The Messiah — Theosophy’s view

[Lunitik]

"All of creation is the "body of Christ?" (logos?)"

1 Corinthians 12:12-27 says exactly that.

Christ is the Cosmic Son, the manifestation, the very physical universe we each reside in.

I do not like to call it this way because it identifies directly with Christianity, and there are many other words for this which are equally valid and invalid. It is the nameless, thus any name is invalid, only a pointer to what is intended, only what is pointed to is valid. When we begin to dispute names we give things, we have failed to realize even without humans, and thus language, it is still the case.

Yet, the Son is part of the Trinity, as well as the Father - the unmanifest - so God is indeed the whole - the Holy Spirit.

 

[seattlegal]

"All of creation is the "body of Christ?" (logos?)"

1 Corinthians 12:12-27 says exactly that.

Christ is the Cosmic Son, the manifestation, the very physical universe we each reside in.

I do not like to call it this way because it identifies directly with Christianity, and there are many other words for this which are equally valid and invalid. It is the nameless, thus any name is invalid, only a pointer to what is intended, only what is pointed to is valid. When we begin to dispute names we give things, we have failed to realize even without humans, and thus language, it is still the case.

Yet, the Son is part of the Trinity, as well as the Father - the unmanifest - so God is indeed the whole - the Holy Spirit.

I'm going back to the Taijitu Shuo from this post. I guess I still need to add my own Taoist subtitles to understand Greek philosophy. But it's connecting.

My favorite line from the Taijitu Shuo still is:

Therefore [the Yi says], "Establishing the Way (Tao) of Heaven, [the sages] speak of yin and
yang; establishing the Way (Tao) of Earth they speak of yielding and firm [hexagram lines];
establishing the Way (Tao) of Humanity they speak of humanity and rightness. (Love and Righteousness)"

parentheses-- my preferred wording from other translations of the text​

Although I prefer other translations of it to this one.

 

[luecy7]

It still problematic to me. It has certain sentimental appeal, and a use, but if one's getting into theology generally, and Christology specifically, then I find the analogy wanting.

As Lunitik and a few others use their analogy, I agree, and I sympathize. The finite into the infinite looks very similar to me. I was going away from the drop being the do-er, to the drop being the medium that a do-er utilizes, like the ink of a pen. The drop that returns to the ocean is seemingly the history lost. In my view, that analogy seeker favors that as an anonymity, unaccountable, their life and do-ings here meaningless.

 

[Lunitik]

I'm going back to the Taijitu Shuo from this post. I guess I still need to add my own Taoist subtitles to understand Greek philosophy. But it's connecting.

My favorite line from the Taijitu Shuo still is:

Therefore [the Yi says], "Establishing the Way (Tao) of Heaven, [the sages] speak of yin and
yang; establishing the Way (Tao) of Earth they speak of yielding and firm [hexagram lines];
establishing the Way (Tao) of Humanity they speak of humanity and rightness. (Love and Righteousness)"

parentheses-- my preferred wording from other translations of the text​

Although I prefer other translations of it to this one.

I would like to see other translations, it seems they are creating a trinity though: the unseen, the seen and the seer each being an aspect of the Tao - most faiths have a trinity so it would surprise me if Taoism does not...

 

[Lunitik]

As Lunitik and a few others use their analogy, I agree, and I sympathize. The finite into the infinite looks very similar to me. I was going away from the drop being the do-er, to the drop being the medium that a do-er utilizes, like the ink of a pen. The drop that returns to the ocean is seemingly the history lost. In my view, that analogy seeker favors that as an anonymity, unaccountable, their life and do-ings here meaningless.

My use is simply that they are both water, the ocean is the huge body and the drop is a puny thing outside the ocean. When the drop falls into the ocean, the drop is no more possible to be located. Yet, everything that the ocean is is contained in the drop...

As you touch on, the drop is finite while the ocean is the infinite, and yet the whole infinite is there in the finite. The drop is not the doer though, it is just a part of the ocean. The ocean is certainly the doer, it has caused the drop in the first place, else where has the drop originated?

The problem is, you are utterly identified with your current experience, thus you have a problem with "history lost". You want to believe your actions are important to existence, and thus you want to own them, even if it means you are accountable for the wrongs. You are uncomfortable with the idea that everything you do here is utterly meaningless, that it is just the gift of being able to experience all that is provided here.

For me, this realization, that nothing ever actually matters, is exactly the start of spirituality. When you realize that ultimately this world will end according to every scripture on earth, what ultimate meaning does anything you do have? Everyone you converse with is going to be dead some day, everything you work with now will some day cease to exist, where you live will some day be knocked down, nothing at all in this place is permanent to the extent that even this place is not permanent.

What is permanent though? This is the question Buddha specifically sets out to answer, can you find that answer for yourself? Buddha has needed no help...

 

[luecy7]

Lunitik, with your freedom, you are in command. Whether you are meaningful, and whether you matter, is up to you. If you do not wish to be meaningful, nor matter, then I believe you are well on that path to succeeding. If you wish to be meaningful, and matter, then ask another how you can be meaningful, and matter, and get to work. Ask God. Ask your parents. Ask your neighbor. Ask a girl. Ask the person who is begging for help. Ask your enemies. Ask Buddha.

Yes, you can cause destruction, and terrorize, and commit all manner of crimes, and claim that it doesn't matter. All temporary, right? Be who you want to be. You say you are free, and enlightened, then you have no excuse. You are in command of who you are.

 

[Lunitik]

Again, you are inferring that you matter to existence, and projecting onto others that they should feel they are as well - this is naught but the ego. You pretend humility, but your entire approach to life is egoistic, yet you claim to be an authority of spiritual matters? We are utterly insignificant whether we want to believe it or not, no matter what perspective we use. This Universe has existed for an estimated 15 billion years, we exist for about 70 years. How large is the Universe? We occupy 6 feet by about 2 feet, in every respect we are irrelevant. Even our solar system is irrelevant - just a star 2/3 down one arm of our Galaxy, there are stars near by that are thousands of times larger than the sun, yet the sun is thousands of times larger than our earth, and still 7 billion of us humans are living here reasonably comfortably. Even if we blow up this Earth, existence will go on happily without us though. There are billions of other Galaxies, each with as many stars as our own, each with a chance of another Earth. Through all this, you think you are meaningful to the Universe? That is the very definition of ego, it is utterly absurd to think you matter at all to existence as a distinct person.

 

[Lunitik]

Conversely, if you can drop this ego, you realize something awesome.

As the moon circles us, as we circle the sun, and as the sun circles the center of this galaxy, so there are larger systems which our galaxy is part of that is also circling something. Perhaps that is something else, too which even that is circling, infinitely larger and larger systems...

At the center of it all, there is a center of axis, some have called it the Primal Point... if you can drop the concept of ego, you realize you are actually one with that.

You can struggle against existence, trying to prove you matter, or you can stop fighting and realize you are what you are struggling against. Man seems to be sick, he insists on making himself a somebody, he goes against the entire nature of things trying to prove he is relevant. Existence itself lays dormant in him, and yet he is adamant about going against it to prove his puny self is important.

 

[luecy7]

Lunitik, I do not matter to you. You have made that clear. You say that you do not matter to anyone, and from what I saw, I would agree with you. You should stop demanding and insisting that others be meaningful, and matter, in paying for your existence, your food, your room, your electricity, your water, and driving you around. You demand that they matter, so that you don't even have to matter to yourself. Whether or not they wish to matter is their choice, but you are the one demanding it from them. You are existing, for a limited time, as a double standard.

 

[Lunitik]

"I do not matter to you"

I am not, so if you want to credit yourself in relation to me you will be in a trouble.

I hope you do not wait until the time of your physical death to realize your true nature too, it really is a beautiful and awesome thing. It is really odd to me that people wish to exist as something so small when their real Self is so great already.

How weird that people try to make something of themselves when they are already the whole without any effort on their part... you have not chosen when to take birth, you have not chosen to die, yet between both humans try to create an illusion of control. Are we really that utterly warped that we can't realize we have no say in anything, that existence just isn't concerned by us? We have convinced ourselves this tiny spec of a body, this small dot of a planet, is somehow important, we need it to be important because it provides a foundation for our ego... the first conceptions: I am this body, I am from this place.

If you could know what you really are, you would see how infinitesimal your current perspective is.

 

[Lunitik]

What you have missed is, even if I was about to starve to death, my celebration would not be less. Existence seems to want me to remain here because it continues to provide for me to be, for this I am very grateful. It is not important to me that I stay here though, in fact I look forward to losing this state of relativity and truly merge with the eternal infinity. Until that day, I will continue playing here, dancing here, celebrating all that is because it is beautiful and it is me.

 

[Lunitik]

Of course, my wording is based in language, and thus inaccurate.

Why identify with this conception of "I" which is so irrelevant? Look deeper and you will see what you are, but most people are afraid of it, they want to remain busy and distracted because they fear their own depths - this we call "boredom". The true "I" cannot die, it is the eternal... it is not something to fear, it is pure freedom.

Then you can relate from that place, you will not wish to control everyone though, you will want to give them freedom of their own, indeed, from their current notions of themselves.

 

[Lunitik]

"If a man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26)

"Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33)

"When a man told him that he would follow him but he should be, allowed to go and bury his dead father, Jesus said 'Follow me; and let the dead bury the dead'" (Matthew 8:22)

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof" (Matthew 6:34)

You are speaking against Jesus when you address me, do you realize it? I have pointed to your family because it seems to contradict your own statements of what you value, but Jesus would be utterly fine with those relationships, why? It simply shows you are attached to nothing but the divine...

 

[Thomas]

Hi SG —

All of creation is the "body of Christ?" (logos?)

Only in the sense that the Divine, the source of all things, created all things with their end in view, as it were, incorporation back into the divine.

The Logos of God is, if you like, God's self-knowing (as ever with the Trinity, language is inadequate to the necessary nuance) ... as I posted earlier, Father is Arche Anarchos 'principle without principle', whereas the Son/Logos is the Arche principle of all things, of all being ...

It makes more sense than the ocean analogy in the differentiation of things.

I think so.

That would go a long ways to explain "eating Christ's flesh" and "drinking his blood" in that we continue to exist in (and eat and drink from) the material realm!

In the Christian Liturgies, the gifts are brought from the nave to the sanctuary, and then to the altar, and the symbolism is obviously one of ascent from the material to the spiritual.

The point is we are here, not as a punishment, as the gnostics thought, nor as a pedagogy, as Origen, for example, thought. We, human nature, is the gateway of the finite to the infinite, in that we encompass both in our being, in that we are finite bodies, but open to the Infinite.

The phenomenologists focus on being-in-the-world (“in-der-Welt-Sein” Heidigger). In order for the human spirit to be in the world, it must simultaneously be “being-set-apart … against the world” This is possible through what Rahner calls, again from Heidigger, the pre-apprehension (vorgriff). It is through the pre-apprehension of being (Vorgriff auf esse) that human spirit “reaches out toward what is nameless and by its very nature is infinite” or “reaches out beyond the word and knows the metaphysical”. The pre-apprehension itself is the condition of spirit transcending itself toward the infinite being, while still remaining in the world.

We pray:
Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.
Then:
Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.

So the gifts of bread and wine we offer is just that —bread and wine — nothing special. But moving from being-in-the-world to the infinite nature of being as such, the gifts it It signifies us, it signifies the whole material cosmos ... the bread and wine is offered, and by the power of the Holy Spirit is consecrated, and becomes the Body and Blood of the Logos of God.

St Augustine said, to the catechumens at the initiation into the Mystery, when holding the Eucharist before them:
"See what you receive, receive what you are."

Modern Christianity, even Catholic, often uterly overlooks the premise of the mystery, that the mundane is offered up to the sacred, that we are the bread and wine, and that the gifts are accepted and incorporated into, and become ontologically, the Body and Blood of Christ — Christ is the head, and we are the members, so we too are incorporated into the Eucharist as an offering by the Son to the Father ... so the offering of the Eucharist at Mass is the self-offering of the community to God, a Trinitarian Act (as all divine acts are Trinitarian), it is the gift of ourselves, to the Father, consecrated by the Spirit, incorporated in the Son.

Would that make the Logos pantheism, whereas "the father and the son" panentheism?

Not really. The pantheism/panentheism debate is a confusion of the idea of immanence in creation, but this immanence of the Divine is not because of the inherent divinity of matter — how can it be? Rather it is because the Divine brought forth creation from nothing, and is immediately present to it.

In my own theology, the primary metaphysical question 'why is there anything at all' is answered by the Doctrine of the Trinity, and the Trinity is prior to creation.

Pantheism makes God the sum of all things, whereas God is not a thing, nor the sum of things, and God is before things were .... likewise panentheism is, to me, a 'fudge' of the argument, trying to be both God and not God, or the sum of all things plus a bit extra on top ... so we're back to the Aristotelian argument of categories, and God is not a collection, nor a totality, of categories.

Darkness was on the face of the watery deep--the waters came before even the creation of diffused light, much less light separated from darkness.

I read darkness and deep as God, and the light as the knowing of God.

The knowing of God, like the knowing of the Tao (dare I say), is a 'dark knowing' — it is faith, a knowledge beyond forms, beyond terms, beyond being — it is not an order of knowledge per se.

God bless,

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

but do you think it is not the actual state of all things already? Do you think Theosis is a happening, or merely a remembering of what you already were?

Well the divine is immanently present ... and Theosis is a Final End, not a beginning.

Theosis is the movement from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) to God. Full participation in divinity is humanity's vocation, and the destiny of the cosmos.

The latter point is crucial. Theosis is the deification of the entire cosmos, not one or more individuals. There will be provisional moments and instances along the way, but Theosis in its fulness will not be realised until it is all in all.

Inaccurate, I use pieces from various jigsaws because you are familiar with them, but what I convey is not a jigsaw at all, it is the original painting.

I disagree ... I think your view of the divine is fundamentally cosmic, whereas I'm talking about the metacosmic.

I disagree, it is mans natural state, we have only forgotten. There are techniques which allow us to remember what we have forgotten, but our very birth is the invitation, the very fact we exist is an invitation to discover the nature of existence - and the Transcendent is exactly that nature.

I would say your entire horizon is bound within the cosmic, in that, everything you say makes sense. Trascendence is not like running a 100 metres or learning to hold one's breath. That's not how love works.

It is better to call the soul a wave ...

I like the idea of the soul as particle/wave : body/being finite/infinite ... you still seem to treat the soul and body as two distinct things, for all you say about non-duality.

... it expresses more effectively how puny the soul is.

I think the human being is the apogee of creation.

It is as a ripple in the divine, but without the divine it is not possible at all.

Here you go again ... your presentations of the divine are always contingent and relative. It is, as the Perennialists declare, a relative-absolute statement.

The Divine of which I speak is subject to no condition or determination, change or movement, growth of decay, expansion or contraction ... it is the Absolute as such, not a provisional presentment of it, as you seem to imply.

I have never left the ocean

I know ... your problem is you assume that's all there is.

It is an individual searching

That's the way the ego wants it, but it's not the Way at all ...

I simply say the soul is the Holy Spirit too much in love with its current identity - what I call the ego.

That's an anthropomorphism ...

It is the part of God that is within each living thing as the Bible tells us...

That's another one.

Yes, 'within' meaning 'immanent to', not 'a part of.

If the soul is divine, then its being is one and the same thing ... so it cannot suffer amnesia any more than it can suffer corruption.

If your premise is true, then the Divine is rendered cosmological, contingent and corruptible. That's not the divine of my definition. I think you're working to an anthropomorphic model.

Your analogy seems to say that either God has lost some of himself in giving us life, or that God gains something when we return

Anthropomorphism again.

we are as an idea God is curious about, and so we manifest as a character in a dream to experience the idea - yet we don't actually exist as something individual, just as characters in a dream

And again

We can say that it is for us to realize our own nature again, it seems to be a fascination for the divine to realize himself repeatedly in different ways.

And again.

It is certainly an illusion though, we already are the divine, we have always been searching for ourselves.

And again.

In (roughly) the words of St Francis of Assasi "eventually you realize that the one you were searching for is the one who has been doing the searching."

Anthropomorphism again.

He was almost certainly an Essene based on his life style...

Please, please stop churning out such statements, and go back to where you got them from and ask for your money back.

It was the hip and common view about thirty years ago ... it's been well and truly dismissed as very bad new-agey, pseudo-gnostic nonsense since.

God bless,

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

For clarity's sake —

The ocean analogy refers to a pre-cosmic ‘material’ that our universe was created from. Both the Virgin Mary in Catholicism and Guanyin in Buddhism symbolize this ‘material'.

Again, in your belief system perhaps, but not in any real sense.

In Christian doctrine creation is from nothing, 'ex nihilo', not from some abstract pre-cosmic substrate.

In addition, Mary holds a baby (a new ‘birth’ of a new universe) and Guanyin hold a vase of water (ocean symbology), both symbolizing the same new universe that has just been ‘born.’

A somewhat naive and sentimental idea ... certainly Christ 'makes all things new', but it is the same universe, not another one, and He makes them new against their reality, not against something else altogether.

"That would go a long ways to explain "eating Christ's flesh" and "drinking his blood" in that we continue to exist in (and eat and drink from) the material realm!"

Explain it away, morelike ... a quite mundane view that reduces the sumblime to the ridiculous.

God bless,

Thomas

 

[seattlegal]

I read darkness and deep as God, and the light as the knowing of God.

The knowing of God, like the knowing of the Tao (dare I say), is a 'dark knowing' — it is faith, a knowledge beyond forms, beyond terms, beyond being — it is not an order of knowledge per se.

God bless,

Thomas

Wouldn't it have to be--in order not to invalidate free-will?

 

[Thomas]

Wouldn't it have to be--in order not to invalidate free-will?

Yup.

God bless

Thomas

 

[Lunitik]

Well the divine is immanently present ... and Theosis is a Final End, not a beginning.

You are perfectly correct, this is shared by all the faiths, except others say it is the end of continuous reincarnation. Yet, does God ever end? It is only the distinct personality we identify with which ends.

Theosis is the movement from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) to God. Full participation in divinity is humanity's vocation, and the destiny of the cosmos.

Again, I agree, how does one go to nothing though? It is not by trying to become more, which is what Christianity goes on attempting. Christians are taught to do good deeds and earn credits so they might go to heaven, it is a greed and greed is fundamentally an attempt to become more.

The latter point is crucial. Theosis is the deification of the entire cosmos, not one or more individuals. There will be provisional moments and instances along the way, but Theosis in its fulness will not be realised until it is all in all.

Again, I agree, except the entire cosmos celebrates through the enlightened ones, so in a way it happens that the entire cosmos becomes awakened many times. Yet, again, is God ever effected by this at all?

I disagree ... I think your view of the divine is fundamentally cosmic, whereas I'm talking about the metacosmic.

I simply make no distinction between the unmanifest and the manifest, because they are both one in reality. God is the Holy of Holies, the whole Whole. You continue to want to say God is something unreachable, but I am telling you this is not so. What we ordinarily perceive is the first three bodies of God, man can access the first six in this plane, the 7th is the void which Hindu's discuss - God is in each, but certainly he is not only this physical realm, he is far more subtle and hence the problem finding him.

I would say your entire horizon is bound within the cosmic, in that, everything you say makes sense. Trascendence is not like running a 100 metres or learning to hold one's breath. That's not how love works.

It can happen this second, but it is not a doing at all, it is a happening. What you list doings, but right where you are sat this moment it can explode in your being and you are one with That.

I like the idea of the soul as particle/wave : body/being finite/infinite ... you still seem to treat the soul and body as two distinct things, for all you say about non-duality.

The body is as a vehicle, it is not the being. At the same time, you are perfectly correct, the body consists of more gross spirit - or as the Scientists call it, quanta - it too will return to the source in its time. I happen to know I can leave this body though, and I happen to know it can function without my interference, thus I know it is not me just as a car is not me.

I think the human being is the apogee of creation.

This is ego speaking, the human being is utterly false for starters, we are the consciousness of the divine interacting with itself. We don't even have an existence independent of that, and yet we are not even the most mature species in this Universe as far as consciousness is concerned. There are planets with nothing but Jesus', nothing but what we call enlightened or awakened ones, Buddhas.

Here you go again ... your presentations of the divine are always contingent and relative. It is, as the Perennialists declare, a relative-absolute statement.

I speak on my encounter of it, you have read something you consider higher but it is speculation at best. Humans cannot know of the 7th body, and yet your Catholic buddies have had the nerve to discuss it as if they know. Jesus has not said it, and he is the master of the Christians so it is not possible to exceed him in knowledge if you walk his path.

The Divine of which I speak is subject to no condition or determination, change or movement, growth of decay, expansion or contraction ... it is the Absolute as such, not a provisional presentment of it, as you seem to imply.

It is strange you say I am implying this, because for me you are implying it. You have said before that God is not in the creation, you say he is beyond creation utterly. For me, this limits him, I know there to be not even a single atom which God does not reside within, each atom is as its own universe, and this universe is as an atom as well compared to what it is we are discussing... and yet God is the whole, that is the meaning of Holy.

If the soul is divine, then its being is one and the same thing ... so it cannot suffer amnesia any more than it can suffer corruption.

Correct, but the body is subject to decay because it is material.

If your premise is true, then the Divine is rendered cosmological, contingent and corruptible. That's not the divine of my definition. I think you're working to an anthropomorphic model.

First, I am not interested in your definition, I am not speaking about something which can be found in a book, I am speaking of direct encounters.

Second, you make this leap, I am not restricting my words to the perceivable Universe, I am not restricted in my definition at all, I only say God is the Whole. Whatsoever there is, perceived or unperceived by the senses, there is God, beyond all physical limits, beyond all imagination, God is the entirety of it all. It is impossible that there be anything that exists that isn't God, because my I am saying God is existence itself. The unseen, the unmanifest, it still exists, thus it is still God by what I am saying.

Please, please stop churning out such statements, and go back to where you got them from and ask for your money back.

Why, because the money you have given the Church is more valuable? I have not paid for my knowledge, I have been graced with it, existence itself has shown me its secrets, but you cling to your books.

It was the hip and common view about thirty years ago ... it's been well and truly dismissed as very bad new-agey, pseudo-gnostic nonsense since.

It has not been dismissed at all, and what I speak of has been known long before Jesus, or even Abraham. For instance, my words are echoed in the Vedas, and there are particular statements in these texts of star charts that could not have been so less than 90,000 years ago. If it has lasted that long, I doubt it will fade any time soon, although has not caught on in the mainstream, it has always been guarded because it is always against the establishment. Yet, have you ever seen, for instance, paintings of old with winged hearts? This is such a group of knowers that I speak, hiding from the Christian establishment in plain sight because they would have been killed by those you cling to.

The Catholic Chuch has always killed to subdue the truth, yet you want me to take what you say to be so when it is based on their documents? They are not interested in freeing you at all, they are interested in controlling you... now they even say it is forbidden to go directly to God, why? Perhaps because the consciousness of the world is growing, people are becoming more sensitive to the divine, and if they permit the people to go directly they will have no business remaining? It is so, pay attention.

As it is, the Vatican is one of the most wealthy establishments on this Earth, look at the majesty of that city, not even Royalty lives like that... now recall the life of Jesus and tell me there isn't something strange going on.

 

[Lunitik]

In the same sense you think your body is you, the manifestation, the physical world is the body of God. I am not this body, this body is a small expression, just as a plant or a tree is a small expression. You say I am inconsistent with my non-duality, I simply do not limit it to the puny scopes that the mind usually works within. ALL in ALL, not just this body-mind and distinct consciousness, the sum of everything which exists to the far reaches of this Universe and beyond, as Science now believes we are a Multiverse of at least 11 Universes. I say those eleven are simply another system, that there are infinite Universes as well. Yet something pervades it all, that is God.

In this respect, I find even the Bible to be limited in scope, it only says the Christians are part of one body, it doesn't even permit other life, let alone plants and minerals - I say everything that contains atoms consists of God. The keyboard you are typing on, the screen you reading this off of, both have atoms which are alive - they never stop moving. The very large and the very small, all is God because God is life, God is all there is.

God is a Christian word though, they can keep it... it is existence itself. I have to communicate in a way people will understand, but this word has been utterly killed, it no more has a significant meaning in our language.