News:

If you have difficulty registering for an account on the forum please email antespam@gmail.com. In the question regarding the composer use just the surname, not including forenames Charles-Marie.

Main Menu
Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - Michael H

#1
Dear David
Thank you for your considered reply. It seems that you perhaps confuse the issue with intellectual speculation, and it rather looks as though you are trivialising it despite going along with it. I cannot agree with you that it is not profound - yes, reincarnation can be looked at in different ways, but it's no good intellectualising about it. I still maintain that reincarnation is absolutely vital for a true understanding of the Christian message. For the best understanding of it via the written word I recommend any of the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda, particularly his monumental work 'The Second Coming of Christ' - there speaks a being of true wisdom (no philosophical digests, just the direct experience of someone who has himself become Christlike). There is a website: Self Realization Fellowship.
With kind thoughts
Michael
#2
Thank you, David. Regarding my second paragraph I'm not clear what you mean by "less philosophically profound". Can you explain?
Also, I would like to challenge you to respond to my comments on reincarnation because I believe this is such an important issue if we are ever to make any sense of suffering or indeed of the deeper implications of Christianity. I know that what I'm saying flies in the face of evangelical Christian thought, and that I would certainly be labelled as a heretic. But it seems to me that we are increasingly at the mercy of trivialisation techniques perpetrated by evangelical enthusiasts, not just in Christianity but in other religions. and this kind of evangelism (and fundamentalism) is a bi-product of our materialistic society. You might even say that we are currently in a period of materialistic Christianity!  What hope is there for the Church?
#3
I have written before on the question of the existence of God, indicating that we can believe in God at the same time as saying that God does not exist. For, to me, God is beyond existence and has no need to exist, for existence implies some form of restriction - we are trying to define God, and you can't define something that you believe to be infinite. Thus you do away with all those limited ideas of what God may look like - God is not made in OUR image (in fact, God is not 'made' at all); it is we who are made in the image of God, and therefore our possibilities are infinite.
And on the question of evil, if only the Christian church would take on the fact of reincarnation as it did originally (until the 2nd Council of Constantinople in about AD553, when it was declared a heresy on political grounds) our understanding of the so-called evil in the world would be understood much more easily and would be put into its proper context. The idea of reincarnation is found in every major religion - Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity if only we look deep enough. To think of 'one life' (particularly as the evangelical Christians do - we all go straight to 'heaven' or 'hell' at death!) is such a limited way (dare I say banal?) of living as a mature person of any religion. Reincarnation puts the problem of evil into a sensible perspective. If we deny it, then we are saying that all those other religions have got it wrong - how presumptuous of us!
#4
I've said before, I don't believe God exists, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in God, for God is beyond existence, therefore cannot be defined, for any attempt to do so is like trying to restrict the infinite, which is a nonsense. Nowhere in this forum can I find anyone going along with the idea that the Universe is a creation of consciousness, i.e. consciousness (brought into creation by God) brings the Universe into creation the other round from conventional belief that the physical universe came first. I think the physical Universe came last and is just a crystallisation of the higher levels of creation. in that context the physical Universe is just a tiny drop in the ocean of total creation.  this idea shouts at us through the concept of the Big Bang theory but cosmologists and other conventional scientists do not seem prepared to look deeper  into this possibility, even though the idea of time and space seems to virtually force us to reconsider our conventional approach to understanding.
#5
Believers' Corner / Re: Halloween and organ recitals
October 31, 2011, 02:45:30 PM
I cannot go along with this suggestion of getting children to 'evangelise' on this day.It is just another extreme with no depth - a form of indoctrination or coercion, and just another example of how shallow people have become in the name of Christianity.
#6
(from The Hammerwood Hereticess)
Life is an experiment. We can learn about life or God from the results of our experimentation with what life presents to us at any given moment.
#7
CANTATE DEO - A message for atheistic organists or organic atheists . . .

Do you not see that I can be
and not exist, this paradox?
Existing would restrict and give me form;
Such limitations cannot encompass the infinite.
So let your faith embrace the non-believers
for both are right and both are wrong.
Know then now that I do not exist,
but call all life into expression;
my being is thus crystallised
in all that you see manifest.
And Christ, the one you think an only Son,
has crossed the bounds of many faiths
and goes by different names.
Through Him you come to understand
and realise a higher plane -
His consciousness is mine.
And you are part of this as well,
in all its fullness and its glory.
Now is the time to make it so.

                               (from The Hammerwood Heretic)




#8
Karen Armstrong in more than one of her books has a lot to say about the dangers of fundamentalsm, including atheistic fundamentalism. I strongly recommend her writings.
And anyone who reads Richard Dawkins (that arch-atheistic fundamentalist) should also read counter arguments by such people as  Keith Ward. Don't you think that Dawkins writes so cleverly but lacks any wisdom?

Does anyone share my belief that it's about time we considered reincarnation? Reincarnation forms part of the deeper understanding of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and even Christianity (although it is officially denied by the church, of  course - but that's  a subject for another discussion) and it makes so much sense of those difficult issues that the Christian Church tries in vain to grapple with. David, you said somewhere that we come naked  to this world and leave in the same way; in one sense I agree with you but I also believe that we bring much with us in terms of karma (or baggage) from past lives and we take any more baggage with us to be sorted out hopefully in the next incarnation - our job is to try to get rid of our existing baggage and not to acquire any more.  I'm sure this all sounds heretical, but perhaps the Church could benefit form heretics rather than condemning them.
#9
I wonder if people think I am an atheist? The reason is: I believe in God but I believe God does not exist. Anything that exists is by definition limited, and I cannot consider God as limited - rather, God is beyond existence. Perhaps I am a Christian atheist! It seems to me that people who normally think they are atheists are rejecting the very limited attempts to 'define' God. The Church needs that kind of understanding and that kind of input. Too often we make God in the image of man rather thsn thinking man is the image of God.
And where does music come into this? Just listen to (or play) some Bach (not emotional and turbulent 19th & 20th century organ works or pieces composed to demonstrate how clever the organist might be!) or listen to Allegri's Miserere or Tallis and you are carried beyond the inspiration that led to that music, you are lifted above questionable theology and trivial beliefs and you experience a deeper level of understanding. Increased consciousness - that's what we all need.