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i think you are looking at it through a tunnel..
you are talking about jefferson creating a “buddha” book of jesus sans the fluff
who needs fluff? if you have two books and one is fluff tastic, a dinsey like biblethon of the unbeliveable
then you create a sincere book of values and ethics so that people can decide for themselves..
… but how can people ‘decide for themselves’ on what they haven’t personally experienced?
I don’t believe for one second that what’s in those gospels is anything like the real measure of what Christ was about. Michael, Leary, many others, are far closer to what he was saying than Jefferson was. Not at Christ’s level necessarily but much more in his spirit. He wasn’t merely preaching ethics, he was made to sound like he was but the christian movement was initially about energy work, alchemy and magic in my honest opinion. These are the things that got him where he got.
However good you are with ethics, turning water into wine and rising from the grave require something more than that, they require actual instruction. Christ did instruct in those things IMHO but by the time of the solid founding of the church the skills were already long gone. That was four centuries! They would arise later in the Cathar heresy but that was a heresy precisely because of this. The actual church which presented the official new testament had no inkling of this knowledge.
Christianity promised *immortality* for the soul reborn in christ. That is what Michael is teaching also, not by the same method I’m sure, but the same principle exactly. Living a good life shortens the path, and that’s important – but it won’t make a body of light will it? To christians these are ‘miracles’ – inexplicable products of faith in god and holiness. To us they must be sciences and arts surely. The perennial philosophy was about far more than ethics, it had to do with everything on this site and more, and you can’t simply call of it fluff – it’s especially nonsensical to do so when you’re in the middle of practicing it! 🙂 Or so it seems to me.
I really find it hard to understand how you could call removing male and female, aeon and daemon, platonism and gnosticism, from the ‘perennial philosophy’ removing ‘fluff’! What would be left of the practices on this site if you removed talk of male and female? 🙂
How can you agree with Jefferson that such things are not important, and still practice the practices on this site? :)Surely you must at least agree that Jefferson is wrong on that score? Even if we have here a very good book of ethics and nothing more, still therefore to dismiss alchemy in favour of a good book of ethics just doesn’t seem like a good trade!
On your other comments I do realize the political machinations surrounding the creation of the KJV were extremely involved, but still they were ultimately political machinations. The KJV itself was a version of an RC text and that came from the literalist founding church of Constantine. Never mind who owns them, who has the right to translate them, etc., – what’s actually *in* them?
We have been told that those gospels and that testament are ‘cannon’ but it is an absolute fact that in the first four centuries after Christ every single document in the New Testament as we know it today was at some time or other branded as either heretical or forged, by other christians. It was in the end the iron boot of the law which established what was officially true, and we wouldn’t have nearly so much idea of Gnostic christianity, which is far more interesting in the terms of this site anyhow, if not for accidental archaeological finds such as Nag Hammadhi.
As far as ethics are concerned, minus ‘miracles’ and immortality, you will find most of the points made in the gospels on purely ethical matters written better and earlier by the Greek philosophers. Eg:
‘This is the philosopher’s way; to be flogged like an ass and to love those who beat him, to be father and brother of all humanity.’ – Epictetus.
‘So we should never take revenge and never hurt anyone, even if we have been hurt.’ – Socrates.
The renouncement of material goods? Check out the tradition of the Cynics with their rough cloaks, begging bags and thorn-sticks!
‘Not only do they [the christians] misunderstand the words of the philosophers, they even stoop to assigning words of the philosophers to their Jesus.’ – Celsus
Or how about this? – ‘This glorious Age will dawn. The ox will not be frightened of the lion.’ – Virgil, 1 BC
It’s not original this stuff that’s what I’m saying. Jesus himself was way better than this! He had something real and that’s what created a stir – what he had is not really present in the new testament.
Sorry to bang on… I will shut up on this matter now. j
I’ll try my best here to address this BUT, first stated
As far as I am concerned the initial question is that of Good for goodness sake,,,
some people agree with this, and some people don’t..
if we were all born in to a peaceful charitable world with all the answers it would be one thing..
but we are not.. in fact, we are born into a world where, for one reason or another, toddlers throw tantrums and kids fight incessantly over emotions and nothing..
there is jealousy, misery, emptiness
if we look at Buddha we find a “normal guy” who taught a system of thought which is essentially heaven and hell, both here on earth and ultimately through the afterlife via various stages of reincarnation based on a human soul nucleus of unity and love
if we look at some modern evolutionists, we are told something different.. something that in truth looks more like the old testament..
so with Jesus, we are presented with miracles and god incarnate
but the message is obscured by the fluff..
what do i mean by fluff?
you never hear jesus speak these fluff things..
jesus speaks principle, pure and simple, LOVE IS THE ONE LAW here is how you do it…
and personally i think he did a better job than anyone else but i haven’t read anything..
now if you want a fanciful super story which i doubt is true, then read King James..
Personally, my feelings are that if you read just jesus as principle then you may come in contact with the spark of the divine within yourself…
beyond that, there is an argument put forth by dan merker that the israelites consumed manna bread as an ergot based sacramant..
and that turning water to wine meant something along these lines..
but that is hearsay.. point by point follows:
“but how can people ‘decide for themselves’ on what they haven’t personally experienced? I don’t believe for one second that what’s in those gospels is anything like the real measure of what Christ was about.”
He spoke the one law of love and showed you how to do it
“However good you are with ethics, turning water into wine and rising from the grave require something more than that, they require actual instruction.”
that’s assuming somehow that those things are real.. personally i think the missing ingredient is reincarnation and i don’t really know if anyone wants it anyway, rebirth and resurrection can be metaphors for diogene-rebirth of spirit
“The perennial philosophy was about far more than ethics, it had to do with everything on this site and more, and you can’t simply call of it fluff – it’s especially nonsensical to do so when you’re in the middle of practicing it! 🙂 Or so it seems to me.”
well honestly these practices have resulted in psychic awareness and a hypotheses of the afterlife, but they have never convinced me of the one law of love in the face of evil…
that to me becomes a question and a process… i personally think buddha and jesus do it better than these practices.. but these practices do work in my opinion
“As far as ethics are concerned, minus ‘miracles’ and immortality, you will find most of the points made in the gospels on purely ethical matters written better and earlier by the Greek philosophers. Eg:”
yes but jesus and buddha are the EMBODIEMENT and personification of the one law of love
“what he had is not really present in the new testament.”
did i mention it’s the one law of love which the old testament DIDN’t teach and which totally contradicts the selfish darwin gene of natural selection
it’s a state of mind in my opinion.. i think that kundalini, tantra, buddhism, taois as yogas can unify you into that force field but the embodied teacher is still great..
i mean ask youself.. someone teaches and embodies love as buddha and jesus did, then you either do yoga or psychedlics etc and you get into a deeper experience of that.. you always have them to call on as a reference..
when you doubt, there they are.. do we need fluffy miracles in the face of love?
no hardly
Mate I separate ‘Jesus’ in my mind from ‘the gospels’. Of course I have nothing against a realized teacher! But I believe what Jesus actually taught his disciples was to do with the very male & female, aeon & daemon, essence & emanation that Jefferson dislikes. It is coming into contact with your own true nature and the nature of the universe which propels you into understanding of universal love. This does not happen by reading about it but by doing it.
There were many orginal gospels which talked about *how* to do it. These gospels did not become cannon.
>>He spoke the one law of love and showed you how to do it<>that’s assuming somehow that those things are real.. personally i think the missing ingredient is reincarnation and i don’t really know if anyone wants it anyway, rebirth and resurrection can be metaphors for diogene-rebirth of spirit<>well honestly these practices have resulted in psychic awareness and a hypotheses of the afterlife, but they have never convinced me of the one law of love in the face of evil…<>that to me becomes a question and a process… i personally think buddha and jesus do it better than these practices.. but these practices do work in my opinion<>yes but jesus and buddha are the EMBODIEMENT and personification of the one law of love<>it’s a state of mind in my opinion.. i think that kundalini, tantra, buddhism, taois as yogas can unify you into that force field but the embodied teacher is still great..<>i mean ask youself.. someone teaches and embodies love as buddha and jesus did, then you either do yoga or psychedlics etc and you get into a deeper experience of that.. you always have them to call on as a reference..<>when you doubt, there they are.. do we need fluffy miracles in the face of love?
no hardly<<
As I say the miracle were not fluffy 🙂 but demonstrations of what the practices can achieve in the hands of a master.
As for love, I repeat, preaching love does not inculcate love in people. One can look anywhere and find people preaching love, one can look anywhere and find people who know the scriptures. One will look a long time for somebody who embodies the truth of the universe. Why is that? Because knowing the scriptures does not give the real result.
'Aeon & Daemon' (the gnostic words for early heaven and original nature BTW) 'male and female' (yin and yang) 'essences and emanations' etc. are *real* and they have everything to do with Christ. Jefferson dismissed them because he had no clue about what they really were. Modern scientists have begun to begin to begin to suspect them. Christ taught direct knowledge of them.
The patriarchal church, the same church whose founding fathers demonized women and whose actions led to the state of 'inanity' that upsets you so much, did not teach them, but left them out. They have everything to do with the embodiment of love, but nothing to do with founding an authoritarian religious empire. Read the gospels those fathers left out! They will convince you that Christ did not only tell people 'how to behave'.
In fact even a careful reading of Paul will convince you of that! When he speaks of being "caught up as far as the third heaven", do you think he is talking poetically? When he says: "The secret is this: Christ is in you!" – does he mean the actual personality of Jesus Christ, if not, what? When he says, "Neither did I receive the Gospel from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ" – what is he saying? He says nothing at all about the actual personality Jesus, the historical one, never in any place. Because he is not talking about that person!
But anyway, I suppose Jefferson would simply cut those bits out. 🙂 j
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