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One Love
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| Posted 7/14/2011 12:32 PM (GMT -6) |   | D’s Quote: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, -- as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims)...”
Tom: I’d challenge this a bit. It doesn’t follow that since the US isn’t founded upon any particular religion (Christianity) that all religions (Islam in particular) are compatible with the values central to the worldview which is at the heart of the events and declarations that created America and which sustain its freedoms (however imperfectly we hold them). Islam, in particular, is not void of inherent political aspirations, whatever SOME Muslims might say about the possibility of a form of fulfilled Islamic living that doesn’t include political commitments and Shari’a law. There is to date NO Islamic state (or society) that has succeeded (or even approached a measure of significant success) in marrying the political freedoms (of speech, press, religion) and equalities (of gender, sex, etc.) definitive of Western style democracy with Islamic law. And I don’t believe it can be done. Shari’a law is fundamental to Islamic orthodoxy (I agree with the Mulahs; they’re right on) and that same way of life is incompatible with the freedoms and equalities at the heart of America’s national identity.
How about Sufism, Tom?
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One Love
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| Posted 7/14/2011 12:49 PM (GMT -6) | | Ian Stevenson.
VERY interesting...
"Skeptic Sam Harris said of Stevenson 'either he is a victim of truly elaborate fraud, or something interesting is going on.' "
and...
Clarke observed that Stevenson had produced a number of studies that were "hard to explain" conventionally, but noted:
the problem with reincarnation is that it's hard to imagine what the storage medium for past lives would be. Not to mention the input-output device. I hesitate to rule it out completely, but I'd need pretty definite proof.
It's not that hard at all.
Store-house consciousness.
Collective unconscious.
Turiya.
Basically, there's one field of consciousness that is the base and ground of all individual, personal consciousnesses (generated in relational unity with human brains). Just like every set of human lungs participate in and interact with the one atmosphere of Earth allowing the process of human respiration, so also every human brain participates in and interacts with the singular field of consciousness allowing the emergence of human self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-expression.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/14/2011 12:59:55 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 7/14/2011 1:24 PM (GMT -6) | | Jim B. Tucker.
Although critics have argued there is no physical explanation for the survival of personality, Tucker suggests that quantum mechanics may offer a mechanism by which memories and emotions could carry over from one life to another. He argues that since the act of observation collapses wave equations, consciousness may not be merely a by-product of the physical brain but rather a separate entity in the universe that impinges on the physical. Tucker argues that viewing consciousness as a fundamental, non-physical, part of the universe makes it possible to conceive of it continuing to exist after the death of the physical brain. He provides the analogy of a television set and the television transmission; the television is required to decode the signal, but it does not create the signal. In a similar way the brain may be required for consciousness to express itself, but may not be the source of consciousness. On the other hand Susan Huelga, a lecturer in quantum mechanics at the University Of Hertfordshire, notes that brain dynamics are highly complex, and she finds that there is no more evidence that quantum mechanics is relevant in this field than that it is relevant regarding whether or not God exists.
Uh...yep. 
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One Love
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| Posted 7/14/2011 3:17 PM (GMT -6) | | | When we mention "center of consciousness", we are really talking about the sense of intrasubjective indivisibility where self-awareness and R/W/E can occur (through which personal uniqueness and connectedness are experienced.) All that is being said is that these individualize "senses" occur within a single field of intersubjectivity which grounds ALL experience.
Think about how God is truly the "centerless center" in the center of all of our consciousnesses.
Or another. I always think of what would happen if a human cell were to become self-aware...and were able to relate to the whole body it inhabited which was ALSO self-aware. Truly, the cell would see itself to be indivisible--a whole--while at the same time being a PART of something much larger than itself which is ALSO a whole. The consciousness of the cell would NOT be separate from the consciousness of the body, through there would be differentiation of perspective. I think I got this idea from the 2001 movie "Osmosis Jones"...
Basically, what if Osmosis Jones could communicate with Frank...and vice versa? I'd say that's what we have analogically the individual Christian member of the "Body of Christ" and Christ himself.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/14/2011 3:28:59 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/14/2011 4:13 PM (GMT -6) | | D: When we mention "center of consciousness", we are really talking about the sense of intrasubjective indivisibility where self-awareness and R/W/E can occur (through which personal uniqueness and connectedness are experienced.) All that is being said is that these individualize "senses" occur within a single field of intersubjectivity which grounds ALL experience. Think about how God is truly the "centerless center" in the center of all of our consciousnesses.
T: Set aside our WE are related personally (interpersonally) and grounded in God. I was talking about how the three divine persons are related. We cannot draw exact parallels between us as persons related to God and the divine persons related to each other because F, S, and SP are one being/essence and we are not.
For example, if we take ‘center of consciousness’ as a particular, self-aware RWE, that seems to cover US as distinct persons who are not one and the same essence. Fine. But it’s orthodox to say God’s being ONE means one mind and one will. That would seem to imply a single center of consciousness (or a single particular, self-aware RWE). But you’re saying God is THREE centers of consciousness or three (which is not a particularly orthodox thing to say), and if a center of consciousness is, as you say, it’s own particular sphere of rational/volitional self-aware subjectivity, then how do you not have three minds and three wills. If distinct centers of consciousness in US require distinct minds, wills, etc. (all grounded in God, yes), how is it that three distinct divine centers of consciousness (i.e., three persons, if such a unique center is essential to personhood) don’t require three minds, three wills, etc.?
Never mind how OUR centers of consciousness as non-divine beings each with its own RWE functionality are all related to the singular divine consciousness…tell me how this singular divine consciousness subsits as three distinct centers of consciousness with one will and one mind? See what I’m saying? The Son and Spirit are NOT cells in the body of the Father. I'm talking trinity.
Wish you were with me tonight for my visit to that Hindu family. It’s gonna rawk.
Tom
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Tom
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| Posted 7/14/2011 4:20 PM (GMT -6) | | | You realize, D, that turiya is a false notion. To clarify, there is no pure consciousness void of conceptuality and differentiation, i.e., consciousness void of Logos. In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. There is no God apart from Logos. Logos/logoi are definitive of consciousness; no consciousness which is not hypostatic (i.e., hypostatically differentiated), and that means identities in relationship and otherness and alterity, etc. There’s no pure divine consciousness that stands BEHIND these things. To be conscious (in the fullest sense we want to attribute to God) is to perceive them. So divine consciousness is not a kind of standard operating system, as it were, logically prior to God's hypostatic distinctions and running in the background or the 'stuff' in which the three persons have their being. The persons don’t spring from an ontologically or logically prior essence (whether consciousness or something else). That would be to deny that reality is irreducibly relational.
Advaita Vedanta's one-story isn't the SAME story as Christian monotheism's one-story. To say there is no subject or object predicable of divine/true reality is to deny the Triune God. "Pure awareness" just IS the experience of an irreducible, indivisible ecstatic differentiation of hypostases.
You feeling me?
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 7/14/2011 4:55:42 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 7/14/2011 4:53 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
tell me how this singular divine consciousness subsits as three distinct centers of consciousness with one will and one mind? See what I’m saying? The Son and Spirit are NOT cells in the body of the Father. I'm talking trinity.
Orthodoxy says that, within the one uncreated consciousness of God, the perspective of each divine personal perspective recognizes communion and uniqueness among the other divine personal perspectives. This is the same thing as the Father knowing himself as the Father distinct from and related to the Son and Spirit...and so on with the other persons. Now, the Father is the "arche" and ground of this whole movement so the will of the Trinity is the will of the Father...just like the nature of the Trinity is the nature of the Father. (That's straight Nicean right there.)
The ancient Nicene theologians argued that everything the Trinity does is done by Father, Son, and Spirit working together with one will. The three persons of the Trinity always work inseparably, for their work is always the work of the one God. Because of this unity of will, the Trinity cannot involve the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. Eternal subordination can only exist if the Son's will is at least conceivably different from the Father's. But Nicene orthodoxy says it is not. The Son's will cannot be different from the Father's because it is the Father's. They have but one will as they have but one being. Otherwise they would not be one God. If there were relations of command and obedience between the Father and the Son, there would be no Trinity at all but rather three gods.On this point St. Basil observes "When then He says, 'I have not spoken of myself,' and again, 'As the Father said unto me, so I speak,' and 'The word which ye hear is not mine, but [the Father’s] which sent me,' and in another place, 'As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do,' it is not because He lacks deliberate purpose or power of initiation, nor yet because He has to wait for the preconcerted key-note, that he employs language of this kind. His object is to make it plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father. Do not then let us understand by what is called a 'commandment' a peremptory mandate delivered by organs of speech, and giving orders to the Son, as to a subordinate, concerning what He ought to do. Let us rather, in a sense befitting the Godhead, perceive a transmission of will, like the reflexion of an object in a mirror, passing without note of time from Father to Son.."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/14/2011 4:56:05 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 7/14/2011 4:58 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Wish you were with me tonight for my visit to that Hindu family. It’s gonna rawk.
Ask them about "akasha" and it's relationship to "turiya".
The dot above the curve...
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/14/2011 5:01:15 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 7/14/2011 5:41 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
You're not gonna deny the irreducible relationality of divine being by supposing there to be some fundamental singular consciousness behind the plurality, are you?
I don't deny the irreducible self-relationship of divine being. I, at the same time, affirm that this divine self-relationship is taking place within the "fundamental singular consciousness" of God the Father, the ground of the Trinity. In other words, the personal perspectives of Son and Spirit are in the "context" of God the Father's eternal activity of self-knowledge and self-expression.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/14/2011 5:46:26 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 7/15/2011 8:25 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Everything about our experience of ourselves tells us that each time you have a center of consciousness, you have a mind and a will. But you're saying this is NOT so with God.
Everything about our experience of ourselves is based upon embodiment, particularly the experience of the human brain. Our experience tells us that every center of consciousness has a localizing factor--the brain--and through that, a mind and a will. In other words, no human being thinks of other human beings as being non-spatial...and the general belief is that wherever there is a working brain, there will be a mind and a will. (See Abigail and Brittany Hensel) Think about how you see Anita. When you think of Anita, you DEFINITELY think of her embodiment and the learned, consistent personality tendencies that she expresses through that embodiment. It's how you would differentiate her from another human, right? All of this is inseparable from her brain. Interestingly enough, if Anita's mind/brain information somehow got transferred to MAN's mind/brain...and you encounted this different looking man...you would DEFINITELY know it was "her" by her consistent personality tendencies and intimate knowledge of your relationship expressed by the man...that she learned during her embodiment as "Anita." (Remember the movie "FaceOff" or better yet..."Prelude to a Kiss" ?)
However...
the Uncreated Triune God is immaterial, omnipresent, and has no brain (not considering the Incarnation here). As God the Father self-relates, His Spirit spirates and "rests" in the Father's Self-Disclosing Word, the Son. We are not dealing with seperate brains interacting with each other through inner representations of bodily contact and interaction. We are not dealing with learned self-experiential and behavioral patterns or any other spatio-temporal realities here. Three personal perspectives [that's the best way I know how to say it] are taken within self-relational activity within the singular uncreated consciousness. The will of the Underivative Father IS the will of the "Begotten" Son, because the Son is the perfect Image of the Father, having the Father's will. The Son--as Perfect Self-Image of the Father--exists in the consciousness of the Father along with the Father's Spirit as the context in which the whole divine "inner conversation" takes place.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/15/2011 9:27:58 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 7/15/2011 9:08 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
The triune God is his own akasha, dude. Consciousness is not the divine undifferentiated aether in which the three persons subsist.
Ok...prakasa...
Prakāśa is considered supreme, ultimate, unsurpassable, but as such it cannot be described as pure transcendence, because even though it is above all, it is still present in the manifestation, in every aspect of it. Thus prakāśa is said to be both transcendent and immanent.
For analogy sake, think of prakasa like unto the "uncreated energies" experienced by Christian hesychasts. Also notice the transcendence and immanence of it. Sounds familiar, right?
Akasha is pretty much the "very first element of creation", the substratum of all creation...namely the emptiness, nothingness, silent "medium of sound" which grounds the Om. This is similar to the Loderian Void through which God speaks existence into being.
Restating. When I look at the relationship of prakasa and akasha...and I think about turiya...I see something that looks a LOT LIKE a Christian hesychast who experiences the "uncreated light" and "no-thingness" that grounds creation via the "stillness point" in her heart.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/15/2011 9:20:12 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/15/2011 9:37 AM (GMT -6) | | It went great. I love that family. So cool. I'll probably be making a trip to West Minneapolis to visit their Temple with them this Fall. I hope to take some of my students.
So, Hari (the gentleman I met with; grandfather of Daniel's girlfriend Sophia) is pretty much Advaita Vedanta. That's what he knew about. So we talked about that mostly. Atman is Brahman, we're each a drop in the sea and Brahman/God is the sea, etc. Straight up pantheism. He knew of Ramanuja's disagreements with Shankara about Dvaita Vendanta but said the philosophical details escape him.
You know me. I'm all for points of comparison, bridge-building, etc. But it's not like any Hindu concept can be uncritically brought into Christianity. The whole idea that prakriti (matter/energy) is inherently maya/illusion is not a biblical notion. It's unbiblical to push matter/energy into a full-blown two-storied worldview, yeah. But biblically speaking creation is "good," redeemable when fallen, and God intends our fullest union with him to be via embodied existence, so that itself competes with (what I got from him last night) the Hindu view on the material world. A Christian can say maya occurs in the mind and is a false perceiving OF the material world. Just like we construct false selves, we can construct false views of what the world is. But that doesn't make the world inherently illusory. When I pressed this a bit last night I got the drop in the ocean analogy. All the material distinctions that define this world are maya and all disappear when one reaches the highest englightenment. Not a biblical (or necessary) view on human fulfillment.
Tom
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One Love
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| Posted 7/15/2011 9:50 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
You know me. I'm all for points of comparison, bridge-building, etc. But it's not like any Hindu concept can be uncritically brought into Christianity. The whole idea that prakriti (matter/energy) is inherently maya/illusion is not a biblical notion. It's unbiblical to push matter/energy into a full-blown two-storied worldview, yeah. But biblically speaking creation is "good," redeemable when fallen, and God intends our fullest union with him to be via embodied existence, so that itself competes with (what I got from him last night) the Hindu view on the material world. A Christian can say maya occurs in the mind and is a false perceiving OF the material world. Just like we construct false selves, we can construct false views of what the world is. But that doesn't make the world inherently illusory. When I pressed this a bit last night I got the drop in the ocean analogy. All the material distinctions that define this world are maya and all disappear when one reaches the highest englightenment. Not a biblical (or necessary) view on human fulfillment.
Let's think about this for a moment. Particularly in light of what we know. If we were to speak in terms of the relationship of God Himself working (Grace, uncreated energies, etc) to Creation, then seeing creation as something essentially real IS a "false perceiving" of things. When the veil is on human perception, Creation seems like "just the material world". When the veil is removed, we see the omnipresent God at work everywhere. It's the difference between seeing a blackberry bush and picking berries off it...and seeing the fire of God's Presence in the bush and it's berries.
That's the point MANY mystics--western and eastern--have tried to make: Creation is NO-THING. To think it is SOME-thing is the ILLUSION. Creation's only truth (Haqq?) is God.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/15/2011 9:57:58 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 7/15/2011 10:01 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
And I really disagree with construing human fulfillment in Hindu terms as escaping all prakriti (as maya) and reaching a place of pure undifferentiated awareness void of all conceptuality and sense of self and other.
What do you think that hesychia is? What do you think happens when we go into inner stillness in the "secret place in the heart"? Fleeing "alone to the Alone?" It is SPECIFICALLY about achieving a state of presence beyond sensory and conceptual activity, escaping all "prakriti", as it were.
And don't forget the Jivanmukti idea. Just like the Christian saints, it is possible to live in the world IN the stillness found in meditation.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/15/2011 10:05:06 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/15/2011 10:08 AM (GMT -6) | | D: If we were to speak in terms of the relationship of God Himself working (Grace, uncreated energies, etc) to Creation, then seeing creation as something essentially real IS a "false perceiving" of things.
T: You’re introducing “essentially” to qualify real seems to beg the question. You seem to think that “essentially real” = “self-existent.” And of course nothing created is real in THAT sense. But that doesn’t mean creation is real (actual, concrete) and perceived by God as such (and as other than himself).
D: When the veil is on human perception, Creation seems like "just the material world". When the veil is removed, we see the omnipresent God at work everywhere. It's the difference between seeing a blackberry bush and picking berries off it...and seeing the fire of God's Presence in the bush and it's berries. That's the point MANY mystics--western and eastern--have tried to make: Creation is NO-THING. To think it is SOME-thing is the ILLUSION.
T: We’re just talking Advaita Vendanta. It’s like you want ALL mystics to say ‘exactly’ the same thing. But Advaita Vendanta is pantheism. You see that right? They don’t sufficiently distinguish uncreated and created being. Everything on the created/material side is just maya and it doesn’t have a role in the highest fulfillment of human being. That’s not biblical, right?
I’m not talking about seeing creation as self-existent, or as something apart from God. By all means, see God in all created things. But by the same means see created things as real and willed by God as good in their materiality, in their otherness as non-divine. Such being is a good thing. Nothing illusory about IT (as illusory as our perceptions of what it is can be).
Tom
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One Love
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| Posted 7/15/2011 10:23 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
What I want to avoid, D, is reducing everything ontologically down to pure consciousness. Yes, God is consciously in all things. Yes, you can't separate anything created from God's creative/sustaining act. But that doesn't just mean everything created IS God, that all created things are just God doing now this, now that. That's indistinguishable from pantheism.
1) Are all things "within" God's consciousness? Better yet, does God's consciousness PERMEATE Creation? I would say yes. I don't see how you can say no.
2) Remember Achintya-Bheda-Abheda. It's panENtheistic.
3) All I think is really being stated with the "Atman is Brahman" sense is the following: Our sense of "I am" is NOT self-originated or self-generated, but is immediated communicated to us by the Uncreated "I Am." In that sense, we are all reflections of the TRUE personal light in whom we exist, God.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/15/2011 10:43:42 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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