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Tom
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| Posted 12/8/2008 9:25 AM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2008 9:37 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2008 11:22 AM (GMT -6) | | Wait a minute. Tom, you see that? Iqbal is PAKISTANI. From wiki...
Iqbal is commemorated widely in Pakistan, where he is regarded as the ideological founder of the state. His Tarana-e-Hind is a song that is widely used in India as a patriotic song speaking of communal harmony. His birthday is annually commemorated in Pakistan as Iqbal Day and is a national holiday. For a long time, Iqbal's actual date of birth remained disputed, with many believing February 23 to be the date of Iqbal's birth. On February 1, 1974 a Pakistani government committee officially declared Iqbal's date of birth to be November 9. Iqbal is the namesake of many public institutions, including the Allama Iqbal Open University and the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore — the second-busiest airport in the nation. Government and public organizations have sponsored the establishment of colleges and schools dedicated to Iqbal, and have established the Iqbal Academy to research, teach and preserve the works, literature and philosophy of Iqbal. His son Javid Iqbal has served as a justice on the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
If this is on the level...isn't that interesting?
What if Americans celebrated "Iqbal Day" with them next year? I know I'd be down to do that.
Wouldn't that build some very needed bridges?
A non-violent way to work with the situation brewing with Pakistan. How could they hate on people who are honoring THEIR hero? Seriously...
From a mystical standpoint, the dude is fire.
What do you think? Crazy idea? 
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2008 10:28:17 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2008 11:27 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Iqbal's poetic works are written mostly in Persian rather than Urdu. Among his 12,000 verses of poem, about 7,000 verses are in Persian. In 1915, he published his first collection of poetry, the Asrar-e-Khudi (Secrets of the Self) in Persian. The poems delve into concepts of ego and emphasise the spirit and self from a religious, spiritual perspective. Many critics have called this Iqbal's finest poetic work.[7] In Asrar-e-Khudi, Iqbal has explained his philosophy of "Khudi," or "Self." He proves by various means that the whole universe obeys the will of the "Self." Iqbal condemns self-destruction. For him the aim of life is self-realization and self-knowledge. He charts the stages through which the "Self" has to pass before finally arriving at its point of perfection, enabling the knower of the "Self" to become the viceregent of Allah.[6]
In his Rumuz-e-Bekhudi (Hints of Selflessness), Iqbal seeks to prove that Islamic way of life is the best code of conduct for a nation's viability. A person must keep his individual characteristics intact but once this is achieved he should sacrifice his personal ambitions for the needs of the nation. Man cannot realise the "Self" out of society. Also in Persian and published in 1917, this group of poems has as its main themes the ideal community, Islamic ethical and social principles and the relationship between the individual and society. Although he is true throughout to Islam, Iqbal recognises also the positive analogous aspects of other religions. The Rumuz-e-Bekhudi complements the emphasis on the self in the Asrar-e-Khudi and the two collections are often put in the same volume under the title Asrar-e-Rumuz (Hinting Secrets), and it is addressed to the world's Muslims. Iqbal sees the individual and his community as reflections of each other. The individual needs to be strengthened before he can be integrated into the community, whose development in turn depends on the preservation of the communal ego. It is through contact with others that an ego learns to accept the limitations of its own freedom and the meaning of love. Muslim communities must ensure order in life and must therefore preserve their communal tradition. It is in this context that Iqbal sees the vital role of women, who as mothers are directly responsible for inculcating values in their children.
Talk about "family values"
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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Tom
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| Posted 12/8/2008 11:53 AM (GMT -6) | | I've got Iqbal. Yeah. Knew all that about him. Cool guy.
I gave you Loder. I SOOO gave you Loder! I remember loaning you my copy specifically. You still have it!
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Tom
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| Posted 12/8/2008 12:29 PM (GMT -6) | | I gave you Loder, but I didn't say I agree with him! Yo.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2008 1:21 PM (GMT -6) | | | D: Not a DIRECT identification. Identification through perichoretic indwelling and participation.
T: See, there ya go. You can’t NOT make the “identification.” Dang. It’s not an ‘identification’. Indwelling, yes. Grounding, yes. Emergent, yes. But none of those requires “identified as.”
Identification: The unconscious modeling of one's self upon another person's character and behavior.
Now imagine a human self in "identification" and "introjection" with the Divine Self, Christ.
Yeah...  Those who keep [Christ's] commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2008 12:31:58 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2008 1:36 PM (GMT -6) | | What are baptism and the Eucharist if NOT means of "identification with" and "introjection of" Christ's Presence in believers via the Holy Spirit?
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2008 5:47 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2008 9:33 PM (GMT -6) | | De Quincey:
I am proposing, therefore, that interpersonal consciousness evolves out of a prior personal consciousness. As a transpersonal mode of consciousness, it involves not only awareness of the prior personal and of the emergent interpersonal but also of the ontological grounding (or context) of all consciousness which is intersubjective.
So now we have: "'I'-SAPRIU(D)":
o Intersubjective (primordial condition and foundation for consciousness shared between all intersubjects--what many traditions refer to as "spirit" );
o Sentience (primitive capacity for feeling and self-motion in any individual organism);
o Awake/awareness (higher form of sentience where organism can be either conscious or unconscious, awake or asleep);
o Personal (individualized awareness with a sense of self-identity);
o Reflective (capacity for self to be "aware that I am aware"--gateway to altered states of consciousness: "aware that I am aware that I am aware . . ." ):
o Interpersonal (gateway to transpersonal consciousness, involving awareness not only of personal identity, but also of deep intersubjective foundation of all consciousness);
o Unitive (integrates all prior forms of consciousness into experienced unity);
o Dissociative (pathological failure to integrate prior forms of consciousness).
According to this view, intersubjectivity is not, strictly speaking, a variety, or a state or level of consciousness like the other seven. It is the context or condition for all varieties of consciousness, and permeates the entire evolutionary spectrum. As consciousness evolves, it eventually becomes aware of this context.
Csentience and Cawake are pre-personal, Cpersonal and Creflexive are personal, with Cinterpersonal evolving out of Cpersonal, emerging as the first stage in transpersonal consciousness. The integration of all stages from Csentience to Cinterpersonal is unitive consciousness. ("D," as before, represents the potential for dissociation at any stage, the pathological shadow side of intersubjective consciousness that prevents unitive consciousness.)
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I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO feelin' this.
Are you, Tom?
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2008 8:37:25 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/8/2008 10:29 PM (GMT -6) | | Out the door to travel in one minute. Can't talk.
See ya all in a week or so.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/9/2008 8:51 AM (GMT -6) | | |
The unitive life is the last stage of mystical ascent. The mystic becomes as closely united to God through God’s love as God is unified to his own being by nature. Mystically married to God, the mystic becomes “God by participation.” Nonetheless, this union remains differentiated, that is, God and the mystic become one while remaining distinctly two. The mystic’s person does not dissolve into God. In fact, the more deeply united to God the mystic becomes, the more the mystic’s individuality is confirmed and enhanced.
Mystical marriage bestows the conscious sharing in God’s own life and power and almost complete self-forgetfulness. The mystic now seeks only God’s will and honor and desires to serve God totally. Although external trials may continue, absolutely nothing can touch the peace and freedom at the deepest core of the mystic’s being. The transformed mystic desires greatly to suffer, but in no way does this suffering disturb the peace that flows from the ever present, explicit awareness of living God’s very own life. In fact, the only thing separating the mystic from the beatific vision is this life itself.
The mystic is experientially united to a love that communicates itself to all persons and to all things. Therefore, the more deeply the mystic experiences union with God, the more deeply union with God’s creation is experienced. Transformed by and into Love itself, the mystic becomes creative, totally self-giving, radically concerned about others—in short, spiritually fecund.
Hence, mystics heal in their own persons and through apostolic service the fragmentation found in so much of human life. They become an even deeper part of the great process of life. Wholly in God, yet totally in the world, they experience both absolute peace and a holy anxiety to serve God and God’s world.
The mystics insist, however, that the mystical life is more than heroic virtue or service to the world. These are the outward expressions of their union with God, the sacramental expression of their mystical lives. They are socially and often politically active because they seek God and God alone. Only this—not “experiences,” not a transformed personality, not serving the world—gives the mystical life its ultimate value.
Nonetheless, the mystics are the most impressive servants of humanity the world has ever seen. These deified, christified, spirit-filled persons are the amplifiers of every person’s more hidden life of faith, hope, and love. Their lives help us bear the interior whispers and see the faint flickers of divine truth and love in ourselves and others. The Christian mystics point the way to fully authentic human life by illustrating what it means to be a human being, what life means: eternal union (which begins here) with the God of love.
Harvey Egan, S.J.
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Loder. Knight's Move. 273. Talking about the "Absolute Unity of Being"
Beyond vision, in the fourth and final phase of the journey of intensification, is the numinous, imageless passage into the absolute unity of all things. Here no-thingness (cf. Eckhart's Ohne bild) is experienced as more real that than the reality of the ordinary state, even after self-consciousness returns to phase 1. Although imageless, its impact most often leaves the after-image of radiant white light, so vivid it cannot be described except perhaps by a kind of via negativa. For this phase there is no language, only silence--favete linguis (hold your tongue), says Kierkegaard. For this phase there is still differentiated self-consciousness (Tom!), but beyond that only a reaction of awe as before the Holy who both fascinates and overpowers at the same time. This corresponds to the vision of God in Augustine, Hildegaard, Teresa (of Avila), Eckhart, and several others.
The neurological foundation of this experience is the profoundly significant capacity of the brain to present to consciousness not only an ordered content but the very way in which that content is itself presented: i.e., the order itself. In this case, it is the whole or totality in itself that is communicated. Clearly this is not a reductive account, but only a claim that the human organism is made so as to support and entertain an encounter with an imageless sense of the Absolute Unity of Being. The numinous impact of this is, of course, like that of the encounter with the Holy in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. If mythic vision and cosmic consciousness were the consequences of the third phase, then here the consequence is that one may now see the cosmos from a standpoint beyond it, while still within it.
The benevolent detachment from the world which is the consequence of this experience has the effect of making the world becomes a matter of choice rather than one of defensive survival. All that is needed for ultimate survival has been given and far more, so engagement with the world are a matter of decision in what can only be called a state of blessedness.
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Another quote. Page 167.
As indicated in the previous chapter, ego transformation should be understood not as destruction to the ego, but as decisive recentering of the personality around a transcendental reality that points to the invisible God. The net effect actually enhances ego functioning, because the ego has less need to control or limit perceptions or understandings of the self, world, or others. The ego-as-center constricts its vision lest the underlying existential negation come into view and the centripetal force of nostalgia for the true center draw it back into nothingness. However, once the center is invested with God's Presence, the ego's anguish at absence and abandonment is dissipated, and its defensive energies can be poured into its compentencies. As described earlier in reference to "mundane ecstasy", decentering the ego liberates and empowers its functioning even though and precisely because it is no longer the presumed center of the personality.
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Loder. The Transforming Moment. 106-107. Talking about "I, not I, but Christ" idea...
Here the distinction between the "I" in its integrity as the spiritual self and Christ as the Holy One is all important. Christ is still the one to whom the process belongs, but the consequence for the subject is not absorption; rather, it is a personal interrelatedness with Christ. The self relates to Christ in such a way that the "world" it composes is recognizably created in response to his having "gone before." It is Christ's World that the self creates out of the freedom that Christ's grace has made possible. Thus, while the self, world, void, and the Holy are reconstellated by his nature, the self is freed within that very context---the context of his nature--to choose for or against him. That one can actually choose to manifest in his or her own particularity Christ's own nature--a nature that preserves all the dimensions of human being in their interdependence--this is the impossible Christian possibility. Yet, absorption in Christ is a contradiction in terms, because "in Christ" one is never absorbed but is heightened in personal particularity and uniqueness.
The issue here is not this-worldliness versus other-worldliness but simply the nature of the relationship between the self and the Holy into which tranformation leads. In Jesus Christ, the two sides of the self's relationship to the Holy are revealed. In Jesus' intimate relationship to the Father, who he called Abba ( "Papa" ), he epitomized the transcendent movement of the self; through this relationship, he did only what he saw the Father doing. In effect, he composed the "world" after the Father and in accordance with the Father's composition of the World. In this, Jesus revealed what it means to be truly human.
On the other hand, by doing what the Father was doing, he revealed the nature of God as one who loves the World sacrificially. Thus for the self, the consequence of transformation at the hands of the Mediating Christ is to be led into conflict with all other "worlds" and into a sacrifical love for the World which the Father composes and sustains. The self, therefore, while being thoroughly grounded in Christ's nature, must remain both free and distinct from Christ so that love can be truly self-giving. If love is not given consciously and freely and as an expression of one's own being, then either the sacrifice is puppetlike and means nothing, or it aggravates self-alienation and heightens the dizziness of freedom.
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Union with Christ in the Spirit (Dr. Deddo's paper)
Through consideration of a number of ever more comprehensive themes Torrance further discovers the intensely personal nature of the relationship established with humanity in Christ. Union with Christ, understood in an ontorelational way, encapsules his grasp of the reality of relationship. For Torrance salvation is the perfection and completion of our union and communion with the Father through the Son and in the Spirit. That union to God actualizes a reconciling exchange which affects us at the very core of our being, so that we become in relationship to God other than what we were on our own. For in that exchange we receive not some divine stuff or something external to us, but are united in person to Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit which was in Christ.
To receive the Spirit is to receive God himself, because in the Spirit the Gift and the Giver are one. Through this communion with the Spirit we don’t become divine (OL's Note:NO henosis!) but we are nevertheless united to God while remaining a (radically transfigured) creature (Participation in Christ's "theandric" energy). This, Torrance contends is the proper understanding of the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis. Torrance also likes to explain the indwelling of the Spirit as “interiorizing” because we are redeemed from our “inturned and ingrown existence” through his possession of our subjectivities by actualizing God’s own knowledge of himself in us and so turning our spirits “outward and upward to God.”
But most comprehensively and with an obvious Scriptural point of departure Torrance likes to explicate our union with Christ in terms of our having access to the Father through the Spirit. Jesus Christ [the-Logos] is the One “through whom and with whom we have access to the Father in the Spirit, and through whom the Spirit lifts us up to have communion with the Father.”
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/9/2008 8:53 AM (GMT -6) | | How about this?
WHO is the ground of all "Intersubjectivity"...that "Absolute Unity of Being"?
I vote it's God the Holy Spirit of Christ-the-Logos.
Whatcha'll think? 
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/9/2008 9:04 AM (GMT -6) | | | Loder on Torrence's view. From Knight's Move.
"The Self's Experiential Appropriation of Trinitarian Life", pp.299-300 (All parentheses Loder's)
Let us now summarize the experiential appropriation of trinitarian life by way of the same three levels Torrance used to describe the emergence fo the doctrine of the Trinity. First, the spontaneous creative work of consciousness which is both autobiographical (involving the "I" ) and symbolically constructed (not merely awareness as shared with lower animals) is, as we have suggested, implicitly but not sufficiently perichoretic. It is already the bearer of despair. Second, intentional efforts to created a new frame of knowledge vis-a-vis any given situation or problem, as in Einstein's productive thought, approaches ever more profoundly, but still insufficiently, the perichoretic potential in the mind and self of the knower. Even great creative efforts do not elude despair. Third, for Kierkegaard, is the decisive level in which the Divine Presence is able, in turn, to indwell the self via the Holy Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit generates an open-ended reality that replicates in human nature the Divine nature of the Trinity. Here the image indwells its Original and, at the same time, and because of that indwelling, becomes a reflection of it. The transparently grounded self is thus sustained as such by the Divine nature and at the same time is transcended by it as Original transcends image.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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One Love
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| Posted 1/5/2009 8:15 AM (GMT -6) | | Brief thought.
T.A. gave us Dr. Deddo's paper on Torrence earlier in this thread...The Holy Spirit in the Theology of T. F. Torrance
A quote...
In the West, Torrance suggests, there has been a growing tendency to identify the Spirit with the human spirit and creativity. He insists that the Holy Spirit can in no way be identified with the human spirit or its experiences. The Spirit, although united to human subjectivity, can never be confused with it. The Spirit retains its sovereign lordship over and independent personhood within humanity. So while the Spirit may indeed indwell our subjectivity, the Spirit cannot be identified with our subjectivity.
Tom agreed with this.
What's interesting is this: This has to mean that the one person of Jesus of Nazareth had to have two dimensions of subjectivity.
The Incarnate Word's divine Person naturally possesses the Holy Spirit (The Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son)...and took on human nature, meaning naturally possessing a human spirit. If it makes sense to say, with Torrence, that the consciousness (subjectivity assumes consciousness) of the Holy Spirit is NEVER to be confused or "identified" with that of "the human spirit or it's experiences"...
then we have to say that the one person of the Incarnate Word naturally had two "unities of consciousness" that are corresponsive to the Holy Spirit (divine nature) and the human spirit (non-divine nature) in their assymetrical relationship in Christ's hypostatic union.
Two ontologically distinct "unities of consciousness" in constant union (not fusion or confusion) in one divine person (God the Son), with one unity of consciousness always "freely obedient" to the Other.
Jesus did this NATURALLY as the Incarnate Word...but demonstrates that deified human beings can participate in Christ's theandric energy BY GRACE. The Spirit-indwelled, Spirit-lead, Spirit-borne human being.
God took on human life...so that humanity could take on God's life.
Make sense?
PS: This is the difference between the Incarnate Word and all other humans: Only the Only Begotten, Jesus of Nazareth, naturally "owned" the Holy Spirit as his own, through him being the Only Begotten. No other human being has the Holy Spirit in this personal, natural way. We have the Spirit by faith through Grace. No matter how unified we become with Christ, we CAN'T change that. Hence an eternal distinction between Creator (Christ) and Creation (Church)...even as the two are inseparably united by the One Holy Spirit.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life." Post Edited (One Love) : 1/5/2009 8:20:17 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/5/2009 12:41 PM (GMT -6) | | POW:
i'll try ----- two dimensions of subjectivities without having two subjectivities.
In other words, there are not two "subjects" in the Incarnate Word. There is one Subject (one divine person) with two dimensions of subjectivity (two spirits, two wills, two natures, etc). This means that there are two loci of self-reflective consciousness that naturally dwell within the one person of the Incarnate Word: His Holy Spirit and His human spirit.
"The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except that person's own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God."
Jesus knows himself as God AND human...because he "owns" both spiritual realms of consciousness in his single Person.
All this would seem to fit with the "two minds" view...where the Incarnate Word has the Uncreated Divine Mind and a created human mind (nous). In MY OWN MIND, the analogy is the single lucid dreamer who obviously relates with two distinct levels of consciousness in his lucid dream.
Level 1: the level of consciousness creating the whole dream world from "without"
Level 2: the level of consciousness experiencing the dream as an individualized form from "within" the dream world.
In this framework, the lucid dreamer experiences herself both as creator (level 1) and creation (level 2) in one unique, personal experience. I can see the Christ-the-Logos' experience as Uncreated Creator and Incarnation as being something LIKE this.
"He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him."
I know some people don't like the lucid dreamer thing...but it helps things work in my mind.
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"Not my will (human spirit/human will), but Your Will (Holy Spirit/divine will) be done."
--Jesus
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life." Post Edited (One Love) : 1/5/2009 12:06:41 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/5/2009 11:36 PM (GMT -6) | | |
So, D., what does it mean then that God was baptized -- rather that WE in God were baptized for us?
Jan 06 - The Holy Theophany Of The Lord January 05, 2009
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/5/2009 10:39:19 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/5/2009 11:56 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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