(jem is posting on an office computer... under this handle because Jem is making sure only he posts under Jem as of about a few weeks ago) You pulled the one quote i also found which was from an early Christian named Justin.... which seems a bit confused. Just to be clear... if anything the Western Catholic church would be closer to your thought of aptheosis --- although Western Catholic church does not believe we become God either... there is a little bit more a potential for a close proximisty in Western thought. The eastern rite and the greeks make it quite clear that you are not going to be God. It all comes down to this general statement. Eastern thought wants you to think you can be God. Christian thought --- there is only one God and we want to worship, praise and be with him. We get there through Christ. Jews also say one separate God. Not sure what they preach on being with God since the destruction of the temple. (but I will look it up.,)
absolutely beautiful thread, Jem, Mohd, I am, etc. just for a li'l clarification on this point, if you would be so kind...can you give an example of what "Christ-Being" would be like on an experiential level in one's day to day existence? all semantics, but are you using "Christ-Being" to mean something like "pure awareness grounded in non-dual reality" and a "false experience" would only be "false" because it is born of the delusion of ego/i thus separation? this is my guess from a bit of exposure to the ramana maharshi character you had mentioned earlier. to try to draw some parallels with christianity and eastern thought, are there not some Christian mystics that SEEK to experience God and wasn't that very point addressed by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians? i mean, the carmelites, trappists and maybe fransicans actively contemplate in silence (however "active" that looks;-) small digression, do you think it is possible that the church in their final cut of the new testament chose the letters of Paul because it would be much easier to control society if they were kept in the dark, so to speak, regarding the nature of God? like, "work hard your entire life and sacrifice for the church if need be because when you die, ETERNITY of bliss awaits you. what's 70 years compared to infinity?" whereas the corinthian mystic meditates/contemplates and experiences non-dual reality for a long enough period to see clearly that the self that he had identified with so strongly up to that point is just an illusion and even the pope (yes, anachronistic)telling him that he will be executed for blasphemy is laughable because the pope is also in the delusion that traps him within the thoughts that engender "i" sense and separates him from God and he, the corinthian, IS the pope and everything else that is, was or will be when he is in the experience of god. if so, and if you read some of the gnostics like the gospel of thomas, it seems as if Jesus was definitely clued into the same "wisdom" that typifies eastern thought? of course, any one can answer. either way, i have enjoyed writing and thinking a bit in my slightly sleep deprived state
In Genesis 3:4-5 you find the original deception introduced to mankind , it's still alive today, "You will not surely die..... You will be like gods. How can a created being, obtain the same level as the Creator? Yet Christians, those chosen and who have accepted Christ as their personal Savior, are considered "Sons and Daughters" through adoption and are able to partake in their inheritance. While God's grace allows this, we are never equal to God, but will be transformed into sinless perfect beings able to experience God in the first person. God's perfection will not allow us to enter into his presence in our fallen sinful state. There will be only one thing imperfect in Heaven, that will be the body of Jesus himself, as HE will bear he scars received at Calvary on our behalf. People's nature seeks a higher level, something better bigger - we are created, hard wired in this way. You see it in every book store you enter, rows and rows of self improvement books. Christianity is designed in the opposite, as it teaches one cannot save himself, in fact until one realizes the helplessness of one's self and relies on God and God alone, one cannot fully function as God designed. Everyone wants to come to God on their own terms and time. Doesn't quite work that way i'm afraid.
I might point you to the book "Tryptamine Palace" by James Oroc for a description of the experience of being what i've called Being-Christ. Here's a youtube of James describing his first experience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMroEktiUqQ The book goes into more detail. The Christ-Being naturally has no awareness of an individual "I", nor for that matter any world filled with individual "I"-beings. To be an I-being, one cannot experience one's natural state of Christ-Being. James describes how the use of a substance enabled him to temporarily jettison any/all i-identity in order to experience his natural state. On a "day to day" basis, the experience will vary depending on how one is making progress toward dis-identification with any i-identity. To get an idea about how that looks, i would reference this simple hermit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf1LSAlR_z0
Perfectly Brilliant... not to slide this thread into the underworld of drugs, but when it comes to profound mystical/Christ-Being experience for the average westerner, psychedelic drugs is the likely choice. if the "christ-being" state is born of the instantaneous but temporary cognitive transformation as if being shot from an atomic canon, then they still come back to an i that only distantly relates to that ineffable experience of non-i and may not actually progress much on the path to permanent non-identification. it would be like explaining green to a blind person. there is the second hand world of thought and then there is the world as it is in objective reality, so far beyond the difference between black and white. however, the DMT traveler will have that experience of non-duality which they maay recall "felt" far more real than looking at one's hand and thinking "this is my hand" so they got that going for them. to me, the kid hermit seemed more on his way to a more lasting non-identification and yogis/monks/spiritual aspirants that regularly practice the different types of insight and/or concentration inducing techniques may experience non-duality, emptiness, etc. similar to smoking DMT but they have also been making their life happier and more peaceful by eradicating defilements/sin and fostering virtue. kinda like the story when Ram Das gave his guru, the Karoli Baba guy, 1200 mics of LSD and he was hardly affected because he had already plumbed the depths of his mind. what ye think? thanks dude
Good points. Yes, the simple hermit may have an edge by approaching the 'destination' in a more wholistic way. The object is to get to the destination and stay there as That (Being). I include James' testimony because it clearly describes the magnitude of our destiny (Christ-Being) and his method may offer the doubtful a needed direct experience of what's to come. But the simple hermit's foot is perhaps more surely on the path of return (to the natural state of Christ-Being), and is noteworthy because his initial method so closely resembled the path Ramana Maharshi took, namely the path of 'self-enquiry'. Ramana discovered it at age 17 (intuitively) while this simple hermit discovered it at age 18 or 19 probably also intuitively and has matured rapidly. He keeps one foot in the world to help out. But given a couple weeks of intensive meditation, the simple hermit could up and leave, if not fully return to the state of Christ-Being. Or, like Ramana, might spend years in silent samhadi (bliss). He is a great example of the point i was making about the hesychast controversy which revolved around the practice of certain kinds of meditation that would yield direct experience of God. The question then becomes, who knows more about God, the one who has direct exprience (like the simple hermit), or scholastic theologians (like Aquinas)? Though young and relatively unstudied, i'd say the simple monk is more an authority on the path of salvation than most celebrated ecclesiastics who are pouring over old texts while relying upon generations of darkened minds for interpretation. While it's difficult to define hinduism (or christianity for that matter), its easy to see the link between Adi Shankara>Ramana Maharshi>simple hermit>Eastern Orthodox (interpretation of 'theosis').
That is the bottom line. We can either be humble and approach or think we can be God on our own. I already know I am far from perfect.
Samadhi Raja Sutra Know all things to be like this: A mirage, a cloud castle, A dream, an apparition, Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen. Know all things to be like this: As the moon in a bright sky In some clear lake reflected, Though to that lake the moon has never moved. Know all things to be like this: As an echo that derives From music, sounds, and weeping, Yet in that echo is no melody. Know all things to be like this: As a magician makes illusions Of horses, oxen, carts and other things, Nothing is as it appears.
I am definitely in agreement on this point and it seems kinda like comparing someone that has read and perhaps memorized a recipe with someone that has mindfully eaten the dish created. Maybe a more accurate analogy would be someone that has gotten A+ in a few semesters of the anatomy and physiology of the genitalia and sex, in general, with someone that has actually done the deed a few times in differing durations from the 5 minute DMT guy to the 1 hour advanced monk. Who will better know the experience of both sensations and be most capable to guide others into the same experience? Beyond that, even the word "God" may be different from one person to the next. For example, in the west, the scholars are almost always referring to a separate entity that some may call anthropomorphized whereas in Eastern thought, IT(not the pantheon of infinite Hindu gods and godlets) may be termed "formless within which all forms reside, changeless where all apparent change takes place, timeless (ok, redundant there), nothing and everything in perfect simultaneity and all sorts of other paradoxical relationships in which the God of the West may reside." I mean, if one defines "God" as everything that is or can ever have been or be and the antithesis thereof, then surely all other gods must be in there too, no? That said, maybe the Western scholars know more of the somewhat capricious but seemingly limited, limitless God as he has supposedly spoken with a select few prophets directly and the spiritual aspirants like the simple hermit and James the 5Meo-DMT dude have experience of the infinite, timeless expanse in which ALL arises and falls(in an apparent sense). Just a notion from someone that knows much less than .0001% of what can be known
This reminds me of Ramana Maharshi telling of how this apparent reality is much like a dream. (Not counting those all too rare lucid dreams,) someone in your dream tells you that you are dreaming and you would laugh at them, "what do you mean, you fool, to say that this is a dream?!" But once you wake up, clearly you see that every single separate entity in your dream was born as a projection of the same solitary mind. In the "waking world," just because there is agreement among the masses that we are all separate due to our senses that lead us to believe that there is an "i" and the perceived as dual in nature doesn't necessarily make it so. What/who is it that watches the thoughts or sees and hears before you almost immediately start to label and interpret those perceptions? If you see a flower, if you don't label it as "flower" in your mind, is it any less there or maybe, it becomes much more than the generic "flower" you would have otherwise forgotten about as now it is unique and vibrant with a huge variety of structures connected, countless shades of green on the stem as it is in different shades of light, each petal its own form and even those words, "green" "petal" 'stem" throw them all out and just see as deeply as your awareness will let you before thought runs away with it. OK, definitely time to sleep. Later...