Imago Dei

So far as I can tell the idea that we were created in the image of God is found only in the Abrahamic religions, that is, it is only found in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. And too often within those religions it appears that the truth of the matter is that God was created in the image of humanity. I suppose that one could infer from the Greek pantheon that they also were created in the image of humanity. At least that is the case of the artwork and myths. However, that doesn’t mean that humanity was not created in God’s image. If there is a God, and I believe there is, then God is not corporeal or material as we understand it. God is of a substance that we cannot see or touch. For millennia, it has been called spirit, and the metaphor for God is the wind or breath. One cannot see the wind except for the way that it interacts with other things. We can see it move the trees; we can see it create waves in water, yet we cannot see it itself. However, we can feel it. We can feel gentle cooling breezes, it can exert force on us and it can be destructive. That may be where the metaphor breaks down unless we are referring to spirit. In that vane it can be beneficial, and it can be destructive.

I personally intuitively believe that the creator is conscious energy. For me the word spirit and the word consciousness are interchangeable. Likewise, the word God is synonymous with creative consciousness.

This means that to say that humanity is created in the image of God one is saying that the human is first and foremost, divine, eternal, conscious creative energy. However, when one looks a little deeper, one finds that the aboriginal people across the globe and millennia thought that we were essentially and foundationally spirit. What they meant, and what the idea in the Abrahamic Religions must mean, is that humanity is composed of eternal spirits at the core. Hinduism and Buddhism believe that the human is essentially spirit and on a cycle of samsara. This is the Hindu word for reincarnation. Taoism sees the Tao as an ineffable and unknowable spirit. The American indigenous people speak of and teach their people that there is a great spirit of which they participate in.

Likewise, the Egyptians believed in a conscious creative spirt and it was allegedly passed on to the Greeks by Pythagoras. The Greeks then developed the idea of the Logos as being the creative source and the divine seed. Plato believed and taught that there was a spiritual and ideal object for all of material reality. They likewise believed in a reincarnation of sorts.

Today, panpsychist ideals teach that consciousness is foundational to reality. There are physicists and cognitive scientists theorizing the same idea. So, to say that this concept is ubiquitous is a definite understatement of fact.

Is it possible that we can be spiritual and not religious? I think so. It should be agreed upon that the term God describes the creator, and even in polytheism, there is always one supreme creative source. Is it possible to redefine God? I believe it is. If we realize that there is one foundational source of reality, and it is consciousness, then it follows that we are describing God. Whether one calls the creator God or consciousness it is still the same concept. It is describing the same exact thing. It is through our consciousness that we participate in the divine nature. We are indeed creators, and as a scripture states it is yet unknow what we may become. I personally believe that it is unlimited. Yes indeed, we are Imago Dei, born in the image of God.

The Conscious Cosmos: Why I believe in the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth

There are many scholars who doubt the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. However, I am quite certain that he was indeed a historical figure and that he was a mystic and master as well. Was his message misunderstood and coopted? Most definitely! I come to that conclusion based on all of the writings from the first three centuries CE. This includes some of the orthodox canon and the writings of the Nag Hammadi library. Was he sent from God? Well, that depends on your definition and understanding of God. If you see God anthropomorphically as a sky parent who had a literal son, then you have missed the mark. However, if you see God as the creative source of the universe, if you see God as creative consciousness, and you see the son of God as a metaphor for individual conscious agents that are an integral part of the divine, having a divine nature, then yes, indeed he was sent by God.

It is his message, that for me proves that he was a historical mystical figure, a miracle worker that was misunderstood because of the audience he came to, and the belief system they held about the creator and the nature of reality. If what I am writing scares you as heresy, my hope is that you get over it. If you think I am trying to evangelize the world to this idea, you are wrong. Could humanity benefit from what I believe Jesus real message was? Yes indeed! It actually adds mystical understanding to all of the messages and explanations that have gone on before it. This is why I believe that it should be a part of eclectic and syncretistic spirituality. Yes, I use the word spirituality and I use it without shame or hesitation. If consciousness is fundamental to reality, then it is ineffable, and spirituality is as good a descriptor as any.

Moving on to the reasons I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is a historical figure and a mystical master. It includes the Gospel of John, parts of Paul’s epistles, the Gospel of Truth, and other writings from the same time period. This theory does not include orthodox teaching, anything evangelical, or fundamentalist. Yet it does include parts of orthodox Christian scripture. It likewise includes Hermeticism, Platonic, and Neo-Platonic philosophy. One could add Taoism into the mix as well.  All of those traditions involve a “parent and an offspring” metaphor to the creation of reality. It is in that area that the message of Jesus advances the metaphor. Further, the advancement of that metaphor is dependent on a mystical message, most likely from an individual. That is how it has worked over the course of millennia and so there is no reason to doubt it in this instance.

The unique message in which Jesus advanced spiritual understanding was that the parent offspring metaphor includes all of humanity. This can be gleaned by looking at a universal coherent message that permeates all of western civilization across millennia, beginning with Egypt and Sumer, Hermeticism, Greek and Platonic Philosophy, the Stoics and culminating with two revelations that Jesus made that were not explicit before his ministry. He also taught that God was the parent, but additionally, a loving parent, and that all of humanity was God’s offspring and an active participant in the divine nature. All other claims prior to that had God at a distance, apart from the creation. There was no familial reference. Today, there are many who refer to the concept of being a child of God without realizing that it is known largely by the teaching of Jesus.

This revelation went on to be mystically revealed to Paul. Rom 8:38-39  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  (39)  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.” It was Jesus that introduced this concept in his teaching.

Many may ask, “didn’t Jesus also teach about hell?” That requires that one be able to clearly see the Jew-Gentile distinction that is in the pages of the New Testament. Jesus was a Jewish prophetic mystic and miracle worker. He did his work within the context and culture of first century Judaism. It was first century Jewish Pharisaic teaching that taught about hell (Gehinnom.) His references were a hyperbolic reaction to that teaching. Paul never mentions hell. Why? Because his mystical revelation was to bring the message to both Jew and Gentile and to present it as a spiritual reality. One can see the Jew-Gentile distinction everywhere in the New Testament and Paul taught that the wall of separation was torn down by the ministry of Jesus. So then, Jesus’ ministry was twofold. First, it was to call the Jewish nation to change their mind about their relationship with deity. Second, it was to inform both Jew and Gentile that God, the creative source was a loving parent.

In the Gospel of Truth, accredited to Valentinus by Irenaeus, the mission and message of Jesus was to overcome the forgetfulness that humanity has and remember its true nature which is divine. God the Father is a loving parent and upon incarnation humans no longer remember the fact. Jesus’ message was to restore that knowledge. Valentinus was a student of Pauline Christianity and founded a group of believers that were called Valentinians after him. They were considered heretics by the early church fathers, and their works were destroyed. It was the serendipitous find of Nag Hammadi in 1945 that gave us many of their writings. I am not saying that they had all and exclusive truth. I am saying that they had an important part of the Jesus message, and it would be beneficial today. Not that it is necessary for us to carry on as the offspring of the creator or to gain some kind of eternal nature. We are that already. But it would help us to realize that we are divine and that the divine is love and love is out natural state of being if we but remember who we really are.

Jesus realized that he was anointed with the divine Logos or the mind of God. This made him God’s son and he went on to teach that the same thing is true of each and everyone of us. I will close this with Paul’s words. This is from a letter that is credited to Paul by most all scholars.

Php 2:5-8  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,  (6)  who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,  (7)  but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,  (8)  he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

We all do this when we incarnate. We become obedient even to the point of death. It does not have to be a cross. In our emptying process, we forget our divinity and Jesus restored that. That message is so unique that I believe there really was such a person that delivered it.

  

 

God Beyond Religion: The Real Purpose and Meaning of the Resurrection

 “Nothing redeems us from this world but we are of the All, and we are saved. We have been saved from start to finish. Let us think about it in this way; let us accept it in this way”. ~Meyer, Marvin W.; Robinson, James M.. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (p. 54). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

It is past time that we take back and regain the terms and concepts that orthodoxy, fundamentalism, and evangelicalism stole from the mission and message of Jesus. It is time to recognize that oh so fearful word, heretic is just a word used by people to gain control over other people. There are so many terms that orthodoxy repurposed for control that overturning it will be a big job.

One such term that I will address today is resurrection. It is only fitting to do so on resurrection Sunday! Another that has to be included is “the fall.” So, before I deal with the resurrection, I will briefly deal with the fall. What really was the fall? It was a fall into forgetfulness. That was the central message of the Gospel of Truth. What was forgotten? The fact that we are pre-existing divine souls. It is similar to the emptying that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Philippians. Upon incarnating into material reality, we empty our knowledge, in other words forget that we are indeed an aspect of the divine Logos, or the divine mind. That is our spiritual nature. Thus, being redeemed from the fall simply means that we are able to regain the knowledge of who we really are. This was the message and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. He chose to do this before the foundation of material reality.

How then does the resurrection redeem us from the fall? If we take the message of Jesus that was spoken while he was living and couple that with the resurrection, we have a solid proof that we are indeed partakers of the divine nature, and that we can remember and exploit that knowledge. It is the catalyst for love within us. Jesus’s message was that we are the offspring of a loving parent. He went on to teach that we are incarnations of the divine mind, or divine Logos. Paul said, let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. What mind was that? It was the mind that believed that God was a loving parent, (in deity there is both the masculine and feminine aspect.) It was a mind that believed our purpose here on earth was to develop love for one another. It was a mind that knew he was eternal and eternally the offspring of God.

The proof of this message was substantiated in the resurrection from the dead. It was the proof that individual souls are indeed eternal. Let’s face it. Jesus’s sacrifice happened when he incarnated. At that point he was going to die at some point. To die at the hands of the Roman occupation, at such an early age, was a way to stamp an exclamation point on his sacrifice. God did not sacrifice his son. The sun sacrificed himself as a proof of our divinity. Think about it, God did not need a blood sacrifice to forgive humanity for being the way it was created. It is archaic to think that animal sacrifice was necessary to appease the wrath of a God who is defined as love; defined as agape love; a love that keeps no record of wrongs.

I do not believe all of Valentinian Gnosticism. But the above quote from the Nag Hammadi scriptures is from the “Treatise on Resurrection” and that’s why I share it. The truth is we are all saved! The truth is we are all eternal! The truth is that we are all divine!

God Beyond Religion: Mystics, Mysticism, and Revelation

One of the ways we know about the creative source of the universe is through mystical revelation. Those who receive mystical revelation are mystics. Let’s look into the world of mystics and mysticism. When I was in evangelical orthodoxy, teaching seminary and preaching, most if not all of my colleagues believed that there was a difference between revelation and illumination. Their point was that only those who wrote the works in the accepted canon of scripture were able to have their writings be classified as revelation. Any insight received by a person after the time of the writing of the canon was simply illumination of the previous revelation. To this I merely call BS! First of all, if one thinks about it for more that a few minutes not guided by dogma that they are afraid to veer off from, it makes no sense that God would give final revelation to men in the Roman Iron Age that would be the final word for the rest of the time the planet exists. That makes a lot of assumptions that are not plausible. It assumes that humanity will not advance, and that spirituality will not evolve. It assumes that a small country with an insignificant population would have an even smaller segment be the arbiter of all truth for all time.

The truth is that mysticism and mystical revelation have been ongoing since the dawn of humanity. Indigenous shamanic tribes of people from all over the globe had very advanced spiritual understanding. Especially in regard to the nature of reality, and the spiritual purpose for existence. So, let’s return to the electromagnetic fields that are at the foundation of our material and corporeal world. Using the example of microwaves, and radio waves we can extrapolate that the brain waves are connected with the waves from the unified field of consciousness; in what Rupert Sheldrake has identified as the fields of morphic resonance and is the plausible source of all mystic revelation. Further, every human is capable of tapping this source of revelation. It is where all intuition comes from. Likewise, it is the source of all of the mystics over the millennia as well as the source of the creativity. In ancient Greece, they called it the muses. It is also the source of all artistic inspiration. Most importantly it is nothing to fear, and it is NOT demonic or evil. It is a natural phenomenon in reality.

It is also the source of spiritual awakening. It appears that there is a rapid growth in spiritual awakening at this time, and it is quite probably linked to our entering the Age of Aquarius. There is a prediction that the planet is transitioning into a new stage of spiritual density. This transition will result in the vibrations of everything on the planet being raised to a higher level on the spiritual plane. The Kybalion mentions three planes of existence. The material plane, the mental plane, and the spiritual plane. The change that is taking place will eventually affect all three planes. It will begin with the spiritual plane and move into the mental plane and will ultimately change the material plane as well. It will end up making mental alchemy easier. This will aid those who are practicing the law of attraction.

One important aspect of this trend is that it will initiate eclectic and syncretistic spirituality. More and more people will be able to discern the mystical revelation found in all of the world religions and religion itself and ritual will diminish. Dogma will give way to open minded acceptance and wider tolerance of individuals that have differing views of spirituality. There is a move toward truly being spiritual and not religious. Dogmatic religions are toxic and abusive, and they will diminish until they completely vanish.