Hi,
Well I might like William Blake, as we (my English lit classes) read his poetry (I liked Tyger, tyger burning bright...in the forests of the night....when the stars threw down their spears and watered heavens with their tears....) but that doesn't mean I share his belief in angels. I like Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol but that doesn't mean I'm a believing Christian as Dickens was, or I believe in the Ghost of Christmas
Paul Coelho's The Alchemist is a marvelous fairytale about how God sends messages in dreams to encourage you to follow your dreams and God then helps you realize them. I've never heard of "Pico della Mirandola", I do visit
www.gnosis.org from time to time, and they are promoting The Secret Book of John, which Elaine Pagels spoke of, I read it but I found it impossible to understand.
The Swedenborgian church has quotes and excerpts from Emmanuel Swedenborg in order to entice people to the sect.
Sounds like a description of epiphany -- I don't suppose you're a closet theist? I'm agnostic on whether there is some sort of divinity, although I think humans can experience divine things, I sometimes wonder if such experiences are just delusions and madness.
doesn't eating when you're not hungry = fat ? :huh:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Solo
Hi gnosis,
don't know Paul Coelho but it seems clear that you are looking more for both, group support, and your own sense of what is going on. One rational mystic of the late Renaissance that you might want to try is Pico della Mirandola - an amazing character - needless to say he had the Inquisition chasing him half way through Europe. There is an essay by him called "Three relations", in which he says that man's relation to God is an inner dialogue that is too fractious for public discourse and has not much to add to the other two relations that define us socially, men to men, and men to nature.
You mention Blake, as one of the mystics you like. He was into angels big time. AMOF, Gilchrist reported that as a ten year old he told his father he saw angels sitting in a tree. His dad gave him a beating for telling lies.
Here is one of my favorite passages. Teresa, struggles to express how her joy "in God" differs from a purely mundane kind of happiness. Even though I would not use the same words and imagery I know what she is saying. Ever since I was little I would suddenly get a rush, at a thought, at a signt, during a piece of music, an inexplicable orgasmic feeling that overpowers me, fills me and voids me at the same time. I am covered in goose pimples.
It seems to me that the feelings which come to us from Divine things are as purely natural as these, except that their source is nobler, although these worldly joys are in no way bad. To put it briefly, worldly joys have their source in our own nature and end in God, whereas spiritual consolations have their source in God, but we experience them in a natural way and enjoy them as much as we enjoy those I have already mentioned, and indeed much more. Oh, Jesus! How I wish I could make myself clear about this! For I think I can see a very marked difference between these two things and yet I am not clever enough to make my meaning plain: may the Lord explain it for me!
I have just remembered a verse which we say at the end of the last psalm at Prime. The last words of the verse are 'Cum dilatasti cor meum'. (Psalm 119:32, "when you enlarge my heart")
Same way as eating benefits you when you are not hungry.
Jiri
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03-26-2007, 10:24 PM
