/lit/ - Literature

>>21535748
But also and of course, even this very attitude is taken as “anti-Christian,” inasmuch as if the historical personage Christ is not taken as central, it’s “anti-Christian.” Even a rhizomatic omnicentral viewpoint (every spot as a veil of the eternally repeated and omnipresently manifesting Centrality of Divinity, and Christ as a Man in Whom knowledge, understanding, and action according to the Will of this Divine Omnipresence was explicitly instantiated) gets wary looks for “not being sufficiently Christian” or “smacking of heresy,” as in the furtive side-eyes of the clergy at the thought of men like Meister Eckhart, and even the reactions of traditional Muslims towards ecstatically iconoclastic Sufis. For traditional Abrahamic theologians, this often seems too close to “Luciferianism” and egomania, although such a worldview also includes that everyone and everything else is also a manifestation of God, however consciously revealed and acted-upon this is to themselves.

Also, many Christians here who go on their rants against “anti-Christian” or “non-Christian” mysticism speak in incredibly petty, insulting, arrogant, snide and vain ways. This is just a generalized observation and not meant to apply to every Christian at large. God bless you and each and every one, and may everyone eventually attain to moksha (God-consciousness, enlightenment, or liberation from normal unenlightened life and suffering) and become a transcendental divine immortal with all the 24 siddhis (divine or miraculous powers of Hindu theology).

>>21535748
>>21535104
But also and of course, even this very attitude is taken as “anti-Christian,” inasmuch as if the historical personage Christ is not taken as central, it’s “anti-Christian.” Even a rhizomatic omnicentral viewpoint (every spot as a veil of the eternally repeated and omnipresently manifesting Centrality of Divinity, and Christ as a Man in Whom knowledge, understanding, and action according to the Will of this Divine Omnipresence was explicitly instantiated) gets wary looks for “not being sufficiently Christian” or “smacking of heresy,” as in the furtive side-eyes of the clergy at the thought of men like Meister Eckhart, and even the reactions of traditional Muslims towards ecstatically iconoclastic Sufis. For traditional Abrahamic theologians, this often seems too close to “Luciferianism” and egomania, although such a worldview also includes that everyone and everything else is also a manifestation of God, however consciously revealed and acted-upon this is to themselves.

Also, many Christians here who go on their rants against “anti-Christian” or “non-Christian” mysticism speak in incredibly petty, insulting, arrogant, snide and vain ways. This is just a generalized observation and not meant to apply to every Christian at large. God bless, and may everyone attain moksha (God-consciousness, enlightenment, or liberation from normal unenlightened life and suffering) and become a transcendental divine immortal with all the 24 siddhis (divine or miraculous powers of Hindu theology).

>>20728214
Thanks for the rec, might put it in my backlog. Yep, there’s a fascinating history of this due to their geographical proximity — I’m certain figures like Kabir (the Indian yogi-poet-saint who was both and neither Hindu and Muslim), as well as the Prince Dara Shikoh who wrote “The Confluence of Two Seas” on the harmony between Islam and Hindu theology, Vedanta and Sufism, very possibly come up in it.

The dhikr (can also perhaps more accurately be pronounced/written as zikr) is the “remembrance”, remembrance of God, of God’s name, remembrance of Allah, and can be chanted aloud in group rituals or silently repeated to oneself in the breath. In this latter way it exactly matches up, as >>20727209 noted, with the yogic use of mantras. To permeate one’s breath, life, and mind with the remembrance of God, harnessing the consciousness to the breath as a perpetual self-reminder and private discipline. The Jesus Prayer of Orthodox Christianity also functions similarly. The deliberate silent repetition of “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” held to start as a Prayer of the Mind, deliberately set about by the intellect, and then eventually transcending the merely mental repetition of it and turning into the Prayer of the Heart, in which, instead of just being automatically repeated, it actually becomes authentically heartfelt. It can also be shortened to and become as simple as simply silently repeating “Lord, have mercy,” “Jesus,” or what-you-will. The fact that we have a breath, an internal consciousness, and that we can have an ideal of faith and devotion we need to remind ourselves of so we don’t just forget it, and that these three can be usefully harnessed, seems to have been realized by wise people of many times and places.