Slight Qualification Needed........

....about something I posted on the 'Inspiring Quotes' thread.

I think Sri Aurobindo is correct here in the case of the God of the Old Testament, Jehova/Yaweh, and his alter ego Allah.
However, I don't think this is at all applicable to Jesus Christ.
He was an avatar of love, who came to teach love, and to show God's love for us.
I can't imagine Jesus as 'knowing not mirth'.


Anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

Hare Krishna!

From BBB...
I think Sri Aurobindo is correct here in the case of the God of the Old Testament, Jehova/Yaweh, and his alter ego Allah.
However, I don't think this is at all applicable to Jesus Christ.
He was an avatar of love, who came to teach love, and to show God's love for us.
I can't imagine Jesus as 'knowing not mirth'.


Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I don't know much, know nothing really. However, always believed that Lord Jesus was not a Jew, nor a Christian, Muslim, Hindu....etc. He did not belong to any race, boundary or religion. He was son of God or God himself. A perfect picture of embodiment of love, mercy and compassion.

Ideas of Semitic people (The Jew or The Arabs ?) about God ? Well, we know none of the stature of Lord Jesus. So, why bother much about how they describe or colour the picture of God ?

Love,

Kumar.

 

I agree with you BBB. I can't imagine Jesus being anything but love, anything but full of sweetness. How could he be "knowing not mirth" when he joined in joyous celebrations such as the wedding at Cana... and he was, as Kumarji said the "embodiment of love, mercy, and compassion"...what of he and woman at the well? When all others would've judged her by her nationality, he only showed her kindness.

These are just my thoughts.

 

Duality is the bain of this world if you don't understand it's function.

Sounds like good cop, bad cop to me.


x

 

There is some suggestion that Jesus was actually a Caannite and not Jewish in the proper sense.

Any discussion of bloodlines will immediantly deviate from the spiritual path.

Blood is a secular thing. It has no value on the spiritual plane.


x

 

Hare Krishna!

From Xexon...

"Blood is a secular thing. It has no value on the spiritual plane."


Dear Xexon,

Very well said, thank you.
Similarly, why cannot we think and accept that God, the divine consciousness, being only one and the same God, is also secular and religion has no value on the spiritual plane.

Love,

Kumar.

 

Jesus racial origin is not the point. It's not a question of blood but of vision and culture.

Sri Aurobindo isn't attacking the Jews or Arabs in a racist sense - He is saying that the concept of God they had is inadequate.

But I am amused by your statement that 'blood is a secular thing' - in a sense no doubt you can see it that way, but from another standpoint, nothing is secular - all is the divine.

 

I use the term secular because most people have no concept about God other than what has been taught to them. They are totally locked into their human identity and the beliefs that come with that.

As they see the world through their human eyes only, they have a terrible time with "oneness". It flies in the face of ego and western religious belief.

If you expect to reach them, you must use their level as the first step.


x

 

Well I agree - and what Sri Aurobindo is doing in the piece I quoted is saying to people that there are higher and lower conceptions of God. I don't think that's too much for people to understand, even from their position within the ignorance.

So - taking what you say - if they only know what they've been taught, then perhaps Sri A's words here might encourage someone into looking further into other paths and beliefs, through which perhaps some may come to an actual knowledge of God, or at least realize that what they've been taught is inadequate.

No doubt the western notion of God can appear rather sombre to say the least. 'Fear of God' is often one of the paramount features of ordinary religion in the west. There is little or no conception of how God can be a child full of mishcief and happy laugher and fond of play.

 

I don't think Sri A was referring to the revelations of the Divine in the scriptures of the Semitic religion at all (he only speaks of "semitic peoples"). There are enough great masters and mystics from every one of these traditions to indicate that they reveal the same, loving, joyous ideal of God as any eastern text. I think his comment is more directed at the common man's view of the religions and the way they are typically taught in churches, mosques and temples.

Anyway, based on what I see of the context, I am inclined to think he was simply drawing a contrast to emphasize how much the Hindu devotional tradition stresses on the joyous aspect of spiritual life over the discipline and austerity. Both are, of course equally valid.

 

I think Sri Aurobindo was most definitely referring to the concept of God in certain scriptures, namely the Old Testament and the Koran. We have no other source for knowing what the 'semitic' conception might be.
He wrote more about this false concept of God in other places, and I will try to find some other quotes.

From my own point of view, it seems absolutely impossible to reconcile the God of the OT with a loving deity, or even one who is fair minded, or posseses even basic human compassion.
Things like the mass genital mutilation of fallen philistines etc has nothing to do with the divine IMHO. Nor does it have much to do with austerity or self discipline. Yet this is among the 'commandments' given by him to his followers.
Remember, it was the servants of this so called god who were the ones who wanted Christ crucified. The Romans were simply instruments of the will of the Jewish high priests. Pilate had no particular wish to see Him executed.
I think the old Gnostics were probably correct- the OT god is a false god, even a devil in disguise, and Christ came to show the true nature of the Godhead, at least insofar as the west is concerned at that time and in that culture.

 

Perhaps this might help shed light on Sri Aurobindo's line on this:

'In the most primitive parts of his being he (primitive man) conceives of it (God, the divine) as a thing of natural egoistic impulses like himself, beneficent when pleased, maleficent when offended; worship is then a means of propitiation by gifts and a supplication by prayer. He gets God on his side by praying to him and flattering him. With a more advanced mentality, he conceives of the action of life as reposing on a certain principle of divine justice, which he reads always according to his own ideas and character, as a sort of enlarged copy of his human justice; he conceives the idea of moral good and evil and looks upon suffering and calamity and all things unpleasant as a punishment for his sins and upon happiness and good fortune and all things pleasant as a reward of his virtue. God appears to him as a king, judge, legislator, executor of justice. But still regarding him as a sort of magnified Man, he imagines that as his own justice can be deflected by prayers and propitiation, so the divine justice can also be deflected by the same means. Justice is to him reward and punishment, and the justice of punishment can be modified by mercy to the suppliant, while rewards can be supplemented by special favours and kindness such as Power when pleased can always bestow on its adherents and worshippers. Moreover God like ourselves is capable of wrath and revenge, and wrath and revenge can be turned by gifts and supplication and atonement; he is capable too of partiality, and his partiality can be attracted by gifts, by prayer and by praise. Therefore instead of relying solely on the observation of the moral law, worship as prayer and propitiation is still continued. Along with these motives there arises another development of personal feeling, first of the awe which one naturally feels for something vast, powerful and incalculable beyond our nature by a certain inscrutability in the springs and extent of its action, and of the veneration and adoration which one feels for that which is higher in its nature or its perfection than ourselves. For, even while preserving largely the idea of a God endowed with the qualities of human nature, there still grows up along with it, mixed up with it or superadded, the conception of an omniscience, an omnipotence and a mysterious perfection quite other than our nature. A confused mixture of all these motives, variously developed, often modified, subtilised or glossed over, is what constitutes nine-tenths of popular religion; the other tenth is a suffusion of the rest by the percolation into it of nobler, more beautiful and profounder ideas of the Divine which minds of a greater spirituality have been able to bring into the more primitive religious concepts of mankind.'

Synthesis of Yoga,Pt.3 Ch.2 - 'The Motives of Devotion'.

 

I agree with you. I think Christ definitely had a sense of humour, and as shown by the story of the woman taken in adultery, he was slow to judge or to condemn. Too often, he is portrayed exclusively as the 'man of sorrows', and no doubt He knew His share of them, but that's only part of the story.
But also, and this is relevant, by not condeming her, he went against the law of the OT god.
As He said 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life'.