The Holy Spirit and “Space”

To continue our discussion of the parallels between “space” and the Holy Ghost, Preston Harold invokes Einstein, Sufism, and Jesus.

Einstein proposed that each three-dimensional portion of space “always contains a total electrical charge whose size is represented by a whole number,” despite the fact that its electrical density disappears everywhere. Thus, one might say that space “holds” the charge, but is not itself that which it holds.

All of creation is the “charge” which space holds. We all exist within space’s “confines.” Theologically we may say along with the Apostle Paul, as he quoted Epimenides at the Areopagus, “For in him we live and move and have our being.” Another viewpoint would be Paul Tillich’s concept of God as “the ground of our being.” Space certainly is the “ground” of our being. How about these words from St. Patrick’s breastplate:

 

…Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me.

Sounds like a perfect description of space, doesn’t it? Preston Harold continues:

Each person involves and is held in being by space. If there is a “divine Absolute,” space is the only “manifestation” of it that man knows. Sufism teaches that: “Each human soul is a particle of the diving Absolute, and the mystic aims at a complete union with the Divine. This union is attained in the knowledge that he himself is the ultimate Reality which he seeks. But the individual self is completely annihilated in this higher Self…” The difference between Jesus’ teaching and Sufism is that Jesus saw that creation, space, Holy Ghost of God, is that ultimate reality which cannot be undone, so that He insists upon the “study of and,” of the organization and arrangement of energy within it. He saw that God as Father lives in a centering of power in one’s, and in the transferring of the power inherent in “ultimate Reality” to consciousness of God in one’s being: i.e., Christ-consciousness. “I” am conscious of God as the set of the power in “my” being, and as the rest possible to life. This borders on Sufism:

I stood on the edge of things, as on a circle inscribed

But time’s revolutions have borne me into the still centre.

But Jesus saw that the individual self is not annihilated as time bears one to union with the center and seat of his being, that is, to rest or death. One’s life is harvested, his soul and “charge” renewed, and time’s revolutions bear him again to “the edge of things.” But to what end? Can one find a clue in the realm of physics?

Knowing Harold, I’ll bet we can! We’ll continue in our next post exploring more of what Einstein has to say on the matter. Until then, peace.

 

Christ-Consciousness

Much has been written on the concept of “Christ consciousness,” a term which has been interpreted different ways by different people. For anyone who is interested, a simple Google search for the term will bring up multiple hits to explore; there is even a “Center for Christ Consciousness” website! As for this blog, we will examine what Preston Harold understood by the description.

Harold describes the arising of Christ-consciousness as a person becomes equivalent to the idea of one:

Jesus’ drama depicts the Authority-Ego speaking to the multitude of personality images surrounding it. The group ponders, rejects, doubts, does not fully understand. Resistance continues until one in the group becomes equal to the idea of one – then light enters his consciousness. A scribe, raised to a “higher orbit of thought” as he listens to Jesus, says: “’Right, teacher! You have truly said, He is One, and there is none else but Him. Also, to love Him with the whole heart, with the whole understanding, and with the whole strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself – that is far more than all holocausts and sacrifice.’ [Jesus replies] ‘You are not far from the realm of God.’” The scribe has stated the concept of one and wholeness.

So for Preston Harold, Christ-consciousness is centered around a unitive awareness and vision in which all things are connected, beginning with the connection of humanity to God and neighbor. What might the result of this vision be when put into action? In his letter to the Phillipians the Apostle Paul tells us, “Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” True Christ-consciousness, it seems, leads to humility and servanthood. Preston Harold might say, “a higher orbit of thought leads to a lower valuation of egotism.”

But how does Christ-consciousness manifest in a person? How does a person “become equal to the idea of one?” Harold surmises…

Jesus tries to explain that the spirit or energy of truth is spread about in man in a manner by no means comparable to preconsciousness or to any image of self in the ego-group, but that as one’s superconsciousness is heightened, Christ-consciousness condenses in his mind, and like an “electron” becomes as a compact body moving around with his ego-group. This drama, He, Himself represented, and He must show that in life as man’s consciousness reaches a certain pitch of intensity, a vision of the Christ will emerge like a genie – in the finale one sees this happen.

This may explain how Christ-consciousness arises, but it doesn’t tell us exactly where it comes from, does it? We will explore this riddle in the next installment. Until then, peace.

Learning Experiences

Why does our knowledge of love’s fullness have to be so painful to obtain? Why doesn’t God completely reveal to us our full nature?

By giving His power, the power of the word, to man, God destroyed His absolute power to reveal Himself and the secrets of creation. But before man appeared on the scene, the secrets had been told in mammon – in the temporal – which reflects them oppositely and truly, as though in a mirror, itself material, a form that is real is seen, albeit its “mirror-image” is not its reality in being. Thus, truth-bearer must make unto himself a friend of mammon, “unrighteous” as mammon is, and he must reveal the working of the flesh, offensive and error-provoking though his words may be.

Being part of the material realm limits us in coming to full knowledge of the reality and fullness of God. If we want LIFE, we must deal with the limitations and consequences thereof. The Apostle Paul says as much in his letter to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:18-21) 

According to Paul here, we were not created by God already perfect, then fell, and now are in the process of regaining paradise. Rather, we have been subjected to futility from the beginning by our creator! Why? In hope that we will come to know the freedom of being children of God (being set free from slavery to mere mammon). It is the only way we can know love for ourselves. In other words, the Eden story isn’t a time-based story; it is rather an eternal happening, goading and guiding us into a better future. The story is a “trap” God sets for us, striving for the “beginning,” which in eternity is also our “completion.”

And here Preston Harold sounds like a modern day Paul:

Mammon is the mirror, and perforce the mirror lies – for it, itself, is not what it reflects in its being or as its being. God, First Cause, love, life itself, is not matter as revealed in mammon; God…is revealed through mammon’s examination to be “spirit,” or a type of “energy” unknown and unknowable in physical terms…. The reality underlying the world of appearances cannot be reduced to physical terms, it is only indirectly knowable as reflected in mammon’s mirror, and as it is intuitively experienced by man…. But in mammon’s mirror, in evil, or in pure matter, or in life’s temporal history with all its evil-doing, the image of good and its working may be beheld. This is to say, there is evidence that life is building into man a factor that will in time deliver him from evil without robbing him of its desirable aspects, and that this factor is in truth the saving grace of life.

Amen! Until next time, peace.

Along Comes Paul

For Paul’s gospel to be effective, he had to tap into man’s primeval and archaic heritage.  Freud says that Paul’s success

“was certainly mainly due to the fact that through the idea of salvation he laid the ghost of the feeling of guilt.  It was also due to his giving up the idea of the chosen people and its visible sign – circumcision.  That is how the new religion could become all embracing, universal.”  Thus, he concludes that Paul effected a “continuation of primeval history,” and that both Christianity and Judaism stem from “the religion of the primeval father, and the hope of reward, distinction, and finally world sovereignty is bound up with it.

Freud also says that Paul shifted the focus from the father to the son, seizing upon the feeling of guilt for father murder and tracing it to its primeval source:

This he (Paul) called original sin; it was a crime against God that could be expiated only through death… A son of God, innocent himself, had sacrificed himself, and had thereby taken over the guilt of the world… The Mosaic religion had been a Father religion; Christianity became a Son religion.  The old God, the Father, took second place; Christ, the Son, stood in his stead, just as in those dark times every son had longed to do.  Paul, by developing the Jewish religion further, became its destroyer.

Of course it was St. Augustine, not Paul, who developed the idea of “original sin.”  But Freud’s insights remain relevant.  We will explore his interesting insights into the reason for anti-Semitism in our next post.  Until then, peace…

THE PROBLEM, THE OBJECTIVE, THE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS – Part 1

The title of Chapter 1 gives us three foci, of which we will explore in order of importance.  Today’s post will focus on “the problem:”

The decline of Christianity, religion of the West, bespeaks the decline of faith in the Pauline interpretation of Jesus’ meaning to mankind…

Jawaharal Nehru states: “Essentially, our problems are those of civilization itself.  Religion gave a certain moral and spiritual discipline; it also tried to perpetuate superstition and social usages.  Indeed, those superstitions and social usages enmeshed and overwhelmed the real spirit of religion.  Disillusionment followed.”

The pace of Christianity’s decline, in terms of declining beliefs in its tenets, accelerates.  J.B. Priestly writes: “…if we all joined a Christian Church tomorrow the fundamental situation would be unchanged, because no church existing today has the power – and we could not give it this power by joining it – to undo what has been done…the symbols no longer work, and they cannot be made to work by effort on a conscious level…No matter what is willed by consciousness, that which belongs to the depths can only be restored in the depths.” (emphasis mine)

The depths, huh?  Well then, can psychology help?

Today, psychologists explore and interpret the depths of man, but thus far psychology serves only to present again in professional terms the notion of original sin…man is victim of primordial sex drives incorporated in his being when he is expelled from the paradise of the womb.

(Psychology) cannot defend man against the dehumanizing collectives, or restore in his depths the hope that declines as religion declines – indeed, the human problem is compounded by psychologists theories, and man must seek defense against them.

But…

Freud and those who followed in this field opened Pandora’s box, but they also presented humanity with vital knowledge, which must be dealt with now, just as nuclear power must be dealt with now – and just as the vacuum created by the decline of religion must be dealt with now, for in Priestly’s words, “it is doubtful if our society can last much longer without religion…”

Harold believes that for Christianity to thrive, it must look past the Pauline interpretation which has dominated the past 2000 years, and try to make sense of Jesus’ words in the light of today’s knowledge and understanding. As a fan of Paul rightly understood I have a bit of a problem with this, but let’s let Harold have his say…

In orthodox theology, St. Paul’s compelling interpretation of Jesus is highlighted against the background of the disciples messages, obscuring much of their content.  The pre-eminence of Pauline doctrine precludes the idea that there could be another valid concept of Jesus and His mission.  But in the four Gospels another view of Him is precisely drawn, a view as natural and different from the Pauline concept as non-Euclidian geometry is natural and different from Euclid’s.  Since the advent of the Bible, which drew together fragments of His picture, this answer to the question of Jesus has lain before men’s eyes.  It is an answer St. Paul could not give.  In the early days of Christianity only a hint of it could be discerned, and was discerned by Saul of Tarsus – his mighty work is not to be decried.  Nor could this answer been given by those who followed and through the ages developed the Christian religion.  Indeed, not until the twentieth century, when the writings of Darwin, Freud, Einstein and many other scientists had been circulated throughout the world, and science had suffered it’s great revolution, and mathematicians had been freed of the limitations of Greek thought, could the concepts of Jesus to be offered in this study evolve as His own words, works, and drama are measured against the data now available.

After reading the book, it is my understanding that Harold’s problem with Paul doesn’t rest so much on Paul’s actual doctrine, but rather what the Church teaches regarding Paul and it’s understanding of his message.  But Harold will still take us into uncharted, ripe territory, and if he had to bypass his understanding of Paul in order to do so, I am certainly willing to forgive him.  The fruit is delicious!

Harold leaves us on a positive note concerning our present problem:

The problems confronting man in the twentieth century are colossal, but opportunity looms equally large: “…the present situation is a new one, in which new facts and new knowledge are available over new fields to an unprecedented extent, and could be distilled to provide us with the truth that alone can set us free.” – Julian Huxley

In the next post we will explore the crucial questions, and then move on to the objective of the book.  Until then, peace…