Personal experiance VS. Scripture

[scottm]

Souldwolf, sounds like you might get a great charge from integrational philosopher Ken Wilbur, especially his A Brief History of Everything.

AMEN times a million!!! Wooo-ooooo!!! Now you have three people telling you to read Wilbur!

After that book browse his “Integral Spirituality.” Whereas the “Everything” book is about everything, the spirituality book focuses on religion.

 

[scottm]

well i can definitely say that i’m not catholic (by means of the more mainstream definitions) or christian for that matter. Though i was raised roman catholic so that is the religion ive had the most exposure to.

Other than that, i have had the most exposure through shamanism and Buddhism. Though i cant say i know much about Buddhism. And though i have experienced some of the more intense shamanic practices, i cant say i am fully immersed in that belief system as well. i’m more of a completionist. a snippet here and a snippet there. Would you say that is adequate?

It’s worth a try. You just volunteered yourself to be a reviewer of an unfinished 100-page book. PM me an email address.

 

[Soulewolf]

AMEN times a million!!! Wooo-ooooo!!! Now you have three people telling you to read Wilbur!

After that book browse his “Integral Spirituality.” Whereas the “Everything” book is about everything, the spirituality book focuses on religion.

funny thing about this is i said to the universe (divinity, god, whatever) that if i should read the book a third person should tell me to read it. sooooo i think imma go check out my local library tomorrow. Thanks for the reference.

 

[Vico]

funny thing about this is i said to the universe (divinity, god, whatever) that if i should read the book a third person should tell me to read it. sooooo i think imma go check out my local library tomorrow. Thanks for the reference.

How do you know that said universe (divinity, god, whatever) is good rather than bad?

 

[Tuno]

How do you “know”, Vico, if you only believe? You trust a 2000 year old game of “telephone” by itself to inform the most important aspect of your life? Don’t we forget the we believe because we want to? That is perfectly fine, mind you, and you may even be right, but please give credit to those who have the desire and courage to go beyond the mere dualism of the Zoroastrian “good vs bad.”

 

[davidv]

How do you “know”, Vico, if you only believe? You trust a 2000 year old game of “telephone” by itself to inform the most important aspect of your life? Don’t we forget the we believe because we want to? That is perfectly fine, mind you, and you may even be right, but please give credit to those who have the desire and courage to go beyond the mere dualism of the Zoroastrian “good vs bad.”

Why do you call it a game of telephone?

From my vantage point, “telephone” is a very faint shadow of what is contained in the family history of the Church.

 

[Tuno]

From your vantage point davidv, yes. That ought to be sufficient.

BTW, I wished to compliment you on a bit of sanity you inserted into a thread dealing with atheism. I can’t find it now. I’m quite sure it was you. If it’s not, just be a proxy for the praise and glow.

 

[davidv]

From your vantage point davidv, yes. That ought to be sufficient.

BTW, I wished to compliment you on a bit of sanity you inserted into a thread dealing with atheism. I can’t find it now. I’m quite sure it was you. If it’s not, just be a proxy for the praise and glow.

Thank you.

Would mind explaining why you used the “game of telephone” in the post I responded to?

 

[Vico]

How do you “know”, Vico, if you only believe? You trust a 2000 year old game of “telephone” by itself to inform the most important aspect of your life? Don’t we forget the we believe because we want to? That is perfectly fine, mind you, and you may even be right, but please give credit to those who have the desire and courage to go beyond the mere dualism of the Zoroastrian “good vs bad.”

I officially give credit to those who have the desire and courage to go beyond the mere dualism of the Zoroastrian “good vs bad.”

 

[Soulewolf]

How do you know that said universe (divinity, god, whatever) is good rather than bad?

because it is infinite Love. as far as i know, philosophically, Love is intrinsically good.

 

[Tuno]

Davivv, by “telephone” I am refering to the game where you whisper something into the ear of a person at one end of a line of say, ten more. That person passes what s/he thought he heard to the next, and so on down the line. Rarely is the outcome any semblance of the original.

The passing on of something as ineffable as a spiritual Teaching over 2000 years might be thought of as being at risk in this way, given what we know of the character of witnessing, translation, and all the contingencies of history. Even a simple reading of the George Lamsa translation tells us that we have not much of a clue these days as to the culture and idiom of that time and place. And Gina Cerminara’s handbook for religious sanity exemplifies and sources not only material but methods largely ignored by the average person of faith. Any faith, but in this case particularly Christian.

Having been a very well versed Catholic, I am aware of the internal “safeguards” posited by the Church. IMHO, those may withstand the gates of hell, but do not withstand the exigencies of simple research. I think as well that if I was making similar claims about Mormons, Muslims, Jews, or any number of non-Abrahamic faiths, you would by dint of your association and religious life investment be more open to critical thinking about those than about your own. I found that to be the case until I had no other choice. So if you dispute with me on this, I completely, from experience, understand. But what I stood for before is not what I now experientially see and understand as a more accurate picture.

PS Soulewolf, I agree.

 

[Vico]

because it is infinite Love. as far as i know, philosophically, Love is intrinsically good.

Interesting, for me some of the perception has been expansive (spaciousness) one time, lack of psychological weight to things (a.k.a., joy) another, great peaceful satisfaction (like a great quenching of thirst) another. Never specifically like feeling loved, but rather absence of feeling unloved. I would define Love actively as doing what is in the best interest of all (not selfish), passively as communion (consciousness).

 

[Soulewolf]

Interesting, for me some of the perception has been expansive (spaciousness) one time, lack of psychological weight to things (a.k.a., joy) another, great peaceful satisfaction (like a great quenching of thirst) another. Never specifically like feeling loved, but rather absence of feeling unloved. I would define Love actively as doing what is in the best interest of all (not selfish), passively as communion (consciousness).

nods What i experienced was an essence i can only call Love (with a capital L) that was infinite and conscious. It existed within everything and was everything. It was the nature of the essence of existence.

blah words fail to describe it.

And yes i would agree to the other descriptions. I cried in joy for a while. The emotional high left eventually, but the understanding remained.

 

[fhansen]

Interesting, for me some of the perception has been expansive (spaciousness) one time, lack of psychological weight to things (a.k.a., joy) another, great peaceful satisfaction (like a great quenching of thirst) another. Never specifically like feeling loved, but rather absence of feeling unloved. I would define Love actively as doing what is in the best interest of all (not selfish), passively as communion (consciousness).

For myself, *knowing *infinite, unconditional Love was the overwhelming focal point of the grandest experience I was given. And, yes, the peace that came with it was total, beyond comprehension.

 

[fhansen]

nods What i experienced was an essence i can only call Love (with a capital L) that was infinite and conscious. It existed within everything and was everything. It was the nature of the essence of existence.

blah words fail to describe it.

And yes i would agree to the other descriptions. I cried in joy for a while. The emotional high left eventually, but the understanding remained.

Soulewolf, this description of your experience, as far as it goes, is exceptionally similar to mine, including the tears. What I’m not sure of is why you don’t seem to consider Christianity more seriously.

While experience transcends dogma, religious dogma, at its best, should be an attempt to understand, teach, and clarify real, significant experiences that other people had at some time in the past. And while all words may seem crude and inadequate, religion still has to try in order to pass down the opportunity for others to search for the transcendent themselves.

What I’m getting at is that your experience, like mine, apparently involved something separate from yourself, way superior, but at any rate a separate consciousness, if I’m not reading too much into it. You also said that the essence of this “being” was Love. Not only is that equivalent to my experience but also it meshes easily with Christian teachings, where God is, and God is Love. Those statements may seem sparse but not inaccurate whereas I’ve not encountered anything quite like this in other religious systems, though my experience there is admittedly limited even though in my youth I read many a sutra as well as a variety of other eastern works and eastern philosophical commentaries.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Tuno]

With all due respect to anyone on here who has had such an experience as Fhansen, Soulewolf, myself, and I am quite sure many others, not to mention the very extensive literature on the subject, I would like to make an observation. First, I completely concur up to an unfortunate point of departure with fhanson that “dogma, at its best, should be an attempt to understand, teach, and clarify real, significant experiences that other people had at some time in the past. And while all words may seem crude and inadequate, religion still has to try in order to pass down the opportunity for others to search for the transcendent themselves.”

Well said, good and true. And I believe that much of it its intended to be that way. But there are cases, I submit, where that fails, despite good intentions and due diligence on every side. Mine own is a case in point, if I may. I was a very staunch and dogmatic Roman Catholic at the time of my most radical insight, despite, in retrospect, some minor intimations of trouble ahead from dealings about some previous mystical events in my practice. Despite that, and some years of research with both clerics and books, I had to go elsewhere.

Having said that, and having necessarily been a student of this very question from my late teens, I can say that this question of person and whether the Being encountered in such experiences as ours is a discreet and separate entity or one’s own ultimate Self in the mystical sense, is the most slippery and thorny question in mysticism of any sort, including NDE’s. This holds true, as far as I see, across time, cultures, locations, and any other factors.

It centers, as much as I can tell, on a) how deep the experience was, in any case it being likely the most profound event of one’s life, and b) the tools available to the individual to exegize the meaning and substance of the experience after the height of it. Indeed, the thrust of practice in some traditions is to never leave a condition where one is fully both “here” and “there,” “there” being equivalent to THAT or ALL. So, fundamentally, we are dealing with a question of identity/Identity. It is also viewable as a question of knowledge by intellect and/or Knowledge by Identity. In any case, as I mentioned, there is a very large literature on the matter, both Eastern and Western.

We each certainly have our experiential assessments of what happened to us. But if I may, I would like to recommend a tool for perhaps a more detailed consideration of the dynamics involved in such events as ours. I came across this volume at the advice of a friend who knew of my predicament and had dealt with it himself, though as far as I can tell, in a far more profound manner than did I. (I am, you see, a great fan of distinguishing degrees and kinds.)

At any rate, what I would like to propose is this: There is a diary of a man, an electrical engineer who lived of late in California. He had as a hobby hard rock gold mining for the purpose of solitude and contemplation. He is one who sought and had an experience such as ours. In the process he kept a very detailed diary of his considerations, many of them about this question of “who or what is IT?” though not exactly in those words. The book is called Pathways through to Space, and the author is one Franklin Merrell-Wolff. I believe it is still available. I propose we get a copy of it so the three of us at least, and perhaps others on here, may have a common ground for thinking and commenting about points relevant to this question, and go from there. In the mean time we can continue with these very satisfactory chats. What say you?

 

[davidv]

Davivv, by “telephone” I am refering to the game where you whisper something into the ear of a person at one end of a line of say, ten more. That person passes what s/he thought he heard to the next, and so on down the line. Rarely is the outcome any semblance of the original.

The passing on of something as ineffable as a spiritual Teaching over 2000 years might be thought of as being at risk in this way, given what we know of the character of witnessing, translation, and all the contingencies of history. Even a simple reading of the George Lamsa translation tells us that we have not much of a clue these days as to the culture and idiom of that time and place. And Gina Cerminara’s handbook for religious sanity exemplifies and sources not only material but methods largely ignored by the average person of faith. Any faith, but in this case particularly Christian.

Having been a very well versed Catholic, I am aware of the internal “safeguards” posited by the Church. IMHO, those may withstand the gates of hell, but do not withstand the exigencies of simple research. I think as well that if I was making similar claims about Mormons, Muslims, Jews, or any number of non-Abrahamic faiths, you would by dint of your association and religious life investment be more open to critical thinking about those than about your own. I found that to be the case until I had no other choice. So if you dispute with me on this, I completely, from experience, understand. But what I stood for before is not what I now experientially see and understand as a more accurate picture.

PS Soulewolf, I agree.

I know what the game of telephone is.

I also know the the tranmission of family history doesn’t come close to equaling this game.

So if you still think that the transmission of Church history is due to a game of telephone, I declare your argument that it is, is a strawman.

 

[Tuno]

Please don’t mistake me as intending that a child’s game is the only factor in this matter. If not directly to you, then at other times I have litanized numerous things from authority to zeal and passing thru such things as culture, grammar, history, idiom, semantics, skeletons, translation, and the nature of witnessing. That’s a lot of straw, or lettuce, which takes us to St Augustine, who wanted to burn his after his last reported insight.

So I’m not saying it is all wrong, Davidv, just that there is a LOT of doubt that by the momentum of our Faith we tend not to account for.

Off to bid a job; perhaps more later.

 

[Soulewolf]

Soulewolf, this description of your experience, as far as it goes, is exceptionally similar to mine, including the tears. What I’m not sure of is why you don’t seem to consider Christianity more seriously.

While experience transcends dogma, religious dogma, at its best, should be an attempt to understand, teach, and clarify real, significant experiences that other people had at some time in the past. And while all words may seem crude and inadequate, religion still has to try in order to pass down the opportunity for others to search for the transcendent themselves.

What I’m getting at is that your experience, like mine, apparently involved something separate from yourself, way superior, but at any rate a separate consciousness, if I’m not reading too much into it. You also said that the essence of this “being” was Love. Not only is that equivalent to my experience but also it meshes easily with Christian teachings, where God is, and God is Love. Those statements may seem sparse but not inaccurate whereas I’ve not encountered anything quite like this in other religious systems, though my experience there is admittedly limited even though in my youth I read many a sutra as well as a variety of other eastern works and eastern philosophical commentaries.

Any thoughts on this?

well after my experience, i came to realize it isnt the path to Divinity that is important, it is the relationship with divinity.

In my opinion, all these religions are here to point us in the direction of divinity.

Heh reminds me of a Bruce Lee clip. Lemme see if i can find it.

here we go

youtube.com/watch?v=sDW6vkuqGLg

lol i never thought i’d use a Bruce Lee movie scene to help demonstrate an idea.

Also that is a good idea tuno. Though again i have many people telling me i need to read different books, plus i’m helping to edit one, plus i have school soooo lol i dont have a whole lot of time.

 

[Tuno]

Yep, that fits, Soulewolf. And I understand that you have all those book fingers pointing to your need to study and tend to priorities. Thanks for the clip.