historical Jesus and why. I’m suggesting the death and rebirth of Christ as a metaphor.

That question still nags at me: Why was Jesus put to death? So much like Jesus we are that the Bible had him being born from a Virgin and his birth foretold by angels, and his Baby shower attended by Magi. Yeah, he is just like us…

Again, I think you’re confusing the metaphor with the real. The virgin birth, for example, is another motif prominent throughout mythology. I’m not suggesting anything with respect to the historicity of these things. I’m only suggesting that the meaning behind them might go beyond the literal.

Thus the King is the servant and the servant the King? Do you know any mystics, Jerry? Now tell me, how many of them can answer these questions:
“Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundation?”
" have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn it’s place?"
“Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?”
Surely they know these answers since they are like God and have lived for so many years…

Well one needs to be careful not to anthropomorphize. I’m not saying we can become a divine ruler sitting on a throne surveying all of Creation. We are manifestations of God and, in union with the divine, we can experience God, even be at one with God. We can, in a sense, be God. There are moments when man can be at one with the divine and the idea of separation falls away. “Loved one in the other fused as one.”

[Bob]

Hi jeffl,

I don’t think it’s so much that they [Prophets of our age] don’t consider the psychic aspects of life; it’s just that noone can articulate meaningfully and with faith the way that the psychic imposes itself on the carnal. Because that genre of dialog is absent, the psychic landscape is very fluid and maliable; and that suits the mystic just fine.

Not quite, it is the mystic that attempts this dialogue, but he is often confronted by fundamentalism that is steered by rational and materialistic requirements of God. However, these are the proofs or the “seeing” that we are not given. The requirement of faith despite not seeing points clearly to this. It is also difficult because of the dominance of the evangelical influences in countries like America, even if it isn’t active dominance, you can see by the arguments put here that it is omnipresent. It has grown out of the protest against Catholicism which has portrayed perhaps the more feminine and intuitive side of religion. C.G.Jung saw Protestants and Catholics as a division of male (Word) and female (Maria) influences - despite the male dominance in the hierarchy of the catholic church.

I personally see the problem in the lack of balance within the humankind and a prominent one-sidedness of arguments. People like myself move towards mysticism after discovering their “feminine” attributes, for example when taking up nursing as a vocation, and moving away from typical “masculine” expectancies. A new perspective grows as if you had received a new sense organ. I have experienced the questioning look of male friends who find me mediating between men and women, rather than taking sides – and heard the speculations.

The arguments I heard from evangelical friends were curiously similar and I remembered the comparison that Jung had made. The distaste of true-blue protestants for meditative influences, considering them as something “feminine” - which on the one hand should get the backs up of all emancipated women, but on the other hand please them – was very much present when I made my transition. Although I stayed in the protestant church and am in fact an elder of the parish, and although the mainstream protestant church is moving away from such one-sidedness, there still is an opposition to be felt.

I hope you’ll agree that we don’t move toward that dialog when we insist that the truth cannot be articulated. To insist on the mystery is to say we cannot know; it is to be strong agnostic. I don’t think that’s a viable position.

Whilst JT and I have often spoken about the agnosticism of mysticism, it isn’t that the revelation of mysticism cannot be articulated, but that it isn’t necessarily articulated in word form – unless suitable descriptions are found. Perhaps one of the reasons for protecting a canon of scripture is to provide familiar symbols and archetypes which then are used to transport the message. Language isn’t the message in itself, but only carries the message. In the past we have spoken about “reading between the lines” and not brooding on single words, or taking them literally as we would understand those words today, because we are often dealing with translations which cannot free themselves from being interpretations.

The reality behind the Metaphor “God” remains an ineffable mystery. A mystery which has diverse expressions in the various cultures. Just like the various races and their cultures are a given fact, so we must accept that the Ineffable will find a specific figurative speech within specific cultures. The kind of protectionism that is expressed in the exclusiveness of many religions will be overcome in the same way as fear is overcome – or it will be our end.

Shalom

[jeffl]

@Bob

Whilst JT and I have often spoken about the agnosticism of mysticism, it isn’t that the revelation of mysticism cannot be articulated, but that it isn’t necessarily articulated in word form – unless suitable descriptions are found.

I agree 100%. This is why i’m on about consciousness; it is the transending context, and we are understanding enough about the structure and funcion of the brain that certain productive analogies can be built. Ray Jackendoff wrote a book, ‘Semantics and Cognition;’ where certain cognitive structures were reduced to spacial relationships as a hypothetical aside. This makes a great deal of sense to me, as in myown meditations i see ‘meaning’ and ‘place’ converging.

Perhaps one of the reasons for protecting a canon of scripture is to provide familiar symbols and archetypes which then are used to transport the message.

The canon is a light, it ought to shine.

Language isn’t the message in itself, but only carries the message.

In more ways than one. It is instructive to follow the evolution of language, particularly indoeuropean.

The kind of protectionism that is expressed in the exclusiveness of many religions will be overcome in the same way as fear is overcome – or it will be our end.

I agree; justice, forgiveness, and grace.

[omar]

Hello Jerry and thanks for the compliment, as undeserving as I feel of it.

— I can’t think of a single thing in the world that we come upon throughout life, that doesn’t meet this description, including how we interpret both the world and life itself. It’s all an inkblot test, omar.
O- Every thing that happens in our life is open to interpretation. We can agree. So why try to fix our eyes in only one? Everything, it seems, is open to interpretation, until some prophet hoist up a “correct” interpretation, and that is inevitably what religions do.

— I wouldn’t presume to deny other interpretations of Christianity.
O- I kinda doubt your neutrality. You go on to say: “If a literalist finds union with God then his interpretation has served its purpose.” If you left it at that then I would agree with your prior statement, but see how you go right into what I accuse religions of doing: "I would only suggest that if one is worshipping from afar, and believing out of fear, and praying out of guilt, then one is missing the true idea of union.
Oh yeah. There is that True bussiness to attend to. You don’t deny them, you only see them as false ideas? What an affirmation indeed! Jerry, please forgive my sarcasm. I have decided to leave it there in the post because it should express correctly my desperation that when I am promised something different, the same partiality, the same sanctimoniousness returns and I am afraid inevitably so, because that is the point of re-ligion to affirm one thing above others. The subjective, which is the breeding ground for all thyese re-ligions, is implacable and for true meaning to be achieved, error must be trimmed from the world. It means by the grace of what it denies and that is why, I believe, while the intention might truly be to be non-judgmental and tolerant, the end result does not vary because of the circumstances I have described.

— Is my interpretation something you should automatically accept? Well, no, and it wasn’t one I automatically accepted either. One comes to a point where one finds God (and one allows God to find) not very easily, at least in my case. It can be a long, winding, circuitous path, ultimately affirmed by a kind of direct awareness which is impossible to relate.
O- You presume that “union” was all along the idea behind it all. This presumption ignores the Israelite tradition up to Jesus and it’s intricacies, which might be problematic to this “union-with-God” perspective. Is Thomas representative of Jewish thought?
Let me explain. Suppose you are a listener of Jesus back in the 1st century. You have been educated as any 1st century Palestinian Jew. What will it mean, (you think), when Jesus is called the “Messiah”? Why did it provoke the Temple authorities so the rumors of the day? In that tradition, as it was known in their day, the Messianic hope was not one that sought “union” with God etc. Call them “carnal”, but one cannot deny the jewishness of Jesus. If one accepts that inheritance, then Jesus is understood in a totally different light, and his sayings as well. I understand that the picture that emerges is a failed picture and thus a new meaning is found to the story. This is tradition and occurs in ancient controversies over the role, if any, of Hesiod, and Homer as educators of the youth in Greece. Rather than discarding their teachings, those sentimentally attached, in my opinion, try to salvage what they can by looking for a hidden meaning which inserts into the ancient a modern message. I just disagree with the disregard for what the author’s intention might have been, as well as the inherent self-righteousness in that the new message is a superior understanding of what is. Call me a conservative, but can you put new wine in old skins?
One last thing before we proceed. I am not defending a literal view over a metaphorical view etc. it is not some either or controversy, settled in either extreme. Instead I fully defend that the Scriptures are both. At times literal, at times symbolic and it does not take much to dicern how and when. A strict literalist view is wrong, but so is a strict symbolic one.

— I think it’s interesting, though, to go beyond the Biblical literature, and here naturally is where a literalist would have a problem. But the sheer amount of life/death/rebirth motifs found throughout mythology from the ages is no less than stunning. At some point, one has to wonder just what is going on.
O- I actually welcome going beyond scripture. Perhaps we can use other arts than merely interpretation of scripture to discriminate the truth from error. So many cultures, so diverse and yet seemingly with the same recurring motif, how can we hope to explain it?!
Two paths.
First one assume that the similarity comes from an unconscious and yet objective experience into the Divine. That God reveals himself differently to different people, but it is still the same God, or that God is One and the same but that while the similarities reveal what is true about Him, what is diverse reflect our limited understanding and the powerful influence of culture in our appreciation of that public experience that is God.
The second path is more skeptical. That voice, not a very popular one, but notheless, possible, says that underlying the similarity in religious tradition is a biological tract and part of what makes us human. This point is thoroughly examined in the book “The Creation of the Sacred” (can’t remember the author but I think it is Burkert). It is an echo of Ludwig Freuerbach, who reversed the order of creation from God then man to Man then God. It is then in man that the answer will be found, in his existential condition, rather in some beyond or some interpretation of what is beyond.

— Couple this idea with a belief in pantheism, throw in the sheer beauty of Christ’s message (the Sermon on the Mount, if nothing else), and the stretching of mysticism across Christianity becomes more justified all the time.
O- I am interested in this. Please, give me your mystical rendition of the Sermon on the Mount. Use Luke’s variant of it to make truly a challenge.

— At some point, for me, along the circuitous path previously mentioned, the idea began to resonate. This was no ivory tower discovery. This was prayer and meditation, along with philosophy and history. I have no interest really in arguing my path. I am merely suggesting that there is a point of view that marries all of these ideas together and that point of view is, essentially, Christian mysticism.
O- How can I argue with that? I commend your achievement, but I must only say that my comment in all of this is that what you’ve achieved is not that dramatic. It is like an opinion. You feel that you have achieved a union with God. How could I investigate the truth of such claims? It is enough that they be true to you, even if they are false in the eyes of every one else. Are you happy by the development? If so, then what more can one want?

Quote:
Why did Jesus have to die? To provide us with this example? A parable might have done the trick.
— I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t a parable.
O- Quite a statement Jerry. I’ll be thinking about it for a while before I hazard a response.

— And vice-verse. “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men see it not” (The Gospel of Thomas). There’s your apocalyptic message.
O- Again, does Thomas represent Jesus mind set better than the others? Did it mean that for Ignatious and Polycarp? Or Paul and Peter? Why is the Kingdom also likened to a mustard seed. The Kigdom of God is the kingdom of David. Why then do people not see it? Because it has been brought low, but it is not gone. Just because the people suffer does not mean that their God has been overcome but that their God has allowed their humbling. This is Biblical, though I cannot say if it is true. The Kingdom does not come, does not descend, and does not need to because it was never destroyed, it never stop being. Says the Lord: “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever”.
In Jesus thriumphal entry the crowd shouts:”Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”
“Blessed is the kingdom of our father David!”
That makes sense in view of what God said to David and recorded in scripture.
I don’t want you to think that I am partial to a literal understanding, but that I understand what has been written better in that light rather than in some interpretation that what is meant all along is a mystical union of God and man. It does not follow the myth as told in the old testatment and seems to me as a later development, a later creation, which has taken the most sublime sayings and inserted within them their own agenda. I could be wrong, but based on a reading into the Books of the Bible and some like the Apocraphia and then reading the writings of the martyrs, which is what I have done, I have found that it makes a lot of sense to read such sayings of Jesus as reflective of a jewish tradition and less of a mystical tradition in which man becomes God.

— Again, I think you’re confusing the metaphor with the real. The virgin birth, for example, is another motif prominent throughout mythology. I’m not suggesting anything with respect to the historicity of these things. I’m only suggesting that the meaning behind them might go beyond the literal.
O- Don’t all things possess that extra meaning for the mind that seeks it? Does not mean that the meaning is real but within the mind that sees it. The Virgin Birth was used by Caesar, and Emperor, so what does that say about Jesus being just like us? It places Jesus less in our sphere and more in Caesar’s.

— Well one needs to be careful not to anthropomorphize. I’m not saying we can become a divine ruler sitting on a throne surveying all of Creation. We are manifestations of God and, in union with the divine, we can experience God, even be at one with God. We can, in a sense, be God. There are moments when man can be at one with the divine and the idea of separation falls away. “Loved one in the other fused as one.”
O- So what is this “God”? He is not a divine ruler, so what is He or should we say “It”? Right now I am drawing a “nada”: “We are manifestations of “Nada” and, in union with the divine, we can experience “Nada”, even be at one with “Nada”. We can, in a sense, be “Nada”.

[tentative]

I’m not sure I even care for the term mysticism any longer. It carries with it the same baggage as does “God”, Christian", “Allah”, “Muslim”, …

It’s almost paradoxical that we experience that ‘something’ beyond the apparent manifest and we want to express what we have experienced, but all we have is language which is useful in describing that which is manifest, but falls miserably short in any expression of the experience of all that is. And so we search for metaphors to illuminate, but end up clouding the experience with more words about words.

We assume our words give us the power to assign attributes to that which is behind manifest. God is this, God is that. We cite this or that collection of even more words (holy scripture) as “proof” that we can know God. But at the bottom of it all, one is left with an indescribable experience and the ‘knowing’ of God is both personal and private. I may ‘know’ for myself, but for no other, and in that I must remain silent lest I fall victim to the first Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.”

Our words about God, of God, are idolatry. Poor imitations of what they purport to describe. I suppose it is inevitable that we should do this, since language is the pervasive environment, but we should recognize and accept the limitations of our words. For me, I will call that which is, the ineffable, and if asked about what is God, I have to answer, “I don’t know.”

If this is mysticism, then so be it. But I really prefer silence. Of course if there is discussion of how shall we live? Those are experiences of which I can speak freely - and do - too much of the time.

JT

[Disciple_of_light]

.

I think it’s about time somebody around here presented an alternative to what is unfortunately perceived as Christianity today, at least a nutshell version of what Christian Mysticism is all about.

@Jerry

Damn. And here I thought I might have something interesting to say about it. Something that could possibly generate some conversation where maybe other people might also say interesting things.

You,ll have to excuse me then , I thought when you said " somebody " you were reffering to someone other than yourself , if what you meant was its about time you shed some light on christian mystiscism , that you will attempt to put it in a nutshell , then ok

.

[Nick_A]

Jerry wrote:

his was no ivory tower discovery. This was prayer and meditation, along with philosophy and history. I have no interest really in arguing my path. I am merely suggesting that there is a point of view that marries all of these ideas together and that point of view is, essentially, Christian mysticism.

I would define it as a facet of man made Christianity or “Christendom” rather than Christian mysticism.

[Jerry]

@Disciple of light

You,ll have to excuse me then , I thought when you said " somebody " you were reffering to someone other than yourself , if what you meant was its about time you shed some light on christian mystiscism , that you will attempt to put it in a nutshell , then ok

No problem. I see what you meant now. Yes, it was my intention to summarize the general idea myself. (Sorry for the wise-ass reply).

[Jerry]

@Nick_A

I would define it as a facet of man made Christianity or “Christendom” rather than Christian mysticism.

I’d be interested, then, in your definition of Christian mysticism.

[Jerry]

@omar

Every thing that happens in our life is open to interpretation. We can agree. So why try to fix our eyes in only one? Everything, it seems, is open to interpretation, until some prophet hoist up a “correct” interpretation, and that is inevitably what religions do.

And I would reiterate that I am not here to push Christian mysticism as the one, correct interpretation. It is but one way to somehow attempt to make sense, and experience something of, God. I would refer you to the quote from Andrew Harvey which I have led off this thread with.

-I kinda doubt your neutrality. You go on to say: “If a literalist finds union with God then his interpretation has served its purpose.” If you left it at that then I would agree with your prior statement, but see how you go right into what I accuse religions of doing: "I would only suggest that if one is worshipping from afar, and believing out of fear, and praying out of guilt, then one is missing the true idea of union.
Oh yeah. There is that True bussiness to attend to. You don’t deny them, you only see them as false ideas? What an affirmation indeed! Jerry, please forgive my sarcasm. I have decided to leave it there in the post because it should express correctly my desperation that when I am promised something different, the same partiality, the same sanctimoniousness returns and I am afraid inevitably so, because that is the point of re-ligion to affirm one thing above others. The subjective, which is the breeding ground for all thyese re-ligions, is implacable and for true meaning to be achieved, error must be trimmed from the world. It means by the grace of what it denies and that is why, I believe, while the intention might truly be to be non-judgmental and tolerant, the end result does not vary because of the circumstances I have described.

I cannot deny that I believe what I believe. That I believe it makes it, to my way of thinking, “correct.” Else I would not believe it. Does this of necessity make other approaches “incorrect”? I don’t know. Obviously some of that idea is part and parcel with one’s belief about something. It is quite unavoidable and I won’t waste your time by trying to deny it.

I will say this however. I do feel as though other approaches can be just as valid as mine. I have the experience of mine to recommend it to my own self, but I am aware that that experience is non-transferable by language. It is for this reason that I see one’s relationship to God as a completely unique and very personal thing. Outside of forums such as these where these kinds of ideas get bandied about for fun and intrigue, and private conversations with a very small, select group of people that I know quite well, one hears nary a peep from Jerry about how one should approach God. This is quite a different approach, I would say, than one in which people are preaching and actively attempting to effect conversion. I’m not saying that’s a wrong approach (that would be ironic), I’m merely differentiating mine from what you have said you “accuse religions of doing.”

You presume that “union” was all along the idea behind it all. This presumption ignores the Israelite tradition up to Jesus and it’s intricacies, which might be problematic to this “union-with-God” perspective. Is Thomas representative of Jewish thought? …I just disagree with the disregard for what the author’s intention might have been, as well as the inherent self-righteousness in that the new message is a superior understanding of what is. Call me a conservative, but can you put new wine in old skins?

Keeping what has been said in historical context, which I think you are getting at here, is important. But one has to make a determination somewhere along the line as to whether or not the words were written just for the specific times, or whether one can take a wider, broader view and either postulate that the words are appropriate for other times and meant to be so, or at the least the words and deeds and stories can be used as lessons to be applied towards different circumstances in different times.

There is no denying that doing so raises a host of interpretive issues. This is a problem that I do not deny. It is for this reason that one needs, in my view, to carefully compile information from many sources, scripture and otherwise, including wisdom down through the ages from the kings and philosophers and warriors and thinkers and poets, to meditation and prayer and listening with the heart, so to ultimately be able to cobble together a worldview that resonates.

One last thing before we proceed. I am not defending a literal view over a metaphorical view etc. it is not some either or controversy, settled in either extreme. Instead I fully defend that the Scriptures are both. At times literal, at times symbolic and it does not take much to dicern how and when. A strict literalist view is wrong, but so is a strict symbolic one.

Understood. And I do not think I disagree.

I actually welcome going beyond scripture. Perhaps we can use other arts than merely interpretation of scripture to discriminate the truth from error. So many cultures, so diverse and yet seemingly with the same recurring motif, how can we hope to explain it?!
Two paths.
First one assume that the similarity comes from an unconscious and yet objective experience into the Divine. That God reveals himself differently to different people, but it is still the same God, or that God is One and the same but that while the similarities reveal what is true about Him, what is diverse reflect our limited understanding and the powerful influence of culture in our appreciation of that public experience that is God.
The second path is more skeptical. That voice, not a very popular one, but notheless, possible, says that underlying the similarity in religious tradition is a biological tract and part of what makes us human. This point is thoroughly examined in the book “The Creation of the Sacred” (can’t remember the author but I think it is Burkert). It is an echo of Ludwig Freuerbach, who reversed the order of creation from God then man to Man then God. It is then in man that the answer will be found, in his existential condition, rather in some beyond or some interpretation of what is beyond.

Put me down for the first path.

I am interested in this. Please, give me your mystical rendition of the Sermon on the Mount. Use Luke’s variant of it to make truly a challenge.

I’m not sure how you mean to use the word “mystical” here and so I’m not sure I am understanding your question. The Sermon on the Mount is, if one was looking to summarize what Jesus had to teach and could take just one thing from the NT, a beautifully succinct lesson to point to.

It is like an opinion. You feel that you have achieved a union with God. How could I investigate the truth of such claims? It is enough that they be true to you, even if they are false in the eyes of every one else. Are you happy by the development? If so, then what more can one want?

No, it is not “like” an opinion. It is an opinion. And I am claiming nothing more. You can’t, in fact, investigate the truth of such claims. I have said before I am not here to defend a position, merely to put forth a possible one, and I have done so especially for those around here without a real idea as to what Christian Mysticism really means but instead take the conventional approaches to Christ as being the only approaches available.

I don’t want you to think that I am partial to a literal understanding, but that I understand what has been written better in that light rather than in some interpretation that what is meant all along is a mystical union of God and man. It does not follow the myth as told in the old testatment and seems to me as a later development, a later creation, which has taken the most sublime sayings and inserted within them their own agenda. I could be wrong, but based on a reading into the Books of the Bible and some like the Apocraphia and then reading the writings of the martyrs, which is what I have done, I have found that it makes a lot of sense to read such sayings of Jesus as reflective of a jewish tradition and less of a mystical tradition in which man becomes God.

The problem I have always had with respect to reading literally, is that the answer to one major question – maybe the question – is sorely in want. What purpose man? What purpose life? If not union with God, if not co-creation of some sort, then what, omar? This was the question that originally steered me towards other avenues. This gaping hole gnaws at one incessantly, does it not? Where is the answer? Asking the question gets us started down a completely new path and it has occurred to me that the question is left unanswered precisely so that we may go in search of its answer. And this search, by necessity, puts us on a road quite beyond the maps left to us by what can be discerned with literal interpretations.

So what is this “God”? He is not a divine ruler, so what is He or should we say “It”?
Right now I am drawing a “nada”: “We are manifestations of “Nada” and, in union with the divine, we can experience “Nada”, even be at one with “Nada”. We can, in a sense, be “Nada”.

Could be Nada. Could be Todos. Abraham Heschel used the word “ineffable”, a word tentative is fond of and for good reason I think. I can’t do better than that. We can catch glimpses and we can see God sometimes if we’re paying attention. Through time, I have learned that I can see God in such things as you, me, the love I feel for my son, the eyes of a close friend, the waves of the ocean, and the way twilight makes me feel.

[JM1 (JM)]

Thank God for this thread. I was surfing the philosophy board and realized there is nothing I have to sday or want to know regarding mere thought. For me it’s always been about revelation - inexpressible joys and anguish that come with the realization the universe consists of consciousness and not of matter. To me this is what the Christ teaches - whether he be Jesus or ones inner Christ - ones inner, higher self.

The problem I have, as do many, with the notion that all there is is the now and there her - is that I live in a western dynamic society and not in a mountaincave, or even on the land, cropping my own food. If that were so, I’d be perfectly happy. But I am raised as an artist, a film and tv director, and I love my craft. But the setting in which I have to perform it is oppressing, tyrannical - it demands of me that I am - that I go with this flow, this near-insanity of veryday life. The past ten years have been a struggle to release myself from the sense of obligation and still make enough money to live a life. And God has always been close to me, I keep Him close.

The awe of the father and the dear love for the mother - the connectedness with the son within - they all have become a given to me - but I can’t escape the torment here as I was born in the west with a conscience and a sense of purpose. I have tried to get away, but was drawn back.
What am I getting at? I want to present the idea that the Christ - in the modern world - is a dynamic type, who needs to cultivate warrior qualities in order to surive and work within western society.
I believe that the second coming of Christ is not only the birth of the Self within a human - the realease of ego-consciousness - bt also a geo-political movement of Christs being born within the ego consciousness of the western world. And I believe this coming is imminent. I see the ego-world stretching itself to such an extent that it almost snaps, crushes under it’s own weight. When this happens, we as humanity will not just need the wisdom love and good will of individuals, but orgainized Christs. So; Christs - organize!
What am I shoutin for - it’s not as if I need to tell them.

[Jerry]

Hi JM. Glad you like the thread.

With respect to this idea of the insanity of everyday life and sense of obligation, it’s really a question of motivation, isn’t it? We’re creative beings first and foremost. If one is working to feed the ego-self then one is working for the wrong reasons it seems to me. If, on the other hand, one is working to feed the true self, the creative being that resides within, then I think the motivation is in the right place. Inside each of us is an artist. We can’t all be painters or poets but we all have a means by which we create. In my business I create marketing avenues for companies, but much more than this I have created valuable relationships with coworkers and clients that go well beyond monetary considerations. This kind of thing remains unavailable to us in your mountain cave, or on the land “cropping (your) own food,” and so I am wondering if it’s not a more worthwhile way to live after all.

In other words, your “ego” world doesn’t have to be an ego world, does it? I’m wondering if it’s only an ego world if that happens to be the way it’s approached.