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Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
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Re: Mixing Christianity Buddhism and Hinduism [Re: saintdextro]
#21893597 - 07/03/15 05:12 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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saintdextro said: Silversoul, can you or anyone elaborate what's Logos? Should I already know by now?
The Logos is a concept that goes back to early Greek philosophy. It is basically a kind of hidden order to the universe. Probably the closest parallel would be the Tao. It is basically that by which the universe is able to make sense to us. It is the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. In the Gospel of John, it is translated as "Word," as in "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The next line is particularly important for Christians: "And the Word became Flesh." The Logos or "Word" basically is referring to the expression of God in the order of the cosmos.
As an aside, I second Markos' recommendation of Fr. Bede Griffiths. He was vitally important in founding the Christian Ashram Movement in India, which essentially adapts the Christian faith to certain practices and aesthetics that are more familiar to Hindus.
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Deviate
newbie
Registered: 04/20/03
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Last seen: 8 years, 4 months
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Very interesting, thanks Markos. I viewed an interview with Tim Leary on youtube recently and he claimed that back in the 60s, he was so naive that he never imagined that the psychedelic movement would become what it did.
He said that he thought people would only use psychedelics in proper set and setting primarily for religious reasons. He never imagined that the hippies would come, or the grateful dead or that acid would basically become the premiere party drug of the era.
I was surprised to hear this to say the least, given how much fun the psychedelic experience can be, it seems quite obvious to me that more people would use it for recreation than for spiritual reasons. I feel like Leary didn't quite understand that most people in the world don't care too mcuh about the spiritual way and for them, getting them high just isn't enough to change this, so they simply look at it as a fun recreational experience. What do you think Leary primarily did wrong? Too vocal about his discoveries and too anti authority?
In my opinion the thing that happened in the 60s was people became too enamored with psychedelics, thinking they were some sort of panacea that would save the world. Then, when this didnt happen and it turned out psychedelics were actually not as wonderful as originally thought, there was a backlash against them. Now people are starting to realize that the backlash went too far in other direction. Just because they dont fix everything doesnt mean they are useless either.
Now what you have said about the One-Nous-World Soul reminds of what I have been learning about in the Philokalia. I have also noticed the Philokalia praises and shows great respect for the great gnostic fathers. Why is this? I thought gnoticism was considered a heresy by the Orthodox church?
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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Re: Mixing Christianity Buddhism and Hinduism [Re: Deviate]
#21894010 - 07/03/15 06:59 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Deviate said: What do you think Leary primarily did wrong?
Imho, there was nothing wrong with Leary per se, but rather some of his actions, possibly. To boil it down, he was too loud and needed too much attention, when the best course of action would have been to be more judicious about such sensitive matters. Many people have made the case that the criminalization of many now illicit substances stems from Leary's overexposure of them, which some have viewed as reckless at best. I don't want to comment on that because I don't really know whether it's true, and this kind of stuff opens up a universe whose place is not in this thread. But that's my .
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Photismos
Stranger

Registered: 06/30/15
Posts: 13
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MarkostheGnostic said: Personally, I see the Christian trinity as explicated by Augustine in the West or Pseudo-Dionysus in the East as an adaptation of Plotinian Neoplatonism where the One-Nous-World Soul becomes changed to Father-Son-Holy Spirit. The Nous or the Logos is God as Being, containing the Platonic Forms ("Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made) - John 1:3. The Nous or Logos is emanated (or "begotten") eternally as you say in both systems from the One ("Father") which is the Unmanifested Godhead of which nothing can be imputed, not even Being. Plotinus explicates Plato's thoughts on this (in Parmenides, one of Plato's works that I recently read with moderate difficulty).
I don't think it's accurate to say that the doctrinal development of the Christian trinity is purely an adaptation Plotinian Neoplatonism. The explication of the Christian trinity as a dogma was also committed to developing an Ante-Nicene tradition of the trinity (such as Tertullian's Against Hermogenes, Theophilus' exegesis of Genesis and even earlier baptismal formulas). Triune theology in the non-Christian world might also go back much further than the Platonic Academy itself. While Middle Platonic Hermetica reconnoitred something of a silhouetted trinity, Flinders Petrie dated some of the Hermetic corpus to Demotic texts from much earlier (two or three centuries before Plato).
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The Perennialist school is countered by the Constructivist school which insists that all mystical experience is mediated and tinted by some intellectual tradition.
The Constructivist school is solely epistemological, is it not? IMO the Perennialist school is chiefly countered by the capacious category of Western esotericism (Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, etc.) which tend to differentiate between mysticism and initiation, primordial tradition and visionary denouement.
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But, I've had a Jewish-flavored experience on a Rosh Hashana acid trip where I ended up attempting to repair a burned out Eternal Light over the ark in the Jewish part of an interfaith chapel.

Interestingly enough, my most profound experiences on immodest doses of psychedelics always occur when I'm trying to allocate an immense amount of concentration and effort to perform a rudimentary task. Profundity and hilarity ensues.
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder



Registered: 12/09/99
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Loc: South Florida
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Re: Mixing Christianity Buddhism and Hinduism [Re: Photismos]
#21894164 - 07/03/15 07:33 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Outside of his Egyptology as taught to me by my former prof Bob Brier, I hadn't read that about Petri. I was being simplistic and I was not taking any other trinitarian concepts from traditions outside the Christian ones into consideration. It with the realm of possibility that Plato had encountered proselytizing Buddhists, and his predecessor in the Greek mystery traditions, Pythagoras, was quite possibly aware of Hindu categories which would've included mythic trinitarian thought at the very least. Psychological formulations like Sat Chit Ananda were perhaps later developments, I'd have to check. I do not think chronologically as a trained historian even a historian of religious thought. Nevertheless, your comments are much appreciated. 
The Constructivist school strikes me as failing to grok transcendental experiences at it most formless range. Heinrich Zimmer for example, was brave enough to take mescaline, but his conclusion was both Catholic and condescending, expressing the opinion that 'mere' nature mysticism or some 'impersonalist' forms of mysticism are conceivable with such substances, but that theistic mystical experiences were quite beyond the purview of psychedelic leverage, something akin to storming Heaven with divine consequences. I have written a book which is an autobiographical account of my most interesting and profound experiences, but I felt the need to classify them first and I did separate visionary experiences (such as Paul being "caught up to the third heaven") and formless mystical experiences (not articulated in the NT beyond those "I AM" affirmation of John's Jesus - Pure Consciousness Events of Identity).
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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fivepointer
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Registered: 08/03/02
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Re: Mixing Christianity Buddhism and Hinduism [Re: saintdextro]
#21910029 - 07/07/15 02:45 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
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Christianity + Buddhism + Hinduism = lost
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