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myth : God
Conceptualized
physical depictions of gods come in
two dimensional drawn, painted and chipped images and in three dimensional sculpted talisman
and statues.
Conceptualizing
God, the Creator, as
confined to two or three dimensions borders on heresy as God can
never be accurately depicted by humans
in a purely physical representation.
A Christian archeologist, excavating in the 18th
or 19th century happens upon a grotesque depiction of
Michlantecuhtli, or Shiva the Destroyer
wearing a necklace of human skulls,
and sees a graven image. He
believes that the creators of the
conceptualized physical depiction actually
worshiped the sculpture as a god not
as a physical representation of a god
who operated in reality unseen. He labels
the culture as an "idol worshiping culture."
In
the far distant future an archeologist happens upon a grotesque sculptural
depiction of a poorly fed man his face contorted in agony, his
hands and feet crudely nailed with
rusty iron spikes to a rough hewn wood cross, wearing a crown of razor sharp
thorns which tear his skin creating rivulets of blood and as a final afront a
iron pike pierces his liver. Without the cultural knowledge of having heard the
story of
Jesus, this archeologist sees a man being
put to death in a most gruesome manner. He could easily surmise that a
culture that worshiped an
idol depicted in such a manner would glorified
torture and
death and be a most
bloodthirsty homicidal social culture - a graven
images of a son being put to
death in the most agonizing fashion at the
behest of his father.
God is an ambiguous
word in our
language which appears to refer to
something that is known.
The
transcendent is
unknowable and unknown.
God is transcendent of anything like the
name "God."
God is beyond names and forms. (see the Way)
Meister Eckhart said that the
ultimate and highest leave taking is leaving
God for GOD,
leaving
your notion of God for an
experience of that which
transcends all notions.
The source of
temporal life is
eternity.
Eternity pours itself into
reality.
There is a basic
mythic idea of the
God who becomes many in
us.
This is an important point in
all of the great Eastern religions.
In India, the
God who
exists in me is called the 'inhabitant' of the
body.
To identify with the
divine,
immortal aspect of your
soul,
the
divine spark of
God, that inhabits all
life, is to awaken to the
reality of
God here and now.
Eternity is not some
time in the future.
Eternity is not even an
infinite amount of
time.
Eternity has nothing to do with
time.
Eternity is that
dimension of here and now that is beyond
all thinking in temporal symbols.
The
problem with
heaven is that you will be having such a
good time there, you won't even
think of time.
You just have this unending
delight in the
beatific presence of God.
The experience of
eternity is found within a
moment by fully
living right here and now.
Eternity is beyond all
categories of
thought.
Humans want to define God.
God is a
thought.
God is a name.
God is an idea.
God is
a symbol.
God is an archetype.
God is love.
God is a concept.
God is that which is beyond even
the concept of
reality, that which
transcends all
thought.
The
ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of human
conceptualization.
God goes past anything that could
be consciously
conceived by any
human.
Instinctual
understanding of
God, of the ultimate mystery of being,
cannot be explained because understanding
transcends the
archetypical conceptual symbolic imagery available to
humans. We can not
enwrap
God with
words because words are inadequate to describe the
existent reality of
God.
The second best
concepts/symbols/imagery
are misunderstood, because these concepts/symbols/imagery
refer to that which transcends
archetypical conceptual symbolic imagery socially and culturally available to us within our
community.
The third best concepts/symbols/imagery
are what we talk and write
about.
You don't understand
God if you
think
god has sex organs.
To
springboard into the transcendent, means to "transcend," to go past
duality.
Everything in the field
of time and space has an
opposite.
The ultimate
word in our English
language for that which is
transcendent is
God.
But as soon as you
think of
God, you have a
concept.
Literalist
Christians, Jews and Moslems think of
God as the
Father.
In
religions where the
God of Creation is the
Mother, the
whole Earth is her body.
Conceptually to humans who envisioned the
God of Creation as the
Mother there is nowhere else but the
Earth.
But a male God must exist -
for how else could the Mother become
impregnated and produce Her children?
As a male
god must
exist such a male god must
not exist on Earth but must exist somewhere else - perhaps in the
sky, the heavens or somewhere outside of
nature.
Thus a male
god must conceptually be able to walk through the
sky.
But male and female are
two aspects of one principle.
The division of
life into sexes was a late
division.
It is absurd to
speak of
God as of either this
sex or that sex.
The divine power of
God is antecedent to sexual
separation.
One problem with
Yahweh, as they used to say in the
Christian Gnostic texts, is that he forgot
he was a metaphor.
Yahweh thought he was a fact.
And when
Yahweh said, "I am god, "
a voice was heard to say, "You are mistaken, Samael."
"Samael" means "blind
god":
blind to the
infinite light of which he is a local
historical manifestation.
This
is known as the blasphemy of jehovah -
that he thought he was
God. (See Indra)
It was Hegel who spoke of
god as the gaseous anthropomorphic
vertebrate - such an idea of
god many Christians hold.
Or
god is thought of as a bearded old
man, the patriarch, with an unpleasant
temperament.
This is a false and
materialistic
way of talking about the
transcendent, of
conceptualizing
God as something
supernatural, outside of
nature, somewhere out there,
separate from us and the Earth.
Transcendent properly defined is
that conceptualization which is beyond all
concepts,
GOD.
Immanuel Kant tells
us that all of
our experiences are bounded by
time and space, they take place
within space, and they take place
within the
natural course of
time.
-adapted
from the Power of
Myth, interview of Joseph Campbell,
mythologist, by Bill Moyers, journalist.
See
David Hume,
Rene Descartes,
Immanuel Kant
Also
see Joseph Campbell on:
in the
beginning
image
myth
life
consciousness
archetype
metaphor
mystery
the
serpent
religion
dreamtime
hero
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