1. Jeff April 3, 2012 at 12:44 am #
An Experience:
Years ago I had a life changing experience. I was spending a
weekend at a Trappist monastery. A friend and I entered the
church for the first time, We suddenly and simultaneously each
had a marked spiritual experience. We stared at each other in
shock and surprise. It was the presence of the Holy Spirit,
fiery and enlivening. It lasted but a moment. What shocked me
most was not the mere fact of experiencing “spirit” (I was
used to that in my new age and eastern religious exposure) it
was that it simply wasn’t the same spirit as I had encountered
in those arenas. I had been taught the cardinal principle
(dogma?) that God or Spirit or the Absolute in every religion,
despite different approaches and words, was the same in
essence and taste. I could no longer think that, based on my
experience and what I was reading in the Bible. I was undone.
Unless I reinterpreted and redefined the words of the Bible in
the light of systems alien to the Bible – making it say things
it doesn’t. – I couldn’t blend Christ and Hinduism/Buddhism. I
still had a way to go but eventually I left eastern and new
age thought behind and became a Trinitarian/Nicene creed type
as that understanding had the best fit to scripture and my own
experience of the Three Persons of the Godhead.
I came up with this parable to express what I met in my
spiritual journey
A Parable:
The coast of Namibia is the only place in Africa where
elephants swim in the ocean. Two gnats went out to sea. One
landed on an elephant; the other on a whale. Both returned to
land and shared their experiences. While their respective
accounts had differences both said something like this: “It
was huge beyond belief, wet, gray, and above all, alive!” Many
gnat theologians decided the two gnats had experienced the
same thing, while others disagreed. The discussion continues.
Obviously the whale is Yahweh.
What is the experience of the elephant? I think the “elephant”
is deifying and absolutizing via “spiritual” practices and
teachings your inward awareness which is created in God’s
image. Your inner awareness and self is Godlike being made in
his image and through proper training and continued mental
programming you can expand it into an experience and
perception of “absolute reality”. From the Christian
perspective this is embracing the primal lie of Genesis that
you can be as God! and is the root of eastern religions.
Anyway this is the conclusion I’ve come to in this area. I
know this is offensive to sincere and well intentioned
followers of eastern spiritualities, but Jesus Christ is
termed the rock of offense and the stumbling stone. I know I
barked my shins against him and it was painful, but in the end
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2. I trusted in him.
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johnboy April 4, 2012 at 1:06 pm #
Jeff, what you describe, in my view, is based on a common
and facile caricature of the East, which, by the way, in no
monolithic tradition but, instead, very pluralistic with many
schools. For example, regarding anatman or no-self, in both
Buddhist & Hindu traditions, many westerners tend to
misappropriate the teaching when they adopt it, misinterpret
it, when they critique it.
One of the many practical take-aways from advaitan
sensibilities for Christianity would be to simply translate
the concept “identity” into “intimacy,” whenever it is
encountered, to consider identity a reality we approach — not
actually, but – asymptotically. In other words, even for some
(maybe even most) advaitans, no-self is an adjectival &
analogical interpretation of a phenomenal experience not a
literal & ontological description of a metaphysical reality.
The concept entails, therefore, an epistemic critique and not
a positivistic description. This approach recommends we employ
phenomenological vagueness for depthful, dynamical realities
like God and self (i.e. both dei & imago dei) in the place of
substantialist, essentialist categories. Many advaitans are
panentheists, then, as are many Christians.
It’s more like swimming in the ocean and either
BEFRIENDING (literally) a whale or BECOMING (metaphorically) a
whale, in the latter instance by being swallowed like Jonah.
And these are not mutually exclusive propositions. Many have
experienced both realities. It’s trialectical because first
(there is a mountain) the whale is encountered and befriended,
then (there is no mountain) one is swallowed by the whale,
then (there is) one is spit ashore by the whale, for personal
identity thus perdures even in the East!
That’s one of the signs that point to the Resurrection,
which we celebrate this Holy Week!
Namaste Jeff
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johnboy April 4, 2012 at 1:20 pm #
RE: What is the experience of the elephant? I think
the “elephant” is deifying and absolutizing via “spiritual”
practices and teachings your inward awareness which is created
in God’s image. Your inner awareness and self is Godlike being
made in his image and through proper training and continued
mental programming you can expand it into an experience and
perception of “absolute reality”. <<<<<<
This is tantamount to calling the Eastern experience a
navel-gazing anthropomorphic projection, the same critique
that Feuerbach leveled at Christianity and other theisms. It's
a nonfalsifiable tautology whether leveled by Feuerbach at you
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3. or leveled by you at the Eastern traditions. Alternatively,
though, we might consider the inner experience to be an
encounter of the indwelling deity, even as we needn't deny
that, at the same time, many of us from all traditions are
engaging in no small amount of self-projection, an activity
from which we progressively desist on our journeys of
transformation (theosis, where humanization = deification).
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