phil
Member
Just me all at sea
Posts: 209
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Post by phil on Aug 29, 2005 11:51:56 GMT
Maat, IMHO (as humble as I can muster) I believe that you are reading the Bible too literally. What if you were consider the water into wine and walking on water more metaphorically? ?
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Post by maat on Aug 29, 2005 23:20:26 GMT
Hi Phil Between you and me (and the rest of the world) I don't read the Bible. What references to it that I make are residual from my convent school days. HOWEVER - let me ask you - What if we don't take it metaphorically?? IF - the Kybalion is stating a fundamental truth about the Universe AND the bible stories are true AND at least some of the weird and wonderful stories we hear about are true ... faith healing, laying of hands, Lourdes miracles ... etc Does that not give us something to think about? Why does Freemasonry consider it a fundamental to train our minds (all that Ritual)? We must learn to concentrate - Why? Have you ever read the classic by Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich? Have you not noticed that successful people the world over speak about how their mind set was the key to their success? Do you know that before a Kahuna can heal a person he must first recognise and get the sick to try and heal their minds of its complexes etc....psychiatrists do the same thing. There's a thought - we know our minds can make us ill - why would we be less happy or uncomfortable to acknowledge that our minds can make us well? So we know our minds can affect ourselves - we know our minds can affect other people (this forum is a fine example of that) - we know our minds can affect seeds www.psi-researchcentre.co.uk/article_6.htmwhat we don't know yet is how to Master our mind to the extent it can change water into wine (I, personally, plan to concentrate on this experiment ) A PS to my comment on Bible reading - I am amazed at how many times a quote from it will come up in my significant dreams and how often when a BIG REALISATION occurs it is encapsulated in a Bible saying. As in Oliver Twist - I should review the situation... Cheers Maat
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Post by hollandr on Aug 30, 2005 0:20:22 GMT
Maat
As I grow older I find that many things that I took to be metaphorical now look to be literal descriptions by eye witnesses. This then provides many passages in scriptures with additional meanings to be considered.
Of course it is traditional to consider ancient writings as metaphorical or corrupted or naive whenever the writings conflict with our cartesian view of the world. After all, it is obvious beyond need of proof that the human race is now more intelligent than 3000 years ago.
Cheers
Russell
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Post by maat on Aug 30, 2005 5:40:51 GMT
Can't remember if I have posted this snippet before or not - nonetheless it might be relevant to this subject.
The following is a direct quote from the book "Man, Son of Man" by Sri Madhava Ashish.
"In our times the vague old religious formulations of the divine order have been replaced by the precise demonstrations of the sciences. Men set out to prove their half-formed perceptions of the inherent order underlying the chaos of appearances, and that order has become a scientifically established fact. But in establishing the fact of order in material forms men forgot the original problem they had set out to solve. THEY FORGOT THE IMMATERIAL SOURCE OF ALL ORDER WHICH MANIFESTS ITSELF IN MATERIAL PATTERNS. We have become like the ten men in the Indian story who could only count themselves as a party of nine because, in counting, each left himself out of the count; for the SELF of the universe, the SELF of man, and the SELF in the heart of the atom can be subjectively known but can never become a measurable object of experience. If we leave that Lord, the One Eye of our world, out of the count, the hearts of all things are empty, and the whole array of ordered existence, wonderful in the sheer beauty of its complex patterns as it is, becomes a sterile, purposeless and impersonal prison in which we vainly search for a meaning to our lives."
The All Seeing Eye of Freemasonry explained very well I think.
Maat
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