There is a link in the chain of being, right at the juncture where humans straddle the material and spiritual realms, right at the spot where Jesus inhabited our realm --- and it is THE LINK of all links.

Hi JB,
First...I wanted to say that the little girl you mentioned earlier is in my prayers. I hadn't seen that post til now, so I'm sorry it took so long to respond.

On the quote above:
Is it possible that this could be what I've always called "communication/communion/interconnection via the Holy Spirit"? There are two people (one being the young man I mentioned on another thread who is now a monk) that I pray regularly with and for, that I am spiritually connected to. By that I mean, at times their "presence" is completely with me here. My older monk friend who died last year called it a type of bi-location. It's as though when deep in prayer these two friends and I connect on a level that really has no human description because it is not of the human world. Is that anything like what you are talking about? Sometimes we do seem to know what is going on with the other..maybe not in specifics, but rather in a spirit-groan, if you will. For instance, at times I or they have detected each other's loneliness or aching heart..and when we email or in some cases call each other, we find out that yes, there was something going on and they or I had felt the prayer/comfort of the one sensing it....hmm hope that makes sense. Anyway, I was just curious.
Thanks!
Terri

Terri - I affirm what you said in the same context of that issue raised earlier in the thread by w.c., where he'd written: What I'm referring to is the growing body of data supporting the parapsychological explanation for mind/brain/body interactions. and J.B., I know your familiar with all of this, but it might be an interesting vein to add as you develop your spiritual anthropology. I'd like to here your opinion on its relevance, especially since many people without a reported struggle with kundalini would likely be interacting with each other over distances in meaningful ways without knowing it, even without an active prayer life.

It was dove-tailing, in my mind, with Stephen's questions about the Incarnation.

I think there is a lot of promise in future informed speculation regarding the "tacit dimension" but it is also an area fraught with peril because it does not, in principle, lend itself to direct empirical verification. However, the quality of the indirect evidence is being enhanced by serious researchers and the idea of formal causality is being recovered from old Aristotelean thought and reapplied as an indispensable explanatory idea for physical phenomena, normal and paranormal.

We must remember that when we introduce faith data into the picture that we're moving into the realm of mystery, something we can penetrate and grapple with, to be sure, but no-thing we can fully wrap our brains around.

One other thing, I forgot to provide the urls for the relevant Arraj links (this is the Lite thread, afterall), inasmuch as I was also playing off of his musings regarding the spiritual unconscious, in general, as discussed in different of his books, and more particularly off of his explication of the theology of Emile Mersch in Mind Aflame . See the Chapter on the Supernatural, where it reads, in part:

quote:

If there is nothing that can be added to our natures to make us supernatural, where can we look to find an answer? We must somehow look to a reality that by its very nature transcends essence understood as a certain capacity to exist. We have to look to existence rather than essence. And ultimately, we have to look to God, but in the form of a new and radically different relationship than the one we have in virtue of our creation. "The supernatural involves a change of a different order, a change that is at once far more radical and more delicate, a change that affects a being by causing it to be the very thing it was but in a very different way." (4)

At first glance such a new relationship seems impossible, and it is, if we look solely from our side, for all that we are in relationship to God is comprehended by the fact that God has made us exist. But what about God's side? Our existence is only a partial and limited reflection of what God is as existence itself. "When God has communicated Himself to a thing by the being that is interior to the thing, He can still communicate Himself by the being that is interior to Himself."

The concept of the spiritual unconscious arises in several places in Arra's writings. I was particularly intrigued by the thought of Jesus possessing, not only normal human consciousness at all levels, including the spiritual unconscious but also, a supernatural unconscious. But we take pretty quick leaps from the physical to the metaphysical to the theological and back in trying to juggle this many balls in the air! I don't think there is an easy articulation or ready metaphor for this discussion because it requires too much nuancing but I do think all of us have a pretty good intuitive grasp. I think everyone has expressed a good feeling for what's going on --- and maybe that's not a bad way to begin such a reflection. Symbols evoke meaning from deep within and our nonrational experience of the numinous gifts us with a knowledge that doesn't come through reasoning faculties. The theologians then help us process it within a framework that is time-tested and which honors long tradition.

Well, enough of that before I break my corpus callosum

pax,
jb

p.s. My little friend began chemo and has an excellent prognosis; a well-contained lymphoma. "Fortunately", her small intestines collapsed into the large causing unrelenting and excruciating pain, which resulted in an operation, which discovered the malignancy (otherwise totally unrelated). Wow.

Oh my, I'd say the finding of your little friends lymphoma was indeed a case of Divine Intervention. I'm a cancer survivor myself and would never have known I had the disease if my mom hadn't been diagnosed with it just a couple weeks before...and God added an extra little physical change that happened overnight (I kid you not) to push me to have myself checked out. I, for one, believe He does step in to bring these things to our attention according to His will .

I was going to quote from your post up there but, gosh, there was so much I wanted to quote it would've just reposted the whole thing!...lol. I agree about the perils and I think one has to be grounded in realizing that we can't just assume we completely understand what's going on when spiritual/supernatural things begin to happen. We HAVE to keep that "umbilical cord" to God attached.

I've often wondered if in the apostles time, they somehow had a greater understanding of that spiritual unconciousness or something. We see all through scripture about messages delivered in dreams, in visions, by angels...we see people delivered from prisons by angels. Have we somehow lost the initial understanding of how God works in the supernatural realm? This has always troubled me a bit because it seems to have been a regular part of the apostles' walk with God. And we don't seem to see this in today's believers unless they are mystic Priests or monks...along that line of dedication. And the things we DO see (some of the charismatic stuff....and no I am not against charismatics, I just think sometimes caution isn't exercised properly) are truly off the wall at times. I don't know, but it just seems to me that somewhere, somehow, we who believe have missed something..or at the very least aren't willing to pay attention to it...maybe even scared of it?

A little side thought here...I know of a few people who consider the possiblity that since we only use 10 to 15% of our brains (according to popular findings) perhaps Adam and Eve used near 100% and communicated in a type of telepathy sort of. And perhaps that's even what our communication with God through the Holy Spirit is all about. And just to throw a little more into the mix, one of those fellas I was mentioning that I prayed with has had episodes during praying the Rosary where he "saw" beings who communicated with each other, but not as we do...more telepathic in nature.

Boy..this topic can certainly open up some things can't it? Verrrrrry interesting .

Blessings,
Terri

I'm very much led into the Bible by your post, jb, re. all the information from the Big Bang being available ,and, am reminded of similar experiences by yours, terri.I have often conceived of something similar in terms of a universal consciousness, jb, but never quite in relation to Christ's consciousness. It's such a beautiful idea!The idea in Romans 6 of dying and being raised again with Christ, and putting on Christ, as you say, is given a new lease of life.
I have always viewed this and "being seated with Christ in the heavenlies" from Ephesisans, as a mystical concept aswell as a practical one and to see it all with the revelation that Christ's energies are contained in God's mind and accessed by us thru the Spirit's power makes it all the more wonderful, if slightly less mysterious. But the mystery is still retained because of the faith involved to grasp and live "in" and "with" Christ's consciousness. To truly live "in Christ" involves a putting off or a God's breaking of ourselves(Paul talks in terms of "the flesh".) This becomes interesting in relation to Kundalini. No need to say that such shedding of ego or "fleshly" nature can be accomplished without Kundalini awakening but , again, only speaking from my own experience, part of an unexpected or unsought after Kundalini is breakdown. The rebuilding of personality for me ,involved one's consciousness drawing from other source material and using it to redecorate one's house. This involved using information which wasn't consciously on hand but was contained in a bigger , not universal but more communal mind. To give an example, as I was being "rebuilt", I found myself borrowing from other peoples' creative reservoir to the point of personality plagiarism. But the borrowings were so exact and precise, even down to exact phrases that I had no way of digesting save by osmosis from this vast pool of consciousness you speak of, that they surprised everyone concerned . So perhaps consciousness is like a bubble within bubbles. Small individual bubbles inside larger communal bubbles which are in turn inside larger universal - you've guessed it - bubbles. Occasionally,(and please pardon the shockingly cliched metaphor) bubbles burst and we find our minds more consciously inside larger bubbles.Sound like a load of bubbles? Perhaps.
When one shifts this into a purer energy system, that of God's incarnated Son, one can envisage all sorts of wonderful transformation.
The scripture "seek and you will find" comes into the picture here. One is reformed or transformed in relation to the context of one's will or sub conscious desire. I was outwith the sphere of Christ's influence during and after my Kun breakdown and would have been a lot more enlightened and "holy" if I had been inside it, which leads me to believe that Kundalini is a kind of "neutral" energy that adapts itself to our intentions, but the pool containing Christ' consciousness is always available, Hallelujah, and one need not undergo such drastic upheavals to swim in it, Double Hallelujah!!!!

Stephen,

Your processing of our musings in the light of the Word was most insightful. That "bubbles metaphor" could go a very long way in drawing depthful analogies to consciousness before it would collapse (or perhaps I should say burst!).

Your characterization of kundalini as "neutral" fits my paradigm for all human faculties, psychic and otherwise, when I say that they are without a "valence" and can be volitionally given over to good or to evil. What is so very interesting is how the system seems to be "rigged", that is to say that the more we become most fully human, realizing our potentialities, the more likely we are to imitate Christ. When human psychological and energetic systems are grown or expanded or fully unleashed in an integrated, holistic manner, we seem to invariably experience that rigging, that innate predisposition toward holiness/whollyness, humanization leading to divinization.

ALL of us experience natural growth processes that lack integration, at times, in all parts of our lives dealing with all human faculties, sometimes due to backsliding and sinfulness, but sometimes due to the mere fact that we are not God and will make mistakes. When such bubbles burst, through the pain and suffering that ensue, indeed, new invitations to alternative consciousness invariably seem to present themselves and opportunities for transformation multiply (again, it appears rigged in our favor?).

Stephen, you seem to be expressing an "aha moment" or to have had a "eureka experience" of sorts by going to Scripture and meditating on these mysteries in the Light provided there. Is this a fair characterization or do you care to comment on whether I have properly interpreted your sharing?

I very much liked this: But the mystery is still retained because of the faith involved to grasp and live "in" and "with" Christ's consciousness.

Yes. This participation in the Christ Consciousness(es) takes place on two planes. It takes place in the natural plane in the very same manner that all humans can access, in principle, that information belonging to our collective ego consciousness, infraconscious, unconscious, spiritual unconscious and what have you. Psychics seem to be very much in tune with some of this info now; likely we'll all be tuned in later. We partly experience, as I conceive it, even Christ's supernatural unconscious at least insofar as it impinged on and shaped and influenced His own ego consciousness and spiritual unconscious --- all of this in the natural realm.

Then, there is the communication with Christ's supernatural life which brings us into the realm of mystery, only to be experienced through faith and this is how it must be, in principle, ontologically distinct as the Trinity is, ontologically discontinuous from Creation even though we were gifted with the Incarnation. It is as if the Holy Spirit communes in our soul, talking to and abiding with that Christ consciousness we have "put on" and the more we have accessed this consciousness, the more unitive this indwelling can be.

Well, I must run. I pick up on some very positive and powerful vibes, Stephen, and share in the delight and the glow of your own illumination, which has brought us additional light here

Go in Christ,
jb

I think you interpret things just fine, jb. There are certain passages of scripture which are continually revitalised and revitalising when read in the light of mystical/metaphysical discussuion - John 13-16, Ephesians 1 and 2.
I also agree with your notion that the more we fulfil our human potential, the more we imitate Christ. He is after all the whole/holistic man or the second Adam, to refer to Paul again, and our spiritual fulfilment. I can only wonder at how broad and open and vast His human consciousness must be to draw all men, with there multifarious personalities and variegated intelligence into Himself,in freedom, not a clone amongst us, hopefully.
I must go and give my niece ,Suzi, some much desired internet time.

Love in Jesus,

Stephen.