Alex Jacob wrote:Kevin wrote:I could have opened up the program saying, "I know everything there is to know about God, so I can tell you exactly where you're going wrong", but I don't think that would have gone down too well.
But you might just as well start from this assertion, it would certainly be more honest. It would likely make a more interesting show too, no pussy-footing and less mincing of words.
True, but then we would probably no longer have a guest to talk to. So it would be an interesting show, but very, very short.
a naturalistic doctrine
I'll agree entirely with that. My God is Nature itself, the All. And the workings of God are nothing more nor less than the workings of Nature.
These workings of Nature can of course be sliced up into all manner of different categories, just as we can slice a cake in countless different ways. And we can slice it in different ways from one moment to the next. And so long as we are conscious, we will always be slicing it, or "ordering" it, as you may say, because that is the very function of consciousness - as is God's will.
Your model seems essentially naturalistic, or biological, and this view stands pretty starkly in contrast even with many of your own 'source books' and source personalities: Kirkegaard, Ramakrishna for example.
I disagree. It's just that I see it as my role in life to demystify
those things that should never be mystified. Nature (the Infinite) is already mystifying enough without piling any further mystifying nonsense on top of it.
I simply tell people the direct truth about God (the deepest spiritual truth), in a manner that
I myself would have dearly liked to have heard when I was growing up, and before I knew what I know today.
As a child I went to Sunday school and Church. But no-one ever told me what the hell God was. They had no clue themselves. Every word they told me, for years, were 100% lies,
literally.
The priests thought that by being weak and vague they weren't really lying. But that made the lie even worse, because the worst liar is a liar who covers up his lies, and never admits his lies, and lies to himself, and closes his eyes to them, and goes to sleep.
I am the opposite to all that. So if you want to blame anyone for the way I am, you can blame the priests.
However, I'm not averse to poetic expression, and I think it's fine to speak of "Mother Nature" - so long as one remembers that Nature is not really a woman, and not a conscious woman, and not a woman who has children. Likewise, by all means refer to the All, the Infinite, as "God the Father". But when people start imagining that the All is a conscious, intelligent being, and possibly even male - then they are just being stupid. They are "mystifying" for the sake of making themselves insane - just like the person who wants to become mad can make a good start of it by hearing voices, and imagining himself the reincarnation of Napoleon.
your---seemingly---mental ordering.
What kind of "mental ordering" do you think I do? I divide things into "true" and "false". Do you think I am fundamentally wrong to do that?
This sort of mental ordering, where the totality of the person does not really seem to appear (that is, with the emotions of the individual, the general panorama of 'experience' which is far more than the sum total of the mental aspect of the person; of sentience, a sort of internal connectedness, etc.)
What you call "emotion" is what I would call irrationality and insanity.
The totality of a person can do well without those things. In fact, I would say that a person is
never whole so long as they have the slightest taint of emotion. And while a person still has any tendency towards emotion of any kind, they will always be stunted, warped, and confined.
This is because all emotions arise from a false conception of the world - a conception that ensures that one will always be tethered and blinkered.
I'm all for the "general panorama of experience", but so long as the experience is
true, and not some insane creation of a tortured imagination.
The devil himself, so to speak, must have a great panaroma of experience - but it's not one that I want.
in the podcast: almost astoundingly boring, quite useless, devoid of any real 'juice' of the human being
You have no idea how much patience and understanding it required on my part to be polite and humane with our guest right to the very end. . . . Not that it required any real effort, since I've been practicing it for many years. That's where the real juice is!
Those shock-jocks on the radio have more emotion in their shows, but no spirit.
I think Father Bowles expresses what I think is a far more 'real' sort of connectedness with 'God', as an inner experience that everyone can have, if they make the effort, make the sacrifice.
That's all very well, but sacrifice of what, to what? That's where Peter wasn't at all clear.
His type of Christianity should more accurately be called "Mystified Christianity" rather than "mystical".
the symbols and 'myths' of Christianity seem to make more sense as inner maps, or guided meditations if you will.
Maps of what? Maps of deluded territory? Maps of imagined, fantastic lands?
It's certainly possible to interpret some of the Christian teachings or symbols to have some wise meaning - but you don't see people doing it in the real world.
The symbolism is ancient, the symbols potent, and the meaning intuitively realizable.
Intuitively realizable to whom? And what do they realize? The highest truth?
Or are you suggesting that the symbol of a circle might symbolize the circularity of many things in life? Or that a cross might symbolize . . . things crossing paths?
What is being asserted and to what conduces these assertions?
God is being asserted, with the intention that listener will realize God.
I don't expect it will work for everyone, because, for most people, "the All is God" doesn't provide them with enough juicy emotions to interest them.
Even when people want God, they don't want to BE God. Rather, they want a God they can keep at arms length, and pray to, and seek explanations from. A sort of consoler. An imaginary friend.
People want "meaning" in life to be handed to them on a plate. They don't want to be the
creators of meaning.
Personally, I believe that the quest for absolutes is its own stumbling block.
This idea is your absolute, and is your stumbling block.
I guess you either go into that inner world and find out what is there, or you erect all these edifices in your head, and confuse them with the inner world, that you experience yet don't control.
I have realized that the outer world is in fact the inner world, and everything has become the inner world, and so there is no longer "inner" and "outer".
The "edifices" I create, such as "true" and "false", are as real as can be. There's no getting around them.