So locusts and famine just balance things out eh?The grasshopper story showcases cooperation, not just competition, in nature.
So locusts and famine just balance things out eh?The grasshopper story showcases cooperation, not just competition, in nature.
The interpretations that I use are found in the official Baha'i Writings of Baha’u’llah and as further explained by Abdul'baha and Shoghi Effendi.But Baha'i may interpret the writings of other religions -- especially Christianity?
Or have these interpretations of various Bible passages already been provided by the UHJ?
I would agree.Baha'u'llah: "By the revelation of these Gems of divine virtue all the names and attributes of God, such as knowledge and power, sovereignty and dominion, mercy and wisdom, glory, bounty and grace, are made manifest.” (p239)
Again, the Names of God establish the spiritual virtues from which values derive.
Right -- so I'm allowed to think my own thoughts, as long as I don't tell anybody?so we must appreciate that our interpretations are for personal growth and we should be able to keep them at a personal level, if they are the cause of division.
That is not what I said RJM. Off to work.Right -- so I'm allowed to think my own thoughts, as long as I don't tell anybody?
Really?: While I find Baha'u'llah in many respects closer to the classical systems than the author supposes, I find nothing new, unique nor revelatory in the Baha'i writings
No, not at all.Really?
That "Christ" meaning "Annointed One" or "Messiah", is not just one flesh body in one small moment of time called Jesus, that is not revelatory?
Regards Tony
Ok, this is quantum physics and relativity.
However both apply only to the ever-changing material universe (created world order) of time and space that ends in death.
The eternal dimension of Spirit surrounds and contains and permeates the temporal dimension of Nature, as a house contains a room.
The walls of the room of nature (the created universe) are walls of time and space. There are many, perhaps infinite other dimensions within the greater house of spirit.
Nature is just one of them.
My Father's house has many mansions.
In the same way that the dimension of nature is bound by time and space, the greater dimension of spirit is 'bound' by Love -- in the greater spiritual sense that all things are One, and return to the One.
The greater wheel of Spirit turns the lesser wheel of nature, but is not turned by it.
And beyond that ... who knows
IMO
I think so too, although who knows if this human incarnation in the dimension of nature is the first experience of the soul? Of course there could have been other previous experiences. And perhaps the soul can die?With regard to the soul of man. According to the Baha’i Teachings the human soul starts with the formation of the human embryo, and continues to develop and pass through endless stages of existence after its separation from the body. Its progress is thus infinite.”
-Shoghi Effendi
The house surrounds and contains and permeates the room. If the walls of the room are taken down, the house is still there?The "indwelling spirit" concept suggests the spirit resides within the body, like a tenant in a house. The room analogy places the spirit in a separate realm altogether surrounding the physical world
Us guys? I have my own beliefs. I'm lightly tethered, lolthought you guys believed in indwelling spirit?
However the human limitation is very real? Coats of skinThat's why I prefer a radio analogy. These worlds aren't necessarily separate. Separation is only imposed because of human limitations. You can't see the different radio waves, but they exist and can be picked up by a receiver. Maybe the material and spiritual are like different frequencies on a larger spectrum of reality. We can only perceive the frequency we are tuned into.
To me it's just Baha'u'llah's way of seeing. It's all open to question. It's not all that revelatory to me. It's just metaphysical wandering. I doesn't need to come down as God's inerrant word to man for the millennium to come?According to Jean-Marc Lepain, Baha'u'lllah explains in a tablet called the Lawh-i Haqqu’n-Nas "that all that exists in the world of Nasut, which He also calls the "world of limitations" ('alam-i-hudud), whatever may be its name (ism), form (rasm), appearance (surat) or characteristics (vasf), exists in the divine worlds in an appearance (shuhudi) and a manifestation (zuhuri) which is appropriate to each of these worlds. The things which exist in the spiritual worlds thus exist in these worlds with totally different characteristics from those of the world below, in such manner that no category of our understanding such as place, extent, form or time can apply to them.
What Baha'u'llah says here is very different from what Muslim philosophy used to teach, and in particular the Ishraqi or Shaykhi philosophy of his time. Ishraqi philosophy says that to everything existing in this world is attached an intelligible reality (haqa'iq) which exists in Malakut or in the World of Images or Imaginal World ['alam-i-mithal]. Thus, this world (Nasut) becomes the mirror of the other world, as in Plato's myth of the Cave. However, for Baha'u'llah it is not only the world of Malakut and the world of Nasut which are the image of each other, but a plurality of worlds which he calls divine (ilahi). In several places in this tablet he insists upon this plurality in speaking of innumerable worlds (Arabic la-tuhsa).
Death in this world is thus but the disappearance of forms and appearances. It never touches the "reality" (haqiqat) and the "essence" (dhat) of beings, for the spiritual reality (haqa'iq) of things exists in each world with a manifestation adapted to each of these worlds corresponding to degrees of different realities, which might be understood as different ontological levels."
Yes, all part of the Christian Revelation —That "Christ" meaning "Annointed One" or "Messiah", is not just one flesh body in one small moment of time called Jesus, that is not revelatory?
According to a Christian Metaphysics, the soul is created ex nihilo, according to its logoi, which, if you like, is the Divine Idea of that particular being. Thus all souls are created from nothing, but do not come as a 'surprise' to God, and the individual logoi is that which, by harmonic resonance, again if you like, the soul is drawn towards God."With regard to the soul of man. According to the Baha’i Teachings the human soul starts with the formation of the human embryo, and continues to develop and pass through endless stages of existence after its separation from the body. Its progress is thus infinite.”
Well the Holy Spirit exists before creation and the creation of the spiritual domain is 'before' the physical (although not in a temporal sense). But yes, the spirit indwells, but in a union with the soul in such a way that the soul participates, at first hand, in the life of the Spirit.Not sure about the "room within a house" analogy that emphasizes separation. It even suggests the spirit exists outside the physical entirely. I thought you guys believed in indwelling spirit?
I can go along with that. The practice of virtues 'tunes' the soul, as it were, and the spirit irradiates. The soul sees and knows as the spirit sees and knows, according to its limitations – In the Apocryphal Acts of Peter there is an extended discussion about what Peter sees when talking to the Lord (Chapter XX & XXI), and from there esoterists draw the phrase 'talem eum vidi qualem capere potui ('I saw Him as I could take Him' – according to his spiritual 'insight' or tuning – here we are talking about 'veils' or, as the Hindu traditions have it, maya – different people see different things.)What I seek is an analogy that emphasizes perception. That's why I prefer a radio analogy. These worlds aren't necessarily separate. Separation is only imposed because of human limitations. You can't see the different radio waves, but they exist and can be picked up by a receiver. Maybe the material and spiritual are like different frequencies on a larger spectrum of reality. We can only perceive the frequency we are tuned into.
Agreed. That's where the symbol comes into its own.The things which exist in the spiritual worlds thus exist in these worlds with totally different characteristics from those of the world below, in such manner that no category of our understanding such as place, extent, form or time can apply to them.
Why is Christ not the body of humanity? We are all created in that image.Yes, all part of the Christian Revelation —
"The Body of Christ is said to be of a triple kind: first, it is the Body incarnate of a Virgin, offered for us upon the altar of the Cross, raised to heaven after having conquered death, seated on the right hand of God (Corpus Natum); second, they call the Body of the Lord the promise given to the Church and which the sacerdotal power actualizes mysteriously from the bread and wine consecrated by the Holy Spirit (Corpus Eucharisticum). And thirdly the Body of Christ is the entire Church in which the elect are united like members of a single body (Corpus Mysticum). The third Body is connected to the first through the second, so much so that one does not affirm that there are three Bodies as such, but only one Body co-ordinated by the Holy Spirit, just as in the human being the soul provides life to all the parts of the body"
(Honorius of Autun (Honorius Augustodunensis) c.1080–c1151, Eucharistion, in Jean Borella, The Secret of The Christian Way, SUNY, NY, 2001, p157.)
Yes but the Christ was sinless and forgave sin. He gave his life on the cross and rose from the tomb after the 'harrowing of hell' to take His place in possession of all things of the Father. He only needed to do it once:Why is Christ not the body of humanity? We are all created in that image.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient
1 Peter 3:18-19
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:23-26
IMO physics is desperate to show that intelligent life on Earth arose by blind chance. The list of fine-tuning parameters that allow for intelligent life on Earth is so hugely stacked – one astronomical coincidence stacked upon another – that they had to come up with the anthropic principle:Some theoretical physicists have explored ideas like the multiverse, where countless universes might exist with different physical laws. It leaves open the possibility that "time and space" could exist in different forms beyond our current understanding.
And to prop-up the anthropic principle, the multiverse theory is required? Taken to its extreme the multiverse theory proposes virtually infinite (10^500+) other universes: which raises the possibility of not just one but infinite copies of myself?The 'anthropic principle' in physics says that we live in the universe that supports us, because if it was not so, we would not be around.
The Anthropic Principle also known as the "observation selection effect", is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that the range of possible observations that could be made about the universe is limited by the fact that observations could happen only in a universe capable of developing intelligent life. Proponents of the anthropic principle argue that it explains why the universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life, since if either had been different, no one would have been around to make observations. Anthropic reasoning is often used to deal with the idea that the universe seems to be finely tuned for the existence of life.
Weak anthropic principle: Our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.
Strong anthropic principle: The universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage.
Just to throw in my own twopence worth –
According to a Christian Metaphysics, the soul is created ex nihilo,