random musings at 1am

i am firstly, a reconstituent of a man or a plant or some matter 5000 years ago.

The God that is being worshipped in Church cannot be the same God worshipped 2 centuries ago, during the age of Puritanism, or 5 centuries ago during the Middle Ages and the various Crusades, and all the way back to the OT times as well.

Each one of us perceives God differently, and if that is true, how different would it be with the God perceived in a different age! We are all a product of our age. No matter how we choose to define ourselves we cannot escape the fact that we have heard the same music, watched the same movies or read the same popular literature that are available to us.

In the past, there was a consensus that the bible was to be read allegorically rather than literally, which has now changed in the present age.

A bible based on historicity will never make sense, because the story of the flood, and the story of creation is an amalgamation of various myths that already existed before the Torah was written. Moreover, there are conflicting information in Gen 1 and 2.

If one tells a child not to steal, without providing a valid reason, the child will eventually succumb and break this rule. Yet if we provide a rationale behind it, there may be hope that he would not commit such an offense. If a reason is provided, it will be his mastery of his will over his self that will fashion his actions.

Parents no longer demand a child not to break a rule by threatening that the police will come and put them behind bars, but explaining to them why it is not good to commit such an act. This I see as a great progress in our humanity.


If the child grows up to think that sinning is wrong in itself because it is against the one in authority, one disastrous consequence would be the development of a guilt complex. He sins, and feels guilty for going against God. And this is what happens when the Word of God is understood in this manner. WIthout reason, without forethought and knowledge with regards to why it was a sin, he feels guilty for going against authority, against God, against what is set out to be true. I beg respectfully to differ from the popular opinion that Christianity only heals, but that Christianity harms the soul in insidious, abominably perverse ways as well.

Now this guilt complex in my opinion, is what sickened Nietzsche into writing his dissertation on the geneaology of morality. Pity, guilt, shame, are what he felt to be over emphasised in the christian faith, putting a stop to the growth of true humanity, preventing us from blooming to the best that we all can be.

I am not here by agreeing with his philosophy, but I am in part, feeling the way he feels about christianity.

The express conversion of the masses to the christian faith is dangerous. It will present a greater bane than any present boon.

Gates of Ivory

Everything is a Sham! Virgil realised this, Homer did too, Socrates as well! That we built our love, our relationships, based on the notion of the infallible truth.. Based on the notion that it is fully pure, fully excellent, fully true.

But the reality is very different indeed. We built everything on dreams, on uncertainty, amidst the idea that it is all true.

is this sad? Is this not sad? It is the human life! It is nothing yet something!

ANd i meditated upon the meaning of it all. And i was wondering why should one even begin asking questions such as these! What is the difference between knowing and not knowing?

And for a time, I do not find an answer.

And someone kept on asking me to continue seeking the answer to this question of mine.

And then it struck me.

Why am I seeking an answer to a question such as this?

And then I saw heaven open up before my mind.

Edward the Great

Language
De Bono has stated that he regards language as having been both the biggest help and the biggest barrier to human progress.
His contention is that just as language has allowed one generation to pass useful knowledge onto the very next, it has also allowed dangerous myths and out-of-date ideas to become enshrined.
Convinced that a key way forward for humanity is better language, he published "The Edward de Bono Code Book" in 2000. In this book, he proposed a suite of new words based on numbers, where each number combination represents a useful idea or situation that currently does not have a single-word representation.
For example, de Bono means "Give me my point of view and I will give you your point of view." might be used in situations where one or both of two parties in a dispute are making insufficient effort to understand the other's perspective

God has no religion, only Man has

The reason why religious people and non religious people disagree has in part to do with the human tendency to classify metaphysical emotions and inexpressible feelings into specific, identifiable groups, not recognizing that the other party's classification is equally valid.

Take 2 identical twins, one became a muslim who understands Allah, while the other became a Christian who truly knows the God of Isreal. To a blind man, both to him are one and the same until they start opening they mouths on religion and what must be believed. They both exude love, patience, peace, and compassion until that little piece of rudder takes over the whole ship of humanity, running it off its true course to what could have come much earlier.

Take 2 believers in the Abrahamic God, one a Catholic, one a Christian.

Take 2 denominations, one a presbyterian, one a charismatic.

Take 2 believers, one a Jehovah's witness, one a Mormon.

Take 2 poets, one a playwright, one a composer.

Everyone thinks that they will go into Heaven, or they should have the right of way on the street of life, when none recognizes that heaven isn't reached by believing in these earthly rules that man set for themselves.

Laws, believes, and rules always start out to help and assist, but always ends up being perverted by our limited conception of what laws and rules are for. That is partly why Jesus came and told the pharisees off for their blind faith and perverted use of Judaic laws. Jesus showed the true way of obeying 'laws'.

Down the line, centuries later, we have made Jesus into an Idol. Well intentioned Christians say, 'If you call upon Jesus, believe in Him, you will be saved, and heavens rejoice as you are now a Son of God'.

This is a common misconception about Jesus. This is not how Jesus is claiming to be accepted into ones life. Saying things like that is misleading in the most subtle way, turning present day christians into Pharisees themselves.

That is why we need a follow up Messiah to come down and show us the way. Let those who have ears listen and contemplate. At least in music, we had Wagner to bridge the divide between Drama, Philosophy, and Music, now we are awaiting a Messiah to truly destroy this religious bridge.

It has been 1900 years. I think it is about time that happened and believe me, it will happen soon enough. A common man like me being able to put forth common sense in a lucid manner speaks for itself that the spiritual climate of the world is changing rapidly.

Be always alert, for he will come like a thief in the night. You wouldnt your oil lamps to be empty then do you?

Paul's misrepresentation of Jesus in marriage

Matthew 19:10 ...'if such is the case.. it is better not to marry. But he said to them, 'Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.'

Paul took this to mean in 1 Cor 7:1 -12 '...It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman, But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband...but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self control..'

Paul had his own bias views about marriage and sex, which is very different from the one Jesus had. Jesus had a general view on marriage, a view that is open to different interpretations, but most of all, it is a view that we should take it to mean that every individual works their way through life differently, and there is no one true path to right living.

Paul then chose to interpret the correct way of life and what marriage is about in his own fashion, spoken like a pastry baker who claims to know what is healthful to be consumed. He is obsessed with his love of god that he became quite insensible in his claims. To him, marriage is just for sex and to control its destructive nature. How plebeian! Spoken like a true monk on his way to enlightenment yet doesnt know that all aspects of life is valid and not necessarily evil!

It is a pity that he was only half way into his own enlightenment that he wrote this. If he was any more enlightened he would have erased this piece of rubbish that has made many followers do crazy insensible things.

Pop Christian Movement should be Banned

What is the pop christian? It is the christian in a charismatic church that does not fully understand what he believes, yet decides to give his life to Jesus when he feels the 'love' and gentleness surrounding him.

His basis of believe does not stem from anything other than peer pressure. Soon, doubts plague him, yet week after week, day after day, the family love he feels in this community draws him back and banishes the questions he have away.

He seeks them out, but not in the correct manner. He engages in pop christian texts, throwing away the CS Lewis and welcoming Tim La Haye, Rick Warren. Engaging, practical authors, but something still feels lacking. He doesn't read non christian philosophies on life, and the only time he reads them are in christian texts which always presents them in the most narrow minded and skewed context. (This in itself is normal, for everyone has difficulty writing impartially)

He has many meetings to attend. Out of love for his community he goes. Sometimes, when he is overloaded with life itself, he would still make the effort to go. Not being there, he feels guilty of abandoning his God that shared this special love with him. He feels guilty, and decides that no matter what, he must still go and worship his God who showed him love through his people.

When he gets angry, he prays in the name of Jesus to remove his anger, and believes all will be alright. He does not recognise the self righteous manner in which he does it, that will come later as he matures.

In all of it, he learns how to pray, what the holy spirit is, how the bible is supposedly the most reliable text and most coherent text ever to be written over the ages.

He goes to church, worships, and breaks down before this God, because he cannot understand why life is so hard. He shares his problems with his community, and they support him with love. Then he feels great again, though the situation does not change.

This is to me love in the most perverse manner that the charismatic church has infected its young with.
This is love in the basest manner, a perversion of agape.

In my ex church, the pastor would say, '..and jesus died on the cross for all of us', proceeding then with tears welling up in his eyes. I have no qualms with that, but he in this manner actively presents the overt way of understanding Christ.

The other way of understanding christ is not overt, it has to do with the heart, and true understanding. It has to do with understanding the mystery and essence of God. The charismatic movement and mega church does none of that. Sure, they have spiritual warfares, manisfestations, but these are all coming out of people in a very overt way, void of true meaning and use for the heart.

The encouragement given in the charismatic church to jump and praise with intense physical joy is no doubt a valid form of worshipping God, but I am a firm believer in dual opposite effects, that this causes intense emotional swings and this pop christian will be susceptible to manic depressive states that only a constant dosage of church can seek to curb it.

Charismatic church and this emotional movement is like heroin. One depends on greater doses to live, or he cannot deal with life and mood swings. He has to be either fully immersed or else he cannot be filled with joy and peace. He does not know how trapped he is in this system, and continues fumbling onwards, with his mind and soul constantly being pulled in multiple directions in the process. If he is lukewarm (for generally 95% of people are in what they do, the 5% becomes someone great like Jesus, Einstein, Beethovan, Edward De Bono etc) in the christian sense, he is simply SPIT in 'God's' eyes.
XXXX
THis is the pop christian movement which I am strongly against. This way of understanding christianity has ruined lives of people who cannot truly fathom why christianity presents only one form of way to understanding the Godhead.

There will always be different kinds of people needing God differently. But charismatic churches ruin lifes of people who are not able to fit in with this method of worshipping the divine.

The movement of course did not start out to ruin people but to build them up, but it has to be abandoned for something better.

.

St Paul coming down as Shenxiu in China

The body is a Bodhi tree,
the mind a standing mirror bright.
At all times polish it diligently,
and let no dust alight.

When the disciples saw this gatha on the wall, there was a great stir. When Hongren saw it, he told them, "Practice according to this gatha, you will not fall into the evil realms, and you will receive great benefits. Light incense and pay respect to this gatha, recite it and you will see your essential nature." All the disciples praised and memorized the gatha.

Killing in the Name of God

I strangely remembered an emotion that I had experienced in church. The idea of dying to self and to be found alive in christ is a wonderful feeling indeed. An eternal rest on earth, for the self is 'gone', and we adopt a new personality and purpose, to live and animate ourselves for only one Subject that we idolize. How easy life becomes! No longer do we try and establish ourselves, we have a rulebook, a database to upload ourselves into.

I sincerely pray that such a man will never falter from his faith, for the consequences of doing so are disastrous for a person who upholds this christian ideal of destroying the Self.

Self negation and the death of the Ego in part makes us at one with our Creator, which Buddha partly refer to as being 'fully blown'... or the very instant when the flame of a candle ceases, realizing that there is no I, that the I has never truly existed, we encounter a strange feeling of calmness and serenity. We are living in the moment, devoid of human woes and cares, living and existing because we are, simply, alive and existing.


Bodhi is no tree,
nor is the mind a standing mirror bright.
Since all is originally empty,
where does the dust alight?

菩提本無樹,
明鏡亦非台;
本來無一物,
何處惹塵埃?

---Hui Neng

The Great Divide

I believe the hardest thing one can do is to be impartial towards his ideas.

An atheist will need to lay down his pride and empathize with the views of a religious fanatic, reading, fully absorbing the religious texts he chooses, fully immersing to get an overall sense as to why a believer beliefs.

A christian will have to abandon all arrogance and biblical education and come to his world with a blank slate, trying to put himself in his position without quickly jumping into easy conclusions.

It takes a man of incredible humility to be able to traverse to and fro this great divide.

What happens when we add a man who is neither an atheist nor a christian into the pie? It just gets messier.

Therein lies the main problem. It is fruitless reading a christian text against non christians, neither is there a point in reading an atheist's rant against christianity, nor a transcendental new age spiritualist against christians and atheist, for all are writing in their own perspective coming from fundamental differences in their own belief systems.

What then is the best approach? Wittgenstein expressed it aptly:

'What can be shown, cannot be said... Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.'


-- and so maybe the christian Calvinist Doctrine of Predestination made sense, for how can a man ever be 'saved' in the christian sense when he was already destined to be who he is believing in what he believes even before he became?

Cyclical Duality

I was told by a good friend to read a book Demian, and a quick Wiki of it made me realise that this was a new story written upon an idea that has always existed since the dawn of humanity.

The cyclical duality of life as well as the mysticism associated with not being able to explain inexpressible feelings, are some of the subjects that have always been around.

What is cyclical duality? I think people in the west closely associate it with Irony and Contradictions in life. As I wrote in my previous entry about the Aeneid, War is never quite far from Peace, Success is not very far from destruction.. Love is not so far from Hate, and so on.

One comfortable with Eastern philosophy can easily observe these apparent contradictions as two sides of the same coin, but I believe that one such as myself, growing up in a Western approach to logic and life, will find it difficult to rectify the seeming differences in these similarities; we only have easy access to difficult material like Bertrand Russell's mathematical paradox or lengthy discourses in Irony, whereas in the East, it is everywhere reflected in society through images and speech and way of life; the Tao, the Yin and the Yang, the Way, Buddhism, Zen etc.

What is this mysticism? It is what the gnostic writers have always been trying to hint at. I believe it is a form of profound writing to hint at some other worldly, inexpressible mood or feeling, which I believe is what we can only call the Divine. We have limited means to express what we feel, and writing in a profound, guru-like manner is the closest means that we have to share this feeling with others.

For Example, simply saying "When you turn over a leaf, you will find Me. You will discover Me in absolute darkness. I am everywhere. The way was always within you... etc" or, how certain music or song speaks so deep to you that you have played it in your Ipod more than a thousand times when no one else appreciates it... all of which evoking a kind of mood that is indescribable yet palpable.

That is why music, esoteric knowledge, hullucinogens, meditation, every form of art play such a big role in our lifes, because by engaging in them we are constantly having a taste of spirituality, other worldliness, the divine, GODhood, transcendental emotions.

I crawled the web and found this well written view

The Complete Bible Guide to Love and Sex

.....'Today the same problem is before us. Whenever sexuality and spirituality are regarded as separate and unrelated things, then both dimensions suffer. For sex is demeaning when it is reduced to the level of a commodity, and religion is demeaning when it is a matter of dry ritual or abstract doctrine. In America today the disembodied spirituality of popular religion is locked in fateful struggle against the dispirited hedonism of the secular world. And the resolution to the conflict is not the triumph of one side over the other, but the rediscovery of what I would call the sacramental view of sex. It is in the interplay of the spirit and the flesh that we find our salvation. The real question is not the prurient question of who does what to whom and when? The truly important question is whether our relationships with other people reflect the love of justice of God. In the passing encounters and the fleeting moments, do we find values that endure. Faith, hope and love, these three, said Paul, and the greatest of these is love. But if love tends more and more toward love making, without the faith and the hope that give it depth and power, then love itself is lost. If, on the contrary, one is able to infuse one's sexual relationships with the saving qualities of mutual respect, trust, and commitment, then one moves closer to living a life which on earth becomes all that it shall be "in Heaven."'

- Rev Charles Henderson

i believe many christians will disagree with many of Rev Charle's theological teachings, but ultimately, everyone interprets the Word of God in their own manner, how can one ascertain that he is more right than the other?

I believe strongly that the word of god is a catalyst towards understanding what was lying dormant within us all along, and the general mass will inadvertantly take everything at face value without consideration, and start a war of words, animosity and persecution.

Why is humanity so embarrassingly dismal in this aspect? I am filled with grief everytime I hear someone justify to themselves silently within their hearts 'Do not throw your pearls to the pigs'. I grief at the retardation of Reason and Intellect for self righteous, false confidence in a truth they are not willing to forgo for a moment to see from a different point of view. I also grief at the lackluster attitude that the world has always been so and nothing can be done to change it.

Socrates becomes the greatest man for saying, 'This one thing I know, which is, that I know nothing.'

If people can open their eyes that 'truth' , the 'love of Allah/God/Jesus/Buddha' can be found in every religion, that a muslim's religious experience is not so different from a catholic's, how great would this world become? Rules, theology, truths be damned to hell.

Love and Sex in the Bible

And i am called upon to write an 8 page paper on the subject of Love and Sex in the Bible. Now, in contemporary times, it is common to view these two ideas differently from one another. Yet if we consider how Greeks have categorised the different forms of love, Sex is actually a subset of Love.


And my main argument would go as follows.

That the greeks have managed to parse the idea of Love into categories : Agape, Eros, Philia, Storge.

In the bible, Erotic love, or what the translated text refers to generally as sexual immorality, is seen to be the basest of all 4.

Thus, as put forth by Paul in Corinthians, marriage was seen as a necessary evil to keep people away from sexual immorality, and sex itself was a necessary albeit disgusting ritual to procreate. I have heard of fervent catholics who agrees with this idea wholeheartedly and engages in sex only to bear children.

There is a whole preoccupation about sexual immorality and impurity in the new testament, and that only one form of love, Agape, is to be extolled.

In essense, universal love, the love for the divine, the love for otherworldliness and the love for everyone in a non-sexual way is the preoccupation of the christian writers.

xxxx
I am at disagreement with this 'ascetic' philosophy. Many would choose only to expound the dangers of sexual immorality, but why would no one give a discourse on the dangers of Agape love while neglecting the other 3, especially Eros?

A recent christian leader in Planet Shakers, Australia, who claims to be sick since a teenager, has confessed not too long ago of his preoccupation with Pornography. And i truly pity this fine young lad and his struggle to live a life of service to the world. Yet his preoccupation with fleeing his concept of 'Sin' and 'Wrongdoing' paradoxically brought him closer to what he feared, which manifested itself physically in sickness. Such is the effect of extolling Agape love and squelching Erotic love totally from ones value system. This is akin to trying to block off a valve in the heart.

Doing so is an impossibility because we are built in a way to experience all 4 kinds of love or maybe even more that people have a lack of words to describe them. Doing so leads to scarring emotional trauma and breakdown of a christian if he is not careful.

How so? A new born in Christ places all his hopes and dreams in an ideal unachievable. He places all his esteem and self identity on one subject, the Christian Godhead. This continual refining process towards Pop christian 'Godliness', becoming 'Jesus-like' in the Pop christian sense, has a pernicious effect on his own individuality. With limited guidance especially in a church that does not base their sermons and service on a deep understanding of the word of god (many charismatic movements), he no longer know who he is as he has fully assimilated into a pop ideal, and any steps away from these 'values' will cause himself grievous mental hurt which will eventually manifest itself physically. How many voices are running in his head i must imagine! How many 'spiritual battles' with himself would he have to go through! That is my Gripe.

Everything in life, I believe, comes in a fine balance. Any attempt to tilt this balance in favor of an 'idea' will inadvertantly be ruinous.

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach knew.. West meets East albeit for a short while (wiki excerpt)

In part 2 he discusses the "false or theological essence of religion," i.e. the view which regards God as having a separate existence over against man. Hence arise various mistaken beliefs, such as the belief in revelation which he believes not only injures the moral sense, but also "poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man, the sense of truth," and the belief in sacraments such as the Lord's Supper, which is to him a piece of religious materialism of which "the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality."

Philosophy
Essentially the thought of Feuerbach consisted in a new interpretation of religion's phenomena, giving an anthropological explanation. Following Schleiermacher’s theses, Feuerbach thought religion was principally a matter of feeling in its unrestricted subjectivity. So the feeling breaks through all the limits of understanding and manifests itself in several religious beliefs. But, beyond the feeling, is the fancy, the true maker of projections of "gods" and of the sacred in general.

I am but a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal! Delivering my body to be burned I gained nothing!