Christianity as extension of Buddhism: A thought experiment

reply to post by IandEye


Yes, I think you're right in what Buddha's response might be...concentrate on what's important and don't waste yourself on useless conjecture.

This idea is very Christian too, but sometimes the Western mind cannot help but trying to logically dissect ineffable mysteries (like hellfire).

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened

I tend to agree, from personal experiences of the past year and a half or so. In my process of trying to make sense of these things, I've read from, among other things, both Buddhist texts and the Bible (mostly the Gospels), and with each would very frequently find myself saying "yeah, that clicks."

Thats exactly what I did. I had the experience, (but being raised agnostic did not have any real framework or way to understand the experience) and after the awe wore off a little, began to try and figure out "what the heck was that?" Like you, I read from many traditions. Intuition just seemed to guide me to the "right" stuff. And like you parts of it absolutely clicked, or made perfect sense in a way they hadnt when I had bumped up against those concepts before. (Even though I was raised agnostic, most of my friends werent so I had exposure, if not a grounding in many things)

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
What's most remarkable is how much more the words in the Gospels mean to me now than they did during my Christian upbringing, and yet I'm pretty sure I don't consider myself a Christian these days.

Agreed. The teachings of Jesus make very good sense after the experience, for the most part. There are still areas where I am like "huh?" But after long consideration and much varied reading and my own experience, I came to realize that the culture, assumptions, and intellect of the "mystic" do influence their take on the experience. The mystic experience does not make you an infallible thing or consciousness. The regular (egoic) mind is still there, still in place, with all its flaws, only now you have another "awareness" with which to check it. Compare it against. Contrast it to.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
Hence my somewhat dodgy attempt at reconciling the two dogmas.

I didnt think it was dodgy. I tried to do the same thing. I dont know how long it has been for you, but this October makes ten years for me, and I have done much of what you are doing. Looking for a way of thinking about it that I can make sense of for my own "self" (my thinking mind) and to communicate it to others. You should read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" too, sometime, if you havent since the experience. It also makes a whole different kind of sense. Especially the part of going back into the dark cave after seeing the Sun. Plato also had the experience, even though he is rarely considered a mystic by the average scholar.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
I think what happens is you experience something that is just straight-up ineffable, cannot be described in words, and yet to you it is real and clear as day, understood on "another level" so to speak. So you feel like there must be a way to put it into words, if only you could find the right ones.

I totally agree. The part I have found most interesting and frustrating is that not only can you not speak properly about it, but you really cant THINK properly about it either. The mind simply wont do it. You can relax and re-"feel" it, get a sense of it again, but even thought doesnt do it justice. Which is why I suspect the mind tries so hard to find that language. It is as much so that our minds can understand it as it is so that we can share it. The thinking mind isnt what experiences it. It is our "consciousness itself" which does not think. It is just pure awareness before thought. And, I am sure you must understand, even these words are so inadequate.

I did try like hell to tell people when it first happened, however. It was so wonderful I wanted to tell everyone. Lol. I am sure you can imagine how that went. "Oh, cool, hey you want to go have lunch?" was a typical response, after a very confused look. It just doesnt make much sense to others, unless they "Know" it too.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
And yet as history shows time and time again, the content of the experience itself cannot be properly communicated in words.

Plato really elaborates on this in his "Seventh Letter." If you are interested in the "whys" it is impossible to communicate, I highly recommend it. Platos works are for people who have had the experience. He really was brilliant. By writing in dialogues the way he did, and avoiding any direct mention of mysticism he managed to ensure his work, (unlike that of Jesus or the Buddha) passed down through time unchanged in any significant way by those who would use religion for their own ends. Others hid their messages in poetry, or allegory to protect them. Its like having a secret decoder ring, if you know the thing they are talking about, you "get it" in a way others just dont. It makes a different kind of sense.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
If you are eloquent and convincing enough, the best you can do is have others erect a structure of dogma around your experience and turn it into a religion. Could religions be just the failures of those who have seen and attempted to communicate in mere words?

Most of the mystics do not try to pass it down in words. Jesus left no writing, Buddha left no writing, Plato left writing but he carefully crafted it so that his message was hidden from the average eye or mind. I think religion comes about because initially the people who follow or hang out with the mystic try to preserve the things the mystic says, so they start out as reporting. But often the followers are not also mystics, so they take things in ways a mystic wouldnt. And the message is corrupt from day one.

But, enough of the core is there to attract people. The sense something in the words that is true, even if they dont quite understand it, so it draws more followers over time.

Finally, the last stage of religion comes about when some clever person figures out that they can make money and gain power if they reinterpret these hard to understand writings for people. By making the people dependent upon them for "understanding" (they offer something understandable, but this is not the true core message, unfortunately, which as we have discussed is by nature not "understandable" intellectually) they amass wealth, and power, and influence, and the whole thing begins to spiral downward from them, degrading more and more as new con artists want a cut of the action and form their own "sects."


Thats my evaluation of it, anyway. It is both the problem of the in-communicability of the core teaching, and a problem of deliberate misappropriation by those interested in using it for personal gain.


Im really glad to have this discussion with you.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

Life is meant to exist at a personal level of each individual, it's what makes the universe and all things on earth beautiful, without it there is just a big nothing, this is the point, to evolve from nothing into something with separation, not the other way around. Aware of what ? Life is suppose to be expirianced on a personal level so we may understand it, unity does exactly the reverse, it's a superficial course of action where you get it by not understanding it. You can't really expiriance once you are all because everything is the same. We do exist at a personal level, if you want to give your energy to something else that is your decision and become that. The big fish eats the small fish, the small fish does not become the big fish but the big fish becomes bigger and the small fish does not exist anymore.

It's brainwashing at a global level, by doing so you become weaker and weaker. Your feeding the monsters energy until nothing becomes of you and that is unity with the absolute. Someone came long ago when we were on our own, they got kicked out of heaven and they decided to play god with us, pose as gods, while god sits back and does not mingle at all.

But there comes a time when he will.

Originally posted by EasternShadow


There are 4 millions people at 10,000 BC. There are 6 Billion people at 1999 AD. My information is based from :

www.worldhistorysite.com...

Assuming the stats is correct, my question is, if soul is the process of recycling, where do this over 5 Billions souls come from?

The answer depends on how deep you want to go.

We will start shallow. If the problem is just "people souls" then I would just remind you that "souls" arent limited to people in those traditions that have reincarnation. Your karmas can lead you to have a less favorable birth as an animal or insect, or (even though they dont mention it, but following the logic) a bacteria or virus.

So you COULD solve the problem of how there can be so many more people now than in the past by reasoning that this is the case because many souls that used to be animals have moved up and are now human.

We dont have an accurate count of "all living things then and all living things now" so that we could check and see if the number is constant, but now more are people. So this would be a solution, but you could not really "prove" it, and if you believe in evolution you would still have a problem.

That problem would be, if all life started with one or very few living things and then became the many, many things, where did all those souls come from in the first place?

You could argue for other planes of existence, and some New Age people do. They argue that Earth is one of many possible levels of experience and when life began here souls came from elsewhere to populate. (Like children moving through grades in school.)

But you still have to ask, where did all the souls come from in the first place if there was only "ONE" (the one, the singularity) to begin with? Why arent we still all One? And that is the hardest question of them all.

The Vedas say in that One "Something happened" and "mind" (or thought) arose and began asking questions, and with each thought, a division was created. (ie, when you say "what is that? " you separate it from yourself, and thus from one comes two, and you can keep doing that forever, drawing lines and making many from one)

Here is how they wrote it.

www.boloji.com...

But notice at the very end they ponder whether even that one could "know" how it happened that thought arose? This is because before thought arose, how could that one think? And if it did not think, how could even it know?

This hits on a core mystic problem and that is that "awareness" or "consciousness" are not the same as "thought." Mystic truth is unspeakable and unthinkable, but it can be experienced by your Consciousness. The part of you that can have the experience is separate somehow from the part of you that you mostly think you are.

And I am butchering this because it IS unspeakable. But, to try to take all this back to the question, the many souls are actually just created by "dividing lines" of thought drawn in the circle of the ONE. There is still only One. Now it has many make pretend divisions "drawn all over it." That process can go on to infinity, or be "erased" back to singularity. (reconcile the One by removing divisions either one by one or all at once or any intermediary step.)

Does that make any sense? Or help at all? Bear in mind that anything I or anyone says about the "ONE," (even Buddha) is not the "Whole" truth. And this is not because someone is lying to you on purpose, but because of the way language itself works. All anyone can do is tell you kinda sorta. Which is why the wisest of the wise say nothing direct about it, and talk around it if at all.

acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu...

1
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Basically my last explanation is in these few short sentences if you can see them.

classics.mit.edu...

But I do not think it a good thing for men that there should be a disquisition, as it is called, on this topic-except for some few, who are able with a little teaching to find it out for themselves. As for the rest, it would fill some of them quite illogically with a mistaken feeling of contempt, and others with lofty and vain-glorious expectations, as though they had learnt something high and mighty.

Originally posted by pepsi78
Life is meant to exist at a personal level of each individual, it's what makes the universe and all things on earth beautiful, without it there is just a big nothing, this is the point, to evolve from nothing into something with separation, not the other way around.

If all you know is the individual, it is perfectly understandable that you would find the idea of not being individual upsetting. If your whole life, all you had ever eaten was spinach, the idea of eating something else might be frightening too. But once you ate the other thing, you might discover it was a pretty darn good, and wonder why you had wasted your whole life eating only spinach.

Originally posted by pepsi78
You can't really expiriance once you are all because everything is the same.

That may be how the mind is forced to consider it. But it certainly isnt what the experience feels like. Yes, in thought, without the division everything is the "same" and in thought, this sounds like a really boring way to experience. But it isnt that at all. It just feels like being "complete" in a way you couldnt even know you wanted. Even the very short period of time I experienced it, that brief experience dwarfs every other experience I have ever had. Nothing compares. Nothing is as good. But at the same time, the beauty of experience here is not diminished by it, but rather enhanced. Knowing that makes this more pleasant not less, even though that is more pleasant than this.

Originally posted by pepsi78
The big fish eats the small fish, the small fish does not become the big fish but the big fish becomes bigger and the small fish does not exist anymore.

The egoic fear. "If I become that and release my individuality I will no longer exist."

The ego doesnt exist in the first place. We experience it, but "it" has no existence. It is just a shadow created by lack of awareness of our true nature. Something that is "lack of" doesnt have real existence. And perhaps because of this, it is full of fear, and worry, desire to hold on, insistence on importance of 'self" etc. You could lose your identity before you even lose your life if you get amnesia or brain injury. Its that tenuous. You can want to hold onto it all you like, but there is nothing to hold onto. You cant grasp a shadow. No matter how real it looks.

Originally posted by pepsi78
Your feeding the monsters energy until nothing becomes of you and that is unity with the absolute.

That is one of the hardest parts to describe, but when you become "All that is" your individuality is not "lost." You can still sense it along with all the other "individualities" within, you just dont identify with it as "you." "You" cease to exist. You dont become "God" in the sense that you think "I am God" God isnt an "I." God or the One is "Am." (Being itself) Your identity, if you can call it that is both as the singularity and as the multiplicity and neither. It is the strangest thing (in a really good way) to be both and neither simultaneously.

All of that said, you of course are entitled to hold onto your individuality to the best of your ability as long as you want or can, and no one could or should want to try to make you stop it. I didnt say what I did to change your mind. I just said it in response to the argument you made.

[edit on 12-8-2010 by Illusionsaregrander]

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
The teachings of Jesus make very good sense after the experience, for the most part. There are still areas where I am like "huh?"

It's the same way with me. One of the things I found striking in my recent readings of the Bible is realizing that when Jesus would give a talk and follow it with "he who hath ears to hear, let him hear", he was referring to those for whom his teachings "clicked". In the past I had seen that line as more of a "rallying cry" type of thing. But at one point I was reading what he was saying, had already had an "aha" moment, then read that line at the end and had a second one.

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
But after long consideration and much varied reading and my own experience, I came to realize that the culture, assumptions, and intellect of the "mystic" do influence their take on the experience. The mystic experience does not make you an infallible thing or consciousness. The regular (egoic) mind is still there, still in place, with all its flaws, only now you have another "awareness" with which to check it. Compare it against. Contrast it to.

Precisely! Ever since I started to "wake up", I've been continuing to have epiphanies, as well as painful internal struggles, and to me that just goes to show that just because you've seen into things a little more deeply doesn't mean you have all the answers. I like to say that awakening is a journey, not a destination.

That reminds me of when Jung wrote that the proper way to handle material from the collective unconscious (basically his term for the "inner source" of spiritual experiences among other things) is to have a "firmly opposed conscious standpoint"; that is, applying the same critical thinking you use on external observations to spiritual material as well. (That quote is somewhere in the book Two Essays on Analytical Psychology)

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
I dont know how long it has been for you, but this October makes ten years for me, and I have done much of what you are doing.

Wow, you've been at it a while! I can't really pinpoint an exact moment because with me it started out with purely intellectual epiphanies, while the spiritual stuff came later and started out in small doses before it became unmistakeable.

I had a lot of prejudices I needed to give up first, and every one is like pulling a tooth. Liberating when it's done, but not fun when it's happening.

I'd probably have to go with summer of 2003, at about a month under 20 years of age, when a couple events brought me face to face with the fact that I was not the good and just and honest and intellectual person I had long prided myself in being. In fact I was nothing like it and probably the opposite. But even just that bit is a long story; suffice it to say I was never the same again after that summer.

That struggle was continuous from then through now. But the spiritual stuff is a lot more recent. It didn't start occurring until mid-2008 when I became acquainted with the green herb. Even that started as more intellectual epiphanies, but at a much faster pace. The combination of that and the psychiatric cocktail I was on at the time was potent. Once I got into that I became very productive at blasting away prejudices left and right. I got into a habit of smoking, then writing down epiphanies I had so I'd remember them, then critically analyzing them the next day (since some of them were nonsense or at least "lost in translation", and more of them were obvious and really not epiphanies at all).

The real weirdness didn't start happening until the end of 2009. But that's where it gets ineffable. I'd attempt to describe it but this post is getting long as it is.

So mine is quite a bit more recent than yours. I'm a young'un at this.

But the progression of my experience is why I hold the belief that if you want to see the spiritual, you first have to bust apart a good chunk of the neurotic baggage if you have it. That stuff will stop you in your tracks.

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
The part I have found most interesting and frustrating is that not only can you not speak properly about it, but you really cant THINK properly about it either.

Hah, I've been having that same problem trying to explain to myself some weird synchronicities that happened in the past few weeks. I'm trying to figure out how in a more-or-less causal universe some highly unlikely coincidences happen, the ever more highly unlikely because they were incredibly meaningful at the time. There's more to this world than meets the eye.


I haven't read any Plato except maybe a fourth of the Republic a long time ago. The stuff you mentioned sounds very worth a read. I'll give it a look!

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
Im really glad to have this discussion with you.

Likewise



[edit on 12-8-2010 by NewlyAwakened]

If all you know is the individual, it is perfectly understandable that you would find the idea of not being individual upsetting. If your whole life, all you had ever eaten was spinach, the idea of eating something else might be frightening too. But once you ate the other thing, you might discover it was a pretty darn good, and wonder why you had wasted your whole life eating only spinach.

We can interact as individuals, independed but connected, as in one person
to another, but not as in 2 in 1. It has nothing to do with eating, and since when is it tasting good a good thing. Just because it tastes good does not mean it's good. It's what happens once you accept everything, everything go's away, notion of what is good and what is bad. Being open minded has a limit, once you cross it you find your self unable to make a difference.

There is a fine line between open minded and stupidity and it's in the middle, after that open minded becomes reckless or the other way around, to closed down inside to open up to anything.

The egoic fear. "If I become that and release my individuality I will no longer exist."

Ego and fear are there to protect you, you were designed with fear and ego, guess why, they did not just pop up in existence a while ago, they are part of you, what makes you be.

The ego doesnt exist in the first place. We experience it, but "it" has no existence. It is just a shadow created by lack of awareness of our true nature.

What is my true nature ? non existance ?, it's the point once you let go of all things you are nothing and you serve no purpose to your self.
- Emotions are gone and you can't feel. check
- Expiriance gain is gone check
- You clear your mind (get brainwashed) check.
- You become full of your self ceck.
- You think you are wise (but without understanding it) Check.

All emulation of not being at all your self, nothing at all. You live in the big minus in stead of living in the small plus.
Big minus = the absolute nothing.
Small plus = the light where things are normal.

It's small things that matter on an individual scale, small inventions of the universe.

Something that is "lack of" doesnt have real existence. And perhaps because of this, it is full of fear, and worry, desire to hold on, insistence on importance of 'self" etc. You could lose your identity before you even lose your life if you get amnesia or brain injury. Its that tenuous. You can want to hold onto it all you like, but there is nothing to hold onto. You cant grasp a shadow. No matter how real it looks.

And my opinion is that it's real and unreal becomes when you mix things in stead of taking one thing separate and making a difference, because if you
can't do that you have no idea what is good and what is bad. It is the plan
so you will in the end up not telling what is what, the big delusion.
What did you expect the universe to be made out of small marbles or something ? it has to be flexible. It was the idea for things to evolve and become individual things otherwise what is the point of existence. Do you want the universe to mix and become nothing, let's just mix everything and make a big nothing out of it.

In the beggining there was nothing and it became something ?
You did not find anything new under the sun, it's in the books.
Eastern religion like Zen or Budism teaches just that, to become nothing at all.

Values are hard to come by and this is not it, shaping is hard, gaining expiriance is hard, only if one is worthy. There has to be a balance between spiritual self and individual self. Lack of spiritual self is bad, and lack of individual self is bad. Going with the flow will just crash you being just an individual will make you go insane so the only way is to walk the line of balance, tho nothing is perfect so we can't walk it perfect, we have flaws. Excess of sleep will just make you dizzy and no sleep at all will wear you down. If you look into it it's the real thing, the real yang and yng not what they are selling today. It is really learning to ride a bike by balance, go to the left you fall, go to the right you fall, standing in the middle will make you ride the bike.

So it's the right VS the left, you name it politics, teams and so on.

Comunism VS Democracy
Socialism VS Capitalism

Note that there are 3 of them, 3 words in every thing you see.

It's implemented in every little notion around you, the idea is not to pick sides and just be the VS. Being perfect is hard, real hard and becoming nothing at all is not it, the absolute is not it.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
One of the things I found striking in my recent readings of the Bible is realizing that when Jesus would give a talk and follow it with "he who hath ears to hear, let him hear", he was referring to those for whom his teachings "clicked".

You are right. Jesus like Plato and others realized that speaking this way could not "convert" everyone. The teaching or message is for those who need it, or are able to hear it, or gain from it. It is lost on those not ready. And I have no idea what makes one ready, and no real theory why some and not others go through this. I speculate on it, I take in data regarding it when I run across it, but I have no conclusion that makes any real sense.

For those who are not having these experiences, (yet) I do know that it has nothing to do with superiority. Its not a reward for the good. And it has nothing to do with "favoritism." "God" does not love mystics more. "God" doesnt love in a more vs less fashion at all. But I went through a "why me" phase, as you might have or may as well, and I am still curious about that, in an intellectual way, even though I have dispensed with any delusions of grandeur.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
Precisely! Ever since I started to "wake up", I've been continuing to have epiphanies, as well as painful internal struggles, and to me that just goes to show that just because you've seen into things a little more deeply doesn't mean you have all the answers. I like to say that awakening is a journey, not a destination.

So very, very true. When you read accounts of ancient mystics, you get this sanitized version from their admirers. "The awakening happened and then *poof* all was wonderful." When you read about the lives of mystics who did NOT end up inadvertently founding a religion, however, you realize it doesnt really happen like that at all. The mind and identity of the mystic struggles (often violently) with the "realization" or experience. Its not all fun, and it takes a lot of work to integrate such an alien experience into ones persona.


I havent really read Jung, but you are not the first person who has mentioned him in such a way as to make me feel like I should. Feel free to suggest a title for me.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
I can't really pinpoint an exact moment because with me it started out with purely intellectual epiphanies, while the spiritual stuff came later and started out in small doses before it became unmistakeable.

Technically, it did for me too. But I firmly ignored it until I had a body slam (Oct 2000) experience. And even after that, for the next three years I tried sporadically to ignore it again and go back to my old plans. (To be a corporate raider, and obscenely wealthy.) My own goals were highly incompatible with mystic experience, and so it really had to hit me hard to get me to listen. Even then, I went reluctantly to my fate, lol, and now I mostly accept it, with only minor temper tantrums at not having a "normal" path, and they are pretty spaced out and manageable.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
I had a lot of prejudices I needed to give up first, and every one is like pulling a tooth. Liberating when it's done, but not fun when it's happening.

That will continue, but each layer of the onion becomes more tricky and subtle, but less painful. In other words, I have not found the center of the onion. I am not sure there is one while embodied. But the lessons get easier to bear, (less dramatic) though more complex and rich and difficult spiritually.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
when a couple events brought me face to face with the fact that I was not the good and just and honest and intellectual person I had long prided myself in being. In fact I was nothing like it and probably the opposite.

Lol. That part sucks, doesnt it? And by human standards I wasnt really a bad person. But being faced with yourself in that sort of objective way is pretty rough. Realizing the truth about your own motivations, and the consequences for your actions, and their impact on others..........yeah. Not so fun.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
The real weirdness didn't start happening until the end of 2009. But that's where it gets ineffable. I'd attempt to describe it but this post is getting long as it is.

So mine is quite a bit more recent than yours. I'm a young'un at this.

Well, in truth, it doesnt sound much different from my progress, except that mine had to start with a big bang, (because I refused to participate) and then I had a lot of years of grunt work to do, and yours seem to be that you are doing a lot of the grunt work up front, and gaining the awareness as you go. I think "how" it plays out has a lot to do with personality and baggage. I am mostly struck by how similar it is, no matter how superficially different it may seem.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
But the progression of my experience is why I hold the belief that if you want to see the spiritual, you first have to bust apart a good chunk of the neurotic baggage if you have it. That stuff will stop you in your tracks.

Although I am not sure about this. I do agree that if you want to benefit from it, you have to bust out the neurotic bull#. But, since I wasnt even trying, AND was actively resisting and ignoring, I kind of wonder if it will happen whether you do it or not. You may end up crazy from it if you dont do the work, either before or after, or miserable, but the awakening itself seems almost like its programmed in somehow. If its in your cards, you might as well roll with it, because you arent getting away from it.

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
There's more to this world than meets the eye.

Yes, there really is. And at the same time, what meets the eye is very important too. Its weird, but the more you allow that synchronicity messaging stuff, the more it happens. I take "breaks" sometimes. Sometimes I still deliberately ignore it because it is just so much work. Im still not the most willing participant. Which is one reason I am so sure its not a matter of "merit."

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
I haven't read any Plato except maybe a fourth of the Republic a long time ago. The stuff you mentioned sounds very worth a read.

The Seventh Letter,

classics.mit.edu...

Is where he talks most directly, but still indirectly, about the experience and gives his motives for doing things the way he does.

And the Allegory of the Cave from the Republic. Which is such a good analogy for what it is like to "wake up" and then have to try and figure out how to make your life work, considering that no one else has any idea what you are talking about, and how stupid you look and sound to those people.

I just take comfort in knowing that I am not the only one. I have actually met more than I would have guessed that are having the same thing going on. Both historically and presently. Its nice to be able to compare notes and just realize it isnt just you, and it isnt crazy. Its just one of those things.

Some people have been really upset to find "others" because they had their minds set that it meant something special about "them" as an individual. You may run into some like that too. The ego can get drunk on the experience and delude itself into believing it is "special" or "chosen" somehow. Personally, I like meeting others who are experiencing it too. It makes it less lonely, because then you can kind of talk about it, and with those who havent, nothing you say makes any sense to them and you just learn to shut up. or face the ridicule.





[edit on 12-8-2010 by Illusionsaregrander]

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
I havent really read Jung, but you are not the first person who has mentioned him in such a way as to make me feel like I should. Feel free to suggest a title for me.

I'll get to the rest of the post in time, but for now I can definitely suggest a couple titles. Jung's a bit eccentric but often the trouble is just figuring out what he means by this or that term.

I think you would love Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Toward the end of each essay, especially the second one, he discusses the awakening processes in his own patients from the standpoint of the doctor. He calls it "individuation", and it's not exactly the same as what we're talking about but it has a lot of common elements.

I think this book also might give you some answers as to the question you brought up of who is "called" to this process. He discusses this, and you're right; it's not just as simple as virtue. He describes it as basically an essential process for some people in order to be healthy, while others who are healthy without it and don't need it will generally not undergo the process.

There's also Modern Man in Search of a Soul, a collection of short essays on psychology with an emphasis on patients' spirituality. I recall really enjoying one of the essays, The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, when I read it.


[edit on 12-8-2010 by NewlyAwakened]

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened

I personally think it all springs from the (voice) strings of God.
That's still a far cry from the whole "reality is nothing but ignorance" that you hear a lot from Buddhists...

I am quite convinced that Siddhartha became acquainted with some very interesting truths. But what you hear from his followers these days strikes of nonsense, often not without some irony when they start talking about "ignorance".

[edit on 12-8-2010 by NewlyAwakened]

Very true, and this statement is also relevant to Christians. As with anything, the farther away from the source you get, more and more of the original is lost or deluded. This is well known by Buddhists and that is why it is said that when all of Siddhartha's original teachings are lost a new Buddha will arrive, being Maitreya.

Like I said before, I think reason, logic and experience weighs much more heavy than faith. Unfortunately, the need for faith is becoming more an more prevalent in Buddhism in today's environment. What I have found is that the majority of their beliefs in reincarnation tend to rely on faith, instead of reason, logic or experience.

[edit on 12-8-2010 by LifeIsEnergy]

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
I wonder how many physicists or biologists are also hardcore Buddhists. I would guess not many.

I don't know, but I don't think that HAS to be true.

Although I'm not "a scientist," I do love science, and am seeking enlightenment none the less.

My (limited but expanding) understanding of Buddhism suggests that scientific and physical explanations are perfectly acceptable and in fact jibe well with Buddhist thought in general.

Again in my understanding at least, the primary illusion to which we fall prey is simply that of the self. Basically, our ego makes us feel distinct from the universal whole, as if we are our own person separate from anything around us, when really we are intimately connected and our outcomes are often shared or at least related.

Perhaps my understanding differs.