We've drifted pretty far from the thread topic, here (despite my valiant attempt to call us back to it in my post above ), but that always happens in forum discussions.

To my understanding, the Unitive state is not only for contemplatives, but for anyone on any type of pathway whose will is more-or-less constantly united with God in love. Teresa's 4th mansion marks the beginning of the Unitive State; 5, 6 and 7 are a deepening of it, largely through a deepening of contemplative prayer.

A surprisingly good summary on the three states can be found on wikipedia:
- http://tinyurl.com/csh3bh

Increasingly, I find myself inclined to a very simple, Joahnine spirituality -- that God is love, and wherever we experience love, there is some kind of encounter with God happening -- whether it be in our relationships, prayer, meditation, contact with nature, pets, hobbies, etc. There are "natural" forms of love, of course, but for people of faith, it seems that these become modes through which the divine Love operates. What follows from this perspective is that a spirituality or pathway that doesn't lead to a deepening and widening of love ought to be seriously questioned, as it might have more to do with natural mysticism or even Ego inflation.

On another thread, "hypnosis and past lives", I have been expositing the revelations of Dr. Michael Newton's life long study of his subject's "discarnate memories" (over 2000 to date) in which they have reported to him on their activities in the Spirit World of our birth. He discovered that he was able to regress them through hypnosis to a "superconscious" theta wave state in which they were able to access their memories of their lives after death, or more accurately their life between lives.

Everything revealed by his subjects is related to consciousness and the Divine and is, thus, extrmely appropriate to the discussion here. To refresh those unfamiliar with this work let me briefly bring you up to date. After 35 years of research and over some 7000 regressions he has literally mapped out the spirit world from the moment of death to when we re-enter earth's realm/diminension and "merge" our soul/spirit energy with the fetus in our mother's-to-be womb. In his "life Between Lives: Hypnotherapy for Spiritual Regression" he outlines the various "altered" states of consciousness as:
1. The Beta state is a full awake conscious state.
2. Alpha states involve light , medium, and
deeper trance levels.
a. The lighter stages are typically those we
use for meditation.
b. The medium stages are generally associated
with recovering childhood memories and past
trauma. This stage is useful for behavior
modification, such as quitting smoking or
gaining/losing weight.
c. The deeper Alpha states involve past life
recovery.
3. The Theta state is as deep as we get before
losing consciousness, and it uncovers the area
of the superconscious mind that reveals our
spiritual life between lives activity.
4. The Delta state is our final deep sleep state.

In reviewing the theological states/stages or "ways" of perfection of theology, I see a distinct correlation with Dr. Newton's "Way of Souls" which comprise the 14 core findings derived from his subject's testimony and gives us a general outline of our true soul nature, activities, purpose and our ultimate mission of progression toward perfection and "conjoinment" with the Source, or God.
In the theological progressions first for beginners or the Purgative Way to the Illuminative and then finally to the most advanced contemplative stage/state of the Unitive Way there is a progressive identification with our acting from a more transcendent/divine consciousness comprised of an all encompassing love, which is described by Dr. Newton's subjects as the permanent "state" of our spiritual "home", AND, a corresponding declination of identification with egoic demands for attachment/pleasure seeking behavior, and participation in the commission of "mortal sin" or the lesser venial sins.
So,those who have reached this Unitive Way, whether by the contemplation of "the glorious mysteries of Our Lord, His Resurrection, Appearances, and Ascension, until the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching of the Gospel" or by realizing they are truly a spiritual being having a "temporal" experience and thus "(t)hey are enlightened in the mysteries of the supernatural life, and they have experience of that truth proclaimed by St. Paul (or by recalling their soul memories) when he said: "We know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be saints (perfected souls)." (Romans 8:28), they can reach the same level of perfection expressed in the "Way of Souls" reflected in one core finding that
"(p)ersonal enlightenment emanates from within each of us and endows humans with the capability to reach our own divine power without intermediaries." The other important "aid" or aspect of Divine grace, as in theology, or as Dr. Newton's subjects report that our spiritual hierarchy of guides and elders do literally send us "positive energies" to help us to mediate the exigencies of life, we are speaking of really the same phenomena operating here.
What I contend is that once we KNOW we are
"(e)ach (a) soul (that) has a unique immortal character. When conjoined with a human brain, this ego character (of the spiritual being we are) is melded with the emotional temperament, or human ego, of that body to produce a single but temporary personality for one lifetime. This is what is meant by the duality of our mind", we can also reach that contemplative state or Unitive Way of realizing our identification with and connectedness to the Divine, for we through our own spiritual "ego character" are able to fully realize the Divine Source of our being.
Dr. Newton also reveals that "(t)he most consistent reports of its demonstrated essence is that the soul represents intelligent energy which is immortal and manifested by vibrational waves of light and color." Whether this IS pure consciousness or the same "stuff" of the Divine itself we can only speculate. Since even in the home of our primary non-physical being
we only "feel" the "Presence" of divine love emanating from our guides and elders and in the spaces we operate within, as reported by all his subjects. But, it is made very clear to all that when we identify with the soul beyond our temporal physical ego character which IS the "mode(s) through which the divine Love operates" in all that we do. Therefore, when we are identified with and operating through our transcendent true nature or our True Spiritual Self we infuse all things we do with the Divine Love from which it was drawn. Consciousness may only be the "conduit" or "channel" by or through which the Divine is made manifest in this physical and temporal plane of existence.

Your Brother in Spirit,

Wayne

A leap of faith on Dr. Newton�s behalf...
-------------------------------------------------

Wayne,

There is no doubt that discrete, altered states of consciousness (ASCs) may be experienced during regression hypnosis. But that does not entail a correlation whereby it is well-reasoned to claim the following about Dr. Newton:

"...he has literally mapped out the spirit world from the moment of death to when we re-enter earth's realm/diminension and "merge" our soul/spirit energy with the fetus in our mother's-to-be womb."

All he has mapped is ASCs related to regression hypnosis. Nothing more. There is no rational basis for the quantum leap you�re making.

You and Dr. Newton are making a leap of faith.

Dear Heartprayer,

Have you read Dr. Newton's two books? Again, they are: "The Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives" and "Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives".
If you read the amazing testimony, all supported by the verbatim question and answer transcripts from the regressions with his subjects, you cannot help but come away with great astonishment, whether you can accept it as the relating of actual experiences or not (his subjects do not doubt that it is, no matter what their conscious beliefs had been prior to the session). He organizes the information his clients/subjects have reported under various chapter headings which involve his clients reporting of virtually every aspect of our activities from, as I stated, death to our rebirth. For example: Soul Orientation,The Spirit World (lengthy descriptions of the nature and orientation of our spaces there), Death, Grief and Comfort, Earthly Spirits, Spiritual Energy Restoration, Soul Group Systems, The Council of Elders, Community Dynamics, The Advancing Soul and The Ring of Destiny and The Life Selection or Screening Room of Future Lives, etc.
Until you read the amazing detailed accounts his some 2000 subjects relate with consistency and without contradiction, you cannot deny that they are relating "facts" of their soul journey.

I realize that all new evidence which does not confirm or agree with our current belief system or world view, or worse, actually turns it all on its head requires great leaps,not of faith, but in our changing the way we see ourselves and our world; Copernicus and Galileo's heliocentric discovery comes to mind.

May I suggest you read the evidence for yourself and determine if it warrants changing what you think you know about who you are, how our consciousness is made manifest in this world and what is our true relationship with the Divine.

Your Brother in Spirit,

Wayne

Wayne:

Ok. We get it. You are profoundly moved by this man's research. However, it is all becoming quite redundant, and annoying, since you have, from the beginning, been preaching your case with comparitively little response to long-standing forum members. This is not to say there isn't some merit to Dr. Newton's findings, but that those findings don't rise to the level of scientific fact. You aren't going to get over that hump with long posts that basically repeat your case again and again. People are disagreeing with you. It doesn't mean you are absolutely wrong, just as one cannot make an air-tight case for most anything of this sort. Shalom Place is, quite frankly, not the place for somebody who has parted with their Christian faith to be carrying on like you have. It's fine that you aren't an orthodox Christian. Most of us here aren't evangelical anyway. Atheists are welcome, but at a certain point, unless it's a political thread, one has to ask "What's the point?" There is a certain kind of dialogue that permits a broad range of opinions, but that isn't the case with the way you post.

So no more posting about Dr. Newton's research here at Shalom Place. You've shared more than enough should anyone be interested in his findings. We can follow-up via Amazon, or by looking at his website. I've already done both.

As you only seem interested in preaching Dr. Newton's pov, there really isn't a thread for you here at SP at this time. If you have other interests (besides reincarnation and hypnosis), then feel free to engage a thread, but with an eye for open-ended discussion.

I would rather you reconsider your purpose here than have to remove your privelages.

Dear W.C.

Believe me, W.C., I do understand your impatience and your unacceptance. Let me give one last attempt at pointing out the relevence of what I have been trying to impart to you in hopes that you might "rconsider your purpose" as well.
Using the analogy alluded to above, let me try to show you the source of your inability to even consider what I have been reporting to you.
I want you to imagine I am Galileo. You represent the Church and it's current thinking of the time that the earth is the center of our solar system (or did they believe it was the entire universe, not sure). Let's also assume you've maybe heard of the telescope but you don't trust that it can enable the user to see what is actually out there in the cosmos. You're told it's unreliable and you really can't depend on it to give us any useful information about the planets or stars. So I (as Galileo) report to you that I've determine through my telescope that, by golly, the earth is not the center, it is the Sun about which the earth and all the other planets revolve. I try to tell you about how I have seen the movements of our planet in relation to the others and the sun and how their orbits clearly show that we are moving around the Sun, the Sun is not moving around us. I try to give you all the other details about the movement of the planets and the sun I've observed, but you keep telling me that my telescope is unreliable, it doesn't work and you can't believe anything you think you see through that new fangled contraption. And, you're tired of hearing about how you have improved the focal width and made the telescope able to see farther and farther into the cosmos, etc. I try to tell you about what I have SEEN actually occurring with the planet's movements, but you keep telling me your tired of hearing about that darn telescope. I again attempt to give you the information I have discovered and why the Sun is the center of our system and what that MEANS for us in understanding earth and God's creation, but you just keep telling me your tired of hearing about that blessed TELESCOPE! I try again, to give you the careful data I have compiled about the moon and Mars, Jupiter and Venus and how earth's movements are definitely HELIOCENTRIC. I plead with you to look at the data I have which demonstrates these new discoveries, BUT you tell me to take my telescope and leave your office (unfortunately it was a lot more unpleasant for the real Galileo). ARE YOU GETTING MY POINT AND MY FRUSTRATION. Are you able to see what YOU have been ignoring, denying and, in fact, literally refusing to see or consider! I have been trying to tell you about the FINDINGS and new revelations and WHAT that they about us and who we are...and, ALL you want to talk about is the INSTRUMENT used in revealing this new evidence.
I can discourse with you about our new understandings of consciousness AND the Divine, and NOT mention hypnosis or reincarnation at all, BUT YOU won't let me.

Now, I know how Galileo felt!

Your Spiritual Brother,

Wayne

You know what Wayne, I could say exactly the same about you. I too have given you information concerning the demonic world and it's ability to deceive well meaning individuals like yourself. If you had shown the least bit of interest in my accounts I would have directed you to further studies and examples of humanities encounter with the demonic (thousands of encounters if you like). But unlike yourself I would have stopped trying to force feed you this information if you had asked me to stop.

I asked you several questions which you failed to answer, as did many others here. You sir are more like the church that condemned Galileo than you like to think. You only hear your own story, you are so convinced of your own truth that you fail to hear anything else. Phil, W.C. and I have acknowledged that there is something relevant in Dr Newton's studies, while we may not agree with everything that he says, it is still an interesting case study. You however have failed to really hear any of us. I fear this may be your last post on Shalomplace, but I encourage you to re-read our dialogues with you and examine whether or not you really listened to anything we said as it appears you ignored most of what we wrote.

For those just walking in the door on this one, Jacques is referring to the extensive discussion we had on this thread, in which we reflected on a variety of explanations for past-life phenomena. There's no need to re-hash all that on this one, and that's not the topic anyway.

Wayne, on that other thread, you had raised questions about scripture, the historical Jesus, and the claims of the Gospels. We've started a discussion on that topic:
- http://shalomplace.com/ubb/ult...t_topic;f=2;t=000298

Feel free to join in, but do take the time to read, first, what's been said, and to consider the material we've linked to. Any posts on reincarnation and Dr. Newton's work on that thread, this one, or any other, will be deleted by me or w.c. If that's primarily what you've come here to discuss, then it's time for you to move on.

Wayne:

I've already told you I'm a Christian who believes in the possibility of reincarnation, seeing as how I've experienced similar dreams and visions. There is no difficulty for me in terms of my faith in considering these notions. I've told you about the aliens. I'm also a certified hypnotist, and have undergone hours of hypnotherapy myself, so there aren't any areas you are covering that are really new to me, or that I'm not open to. Others here are similarly broad-minded.

The problem is mainly with the air of condescension many of us experience in your posting, which you continually indulge in. It seems you are generating straw-man scenarios so as to contrive being misunderstood here at SP. If you had any other intention for being here you'd have changed the way you post by now, imo. To say one feels misunderstood is one thing, but to use grandiose imagery like you are doing is simply a commitment to poor communication.

No more, Wayne. Take up a new approach or move on. If I see any similar posts for or about this topic, your feeling misunderstood like poor Galileo, etc . . . you will be banned.

Just to throw a monkey-wrench into the gears, here . . .

It seems that by "consciousness" some people do mean God, and not just in a pantheistic sense. So for them:
God = Consciousness (Super-Consciousness; Universal Consciousness, etc.)
The human soul = consciousness

That's why it's always necessary to find out how people are using their terms.

In the case of people like Ken Wilber, Deepak Chopra, and Andrew Cohen, it does seem they're conflating the human and divine. I'm not so sure about Hinduism and Buddhism, however. Buddhism in particular, as mateusz has noted elsewhere, means something very specific by "consciousness" -- a "mind-self" of sorts, or consciousness "married" to self-concept, it seems to me.

The Judeo-Christian-Islam tradition has not used the term "consciousness" very often to speak of God or the soul, but, rather, has used terms like spirit and being, capitalizing in the case of God. These Western traditions would tend more to viewing creatures as possessing conscious-ness, or knowing-ness, the human (and other spiritual beings) being conscious of its conscious-ness (while other animals not -- at least to the same extent as humans). Divinity would thus be completely conscious of its consciousness -- all Light, nothing hidden or un-conscious. So would angels, which is why those who fell are considered permanently damned -- their acts of will are total and irreversible. We, on the other hand, while being present to ourselves, are also mostly unconscious, with immense reservoirs of potential and energy lurking beneath the surface of awareness. Our acts of will are only partial commitments of our being, and so we can change our minds, which is a good thing. Jim Arraj fired off a missive on this topic some years ago (scroll down to "A Philosophical Explanation of Kundalini Energy"). Good stuff!

I have sometimes wondered at the career of the notion of consciousness or awareness in contemporary spirituality. I'm sure, people in late antiquity, for instance, were conscious or aware, some of them maybe constantly aware, but they didn't have the need to stress it so much. As I pointed out in some post, the Neoplatonist (and those like St. Augustine too), considered our capacity to be aware and to witness our experiences not a fundamental feature of our humanness. While Buddhists or Hindus or simply the Western teachers inspired by those religions see the capacity to witness as a sort of the essence of our being (like in a Patanjali yoga - Drastr, the Seer = the Soul), the Neoplatonists thought it was something not very high and didn't give much attention to it, sometimes even said that we have that common with animals. By the way this is exactly what Buddhists say when they maintain that animals share the same Mind as people, no difference. The difference between human and animal experience lies in "consciousness" seen as a part of our being (five senses and consciousness make "six consciousnesses" in Buddhists view of human being). But this consciousness that makes us different from animals is something that dissolves after death and is only a manifestation of the Mind which is the same in animals, plants, even rocks, as Dogen Zenji used to say. And the Neoplatonists saw the essence of human being rather in the "intellect" (a nasty word for some Buddhists), the "nous" faculty. St. Augustine thought that capacity to witness is a function of our "memoria", the faculty of conscious presence which is the foundation of the mind. But this "memoria" also remembers and imagines and so on.
"Nous", however, "intellectus" in St. Thomas is not exactly the Witness of Wilber. It is one with its objects but its functioning is cognitive not just being present and observe. So the intellect is not one with the sensory form of a tree but with the formal essence of the tree, so I always was unclear whether this is the same "identity" of the knower and the known. For the Neoplatonists, and for St. Thomas, as far as I know, only humans can be identical to their objects of knowledge via intellectus, not animals who according to Buddhism have the Mind looking out through their eyes.
There is, nonetheless, a metaphor of Light which is the same in the Neoplatonism and in Buddhism - mind is light, God is light, which means it is "knowing", it is capacity to know. But coming to details things get fuzzy for me.
Phil, you say a great deal about the state of awareness and the effects of it. But I wonder if this can be really expressed accurately by our Western metaphysical language. It is "memoria" in its fundamental luminosity, for sure, but not so much "intellectus", since nothing is "intelligized" their or understood about the objects of knowledge. Or Existence is grasped but not essences. So maybe memoria and intellectus come together in one act of knowledge? Possibly. After all three faculties are one unified mind, not three separate minds. So perhaps the state of "presence" is the mind functioning mainly or solely by memoria while in other states, like contemplative love, it can function mainly by will, to the diminishment of understanding. Maybe I just repeating what Lonergan says, but I didn't read him nor Helminiak, so these are my own thoughts.
So I have here: (1) consciousness/awareness which contemporary mystics talk a lot about, presenting it as the key to liberation and happy, good life, and (2) intellectus, understanding, knowledge, which they neglect or even see as an obstacle, but which in its highest modes of operation was considered to be crucial by ancient metaphysical philosophers and theologians. And we have (3) Christian mystics who weren't particularly "intellectual", but tried to graps God by love which surpasses intellect - surpasses, which sometimes meant by-passes from a point of view of philosophers.
Now if we talk about divinity and consciousness. In the light of it all if we see consciousness as a faculty or way of functioning of our mind, it clearly IS NOT God, but something rooted in our brain and physiology. It can go away if brain is damaged, very easily in fact. But Wilber sees consciousness as something very lofty, awareness rather or presence or something which is completely beyond time, space, duality, condition, superhuman - so: God, because what else? Wilber gives an account of one of his grand mal seizures, in which he almost died, and he says that he was aware of this state, he was in coma, but aware of it, he even saw the room in hospital. This seems quite personal (although he says that the Big Mind was indifferent to whether Ken will die or not), but he stresses that it was not Ken Wilber that was aware in a coma, but something deeper and more divine. Clearly, it is interesting that even if brain doesn't function, there is some kind of knowing. So perhaps we have to talk about two types of consciousness - one that is common, and the other that manifests only in mystics and is not dependent on the brain, or the other thing is not consciousness. But Wilbers description seems like it was consciousness, even if a very deep one.
I personally think that it's better to call "consciousness" this human, common faculty of knowing what's going on. this is dependent on our brain. But there is a deep aspect of our being which is "light", the foundation of the mind, and consciousness is a manifestation of it, perhaps. This light in human being is not God, however, because - like Ken Wilber testifies to - it can be indifferent to the death of the body, but it has no power to stop the death, as W.C. often emphasizes. Wilber didn't feel he could choose if he dies or not (even if he supposedly was "one with God" or "God" in this coma), which would be God's prerogative. He simply experienced freedom from bodily, time-space conditions, which seems "trans-human", but perhaps very human at the same time.
So human light is so amazing that it can be confused with God, it also so close to God that it can be confused with him (as I said quoting Gregory - we can confuse the sun with the mirror when the mirror reflects the sun). I think, therefore, that the problem is not that consciousness is mistaken for God, but that the source of our consciousness is so "in likeness and image" of God that when we arrive there we say "wow!", "simply divine!". Yes, but we are mirroring the sun, we are not the sun, because the light doesn't come from us, it comes from the sun. And the fundamental difference between the uncreated and created nature in us is not a perceptible line, but what W.C. talks about - our inability to create, control, govern. We rest in an boudnless luminosity, free from fear, death, body, we feel penetrated by God, so we can exclaim in awe "aham brahmasmi", "my 'I' is God", but we fail to see we are not God, because in all this freedom and boundlessness and feeling of power, we cannot create, or be in control. God is our center, but our will is distinct from his, and our intellect to, because we don't know everything.
But still the experience of the deepest potential of our luminous memoria mirroring God is so powerful and "trans-human" that we cannot be blame if we are tempted to think that we are God, if we don't have framework of faith (or sometimes even if we have). It seems I just repeating what Merton said in his "Inner Experience" about the True Self mistaken for God in Hinduism, but this is how I see the problem now.
So W.C.'s observations seem to be paramount to the discernment between ourselves and God, but when we try to figure out exactly what is the relation between "consciousness" and God and what we mean by "consciousness" in the first place, it's not an easy thing, at least for me.
What suprises me is that for Augustine the experience of the transparency of the mind didn't seem like such a big deal at all. He says that the mind already knows itself in every act of knowledge, that we only have to see that we know ourselves and that we are present to ourselves, and that looking for ourselves prevents us from the seeing. Pretty much Buddhism, isn't it? But for Buddhism this is the ultimate liberation, for Augustine it's nothing like that, it's a stage on the path to the experience of God, which he distinguishes strongly from the experience of the self-knowledge of the mind. That I don't understand.

(I hope I didn't lose the thread in my reflections... my intellectus doesn't function so well recently... )

I enjoyed your reflections, mateusz. Thank you for sharing them.

I think the reason Christian spirituality has placed so much emphasis on what's happening with the will is because, as you noted, it is there (moreso than in mind or awareness) that we experience ourselves to be creaturely, distinct from God and one-another, and, hence, individual. After all, a HUGE problem regarding evil arises for pantheists as there's no way for them to remove God from culpability for human wrongdoing. The doctrine of sin that developed in Judaism made it possible to affirm a good God, and good people who have chosen to do wrong. So this is where Judeo-Christian ethics and spirituality have placed their focus -- on restoring right-relationship with God at the level of the will. Intellectual life and awareness were not neglected, of course, for the will cannot act completely independently of either, but these attributes of the human spirit were not regarded as pathways to union with the divine such as we find in the East.

Interestingly, I once had a conversation with a Hindu yogi who denied the concept of free-will, maintaining that everything was determined by karma. I asked him if what he had just said was karmaically determined, and he said, "yes." When I inquired if he could have decided to have not participated in the conversation with me, he said "no." As this made no sense to me, I dropped the matter and moved on to another topic. That's a rather extreme example, for sure, but I do think we can learn much from the East concerning the limitations of free-will. We, in the West, often seem to regard our inner freedom as being unlimited, and that's just not so -- practically speaking, that is.

Yes, if the experience of "being created", of "creaturelyness" (does this word exist? ) is, like Rahner maintains, an experience of being dependent, than it is mostly by our will we can experience that. There is a great and amazing discrepancy between the weakness of our will and the grandiosity of our awareness (in the sense of "inner light"). We can feel ourselves to be completely one with the whole universe, with the galaxies and empty spaces of the cosmos, but at the same time - to quote Pascal - a drop of water can kill us. "A thinking reed". Perhaps, "an aware reed" in terms of nowadays spirituality. Of course, we can say - only the body is gonna die, I AM indestructible, and this is quite right, but we don't have any power over our body, emotions, thoughts and so on.

My friend told me recently he can't distinguish himself from God. I think it's a common problem among people practicing meditation today, it was mine too. So I'd say that it is in the will, not in the Witness we have to look for the experience of being created. Does God have troubles getting up in the morning or God cannot refrain from harmful actions? A Gnostic might say "this is just myself when I do wrong, it's like God went on holidays then". But this also gives us an odd idea of God, doesn't it?

So I would sum up this thread like you did Phil, that it is the will that allows us to know our weakness and, at the same time, it allows us to know God in a more perfect way (in this life) than intellect or the mind. By the way, the Neoplatonists didn't speak much about the will ( a clear sign of metaphysical mysticism) while the Niceans Fathers and St. Augustine saw the free will as the essence of human being, what distinguishes us from animals. It's an interesting thing - there's not much about free will in Hinduism and Buddhism. They'd say it is "the ego" (in a bad sense of the word) that's making decisions and it has to be transcended (euphemistically speaking, because many of them just try to "kill the ego", whatever that may mean...).

I've just felt interested in the notion of free will. Is there a thread on this already or we could start it? You know about the attempt of cognitivists to show that our brain makes decisions before we consciously make them, which makes them assume that our brain makes decisions for us and that our free will is a sheer illusion? But considering this, and considering the unconscious and its impact on our behaviour, we cannot hold on to XIX century's idea of a free will which can consciously choose, and chooses evil because it's sinful.
Rahner has this idea that decisions are made "in the depths of the heart" which for me means that our conscious choices are a manifestation of something deeper. But if we are not aware of these decisions, doesn't it make it all a bit odd?
So maybe we could talk about the limitations of our choice and will, how this affects our spiritual life.

Yes, the will, as you both are saying, is always relational, as its depth is far greater, in the heart, than awareness primarily generated from within relaxed mental states. And we've discussed on the BR thread how saturation of the mind with the luminosity of cosmic energy would tend to lead a person to equate consciousness and God (not that BR does), as the cosmic energy and kundalini are really one and the same. So the mirror gets full in the mind, whereas it is only in the heart that God can continue to make known His transcendental Being. So what I wonder about is the "hazard" of nonduality prior to an encounter with transcendental grace.

As I mentioned on the BR thread, Ramkrishna, steeped in Hindu devotional mysticism, wasn't all that impressed with the wandering non-dual adept that taught him how to access non-dual awareness. Ramakrishna also ended up rebuking this "teacher" for lack of virture, on an occasion when this man mistreated another man who used an ember from a ritual fire to either cook food or light a cigarette!

The will is a tricky thing, all right. The other day my daughter was going on and on during a meal about mind and thoughts being essential to action -- I forget how the conversation started, but it had something to do with people being inconsiderate. I inquired of her how much thinking she'd been doing about the hamburger I'd grilled, and whether she was intentionally thinking things like: "now I am grabbing the burger, now I am picking it up, now I am opening my mouth, now I am biting, etc." She wasn't, of course. She was "just-eating," while her mind was busy with other matters. And yet some degree of intentionality was operating as she sat there, maintaining herself in proper etiquette, biting, chewing, swallowing, etc. We live so much life like that, don't we? We get ourselves moving in some direction and a whole set of skills "plugs-in" -- skills that we at one time had to consciously practice. It's tempting to say that much of our life just goes on without our having much to say about it, yet my daughter had the freedom to choose to not come and join us at table, to put what she wanted on the burger, to join us in blessing, etc. Then, decisions made, she "just-ate," and awareness and intention can be given over to other matters, including enjoyment of the food and company. The unitive stage is sort of like this -- a formation of the will that goes on loving deep within (in union with the divine will) as a consequence of practice and right-formation.

- continuing -

mateusz wrote: My friend told me recently he can't distinguish himself from God. I think it's a common problem among people practicing meditation today, it was mine too. So I'd say that it is in the will, not in the Witness we have to look for the experience of being created. Does God have troubles getting up in the morning or God cannot refrain from harmful actions? A Gnostic might say "this is just myself when I do wrong, it's like God went on holidays then". But this also gives us an odd idea of God, doesn't it?

Yes, it does! On another thread discussing something Deepak Chopra wrote, I noted the following:

quote:

(Chopra)God is the infinite, unbounded, eternal intelligence that constantly projects itself as the Universe--through the creation of space, time, matter and infinite energy.

That's monism, which is also what Vedanta teaches.

He also speaks of God in many places as the "field of infinite possibilities." His language here attempts to connect with quantum physics, which, he claims, implies the same -- i.e., that the universe (which is indistinguishable from God, really) is a "quantum soup." This kind of language suggests scientific credibility, but really, friends, quantum physicists do not know what the ultimate nature of reality is. Nor do their theories support pantheism/monism over other ways of looking at things.

So God as "field," "intelligence," etc., but "not conceptualizable." Ahem, who's conceptualizing? [Wink]

Also, what's the image of God coming from all this? Personal? Impersonal? Beyond both, he would probably say, failing to understand that anything must be one or the other. For by affirming a Personal God, Christianity (and other theisms) assert that God is not simply an Intelligence, but a volitional Being . . . a Supreme Being. That's not quite the same as a "field" (such language fails to arouse much spiritual passion in this pilgrim).

Missing from Chopra, too, is an accounting for the existence of evil. Like other Easterners, he speaks often of attachments, mistaken identity, illusions, etc. All fine and well, nevertheless one must ask why ultimate intelligence extending itself into the universe has become so confused about its identity, and why it has attached itself to its own projections? This is always the undoing of monism, imo; I don't think the contradiction here can be overcome with even the most clever of sophistries. And even if one were to succeed, one would still be left wondering why we should have any confidence that such an intelligence -- which so badly confused itself in the first place -- can extricate itself from its confusion using even Dr. Chopra's books for guidance. How liberating would it really be, after all is said and done, to detach from one's delusions, only to realize that the "field" was the confused agent to begin with?

None of this occurs to Chopra, however, or if it does, he's not much bothered by it. No doubt, he would sneer at the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creation as (ontological) "dualism" (which it is, and happily so). Yet only such "dualism" adequately establishes creation as "real being" with God as its Creator, the One to Whom we are to give an accounting for our lives, and the One who is all-good and not confused about anything. And only Christianity adequately accounts for how creatures come to share in the divine nature itself without resorting to monism, but through Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection and the gift of the Spirit. Yes, that "dead white male in the sky" (a sarcastic phrase used by Chopra in the article under discussion) is the One who makes that possible, and who even graces the good that Chopra does.

- from this thread

Wayne:

Here is your post from the other thread:

"The more I read about your Faith (with a capital F) in Jesus, especially the Thomist exposition of his �feeling� wisdom and experience of Jesus as a �connaturality�, and this being a coequal aspect of our reason-ing inquiry as to the factual proof of his life, I am impressed with how it is the SAME spirituality or �realization� of our common divinity which you deride the New Agers with espousing and which I have been proclaiming to you regarding our unitary or theology�s �unitive way� of divine consciousness, our shared nature with God, of which we are a manifestation thereof, through which our most noble, and yes, divine qualities of unconditional love, compassion and yes, charity (forgiveness of sin), are the hallmarks of its expression. He states that �anyone united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him� is really identical to my understanding �realization� of my innate spiritual nature and its being of the same �stuff� of our Creator�when I IDENTIFY with that innate nature or REALIZE my true and primary spiritual being and ACT in accordance with it. The only difference is the Christian�s conflation (single identity) of Jesus with God. Faith and Self/Divine Realization in practice is NOT really different. We are arguing over orientation and language�but are describing the same FEELING experience of the divine.
So,in the experience/ecstatic expression of your Faith in Christ/God as one(or coequal aspects) or in the Thomist connatural relationship (shared or co-mmon nature)with them as an integral part of that Faith, WE in your Faith and I in my Divine Realization become the experiencers of our supernatural creation and our divine connection to it.
The real significance of Jesus then for you as for me, although we may differ in our understanding of his mission and his true status, is in the feeling expression of the Divine Love he awakens in us both and by his life demonstrates the means by which we can actualize it in OUR lives. If your Faith and my Realization fails to change us and the world into a place closer approaching the Kingdom of God he came to usher in, then he came for naught! We have had 2000 years to get it right, and there are still wars and rumors of war...when will we apply his teachings and the lessons he gave his life for us to learn?"

Your Brother in Spirit,

Wayne

Wayne:

Your remarks are best suited for the thread "Divinity and Consciousness: the differences," and so I will move your post, along with my reply. Please be mindful of where you place your posts as to a close match with the thread topic. I don't mind you posting on the "Divinity and Consciousness" thread if you refrain from your past tendency of straw-manning and seeming ad hominems. And, you will have to accept that most of the folks on this forum are going to disagree with you re: metaphysics, theology and ontology, which should be quite clear by now. If choose to wrestle with these issues continually without a clear indication of accepting those differences, and/or critical reflection re: your own presuppositions, then you're close to being right back in the saddle that almost got you banned. We know the metaphysics you speak of, and it doesn't resonate with the Christian contemplative and mystical experience, by-and-large. And, our own assumptions likewise don't fit into your interior persepctive. Without acknowledging these differences there can probably be little common ground for further communication.

It would require another thread to compare and contrast subjective impressions, but if the language you are using adequately reflects your interior experience, then I'd say there are significant differences. As for the metaphysical or moral value of those differences, again, that is another thread.

I was under the same impression you appear to hold, and held it for many years as a New Ager, until I experienced Christ and the Holy Spirit. We are on subjective ground here, but your language suggests something much more akin to an expansion of consciousness than the annointing of the Holy Spirit in the heart. There is in that Presence an actual increase in the sense of God's Otherness, even as He is, at the same time, "Daddy." One doesn't come out of such an experience with a "realization of our common divinity," or of a "divine consciousness," and certainly not "a shared nature with God." In fact, one knows oneself to be quite incapable of a permanent state of unconditional love via the powers of the soul, however mature those become, along with the other obvious limits, such as the inability to create out of nothing or overcome death. And so we aren't conflating Jesus as God through an experience of cosmic consciousness, as you suggest, when we refer to the Christian contemplative understanding of the unitive stage of spiritual development. It is really quite different, and is certainly not merely a problem of semantics.

Phil and mateusz:

It occurs to me that this depth of the will, which most often operates subconsciously (see Benjamin Libet's studies), intimates the nature of the creature with the Creator, in that the will's relational nature is never fully realized as would be the case for the alleged full realization of cosmic awareness in the enlightened person. Whereas cosmic awareness saturates the third eye chakra, the will, usually located in the heart in devotional terms, opens to the mystery of being upheld by God beyond our own powers. And so the elightened state of consciousness, depending upon the degree of heart opening, appears complete to itself (lacking humility, as among Buddhist "crazy wisdom?" adepts and so many half-baked gurus), even though the will continues to function beneath conscious awareness in as much as the enligthened person is still functioning at the privilage of his or her created organism in so many subtle physical and energetic ways. Even the nine siddhis don't immortalize the organism, or grant the power of true creation, showing that the true power of the relational will is in the act of surrender through grace. One doesn't even speak of the mind as that which surrenders. We don't have relationships primarily via the powers of the mind which recognize the connections, or certainly don't seat them in terms of the head, but in the heart, just as the self is referenced in this way (we point to the heart, not to head, when localizing feeling awareness or interpersonal identity). The saints, such as devotional Hindus, and the Sufis, along with the Kabbalists and Christian mystics, may have a more fluid access to the realms of the heart, than say the Buddhists, in that the key to this opening comes from surrender of the will to Grace, a concept that is hinted at in Tibetan Buddhism, but only in terms of how devotion is a temporary prop toward non-dual realization. And so in that case, the heart is tethered rather strongly to activities of awareness, rather than awrareness being in some sense secondary, or subserviant to, the will's surrender. Phil alluded to this earlier.

Wayne said:


W.C.,
Firstly, I am not "assuming certain similiarities or differences" I am genuinely "seeing" them in Aquinas' writings and clearly stating them with quotes. My "weak grasp of Christian metaphysics and theology" IS why I am reading it now for this thread in hopes that you can assist me in my understanding...is that not one aspect of this site? The Church has had 2000 years of perfecting its theology and apologetics for its Faith, forgive me my not being familiar with the contents of its voluminous writings. Secondly, far be it for me to "ignore" fundamental or "primary" distinctions, if I have had a fault it would be in my "assumption" of profound differences...forgive my feeble attempt at finding one small area of similarity in the "experience" of divine love. Just maybe you have made "assumptions" about "New Agers" (I am not fond of this rubric, by the way) and might do well to brush up on natural metaphysics in the noble endeavor to find a few points of common experience with the divine we just maybe might share! We don't just understand the divine by reason anymore than you do or Aquinas, in fact, we too believe we can be "united to the Lord (and)become(s) one Spirit with him (Summa Theol., II-II, q.45, a.2)." We do not intellectualize our divine experience anymore than you do in your Faith. As to questions...how many do you want...I got millions of 'em?

Still your Spiritual Brother,

Wayne

Wayne:

Here is part of your earlier post which I transferred, and which you are saying a request for understanding is being made and differences recognized:

" . . . I am impressed with how it is the SAME spirituality or �realization� of our common divinity which you deride the New Agers with espousing and which I have been proclaiming to you regarding our unitary or theology�s �unitive way� of divine consciousness, our shared nature with God, of which we are a manifestation thereof, through which our most noble, and yes, divine qualities of unconditional love, compassion and yes, charity (forgiveness of sin), are the hallmarks of its expression. He states that �anyone united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him� is really identical to my understanding �realization� of my innate spiritual nature and its being of the same �stuff� of our Creator�when I IDENTIFY with that innate nature or REALIZE my true and primary spiritual being and ACT in accordance with it. The only difference is the Christian�s conflation (single identity) of Jesus with God. Faith and Self/Divine Realization in practice is NOT really different. We are arguing over orientation and language�but are describing the same FEELING experience of the divine."

_________________________________________


I really don't see in any of that a real inquiry, and your last post, the one above ("Firstly . . . "), is still full of straw-man innuendo, as though you are being terribly misunderstood for all your attempts to generate true discussion. Nothing could be further from the truth, imo.

And this . . . .

"The real significance of Jesus then for you as for me, although we may differ in our understanding of his mission and his true status, is in the feeling expression of the Divine Love he awakens in us both and by his life demonstrates the means by which we can actualize it in OUR lives."


This isn't an acknowledgment of differences, but a further postulation on your part re: Jesus as a fully awakened human being rather than God (not cosmic consciousness) incarnate. You really can't have an extended conversation with a Christian from this pov, if what you intend to discuss is the nature of spirituality. But then I think you know this, but just keep pushing your New Age agendas here at SP.

". . . in hopes that you can assist me in my understanding."

Given the context in which this statement occurs, it honestly sounds more like a ploy to live and provoke for yet another day than a real change in behavior.


Furthermore, you posit the differences to be with Christians, not yourself as well, and you seem to have no interest in genuinely asking questions, or you would have already put them to Phil or myself, or somebody else here, all of us being very patient with you. But the patience, on my end, has run out.

Keep reading if you wish, but I'm, again, finished with our correspondance. But I will be watching closely to see if you follow through with your alleged commitment to true inquiry.


If Phil bans you at this point, I won't have any misgivings.

W.C.

You have crushed my sincere olive branch with your cynicism and complete inability to acknowledge that we both seek to understand Jesus' life and purpose (and our own I might add) and just might have some common innate spiritual nature which is the source of our inquiry. You have become literally paranoid in your accusations and disclaimers. There is no "true commitment to inquiry" on this site for the only questions you will accept or even entertain are one's concerned with the further encrustation of your faith. You would make Joseph Ratzinger proud. Since you love to suggest reading, may I suggest you read "In God's Name" and find out what happens to those who are NOT open to "real inquiry" and change and who must defend their pov to the death and to murder (Albino Luciani unfortunately did not understand how far they would go to prevent change...he was truly a beautiful soul worthy of Jesus' sacrifice).

I will make you happy and depart and save you from having to excommunicate me from your site. I will leave you, however, with one last quote from Herbert Spencer but doubt you will have the courage to post it: "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

Your Brother of the Spirit,

Wayne

Wayne's privilages have been removed. Any appeals must go through Phil.

I'm not sure if anyone here needs an explanation for my banning Wayne. But everyone should know that I defer to Phil on such a matter, and he has reversed a decision I made in the past. I trust him to make the best decisions for Shalom Place.

I also want to make it clear to forum members and those visiting without registering, that divergent viewpoints are really welcome, both for me and here at SP as far as its philosophy is concerned. I suspect the regular forum members trust this, but I wouldn't assume so. So please feel free to private message me with any concerns, suggestions, and constructive criticisms related to this decision (we don't want to take up thread space for such exchanges, and keeping most of those comments private is respectful).

I also hope I made it clear that I'm not of the belief that a person must be Christian to cultivate the spiritual sensibility, including virtue and compassion, and many of the fruits of the Spirit which God may procure in a soul from another faith tradition.

The reason for banning Wayne is hopefully self-explanatory for those who have followed the interactions over the past weeks. If not, please do private message me and I'll elaborate so you can be confident of the right to express your opinions here at SP.

(Stuck in Minneapolis for the night after Northwest Airlines arrived too late for my connection to Wichita.)

w.c., I support your decision. And, to my knowledge, the only reversal of a decision you made was with Asher, who contacted me months later with apologies and a request to have his posting rights restored. We'll see if that happens here as well.