Are we God - or some expression thereof?

[John Martin]

I think that this is very true and it feeds into what Windwalker was saying as well. Our answer to the question posed is pre-conditioned by our religious (or not) formation

One thing I would point out though is that although the Abrahamic religions would be classified as dualistic if one were to use the Indian classification, they do recognize that at the highest contemplative state from the point of view of the individual person, there is no perceived distinction between the soul and God.

You did mention "except from the mystical traditions" however in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism the "mystical tradition" cannot be divorced from standard theology, because most of the great theologians were also great contemplatives and their theology was both informed and shaped by their mystical experiences, as well as vice-a-versa (theology also helps mystics understand their experiences in a framework).

Abbot John Chapman explained this:



Therefore traditional Christianity, in its mystical theology, does recognize a difference-in-no-difference between the soul and Godhead. I see it to be an artificial distinction to perceive a "mystical tradition" independent of the traditional Christian religion as a whole. In practice, theology has always been informed by contemplation/mysticism and vice-versa. It must thus be said that Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Christianity as a whole recognize a difference-in-non-difference.

Thank you Vouthan. It is very supportive. All the great mystics in Christianity spoke of difference in non-difference. Meister Echart was great. the draw back of Christian theology not having a recognized non-dualistic system like in Hinduism, that makes Christians not be open and straight forward in their expressions.

 

[John Martin]

Exactly. And we can see as "me", and we can see as God. We are, God incarnate. The only thing missing is awakening, and opening our eyes and seeing. We are, in the wholly separate self, asleep. After we awake, we are Emptiness and Phenomena.

Which of the Upanishads says this?

"And the illumined soul moves freely up and down these worlds, assuming whatever form it likes, eating whatever food it desires, chanting, 'Oh wonderful! Oh wonderful! Oh wonderful!"​

This to me is inhabiting nonduality, I am both, I am neither, I am nothing, I am all. We move freely up and down these worlds, the gross, the subtle, the causal, assuming whatever form we desire. And it is all wonderful.

"And the illumined soul moves freely up and down these worlds, assuming whatever form it likes, eating whatever food it desires, chanting, 'Oh wonderful! Oh wonderful! Oh wonderful!"

Windwalker, thank you for that wonderful post. Can you give me the reference to the above quote. Thank you.

 

[Vouthon]

Since Thomas Merton believed that all religions lead to God and he said..."I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity ... I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can." (David Steindl-Rast, "Recollection of Thomas Merton's Last Days in the West" (Monastic Studies, 7:10, 1969) and also believed that everyone has god within then I believe he most definitely did abandon Jesus Christ and the orthodox doctrines of biblical faith.

As always, one must weigh up conflicting pieces of evidence to find the truth

Given his interfaith activities, I think that people can quite easily cherry-pick certain words of his out of the wider context and thereby make him appear to be something that he in fact wasn't.

In his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, he explained:

I will be a better Catholic, not if I can refute every shade of Protestantism, but if I can affirm the truth in it and still go further. So, too, with the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, etc. This does not mean syncretism, indifferentism, the vapid and careless friendliness that accepts everything by thinking of nothing. There is much that one cannot "affirm" and "accept," but first one must say "yes" where one really can. If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it
​

So that was his "angle" when approaching other religions. It was not to suggest that they were identical in belief with Christianity, nor to devalue his devotion to Christ. He was not a syncretist.

I once read Thomas Merton's biography, "The Seven Storey Mountain" published in 1949. It is in this work, and in others such as New Seeds of Contemplation, that one finds his expression of Christian faith.

Consider his 1957 book, "The Silent Life". Here is a quotation from it. What exactly is un-orthodox about it? (Please don't mention the fact of "monasticism" which I am sure you probably won't agree with ). Note how often he references the Bible:

The deepest law in man’s being is his need for God, for life. God is Life. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5). The deepest need of our darkness is to comprehend the light which shines in the midst of it. Therefore God has given us his first commandment:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength.

The monastic life is nothing but the life of those who have taken the first commandment in deadly earnest, and have, in the words of St. Benedict, “preferred nothing to the love of Christ.”

But Who is God? Where is He? Is Christian monasticism a search for some pure intuition of the Absolute? A cult of supreme Good? A worship of perfect and changeless Beauty? The very emptiness of such abstractions strikes the heart cold. The Holy One, the Invisible, the Almighty is infinitely greater and more real than any abstraction of man’s devising. But he has said: “No one shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). Yet the monk persists in crying out with Moses: “Show me Thy face” (Exodus 33:13).

The monk, then, is one who is so intent upon the search for God that he is ready to die in order to see Him. That is why monastic life is a “martyrdom” as well as a “paradise,” a life that is at once “angelic” and “crucified.”

St. Paul resolves the problem: “God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

The monastic life is the rejection of all that obstructs the spiritual rays of this mysterious light. The monk is one who leaves behind the fictions and illusions of a merely human spirituality in order to plunge himself in the faith of Christ. Faith is the light with illumines him in mystery. Faith is the power which seizes upon the inner depths of his souls and delivers him up to the action of the divine Spirit, the Spirit of liberty, the Spirit of love. Faith takes him, as the power of God took the ancient prophets, and “stands him upon his feet” (Ezekiel 2:2) before the Lord. The monastic life is the life in the Spirit of Christ, a life in which the Christian gives himself entirely to the love of God which transforms him in the light of Christ

The Lord is a Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3: 17-18).

What St. Paul has said of the inner life of every Christian becomes in all truth the main objective of the monk, living in his solitary cloister. In seeking Christian perfection the monk seeks the fullness of the Christian life, the complete maturity of the Christian faith. For him, “to live is Christ.”

But this IS off-topic.

If you wish to reply back to me, then make a thread please about Merton or who qualifies as a Christian in your eyes. I'll be happy to chime in

 

[Windwalker]

However - do feel free to respond to Windwalkers queries of you in another thread I authored. I'm sure he'd appreciate a response - whether it's "babble" to me (or not) is irrelevenat. At least in that thread it's somewhat on topic.

Her lack of response is telling. For to answer it using the Bible, would make completely null her complaint of those who think differently than her. It would mean an end to the re-runs of the Heretic Hunter show (which got canceled somewhere around 500 seasons ago, with the end of the Spanish Inquisition).

(Here's the answer, BTW..... "By their fruits you shall know them.")

 

[InChrist]

Her lack of response is telling. For to answer it using the Bible, would make completely null her complaint of those who think differently than her. It would mean an end to the re-runs of the Heretic Hunter show (which got canceled somewhere around 500 seasons ago, with the end of the Spanish Inquisition).

(Here's the answer, BTW..... "By their fruits you shall know them.")

Speaking from the biblical perspective...it is very bad fruit to deny the the Person of Jesus Christ as the only Savior for mankind and it is very bad fruit for a created being to claim to be God. According to the scriptures such fruit is demonic and inspired by the god of this world (satan) and condemned by the Creator of heaven and earth.

The Spanish Inquisition was an example of how religion can be used by the State to promote its political agenda goals.You can try to compare my words and stand for biblical truth to the inquisition to add an emotional charge to your arguement, but there is no similarity at all.

 

[Open_Minded]

Her lack of response is telling. For to answer it using the Bible, would make completely null her complaint of those who think differently than her. It would mean an end to the re-runs of the Heretic Hunter show (which got canceled somewhere around 500 seasons ago, with the end of the Spanish Inquisition).

(Here's the answer, BTW..... "By their fruits you shall know them.")

Speaking from the biblical perspective...it is very bad fruit to deny the the Person of Jesus Christ as the only Savior for mankind and it is very bad fruit for a created being to claim to be God. According to the scriptures such fruit is demonic and inspired by the god of this world (satan) and condemned by the Creator of heaven and earth.

The Spanish Inquisition was an example of how religion can be used by the State to promote its political agenda goals.You can try to compare my words and stand for biblical truth to the inquisition to add an emotional charge to your arguement, but there is no similarity at all.

In Christ - take this discussion back to the other thread, it doesn't belong here.

 

[InChrist]

In Christ - take this discussion back to the other thread, it doesn't belong here.

If it belongs over thee how did it get here?

 

[Maya3]

Speaking from the biblical perspective...it is very bad fruit to deny the the Person of Jesus Christ as the only Savior for mankind and it is very bad fruit for a created being to claim to be God. According to the scriptures such fruit is demonic and inspired by the god of this world (satan) and condemned by the Creator of heaven and earth.

The Spanish Inquisition was an example of how religion can be used by the State to promote its political agenda goals.You can try to compare my words and stand for biblical truth to the inquisition to add an emotional charge to your arguement, but there is no similarity at all.

Openminded,
She is answering the question that the OP asked.
She states that it is her religions perspective. So in other words her answer is no.

As a Hindu I'm in complete disagreement with her, as are many here, but she did answer the question.

Maya

 

[Penumbra]

Well the thread title about says it all ...

It seems to me, with the large number of god concepts in existence and the lack of evidence for them, that gods are expressions of humans rather than the other way around.

For someone to propose that people are god or are expressions of a god, it would be useful to provide evidence that something that can reasonably be called a god does exist, and that humans are indeed equal to that god or part of that god. Because otherwise it's baseless speculation.

 

[Windwalker]

For someone to propose that people are god or are expressions of a god, it would be useful to provide evidence that something that can reasonably be called a god does exist, and that humans are indeed equal to that god or part of that god. Because otherwise it's baseless speculation.

The evidence is the experience of this.

 

[Straw Dog]

It seems to me, with the large number of god concepts in existence and the lack of evidence for them, that gods are expressions of humans rather than the other way around.

For someone to propose that people are god or are expressions of a god, it would be useful to provide evidence that something that can reasonably be called a god does exist, and that humans are indeed equal to that god or part of that god. Because otherwise it's baseless speculation.

It really does seem to be more of an aesthetic expression of experience rather than a rational proposition. Some personal experiences could be descibed as mystical, but I'm not confident enough to speculate on metaphysics. I'd rather roll with an appeal to aesthetic contemplation rather than get lost in the madness of metaphysical speculation. What we don't understand, we can make mean anything.

 

[Open_Minded]

What we don't understand, we can make mean anything.

And- what we do understand, we can make mean anything.

Do you honestly think relativity and subjectivity end at the door of "understanding" an experience?

 

[Straw Dog]

Do you honestly think relativity and subjectivity end at the door of "understanding" an experience?

No, I honestly do not know and prefer not to make baseless speculations. However, it does seem that we can be more or less bias when interpreting reality by seeking multiple forms of justification besides just intuition (empirical, rational, etc.). I find it somewhat suspicious that what lies at the ground of all being is apparently a perfect and inspiring reflection of human characteristics. It just seems to be very self-serving and illustrates the tendency to anthromorphize reality.

At the same time, I'm not really opposed to God-beliefs. I can understand the aesthetic and social value that they hold. Mysticism is more akin to a form of art rather than a science or philosophy. It is important to cultivate an aesthetic appreciation for reality and does help in dropping the small self created by egocentric tendencies.

 

[Raban]

Well that all depends on your outlook on 'God'. Depending on your concept of God, you will have drastically different opinions on whether man is a representation of said God. I believe that we are, in the sense we have the choice to do 'Good' or 'Evil' in life.

 

[Open_Minded]

No, I honestly do not know and prefer not to make baseless speculations. However, it does seem that we can be more or less bias when interpreting reality by seeking multiple forms of justification besides just intuition (empirical, rational, etc.).

We agree completely. One of the reasons that I enjoy interfaith dialog so much, is because the exploration of commonalities between different cultures and different religions is one way of "seeking multiple forms of justification besides just intuition...".

I find it somewhat suspicious that what lies at the ground of all being is apparently a perfect and inspiring reflection of human characteristics. It just seems to be very self-serving and illustrates the tendency to anthromorphize reality.

Again, everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) is relative. For my own part, I gave up trying to define, describe, or in any other way articulate "what lies at the ground of all being" a very long time ago. Personally I use the word "God", not with any definition in mind, but more as a pointer.

At the same time, I'm not really opposed to God-beliefs. I can understand the aesthetic and social value that they hold. Mysticism is more akin to a form of art rather than a science or philosophy. It is important to cultivate an aesthetic appreciation for reality and does help in dropping the small self created by egocentric tendencies.

From my perspective Mysticism is simply a way of "seeing".... nothing more and nothing less. But... the fact that all cultures and all religions share this particular way of "seeing" says something profound to me. It says that the path is universal (very unlike the various and often opposing theologies of the same religions).

 

[Straw Dog]

We agree completely. One of the reasons that I enjoy interfaith dialog so much, is because the exploration of commonalities between different cultures and different religions is one way of "seeking multiple forms of justification besides just intuition...".

Cool beans.

In some ways, everybody is exactly the same.
In some ways, everybody is somewhat similar and somewhat different.
And in other ways, everybody is different and unique. [/quote]