The Quest for an Afterlife

[Era Might]

Not sure if I should put this in the debate table, not really intended as a debate, but kind of a debate topic.

One of the difficult areas I see with religions like Christianity is the idea that we are on a quest for an afterlife. I was watching a document recently about a British lady who became a Tibetan monk in a cave, and she talked about how she felt early on that she did not believe in Jesus saving us, because there is nothing in us to save. To be alive is simply to be human, to be conscious, to be at peace with that. We save ourselves, and that's how I understand Jesus' words about "enter by the narrow gate"...the narrow gate is the kingdom inside of us, as opposed to the broad gate, which is the way of religion, the way of the Pharisees, the idea that outside of us there is some Way. The kingdom of God is inside you, in being human consciously.

When you look at the Buddha, or other great religious figures like Taoist sages, the "process" of religion is the same across the board. Different religions speak of it in different ways, but essentially the core idea is to know yourself. Someone like Thomas Merton sensed that as well, while remaining a Christian. I'm not sure how one can read Buddhist or Taoist sages and not be floored by that, and just write them off as believers in false gods or worshippers of devils, or just deluded people. They know humanity in a way that most Christians do not, and I find the idea of the Tao, the Way, the One, whatever you want to call it, more convincing than a personal God who stands between heaven and hell. And of course, there have occassionally been Christian mystics who saw God as something different from the traditional conception.

And I'm not assuming here that there is a God, neither a Buddhist God, a Taoist God, a Christian God, whatever...just that the commonality of religious experience, to me, is convincing evidence that there is no "revealed" or "true" religion the way religious people imagine it, there are only different levels of consciousness of who and what we are in the universe.

Thoughts?

Edited November 30, 2015 by Era Might

[Not The Philosopher]

The commonality of religious experience just means that religion is natural to humans. It's a philosophical leap from that to conclude that therefore no one religion could be uniquely inspired by God. It's kinda like arguing that, because the letters on the screen are also physical phenomenon like the meaningless white background behind them, they must just be meaningless squiggles that are impossible for minds to intentionally use to encode language.  It would actually be weirder if God chose to reveal himself in a manner which was alien to our nature (which is why I don't buy the more Protestant idea of Christ vs Religion).

Edited November 30, 2015 by Not The Philosopher

[Era Might]

6 minutes ago, Not The Philosopher said:

The commonality of religious experience just means that religion is natural to humans. It's a philosophical leap from that to conclude that therefore no one religion could be uniquely inspired by God. It's kinda like arguing that, because the letters on the screen are also physical phenomenon like the meaningless white background behind them, they must just be meaningless squiggles that are impossible for minds to intentionally use to encode language.  It would actually be weirder if God chose to reveal himself in a manner which was alien to our nature (which is why I don't buy the more Protestant idea of Christ vs Religion).

But language is just a system of signs and sounds. I think that is another way of looking at religion, just a way we talk about thing, a different kind of language. Language is meaningless. Even from a Christian mystical perspective one can talk about God as the unknowable, the only way to seek him is the cloud of unknowing. This is how the Taoists see the world, the Tao or the Way of everything is like the ocean, you can't explain the ocean to a frog in a well, you can't speak about the Tao to a learned philosopher, it's only something you can live not something you can attain, like an afterlife.

But I agree with your point about the "spiritual but not religious" line. It's like saying you're verbal but not alphabetical, you have no language in that case to speak. But language is artificial, even though we cannot imagine the human experience in purely oral societies.

[Not The Philosopher]

4 minutes ago, Era Might said:

But language is just a system of signs and sounds. I think that is another way of looking at religion, just a way we talk about thing, a different kind of language. Language is meaningless. Even from a Christian mystical perspective one can talk about God as the unknowable, the only way to seek him is the cloud of unknowing. This is how the Taoists see the world, the Tao or the Way of everything is like the ocean, you can't explain the ocean to a frog in a well, you can't speak about the Tao to a learned philosopher, it's only something you can live not something you can attain, like an afterlife.

But I agree with your point about the "spiritual but not religious" line. It's like saying you're verbal but not alphabetical, you have no language in that case to speak. But language is artificial, even though we cannot imagine the human experience in purely oral societies.

I guess this thread is meaningless then.

[Era Might]

10 minutes ago, Not The Philosopher said:

I guess this thread is meaningless then.

Yes, exactly lol. I think we've gotten somewhere and it didn't take 30 pages!

[MarysLittleFlower]

I wouldn't agree with that.. I think if we simply look at ourselves, it's evident that there's much in us that needs to be 'saved'. I mean, the evil that people do is objective, it's truly evil. The way we are isn't how we were created to be before the fall.. we are not who we were meant to be.. so how can salvation be simply accepting who we are?

I also don't believe that we can save ourselves. The whole reason for the Incarnation is that we need a Savior who is human but also divine and sinless. A human being needed to offer sacrifice for human sin, because it was committed by humans, but humans need redemption so it needed to be Someone perfect.. Divine.. Someone who's sacrifice would be acceptable to the Father. This is Jesus.

The 'narrow gate' is more likely to be the Divine Will. The wide gate is self will which most people follow and which is easy to follow. We were not created like that. We were made to follow God's Will, to submit our wills continually to His. The passage about the Kingdom of God being within us, is I think about God's Kingdom of grace within our souls, as He becomes King of our souls, and builds a Kingdom that is centered on His Will. This occurs by grace, from Jesus.

The Narrow Way is Jesus. The difference between Christianity and other religions is that they offer a "way", but it's a method only. But Jesus is the Way, Himself... as He said, 'the Way, the Truth, and the Life'. If we were the way, He would not have said that. He said we can't reach the Father except through Him. :)

[Era Might]

2 hours ago, MarysLittleFlower said:

I wouldn't agree with that.. I think if we simply look at ourselves, it's evident that there's much in us that needs to be 'saved'. I mean, the evil that people do is objective, it's truly evil. The way we are isn't how we were created to be before the fall.. we are not who we were meant to be.. so how can salvation be simply accepting who we are?

I also don't believe that we can save ourselves. The whole reason for the Incarnation is that we need a Savior who is human but also divine and sinless. A human being needed to offer sacrifice for human sin, because it was committed by humans, but humans need redemption so it needed to be Someone perfect.. Divine.. Someone who's sacrifice would be acceptable to the Father. This is Jesus.

The 'narrow gate' is more likely to be the Divine Will. The wide gate is self will which most people follow and which is easy to follow. We were not created like that. We were made to follow God's Will, to submit our wills continually to His. The passage about the Kingdom of God being within us, is I think about God's Kingdom of grace within our souls, as He becomes King of our souls, and builds a Kingdom that is centered on His Will. This occurs by grace, from Jesus.

The Narrow Way is Jesus. The difference between Christianity and other religions is that they offer a "way", but it's a method only. But Jesus is the Way, Himself... as He said, 'the Way, the Truth, and the Life'. If we were the way, He would not have said that. He said we can't reach the Father except through Him.

I agree that we are not "being who we are," but that's different from saying we need to be saved. We are blinded from our natures in many ways...by passions, by our inability to follow our natures, etc. But all that means is we have to live according to our natures. Why do men kill each other? Because they want something...power, or they're jealous, etc. I don't think baptism, or any theory of a savior, changes that, because even after you accept Jesus, it's the same process...being Christian means recovering what it means to be human.

I think even in Jesus, the "Way" is simply his humanity. What is Christ but the God-Man who reveals us to ourselves? That's the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus revealing the people to themselves...what it means to be human, not what it means to be religious. I think at the heart of Christianity is the essential message of religion, which is concerned with the inner man, who we are as members of the universe, and how we come to know ourselves. "The Way" in the Taoist sense is not a method...the Way is simply what things are...which means there is nothing we have to "become," we simply have to be what we are, just as all of creation moves along according to what it is.

As far as the theology of the Father and Jesus, I do think it's very interesting the same way all religious myth is interesting and has a lot to teach, but I don't think theology of that sort really serves any purpose except as a way for people of a common religion to speak about what they believe. Christians go through Jesus the way an Indian might go through a trial by fire for atonement. I think both are beautiful. I guess I just can't accept the cosmic story, that Jesus is up there in heaven with the Father and the Holy Spirit. But, as NTP pointed out, it's pointless to debate these things...at the end of the day religion is the kingdom within, man's search for meaning and for self-consciousness. That was Jesus' essential message as I understand it in the Gospels, in revealing man he revealed God, because if we are created in God's image then the only way to be like God is to be ourselves, truly ourselves.

Admittedly, it's hard to understand how the great spiritual people like Jesus, like Buddha, like Lao Tzu arise. I have no idea how they come about, anymore than I can explain a Shakespeare or a Dante or a Homer or a Michelangelo. There is something in man's depths we can only understand by living...I think religion can be useful in talking about it, but it can darken the experience as much as it can enlighten it. And I think even the Christian mystics understand that...the point at which language and ideas fail, and all one has the Cloud of Unknowing.

[Lilllabettt]

3 hours ago, Era Might said:

But language is just a system of signs and sounds. I think that is another way of looking at religion, just a way we talk about thing, a different kind of language. Language is meaningless.

Language is not meaningless. Language is not artificial! What nonsense.

The only reality in which language is meaningless is that one in which someone is Alone.

Tnitarians rejects outright the idea that there was ever an Alone. 

Community and communication are the core definition of reality.

[Gabriela]

Language isn't meaningless, but it is arbitrary. I think that's what Era meant. It is a big difference, though.

Era, some of your comments remind me of Quine on translation. You might want to look that up.

[MarysLittleFlower]

2 hours ago, Era Might said:

I agree that we are not "being who we are," but that's different from saying we need to be saved. We are blinded from our natures in many ways...by passions, by our inability to follow our natures, etc. But all that means is we have to live according to our natures. Why do men kill each other? Because they want something...power, or they're jealous, etc. I don't think baptism, or any theory of a savior, changes that, because even after you accept Jesus, it's the same process...being Christian means recovering what it means to be human.

I think even in Jesus, the "Way" is simply his humanity. What is Christ but the God-Man who reveals us to ourselves? That's the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus revealing the people to themselves...what it means to be human, not what it means to be religious. I think at the heart of Christianity is the essential message of religion, which is concerned with the inner man, who we are as members of the universe, and how we come to know ourselves. "The Way" in the Taoist sense is not a method...the Way is simply what things are...which means there is nothing we have to "become," we simply have to be what we are, just as all of creation moves along according to what it is.

As far as the theology of the Father and Jesus, I do think it's very interesting the same way all religious myth is interesting and has a lot to teach, but I don't think theology of that sort really serves any purpose except as a way for people of a common religion to speak about what they believe. Christians go through Jesus the way an Indian might go through a trial by fire for atonement. I think both are beautiful. I guess I just can't accept the cosmic story, that Jesus is up there in heaven with the Father and the Holy Spirit. But, as NTP pointed out, it's pointless to debate these things...at the end of the day religion is the kingdom within, man's search for meaning and for self-consciousness. That was Jesus' essential message as I understand it in the Gospels, in revealing man he revealed God, because if we are created in God's image then the only way to be like God is to be ourselves, truly ourselves.

Admittedly, it's hard to understand how the great spiritual people like Jesus, like Buddha, like Lao Tzu arise. I have no idea how they come about, anymore than I can explain a Shakespeare or a Dante or a Homer or a Michelangelo. There is something in man's depths we can only understand by living...I think religion can be useful in talking about it, but it can darken the experience as much as it can enlighten it. And I think even the Christian mystics understand that...the point at which language and ideas fail, and all one has the Cloud of Unknowing.

I guess salvation does involve bringing us to living how we were created but some questions for you... Do you believe it's possible by human effort alone to live according to the ideal of unfallen Adam and stop sinning? I'd say it's impossible without grace. Experience easily shows us that. Our natures are not depraved now but they are weakened, without grace. We were not meant to be apart from God like this. If we "live according to our natures" now we wouldn't be living according to how God wants but according to our weaknesses, because we need grace to come back to this type of life. Its also because we were made to follow God's Will, not ours, and without grace, all we have is our self will which leads to sin if not submitted to God... without grace we sin. In addition, God actually wishes to give us something above our natures, something that is not natural to us - a life of union with Him and the beatific vision. So I'd say that we can't be who we were meant to be without God, without being saved, because we were created to be in union with Him and to receive our spiritual life from Him - and that comes from Him, not us, and it is not natural to us. Yet its the life that God wants for us. I guess what im saying is that God didnt create us to be apart from Him, and when we go apart, we sin, but with Him we fulfill our purpose and live in a truly human way, but also in a supernatural way too. Simply being human is not the whole plan for who we are.. We were meant for union and theosis.

The religions that teach attaining union with the divine through human effort don't see this .. That human effort is incapable of reaching what is not natural to humans. Its like a dog trying to fly. We need grace. I am certainly not seeking just self knowledge, as in eternity I don't want to gaze at and admire myself I want to adore God, who is One other than me, though we'd be in union with Him.

I also wouldn't say that we go through Jesus as an Indian might go through trial by fire etc, because I believe Jesus is personal, as in - He is a Person, and only way to the Father. 

True freedom is not doing what we want, but being free to do God's Will.  We were made to be free, which means we were made to be with God and receive the grace from Him to do His Will. That is the proper use of the two faculties that make us persons - intellect and will. They make us persons because God has them we are in His image. If we use intellect and will to sin, that is not how we were meant to be, but apart from God we start to sin. So we were not meant to live apart from God and cannot save ourselves. We need Him and grace. And our lives were meant to be supernatural - we werent meant to be alone but in union with the divine, which is not natural to us. Our destiny is much higher than we suppose and "simply being human". 

Of course we remain human but the Christian life is supernatural.. 

If someone believes human effort alone can make them sinless, I'd challenge them to find one person who never sinned through human effort... This has never been seen. We try every day to not sin and every day we fail. The only people who reached a higher holiness were Saints who didn't rely on themselves, but let God transform them while cooperating with Him

Edited December 1, 2015 by MarysLittleFlower

[MarysLittleFlower]

Relying on self and self will lead to the original fall 

[Era Might]

2 hours ago, Lilllabettt said:

Language is not meaningless. Language is not artificial! What nonsense.

The only reality in which language is meaningless is that one in which someone is Alone.

Tnitarians rejects outright the idea that there was ever an Alone. 

Community and communication are the core definition of reality.

I agree in the sense that language is just signs that point to reality. I love etymology because it reveals the natural basis of words, but that's all words are, signs which even the Christian God transcends. Jesus is the Word of God because in him the Father says everything, but to say everything is just another way of saying nothing, because language depends on parts broken up into sounds and words, but Jesus is not alphabetic word, he is the Alpha and the Omega, the eternal vowel, God's eternal opening his mouth to speak and in saying nothing he says everything, he stops every mouth.

I definitely share your appreciation for the Christian spirituality of language, and I think it's very telling that Jesus wrote nothing except, I think, when he wrote in the sand as the religious people took up stones to cast at the woman taken adultery. I like to.imagine he was writing the Law in the sand, as opposed to Moses' stone tablets, so he could wipe the sand and the law and language away.

 

2 hours ago, Gabriela said:

Language isn't meaningless, but it is arbitrary. I think that's what Era meant. It is a big difference, though.

Era, some of your comments remind me of Quine on translation. You might want to look that up.

Thanks, I'll check him out, I would like to read Wittgenstein too but I don't think I'm smart enough lol. Apparently Wittgenstein said you could write a serious philosophical treatise using nothing but jokes. Of course, there's a long tradition of paradox, apophatic theology, etc.

[Gabriela]

48 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Thanks, I'll check him out, I would like to read Wittgenstein too but I don't think I'm smart enough lol. Apparently Wittgenstein said you could write a serious philosophical treatise using nothing but jokes. Of course, there's a long tradition of paradox, apophatic theology, etc.

No one is smart enough to read Wittgenstein. He's unintelligible. I don't think anybody knows what he actually said. But there is a general consensus about what people think he said. It's pretty brilliant, but who knows if it's really Wittgenstein's view.

My recommendation to anyone wanting to read Witty is just to read other people talking about what he said. It's a lot less painful that way.

beaver dam. Can't get the meme to load. It's supposed to say, "Don't hate the playa'. Hate the language game."  

Edited December 1, 2015 by Gabriela

[Era Might]

1 hour ago, MarysLittleFlower said:

I guess salvation does involve bringing us to living how we were created but some questions for you... Do you believe it's possible by human effort alone to live according to the ideal of unfallen Adam and stop sinning? I'd say it's impossible without grace. Experience easily shows us that. Our natures are not depraved now but they are weakened, without grace. We were not meant to be apart from God like this. If we "live according to our natures" now we wouldn't be living according to how God wants but according to our weaknesses, because we need grace to come back to this type of life. Its also because we were made to follow God's Will, not ours, and without grace, all we have is our self will which leads to sin if not submitted to God... without grace we sin. In addition, God actually wishes to give us something above our natures, something that is not natural to us - a life of union with Him and the beatific vision. So I'd say that we can't be who we were meant to be without God, without being saved, because we were created to be in union with Him and to receive our spiritual life from Him - and that comes from Him, not us, and it is not natural to us. Yet its the life that God wants for us. I guess what im saying is that God didnt create us to be apart from Him, and when we go apart, we sin, but with Him we fulfill our purpose and live in a truly human way, but also in a supernatural way too. Simply being human is not the whole plan for who we are.. We were meant for union and theosis.

The religions that teach attaining union with the divine through human effort don't see this .. That human effort is incapable of reaching what is not natural to humans. Its like a dog trying to fly. We need grace. I am certainly not seeking just self knowledge, as in eternity I don't want to gaze at and admire myself I want to adore God, who is One other than me, though we'd be in union with Him.

I also wouldn't say that we go through Jesus as an Indian might go through trial by fire etc, because I believe Jesus is personal, as in - He is a Person, and only way to the Father. 

True freedom is not doing what we want, but being free to do God's Will.  We were made to be free, which means we were made to be with God and receive the grace from Him to do His Will. That is the proper use of the two faculties that make us persons - intellect and will. They make us persons because God has them we are in His image. If we use intellect and will to sin, that is not how we were meant to be, but apart from God we start to sin. So we were not meant to live apart from God and cannot save ourselves. We need Him and grace. And our lives were meant to be supernatural - we werent meant to be alone but in union with the divine, which is not natural to us. Our destiny is much higher than we suppose and "simply being human". 

Of course we remain human but the Christian life is supernatural.. 

If someone believes human effort alone can make them sinless, I'd challenge them to find one person who never sinned through human effort... This has never been seen. We try every day to not sin and every day we fail. The only people who reached a higher holiness were Saints who didn't rely on themselves, but let God transform them while cooperating with Him

Well, I guess a necessary implication is I don't believe in a primeval paradise or an eschatalogical beatific vision. As I understand man, and this could change as I learn more, but I think Man is purely material, but in such an evolved way that he is consciousness. That, to me, is what makes man unique, what could be called his "soul," and I think rather than being a descent from paradise, man is just evolving in his consciousness of his consciousness. But I think.change is the essence of the material world, we evolve, change, die, and take new forms. Our history as Man, and our lives as individuals, is the same story and process of evolving consciousness of ourselves and our powers. The baby realizes he can speak, so he imitates. The man or woman learns life is pleasurable together, so they formalize and stabilize it. The ruler learns fear works, so he invokes a divine right of kings. Whether there is some cosmic consciousness in the way that man is conscious, I think.it's possible, we might even call it God, but I think our personal gods and our religions are just other languages, ways of creating story and meaning, and even religion has followed man's consciousness, from tribal brutality to prophetic reform to universal love to institutionalization to secularization, etc.

But to your more specific point, about grace and change and sin, I guess in my personal religious experience I have never had a moral sense of grace in operation. Maybe I'm just poorly suited to virtue, but the real change in my life has never been a supernatural experience of myth and grace, but rather knowledge of myself and my ignorance, and Jesus and Catholicism have not proven, for me, things that have endured my knowledge of self, they too were phases of growth. And I still read the Gospels every morning, and the more I read the less I see Jesus as either Protestant or Catholic myth, and instead I see him as an unexplainable force of man's religious consciousness, like the Buddha. I respect people who stake their life on the Jesus story, but in my heart of hearts I don't believe in the story as cosmic revelation, but I believe in Christ the man as maybe the perfect ir Archetyple...in the Gospels I find Man revealed, not so much God, or rather, God in Man.

[MarysLittleFlower]

Era, if you don't believe in the Paradise of Adam and Eve or Beatific vision, we are probably coming at the question with different ways and would have different conclusions of man's purpose. Regarding grace and experience of supernatural help... There are times when it may feel supernatural and other times when that is less apparent in the experience itself but we see it by its fruits. An example was how I couldnt overcome a particular sin for years, then I asked Our Lady, and literally since that moment it was no longer a struggle. The prayer was very simple but the effects showed it. Grace can be like that and often is. Even wanting to love God is already a grace. It becomes more experiential as one advances in mental prayer and lets God act on the faculties in a more direct way. Its like God is the consuming fire but doesn't consume us all at once. Of course we remain human and keep our being but in a mysterious way, Christ begins to live in us more fully, so St Paul said - He lives and not I.  The person becomes conformed to Him and like Him, not through effort alone but a divine indwelling and transformation that is cooperated with. :)