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Biggie
Guest
“Christianism” is a contortion of the language. Do you use it just to tease at some gnostic secret available to you (and your cadre) or does it have some meaning sensible to “Christianity”?
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Detales
Guest
Benadam
We do all share the same genesis experience which is expressed by “the true myth.” But the distortions imposed on it happen and are pertinent to the short span of one’s own life time and are pertinent unto history only in that it has been thus since human kind came to view the world primarily through left brain subject/object perception. That “fall” habituated into the common inability to see the “Garden of Eden” which experientially is pure right brain awareness and is felt as Union with All,* that experience being the foundation for an actual soul-linked spiritual practice. The pragmatic use of myth, which might as well be called “psychospiritual map” is to guide the devotee of, eg, the Jesus story, into one’s own experience of transfiguration and birth into a new form of integrated Conscious awareness which is then the door way to actual adoration.
Have you ever met someone in this state? I think not. Given your adamantine and incomplete understanding of myth, you would not recognize them as different due to lack of tools of perception, which, ironically, they might guide you into the use of. This is why if Jesus was to return today and show up in a business suit without fanfare and re-start His ministry, He again would be in danger of of crucifiction, by character assasination at least. He would emphatically not be accepted by the Roman Catholic Church and again condemned as a blasphemer. This is why it really bears worth to assiduously consider the actual intent and meaning of the Identity statements attributed to Jesus from the perspective of the Teaching language He Himself is said to have used and is yet in use today as myth. Both Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man: an interpretation of some parables and miracles of Christ and Harry Benjamin’s Basic Self Knowledge are useful in this regard.**
The “disobedience” of the garden myth is the ascent of Man into the relativist mental interaction with the world which is lacking both in animals and infants who cannot separate themselves from the field of perception as an ego entity. In humans when that happens it happens by a decided and imperative adjournment from enjoying the primarily right brain encounter into the subject/object left brain necessity of dealing with life, family, society and environment as a survival mode. The right brain wholeness is clouded over and we are “banished” from it. It is thenceforth guarded by an “Angel” which is symbolic of an elevated idea, namely remembrance, whose fiery sword is the incredible heat generated along the spine when the re-connection is experienced. It is an amazing event to the one that happens to. Just ask. Suddenly the world is what it was, but absolutely different. It is literally a re-birth in the mode of awareness in which one lives and moves.
To one in such a state there is available an Understanding of the actual Nature of the relationship between Man and God called God/Man. You figure from that what that can mean. But for such a one the second death has no sting, their “person” as experienced before awakening already having passed.
Myth points to Truth, and the beginning and the end (Alpha & Omega) IS and the understanding of that can be a happening. Truth is not in the past tense but a living experience Now upon awakening. Why do you think it says to be born again (out) of water (flesh) and (into, or as) the Holy Spirit? We are never separate from God or we could not be re-united. The reunion is the mental and experiential recognition that it has always been thus, save our experience of it denied us by our thought identification with limits. “One thought thought to be yours is the wall between Heaven and Earth.”~KG Mills. That has always been the point of myth: to map our way into the experience. Find someone who has had this experience and ask. Or read about it. In either case it will be an adventure. But you might find out why it is said that “The search for Reality is the most dangerous undertaking: it will destroy your world.”~Nisargadatta That means it will destroy your ignorance, which again is the point of myth. If something “happened” in the past and is described, that description is a mental construct and not the experience itself. Truth didn’t happen as a passing event, Benadam, it IS, and is the light even to one’s ability to deny it.
*As a beginning introduction to the actuality of this as an experience in scientific terms, see youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU&feature=related
**The preface of BSK is readable on Amazon.
We do all share the same genesis experience which is expressed by “the true myth.” But the distortions imposed on it happen and are pertinent to the short span of one’s own life time and are pertinent unto history only in that it has been thus since human kind came to view the world primarily through left brain subject/object perception. That “fall” habituated into the common inability to see the “Garden of Eden” which experientially is pure right brain awareness and is felt as Union with All,* that experience being the foundation for an actual soul-linked spiritual practice. The pragmatic use of myth, which might as well be called “psychospiritual map” is to guide the devotee of, eg, the Jesus story, into one’s own experience of transfiguration and birth into a new form of integrated Conscious awareness which is then the door way to actual adoration.
Have you ever met someone in this state? I think not. Given your adamantine and incomplete understanding of myth, you would not recognize them as different due to lack of tools of perception, which, ironically, they might guide you into the use of. This is why if Jesus was to return today and show up in a business suit without fanfare and re-start His ministry, He again would be in danger of of crucifiction, by character assasination at least. He would emphatically not be accepted by the Roman Catholic Church and again condemned as a blasphemer. This is why it really bears worth to assiduously consider the actual intent and meaning of the Identity statements attributed to Jesus from the perspective of the Teaching language He Himself is said to have used and is yet in use today as myth. Both Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man: an interpretation of some parables and miracles of Christ and Harry Benjamin’s Basic Self Knowledge are useful in this regard.**
The “disobedience” of the garden myth is the ascent of Man into the relativist mental interaction with the world which is lacking both in animals and infants who cannot separate themselves from the field of perception as an ego entity. In humans when that happens it happens by a decided and imperative adjournment from enjoying the primarily right brain encounter into the subject/object left brain necessity of dealing with life, family, society and environment as a survival mode. The right brain wholeness is clouded over and we are “banished” from it. It is thenceforth guarded by an “Angel” which is symbolic of an elevated idea, namely remembrance, whose fiery sword is the incredible heat generated along the spine when the re-connection is experienced. It is an amazing event to the one that happens to. Just ask. Suddenly the world is what it was, but absolutely different. It is literally a re-birth in the mode of awareness in which one lives and moves.
To one in such a state there is available an Understanding of the actual Nature of the relationship between Man and God called God/Man. You figure from that what that can mean. But for such a one the second death has no sting, their “person” as experienced before awakening already having passed.
Myth points to Truth, and the beginning and the end (Alpha & Omega) IS and the understanding of that can be a happening. Truth is not in the past tense but a living experience Now upon awakening. Why do you think it says to be born again (out) of water (flesh) and (into, or as) the Holy Spirit? We are never separate from God or we could not be re-united. The reunion is the mental and experiential recognition that it has always been thus, save our experience of it denied us by our thought identification with limits. “One thought thought to be yours is the wall between Heaven and Earth.”~KG Mills. That has always been the point of myth: to map our way into the experience. Find someone who has had this experience and ask. Or read about it. In either case it will be an adventure. But you might find out why it is said that “The search for Reality is the most dangerous undertaking: it will destroy your world.”~Nisargadatta That means it will destroy your ignorance, which again is the point of myth. If something “happened” in the past and is described, that description is a mental construct and not the experience itself. Truth didn’t happen as a passing event, Benadam, it IS, and is the light even to one’s ability to deny it.
*As a beginning introduction to the actuality of this as an experience in scientific terms, see youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU&feature=related
**The preface of BSK is readable on Amazon.
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Detales
Guest
Biggie, “Christianity” pertains to the Original Teaching of Jesus. “Christianism” refers to the myriad distortions of that Teaching now prevalent as religions, including Catholic, claiming to center their worship on Jesus and the misunderstood idea of The Christ. And it has little if anything to do with Gnosticism, save that it would be useful not to discount what it says on that Greek temple and in traditions older than Catholicism which say “Gnothi Seauton.” Know ThySelf."
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fhansen
Guest
Detales, there’s certainly truth in what you say from my perspective-at least a grain of it. But I have to read between the lines-kind of the way I know you do with religious dogma. But my question is this, how/why is the sting of death lost by your transformation, and secondly, what role does love play in this new life?
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Biggie
Guest
Which last statement actually begs your posture as essentially gnostic. The secret formula lies somewhere available to the knower, but of course is not to be found in the traditional channels frequented by the huddled masses. And also raises the question as to authority, historicity. Nonetheless, forgive me but I will persist that “Christianism” is a torture of the language in the same way Gnostianity would be.
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Detales
Guest
That is Lovely! “Gnostianity.” Yes, there is that, too, but it is not yet what I am pointing to.
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Benadam
Guest
fundamental to gnosticism= to find the self is to find God.
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fhansen
Guest
Interesting. I think it would be right to say that, in Christianity, to find God is to find oneself. By being distanced from Him, we cut ourselves off from ourselves as well.
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Detales
Guest
I think that that is well put, fhansen. I do see, though, that understanding how that separation is made and healed is crucial. That healing is also, in my experience, unfortunately diverted from in christianism. And to label my understanding as Gnosticism is simply a defensive diversion from analysis and introspection, ie, an escape mechanism, if you will.
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Biggie
Guest
Fundamental to Gnosticism or not, isn’t to find God to find God? I mean there is a distinction between God and self unless of course you are God. Could be what happened to Gnosticism oh those many centuries ago. It hibernated until it found itself in the warm environs of the new age where all that was known gets unknown. Ever ask yourself why it is all that has been answered must be re-answered?
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Detales
Guest
Yes, Biggie, when I read stuff like you and others put out I have to ask that, as I do often on these fora. The imagery of the “warm environs of the New Age” are as well a diversion from looking at what has always been and will be true. Truth has no age and is not timed, it being synonymous with God. And the grammatical/semantic structure of the phrase “to find God” is a convenience of unfortunate thinking. But you must “find” the answer for yourself, and maybe a good start would be to clarify by some of the recommended reading why it is that you and others persist in a completely wrong understanding of what is meant by “I” and by “Self” in Wisdom teachings as occluded by the Church.
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spockrates
Guest
I suppose Socrates would say to understand God is to understand one’s potential.
Whereas, the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous—he is perfect in righteousness. He of us who is the most righteous is of all things most like him. Herein is seen the cleverness of man, and also his nothingness and want of manhood. For, to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice.
(Theaetetus, 176)
But who listens to the Father of Philosophy any more?
Whereas, the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous—he is perfect in righteousness. He of us who is the most righteous is of all things most like him. Herein is seen the cleverness of man, and also his nothingness and want of manhood. For, to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice.
(Theaetetus, 176)
But who listens to the Father of Philosophy any more?
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Benadam
Guest
As Christians we believe God reveals man to himself . Man doesn’t reveal God to himself.
Biggie, I have wondered. It seems that it re-emeges in increasing subtlety. It was not as subtle before but then we weren’t familiar with it either. Each time, as it becomes a more sublime deception, we become more experienced at recognizing it.
I think God is allowing it to come to a head, to manifest it’s most sublime expression so it will be finished. Then He will annihilate it with the breath of His mouth.
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Benadam
Guest
And to think he was sentenced to death for promoting atheism.I suppose Socrates would say to understand God is to understand one’s potential.
Whereas, the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous—he is perfect in righteousness. He of us who is the most righteous is of all things most like him. Herein is seen the cleverness of man, and also his nothingness and want of manhood. For, to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice.
(Theaetetus, 176)
But who listens to the Father of Philosophy any more?
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Detales
Guest
(Theaetetus, 176) Anthropomorphically stated, but very accurate.
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spockrates
Guest
One might say he was executed for promoting a kind of monotheism. Though he did not deny the possibility of other gods, he taught his closest friends that there was one God who must be the source of all wisdom.
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spockrates
Guest
Agreed! Socrates had more questions then answers, but many of his answers I often find compelling.
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Benadam
Guest
I’m no scholar, but from what I understand the Greeks considered what Socrates was teaching rebellious and atheistic.One might say he was executed for promoting a kind of monotheism. Though he did not deny the possibility of other gods, he taught his closest friends that there was one God who must be the source of all wisdom.
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spockrates
Guest
Not atheistic. The crime for which he was accused in Athens was advocating another god and corrupting the youth. In other words, he was teaching young men to believe that his own god was better than the gods of the Greeks. At least, this is what I get from Plato’s Apology, as well as other Socratic dialogs.
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spockrates
Guest
The actual crime of which he was accused he quotes in Apology:
“Socrates is guilty of–and gives no rest to himself or others in–investigating matters subterranean and celestial, in making the worse arguments appear stronger, and in teaching these same things to others.”
The motive for bringing the charges was that Socrates asked questions about men and the gods that people believed should never be asked. When men who claimed to be wise could not answer his questions, they became embarrassed and angry and his enemies.
I suppose any philosopher with whom someone disagrees is guilty of the same crime. Don’t you?
“Socrates is guilty of–and gives no rest to himself or others in–investigating matters subterranean and celestial, in making the worse arguments appear stronger, and in teaching these same things to others.”
The motive for bringing the charges was that Socrates asked questions about men and the gods that people believed should never be asked. When men who claimed to be wise could not answer his questions, they became embarrassed and angry and his enemies.
I suppose any philosopher with whom someone disagrees is guilty of the same crime. Don’t you?
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