What Unity Teaches

A Cup Of Tea said:
How so? (Too short a message)
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I just ment that here in the US we're taught to work for someone else and draw a pay check, rather than being self sufficient and supporting ourselves in other ways. There is certainly nothing wrong with drawing a paycheck, but people shouldn't be taught to depend upon it. I think it would be better to teach them to be dependant on themselves instead.
 
Namaste Jesus said:
I just ment that here in the US we're taught to work for someone else and draw a pay check, rather than being self sufficient and supporting ourselves in other ways. There is certainly nothing wrong with drawing a paycheck, but people shouldn't be taught to depend upon it. I think it would be better to teach them to be dependant on themselves instead.
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Just wanted to make sure, I could have interpreted in so many ways. So you're thinking from a somewhat radical* anti capitalistic perspective?

*as in, not with the times
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
Just wanted to make sure, I could have interpreted in so many ways. So you're thinking from a somewhat radical* anti capitalistic perspective?

*as in, not with the times
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I think you may be reading more into my post than is actually there. Nothing to do one way or the other with capitalism.
 
Namaste Jesus said:
I was talking about the last part of Wil's post in regard to listening to the kids and addressing their problems before moving on with the lesson. I think too often the school system teaches our kids to memorize and except the opinion of others rather than thinking on their own.
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Ah. Thank you for the clarification. I agree. From the way schools are going about it, it seems to me that the last thing they want to do is to have kids think for themselves.

I am baffled by the school systems. In my line of work I meet a decent number of teachers, and just about every one of them seems enthusiastic about their job, and think their kids have genuine potential.

But somewhere along the way it goes all wrong. Because by the time they graduate, the typical student is barely above the level of a moron.

Somewhere during the process something is going terribly wrong.
 
GK, I believe it is the administrations, unions, budgets and parents that wear teachers down. I agree they all started with their love for children and knowledge and sharing that knowledge and wanting children to be all that they can be....the ones that stay that way have a fortitude that is stronger than the powers that surround them...and thankfully they are many. My children both public school educated, now as seniors in college...had great teachers...and one is studying to become one himself.

Back to topic, started a thread on Unity and the 12 powers of Man... http://www.interfaith.org/forum/12-powers-of-g-d-17200.html#post289983
 
wil said:
“Unity honors the many names for God, the many paths to God, the many ways to worship God; for there is only one power and presence of God and that God loves each one of us equally. It is therefore the position of The International Association of Unity Churches and Unity to urge all nations, their leaders, and their people to turn to God by whatever the name for guidance during these challenging times and pursue peace, not war, for this is what honors the God of all our faith traditions. Unity stands for peace in our lifetime.“
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What God? Too much God in here.
 
The light of God surrounds us;
The love of God enfolds us;
The power of God protects us;
The presence of God watches over us;
Wherever we are, God is!
 
Another link to books that are utilized in Unity teachings...

Charles Fillmore refused to copyright his books, despite having a publishing house that produced them. He wanted anyone to be able to copy them and use them...so finding them free on the internet is not an issue...even though they are still in print and in stores as hard copies.

Sacred Texts: Unity
 
G!d to us is principle...not some invisible sky faerie doling out plagues....not a being....not an entity that controls... more like gravity... G!d to me is the theory of everything that scientists are looking for.

I got no clue who Daltor or Ulak are....and so far no inclination to find out.
 
Off the cuff answer...I'd put being humane large portion of Christ Consciousness.... (I'd also say Buddha/Krishna Consciousness) Christ is simply the example for Christians...and not the only one.
 
Aupmanyav said:
Is 'Christ consciousness' and being humane different, seriously?
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The idea of 'Christ consciousness' is a syncretic development that caught on bigstyle in the US. Initially it was the product of German Idealist philosophy, but then as soon as it got mixed up with elements of Eastern Mysticism, you've got a quick-fix ticket!

Higher consciousness has come to infer a range of conditions from the reflexive consciousness of self, to that of a transcendental reality, or God.

It is "the part of the human being that is capable of transcending animal instincts", so in that sense there is a correspondence between 'higher consciousness' and what was traditionally called 'rational nature', this being opposed to animals who were assumed to be irrational.

The idea grew out of German Idealism, but once it entered the popular sphere, it became central to contemporary consumer spirituality.

Fichte (1762-1814) a father of German idealism, distinguished the finite or empirical ego from the pure or infinite ego. The activity of the "pure ego" can be discovered by a "higher intuition".

In 1812 Schopenhauer coined the term "the better consciousness", a consciousness that he supposed to lie beyond the experiential, and thus beyond reasons, theoretical or practical.

Ideas of "the better consciousness" stems from Fichte's "higher consciousness", and resembles Schelling's "intellectual intuition". According to Schopenhauer, his "better consciousness" differs from "intellectual intuition", since that requires intellectual development, whereas "better consciousness" was "like a flash of insight, with no connection to the understanding."

According to Schopenhauer,
The better consciousness in me lifts me into a world where there is no longer personality and causality or subject or object. My hope an my belief is that this better (supersensible and extra-temporal) consciousness will become my only one, and for that reason I hope that it is not God. But if anyone wants to use the expression God symbolically fot the better consciousness itself or for much that we are able to separate or name, so let it be, yet not among philosophers I would have thought. (Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography My emphasis)
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Schopenhauer tried to point out when happens when intellectual speculation enters the popular sphere! Superstition and sentimentalism.

Schleiermacher made a distinction between a lower (irrational or animal) and a higher (rational or human self) consciousness. For Schleirmacher, higher consciousness contains "a feeling that points to the presence of an absolute other, God, as actively independent of the self and its 'world'."

Even in Schleiermacher's theology, this consciousness is not God as such, since God would then no longer be an 'infinite infinite', but rather a 'finite infinite', in reality merely a projection of consciousness, It's what Frithjof Schuon referred to as a 'relative Absolute'.

In Schleiermacher, higher consciousness is the point of contact with God. Bunge describes it as "the essence of being human".

When this higher consciousness is present, "people are not alienated from God by their instincts".

Here's an interesting turning point. These philosophical systems still mark the distinction between God and man. The higher consciousness is still intrinsically human.

The search for a spiritual dimension of this 'higher consciousness' became the 'holy grail' of 19th century movements such as Theosophy, New Thought, Christian Science and Transcendentalism.

According to Blavatsky, the 'higher intuition' acquired by Theosophia (God-knowledge), carries the mind from the world of forms into the formless.
Theosophy ... prompted such men as Hegel, Fichte and Spinoza to take up the labors of the old Grecian philosophers and speculate upon the One Substance - the Deity, the Divine All proceeding from the Divine Wisdom - incomprehensible, unknown and unnamed. (H.P.B. What is Theosophy?
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Suddenly the philosophers were, unknown to themselves, engaged not in philosophy, but HPB's 'Theosophy'! Here we see clear evidence of the syncretic adoption of philosophical ideas and theological speculation ...

The idea of a "lower" and "higher consciousness" gained popularity in modern popular spirituality. Its pretty fundamental to New Age thinking.

Ken Wilber tries to integrate eastern and western models of "lower" and "higher consciousness". In The Spectrum of Consciousness Wilber describes consciousness as a spectrum, from ordinary awareness at one end, to a more profound awareness at higher levels. He later went on top trace a route from lower consciousness, through personal consciousness, to higher transpersonal consciousness.

In Gerald Edelman's "Theory of Consciousness", Cognitive Science asserts a distinction between 'higher' or 'secondary consciousness' and 'primary consciousness', defined as the simple awareness that includes perception and emotion. Higher consciousness 'involves the ability to be conscious of being conscious', and 'the recognition by a thinking subject of his or her own acts and affections'. Higher consciousness requires at the least semantic ability, and in its most developed form, requires 'linguistic ability ... the mastery of a whole system of symbols and a grammar'.

William James spoke of the 'New Thought' movement behind groups such as Unity:
... for the sake of having a brief designation, I will give the title of the "Mind-cure movement." There are various sects of this "New Thought," to use another of the names by which it calls itself; but their agreements are so profound that their differences may be neglected for my present purpose, and I will treat the movement, without apology, as if it were a simple thing.

It is an optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative and a practical side. In its gradual development during the last quarter of a century, it has taken up into itself a number of contributory elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power. It has reached the stage, for example, when the demand for its literature is great enough for insincere stuff, mechanically produced for the market, to be to a certain extent supplied by publishers – a phenomenon never observed, I imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest insecure beginnings.

One of the doctrinal sources of Mind-cure is the four Gospels; another is Emersonianism or New England transcendentalism; another is Berkeleyan idealism; another is spiritism, with its messages of "law" and "progress" and "development"; another the optimistic popular science evolutionism of which I have recently spoken; and, finally, Hinduism has contributed a strain. But the most characteristic feature of the mind-cure movement is an inspiration much more direct. The leaders in this faith have had an intuitive belief in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary states of mind. Their belief has in a general way been corroborated by the practical experience of their disciples; and this experience forms to-day a mass imposing in amount. (The Varieties of Religious Experience)
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It was inevitable that when 'New Thought' began to impress itself in the American public domain, that badging it 'Christian' as opposed to atheist would boost its commercial possibility.

But then 'the mind of Christ' needed to be someone in our possession, it had to be attainablke by effort, according to the idealism of 'the American Dream', rather than something extrinsic to us and a gift of grace ... as is taught by traditional orthodoxy East and West.

So science enters the popular domain, and becomes subject to sentimentalism and pseudo-scientific, somewhat superstitious, notions.

(The same kind of nonsense that is spouted in some commentaries on Quantum Physics today ... What The Bleep? anyone :rolleyes: )

New Thought as a movement is generally attributed to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. He suffered greatly from 'consumption' in his youth, and he began experimenting with his own ideas for a cure, especially the mind's ability to heal the body. Such cures were to become foundational to New Thought movements. He because interested in and was trained and practiced as a mesmerist.

Warren Felt Evans, an author, sought healing from Quimby and set up his own 'mental medicine' office in New Hampshire.

Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, was afflicted by a nervous disposition, possibly an hysterical response to her father's ill-treatment. She believed illness was an illusion that could be overcome by prayer, and that she had discovered the 'secret' of Jesus' healing powers.

Charles and Myrtle Fillmore attended New Thought classes. Myrtle subsequently recovered from 'chronic tuberculosis' and attributed her recovery to her use of prayer and other methods learned in these classes. Charles began to heal from a debilitating childhood accident, which he too attributed to following this philosophy.

Nona Lovell Brooks, a co-founder of the Church of Divine Science was cured of a 'persistent throat infection' following NT methodology; Malinda Cramer, another co-founder, was cured of 'persistent health problems' that rendered her an invalid.

In all this we cannot ignore the 'prosperity gospel' of America, that good health, material wealth, etc., is a gift of God and that religion is a product, much like anything else in the marketplace ... it should be noted that the various movements of New Thought were not the result of the conflict of ideas, they all preached roughly the same message, but rather the carving out of a niche in the commercial marketplace that has led America to its tradition of itinerant preachers, 'power of the mind', TV evangelism et al.

'Christ Consciousness' as such then has no foundation in Christian Scripture or Tradition, rather it's a projection of a humanist philosophy. No doubt some might cite 1 Corinthians 2:16: "we have the mind of Christ", but, as ever, that really plucks a line of scripture out of a context which does not endorse the meaning people choose to read onto it.

I rather think the whole thing is an attempt to open up the Christian consumer market to New Thought ideas which, examined even from this near hindsight, can be seen to be a rather naive and sentimental psychologisms.

Remember this was a time when mesmerism, scientism, spiritism was all the rage.

The crowning achievement of post-war (WWII) thinking was to render the psychological distinctions, so carefully highlighted by philosophy, totally redundant, by simply conflating Christ with the Ego, thus allowing one to assert that we are divine by nature, which is sure to shift books and playing to everyone's idea of self-determination and self-realisation.

Whilst Wil tries to conflate New Thought 'Christ consciousness' with Buddha and Krishna consciousness, it should be noted that this simply ignores the distinctions between the traditions, and the glaring discrepancies between New Thought which often states as its goals the very things that the Traditions regard as an impediment to Enlightenment.
 
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It could be called enlightenment, or just consciousness....

We start out as unconsciously unconscious, move onto consciously unconscious, becoming aware of how our thoughts and actions affect our reality. Move onto consciously conscious, releasing blame and accepting responsibility for what happens in your life. and finally unconsciously conscious...operating at a level where your knee jerk reaction is love, not caring about where your food will come from or what to wear, live...life happens...

We call it Christ Consciousness as a Christian as he achieved it... Paul asked us to put the mind of Christ in our mind...same thing.

Nice recap of the New Thought Movement, seems you only missed a couple major players...Ernest Holmes and Emilie Cady
 
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