/lit/ - Literature

nobody actually expects that to happen, they just want their comfy afterlife. seriously, people have been expecting Jesus' return for millennia now and it's never happened.

Find another planet and start over. Get the aliens to become christians too.

>>14567333
eternity.

>>14567549
so nothing happens in eternity?

>>14567556

Merge with god bro cmon it isnt that difficult just pray and control the desires of your material flesh bro

>>14567563
in the Bible I don't think there is anywhere the idea of "merging with God", that seems somekind of eastern or gnostic addition

>>14567333
For 99% of Christians, the question is abstract enough that they never actually develop any meaningful understanding of what it could entail.

For the mystics, like Boehme, a definite answer in terms of visceral experience can be found, and they'll talk about it at length. They generally don't just identify God with experience in the abstract, they identify him with a visceral feeling, and the implications of that feeling serve as the bedrock of the rest of their work.

Religion is different from science in that its highest ideals don't necessarily need to be-- and generally aren't-- transmissable through discussion and verbal communication. Rather, the epiphanies and spiritual experiences of select madmen and other isolated religious types are developed into orthodoxy by the mechanisms of the religion and thereby replicated in a way which corresponds symbolically to their initial inspiration without fully capturing what was originally meant or seen.

This makes religion more durable than philosophy, because the roots of the practices are buried in epiphany and therefore cannot be easily subjected to deconstruction.

People who grew up in modernism and bourgeois capitalism are hostile to this, and will be hostile to this take on religion, because they place prime importance on things "making sense", because they believe that values should be transmissable, because their highest ideal is equality, even at the cost of mediocrity. The kind of people that turn Christianity into a vehicle for dogmatic argument and try to use it to butt heads with other philosophies on this board will tell you that I'm talking nonsense, because they have a vested interest in interpreting their religion in as materialistic and grounded a way as they interpret Kant or even John Stuart Mill.

>>14567599
Deification is present in every single ancient church father.
17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

>>14567333
All human conceptions of 'the conclusion' pall after given some thought. Who really knows what the human heart desires ultimately? Certainly not any human being.
Religion begins with faith and must conclude with it as well. The final presumption must be that God knows what it is (we) finally want. And absolute annihilation though doubtful is a distinct possibility.

>>14567638
reflecting God's glory and being transformed into his image is different than becoming one with God and losing a sense of there being distinct persons

>>14567695
Not who you're responding to, but yeah, they're different things. It just seems like the idea of maintaining separation is stupid and unrealistic, compared to merging into a single being with God at the head.

>>14567614
Great post. So do you think that mystics tap into the truth of reality more than ordinary priests and such? If so how do you verify which are actual mystics and which are shams without wasting years waiting for a transcendental experience to happen? Or are you a perrenialist who thinks they’re all tapping into the same wisdom?

Any books on this subject would be appreciated.

>>14567614
>Rather, the epiphanies and spiritual experiences of select madmen and other isolated religious types are developed into orthodoxy by the mechanisms of the religion and thereby replicated in a way which corresponds symbolically to their initial inspiration without fully capturing what was originally meant or seen.
Do you have a theory on how these epiphanies come to be?
I liked your post a lot, you're very articulate.

>>14567774
I don't know that there are many books I could give you that would address these ideas in a non-biased way. Yeat's book A Vision was the source of most of my spiritual convictions, but it was more evocative than foundational for me, so I'm not sure what would do the trick for other people.

I think that all ideas are rooted in "truth", insofar as they are all ultimately derivative of ideas contained in the universe, and can be tracked back to a source therein. "Truth" meaning "A relation between objects which can or does in fact pertain". But mystics tap into more of the truth, or rather, tap into a version of the truth that, being rooted in the experiential, is more durable but less functional than the truth a philosopher finds through thought.

The only way to really tell a true mystic from a false is to develop your own intuitive model of how the universe works, and then go by feeling. Ideally, develop an intuitive model which categorizes human drives in such a way that broad categories can subsume all of them, which will allow you to account for and categorize perspectives you disagree with which derive from drives which are not in the forefront of your own experience. That's kind of a mystical secret, to my mind-- that drives, as in, needs, desires, sensations, impulses-- are the vehicle through which individuals reckon with the universe, and everything they do or say can be mapped back to them with decreasing accuracy the further you go. That's basically just the will to power, of course, though I prefer to weight it differently.

Actually, now that I've typed all this up, A Vision says it better than I could. But it's poorly written and very dense, so it's more something to internalize subconsciously than something to understand in a manner that could be written out.

You partake in absolute Being

>>14567795
I think they're the product of avoidance, actually. Insofar as "life" consists of a series of solvable problems concerning the relation of one's means to one's ends, spiritual experiences result from a refusal to engage with these problems "on the level", and an insistence on attempting to overcome them through gaining a metaphysical upper hand-- seeking more truth, in order to deconstruct your problems more thoroughly rather than simply facing them with what you have available to you; lingering in the "knowledge gathering" phase, and not transitioning into the "plan implementing" phase, due to an unwillingness to operate on "partial" information.

Those who undergo mystical or spiritual experiences place themselves under the enormous strain incurred by ignoring their problems, and attempt to aggregate as much knowledge into themselves as possible, employing not only their logic but their higher and lower faculties as well. This often causes them to "break", in the sense of having mystical visions and delusional episodes. But the monomaniacal focus on the aggregation of knowledge can yield understanding which is so dense it cannot be easily translated intoa communicable form, and must be instead transmitted symbolically.

That's why mystics are so often hermits, nonconformists, the dispossessed. They are excluded (or exclude themselves) from dominant modes of problem-solving, and must search for a better and deeper answer. If they're doing this at the right time in history, they find something no one in their society has before, and a new religion starts. If they're doing it too early or too late, they don't find anything of substantially new value, and are either ignored or inducted into an earlier tradition (like Boehme and all the other Christian mystics and heretics)

>>14567899
I see, that's a very unique view on it.
Thanks a lot for your reply, and for taking the time to explain the phenomenon.

>>14567860
Is this explanation of mysticism or mysticism itself existentialist? I cant help but get Kirekgaard vibes from your post

>>14568157
I myself am something of an existentialist, in a broad, "push the boulder" sort of way. But I think you could format what I've said differently to communicate the same state of affairs but apply a different moral imperative to it. The trap of samsara in Buddhism is essentially the same thing as my take on the drives, but with a moral imperative which is against the pursuit of them rather than for it as in my view.

>>14567871
Kind of this
Christian eschatology is a 3 dimensional blend between Being and Becoming, which forms the basis of the Western mind in general, even today we see ourselves as always working towards an ultimate goal, and what that goal is is just as important as how we're going to achieve it.

The correct answer is Christianity is wrong

>>14568383
Nonsense
The correct answer is that whatever it is your rejecting probably isn't Christianity; but then what many hold up as Christianity isn't Christianity either, so?
So the fuck what.

>>14567690
I like this.

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens

There's a part in LotR where the gang is in an elf town in the forest that's apart from time itself. They say it feels like being right at home and on vacation in somewhere exciting at the same time, and they spent most days just admiring the trees. After what only felt like a few days they left, turned out that a month or two had gone by.

Maybe heaven is like that but with eternity passing by.

I personally would be fine with at last understanding the things I previously thought to be incomprehensible.

>>14567346
Can't happen until the temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt

>>14568774
well said david

>>14567614
>>14567614
Will to Power, making fun of equality and Christian retardation, a coherent definition of truth, while thinking all ideas are grounded in truth, and a psychological deconstruction of mystics? Get a trip, my friend.

>>14567614
This actually coheres pretty well with traditional catholocism. We believe all the enumerations of dogma and doctrine that have developed over the many centuries are inherently contained within the deposit of faith, that all that will ever come to pass has already been mystically expressed and that what appears to develop is really just the elaboration from intuitive mystical understanding to concrete reason for the benefit of thise who no longer have direct access to Christ outside the sacraments and revelation. While we believe that the universe is ordered and reasonable, and therefore knowledge of God and all his qualities could be arrived at and supported through reason, it is only secular, deistic enlightenment heresies that have led the modern western mind to actually expect a step-wise, deductive argument from being itself to not eating meat on Fridays; while it could be done in theory, such an argument would have to be longer than the summa to even approach a strong conclusion. Knowing that such an iterative approach using human experience as the center is rather unrealistic even for the most intelligent and reasonable man, we turn to symbolism, intuituon, prayer, and mystic experience to demonstrate this truth empirically, but not rationally, which is not to say it is irrational, but rather that it is beyond the human rational capacity. Hence why the Tridentine Mass has become such a point of contention, even though most theologians recognize the validity of both the ordinary form and the extraordinary form of the novus ordo; while the substance of the mass is still essentially the same, the latin mass more clearly presents the mystery of the mass and coneys almost immediately the meaning of worship, while the common mass is almost formless in comparison.

>>14567614
Very based
personally had satori experiences and came to realize mind,reason can never understand or taste divinity .
To understand god is to realize your innermost nature that lies beneath all false layers of separation.
All paths lead to same destination whether you call it brahman,nothingness, tao it doesnt matter its union without duality just being its utmost purity

>>14569409
>Will to Power, making fun of equality and Christian retardation, a coherent definition of truth, while thinking all ideas are grounded in truth, and a psychological deconstruction of mystics? Get a trip, my friend

>>14569893
That's really neat. I'll take a deeper look at Catholic literature, if this is the basis of it.

based thread

>>14567599
>somekind of eastern or gnostic addition
Based.

>>14569893
>We believe all the enumerations of dogma and doctrine that have developed over the many centuries are inherently contained within the deposit of faith, that all that will ever come to pass has already been mystically expressed and that what appears to develop is really just the elaboration from intuitive mystical understanding to concrete reason for the benefit of thise who no longer have direct access to Christ outside the sacraments and revelation.
Certainly that is the traditional view of Catholics and Orthodox, but my experience in Catholic theology departments is that they completely subscribe to the idea of innovation in theology. Very disappointing but I can see how difficult it would be to maintain the traditional view post-V2. I feel sorry for trads desu.

>>14567333
The Pisos didn't think that far ahead.

I've had that question before myself, and it has no answer. Even the Greeks and Scandinavians put in more effort.

>>14568383
You are retroactively btfo'ed by >>14567614

>>14568774
And so does hell.

>>14567758
Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.
13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.
19 If they were all one part, where would the body be?
20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”
22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,
23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty,
24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it,
25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

>>14567695
>>14572677

>>14567333
I don't know anon. My guess is we can't imagine what it'll be like. There are mention of mansions in the bible, so it seems we will have beautiful homes and as Jesus shall be the light and there will be no need for a sun, I take it to mean we will forever be in his glory, something I'm sure that is wonderful but I feel I don't have a true idea of it till I experience it. As a result I imagine we all shall praise his name
Won't really know for sure till we get there.