TEN COMMANDMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (part 2), The Meeting Point of Evolution and Revelation Options

[E.Raja]

2. Part B : The Divine Principle of Uncertainty:[size=5]

The close linkage between matter and consciousness, the former giving birth to the latter and the latter rising to a level of sensing and modifying the former, out-smarting the parent, so to speak, raises an age-old, unanswered question. If matter gets modified through a simple intelligence, could there be a super intelligence responsible for the phenomenon of matter itself. The day organisms outsmarted physical conditions, starting with the control of their own body, the question of the Primordial Controller had popped up on the scene.

But we need to clarify in the first place what we mean by PRIMORDIAL OR SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS and for this, our knowledge of the evolutionary consciousness, is the only source of starting point. As per the first law listed above, any consciousness is an internal experience, a kind of light that recognizes the content within itself and hence the PRIMORDIAL Consciousness ought to be of same nature, in order to qualify as consciousness to begin with. And this makes sense after all, for, most likely, its due to this internal character, we haven’t stumbled upon it empirically till date.

An evolutionary consciousness builds itself assiduously through billions and billions of momentary impressions. Even after accumulating a complex body of knowledge or memory, it can only recall or work on its previous foundation moment by moment through single shots of impressions all over again. In other words, our consciousness is a product of TIME, SPACE AND MATTER and it continues to operate along the very same parameters, although transcending them in many ways as well. In contrast, the Primordial Consciousness needs to be that which recognizes EVERYTHING, the whole of TIME in fact in every INSTANCE OF TIME. What it is beyond TIME, we would never be able to know. Secondly, even as our limited intelligence creatively modifies matter, the supreme one ought to be that which has no need of matter for its own sustenance and yet creates the whole of matter and all its evolution.

Starting off with such a definition of Super Consciousness, are there means of ascertaining Its existence and nature, through the dialectics of our own world. We know very well the inexhaustible facets of intelligence and planning manifested in our universe. But none of it can offer a satisfying proof of the existence of Super Intelligence. We do not look for any such proof either, for we have defined this possibility as an internal experience that exists on its own right, without requiring a physical reality for its sustenance or work of creation.

Turning to our own daily life, we hardly raise the issue of the existence of an evolutionary consciousness, living next to us. The simple reason being it keeps communicating to the world on a physical plane. A consciousness, that we relate to on earth, reveals the richness of its thought, intention and emotion apart from the physical gestures and manipulations it repeatedly exhibits. In other words, every developed consciousness compulsively communicates and this richness acts as the essential foundation to learn of its presence and nature and to strike a meaningful relation with it.

Suppose this factor had been proved with God, the question of His existence would be a superfluous one as well. Individuals might make varying claims of Divinity in their life, His intimate communication and relationship with them. This might even be highly significant to him or her. But it can hardly serve as a proof for the world.

Are there ways in which the pure consciousness has attempted to relate to this world in more generic terms, that we might take them as objective evidence for all. Supposing It possesses the skills of creating matter, or modifying the properties of matter independent of natural laws, do we have evidence of this in our history? Going a step further, we can also inquire if It’s intelligent enough, or at least desirous enough to communicate Its ideas to human beings. Does history reveal anything of this possibility?

These are indispensable questions to learn of the presence and nature of the Super Consciousness. Besides, they are the only means of proof as well. But these very questions lead us to an intractable dilemma of another order. The more God intervenes in Evolution, the less will it evolve of its own dynamism. An intervening God simply strikes at the root of evolution. Worse still, in the case of revelation of ideas to human beings. The more truth He communicates, the less would they discover for themselves.

All basic under-currents of evolution - independence, exercise of inner nature, self-growth & self-achievement - would be seriously jeopardized by a pro-active Lord who perhaps intended and created these very qualities for evolution. Imagine God dictating scientific truths through the prophets of early centuries. In a simple stroke, all further human inquiry could have been nipped.

Knowledge as we know is a process of growth. One discovery leads to another, keeps growing upon its previous stock, becomes a heritage of experts, produces technological advancements, mingles into people’s lives and eventually becomes an indispensable part of society. Such a process needs to be the same even in the case of our knowledge of Ultimate, or the knowledge of Truth. A relationship based on a reliable discovery of God and the fruits of such relationship are indispensable evolutionary need, so to speak. Suppose revelation interfered too much with this dynamism, a legitimate progress in this sphere gets obliterated. The human initiative, discovery and owning of knowledge will never happen in the way it does in every other sphere. That’s a serious issue undoubtedly.

An intervening God spoils Evolution; but a silent God makes His own proof and relationship impossible. Given that He exists and He prefers to keep mum, our central question regarding the Prime Mover of Evolution would be unanswered forever. In a way, the ultimate goal of evolution might remain unfulfilled, as well. The believer likes to imagine perhaps that the goal of evolution has to do with creatures recognizing the creator, relating with Him and acquiring the skills of creation. Most reasonable aspiration, in his standpoint. A silent God shuts the door against any of these likely goals for evolution.

Everything taken together presents a circle of inescapable contradictions and impossibilities. But God, being God, ought to know better and He could still have worked a way out of the impasse. Our inquiry needs to be directed to look for such evidence too.

Religions do have a wealth of material, claiming to be of God’s revelation and deeds. But together they present such a mess, conflicting with each other, propagating ideas that are contradictory to science, at times to ethics and holding an eschatology that appears disconnected with the evolutionary nature of the world. Had there been a consistent and redeeming revelation, a redemption which the revelation seems to voluntarily put forward, we would not still be posing the A, B, C questions on God. Just as we take other human beings for granted, we could have presumed His presence and magnificence for sure.

Should we therefore discard all claims of revelation for the extent of inconsistency they offer? Was it really the Super Consciousness that made such interventions or do they originate at the tricky will of human beings themselves? That’s perhaps an old question. Our theory here begs an entirely new supposition. Was this mess of revelation, possibly, a trick of the Super Consciousness, in order to get out of the dilemma It faced between evolution and revelation?

Did He reveal and yet not reveal to make man the real discoverer? Was there a method of mixing up wisdom and stupidity; light and darkness; scattering traces of truth here and there, splitting it across different traditions, hiding behind possibilities of interpretations, misguiding generations for a while and waiting patiently until the evolving mind works out a scientific basis to recognize Him? A deep reading of the scriptures astonishingly indicates such an intriguing design.

Think of the timing, when major revelations seem to have taken place. The world of humans was still confined to its neighborhood of states and kingdoms. Varying cultures thrived at once in absolute ignorance of one another. Remarkable scientific discoveries were yet to happen. But philosophical inquiries and human aspirations had sufficiently opened up. What better period to go down and initiate the game of understanding and misunderstanding, nectar and poison, and leave a new puzzle altogether that can be resolved by human enquiry later. Possibly God spoke and manifested His power; but He did it in such a manner that the human challenge was hiked rather than reduced.

In such a plot, the question of God’s existence could be re-phrased in this manner. In case revelations of different religions together make sense under the compulsions and subtlety of DIVINE DILEMMA and in case they are intelligible and compatible to the evolutionary law of consciousness, a proof of God’s own communication and nature may be ascertained to the satisfaction of all enquiring spirits.

The scope of this paper is certainly not a research of all scriptures under this new perspective. However the major concepts of the lasting traditions of religions may be synthesized and understood in the light of yet another evolutionary law.

2.1 LAW 8: Dialectics of Divine Dilemma : Greater the demonstration of god’s power and revelation in a religious system, greater the symbolism, originally leading to misconception and distortion of truth.
Seen from the other end of the spectrum: Greater the purity of human effort in a religious system, greater the possibility of truth that originally falls short of divine manifestation.[size=2]

Towards the end of part A, we saw how Buddhism and Upanishads are very close to a scientific understanding of awareness. How the capacity of consciousness to consider the whole of reality as the self is a possible evolutionary goal.

Buddhism was purely analytical on the nature of mind and made it clear that there are only momentary impressions. To them, no soul exists to keep worrying about. Buddha’s advice was one of middle path; to take life at its own stride till nirvana, total liberation, is achieved. He represented the genuine enquiry of human thought and taught the disciples not to accept anything merely because a tradition does. Preaching against the powerful concept of Atman, doing the rounds in his time, Buddha brushed aside even the question of God that hardly seemed urgent to him. Later traditions took this to the logical extent of denying Brahman and declaring that the world moves on its own series of cause and effect. Both at the origin of human consciousness and its very end, namely death, we face nothingness as the undeniable truth and hence Buddhism will never lose its relevance for all ages to come.

However, evolution is also one of building greater complexity, starting from transient impressions and hence projecting the identity of self into all of reality as expounded by Upanishads is equally legitimate. Consciousness has already made a projection of self, upon the net-work of the body and all of individuality. Such a process can rightly be extended to other realities possibly through meditation techniques to begin with.

Suppose we satisfy ourselves of God’s existence, we can also take Him/Her as our own self, at least when time permits & situation warrants. Consciousness definitely works through prioritizing various stimuli at various moments and hence ‘mahavakyas’1 such as ‘TAT TVAM ASI’ - Thou Art That (Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7) or ‘AHAM BRAHMASMI’ - I am Brahman (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10) can easily be cultivated at specific contexts. This never implies that I need to be aware of godliness all the time or that I can’t focus on the difference between God and me, whenever needed. Consciousness is set to grow towards greater complexity and there’s sufficient scope in it for all kinds of reasonable fields of awareness. The highest statements of Upanishads are in perfect conformity with the evolutionary law of consciousness. Only a true Buddhist, capable of a proper analysis of self and a sensible common man acknowledging the obvious difference between one consciousness and the other can also cultivate a world-soul within himself / herself.
Both Buddhism and Upanishads clearly represent the analytical and synthetic character of consciousness and the evolution of human thought owes a lot to these two magnificent methods. However, teachings on the miraculous power of faith are non-existent in such philosophy and they do not offer convincing proof of God inter-acting with world out of His free will. Upanishads is, of course, regarded as revelation; that its verses were heard by the early sages; not invented by any one. But it stops there. The beauty of God communicating with people under many forms of inter-action or displaying His works of power is conspicuously absent.

Hinduism presents lots of avatars of Vishnu, lots of interventions of Shiva in the life of His devotees and lots of other gods as well. The avatars basically arose to fulfill specific missions and they emerged victorious against personified forms of evil. All these directly relate to God’s initiative and concern through epic encounters.

But there’s no universal claim of redemption or requirement of obedience to one specific way of life. The dispersion and plurality might imply a weak form of revelation, but it also shielded Hinduism from a blind obedience to God’s word or a literal understanding of it. The mythology in itself included elements of competition and animosity between gods, hiking the need for interpretation. Every god or goddess claimed superiority over the other and they also ended up in polygamy, begetting of children, each family member becoming an additional god in his/her own right.

Despite excellent moments of god intervening into the world and redeeming human beings from specific contexts of helplessness, Hindu revelation basically included the unacceptable positions of infighting and anthropomorphism, inducing human beings not to be stuck at these levels of stories or past interventions but to look for their hidden significance. Less the coherence of revelation, less the possibility of blind faith or fundamentalism. Until this day, Hinduism is known for its ability to accept plurality and it includes a spectacular range of societal as well as individualistic forms of worship. It hardly ever metamorphosed into a proselytizing culture

The multiple avatars of Hinduism signify the presence of the Ultimate in all of evolution, Its capacity and concern to intervene in specific moments and relate to human beings wherever needed. They also necessitate the obvious conclusion that the formless uniqueness of God alone would be bereft of all anthropomorphic limitations and scandals.

Mahabharata went a step further and offered a holistic scripture called Bhagavad Gita, under a spell-binding form of revelation. The text uniquely combined various stages of spirituality such as the performance of duty in detachment, the Upanishadic knowledge of expanding the identity of self and the Bhakti of surrendering to God as a devotee. A vivid representation of a highly evolved, multi-faceted consciousness, no doubt. Unlike other Hindu mythology, Gita embarked on universal statements such as the eternal program of Krishna to take avataar whenever injustice abounds on earth and the assurance that the homage paid to other gods ultimately reaches Him alone. A higher grade of revelation, so to speak.
But revelation itself is set against an element of awkwardness here. Arjuna is hesitant to go ahead with the war that would result in the killing of relatives and clans and Lord Krishna not only unfolds a lengthy spiritual text on the battlegrounds, He hides behind a convenient theory of the imperishability of souls to goad the warrior into performing the duty of killing. This apparently creates the context of the revelation.

The teaching of Gita that souls neither originate nor die will definitely be at loggerheads with the evolutionary law of consciousness. Conquering death as a final goal of evolution or the human mind linking up with the permanent mind of God may be symbolically represented by such concepts. But literally speaking, revelation here lent itself to a questionable theory of steadfast killing on the façade of the imperishability of souls. The awkwardness of the message in itself suggested the need for creative interpretations. We know that Mahabharata has evoked individual and generic interpretations at many levels and it remains a veritable treasure of human heritage for all ages.

The command of Lord Krishna did not have a simplistic impact on the life of His devotees. None ever understood the argument literally and felt encouraged to kill people, just because Gita says that souls are not being killed.

Literal understanding of the concept of soul and its resurrection on the last day is a much more serious affair in the ‘revealed’ religions of Christianity and Islam and they present more formidable a challenge to the laws of nature. We know that the evolutionary world undergoes crucial stages of extinction and survival. Scriptures could very well point to some extra-ordinary growth level within societal and human consciousness at a specific time of the future. But a possibility of a judgment day, where God, Jesus, Prophet Mohamed and all saints of the past appear on clouds, angels trumpeting and all the dead rising to hear final verdict is totally unacceptable to science. Hence we need to verify the origin of such concepts, the way they developed into a mystifying coherent system appealing to large sections of people and see what deeper meaning, if any, they hide within themselves.

Consider the creation account of the Bible, which in fact lays the foundation for the concept of ever-lasting life, through images of the fruit of knowledge and the fruit of eternity. Read without the bias of later developments, the story of Adam and Eve appears as a coherent, naive solution for the deepest questions of people in those days. Some of these questions are pertinent even now and they can be listed one by one along with the ‘magical’ answer the creation account provides.

Q : How do human beings possess a high degree of knowledge to discriminate good and evil, unlike animals and birds?
Ans: The primordial man and woman ate of the fruit of knowledge in the garden of Eden.

Q : Why human beings are entitled to death along with other creatures, despite their remarkable knowledge and a highly developed sense of self?
Ans: The primordial parents were driven out of the Garden possessing the fruit of eternal life.

Q : Why does woman undergo labor pains much more than other living creatures?
Ans: The Mother of all disobeyed God at Eden.

Q : Why is woman subjected to the rule of man?
Ans: Woman was the first to be deceived and she tempted man into disobedience.

Q : Why man had to sweat it out on the land?
Ans: Land has been cursed for the fall of man.

Q : Why there’s enmity between snakes and human beings?
Ans: Snakes are under a curse, for deceiving the first woman.

To present such simple answers in a convincing, coherent manner, the story even puts God in poor light. He forbad the fruit of knowledge for human beings under fears of death, a quality none would accept as Godly. Later, when Adam and Eve disobeyed His command, He quickly drove them out thinking that they would eat from the tree of life and covet eternity. A portrayal of God, who is petty-minded; in fact, a villainous monster to deny the deep-most aspiration of human being. The purpose of the story evidently is an explanation for the predicament of man, woman and nature and not so much the truth about God. In addition, it was meant to drive fear in human beings to obey the law of God – a blind and crude form of obedience.

The other creation account, namely Yahweh commanding everything into existence through the days of the week can also be read as a simple explanation for the universe based on the knowledge available those days. Many of their assumptions can be shown to be contradictory and illogical, against the well-grown science of today. Arranging the creation account in such fashion, that God took rest on the last day of the week is in itself a betrayal of the compulsions to force the law of Sabbath upon people.
These two creation accounts may be of human origin or of revelation, we don’t know. But the whole lot of later revelation, including the central question of redemption offered by Jesus is squarely built on such accounts and that raises perplexing questions of their own.

Jesus Christ was the new Adam and he was God, incarnate to redeem human being, a sinful inheritor of Adam. The Galilean came to conquer death and share the unique victory with other human beings – or at least grant eternal life for those who believe in him. Out of the disobedience of one man, death and sin entered and out of the obedience of one man, death and sin were conquered.

What does all this mean to humanity? If the starting point is completely unacceptable to science, how can the redemption built on it be true? Even after granting that redemption is not necessarily connected to the typology of Adam, how would the evolutionary law understand the concept of resurrection and the judgment day?

We know that scientists attempt to prolong human life, by arresting the process of ageing etc. No researcher would ever want to experiment raising a dead man, before exhausting all possibilities of prolonging the existing life. A dead person simply means the role of the human being is closed and a resurrection that follows warrants a total intervention of God. These are absolutely contradictory to the basic spirit of evolution and any ideology of cent percent intervention of God has been repeatedly proved wrong through our past discoveries. Even in the case of miracles, the scriptures talk of the complementary role of a believing mind. Hence some kind of continuity of existing life based on a powerfully developed rational faith, may find some compatibility with evolution, but certainly not resurrection and the scene of Final Judgment.

Had Jesus persisted to live in human form and claimed victory over crucifixion throughout the A.D., lot of things would be different. Primarily, Christianity would not struggle presenting him as the savior of the world and the conqueror of death. But he disappeared yet again, even as every human being disappears through death. Was this resurrection therefore a symbolic representation of a future stage of evolution, and nothing more? Given the extra-ordinary wonders of universe and the unlimited potentials of human consciousness, nothing would be too tall an expectation.

The death of Jesus definitely signifies the sense of detachment, possible to achieve through an analysis of the momentary impressions of consciousness. His resurrection, on the other hand, could imply the growth of a still more complex consciousness with the projection of self into Totality. A continuous training of detachment at every junction of life coupled with the creation of new psychological and divine energy could be a life-term engagement for people. Any extension of life along these lines will certainly be meaningful to evolution.

But the way redemption is being propagated in Christianity as a matter of faith in Jesus and a reward of heaven on the final day seems as faulty as the narration of creation. The gratuitous acts of miracles displayed in the Nazarene, including his resurrection are certainly some of the highest moments of Divine Power, but the price we are to pay is an in-built deception, difficult to extricate ourselves from.

Resurrection of body and soul is clearly a deep-most aspiration of every human being and revelation seems to have played upon this desire of ours. Raising of all the dead on the final day, in order to give them a fresh verdict clearly indicates an incapacity of God to include the fruit of every action within the action itself, or the fruit of a righteous life within the course of life. In our world, every effect is a natural development of a cause and therefore even the highest ideals of an enduring life needs to be an accomplishment of the living and not of the dead. Jesus himself was too anachronistic to live up to this truth. His resurrection and second disappearance are nothing more than parables. It was a dramatic display of God’s power that tricked us dramatically too. A trick necessary to guide evolution and yet guide it not. An additional task of critical thinking and striving towards the highest ideal, taking the events of gospel as a pictorial model has been reserved for us. We know how significant goal-setting is for any psychological achievement. Without the vision of goal, we would never be there. Inching towards it is an impossibility. God needed to set the highest goal of evolution, in the metaphor of Christs’ resurrection or the portrayal of heaven and it’s up to mankind to take the challenge or not. Lord God didn’t bother to reveal too many truths to people. He was content to point towards the goal. Even here He tricked us through symbolism.

Nothing unusual for God. He presented the Law through Moses in the midst of another set of ‘historic’ miracles. A millennium later, He sent Jesus Christ, whose mission seemed primarily to expose the literal understanding cropped up around Law. Jesus was killed for this and now his own story needs to be liberated from a literal understanding of death and resurrection. The preacher of parables has turned out to be a parable for mankind. Neither Adam disobeyed God in eating the fruit of knowledge, nor Christ ensured the fruit of life through his obedience on cross. Both the events are metaphoric, even if one was mythological and the other historical.

The blood of Jesus as the price of redemption or of forgiveness of sins is yet another case of tempting deceit. In various traditions of religions, human beings offered animal sacrifices to appease the ‘anger of God’. None ever questioned in those days if God was truly angry or if the sacrifice produced any fruits. But the redemption of Jesus was neatly portrayed as the culmination of the earlier irrational practice. His blood was equated to the price of world sins. Some even imagined that blood literally washed sins.

We know that forgiveness is an act of consciousness and it is said to be total or unconditional when it doesn’t require the measure of pay back, rectification, or punishment. It’s always granted with hope that the mistake is not repeated in future and any one capable of receiving forgiveness is also capable of understanding this desire of the forgiver.

Suppose God wants to absolve human beings and grant to them some of His best gifts, He needs neither a sacrifice nor the blood of any exalted leader. If obedience of one man cheered Him to an extent of granting gifts to all human beings, He would still be accused of capriciousness or arbitrariness. There’s no linkage of cause and effect between the death & obedience of Jesus and the salvation of the world. The entire melodrama of the crucifixion granting forgiveness or eternal life might be appealing to human imagination, but the argument simply casts aspersions on the unconditional gifts of God. A ritual of olden days is exploited to showcase an empty redemption. Blood hardly ever washed sins. The creator posing as the creature in order to atone for sins is still burdened with the concept of atonement and this can never amount to full understanding and forgiveness.

Take the claim of incarnation. Once we declare that the whole of evolution is a display of God’s power, there’s no need of Him specifically to rectify it or correct its course ever after. In any case, no rectification or correction of course seems to have occurred through Jesus Christ. Such arguments can only undermine the inherent capacity of evolution. The laws of consciousness on their own can explain a stage, where humans and the Divine equally reach out to each other and the union of minds occurs.

But the drama of God suddenly turning into an evolving consciousness, maintaining two identities at once is totally untenable for all norms of science. You cannot know everything and yet grow up in knowledge. One cannot act out throughout his life, hiding his power and wisdom and mimicking the role of a lower being. Either you have a fuller knowledge or a lower one. It’s impossible to mix up the two.

Jesus possibly had an experience of close intimacy with God and considered Him as his Father. He could have even felt that he comes directly from God leading to fantastic claims of divinity, merely because others in his milieu had failed to arrive at similar conclusions on a rational basis. In all likelihood, it appears God intervened gratuitously to shape the mind of Jesus, his powerful deeds and words two millennia ago. But none of this ever proves that Jesus was God incarnate in a way Evolution is not; in a way other human beings aren’t. Not even a miracle of virgin birth would indicate such a possibility. Once an exceptional fertilization happened, it was, most reasonably, subjected to the laws of evolution. The fetus within Mary wasn’t acting like the Supreme. It simply grew stage by stage.

The whole concept of incarnation is indicative of the fact that the Supreme Consciousness would mingle with the evolutionary world one day in a mutually respectable manner. But you cannot make one man God and all the rest scoundrels. The life of Jesus displayed many moments of God’s infinite power, but taken as a whole, his was a life of exalted prophecy and nothing more – a prophecy regarding the highest ideals of mankind. To balance the high tone of Divinity in Jesus, the drama had to be clothed in an extra-ordinary form of deceit as well.

Despite primary illusions, the universality of a redeemer, as preached by Christianity could still be true in a totally different perspective. In our evolving world, it’s always an individual who comes up with a challenging discovery of truth and it later becomes the heritage of the world. A leader inspires his/her followers to cultivate a package of values, he himself molded within his specific life-context. Such a pattern may be required even more compulsorily, in the case of a leader who works out a higher level of consciousness, before communicating it to others. He could also be the one who shows the way to a mature relationship with God and possibly to a just and happy society. But no redeemer would ever take a pinch away from the glory and responsibility of other human beings.

The tie-up between a redeemer and the redeemed is best understood through the compulsions of yet another Divine Principle of Uncertainty. The redeemer needs to be a singular representative of a singular God, perfecting the evolutionary role of scientists and leaders. Yet he would be capable of very little redemption, if humanity is to assume its own total responsibility. In fact, the word ‘redeem’ is an anathema for evolution and human psychology. None can redeem others. Each one needs to grow into his/her maturity. With all these requirements and conditions, the best possibility of a redeemer is a passive discoverer and a despicable guide. More the glory showered upon him, less the scope for followers to work out their own knowledge and accountability.

In an evolving world, the true representative of God would combine elements of glory and repulsion in such extreme terms that recognizing him would be a matter of science and reason rather than power and appeal. The guide himself could be subjected to all kinds of illness and limitations that he steadily converts as opportunities to develop a rational faith – a faith made of 100 per cent human effort and 100 per cent divine power.

This is possibly the hidden meaning of the suffering servant of Yahweh portrayed in Isaiah 52 & 53. Such verses refer to Jesus of Nazareth briefly but assume their full significance for a person of later days.

‘by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many’ (Isaiah 53: 11)

‘See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him—his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness— so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand’. (Isaiah 52: 13-15)

‘He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.’ ( Isaiah 53: 2b - 4 )

Historical Jesus, a crowd-puller from day one of profession would hardly fit into many of these dialectics. His share of divinity has been played out in the New Testament to such extreme, one would hardly think of him as the servant of Yahweh. In fact a redeemer reconcilable to the spirit of evolution needs to be much more soft-spoken than the person of Jesus.

‘Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope.’ (Isaiah 42 : 1-4 )

However, the struggles of Jesus against the literal understanding of the Law of Moses will definitely carry a direct symbolism to a full-fledged liberation the world continues to crave for.

The challenge of shaping up a new consciousness and working out the right balance between God’s gratuitous power and the role of human intellect (ability to see the unseen) will be as much to the leader as to all human beings. Hardly would God intervene, before all aspects of a new consciousness is understood by people.

The miracles of Jesus or any other saint until now are pure forms of Divine initiative and they could not spell out the role of a believing mind in all its significance. It wasn’t a natural accomplishment for Jesus, explainable under the evolutionary law of consciousness. He didn’t seem to sweat it out, like Lord Buddha for example, to attain enlightenment after struggles of search. The Holy Quron, in fact, alludes to the making of Jesus along the lines of the first man.

‘The similitude of Jesus before Allah is as that of Adam; He created him from dust, then said to him: "Be". And he was.’ (Holy Quron 3:59)

The analysis has already led us into the subject matter of Koran. Whatever it speaks of Jesus is often literally true. The holy text is a legitimate correction to the gospel of Jesus. But designing a strict code of life on the deserts of Arabia, in lines similar to the Law of Moses renews the glorious trap of blind obedience to revelation all over again. Jesus was precisely fighting against a straightjacket concept of law and hence Gospel and Koran mutually display the much-needed correction to each other.

In chapter after chapter Holy Koran talks of the Judgment Day and we have already shown this could never be compatible with the evolving world. Symbolic meaning of a New Era in evolution is certainly possible and hence the word of God will take its validity undoubtedly. The book also warns against any equation with God. This is of course a common sense to begin with: but it hardly explains all facets of complexity existing in reality and the corresponding equations possible for human consciousness. The followers of Holy Koran might find it a stumbling block to appreciate evolutionary laws of consciousness and all its creative powers. The deceptive tone of dictation to cultivate blind obedience to a strict code of life presents a formidable difficulty in Koran – a price one pays for an exalted degree of revelation.

That the word of God takes a new level of meaning in critical junctures of history has been sufficiently indicated within scriptures themselves.

‘None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: Knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?’ (Holy Quron 2:106 )

‘He it is Who has sent down to thee the Book: In it are verses basic or fundamental (of established meaning); they are the foundation of the Book: others are allegorical. But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is allegorical, seeking discord, and searching for its hidden meanings, but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah.’ (Holy Quron 3:7)

‘I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.

For I knew how stubborn you were; the sinews of your neck were iron, your forehead was bronze. Therefore I told you these things long ago; before they happened I announced them to you so that you could not say, ‘My idols did them; my wooden image and metal god ordained them.’ You have heard these things; look at them all. Will you not admit them? “From now on I will tell you of new things, of hidden things unknown to you. They are created now, and not long ago; you have not heard of them before today. So you cannot say, ‘Yes, I knew of them.’ You have neither heard nor understood; from of old your ear has not been open.

Well do I know how treacherous you are; you were called a rebel from birth.' (Isaiah 48 : 3-8)

‘Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father.’ (John 16: 25)

One can read clearly in the above verses, the compulsions of God to reveal His fore-knowledge and Lordship and yet reveal nothing until evolution itself matures.

2.2 Consummation:[size=3]

Seen from the perspective of the Divine Principle of Uncertainty, the Super Consciousness has performed a superb job of shaping up specific schools of thought, specific modes of life & worship, for a definite period of history and allowing them to disintegrate at right moment to free up space for genuine human evolution. But the word of God attains its validity in a radically new manner. No religion can retain a superiority complex in this new spectrum of colors. The human efforts of Religion have their reward of Truth and the divine initiatives of Religion stand for Divinity itself – revealing God’s presence and wisdom at once. No longer can we complain of different voices speaking through different scriptures. All bear testimony to a Unitary God and His/Her Unified plan, in perfect accordance with the spirit of evolution.

Holy texts are to be understood not merely by a contextual perspective but also through the divine principle of uncertainty. The compulsion of God to reveal and not to reveal in order to make humans mature and responsible is a running theme of all revelation. Under this indispensable new perspective, we would quickly discriminate the good and the evil embedded in religion.

The Lord of evolution has played a ‘diabolic’ game to fulfill the laws of evolution, as such. HE/SHE knew that human brain is capable of seeing through this game one day. And whoever finds the communication of God sensible and wise enough, can happily take for granted His/Her existence, supremacy and intentions for evolution. The Lord God has spoken and He/She has spoken it meaningfully.

Not that this is the only proof of God, available for us. Whatever wisdom and gaps of explanation that continue to persist in our Universe certainly point towards the Higher Reality. In fact the whole of Nature sings of Him/Her. Miracles and revelation serve only as a confirmation to start a meaningful relationship with the Divine. Every personal or social experience of God, unrecorded or unshared perhaps, can also deepen our conviction in this regard. The burden of visualizing the unseen God, projecting unto Him/Her the right type of Godly attributes will continue to be a challenge for human consciousness, constructed primarily on its five senses. But the subtleness of a Reality doesn’t ever imply incompatibility with science or reason.
Scientific discoveries are generally followed by technological advancements. For the theory of consciousness, certitude of God’s existence creates its own tasks and results. The process of self-extension now requires to be exalted to a level of identification with the Supreme, the origin and goal of all evolution. To think of something as myself for a specific reason and to deny this identity for yet another reason are legitimate acts of one and the same consciousness. Both are works of mind and the alertness to this capacity is clearly the tool that deepens the skill as such. An endless CREATIVE SELF can be worked out, in perfect co-ordination with the NATURAL EGO, already existing within us.

The sway of nerves and the intimacy of the individualistic self have forcefully created their own ego and this can never be under-valued or dispensed with. But knowing its limitations, illusions and pitfalls, human beings have also strived to get beyond it, to be free for new forms of energy, happiness, interests and enlargements. The external object and organism might be loosely tied to our consciousness and yet their sway on us is considerable. Creating a sense of self around this concrete reality will be in harmony with the highest ideals and norms of society upheld in history.

Compared to the third degree abstraction of the unseen God, the immediate world and society will definitely be easier for the practice of self-identification. But the supremacy, eternity, unlimited power & love of God will also exert an unflinching appeal to the evolving mind, despite all Its inaccessibility on the physical plane.
More intimate a reality to a consciousness, more possibility of a natural ego built around it, finally leading to illusion and death due to its own blind attachments. Seen from the other end, more abstract a reality to a consciousness, more difficult the process of sensing and self-identification yielding spontaneous emotions and commitments. But this certainly involves more substantial truth, liberation and happiness giving rise to an ever-lasting life. Given such compulsions, all major traditions and religions would be required as complementary aspects to shape up a truly complex, evolving consciousness, starting off with concrete life-situations themselves.

The simplest technique is to recognize an immediate attachment that crops up in our mind, to rise above it psychologically through acceptance, to dissociate the self accumulated in it as an accomplished Buddhist, to be identified with nearby realities in an Upanishadic manner, to invoke the Divine power as a Christian and finally surrender to the Supremacy of Allah as a devout Muslim. Only he who accepts an existing moment in all its significance can quickly detach himself from the same. Only she who dissociates herself from the individuality would be disposed to connect with other realities. Only she who mingles with neighborhood can take God as her own inner being. Finally he who admits his emptiness and yet feels one with the Ultimate, would reap the fruits of the power and love of God – in other words the works of God.

The contradiction between evolution and divine intervention would not be a sharpened sword for all ages to come. There would be a stage when both mingle in full force without canceling the validity of each other. Meanwhile, the process of reaping the fruits of God’s power through a modification of human consciousness, in other words the process of miracles, will be subjected to the divine principle of uncertainty for a considerable length of time. Not that God isn’t capable of wondrous deeds here and now. He/She has demonstrated this prerogative sufficiently through religions of the past. But the constraints of the Divine Dilemma continue to be the same in this extraordinary goal of mankind.

The faster our prayer is answered, the less would we train ourselves to see God scientifically. We simply wouldn’t acquire the benefits of a rational faith in His/Her extraordinary power and love. And yet Godly nature necessarily implies rectification of pain and death here and now. Between these two dialectics of Truth, the faith of human beings would grow to reap abundant fruits effortlessly one day.

The day we can maneuver our consciousness to see the power and love of God as concretely as the physical forces of Nature, miracles would no more be called miracles. Instead, they would be known as ‘irresistible interventions of the Author of Evolution’. When we attain such maturity, God would freely communicate in our midst devoid of snare or deceit and we would draw upon His/Her power without disrespecting the laws of nature and the laws of human mind. This vision of future could be stated into an additional law that ultimately dissipates the Divine Principle of Uncertainty.

2.3 Law 9 : Dissolution of Divine Dilemma: No sooner human beings attain a mature level of rational faith than God would communicate in plain terms and continue to co-create with them as masters of nature rather than violators of nature.[size=2]

The path to reach this pinnacle can also be stated into a concluding law of consciousness:

2.4 Law 10 : Potential for Faith: Believing is an inherent potential of mind. To see the distant truth, one simply needs to see it again and again. To admit the power of God, one needs to admit it despite odds, despite physical laws. [size=2]

[Lindsay]

QUESTIONS:
Are you familiar with the work of Alfred North Whitehead--Process philosophy and theology?
If so, are your ideas similar to his? Check out:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/

The following is a short quote from the complete article:

Process Theism
First published Thu 29 Jul, 2004

Process theism typically refers to a family of theological ideas originating in, inspired by, or in agreement with the metaphysical orientation of the English philosopher-mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and the American philosopher-ornithologist Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000). For both Whitehead and Hartshorne, it is an essential attribute of God to be fully involved in and affected by temporal processes. This idea contrasts neatly with traditional forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable,) and unaffected by the world (impassible). Process theism does not deny that God is in some respects eternal, immutable, and impassible, but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible. The views of Whitehead and Hartshorne should also be distinguished from those that affirm that the divine being, by an act of self-limitation, opens itself to influence from the world......

I have participated in the forum on PROCESS STUDIES. Here is an example:
http://www.ctr4process.org/relationality/v...92c43db9f8cb42a

[Lindsay]

ER: Unless you wish to remain silent, in your profile, it would be helpful to posters if you to give us a bit more information about your life and interests, and tell us where you now live and work. Or are you re-directed?--a term, rather than retirement--I prefer.

BTW, some of the writing of the process theologians makes my head ache, as does some of yours. But perhaps my head needs the exercise. But simple language, now and then, does make thinking a bit more fun, don't you agree?

[maximus242]

This really isnt anything like the ten commandments, the ten commandments are ten lines of word. The whole purpose is philosophically deep, like

Cogito Ergo Sum

Those three words can leave you thinking for hours on end. Thats what really deep philosophy does to you. Yours is more like an essay on ways to live life.

[E.Raja]

QUESTIONS:
Are you familiar with the work of Alfred North Whitehead--Process philosophy and theology?
If so, are your ideas similar to his? Check out:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/

The capacity to know the future guarantees that God is not affected by new developments. I simply talked of a divine plan for the world.

Process theology is clearly a mess up based on the way we get affected physically or through new knowledge.

[E.Raja]

ER: Unless you wish to remain silent, in your profile, it would be helpful to posters if you to give us a bit more information about your life and interests, and tell us where you now live and work. Or are you re-directed?--a term, rather than retirement--I prefer.

BTW, some of the writing of the process theologians makes my head ache, as does some of yours. But perhaps my head needs the exercise. But simple language, now and then, does make thinking a bit more fun, don't you agree?

What I have used is extremely simple language. I am capable only to that extent.

The difficulty you face is precisely this: I have spent years of struggle trying to be the other realities merely based on my convictions, after understanding how my own being has developed in nature. The other realities include God as well; or for example just to train my mind to accept God exists and He is willing to intervene in our midst. I have also spent some time merely focusing on the nature of consciousness, as it occurs in me.

The lack of this experience would definitely make my article greek.

[E.Raja]

This really isnt anything like the ten commandments, the ten commandments are ten lines of word. The whole purpose is philosophically deep, like

Cogito Ergo Sum

Those three words can leave you thinking for hours on end. Thats what really deep philosophy does to you. Yours is more like an essay on ways to live life.

If ten commandments is philosophically deep for you even in 21st century, mine is almost the third wave new commandments and it will definitely take some time for you, before presenting itself as anything deep.

Cogito ergo sum was the result of a doubting Thomas on existence itself. My fifth law on sense of self proves self via every impression of consciousness.

Had you truly spent hours on cogito ergo sum, you would have quickly appreciated the fifth law.

[Lindsay]

.....The capacity to know the future guarantees that God is not affected by new developments. I simply talked of a divine plan for the world.

Process theology is clearly a mess up based on the way we get affected physically or through new knowledge.

I ask the following questions without prejudice. I simply wish to understand your ideas and concepts:

I take it then that you dismiss the ideas of the process theologians as a mess-up?
Is it also nonsense?

When you write: "The capacity to know the future guarantees that God is not affected by new developments", are you saying that God is a personal being who knows the future?

[E.Raja]

I ask the following questions without prejudice. I simply wish to understand your ideas and concepts:

I take it then that you dismiss the ideas of the process theologians as a mess-up?
Is it also nonsense?

When you write: "The capacity to know the future guarantees that God is not affected by new developments", are you saying that God is a personal being who knows the future?

You got me rightly here.

[Joesus]

I have spent years of struggle trying to be the other realities merely based on my convictions, after understanding how my own being has developed in nature. The other realities include God as well; or for example just to train my mind to accept God exists and He is willing to intervene in our midst. I have also spent some time merely focusing on the nature of consciousness, as it occurs in me.

The lack of this experience would definitely make my article greek.

So you're saying in the time you have spent studying your personal experiences and ideas of realities you have no experience of, and at the platform of your current conscious awareness, you have become An Authority of your own beliefs and assumptions.

Nobody knows the trouble I seeeee.....Nobody knows but meeeeeeeee.....

I always thought that people who sang that song weren't seriously approaching life with any innocense.
C'est la Vie

[Lindsay]

ER, ARE YOU A TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN MONOTHEIST?
In summary, ER, here is what I understand you are saying about the nature of God:

Like traditional Christians, you believe in a God who is a personal being. He is an all-powerful and superior being, who is also an omniscient and omnipotent one. Because God knows the past, present and future, he is not affected by new developments.

To me, this sounds like tradfitional Christian and dogmatic monotheism--the kind of theism I no longer accept. I prefer, for now, the approach of process theology. I say, for now, because I do not claim to be infallible, I prefer to keep all my options open.

ER, I read you as saying: Process theology is a mess-up and nonsense.

I also read you as saying that you reject the following idea: GØD--the symbol which I prefer--is in the all the processes of life, with us. I like to think of GØD as being in all of nature and the cosmos, evolving--evening suffering along with us--in the now.

...You got me rightly here.

Thanks for your frankness, ER. At this point I will simply say: Until you can introduce all of the readers of Brainmeta to this personal and all powerful God--I want to talk to the boss--I choose to disagree with you--agreeably, of course.

Would you please pray to God and ask Him to join our forum. He will be most welcome.

[E.Raja]

Thanks for your frankness, ER. At this point I will simply say: Until you can introduce all of the readers of Brainmeta to this personal and all powerful God--I want to talk to the boss--I choose to disagree with you--agreeably, of course.

Would you please pray to God and ask Him to join our forum. He will be most welcome.

Whatever comes from God is obviously God. So your dear symbol & understanding of GØD is fine too. But we have a different name for this, the world. God also has seemingly given it a great deal of independence. And it moves and grows on its own laws.

But the world doesn't exhaust God, for heaven's sake.

Even God as the perfection of existence, knowledge, creativity or personality for that matter hardly exhaust God. We postulate such attributes on God, merely based on the imperfect existence, knowledge, creativity and personality manifested here among us. We arrive at these attributes for God both from nature and from the revelation of God Himself.

Besides such perfect attributes, what It is, we simply don't know and can't know. That doesn't mean It can't be anything beyond what we understand in the midst of our limitations.

Now your difficulty may be how God is at once God and the world-God.

I am an individual; better still, I am my consciousness. This consciousness has merely learnt to acknowledge my body and everything connected to 'me' in my memory as myself. It's this capacity of me as my consciousness, I have been trying to project unto other realities and accept them as myself as well. Ultimately, it's a question of accepting and feeling something as myself in my own consciousness. I have comfortably succeeded in it after many years of analysis, focus and training.

I can be my natural thought at one moment, the tree next to me the other moment, the Lord existing as the foundation of both me and the tree the third moment. Even if my natural self holds me for a large share of attention, I simply can be the other things as well. This attempt of mine rarely interferes with what other realities naturally are.

Now, if my little awareness could be so many things, why God who brought out the world on His own power and will can't be those things, both materially as well as through His perfect awareness?

But the independence that the Lord has admitted to the world needs to be respected. It's this that defines the world in the first instance. The unlimited world is also the most fitting expression of the unlimited God.

Rather than confusing these two realities unnecessarily, you are definitely entitled to confuse it once in a while at least. The confusion clearly makes sense. You can freely sing your Lord through His creation. But boxing the Lord right in creation ... I would rather avoid.

As for inviting Lord into the forum, better watch out; He can beat both of us in any language that you name.

But poor Lindsay can't even force me, a tiny independent spirit, to participate the next time, how can we force the Lord into this. That's His choice.

Just as He gave the world its own laws, He may also have His own law of participation here.

But at this stage, I can't go into it Lindsay.

[Lindsay]

ER writes:

Whatever comes from God is obviously God. So your dear symbol & understanding of GØD is fine too. But we have a different name for this, the world. God also has seemingly given it a great deal of independence. And it moves and grows on its own laws.....

If I am not mistaken this is the theology of diesm. It works for some, and this is okay with me.

Now your difficulty may be how God is at once God and the world-God....

This is not a difficulty for me, it is simply how I understand things to be, for now. Because I make no claim to being infallible, I always keep and open mind. Deism, which says that God is totally transcendent, could be the true theology. But at this point I prfer to think of GØD as both transcendent and imminent.

This is why I use Ø--the mathematical symbol for the set without numbers. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_mathematical_symbols. ∅ means the set with no elements. { } means the same.

The unlimited world is also the most fitting expression of the unlimited God...

Sounds okay to me.

[E.Raja]

If I am not mistaken this is the theology of diesm. It works for some, and this is okay with me.

Deism, which says that God is totally transcendent, could be the true theology. But at this point I prfer to think of GØD as both transcendent and imminent.

This is why I use Ø--the mathematical symbol for the set without numbers. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_mathematical_symbols. ∅ means the set with no elements. { } means the same.

I wasn't talking of Deism, as such. Deists didn't believe in revelation or God's participation in the world. Whereas I do.

Good that you clarified your idea of both the transcendent and the immanent God. I had misunderstood you earlier, as though you were talking only of the immanent God. Sorry about the confusion.

If I understand you rightly now, you want to imply the transcendent aspect of God by your symbol Ø and the entire world as the immanent aspect of God.

Perfectly fine with me too.

In some postings, you have expressed that your difficulty is with the anthropomorphic view of God, as an individual, or a master requiring the pronoun of He, etc., etc.

But this is a necessary difficulty, for we as creatures can only know God through the best of what has been reflected of Him/Her here in creation; but we can carefully minimize errors to arrive at an understanding worthy of God.

We the human beings have the capacity to invent, modify and create new things from whatever is available here. When the question of creator for the world arrives, is it wrong to conceive of an intelligent spirit similar to us, but far more intelligent and creative, worthy to be the creator.

This is exactly what we have done. While defining such creative, subsisting intelligence, we ought to avoid the images of a male personality, a female personality, an angry individual, a crooked and evil monster etc., etc.


This intelligence has also communicated to us through religions. My article presents the dilemma involved here between evolution and revelation and concludes that God needed to deceive us through figurative language, in order that we may discover truth on our own efforts one day.

You also described me as a classical, christian monotheist.

I have reservations to accept it precisely due to the confusion of trinity within the christian concept.

In line with what I wrote yesterday, I would perhaps describe the idea of trinity in this manner:

God the unknowable, God the knowable and God the world are the three indispensable aspects of God, as far as a close description is possible.

None of these aspects can be played down and hence the revelation of a trinitarian God will perhaps assume such indispensable new interpretation.

When John wrote the first chapter of his gospel, he was possibly looking for Christ the Lord right in creation. Genesis was talking of the Spirit of God moving on the waters right at the beginning. But Christ seemed to be absent. He had heard from Jesus quite often that the words he spoke came directly from God. Jesus for him was the word of God and he quickly found this creative word in the first chapter of Genesis and made the bold assertion: In the beginning, the word existed; the word was with God and the word was God as well; nothing was created but through the word.

Every individual consciousness is a mystery for others. Only when it expresses itself either through a word or a gesture, others can come to know of it. Similarly God as a supreme consciousness made ITSELF known through the world as well as through revelation. Thus we have the knowable aspects of God.

Rather than restricting the word of God, or the revelation of God to one single individual by name Jesus, we need to take it as the entire knowable aspects of God including all of revelation, all of incarnations, all of God-man identity expounded in Upanishads.

The spirit of God in christianity creates profound confusion as well. Since God in any case is essentially the spirit, there's not much point in restating it all over again. Wherever the spirit of God in scripture implies revelation per se like the words of prophecies or God's own movement on people or special effects such as God speaking as thunder etc., it presents itself as the knowable aspect of God once again and we have talked of this already.

Wherever the spirit of God or the word of God stand for creation or created realities as such, we need to take it as the third distinct part of God that we described earlier, namely God as the world.

All confusions of a christian trinity, Father, Son & Spirit kind of bla, bla, bla may be clarified as:

God the unknowable,

God the knowable ..... and

God the world.

Thanks Lindsay for triggering me to think little more deeply on God.

I am fallible time and again. Certainly would welcome new ideas on this.

[Joesus]

The spirit of God in christianity creates profound confusion as well.

Not so, oh one who would look through eyes of personal interpretation only, rather than the essence of the Christ.

All confusions of a christian trinity, Father, Son & Spirit kind of bla, bla, bla may be clarified as:

God the unknowable,

God the knowable ..... and

God the world.

Or God the unknowable, the living link between the mind that lives in the world and of the world, the mind that lives in the world and not of the world, and the manifestations of God.

This intelligence has also communicated to us through religions. My article presents the dilemma involved here between evolution and revelation and concludes that God needed to deceive us through figurative language, in order that we may discover truth on our own efforts one day.

God does not deceive but God is not always understood when one is not looking for God as God exists, and one believes in the separation that is created by the idea of being inferior to God, or evolving towards greater understanding. Tho God is in everything God does not make the choice for the human.

A discourse from Master Emil to Baird Spalding and his group...

"When Jesus said 'I am the door,' He meant that the I AM in each soul is the door through which the life, power and substance of the great I AM, which is God, comes forth through the expression of the individual. This I Am has but one mode of expression and that is through idea, thought, word, and act. This I AM God Being, which is power, substance, intelligence, is given form by consciousness; and for this reason the master said, 'According to your faith be it unto you,' and 'All things are possible to them that believe.'
"Now we see that God is within the soul as power, substance, and intelligence-or in spiritual terms, wisdom, love, and truth-and is brought out into form or expression through consciousness. The consciousness which is the infinite mind of God and in man is determined by the belief that is held in mind. It is the belief in separation from Spirit that has caused our forms to age and dies.
When we see that Spirit is all and that form is constantly being expressed from Spirit (I am becoming) then shall we understand that that which born of or brought out of Spirit is Spirit.
"The next great truth to be revealed through this consciousness is that each individual, being a concept of Divine Mind, is held in that mind as a perfect idea. Not one of us has to conceive himself. We have been perfectly conceived and are always held in the perfect mind of God as being perfect beings. By having this realization brought to our consciousness, we can contact Divine Mind and so re-conceive what God has already conceived for us. This is what Jesus called being 'Born Again.' It is the great gift the silence has to offer us; for by contacting God-mind we can think with God-mind and know ourselves as we are in reality rather than as we have thought ourselves to be. We contact God-mind through true thought and so bring forth a true expression; whereas, in the past, perhaps through untrue thought, we have brought forth an untrue expression. But, whether the form be perfect or imperfect, the Being of the form is perfect God-power, substance and intelligence. It is not the Being of the form that we wish to change but the form that the Being has assumed. This is to be done through the renewing of the mind, or through the change from the imperfect to perfect concept, from the thought of Man to the thought of God.
How important then to find God, to contact Him, to be one with Him and to bring him forth into expression.
How equally important is the silence or the stilling of the personal mind, that the God-mind in all its splendor may illumine the consciousness. When it does, then we shall understand how 'the sun of righteousness (right-use-ness) shall rise with healing in its wings.' The mind of God floods consciousness as the sun floods a darkened room. The infusion of the Universal Mind into the personal mind is like the entrance of the vastness of the outside air into the impurity of that which has been held in some close compartment. It stands alone, supreme, and we realize that we are to build but one temple.
The Temple of the Living God is the blending of the greater with the lesser through which the lesser becomes one with the greater. The purity is caused by their union, so that no longer is there a greater and a lesser, but the one good, whole, pure, air. Even so we must know that God is One and all things visible and invisible are one with Him. It is separation from Him that has caused, sickness, poverty and death. It is union with Him that causes one to become a whole Being or to become conscious of being whole.
"The separation from Unity is the descent of the Angels on the ladder of consciousness. The return to Union is the Ascent of the Angels on the ladder of consciousness. The descent is good, for unity then becomes expressed in diversity, but in diversity there need be no concept of separation. That which is diversity has been misconceived from the personal, or external viewpoint, to be separation. The great work for each soul is to lift the personal viewpoint to such heights in consciousness that it becomes one with the whole. When all can 'meet with one accord in one place' the place in consciousness where it is understood that all things visible and invisible have their origin in the One God, then we stand on the mount of Transfiguration.
At first we see Jesus and with him Moses and Elias; or Law and Prohesy, and the Christ, (the power within to Know God); and we think to build three temples, but the deeper meaning comes. We are given to realize the immortality of Man and to know that Divinity is never lost, that Divine Man, is deathless, eternal. Then Moses-The Law, and Elias-the Prophesy, disappear; and the Christ stands alone supreme and we realize that we have to build but one Temple of the Living God within our very selves. Then the Holy Spirit fills the consciousness and the sense of delusions of sin, sickness, poverty and death become no more. This is the great purpose of the Silence.
"This temple from which which you may chip a piece and the scar will be instantly healed but typifies the temple of our body, of which Jesus Spoke, the temple not made by hands, eternal in the heavens, which we are to bring forth on the earth."

From Chapter VI of Volume 1 of the "Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East"
Written by Baird T Spalding of his scientific documentation on his 3 year journey with the masters who claim to hold the "Teaching of the Siddha" in purity, which predates any written history of humanity on this planet.
That last reference of the temple was to also Exemplify a location in the east that contained a Temple called "The Silence Temple" or "The Temple not made by Hands"
This village contains the temple and the houses of the attendants and is located on the former site of a village that had been nearly destroyed by the ravages of wild animals.
The story goes that the masters visited the village and thru their example of power vanquished all pestilence and threat to the village.
As a monument to what they witnessed and in dedication to commitment to follow their example they built the Temple. The temple itself is said to be over 6000 years old, made of white marble and has never needed repair. If a piece is chipped off it automatically replaces itself as if the temple heals itself, and was part of the scientific documentation of the Eleven members that made their way across the Himalayas guided by the masters in 1894.

[Lindsay]

'E.Raja' date='May 10, 2007, 06:21 AM' ...Good that you clarified your idea of both the transcendent and the immanent God. I had misunderstood you earlier, as though you were talking only of the immanent God. Sorry about the confusion.
If I understand you rightly now, you want to imply the transcendent aspect of God by your symbol Ø and the entire world as the immanent aspect of God.
Perfectly fine with me too.....

This shows what patient dialogue can accomplish.

In some postings, you have expressed that your difficulty is with the anthropomorphic view of God, as an individual, or a master requiring the pronoun of He, etc., etc.

You got that right. Thinking of God as a He or She makes no sense to me, whatsoever. How could a loving and almighty heavenly father, or mother, just sit there and do nothing about the useless pain and misery of so many sentient beings, including human beings? It just boggles my mind.
And the following sounds good, to me:

I would perhaps describe the idea of trinity in this manner:
God the unknowable,
God the knowable and
God the world are the three indispensable aspects of God,
as far as a close description is possible.

I see your point.

Rather than restricting the word of God, or the revelation of God to one single individual by the name Jesus, we need to take it as the entire knowable aspects of God including all of revelation, all of incarnations, all of God-man identity expounded in Upanishads. ...

Again, I see your point.

Thanks Lindsay for triggering me to think little more deeply on God.
I am fallible, time and again. Certainly Iwould welcome new ideas on this.

I repeat, positive dialogue helps, even when there is no absolute agreement. Like you, I too make no claim to being infallible.

[Joesus]

quoting Joe;

God does not deceive but God is not always understood when one is not looking for God as God exists, and one believes in the separation that is created by the idea of being inferior to God, or evolving towards greater understanding. Tho God is in everything God does not make the choice for the human.

HUH?

if God is in everything...then God must be a facter in all choices...partaking of all choices...experiencing all choices, creating all choices...you say there is no separation, and God is in everything... yet you separate God from man via choices...

God is a factor. God is in the being but God is not in denial of God.
If a man closes his eyes it doesn't mean he can't see does it?

[Joesus]

you say there is no separation, and God is in everything... yet you separate God from man via choices...

Can "I" truly separate God from Man, as you suggest?

I have full confidence that you can answer your own questions with intelligence.
When, would be a question as you define your intelligence, and God's.

[E.Raja]

Thinking of God as a He or She makes no sense to me, whatsoever. How could a loving and almighty heavenly father, or mother, just sit there and do nothing about the useless pain and misery of so many sentient beings, including human beings? It just boggles my mind.

Lind, Who on earth compels you to think of God as a heavenly father or mother? The human reproductive system requires a male and a female and, like it or not , most of us exist either as a male or a female. But Lord God neither gave birth to the world in the physical, reproductive sense nor does God exist in the form of a male or a female. We are talking of the Eternal Spirit that gave birth to the world merely through Its Will. It was this birth that was original; all other births are physical and evolutionary.

Why not then to think of God as the Parent, rather than father or mother? The Spirit is the true and only Parent of all of cosmos.

Why do you imagine that the Spirit sits there on top?. It doesn't sit anywhere; even your consciousness hardly sits anywhere, although it originates in your brain.

Why worry that God didn't intervene for every little event here on earth? How would the universe evolve, if God kept intervening with It's Absolute Power?

Rather than restricting the word of God, or the revelation of God to one single individual by the name Jesus, we need to take it as the entire knowable aspects of God including all of revelation, all of incarnations, all of God-man identity expounded in Upanishads. ...
Again, I see your point.

Lindsay, you see my point well. But Joe thinks I had dropped the essence of Christ absolutely from the Trinity. He would later go on to explain Christ is the door at every soul and the oneness of God-soul needs to be realized. This is precisely what I meant when I wrote Jesus, the word of God, needs to include all of revelation, all of incarnations, all of God-man identity expounded in Upanishads.

Joe is indeed a gifted one and some of his points are extremely deep. Never mind that he pretended to hold tight to the essence of Christ but watered it down to the universality of all souls the very next moment.

Thinking of God as the Father and Jesus as the son infuriated Prophet Muhamud and we definitely need to take the latter's criticism into account.

Hence I can now offer my second description of Trinity. Reality is complex with many different aspects; and accordingly our descriptions should also be many and adequate. None can compel us to have merely one description for complex concepts such as Trinity.

What I wrote yesterday is from the stand-point of God primarily; God the unknowable, God the knowable and God the world. At this level it doesn't even look like a mystery, since it neatly co-relates with every individual spirit too. Joe the unknowable, Joe the knowable and Joe's world of people and possessions, to cite an example. Three major aspects of any individual spirit. The classical mystery of one God and three persons - how one God may be three persons and yet one - does not arise here at all. We have postulated merely three essential aspects of one and the same God or one and the same Reality. The only variation between the trinitarian aspects of human being and the trinitarian aspects of God is in the mind-boggling dimensions of the three factors ascribed to God.

However the world willed by God is also one that evolves continuously and for all evidences it keeps evolving towards a greater and greater unification. Physically it expands; but mentally it shrinks. After achieving a finer integration with the help of all technological advancements, human beings are set to grow towards thinking and feeling of everything as their own self. I have talked of it in some length earlier. This is the Brahman-Atman identity brought out in Upanishads to recognize which the moment theory and the absence of permanent soul theory expounded by Buddha is essential as an initial moment and trial, while attempting to transcend any given context to reach the above-mentioned goal of unity with God.

Hence we can now suggest to the Christians the following mantra as a more sensible one to be adopted at the beginning and end of all their prayers:

Rather than "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", they could either say:

In the name of the unknowable, the knowable and the world .... or

In the name of the Parent, in the name of Myself and the name of the whole Community, if they sincerely understand the unity towards which the world is evolving. See how I have solved your problem of Father or Mother.

Thirdly, our Joe definitely has a very serious point. He merely attempts to fuse together all heavenly concepts turning a blind eye to science and the evolutionary and psychological stages of developments in consciousness; but that ought not to deter us from attending to some of the jewels he brings in.

He thinks the Heavenly Mind illuminates the earthly Mind from time to time and feeds all essential truths in secrecy and stillness. Something like your expectation of God to intervene miraculously every time. He thinks God has a perfect idea of Joe and he merely needs to buy it from God wholesale. Earlier he used to say that all divisions exist only for the ignorant mind and now he has put divisions within the mind of God itself. I wonder if he comes to know of Joe the 12th of May quite early on the 10th of May itself right from the perfect idea of Joe existing in God's mind through a stillness technique.

I am just kidding. But his insistence that the christian revelation of a perfect link on earth between the unknowable God and the scattering world is a stupendous one. It's in this context I have argued in my article that Jesus of Nazareth was too premature in history to be able to offer an acceptable, scientific explanation of linking the unitary God with the whole of mankind and all its cultures and civilizations. Today, Jesus of Nazareth is more part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

And yet, God would definitely remain true to His/Her revealed word in christianity and cultivate a man or woman through whom He/She would bring about the unification effectively. Rational Faith through which God's power can be legitimized within the self-evolving world would certainly be an essential service offered through this person and made rational and universal for one and all who attempts it sincerely and scientifically.

This is incidentally what I had earlier said, God may have his own law of participation here on earth, when you questioned why he could not be invited to the Forum.

Hence the third description for Trinity could very well be:

In the name of the Parent, and of the First Born and of the Community .... Amen.

Buddham Saranam Kacchami, Sami Saranam Kacchami, Sangam saranam Kacchami.

I hope I am right with my Buddhistic Chorus. If wrong, ready to be corrected.

[Joesus]

But Joe thinks I had dropped the essence of Christ absolutely from the Trinity.

I'm pretty sure that's not what I had entertained. More like you were defining what was wrong with the past and how you were the absolute critic

He would later go on to explain Christ is the door at every soul and the oneness of God-soul needs to be realized. This is precisely what I meant when I wrote Jesus, the word of God, needs to include all of revelation, all of incarnations, all of God-man identity expounded in Upanishads.

But it already does. Lack of perception in truth does not preclude its existence.

Joe is indeed a gifted one and some of his points are extremely deep. Never mind that he pretended to hold tight to the essence of Christ but watered it down to the universality of all souls the very next moment.

Maybe your not evolved enough to hear everything at once so it has to come to you the only way you will allow itself to be revealed..

Thinking of God as the Father and Jesus as the son infuriated Prophet Muhamud and we definitely need to take the latter's criticism into account.

Feelings of anger are often associated with the attachment to understanding. I also remember Jesus turning over the tables of the money changers when visiting the Holy Temple.
Often the actions of people can be misconstrued according to what is inside ones self. If one is predisposed to anger then one will see it in a clear mirror.
Obviously the separation of Father and Son and the implication that Jesus was the only son is an idea. Perhaps not the greatest idea and so anytime one wants to look at the world and say this is what it is, does not define/contain it. No matter how many times one comes back to state the conditions of the universe it can't possibly be done. The idea that one can put God in a quart jar is simply ridiculous.
This is one of the reasons Jesus himself never wrote anything down. No rules, no laws, no absolutes in the relative. Everything he said was in response to meeting the moment and the state of mind of the individual to raise the level of God in Conscious awareness a notch or two and to plant seeds in humanity to grow roots that would crack the foundation of ignorance created from habitual distortion of perception, never to repair God.

Joe the unknowable, Joe the knowable and Joe's world of people and possessions, to cite an example. Three major aspects of any individual spirit.

Relative to the Knower the known and the process of knowing this descibes the pathway to enlightenment or the return to right thinking. As one takes the ego inward and absorbes reflection the individual is released and the path dissolves with the individual to leave only God. This is also called in the Brahma Sutras as Brahmin, the Destoyer of illusions. "All that is" which absorbs all that is perceived in duality.

However the world willed by God is also one that evolves continuously and for all evidences it keeps evolving towards a greater and greater unification.

Evidence is perceived in a linear progression and expanded understanding according to the evidence and interpretation of evidence. Understanding changes with experience. Scientifically speaking one can have a different experience of evidence with each relative union.
Time is not a factor that makes Truth Truth. However it can be perceived that evolution makes Truth relative.

Hence we can now suggest to the Christians the following mantra as a more sensible one to be adopted at the beginning and end of all their prayers:

It would be sensible to release the mind from absolute rules. Jesus never suggested that there was one way to pray nor one way to speak to God. Being that each expression of God is held in perfection there is no wrong way to communicate with God. At the insistence of some of his disciples Jesus gave them an example of prayer and somehow someone made it a traditional mantra.
The word Mantra comes from Manus=mind and Tra=to protect. The intention of any mantra is to link the physical senses to the absolute. Some thoughts expand and some thoughts contract.
Typically Jesus in his teachings taught that the mind in separation does not imagine the absolute any more than a phone that is unplugged can make a connection to another number.
In his discourses to his disciples he taught them that instruction or guidance from Self was primary.
The mind that is fluctuating in and out of illusions based on outward movement of the senses cannot be relied upon as an accurate guide. The mind that is unplugging the phone and reconnecting it during the conversations with God is not necessarily going to get all the information correctly. Certain conditions must come into affect such as engaging the higher senses of the heart or subtle senses that are free from conditioning or ego sense, to connect the phone permanently and remove the impulses that cause the mind to disconnect it.
Religious belief is often the interpretation of the uncontainable and the imaginings of how to achieve union without the experience of it, so, the blanketed ideas that are projected onto humanity as a whole don't adjust themselves accordingly to the individual perceptions of reality, nor are they made from a clear connection to Universal mind.
The foundation of Christianity is God, Union of God and the manifest and the conscious experience of it.
Interpretations of how that exists in a dark room without the experience does not define God, Union with God nor the conscious awareness of it, it never will. Imagination from ignorance is not evil it is simply illusion.

Thirdly, our Joe definitely has a very serious point. He merely attempts to fuse together all heavenly concepts turning a blind eye to science and the evolutionary and psychological stages of developments in consciousness; but that ought not to deter us from attending to some of the jewels he brings in.

No, I am simply pointing to your idea of science as being grossly inadequate to encompass the potential of the absolute. There are no rules to the absolute but there are changes in perception and natural laws that support that perception as long as you wish to remain with that perception. That is called choice. The Universe is ultimately flexible to support all experiences and ideas of reality.

He thinks the Heavenly Mind illuminates the earthly Mind from time to time and feeds all essential truths in secrecy and stillness.

I don't think that is what I said..... God illuminates all things always but not all things are consciously aware of Gods light. When the ego mind is stilled or thoughts of the past and future are removed then all secrets/potential is revealed by removing the obstacles to clear perception.

Today, Jesus of Nazareth is more part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

An interesting Idea. Perhaps you could share how Jesus has created a problem for you in your ability to make choices and your perception of reality.
Are you perhaps projecting a best guess according to your judgment of reality?

[RevLGKing2]

ER, when I am using my son's 'puter, I am RevLGKing2.

To me you write:

Lindsay (King), who on earth compels you to think of God as a heavenly father or mother?

The human reproductive system requires a male and a female and, like it or not , most of us exist either as a male or a female.

But Lord God neither gave birth to the world in the physical, reproductive sense nor does God exist in the form of a male or a female.

We are talking of the Eternal Spirit that gave birth to the world merely through Its Will. It was this birth that was original; all other births are physical and evolutionary.

I am glad to have this confirmed.

From now on, let us be carefull of the wording we use, eh?

[E.Raja]

ER, when I am using my son's 'puter, I am RevLGKing2.

To me you write:

Lindsay (King), who on earth compels you to think of God as a heavenly father or mother?

The human reproductive system requires a male and a female and, like it or not , most of us exist either as a male or a female.

But Lord God neither gave birth to the world in the physical, reproductive sense nor does God exist in the form of a male or a female.

We are talking of the Eternal Spirit that gave birth to the world merely through Its Will. It was this birth that was original; all other births are physical and evolutionary.

I am glad to have this confirmed.

From now on, let us be carefull of the wording we use, eh?

That's a marvelous spirit of openness, King. We humans have a partial role either when we produce something or reproduce a little one. The Lord alone gives birth 100% and prefers to leave it free 100% as well.

Just as He/She left the Nature free, He/She left our choices free too. Nothing special in human freedom alone. The Lord meant all creation to be free. This is why we are able to say, God is in everything and yet everything is on its own as well.


He/She is not merely a factor or the being in us, as Joe put it. He/She is our dilemma and our choices too, as Dianah put it beautifully.