John Martin
Active Member
Dear Katzpur,
thank you for your post. I would like to respond your post very soon.
John martin
thank you for your post. I would like to respond your post very soon.
John martin
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Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but throug
- Thread starter John Martin
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arthra
Baha'i
Although the words are through Jesus ... It is to more correct in my view to acknowledge God is "speaking" through Him. In another place Jesus is reported to have said..
"...before Abraham was I am"
this "I am" is the "I am that I am" in Exodus in my view. So God is manifest in Jesus and other Manifestations and words of God are through Them.
Also when Jesus is reported to have spoken these words He was the only Mediator between God and humanity at that time... Each o fthe Manifestations was also the only Mediator when They were on the earth...
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I've always seen it the same way, Artha.
The way I interpret it, when the Gospel of John has Jesus saying "I am. . ." it isn't meant to be interpreted as Jesus the man expressing his own, independent opinion or claim, it's Jesus the conduit through which God is saying "I am. . ."
My comparatively crude way of putting it has always been to liken the Jesus of GJohn (having gotten his own ego out of the way) to "God's cell phone": the voice you're hearing may be coming out of the speaker, but the words and the ideas behind them are coming from somewhere else.
Problem is that so many people wound up worshiping the cell phone.
Well, at least in his neck of the woods.
Not sure if that's how it works, or if there even ever was someone named Jesus who would qualify (not saying I don't believe the Jesus of the Gospels is roughly based on a real historical figure, I do). But like I said: that's how I read the story.
Probably I agreed with most of what you said already, but I will contribute. Jesus doesn't use the phrase 'The Truth' in the way that most people (Such as Muffled) currently are preached to that he does.John Martin said:
The gospel Matthew in chapter 2 points out that Jesus life is meant to fulfill Jeremiah 31, and requirement of Jeremiah 31 is " And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me,..." Hence when Jesus says 'The Truth' its not at all what Muffled or most other fundamentalists say it means. Its instead the Truth that you and I are nothing but liars before God's truth, and what we have to say about God isn't as important as we think it is. I have only touched the tip of a huge mountain of wisdom passages about being humble before God and not considering our versions of 'The Truth' to be equal to God's own version. This was Jesus 'Mantra' so to speak, his main emphasis. This is what Jesus referred to when he said 'I am the way the truth and the life no man cometh unto the Father but by Me'. He was repeated in other words what he explained to Nicodemus the Pharisee, that conversion was insufficient, that the spirit cannot be captured or described but is like the wind. Its it tragic, tragic tragic that so many fundamentalists think Jesus meant he was putting forward a list of beliefs to believe. 'The Truth' is a phrase that Jesus uses in more than one place and by scriptural context it is not about a static truth, as in something you can put into a textbook. For instance in John 5 he explains that he doesn't bear witness to his own truth, contrasting himself against the Pharisees, Sadducees and other clubs. They bear witness to their ways and their schools of thought. They divide the world into various camps.
Romans 1:18-19 Harps about this by saying what can be known about God is plain and always was but that people suppress the truth by their wickedness. A thorough reading of all the NT literature reveals that the #1 central point Jesus and his apostles bring to bear is that people are all liars in relation to God, who alone is true. James 1 says the Father is the Father of Lights, the only one who doesn't change. In other words people do change and do darken. 1 John 1 says that anyone who says they are without fault has no truth within themselves. All of these things help us put into context what Jesus means when he talks about The Way, The Truth and The Life. John is probably the writer is spends the most time explaining this, but all of the NT writers do.
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John Martin
Active Member
Acceptance of Christ, in other words, is essential; we just see the time-line as being considerably longer.
Dear Katzpur,
I am extremely grateful to you for sharing the beliefs of Latter Day saints. I have heard about them but did not know their beliefs clearly. Your presentation is a good summary. Thanks.
Jesus Christ is the only means by which mankind may be reunited with and reconciled to God:
We need to understand this belief in a universal way. The book of Genesis tells us that God created human beings in his/her own image and likeness. This image and likeness of God is sharing in the fullness of God. This fullness is not like the independent fullness of God but it is the fullness of being receiving the light form the divine. We can use the symbol of Sun to God and Moon to the human spirit. The spirit is the image and likeness of God in us. This spirit is also connected to the body. The combination of these two, spirit and body-mind complex, brings out another entity we call soul. The soul is the reflection of the spirit in the body-mind complex. It does not have an independent entity. If it is aware of its origin the spirit and is in harmony with it then the body and mind are also in harmony with the soul. In this way there is harmony between God and the spirit, the spirit and the soul and the soul and the body. But human beings have the possibility to forget their spirit, the image and likeness of God, and identify with the soul. Since the soul is the combination of spirit and the body it has spiritual desires and also physical desires. Sometimes one may dominate the other. The soul when it is not in harmony with the spirit identifies with the body and with the desires of the body. Sometimes it may even deny the existence of the soul, spirit and God. All religions, as moral structures, are connected to the soul. The soul strives to achieve moral perfection but the soul can never become morally perfect because there is no perfection in the soul, there is any perfection in the process of time or becoming. Per example if we ask the question: how many years are equal to eternity, we will not get an answer. The reason is even fifteen billion years are not equal to eternity. Eternity is a state. Either it is here and now or never. Eternity cannot be reached through time. If this is our condition then what is salvation? Salvation is not something new but discovering our image and likeness of God which is already there. It is like waking up from the dream of the soul and entering into the awakened state of our image and likeness of God. Our entering into dream is our fall and our waking from the dream is our salvation. Or our forgetfulness is our fall and our remembering is our salvation. Jesus Christ who has entered into the fallen condition of human beings woke up from this dream or remembered his image and likeness of God and found salvation not only for him but for the whole of humanity. In this experience he discovered that everyone is already saved by the unconditional love of God. Only thing is there are not aware. They are in a state of dream; they are in a state of forgetfulness. He asked them to repent: which means wake up, remember. So when we say that Jesus Christ is the only means by which mankind may be reunited with and reconciled to God, it means that by following the example of Jesus, we can be reunited with God and reconciled with God with God by waking up from our dreams and remembering our image and likeness of God. This is the only way for everyone.
If this is our vision of a human being then what is death? Death is merely separation of physical body from the soul and the spirit. Our soul is not immortal but our spirit has the seeds of immortality (if we understand that God alone is immortal or eternal) since it is capable of entering into the heart of God. The forms of our soul and body will come to an end but our spirit will be eternally united with God. Our soul is not created by God it is just the reflection of the spirit in the body-mind complex.
What happens to the soul after the physical death? You seem to believe that it remains fully cognizant and capable of making choices and decisions after death. Since the soul has to remember its true source which is the image and likeness of God, this has to happen either in this life on earth or after our physical death.
You also believe that death does not close the door of opportunity to accept Him. Billions have lived and died without having really had what anyone who is going to be completely honest about the matter would admit was a fair chance to hear, understand, and accept the Christian message.
Since the Christian message is an invitation to wake up from the ignorance of dream, or remembering of our true self and this is what it means to accept the message of Christ or salvation through Christ, then it has to happen. Christian tradition proposes the state of purgatory where the soul is purified until it remembers its true self, Eastern religions life Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism propose the theory of reincarnation. According to them this awakening has to take place in the physical body so the soul has to be born again and again until realizes its union or oneness with God according to the system one believes. In this sense both the traditions believe ‘that death does not close the door of opportunity to accept Him’, even though some prophetic religions propose eternal Hell and Heaven. Eternal Hell and Eternal Heaven may not fit into our scheme because our true self, the image and likeness of God is already in God. When we speak about purification we are speaking at the level of soul. So instead of proposing eternal Hell and eternal Heaven, we can only speak of purgatory, purification of our soul after our death either without being born in the physical body or being born in the physical body (reincarnation). We can call it external reincarnation or internal reincarnation. So there is no eternal damnation into Hell but one day the soul will realize its source. This very well goes with Hindu vision.
What is the second coming of Jesus? If a soul has awoken from its ignorance in this life and realized its true nature, does it need second coming of Christ? Or awakening from the dream itself is the second coming of Jesus? Second coming can happen in this life or after death.
What is resurrection? Is it the resurrection of the body or soul or the spirit? If body and soul are not permanent, is it necessary that they have to be resurrected? If they are resurrected is it only a temporary phenomenon? Can we think of awakening to our true self or remembering our true self is the resurrection of the spirit while still we are alive?
What is Judgment? Does God judge us? What will happen when we are face to face with our true self? Do we judge ourselves? Do we feel sorry that we have been living contrary to our human dignity? Is the second coming happens somewhere in the future or is it happening even now? Those who have awaken form the dream of falsehood need to wait for the last judgment? These are the questions that need to be answered individually.
I shall try to reflect on your second para later. Thanks
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John Martin
Active Member
chinu
chinu
JESUS SAID: " I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father but through Me "
Thats right, But this scheme was only vaild for the people of that time, and this strategy was over right after when jesus leaved his physical body and became one with the father.
Currently, jesus is one with his father, Now.
Or in other words, The drop is back in the sea, Now.
Or in other words, Jesus is equal to God, Now.
And a dead doctor cannot treat a patient Now.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
I have a slightly different take on this. I see the Joyous Nazarene as being symbolic of the inner self, sitting sedately within each and every being. In my demented view, the passage is saying that there is no other way into the deeper areas of reality except via the inner self. Another description of this "inner self" is the "larger identity", in that personality comprises much more that we have, as a peculiar little species, allowed ourselves to believe. The statement is also about using the Christ as a symbol for the inner self directly for those who are presently unaware of the existence of the inner self. Once one has developed a relationship with their inner reality, there is no longer any need for external props.
Though I could never possibly consider becoming a follower of the Christ, I do consider myself to be a "friend of the family", as it were.
John Martin
Active Member
Dear Arthra,
Thank you for your post and I feel you have touched an important point. I feel we have to see different 'I' in Jesus: individual 'I(Physical Jesus) ',collective 'I'(Jesus the Jew) Universal 'I'( the Son of God) and Divine 'I'. We can use the analogy of a tree. A leaf represents Individual 'I', a branch represents collective 'I', the trunk represents universal 'I' and the roots represent divine 'I'.
When Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me' it belongs to the universal 'I', the consciousness of the Son of God, the trunk. There is only one trunk. The statement 'the Father and I are one' belongs to the Fourth level of consciousness. It is the level of 'I am what I am'. when Jesus said, before Abraham was I am' it belongs to the third level. In fact all the teachings that Jesus gave came from the third level. Since he was in harmony with the fourth level,'I am who I am' we can say that the teaching comes from God. There is only one trunk, only one universal consciousness. This is only mediator between God and humanity. Just the trunk lives for the branches and the leaves so also the Son of God or universal consciousness lives for all. He or she speaks to God in the name of the whole of creation and humanity and he speaks to humanity in the name of God. It is the same universal consciousness that the great souls like the Upanishad sages and Buddha entered. Any one who enters into the universal consciousness is automatically united all the great manifestations of God in the past and also in the future. It is the same consciousness that spoke in the past through all the great persons and it is the same consciousness that speaks in the future.
The statement 'I am the way,the truth and life' has two aspects: it is freedom from the past and freedom to the future. it means 'I do not follow anyone from the past'. If Jesus follows someone or some belief from the past then that person or that belief will become the way, the truth and the life,and he cannot say that he is the way, the truth and the life. it means to enter into the realm of eternity, originality and creativity. it also means giving freedom to the future. That means he will not enter into the future and become a way to the future. The future will be able to say like Jesus, 'I am the way, the truth and the life'.
It means to enter into the realm of eternity, originality and creativity. In the realm of originality and creativity no one enters into the traces left by others no one leaves the traces for others to follow. This person lives a life of originality and creativity.This person only invites everyone to enter into this originality. To be free from the past is greatness. To give freedom to the future is humility. Everyone can enter into that state by doing what Jesus did. By coming out of the collective consciousness Jesus entered into the Trunk and finally oneness with the Father. This is the way for everyone. This teaching of Jesus was not only for his time.It is valid for all times because in every age people have the possibility to enter into that state and say like Jesus' I am the way, the truth and the life and everyone can come to that state by doing what I have done'.
These people have the inner authority to speak in the name of God: the Father has given all authority to the son and the son does what he sees the Father doing'. These people have power over the collective consciousness and scriptures. Jesus said:It is written in your Law but i say unto you. That is the freedom of the person who speaks from the universal consciousness.It is not God dictating but their teachings come from the awareness of their oneness with God with humanity and creation. In the NT God spoke to Jesus only twice: at Jesus' baptism and transfiguration.But God said the same: you are my beloved son and he is my beloved son'. And then God became silent.
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John Martin
Active Member
Dear Chinu,
I have difficulty to go along with your interpretation of Jesus' most important statement. For me this statement refers to a level of consciousness.
1. It refers to the experience of New Covenant that God promised: Jer.31.31-34.
31The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypta covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
'I am the way,the truth and the life' is the statement of someone who had the experience of the New Covenant. Jesus had this at the moment of his baptism.
2. It is the statement of someone who is free from the past and the future and lives in the eternal present.
3. It is the statement of someone who lives in the realm of originality and creativity.
4. it is the statement of someone who discovered his image and likeness of God and finally has become one with God.
Jesus invited everyone to enter into this level of consciousness and live like him.
He also said that people can come to that consciousness by doing what he did: to come out of the collective consciousnesses of his religion. Religions are connected to the ego. Where there is religion there will be ego. it is the ego which says' religion is the way, the truth and the life'. A person who transcends religion says 'I am the way, the truth and life'.
Jesus had opened this possibility to everyone and everyone can discover it at any time and any age.
John Martin
Active Member
Dear Ymir,
Thank you for your email. You have given a beautiful description. spiritual journey is growing into extended consciousness. Jesus said:the kingdom of God is like the mustard seed. It is smallest of all seeds but when it grows it becomes so big that the birds of the air will come and make their nests in it. It means that our individual identity or consciousness has to grow into divine consciousness or unitary consciousness where we are united with everyone and everything and live for their welfare. It is like a leaf awareness growing into a tree awareness, the Tree of Life.
Thank you for your insights.
As I was reading your tree analogy, which I liked a lot, I was recalling my own tree analogy several months ago in another section of this forum regarding the differences between belief, faith, experience, and adaptation. Let's see how well this ties into what you say above about the individual, the collective, the trunk, and the roots. I think you may like this:
Beliefs may be objects of faith, but more often they are substitutes for faith. The "true believer" is typically someone whose substance of the experience is derived from the beliefs. It is rooted in, and grounded in their beliefs, their doctrines, their tenants or articles of faith. As such to challenge those beliefs is to threaten destabilizing the foundation of the religious experience, to threaten the source of it for them. Typically these are those that switch religions as they find a new belief that makes more sense to them. A lot, not all of course, of your most ardent atheist who espouses science as Scientism, were those formerly Christian who now have a new truer belief to rest the experience of life in. Science will tell us all things, as opposed to trusting in God's word. It's the same approach. One trusts in "God" or "someone" as you put it, or one trusts in Science. It's the same approach, and neither is actually Faith, in the spiritual or religious sense of sensing and trusting in the unknown, the unseen, the unknowable. And trusting that future events will bring answers based on past experience, is itself not faith either.
As such the true believer will fight tooth and nail to protect and defend and justify their beliefs, for the reasons stated above. Someone with Faith, on the other hand, can more easily let go of their beliefs, modify or even change them because they are seen as supports for that intuition, that faith, which is by contrast to the true believer the substance of their religious experience. Since their experience is rooted and grounded in the unknown or the unknowable, then there is an innate recognition that beliefs can be wrong and the substance of their experience remains intact. They can look at things like Biblical criticism and say, "Hey, that makes more sense and it doesn't threaten anything since I 'feel' there is something more than just this simple material world pulling at me to look higher". In this case, the beliefs change to support their mind in the experience of their faith, or intuition.
Then there is direct experience. Not experience of beliefs, not experience of faith, but experience of that which was intuited. At such a place of direct experience, faith is no longer the substance of religious experience, but direct experience itself replaces it. Now you know, firsthand, direct experience. Then the only questions are is more how to talk about it, how to related it to your lived experience in this world. This is the mystical realization, not metaphysical speculations, not intuition, and certainly not beliefs themselves.
Beliefs are like leaves on the tree that yellow and fall off at the end of the season and are reborn as new, different leaves at the beginning of the next. Faith is the reaching of the tree to the sun. Realization, or direct experience, is seeing and knowing and experiencing the tree itself; the sun, the sap, the ground, the leaves, the air and all that in within and surrounding and moving up through all things, creating and unfolding existence itself. And it is all known within you directly.
And finally adaptation is to grow into that as a permanent realized state of your conscious life, your very lived being. That is the result of beliefs held with opened hands, faith realized into direct experience, and direct experience practiced and realized into a transformed reality.
As such the true believer will fight tooth and nail to protect and defend and justify their beliefs, for the reasons stated above. Someone with Faith, on the other hand, can more easily let go of their beliefs, modify or even change them because they are seen as supports for that intuition, that faith, which is by contrast to the true believer the substance of their religious experience. Since their experience is rooted and grounded in the unknown or the unknowable, then there is an innate recognition that beliefs can be wrong and the substance of their experience remains intact. They can look at things like Biblical criticism and say, "Hey, that makes more sense and it doesn't threaten anything since I 'feel' there is something more than just this simple material world pulling at me to look higher". In this case, the beliefs change to support their mind in the experience of their faith, or intuition.
Then there is direct experience. Not experience of beliefs, not experience of faith, but experience of that which was intuited. At such a place of direct experience, faith is no longer the substance of religious experience, but direct experience itself replaces it. Now you know, firsthand, direct experience. Then the only questions are is more how to talk about it, how to related it to your lived experience in this world. This is the mystical realization, not metaphysical speculations, not intuition, and certainly not beliefs themselves.
Beliefs are like leaves on the tree that yellow and fall off at the end of the season and are reborn as new, different leaves at the beginning of the next. Faith is the reaching of the tree to the sun. Realization, or direct experience, is seeing and knowing and experiencing the tree itself; the sun, the sap, the ground, the leaves, the air and all that in within and surrounding and moving up through all things, creating and unfolding existence itself. And it is all known within you directly.
And finally adaptation is to grow into that as a permanent realized state of your conscious life, your very lived being. That is the result of beliefs held with opened hands, faith realized into direct experience, and direct experience practiced and realized into a transformed reality.
Tying to your analogy, beliefs are part of the individual/collective self-image. They define the boundaries of truth for us in this state of being as an individual informed by and in relation to our cultural and social moorings. Faith is moving beyond into the trunk itself, sensing itself coming up from the roots through the trunk, into the branches and all the leaves including itself. Adaptation, is to become that Living Tree in our whole self-Identification.
Anyway, I really enjoy your writing. It is amazing to hear for me.
John Martin
Active Member
I had a thought come to me in my meditation this morning follow what I posted. It is that Tree of Life. The way barred to the ego mind is opened as we die to ourselves. It's fruit is not for the ego-mind, but for the mind surrendered to the divine mind. In becoming that through self-surrender, we become that Tree of Life; the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
natasha levchenko
Member
hello ,Martin. i am from Ukraine, what is your religion? i suppose you are christian since you quote Jesus.
John Martin
Active Member
Dear Windwaker,
thank you for sharing your beautiful and wonderful meditation. I felt the same. The purpose of our life is to transform our life into life of God, our actions into action of God and our children as children of God. That I consider Christmas,the birth of God in the world. Thank you again.
John Martin
Active Member
Dear Natasha,
I am a Christian( not in a limited sense). I prefer to say that I follow the path of Christ. I am also a benedictine monk. Many persons from Ukraine visited our ashram.You are most welcome.
"a flaming sword that turned in all directions" (Gen.3:24) yup, sounds like the garden variety ego-driven mind to me.
Maybe it isn't barred to so much as barred by the ego mind (?)
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John Martin
Active Member
"a flaming sword that turned in all directions" (Gen.3:24) yup, sounds like the garden variety ego-driven mind to me.
Maybe it isn't barred to so much as barred by the ego mind (?)
He banished the man,and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the great winged creatures and the fiery flashing sword, to guard the way to the Tree of life.
God does not banish anyone. The garden of Eden is an unconscious bliss. What it unconscious has to become conscious. The so called fall of humanity is nothing but the desire to be conscious of unconscious bliss. In this process human consciousness gets fragmented. It develops will and intellect, creates ways and means. All philosophies are product of this movement. All religions as belief systems are products of this process. All spiritual paths are product of this process in order to help human consciousness to return to its original state.
Why did God put post winged creatures and fiery flashing sword?
This human consciousness which has come out of it unconscious state to go to maturity in the process of time. It has to grow in the womb of time. The growth in the womb of time is a hard one. It involves questioning, it involves practice and struggle. The danger can be that this consciousness which has come out the Garden may try escape the hardship and enter the Garden without maturity. Can a child which came out of the womb go back to the womb without growing?
God wants human consciousness to grow sufficiently in order to enter the garden again. Probably God put the winged creatures not to allow human beings to escape into spiritual infantalism to help them to become spiritual adults and return as adults, like the Prodigal Son.
Of course it also means that ego cannot enter into the garden of Eden. It is not created by God and nothing that is not created by God can return to God. To identify one self with the ego is to become rich. 'It may be easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than the rich man(ego) to enter into the kingdom God.
Read it like a riddle.
I am... what? way, truth, life
through me... is? through the way, truth, and life (that 'I am').
Nothing to say that anyone couldn't be- or embody- that 'way, truth and life'.
Whatever that (way, truth and life) might be.
ie... "You are the way, the truth and the life", if you embody 'the' (that) way, truth and life.
I am... what? way, truth, life
through me... is? through the way, truth, and life (that 'I am').
Nothing to say that anyone couldn't be- or embody- that 'way, truth and life'.
Whatever that (way, truth and life) might be.
ie... "You are the way, the truth and the life", if you embody 'the' (that) way, truth and life.