Our image of God

Craz said:
@talib-al-kalim

I grew up in Judaism, had a Jewish education but was only religious for a short periods of time.
I was taught that God is unknowable, beyond everything, so I never really formed an image.

At the age of 26(1974) I heard the claim of someone that they had 'Knowledge of God' and could show it to anyone. No cost and no beliefs necessary. (I had just come out of a war and this was ideal).

To cut a long story short, I took up the claim and received said knowledge.
I was shown how to meditate and immediately began to have strong experiences and experienced love like I have never before. (Agape?).
I believed these experiences were God and along with many others deified the teacher.
I believed him to be the incarnation of God(for this time) and actually believed that the whole world know 'Him' by 1980.
So I stayed with this belief for 23 years until I could clearly see that this person was a sham.

I came onto the internet in 1995 when I was going tell the whole world the Truth. (Hmm sounds familiar :>))

I began to see that my experience was not unique and could relate to people who had also found 'The Lord'...in fact there were many with such certitude(although different Lords :>)).

I also met meditators who had the same experiences who were secular/atheist and I realised that what I experienced within was what I experienced within.
Just some ancient meditation techniques that had been hijacked to appear as a religion.

So with the loss of 'God in a bod' meant no God. I had no other concepts of God.

I still feel a deep love for all existence and love meditation.
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An addendum to my post #9

To cut a long story short, I took up the claim and received said knowledge.
I was shown how to meditate and immediately began to have strong experiences and experienced love like I have never before.

When I was shown this knowledge of God , I shown quotes from various scriptures of many religions/cultures.
Bear in mind, that at that time I believed that Jesus was God-incarnate for that time.

The quote that stands out to me, after reading how many people here take the Bible literally is from Matthew 6:22

"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." kjv
(That's the version I was shown).


So, I am curious to know if any of you see light when you close your eyes in meditation or prayer.
 
Craz said:
So, I am curious to know if any of you see light when you close your eyes in meditation or prayer.
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No but...
I have been experiencing an interesting effect since I have laid in recovery from my heart issues. It started (as far as I recall) with seeing a light...just around the corner, in complete darkness of my room, with eyes closed (not in conscious intentional meditation). I would turn to se it (rotate my head) and it would dissappear..only to return again when I wasn't looking. As if there was ambient light coming from somewhere to my right.

I then noticed a glow moving in front of me...again eyes closed and I reached out to point in its direction only to squish a bug crawling on my wall. (Crunch....squish...what the...lights on...WHAT?)

After that I was observing I could see my hand (not clearly) eyes closed in complete darkness...almost a shadowy (?) hazy infraredish image of my hand thru my eyelids.

I played with it a few nights as I fell asleep. Medications? Hallucinstions? Idk..the Beatles bug squish was weird...forgot about it all till just now.
 
You get bonus points for originality! I've never had this question posed to me.

The Lamp of the Body​

22 “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is [g]good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is [h]bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

How I read this is that the light within us proceeds from us as our eye is the lamp of the body. If we don't have the light within us then darkness proceeds from us. Jesus really has given us food for thought. I've never tried to read this differently so thank you.

When my grandfather was dying he said to me that he saw God in my eyes. That always stuck with me because he had severe dementia and didn't really know anyone at that point.

As far as praying the only light I see is from astigmatism lol. I do receive scriptures in prayer and the bible teaches that when we don't know what to pray for the Holy Spirit interceded and prays for us. I've had this happen many times in times of burden or despair.
 
Faithfulservant said:
You get bonus points for originality! I've never had this question posed to me.

The Lamp of the Body​

22 “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is [g]good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is [h]bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

How I read this is that the light within us proceeds from us as our eye is the lamp of the body. If we don't have the light within us then darkness proceeds from us. Jesus really has given us food for thought. I've never tried to read this differently so thank you.

When my grandfather was dying he said to me that he saw God in my eyes. That always stuck with me because he had severe dementia and didn't really know anyone at that point.

As far as praying the only light I see is from astigmatism lol. I do receive scriptures in prayer and the bible teaches that when we don't know what to pray for the Holy Spirit interceded and prays for us. I've had this happen many times in times of burden or despair.
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A nice reading. Pretty much which most of my Christian friends have said.
Sounds sensible to me.
 
wil said:
No but...
I have been experiencing an interesting effect since I have laid in recovery from my heart issues. It started (as far as I recall) with seeing a light...just around the corner, in complete darkness of my room, with eyes closed (not in conscious intentional meditation). I would turn to se it (rotate my head) and it would dissappear..only to return again when I wasn't looking. As if there was ambient light coming from somewhere to my right.

I then noticed a glow moving in front of me...again eyes closed and I reached out to point in its direction only to squish a bug crawling on my wall. (Crunch....squish...what the...lights on...WHAT?)

After that I was observing I could see my hand (not clearly) eyes closed in complete darkness...almost a shadowy (?) hazy infraredish image of my hand thru my eyelids.

I played with it a few nights as I fell asleep. Medications? Hallucinstions? Idk..the Beatles bug squish was weird...forgot about it all till just now.
Click to expand...
I love you Wil.. you made me laugh in what might not be a laughable situation.
 
wil said:
No but...
I have been experiencing an interesting effect since I have laid in recovery from my heart issues. It started (as far as I recall) with seeing a light...just around the corner, in complete darkness of my room, with eyes closed (not in conscious intentional meditation). I would turn to se it (rotate my head) and it would dissappear..only to return again when I wasn't looking. As if there was ambient light coming from somewhere to my right.

I then noticed a glow moving in front of me...again eyes closed and I reached out to point in its direction only to squish a bug crawling on my wall. (Crunch....squish...what the...lights on...WHAT?)

After that I was observing I could see my hand (not clearly) eyes closed in complete darkness...almost a shadowy (?) hazy infraredish image of my hand thru my eyelids.

I played with it a few nights as I fell asleep. Medications? Hallucinstions? Idk..the Beatles bug squish was weird...forgot about it all till just now.
Click to expand...
Gordon Bennet!!! :>)

I had similar stuff happen a couple of years ago when I was hit by a car. Lights everywhere, probably from all the morphine I was given!!!

May your recovery complete.
 
Cino said:
What about you, @talib-al-kalim ?

Will you join us in the beautiful, sublime heresy of comparing our most secret, personal idolatries?
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The Origin of the Kosmos
Starting from the scriptures (the Quran, resuming prior message)
"God made heaven and earth" + "God is One" ,
I see God as the Origin and the Destination (Alef and Taw, Alpha and Omega) of all, the principal and principle of all. Although I derived this thought from the Quran, I have found out that the idea is universal; we find it not only in the Bible but also independently in the Platonic philosophy, and, maybe even closer, in the concept of Brahman, in particular in Advaita Vedanta (Monistic Hinduism).

All good religion aims to reunite (Latin: religere) us with the One, to become "one with the One".

All aspects of the divine are part of God, but only the Oneness is God.

The Father
The Father, is an image for us humans mainly in the teachings received through Jesus. The image of the "man with a white beard", of course, is too human, but it symbolises wise teaching and guidance, mercy and loving care (see 99 Names of Allah, which are all human-scale images). This is the image in my background consciousness e.g. when I pray.

The Holy Spirit and the Word
The third aspect of God is the Good Message, the Inspiration, with the Holy Spirit, "Angels" (where the Holy Spirit mentioned in the Bible and the Quran is often identified with the angel Givril/Gabriel) "speaking to" prophets and, not the same but similar, in ourselves through inspired thought and internal vision.

@Cino : I like your formulation above.
 
Cino said:
I don't deny any God. There is no point in denying what is so utterly incongruent with cognition, perception, consciousness, or existence.

Cino said:
The thing is, this ethical dilemma is such a deeply human experience, that I think you will all agree that it is nothing like what God could be said to be like. Hence, I call myself an Atheist.
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I loved your post. What a great summary of a spiritual quest. Thank you for sharing!
You really painted a picture of your journey, experiences, and insights, for me it was like being along with you in a long wild adventure even through reading a summary in a nutshell. I think the profundity of your experience comes through.

What you described sounds to me what some describe as non-theist even more precisely than atheist. That for you it is not about denying, but about recognizing that what you encountered in your own quest was "nothing like what God could be said to be like"
(Or maybe even Ignostic...)


Terms/Labels aside though -- (they're handy but sometimes people can get caught up in them as identity and get frozen...)
I think what you shared --and what some others have shared on this forum -- here, there, and everywhere -- helps us remember that spirituality is an evolving journey in time.
 
Craz said:
I was taught that God is unknowable, beyond everything, so I never really formed an image.
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Tony Bristow-Stagg said:
There is indeed only one God, who is the source of all the Scriptures.
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wil said:
I do believe in some sort of TOE, theory of everything, some all encompassing principle which ties our physics and brain science....discovering we are all connected, all life, all matter, all thought. I believe scientists and theologians are searching for the same thing and may even find it from their differing paths...that all have part of the puzzle defining the elephant in the room. And that all of us are both right and wrong, that all of us have some truths, and some error in our beliefs which are holding us from discovery.
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I find commonality with all these remarks. The idea in Judaism as reported by Craz, that God is unknowable, and beyond everything, so thus never forming an image -- that is my favored and preferred concept of God.
I believe there is one God, though who knows whether and how many other supernatural entities there may be that have been taken for gods... I think there is one God. Another Jewish figure, Dennis Praeger (a radio host whom I used to like) described God this way once -- that he held on to belief even when doubtful as he felt he had to believe there is "a just, rational mind that governs the universe" which resonated for me - I simply agreed with him on that.
I found resonance in a term Universal Mind. The term is found in some of what might be called New Age materials who gain the idea from ancient Greek sources, Western esotericism and Eastern religious thought.
I like learning the various Hebrew names for God, and I like to think of God's action in the world as Providence, which is a term that used to be common in English but seems less common even in the speech of religious people today.
 
Something that I like to do is scour the internet for churches or groups that are Bible oriented but off the beaten path of mainstream Christianity.
I think this speaks to a wider question than my image of God, but also to what my image of a Christian world view would be if I were to embrace any kind of Christian world view.
I like to see what is being said by Christian groups that depart from mainstream orthodoxy.
Sometimes I find surviving offshoots of the Armstrong churches.
Today I encountered this https://sdanabaptist.weebly.com/ Seventh Day Anabaptists.
I appreciate Christian heterodoxy. Especially if they are somewhat similar to this group.
It is not a direct match for what is considered either right-wing Christianity today and not much like progressive liberal Christianity either, but it is not dissimilar to what my grandfather believed. (Which was the OG Armgstong church, the Worldwide Church of God)
Christadelphians would be a different example of something like this.
 
talib-al-kalim said:
All of us have an idea of God. Even a convinced atheist has an idea of what he or she is denying to exist.
I think everyone shares the idea that God exceeds our imagination. But still, we have our thoughts and imagination; be it philosophical, emotional, in prayer.
Who would like to share?
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Yeah, as an atheist, I have my idea of what the theists believe of God. I completely deny the possibility of existence of God or soul. For me, both ideas, a personal God or an impersonal God, are not sustained by evidence. Most in 'Advaita' Hinduism (non-duality, the philosophy that I follow) accept an impersonal God. I differ.
 
Aupmanyav said:
Yeah, as an atheist, I have my idea of what the theists believe of God. I completely deny the possibility of existence of God or soul. For me, both ideas, a personal God or an impersonal God, are not sustained by evidence. Most in 'Advaita' Hinduism (non-duality, the philosophy that I follow) accept an impersonal God. I differ.
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Do you have a philosophical concept for Brahman?
 
God knows the heart in inner silence, though pyramids return to dust
 
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