Iambiguous: I can cobble together some answers for you, but what most interests me is your own position in respect to these questions. One of the most alarming things about our present -- politically, socially, religiously, economically -- is to come into contact with people who, on one hand, put forth absolutist-type declarations about *what is* and what is *right* and what is needed, when alongside all of these declarations one gets the sense that most people exist within a framelessness where the very ground has been removed from under their feet and there are so many competing Stories and truth-assertions, which contradict each other, that it results I think in a sort of narrative-numbness.
One of the terms I employ is, I think, a good one:
desperation.
syn: despair, desperation, despondency refer to a state of mind caused by circumstances that seem too much to cope with. despair suggests total loss of hope, usu. accompanied by apathy and low spirits: He sank into despair after the bankruptcy. desperation is a state in which loss of hope drives a person to struggle against circumstances, with utter disregard of consequences: In desperation, they knocked down the door. despondency is a state of deep gloom due to loss of hope and a sense of futility and resignation: despondency after a serious illness.
I know that you have some reason or other to desire
me to make some definitive statements, but as I say I do not see that as the central thing to be talked about.
iambiguous wrote: βMon Jun 26, 2023 12:33 am
1) What is your take on the day that you die?
2) Leaving aside for now your more pedagogical assessments of Christianity...God and religion...how do you connect the dots existentially between the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave and what you imagine the fate of mere mortals to be on the other side?
3) Is there anything in the vicinity of a God, the God in your current frame of mind? How about Judgment Day? Immortality? Salvation? Moral Commandments? Sins?
4) And how do you anticipate things like race and ethnicity and sexual orientation factor into it?
5) And if you were really, really pressed to actually demonstrate empirically, experientially, experimentally, etc., that what you believe "in your head" is in fact true, how would you go about that?
1) If you mean to ask if I accept the Christian picture my answer is that I see all religious pictures as attempts to concretize into conceptualizable terms what cannot be conceptualized. The pictures vary, but there is always a picture, and we need pictures, but they also seem to hang us up. The entry into death, the departure from our vehicle, is it seems to me inconceivable since one leaves the conceived territory. You could as well ask about existence prior to entry into the body and, examining that picture, you'd have to conceive of some level of existence on some plane or other, or in any case something like a *soul* that blends with and becomes unified with everything in the physical human being that depends on biological and physical matters and which determines so much in our world.
I am uncertain if that part of us -- that part which is aware and conceives -- has even come to be since it has seemed to me that whatever it is, is eternal. Then, the thing to examine is *time*. There are so many questions about *time* and they all seem to resolve into mystical-like conceptions. So, how could anything be 'eternal' when time exists and seems so vast and in a sense terrifying and overwhelming?
2) Largely through a rather simplistic lens that I absorbed through my contact with Vedic metaphysical philosophy. Christianity presents us with a *picture* that is refracted through a Hebrew lens. And that was further refracted (the word implies a breaking apart but I'd also add in synthesis) when that vision clashed and was absorbed by the Greek concept-models. Those early centuries have been described as "a confusion of ideas and a confusion of peoples". That was an effect of the Roman empire and its conquest of different peoples, bringing them into association. Everything got blended together or to put it differently it became necessary to try to create bridges between one way of seeing and conceiving and some other which was very different. Not only was there syncretism on religious and mythical levels, but in all realms of thought.
In my view the metaphysical philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita better explains what the Christian scriptures attempt to define. So in this sense the Vedic notions can help to illustrate what is
metaphysically important in Christianity. My reference point would be the 16th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita:
This chapter expounds on the two kinds of human natureβthe saintly and the demoniac. Sri Krishna explains that the saintly-nature develops in humans by cultivating the modes of goodness, by following the instructions given in the scriptures, and purifying the mind with spiritual practices. Such behavior attracts daivΔ« sampatti or godlike qualities, eventually leading to God-realization. Contrary to this, the demoniac-nature develops by associating with modes of passion and ignorance and materially focused lifestyles that breed unwholesome traits in human personality. This leads the soul finally to a hell-like existence.
Sri Krishna enumerates the saintly virtues of those endowed with a divine nature and then describes the demoniac qualities that should be shunned consciously. Else, these will drag the soul further into ignorance and samsara or the cycle of life and death. In the end, Sri Krishna declares that the knowledge of the scriptures helps in overcoming ignorance and passion. They also guide us to make the right choices in life. Therefore, we must understand their teachings and injunctions and accordingly perform our actions in this world.
3) *In the vicinity of God* is a curious expression. My view is that it is our own awareness, our own living consciousness, that is the best thing to focus on if *God* is to be conceived. So, it is always an
internal affair. Judgment Day, in my mind, means simply that we are always in a process of judgment. If we manage to hone or sharpen our awareness it is inevitable that we enter into a process of examination of self (self in the world). The greater the awareness, the greater the sense of grief or embarrassment about all that we have done or thought on a road to what we hope was self-satisfaction. The Vedic idea is of *material entanglement*. We get trapped by our striving, our needs, our craving, our ambitions, and these cause us to do many things against our better judgment. But any rise in awareness is always internal.
Sat-Chit-Ananda is a Vedantic statement in Sanskrit (a 3D chess sort of language) that implies that Being is eternal. In that sense there is something in us that is 'eternal' while it is also true that a great deal that is exterior and mutable all passes away and reverts back to its mutable elements.
4) The issue of *race* is totally separate from that of *sexual orientation*. I have been puzzled why it is that *race* is of concern to you. I gather it was because you were raised up in an American 'white supremacy' but then, as with your Christian faith, everything was assaulted and you concluded that race-identity is not a 'good' but is a 'bad'? If you explain a bit more it would be helpful.
5) The proofs that tend to be convincing, for me, are evidenced by what I sense when I come in contact with a person. They carry their *spiritual dimensions* along with them. It is evident in how they carry themselves and in other ways like refinement, grace, intelligence, circumspection and a great deal else. And these things are carried culturally and transmitted from generation to generation.
