Date Posted:19:49 Author: Hendrik - 8 Jun 2001 Subject: Re: Thoughts of the Day In reply to:
ketch - 8 Jun 2001
's message, "Re: Thoughts of the Day" on 19:46
Ketch,
Thank you for the correction which prompted me to look up the Bible for the first time in years, and the English (King James) version for the first time ever.
What Jesus actually said at the cross was: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
I looked into his statements that he made during his last days - my edition was quite helpful as all of Jesus' sayings are printed in red - and I was astonished to find a recurring sort of dialogue that Jesus held with his "Father". Far from being able to interpret this in an objective manner, these dialogues at first sight still leave in me the impression of someone who is communicating with an at least partly separate entity, rather than an edifying talk held demonstrably aloud just to point up his oneness with his "Father" (interestingly he always calls him my father, not the father).
For someone raised in a monotheistic faith this would also be quite natural -- we cannot expect Jesus to have become a die-hard non-dualist just because he possibly spent some time in India or Tibet. Moreover Jesus lived centuries before the advent of Shankara and the mainstream features of Indian spirituality may have differed considerably from what it is today.
I am quite amazed, but I am a slow reader and won't read the New Testament again soon. I am sure there are a lot of interesting things that can be unearthed.
Last weekend a visitor told me that not long ago a commission of academics after assiduously investigating early Christianity arrived at the result that Jesus probably did not exist and is a fictitious character, but they decided not to publish their findings out of respect for the feelings of the many devout adherents of that faith. -- Which is a sign that it must have been an American commission as well as a serious investigative effort. If anyone can track this down on the Internet, please let me know; I will also be on the lookout myself and try to find it. I do not know whether it is mentioned somewhere.
Nearly everyone here has started eastern meditation. How many beginers can honestly say they have had the experiences she relates? I think she hast just read descriptions of the experiences of yogis and has based her supposed experiences on these.
You could be right, I didn't take this into consideration. In fact right at the beginning she mentions Sai Baba, Muktananda etc. but in the course of her life-story these names don't reappear if I rightly remember, although they should. The dichotomy between a liberal freethinker and a fundamentalist Christian in her other articles looks a bit weird. And the almost casual way of accepting Christ after all her great experiences seems a bit contrived. This cultish approach to a "personal Christ" is exemplary for protestant fundamentalists. Whatever her spiritual experiences, I doubt that they were all too profound ones.
