Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

If you've nothing of even remote interest to say, then I guess we've run our course.

Ah we’re back to this one?!

What I have to say I’ll keep saying. Nothing has changed for me. If you’ve ‘run your course’, well, that has little to do with me.

[attofishpi]

Ok, that’s it. Although I know it is not particularly relevant to your angle in dealing with IC and his shortcomings with consideration to Christianity, I think it important for me to clarify JUST some things:-

1. God made itself aware to me since 1997.

2. The sage.
On November 5th 2005, I climbed out of bed and the words were said to me (very loud and clear – as if someone was in my room) “Tonight, bad luck.”
I was playing cards with a bunch of lads that night, so I thought ok, maybe I am going to lose at cards. I did not lose, in fact I won a bunch of money. I staggered drunk out to a taxi, I fell asleep in the taxi and awoke to the driver forcing me to get out, miles away from where I live (we were outside a petrol station).
I sat on some grass and thought shit, I am going to have to call another taxi, when a male and a female approached me, and started yelling at me like I was a piece of shit. I stood, the girl kept telling me to ‘sit’ like a dog! I ignored her, and thought ok, here we go, biffo time. Then I noticed the ‘man’ get a metal baseball bat from under his jacket. He broke my arm and nose.
I ended up in hospital. After a day or two, since they were no longer giving me morphine, I decided to check-out and go home. The prescription they gave me for pain killers apparently was only valid at the hospital, so to my dismay when I got to my local chemist and could only get paracetemol and on calling the hospital – their dispensary was now closed. I was in a LOT of pain, I had pins and wires in my not so funny bone.
That night, I was in tears with the agony. Eventually, since I knew God existed I decided to say a prayer (In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – all that crap) I asked for the pain to dissapear. The reply:- “Would you like me to erase that?” – to which of course I replied YES!
The pain dissapeared from about 10 mins, great relief. But then eventually the pain started to return and the voice stated “Do you understand?” – to which I shouted NO! And probably called it all sorts of names. (I understand now however) Eventually, whenever I was close to finally getting to sleep, an energy would surge through my body, ensuring I was re-awoken. I said, “Who are you, are you God?” To which the reply was, “I am a sage.”
I didn’t know what a sage was (apart from a herb) so I thought about climbing out of bed and looking it up in my dictionary, as I thought this I was tapped heavily on my right knee – as in ‘right’ do that.
My dictionary read re sage:- “An extremely wise person.”
Oh yes, they stole my mobile phone. When I got a replacement, my new number is very basic, and it has in the middle 007666 (license to kill !!)

3. RE: I am your entertainment.
About five years ago, when I was being TESTED in all kinds of ways – rather dire at times, I stated to the sage: “What am I to you, I am here for your entertainment!”
The SAGE replied: “Don’t flatter yourself.”

4. RE: I learn from you. (MANKIND)
A couple of years ago I asked GOD (again while under the duress of some heavy tests.)
“What do you want from us”? (meaning us humans)
To which (I presume God replied.) “I learn from you.”

Just to add. YES, I am in almost daily contact with these entities. Indeed Christ has spoken to me, and made it clear it was Him very recently. I look forward to playing pool with him, for some reason!
Oooh I’m soooo special. I would rather be dead for the rest of eternity than go through the HELL that I have been put through since 1997.
Now that I am in heaven – fuck, It’s like being a Jedi – nothing, nobody can harm me! People think I am in my early 30s – I am 50. You can live ‘forever’, as a sage..since God has ultimate control over all atomic matter.
Recently the word “secret” has been said many times, to which I laugh – as if anyone believes me!! But, some stuff regarding a pending invite I shall keep quiet..I look forward to meeting them.

viewtopic.php?t=33214
www.androcies.com


ATTRIBUTES OF GOD: (GARNERED FROM MY EXPERIENCES SINCE 1997)

- What we perceive as reality, is 'generated' by this entity at THE most finite sub-atomic scale where either an event occurs or it doesn't - ergo, it has binary control over ALL matter, that includes our very own grey matter (if it wishes).
- IT has the ability to KNOW everything within the minds of wo/man.
- IT has the ability to switch ALL matter within our brains - our synapses - making us akin to biological robots - should serendipity or synchronicity be a desired outcome.
- IT has formed key words within the ENGLISH language - the common protocol for communication with anomalies and intricacies beyond natural language etymology.
- IT has the ability to appear to morph matter that you perceive as 'matter'.
- IT has ultimate control over ALL that we perceive as dimensions within our reality.
- IT is KARMIC.
- IT reincarnates US (souls) to within families - or other - that we deserve based on KARMA.
- Entropy is likely to be key to the reason it permits the opposite of FAITH -> DOUBT (in other words, fools that cross certain lines of KARMA may end up 666).

[Immanuel Can]

What I have to say I’ll keep saying.

Yep, just like Chesterton said.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What I have to say I’ll keep saying.

Yep, just like Chesterton said.

For those who missed it here it is:

One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

Couldn't have said it better myself!

__________________________________________________________

AJ: I do not think you have any real understanding of what has happened in the contemporary world and of the immense changes that have taken place. Why? You are locked within a very rigid and strict Christian context. I say this not as a judgment but as a statement of fact (and about your own context). You can only see things through one lens. Others here, myself included, seem to be able to access other lenses and different ones. Because I know that this is true, and because your context and choices render you dense indeed, you have been for me a necessary point of reference in my attempt to get clear, and be able to articulate, what happened and why it happened. To get this understanding means examining a former time-period and an axial one.

There is good reason to linger over 'what happened and why it happened' -- the fin-de-siècle period is a very good starting-point -- and for this reason, on a thread that explores Christianity, it is highly relevant to do so. This is not a deviation from the topic of the conversation, but an exploration of an entire social and cultural nexus that we must understand in order to understand ourselves and our present.

We have to begin with an essential premise: if we ask ourselves 'what do we really want' and 'what do we really seek', and I mean this in a wide social and cultural context, the answer is enlivening experience. The result of the difficult process of ideological disassociation from the domineering Christian form, if this is seen as an *imposition* imposed over and against the pagan European cultural body, seems to have become a process of 'return to the body' and a 'return to the Earth'. This was described for example by Jung as an uncovering of the unconscious and unconscious, repressed content.

The idea of liberating repressed content is, of course, a Freudian idea originally. But here we must recognize that Jung and the cultural milieu that produced him reinterpreted this 'return' and this 'rediscovery' as a return to an original way of being. The difficulty here is, and I think this is evident in the conflict many here feel with Immanuel Can, is that the reigning ideology of Christianity is highly imperious. It seems to function through the hook of 'guilt' and 'fear'. That is to say that if you fail to appreciate and obey *the law* through an act of submission of the self to a metaphysical construct, it will be insisted that you will 'go to hell' and will be, literally of course, excommunicated from Being itself.

To go to hell is, rather obviously, to cease to exist within life, to be alienated from life itself. So the absolute claim of Jesus "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" must be seen in two distinct senses. One is as the ultimate control-trip. This is not hard to recognize and understand. The Construct has a social function and that function is to guilt-trip the populace into obeying the cultural laws (which are also described as 'laws from the authority above') or to suffer unreally negative consequences in an imagined after-world.

But there is another sense as well and that is that spiritual focus, and a turning away from sensuous addiction, tends to turn the spirit of man toward a focus on 'higher things' -- higher ideals, higher objects, higher achievements and attainments. All religions that I am aware of describe a path that involves renunciation' and suppression of lower appetites in order to enjoy pleasures of another sort and order.

But now I have to return to 'what actually happened' in Europe at a certain crucial juncture. Why did people, in a general sense, turn away from the Christian-defined life-path? I do not think there is any easy answer and in fact I think any answer offered will be difficult, knotty and to a significant degree convoluted. Take convoluted as: intricately folded, twisted, coiled, and requiring a careful unraveling. So let me suggest the image of people being tied up in knots. Internally, subjectively, emotionally -- wrapped up and constrained by their 'neurotic complexes'.

This was the cultural situation that Freud noticed. That is to say whole realms of *symptoms* which, in his interpretive modality, were expressions of 'inner knots' that had to be untied. Here, we must mention that in just a few short years a war of immensely destructive magnitude broke out. That war changed the world forever. I've read that some people said that, literally, one breathed easier and life was literally different before the horror of that outbreak. And not to speak of the one that followed. That there was a sense of easiness and security that was blasted away by the war-events. So it is not at all unrealistic to refer to 'psychological knots' and profound complexes and psychoses which burst out onto the scene.

My question to you is: What 'interpretive lens' shall we employ here to be able to understand what happened? Europe imploded and 'the jewel of the world' was devastated, ruined and bankrupt. Frankly I do not understand enough to be able to offer an assessment.

The easy answer is to say something like: Europe abandoned Christianity, and Christ, and went forward on a path to ruin. This would be one attempt to explain a causal chain, no? But there is another one as well but it is more difficult to understand, more demanding, and involves a different sort of seeing. So here I will quote from a letter of CG Jung to Oskar Schmidz (May 26, 1923) as a way to broach a general, but very difficult, idea:

The Germanic tribes, when they collided the day before yesterday
with Roman Christianity, were still in the initial state of a polydemonism
with polytheistic buds. There was as yet no proper priesthood and no
proper ritual. Like Wotan's oaks, the gods were felled and a
wholly incongruous Christianity, born of monotheism on a much
higher cultural level, was grafted onto the stumps. The Germanic
man is still suffering from this mutilation. I have good reasons for
thinking that every step beyond the existing situation has to
begin down there among the truncated nature-demons. In other
words,there is a whole lot of primitivity in us to be made good.
It therefore seems a grave error if we graft yet another foreign
growth onto our already mutilated condition. This craving for
things foreign and faraway is a morbid sign. Also, we cannot get
beyond our present level of culture unless we receive a powerful
impetus from our roots. But we shall receive it only if we go back
behind our cultural level, thus giving the suppressed primitive
man in ourselves a chance to develop. How this is to be done is a
problem I have been trying to solve for years. . . . We must dig
down to the primitive in us, for only out of the conflict between
civilized man and the Germanic barbarian will there come what
we need:a new experience of God. I do not think this goal can be
reached by means of artificial exercises.

So what I want to broach here, and this is all quite post-Nietzschean (and I mean this neither in a completely positive nor in a negative sense but rather a sense of realness and accurate description), is that an entire mold and constraining system -- indeed a metaphysical picture and what Nietzsche meant when he employed the image of an 'horizon' that was wiped away -- came to its natural end. It is not 'God' who died but a conceptual order.

Now here is what I think is the curious thing: the former conceptual order will not, and cannot be, reconstructed. There are other peoples however, let's say in the Third World, who have not entered Modernity and who can and will use the Christian conceptual form to pull themselves up into Modernity, but what happened to us (the collapse of a metaphysical story and the loss of an 'horizon') will also, eventually, occur for them as well. But for us, now, we cannot go backward. It is in a strong sense impossible to do so. We cannot recover and paste up there onto the sky an old vision that no longer really applies, that no longer *describes our world*.

Allow me to quote Hermann Hesse in Demian:

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.”

[Dubious]

A horizon which remains stagnant, static, unmoving, dead while everything around it moves is predestined to dismember with the gods themselves contained in its sanctum likewise fated, lost in space...captains of a vessel doomed to shipwreck. It's called Götterdämmerung or Twilight of the gods, a light which gradually diminishes until all is cremated leaving only subliminal remnants of what once was in its wake. But, like nature itself, psychic contents are almost as indestructible as physical ones and reform themselves into new horizons that circulate until that too succumbs to atrophy.

Civilization, as temporarily denoted by its horizon, is not ONE thing but an ongoing process of metamorphosis. As long as change is possible, it reinflates consecrating itself into new vistas. History being dynamic cannot remain rooted in the same stories; sceneries shift and gods get replaced or annulled as the psyche demands of itself according to the time and place situated. It evaluates what is present to create the values of its time.

[Belinda]

Ok, that’s it. Although I know it is not particularly relevant to your angle in dealing with IC and his shortcomings with consideration to Christianity, I think it important for me to clarify JUST some things:-

1. God made itself aware to me since 1997.

2. The sage.
On November 5th 2005, I climbed out of bed and the words were said to me (very loud and clear – as if someone was in my room) “Tonight, bad luck.”
I was playing cards with a bunch of lads that night, so I thought ok, maybe I am going to lose at cards. I did not lose, in fact I won a bunch of money. I staggered drunk out to a taxi, I fell asleep in the taxi and awoke to the driver forcing me to get out, miles away from where I live (we were outside a petrol station).
I sat on some grass and thought shit, I am going to have to call another taxi, when a male and a female approached me, and started yelling at me like I was a piece of shit. I stood, the girl kept telling me to ‘sit’ like a dog! I ignored her, and thought ok, here we go, biffo time. Then I noticed the ‘man’ get a metal baseball bat from under his jacket. He broke my arm and nose.
I ended up in hospital. After a day or two, since they were no longer giving me morphine, I decided to check-out and go home. The prescription they gave me for pain killers apparently was only valid at the hospital, so to my dismay when I got to my local chemist and could only get paracetemol and on calling the hospital – their dispensary was now closed. I was in a LOT of pain, I had pins and wires in my not so funny bone.
That night, I was in tears with the agony. Eventually, since I knew God existed I decided to say a prayer (In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – all that crap) I asked for the pain to dissapear. The reply:- “Would you like me to erase that?” – to which of course I replied YES!
The pain dissapeared from about 10 mins, great relief. But then eventually the pain started to return and the voice stated “Do you understand?” – to which I shouted NO! And probably called it all sorts of names. (I understand now however) Eventually, whenever I was close to finally getting to sleep, an energy would surge through my body, ensuring I was re-awoken. I said, “Who are you, are you God?” To which the reply was, “I am a sage.”
I didn’t know what a sage was (apart from a herb) so I thought about climbing out of bed and looking it up in my dictionary, as I thought this I was tapped heavily on my right knee – as in ‘right’ do that.
My dictionary read re sage:- “An extremely wise person.”
Oh yes, they stole my mobile phone. When I got a replacement, my new number is very basic, and it has in the middle 007666 (license to kill !!)

3. RE: I am your entertainment.
About five years ago, when I was being TESTED in all kinds of ways – rather dire at times, I stated to the sage: “What am I to you, I am here for your entertainment!”
The SAGE replied: “Don’t flatter yourself.”

4. RE: I learn from you. (MANKIND)
A couple of years ago I asked GOD (again while under the duress of some heavy tests.)
“What do you want from us”? (meaning us humans)
To which (I presume God replied.) “I learn from you.”

Just to add. YES, I am in almost daily contact with these entities. Indeed Christ has spoken to me, and made it clear it was Him very recently. I look forward to playing pool with him, for some reason!
Oooh I’m soooo special. I would rather be dead for the rest of eternity than go through the HELL that I have been put through since 1997.
Now that I am in heaven – fuck, It’s like being a Jedi – nothing, nobody can harm me! People think I am in my early 30s – I am 50. You can live ‘forever’, as a sage..since God has ultimate control over all atomic matter.
Recently the word “secret” has been said many times, to which I laugh – as if anyone believes me!! But, some stuff regarding a pending invite I shall keep quiet..I look forward to meeting them.

viewtopic.php?t=33214
www.androcies.com


ATTRIBUTES OF GOD: (GARNERED FROM MY EXPERIENCES SINCE 1997)

- What we perceive as reality, is 'generated' by this entity at THE most finite sub-atomic scale where either an event occurs or it doesn't - ergo, it has binary control over ALL matter, that includes our very own grey matter (if it wishes).
- IT has the ability to KNOW everything within the minds of wo/man.
- IT has the ability to switch ALL matter within our brains - our synapses - making us akin to biological robots - should serendipity or synchronicity be a desired outcome.
- IT has formed key words within the ENGLISH language - the common protocol for communication with anomalies and intricacies beyond natural language etymology.
- IT has the ability to appear to morph matter that you perceive as 'matter'.
- IT has ultimate control over ALL that we perceive as dimensions within our reality.
- IT is KARMIC.
- IT reincarnates US (souls) to within families - or other - that we deserve based on KARMA.
- Entropy is likely to be key to the reason it permits the opposite of FAITH -> DOUBT (in other words, fools that cross certain lines of KARMA may end up 666).

I don't doubt that Atto is telling the truth. However mystical anecdotes usually contain a lot of interpretation as does this interesting one from Atto. Mystical experiences may be correlated with brain activity and other objective observations and subjected to statistical analysis so that we may say what is or is not caused by brain activity.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Ok, that’s it. Although I know it is not particularly relevant to your angle in dealing with IC and his shortcomings with consideration to Christianity, I think it important for me to clarify JUST some things:-

In a philosophy environment like this, inclined to analysis which always implies breaking down into pieces:

[Medieval Latin, from Greek analusis, a dissolving, from analūein, to undo : ana-, throughout; see ana- + lūein, to loosen; see leu- in Indo-European roots]

. . . it is problematic to examine personal, spiritual experience. However the important thing is (from my angle) is to validate it. My own view is that that is how spiritual life begins -- often through uncanny events.

Within the context of a conversation about Christianity we simply have to note that Christianity by its declared nature must deny and negate entire realms of experience. The context in which this happened originally was when the Christian apostles set out into the pagan world with their mission of invalidating one realm of experience and asserting a 'replacement' by a higher modality.

As the quote by Jung suggests this involved 'cutting away' from the life-tree: "Like Wotan's oaks, the gods were felled and a wholly incongruous Christianity, born of monotheism on a much higher cultural level, was grafted onto the stumps. The Germanic man is still suffering from this mutilation".

It seems to me that 'genuine spiritual experience' must take place within the area where the roots were severed. We have mentioned Hesse's Steppenwolf and I am now more certain that this is what he was getting at.

Curiously, Christianity and (let's say) pagan revivalism both propose rebirth and regeneration as needed and necessary. Christianity expresses it (in John for example) as being regenerated from above. It is a prepositional statement and implies the celestial world and the world of a god that is *up there* and *out there*. In any case something distinct from the Earth, non-connected to the Earth. So *the Earth* is not seen as needed. And the Earth is seen as something which one must get away from.

This all fits into Christianity's aversion to nature, natural 'spirits', the healing power of nature, and also any sort of reliance on 'the inner man' and the 'inner world'. These were actually defined as the Devil's territories. Christianity sees 'the heart of man', and man himself obviously, as totally and irredeemably corrupt (Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?")

Obviously, one of the backdrops to this present conversation is that Christianity is bound up in a dualistic perceptual and ideological structure. In fact Christianity is really Manichaean! Not only must a Christian divide himself off from 'the world' he must divide himself off from a sense of internal union and self-trust. A rigid, inflexible Christian modality is -- often -- pretty neurotic.

And as I have been suggesting it is in a concrete and defined sense that this division and duality became unworkable and untenable. Other modalities had to be found and worked. God had to be understood again as part and parcel of the world and part and parcel of man. For that reason the new, if somewhat whimsical, definition of the god Abraxis. A much older god-picture. It is in fact much more than a mere poetic term. It actually means something quite substantial.

[Nick_A]

Ok, that’s it. Although I know it is not particularly relevant to your angle in dealing with IC and his shortcomings with consideration to Christianity, I think it important for me to clarify JUST some things:-

In a philosophy environment like this, inclined to analysis which always implies breaking down into pieces:

[Medieval Latin, from Greek analusis, a dissolving, from analūein, to undo : ana-, throughout; see ana- + lūein, to loosen; see leu- in Indo-European roots]

. . . it is problematic to examine personal, spiritual experience. However the important thing is (from my angle) is to validate it. My own view is that that is how spiritual life begins -- often through uncanny events.

Within the context of a conversation about Christianity we simply have to note that Christianity by its declared nature must deny and negate entire realms of experience. The context in which this happened originally was when the Christian apostles set out into the pagan world with their mission of invalidating one realm of experience and asserting a 'replacement' by a higher modality.

As the quote by Jung suggests this involved 'cutting away' from the life-tree: "Like Wotan's oaks, the gods were felled and a wholly incongruous Christianity, born of monotheism on a much higher cultural level, was grafted onto the stumps. The Germanic man is still suffering from this mutilation".

It seems to me that 'genuine spiritual experience' must take place within the area where the roots were severed. We have mentioned Hesse's Steppenwolf and I am now more certain that this is what he was getting at.

Curiously, Christianity and (let's say) pagan revivalism both propose rebirth and regeneration as needed and necessary. Christianity expresses it (in John for example) as being regenerated from above. It is a prepositional statement and implies the celestial world and the world of a god that is *up there* and *out there*. In any case something distinct from the Earth, non-connected to the Earth. So *the Earth* is not seen as needed. And the Earth is seen as something which one must get away from.

This all fits into Christianity's aversion to nature, natural 'spirits', the healing power of nature, and also any sort of reliance on 'the inner man' and the 'inner world'. These were actually defined as the Devil's territories. Christianity sees 'the heart of man', and man himself obviously, as totally and irredeemably corrupt (Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?")

Obviously, one of the backdrops to this present conversation is that Christianity is bound up in a dualistic perceptual and ideological structure. In fact Christianity is really Manichaean! Not only must a Christian divide himself off from 'the world' he must divide himself off from a sense of internal union and self-trust. A rigid, inflexible Christian modality is -- often -- pretty neurotic.

And as I have been suggesting it is in a concrete and defined sense that this division and duality became unworkable and untenable. Other modalities had to be found and worked. God had to be understood again as part and parcel of the world and part and parcel of man. For that reason the new, if somewhat whimsical, definition of the god Abraxis. A much older god-picture. It is in fact much more than a mere poetic term. It actually means something quite substantial.

Let me explain a little of how we differ. First I believe that the human organism is dual natured. His lower parts are animal and evolved from the earth like other creatures of the earth. His higher parts descended from above as part of the "fall." Man has become incapable of reconciling the needs of the earth with the needs of the soul?

Collective Man as a whole is described by Plato as the "Beast". Like all other beasts, man on earth is not conscious. It is a creature of reaction. A jungle is not a conscious construction. It is a machine working by reactions to natural and cosmic impressions. The mistake you are making is assuming choice to exist. Collective man has no choice. It is a machine serving the earth.

Christianity is not opposed to the earth. It knows its value and the importance of protecting it. It is opposed to being dominated by it. The higher parts of Man's psych should dominate the lower parts. But the fall of man gradually has created the absurd situation where the lower dominates the higher. The first step in Christianity, not man made Christendom, it is to awaken to our situation. We are conditioned machines preventing our species from awakening to our human nature.

“When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.” P.D. Ouspensky

The great advantage of Christianity is that it promotes awakening rather than dreams. The great beast cannot change. It serves its purpose as creatures of reaction by serving the earth, However awakening is beyond the ability of the beasts. Yet an individual can awaken and become able to Know Thyself. Man can experience how he loses his conscious self to his lower programmed self and try to become a normal human being aware of his universal meaning and purpose

“The supernatural greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.” ~ Simone Weil

Christianity showed the means to reconcile the struggle between our higher and lower natures and with the help of the Spirit, makes it possible for some with the need, courage, and will, to consciously experience ourselves from a higher conscious perspective for the goal of becoming human rather than hiding from it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The first step in Christianity, not man made Christendom, it is to awaken to our situation. We are conditioned machines preventing our species from awakening to our human nature.

A few thoughts in response . . .

Numerous times I have said, and I still think it, that the doctrines and the sound precepts of traditional Christian theology seem to me sound. They have been developed over hundreds of years, even a thousand years, and they incorporate many different traditional, philosophical, ethical and ideological ideas. Perhaps there are others here who absolutely negate the good sense in these outlines of sound practice? However I am not one of them.

When one speaks of 'Christendom' one speaks about a social order in which a religious mode is practiced, right? In my way of understanding things, and life generally, one has to accommodate 'the masses' and provide to the masses (sorry to put it like this) a sound set of guidelines and rules. The function of traditional religion is to inculcate a form of obedience to certain rules and regulations. I do not have a problem per se with this, and when I spoke about 'Christian culture' to IC I referred to just this: a general, socially-accepted and socially-administered set of ethics. I cannot see how a society can do without these. So I am resolved to foster religiousness for a host of different reasons.

But when it comes down to the philosophical and existential brass-tacks, and here on a forum where ideas are hammered out and analytic acids are applied, I am aware that 'religious life' and 'spiritual life' are distinct categories. Spiritual life involves many different levels of risk. Not the least being that God and Spirit cannot really be portrayed or said to be one thing and not another. The religious mode of life for, say, an average citizen, is fulfilled through simply living as a decent person. If that is attained then a great deal is attained.

But spiritual life is far more demanding and also dangerous. I think there is always, and there will always be a heretical tint to it. Same with mystical understanding of the inner aspect of religiousness.

The only person who can 'awaken' as you say is just that: one person who has a spiritual life. In a sense I think that person must cover-over the truth of what spiritual life is and demands from those who need to remain solidly anchored in religious life. The way I think about this is to imagine how you or I or we would reveal the truth of things to a child -- our children I mean of course. Kind of like in nursery school you have to establish a predictable, regular order and everything has to feel 'safe'. Otherwise the kids feel insecure and when insecure they act out.

I think I can go along with 'regeneration from above' if the above is redefined. I see Christianity as a construct and as a 'lens' or perhaps I should say a program for self-development. But as I have often said I think one has to seek out the original and more or less pure sources of this teaching. But the image of God, and even the way that Jesus Christ is pictured, seems quite wrong to me (now that I have been thinking about it). So what I presently think is that if there is even a Jesus-figure that is held in the imagination (and here I mean for one on a spiritual as opposed merely to a religious path) that figure of Jesus must be visualized in a very different way.

I have come to believe that if there is a new man of theology it must be a Hamlet-like figure. Theology must become infinitely more expansive and the theological conversation infinitely more open and broad. And so must the (static) figure of Jesus. But I also see the visualization of Jesus-God as a person to be misleading. As I say average people need a fixed image, not one that moves and shifts. The odd thing is that many people wish for a father-figure-like Jesus and one as predictable as an Apollo. But there is another aspect to God or to the manifestation of God and it is, I am almost afraid to say, a trickster and a mercurial figure.

[Dubious]

As the quote by Jung suggests this involved 'cutting away' from the life-tree: "Like Wotan's oaks, the gods were felled and a wholly incongruous Christianity, born of monotheism on a much higher cultural level, was grafted onto the stumps. The Germanic man is still suffering from this mutilation".

It seems to me that 'genuine spiritual experience' must take place within the area where the roots were severed. We have mentioned Hesse's Steppenwolf and I am now more certain that this is what he was getting at.

This is all so totally anachronistic, in effect, meaningless. In the Western World especially in Europe, populations are turning more and more atheistic or at best agnostic. Who now would be subject to a mental hernia based on the fact that Wotan's oaks once were felled replaced by Christianity! It's far too late to suffer from that kind of mutilation when Christianity itself is now vulnerable to being felled by the erosion of non-belief.

The caters in the psyche...and craters there be, are no-longer of that ilk which Jung describes. Though much more sophisticated and symbolic than simply believing in the bible as the literal word of god, these kinds of superannuated views are of absolutely no help in initiating a new path or paradigm in moving the psyche forward. What it remains indifferent to lacks the will to move it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

This is all so totally anachronistic, in effect, meaningless. In the Western World especially in Europe, populations are turning more and more atheistic or at best agnostic. Who now would be subject to a mental hernia based on the fact that Wotan's oaks once were felled replaced by Christianity! It's far too late to suffer from that kind of mutilation when Christianity itself is now vulnerable to being felled by the erosion of non-belief.

The craters in the psyche...and craters there be, are no-longer of that ilk which Jung describes. Though much more sophisticated and symbolic than simply believing in the bible as the literal word of god, these kinds of superannuated views are of absolutely no help in initiating a new path or paradigm in moving the psyche forward. What it remains indifferent to lacks the will to move it.

Am I to gather from what you say, and your personal position, that atheism (at best agnosticism) is a desired object?

I believe that I grasp what you are trying to say, still I think you could say it with more clarity. But I'd rather not guess. Where do you think things are going?

It may be true that the views of someone like Jung have become anachronistic in the present, but that does not mean that what he proposes, or what he saw and opined about the spiritual condition of Occidental man (Germanic man as Jung would have it) is untrue.

Who now would be subject to a mental hernia based on the fact that Wotan's oaks once were felled replaced by Christianity!

There are two aspects to this. One is if a person were actually aware that the oaks of Europe had anything to do with Wotan, and that is itself doubtful. If the statement were made it would indeed make no sense.

But the condition -- that is if you think it real -- of having been severed from authentic roots at a psychological level and a psychic level, from a psychological perspective (a Jungian one in any case) could very well still apply. This would indicate that people can suffer *consequences* without at all understanding what the causes that produced those consequences are. People could well live in a form of 'hernia' (a malady) without grasping at all why they live in that state. I observe this ignorance all the time.

So let me ask you: Do you think that people can suffer such consequences without being aware of what the causes are? And if so, what do you suppose the cure would be?

It's far too late to suffer from that kind of mutilation when Christianity itself is now vulnerable to being felled by the erosion of non-belief.

I sense that your position is one of, let's say, an 'absolute atheism'. But I don't want to read into it. What exactly is your position? If you provide that bit of information it will be helpful to understanding your thought. I'm going to hold off from the comment I began to make on this quoted portion until I hear from you.

...these kinds of superannuated views are of absolutely no help in initiating a new path or paradigm in moving the psyche forward.

Can you talk more about what you believe is needed and necessary? Again until you have made some of this clear I'd be guessing about what position you hold.

[Dubious]

Am I to gather from what you say, and your personal position, that atheism (at best agnosticism) is a desired object?

Nothing to do with desired or not. One doesn’t “desire” to become an atheist or theist. Neither of these existential views are created through desire or last very long if they were. Nevertheless, I think of both expressions as vastly less limited in allowing an 'open mind' to operate, consciousness having the range it was meant to have.

Where do you think things are going?

Short answer is not to any place we want to be. The long answer is much more problematic but hardly less pessimistic.

It may be true that the views of someone like Jung have become anachronistic in the present, but that does not mean that what he proposes, or what he saw and opined about the spiritual condition of Occidental man (Germanic man as Jung would have it) is untrue.

True or not, they prove themselves equally ineffectual in the gradual uploading of a more cosmological perspective and all what may emerge from it including a much more potent revision of our interface with the planet, which, after all is the source and cause of our existence. That which emerges from the deep never immediately floats to the surface or make itself wholly visible. That’s when philosophy attempts to fill the gap.

But the condition -- that is if you think it real -- of having been severed from authentic roots at a psychological level and a psychic level, from a psychological perspective (a Jungian one in any case) could very well still apply. This would indicate that people can suffer *consequences* without at all understanding what the causes that produced those consequences are. People could well live in a form of 'hernia' (a malady) without grasping at all why they live in that state. I observe this ignorance all the time.

So let me ask you: Do you think that people can suffer such consequences without being aware of what the causes are? And if so, what do you suppose the cure would be?

I don’t think most people would be bothered or aware of such specifically articulated amputations of the psyche from it’s supposed roots. You aren’t going to get a neurosis from something vaguely or never experienced. The cause of anxiety is not so much one’s separation from some ancient mythic belief but, much closer to home, existential conditions never faced before morphing into scenarios ever more deadly. We’re at a millennial cusp of a kind where another may not follow. It’s our dissociation with the past which must happen - not forgetting what they were - if by “future” is meant the emergence of a new horizon.

I sense that your position is one of, let's say, an 'absolute atheism'. But I don't want to read into it. What exactly is your position?

I don’t notice a big difference between being an ‘absolute atheist” OR an ‘absolute theist’. One requires a firm belief in god-driven events; the other merely disenfranchises himself from such beliefs and, in the process, feel more free in realizing his existence is merely an act of chance without being subservient to a high power. Common to both, you live until you die. In the interim, believe as you like! It's furthermore contradictory to be an 'absolute' atheist or theist since it's logically not possible to know for certain in either case. So far, God as manifested in the bible operates as a psychological limitation forcing one’s mind to surrender and acknowledge a lie. It segregates that part of the mind no-longer allowed to be used. In effect, it exiles that part of the thinking process which has the audacity to question any of its scriptured falsehoods.

As for my exact position, without mentioning all its details and exemptions, is that we’re composed of atoms arranged into molecules which further create the tissues and organs of our existence all controlled by chance and nature...a conclusion in which god never died not having been necessary for anything from the very beginning. God’s only existed when the universe wasn’t even close to the actual size of the solar system and barely understood. It was then not beyond human imagination to imagine god(s) existing! The 'mystical' becomes more profound when god isn't inserted.

Btw, don’t feel obligated to respond. I’m merely expressing my views which are never ‘exact’. To me a philosophy forum is simply a vehicle to rationalize and structure one’s ideas...a kind of self-rationalization independent of any response.

Your choice.

[attofishpi]

Ok, that’s it. Although I know it is not particularly relevant to your angle in dealing with IC and his shortcomings with consideration to Christianity, I think it important for me to clarify JUST some things:-

In a philosophy environment like this, inclined to analysis which always implies breaking down into pieces:

[Medieval Latin, from Greek analusis, a dissolving, from analūein, to undo : ana-, throughout; see ana- + lūein, to loosen; see leu- in Indo-European roots]

. . . it is problematic to examine personal, spiritual experience. However the important thing is (from my angle) is to validate it. My own view is that that is how spiritual life begins -- often through uncanny events.

Within the context of a conversation about Christianity we simply have to note that Christianity by its declared nature must deny and negate entire realms of experience. The context in which this happened originally was when the Christian apostles set out into the pagan world with their mission of invalidating one realm of experience and asserting a 'replacement' by a higher modality.

As the quote by Jung suggests this involved 'cutting away' from the life-tree: "Like Wotan's oaks, the gods were felled and a wholly incongruous Christianity, born of monotheism on a much higher cultural level, was grafted onto the stumps. The Germanic man is still suffering from this mutilation".

It seems to me that 'genuine spiritual experience' must take place within the area where the roots were severed. We have mentioned Hesse's Steppenwolf and I am now more certain that this is what he was getting at.

Curiously, Christianity and (let's say) pagan revivalism both propose rebirth and regeneration as needed and necessary. Christianity expresses it (in John for example) as being regenerated from above. It is a prepositional statement and implies the celestial world and the world of a god that is *up there* and *out there*. In any case something distinct from the Earth, non-connected to the Earth. So *the Earth* is not seen as needed. And the Earth is seen as something which one must get away from.

This all fits into Christianity's aversion to nature, natural 'spirits', the healing power of nature, and also any sort of reliance on 'the inner man' and the 'inner world'. These were actually defined as the Devil's territories. Christianity sees 'the heart of man', and man himself obviously, as totally and irredeemably corrupt (Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?")

Obviously, one of the backdrops to this present conversation is that Christianity is bound up in a dualistic perceptual and ideological structure. In fact Christianity is really Manichaean! Not only must a Christian divide himself off from 'the world' he must divide himself off from a sense of internal union and self-trust. A rigid, inflexible Christian modality is -- often -- pretty neurotic.

And as I have been suggesting it is in a concrete and defined sense that this division and duality became unworkable and untenable. Other modalities had to be found and worked. God had to be understood again as part and parcel of the world and part and parcel of man. For that reason the new, if somewhat whimsical, definition of the god Abraxis. A much older god-picture. It is in fact much more than a mere poetic term. It actually means something quite substantial.

Well, like Christ apparently said: To know God is through me (belief in).

I know God (to a certain level). One can read all the books on the planet, but until one makes that single leap of faith, (perhaps) one can never actually gain gnosis.

So.

Beyond a general interest in the history and man's interpretations of theology, what is the point if you are never going to find an actual knowledge of God's existence?

[attofishpi]

I don't doubt that Atto is telling the truth. However mystical anecdotes usually contain a lot of interpretation as does this interesting one from Atto. Mystical experiences may be correlated with brain activity and other objective observations and subjected to statistical analysis so that we may say what is or is not caused by brain activity.

Everything we percieve is via brain activity resulting in our conscious awareness. It's when the correlation between what God\sage states, and then events in ones life occuring (synchronicity) so damned often for months on end that one should consider a lot deeper regarding what they understand is the true nature of reality.

For 1 example of countless:-
"mad_if_u_dont" - a username issued by a customer the moment I considered to myself that I should go to confession that night. On what planet does a customer make up a username like that...consider that 1st, let alone the timing. (and this sychronicity was one of countless where I wished it would stop - HELL is not nice, heaven> not so bad!)

Yeah, I'm pretty much done with trying to convince anyone...

[Belinda]

I don't doubt that Atto is telling the truth. However mystical anecdotes usually contain a lot of interpretation as does this interesting one from Atto. Mystical experiences may be correlated with brain activity and other objective observations and subjected to statistical analysis so that we may say what is or is not caused by brain activity.

Everything we percieve is via brain activity resulting in our conscious awareness. It's when the correlation between what God\sage states, and then events in ones life occuring (synchronicity) so damned often for months on end that one should consider a lot deeper regarding what they understand is the true nature of reality.

For 1 example of countless:-
"mad_if_u_dont" - a username issued by a customer the moment I considered to myself that I should go to confession that night. On what planet does a customer make up a username like that...consider that 1st, let alone the timing. (and this sychronicity was one of countless where I wished it would stop - HELL is not nice, heaven> not so bad!)

Yeah, I'm pretty much done with trying to convince anyone...

You are right and I am sorry I lacked the opportunity yesterday to enlarge on my discussion. I'd like to have discussed how the good of your experiences and the good of your premonitions do as a matter of fact correlate.